BOOK V

THE OPHITE HERESIES
p. 137. 1. These are the contents of the 5th (book) of the Refutation of all Heresies.
2. What the Naassenes say who call themselves Gnostics, and that they profess those opinions which the philosophers of the Greeks and the transmitters of the Mysteries first laid down, starting wherefrom they have constructed heresies.
3. And what things the Peratae imagine, and that their doctrine is not framed from the Holy Scriptures but from the astrological (art).
4. What is the system according to the Sithians, and that they have patched together their doctrine by plagiarizing from those wise men according to the Greeks, (to wit) Musaeus and Linus and Orpheus.
5. What Justinus imagined and that his doctrine is not framed from the Holy Scriptures, but from the marvellous tales of Herodotus the historiographer.
1. Naassenes.1
p. 138. 6. I consider that the tenets concerning the Divine and the fashioning of the cosmos (held by) all those who are
1 In this chapter, Hippolytus treats of what is probably a late form of the Ophite heresy, certainly one of the first to enter intorivalry with the Catholic Church. For its doctrines and practices, the reader must be referred to the chapter on the Ophites in the translator's Fore- runners and Rivals of Christianity, vol. II ; but it may be said here that it seems to have sprung from a combination of the corrupt Judaism then practised in Asia Minor with the Pagan myths or legends prevalent all over Western Asia, which may someday be traced back to the Sumerians and the earliest civilization of which we have any record. Yet the Ophites admitted the truth of the Gospel narrative, and asserted the existence of a Supreme Being endowed with the attributes of both sexes and manifesting Himself to man by means of a Deity called His son, who was nevertheless identified with both the masculine and feminine aspects of his Father. This triad, which the Ophites called,
118
THE OPHITE HERESIES 119
deemed philosophers by Greeks and Barbarians have been very painfully set forth in the four books before this. Whose
the First Man, the Second Man, and the First Woman or Holy Spirit, 1 \n they represented as creating the planetary worlds as well as the " world ™j of form," by the intermediary of an inferior power called Sophia or Wisdom and her son Jaldabaoth, who is expressly stated to be the God ' of the Jews.
All this we knew before the discovery of our text from the statements ofheresiologistslike St. Irenreus and Epiphanius ; but Hippolytus goes further than any other author by connecting these Ophite theories with | L the worship of the Mother of the Gods or Cybele, the form under which the triune deity of Western Asia was best known in Europe. The un- named Naassene or Ophite author from whom he quotes without inter- mission throughout the chapter, seems to have got hold of a hymn to Attis used in the festivals of Cybele, in which Attis is, after the synergistic fash- ion of post- Alexandrian paganism, identified with the Syrian Adonis, the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek Dionysos and Hermes, and the Samothrac- ian or Cabiric gods Adamna and Corybas ; and the chapter is in substance a commentary on this hymn, the order of the lines of which it follows closely. This commentary tries to explain or "interpret" the different myths there referred to by passages from the Old and New Testaments and from the Greek poets dragged in against their manifest sense and in the wildest fashion. Most of these supposed allusions, indeed, can only be justified by the most outrageous play upon words, and it may be truly said that not a single one of them when naturally construed bears the slightest reference to the matter in hand. Yet they serve not only to elucidate the Ophite beliefs, but give, as it were accidentally, much information as to the scenes enacted in the Elcusin- ian and other heathen mysteries which was before lacking. The author also quotes two hymns used apparently in the Ophite worship which are not only the sole relics of a once extensive literature, but are a great deal better evidence as to Gnostic tenets than his own loose and equivo- cal statements.
As the legend of Attis and Cybele may not be familiar to all, it may be well to give a brief abstract of it as found in Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, Ovid, and the Christian writer Arnobius. Cybele, called also Agdistis, Rhea, Ge, or the Great Mother, was said to have been born from a rock accidentally fecundated by Zeus. On her first appearance she was hermaphrodite, but on the gods depriving her of her virility it passed into an almond-tree. The fruit of this was plucked by the virgin daughter of the river Sangarios, who, placing it in her bosom, became by it the mother of Attis, fairest of mankind. Attis at his birth was exposed on the river-bank, but was rescued, brought up as a goatherd, and was later chosen as a husband by the king's daughter. At the marri- age feast, Cybele, fired bv jealousy, broke into the palace and, according to one version of the story, emasculated Attis who died of the hurt. Then Cybele repented and prayed to Zeus to restore him to life, which prayer was granted by making him a god. The ceremonies of the Megalesia celebrating the Death and Resurrection of Attis as held in Rome during the late Republic and early Empire, and their likeness to the
120 PHILOSOPHUMENA
curious arts I have not neglected, so that I have under- taken for the readers no chance labour, exhorting many to love of learning and certainty of knowledge about the truth. Now therefore there remains to hasten on to the refutation of the heresies, with which intent1 also we have set forth the things aforesaid. From which philosophers the heresiarchs have taken hints in common 2 and patching like cobblers the mistakes of the ancients on to their own thoughts, have offered them as new to those they can deceive, as we shall prove in (the books) which follow. For the rest, it is time to approach the subjects laid down before, but to begin with those who have dared to sing the praises of the Serpent, nvho is in fact the cause of the error, through certain systems invented by his action. Therefore
j\ 139. the priests and chiefs of the doctrine were the first who were called Naassenes, being thus named in the Hebrew tongue : for the Serpent is called Naas.3 Afterwards they called themselves Gnostics alleging that they alone knew the depths.4 Separating themselves from which persons, many men have made the heresy, which is really one, a much divided affair, describing the same things according to vary- ing opinions, as this discourse will argue as it proceeds.
These men worship as the beginning of all things, according to their own statement, a Man and a Son of Man. But this Man is masculo-feminine 5 and is called by them Adamas;6 and hymns to him are many and various. And
p. 14c. the hymns, to cut it short, are repeated by them somehow like this : —
" From thee a father, and through thee a mother, the two deathless names, parents of Aeons, O thou citizen of heaven, Man of great name ! " 7
Easter rites of the Christian Church are desciibed in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for October 191 7.
1 (ov) x
2 jueTe'xto tcls acpopfias, a phrase frequent in Plato.
:i C'rU 4 Cf. Rev. ii. 24. 5 apatvoOyXvs.
6 Cruice thinks the name derived from the Adam Cad m on of the Jewish Cabala. But Adamas "the unsubdued" is an epithet of Hades who was equated with Dionysos, the analogue of Attis. Cf. Irenaeus, I, 1.
7 Salmon and Stahelein in maintaining their theory that Hippolytus' documents were contemporary forgeiies make the point that something like this hymn is repeated later in the account of Monoimus the Arabian's heresy. The likeness is not very close. Cf. II, p. 107 infra.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 121
But they divide him like Geryon into three parts. For there is of him, they say, the intellectual (part), the psychic and the earthly ; and they consider that the knowledge of him is the beginning of the capacity to know God, speaking thus: ''The beginning of perfection is the knowledge of man, but the knowledge of God is completed perfection." But all these things, he says, the intellectual, and the psychic and the earthly, proceeded and came down together into one man, Jesus who was born of Mary ; * and there spoke together, he says, in the same way, these three men each of them from his own substance to his own. " For there are three kinds of universals 2 according to them (to wit) the angelic,3 the psychic and the earthly ; and three churches, the angelic, the psychic and the earthly ; but their names are : Chosen, Called, Captive.4
7. These are the heads of the very many discourses which p. 141. they say James the brother of the Lord handed down to Mariamne.8 So then, that the impious may no longer speak falsely either of Mariamne, or of James, or of his Saviour, we will come to the Mysteries, whence comes their fable, both the Barbarian and the Greek, and we shall see how these men collecting together the hidden and ineffable mysteries of the nations6 and speaking falsely of Christ, lead astray those who have not seen the Gentiles' secret rites. For since the Man Adamas is their foundation, and they say there has been written of him "Who shall declare his generation?"7 learn ye how, taking from the nations in turn p. 142. the undiscoverable and distinguished 8 generation of the Man, they apply this to Christ.
1 Origen {cont. Celsnm, VI, 30) says the Ophites used to curse the nnrae of Christ. Hence Origen cannot be the author of the Philosophumena. \
2 to o\a. I am doubtful whether he is here using the word in its .philosophic or Aristotelian sense as "entities necessarily differing from one another in kind," or as " things of the universe." On the whole the former construction seems here to be right.
:; ' ' That which has been sent " ?
4 Doubtless as being still confined in matter.
5 Both Origen and Celsus knew of this Mariamne, after whom a sect is said to have been named. See Orig. cont. Cels., VI, 30.
8 t
7 Isa. liii. 8.
8 Sidcpopou. Miller reads a8td(f>opoi> : "undistinguished."
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"For earth, say the Greeks, was the first to give forth man, thus bearing a goodly gift. For she wished to be the mother not of plants without feeling and wild beasts without sense, but of a gentle and God-loving animal. But hard it is, he says, to discover whether Alalcomeneus of the Boeotians came forth upon the p. 143. Cephisian shore as the first of men, or whether (the
first men) were the Id?ean Curetes, a divine race, or the Phrygian Corybantes whom the Sun saw first shooting up like trees, or whether Arcadia brought forth Pelasgus earlier than the Moon, or Eleusis Diaulus dweller in the Rarian field, or Lemnos gave birth to Cabirus,- fair child of ineffable orgies, or Pallene to Alcyon, eldest of the Giants. But the Libyans say Iarbas the first-born crept forth from the parched field to pluck Zeus' sweet acorn. So also, he says that the Nile of the Egyptians, making fat the mud which unto this day begets life, gave forth living bodies made flesh with moist heat."1
But the Assyrians say that fish-eating 2 Oannes (the first man) was born among them and the Chaldaeans (say the same thing about) Adam ; and they assert that he was the man whom the earth brought forth alone, and that he lay breathless, motionless (and) unmoved like unto a statue being the image of him on high who is praised in song as the man Adamas ; but that he was produced by many p. 144. powers about whom in turn there is much talk.3
In order then that the Great Man4 on high, from whom,
1 This hymn is in metre and is said to be from a lost Pindaric ode. It lias been restored by Bergk, the restoration being given in the notes to Cruice's text, p. 142, and it was translated into English verse by the late Professor Conington. Cf. Forerunners, II, p. 54, n. 6.
2 IxOvocpdyov. Doubtless a mistake for lx®vo Berossus' story wore a fish on his back.
3 Adam the protoplast according to the Ophites {Ireneeus, I, xviii, p. 197, Harvey) and Epiphanius {Hcrr. xxxvii, c. 4, p. 501, Oehler) was made by Jaldabaoth and his six sons. The same story was current among the followers of Saturninus {Irenccns, I, xviii, p. 197, Harvey) and other Gnostic sects, who agree with the text as to his helplessness when first created, and its cause.
4 So in the Bruce Papyrus, " Jen," which name I have suggested is an abbreviation of Jehovah, is called "the great Man, King of the great Aeon of light." See Forerunners t II, 193.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 123
as they say, "every fatherhood1 named on earth and in the heavens '; is framed, might be completely held fast, there was given to him also a soul, so that through the soul he might suffer, and that the enslaved "image of the great and most beautiful and Perfect Man " — for thus they call him — might be punished.2 Wherefore again they ask what is the soul and of what kind is its nature that coming to the man and moving3 him it should enslave and punish the image of the Perfect Man. But they ask this, not from the Scriptures, but from the mystic rites. And they say that the soul is very hard to find and to comprehend, since it does not stay in the same shape or form, nor is it always in one and the same state, so that one might describe it by a type or comprehend it in substance.4 But these various changes of the soul they hold to be set down in the Gospel inscribed to the Egyptians.
They doubt then, as do all other men of the nations, whether the soul is from the pre-existent, or from the self- begotten, or from the poured-forth Chaos.5 And first p. 145. they betake themselves to the mysteries of the Assyrians 6 to understand the triple division of the Man; for the Assyrians were the first to think the soul tripartite and yet one. For every nature, they say, longs for the soul, but each in a different way. For soul is the cause of all things that are, and all things which are nourished and increase, he says, require soul. For nothing like nurture or increase, he says, can occur unless soul be present. And even the
1 Eph. iii. 15. Cf. ihe address of Jesus to His Father in the last document of the Pi s'.is Sophia, Forerunners, II, p. 180, n. 4.
2 Why is he to be punished ? In the Manicfuxan story (for which sec Forerunners, II, pp. 292 ff.) the First Man is taken prisoner by the powers of darkness. Both this and that in the text are doubtless survivals of some legend current throughout Western Asia at a very early date. Cf. Bousset's Hauplprobleme der Gnosis, Leipzig, 1907, c. 4, Der Urmensch.
3 So the cryptogram in the Pistis Sophia professes to give "the word by which the Perfect Man is moved." Forerunners, II, 188, n. 2.
4 ov hypostasis was later substituted according to Hatch. See his Hibbert Lectures, pp. 269 ff.
5 So Miller, Cruice, and Schneidewin. I should be inclined to read (pdos, " light," as in the Naassene hymn at the end of this chapter. ' No Gnostic sect can have taught that the soul came from Chaos.
6 This, as always at this period, means "Syrians." See Maury, Rev. ArcheoL, Iviii, p. 242.
VOL. I. I
I24 PHILOSOPHUMENA
stones, he says, are animated,1 for they have the power of increase, and no increase can come without nourishment. For by addition increase the things which increase and the addition is the nourishment of that which is nourished.2 Therefore every nature he says, of things in heaven, and on earth, and below the earth, longs for a soul. But the Assy- rians call such a thing 3 Adonis or Endymion or (Attis) ; and when it is invoked as Adonis Aphrodite loves and longs after the soul of such name. And Aphrodite is generation4 accord- ing to them. But when Persephone or Core loves Adonis 5 there is a certain mortal soul separated from Aphrodite p. 146. (that is from generation).6 And if Selene should come to desire of Endyrnion 7 and to love of his beauty, the nature of the sublime ones, he says, also requires soul. But if, he says, the Mother of the Gods castrate Attis,8 and she holds this loved one, the blessed nature of the hypercosmic and eternal ones on high recalls to her, he says, the masculine power of the soul.9 For, says he, the Man is masculo-feminine. According to this argument of theirs, then, the so-called10 intercourse of woman with man is by (the teaching of) their school shown to be an utterly wicked and defiling thing. For Attis is castrated, he says, that is, he has changed over from the earthly parts of the lower creation to the eternal substance on high, where, he says, there is neither male nor female,11 but a new creature,12
1 fyrpvxoi. lie is punning on the likeness between this and \pvxv, "soul."
2 And between "nourished" and "reared."
3 rb toiovtov. Not (pvtris or ^/vx'h. At this point the author begins his commentary on the Hymn of ihe Mysteries of Cybele, for which see p. 141 infra.
4 y4ve
6 An allusion to the myth which makes Aphrodite and Persephone share the company of Adonis between them.
6 These words are added in the margin.
7 A prominent feature in the imposture of Alexander of Abonoteichus. See Lucian's Pseudomantis, passim.
8 In the better-known story Attis castrates himself; but this version explains the allusion in the hymn on p. 141 infra.
9 i. e. restores to her the virility of which they had deprived her when she was hermaphrodite. Seen, on p. 119 supra.
10 \c\tyij,4v7). Miller and Schneidewin read SeSaiy/ncuT], "open," or " displayed."
11 Gal. iii. 28. So Clemens Romanus, Ep. ii. 12 ; Clem. Alex. Strom. i III, 13. Cf. Fistis Sophia, p. 378 (Copt).
12 2 Cor. v. 17 ; Gal. vi. 15.
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a new Man, who is masculo-feminine. What they mean by " on high " I will show in its appropriate place when I come to it. But they say it bears witness to what they say that Rhea is not simply one (goddess) but, so to speak, the whole creature.1 And this they say is made quite clear by p. 147. the saying : — " For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made by Him, in truth, His eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse. Since when they knew Him as God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but foolishness deceived their hearts. For thinking themselves wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likenesses of an image of corruptible man and of birds and of fourfooted and creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up to passions of dishonour. For even their women changed their natural use to that which is against nature." 2 And what the natural use is according to them, we shall see later. " Likewise, also the males leaving the natural use of the female burned in their lust one toward another males among males working unseemliness."3 But unseemliness is according to them the first and blessed and unformed substance which is the cause of all the forms of things which are formed. "And receiving in themselves the p. 148. recompense of their error which is meet."4 For in these words, which Paul has spoken, they say is comprised their whole secret and the ineffable mystery of the blessed pleasure. For the promise of baptism 5 is not anything else according to them than the leading to unfading pleasure him who is baptized according to them in living water and anointed with silent6 ointment.
1 i. e. masculo-feminine. That Rhea, Cybele an 1 Ge are but different names of the earth-goddess, see Maury, Kel de la Grece Antique, I, 78 ff. For their androgyne character, scqJ.R.A.S. for Oct. 1917.
2 Rom i. 20 ft. The text omits several sentences to be found in the A.V.
3 Ibid., v. 27. 4 Ibia., v. 28.
5 iirayyzXla tov \ovrpov, pollicetur Us qui lavanltir, Cr. But "the font " is the regular patrislic expression for the rite.
6 The text has &\Ay, "other," which makes no sense. Cruice, following Schneidewin, alters it to a\d\cp on the strength of p. 144 infra, and renders it ineffabilis ; but dAciAos cannot mean anything but "dumb" or "silent." That baptism in the early heretical sects was
126 PHILOSOPHUMENA
And they say that not only do the mysteries of the Assyrians bear witness to their saying, but also those of the Phrygians concerning the blessed nature, hitherto hidden and yet at the same time displayed, of those who were and are and shall be, which, he says, is the kingdom of the heavens sought for writhin man.1 Concerning which nature they have explicitly made tradition in the Gospel inscribed according to Thomas,2 saying thus:' "Whoso seeks me shall find me in children from seven years (up- wards). For there in the fourteenth year I who am hidden
p. 149. am made manifest." This, however, is the saying not of Christ but of Hippocrates, who says : "At seven years old, a boy is half a father." Whence they who place the primordial nature of the universals in the primordial seed having heard the Hippocratian (adage) that a boy of seven years old is half a father, say that in fourteen years according to Thomas it will be manifest. This is their ineffable and mystical saying.3
They say then that the Egyptians, who are admitted to be the most ancient of all men after the Phrygians and the first at once to impart to all men the initiations and secret rites 4 of the gods, and to have proclaimed forms and activities, have the holy and august and for those who are not initiated unutterable mysteries of Isis. And these are nothing else than the -pudendum of Osiris which was snatched away and sought for by her of the seven stoles and black
p. 150. garments.5 But they say Osiris is water. And the seven- stoled nature which has about it and is equipped with seven ethereal stoles — for thus they allegorically call the wandering stars — is like mutable generation 6 and shows
followed by a "chrism" or anointing, see Forerunners, II, 129, n. 2 ; ibid., 192.
1 Luke xvii. 21.
2 This does not appear in the severely expurgated fragments of the Gospel of Thomas which have come down to us. Epiphanius {Hcer. xxxvii.) includes this gospel in a list of works especially favoured by the Ophites.
3 \6yos, Cr. disciplina, Macmahon, "Logos." But see Arnold, Roman Stoicism, p. 161.
4 opyia. In Hippolytus it always has this meaning.
5 Isis. See Forerunners, I, p. 34.
6 7] neraPXriT)] yheois. The expression is repeated in the account of Simon Magus' heresy (II, p. 13 infra) and refers to the transmigration of souls.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 127
that the creation is transformed by the Ineffable and Un- portrayable * and Incomprehensible and Formless One. And this is what is said in the Scripture : "The just shall fall seven times and rise again." 2 For these falls, he says, are the turnings about of the stars when moved by him who moves all things. They say, then, about the substance of the seed which is the cause of all things that are, that it belongs to none of these but begets and creates all things that are, speaking thus : " I become what I wish, and I am what I am ; wherefore I say that it is the immoveable that moves all things. For it remains what it is, creating all things and nothing comes into being from begotten things."3 lie says that this alone is good and that it is of this that the Saviour spoke when he said : " Why callest thou me good ? There is one good, my Father who is in the heavens, Who makes the sun to rise upon the just and the unjust, and rains upon the holy and the sinners."4 And who are the p. 151. holy upon whom He rains and who the sinful we shall see with other things later on. And this is the great secret and the unknowable mystery concealed and revealed by the Egyptians. For Osiris, he says, is in the temple in front of Isis, whose pudendum stands exposed looking upwards from below, and wearing as a crown all its fruits of begotten things.5 And they say not only does such a thing stand in the most holy temples, but is made known to all like a light not set under a bushel but placed on a candlestick making its announcement on the housetops in all the streets and p. 152. highways and near all dwellings being set before them as some limit and term.6 For they call this the bringer of luck, not knowing what they say.
And this mystery the Greeks who have taken it over from the Egyptians keep unto this day. For we see, he says, the (images) of Hermes in such a form honoured among
1 aue^iKovia-Tos, "He of whom no image can be made."
2 I'rov. xxiv. 16.
3 Some qualification like " originally " or " at the beginning " seems wanting. Cf. Arnold, op. cit.> n. on p. 58 supra.
4 Matt. v. 45.
5 He has apparently mistaken Min of Coptos or Nesi-Amsu for Osiris who is, I think, never represented thus. At Denderah, he is supine.
6 The "terms" of Hermes which Alcibiades and his friends mutilated.
128 PHILOSOPHUMENA
them. And they say that they especially honour Cyllenius the Eloquent. For Hermes is the Word who, being the interpreter and fashioner x of what has been, is, and will be, stands honoured among them carved into some such form which is the pudendum of a man straining from the things below to those on high. And that this— 1that is, such a Hermes — is, he says, a leader of souls and a sender forth of them, and a cause of souls, did not escape the poets of the nations who speak thus : —
" Cyllenian Hermes called forth the souls Of the suitors." —
(Homer, Odyssey, XXIV, I.)
p. 153 Not of the suitors of Penelope, he says, O unhappy ones, but of those awakened from sleep and recalled to consciousness
"From such honour and from such enduring bliss." —
(Empedocles, 355, Stiirz.)
that is, from the blessed Man on high or from the arch-man Adamas, as they think, they have been brought down here into the form of clay that they may be made slaves to the fashioner of this creation, Jaldabaoth, a fiery god, a fourtli number.2 For thus they call the demiurge and father of the world of form.
11 But he hoi ils in his hands the rod Fair and golden, wherewith he lulls to sleep the eyes of men, Whomso he will, while others he awakens from sleep." —
{Odyssey, XXIV, 3 ft.)
This, he says, is he who has authority over life and death of whom he says it is written : "Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron."3 But the poet wishing to adorn the incom- p. 154. prehensible (part)4 of the blessed nature of the Word, makes his rod not iron but golden. And he charms to sleep the eyes of the dead, he says, and again awakens those
1 Bnfiiovpy6s. Here as always the "architect," or he who creates not.£r nihilo, but from existing material.
2 For this name which is said by all the early heresiologists to mean "the God of the Jews," see Forerunners, II, 46, n. 3. He is called a " fiery God" apparently from Dent. iv. 24, and a fourtli number, either because in the Ophite theogoftvy he comes next after the Supreme Triad of Father, Son, and Mother or, more probably, from his name covering the Tetragrammaton, or name of God in four letters. 3 Ps. ii. 9.
4 Cr. supplies " virtutem " ; but the adjective is in the neuter.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 129
sleepers who are stirred out of sleep and become suitors. Of these, he says, the Scripture spoke : " Awake thou that sleepest, and arise and Christ shall shine upon thee."1 This is the Christ, he says, who in all begotten things is the Son of Man, impressed (with the image) by the Logos of whom no image can be made.2 This, he says, is the great and unspeakable mystery of the Eleusinians " Hye Cye"3 seeing that all things are set under him, and this is the saying : " Their sound went forth into all the earth," 4 just as
11 Hermes waved the rod and they followed gibbering." —
(Homer, Odyssey, XXIV, 5-7.)
still meaning the souls as the poet shows, saying figuratively : —
"And even as bats flit gibbering in the secret recesses Of a wondrous cave when one has fallen down out of the rock From the cluster. . . . " —
{Ibid, XXIV, $seg.)
Out of the rock, he says, is said of Adamas. This, he says, p. 155. is Adamas, " the corner-stone which has become the head of the corner."5 For in the head is the impressed brain of the substance from which every fatherhood is impressed.6 "Which Adamas," he says, "I place at the foundation of Zion." 7 Allegorically, he says, he means the image of the Man. But that Adamas is placed within the teeth, as Homer says, "the hedge of teeth,"8 that is, the wall and stockade within which is the inner man, who has fallen from Adamas the arch-man 9 on high who is (the rock) "cut without cutting hands"10 and brought down into the image
1 Eph. v. 14.
2 KexaPaKTrIPl(rlx*V0S "irk T°v axaPaKTrlpi sions repeated up to the end of the chapter are most difficult to render in English. The allusion is clearly to a coin stamped with the image of a king. Afterwards I translate axo-paKT-qpiaros by " unportrayable, for brevity's sake.
3 The famous words which tradition assigns to the Eleusinian Mysteries. One version is " Rain ! conceive ! " and probably refers to the fecundation or tillage of the earth. Cf. Plutarch, de Is. et Os., c. xxxiv.
4 Rom. x. 18. 6 Ps. cxviii, 22. Cf. Isa. xxviii. 16. 6 See n. on p. 123 supra. 7 Isa. xxviii. 16.
8 Something U here omitted before 6d6vTes. Cf. Iliad, IV, 350.
9 apxavOpoinros, a curious expression meaning evidently First Man. It appears nowhere but in this chapter of the Philosophumena.
^° Dan. ii. 45, "cut from the mountain without hands."
1 3o PHIL0S0PHUMEN A
of oblivion,1 the earthly and clayey. And he says that the souls follow him, the Word, gibbering.
Even so the souls gibbered as they fared together, But he went before,
that is, he led them,
''Gracious Hermes led them adown the dark ways." —
{Odyssey, XXIV, 9 ft)
p. 156. that is, he says, into eternal countries remote from all evil. For whence, says he, did they come ?
" By Ocean's flood they came and the Leucadian cliff And by the Still's gates and the land of dreams." —
( Odyssey \ ubi tit. )
This he says is Ocean, "source of gods and source of men"2 ever ebbing and flowing now forth and now back. But when he says Ocean flows forth there is birth of men, but when back to the wall and stockade and the Leucadian rock there is birth of gods. This he says is that which is written: "I have said ye are all gods and sons of the Highest ; if you hasten to flee from Egypt and win across the Red Sea into the desert," that is from the mixture below to the Jerusalem above who is the Mother of (all) living. " But if ye return again to Egypt," that is to the mixture below, p 157- "ye shall die as men."3 For deathly, says he, is all birth below, but deathless that which is born above ; for it is born of water alone and the spirit, spiritual not fleshly. This, he says, is that which is written : " That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit."4 This is, according to them, the spiritual birth. This, he says, is the great Jordan which flowing forth pre- vented the sons of Israel from coming out of the land of Egypt — or rather, from the mixture below ; for Egypt is the body according to them — until Joshua 5 turned it and made it flow back towards its source.
1 The Power called Adonaeus or Adon-ai by the Ophites is also addressed as A^0tj, " oblivion," in the "defence" made to him by the ascending soul. See Origen, cont Cels. VI, c. 30 ff. or Forerunners, II, 72.
2 A compound of //tad, XIV, 201 and 246.
3 Ps. lxxxii. 6 ; Luke vi. 35 ; John x. 34 ; Gal. iv. 26,
4 John ii', 6, 5 Joshua iii, 16,
THE OPHITE HERESIES 131
8. Following up these and such-like (words) the most wonderful Gnostics having invented a new art of grammar 1 imagine that their own prophet Homer unspeakably2 fore- showed3 these things and they mock at those who not being initiated in the Holy Scriptures are led together into such designs. But they say : whoso says all things were framed from one, errs ; but whoso says from three speaks the truth and gives an exposition of (the things of) the universe. For one, he says, is the blessed nature of the Blessed Man above, Adamas, and one is the mortal (nature) below, and one is the kingless race begotten on high, where, p. 158. he says, is Mariam the sought-for one, and Jothor the great wise one, and Sephora the seer,4 and Moses whose genera- tion was not in Egypt— for there were children born to him in Midian — and this, he says, was not forgotten by the poets : —
" In three lots were all things divided and each drew a domain of his own." — {Iliad, XV, 169.)
For sublime things, he says, must needs be spoken, but they are spoken everywhere, lest " hearing they should not hear and seeing they should see not."5 For if, he says, the sublime things were not spoken, the cosmos could not have been framed. These are the three ponderous words : Caulacau, Saulasau, Zeesar.6 Caulacau the one on high, Adamas, Saulasau, the mortal nature below, Zeesar the p- 159- Jordan which flows back on its source. This is, he says, the masculo-feminine Man who is in all things, whom the ignorant call the triple-bodied Geryon — as if Geryon were "flowing from Earth " 7— and the Greeks usually "the
1 So the Cabbalists call one of their word-juggling processes gematria, which is said to be a corruption of ypa^fj-ania.
2 app_7]Tws, i.e., "by implication,'' or "not in words."
3 Play upon irpocpaivu and irpo(priT7]s.
1 Mariam was Moses' aunt, Sephora his wife, and Jothor Sephora's father, according to some fragments of Ezekiel quoted by Eusebius. So Cruice.
"' Matt. xiii. 13.
6 Isa. xxviii. 10. In A.V., " Precept upon precept ; line upon line ; here a little, there a little." Irenoeus (I, xix, 3, I, p. 201, Harvey) says, Caulacau is the name in which the Saviour descended according to Basil ides, and the word seems to have been used in this sense by other Gnostic sects. See Forerunners, II, 94, n. 3.
7 in y?is piovra !
132 PHILOSOPHUMENA
heavenly horn of Men " x because he has mingled and com- pounded all things with all. "For all things, he says, were made through him and apart from him not one thing was made. That which was in him is life." 2 This, he says is the life, the unspeakable family of perfect men which was not known to the former generation. But the "noth- ing " which came into being apart from him is the world of form ; for it came without him by the 3rd and 4th.3 This, he says, is the cup Condy in which the king drinking, divineth. This, he says, is that which was hidden among the fair grains of Benjamin. And the Greeks also say the same with raving lips : —
" Bring water, bring wine, O boy Intoxicate me, plunge me into sleep. The cup tells me P- 160. What I must become.'"4—
{Anacreon, XXVI, 25, 26.)
It was enough, he says, that only this should be known to men that Anacreon's cup spoke mutely an unspeakable mystery. For mute, he says, was Anacreon's cup which says Anacrcon, tells him with mute speech what he must become, that is spiritual not fleshly, if he hears the hidden mystery in silence. And this is the water in those fair nuptials which Jesus changed by making wine. This, he says, is the mighty and true beginning of the signs which Jesus did in Cana in Galilee and made known the kingdom of the heavens. This, he says, is the kingdom of the heavens within us, as a treasure as the leaven hidden within three measures of meal.5 p. 161. This is, he says, the great and unspeakable mystery of the Samothracians which is allowed to be known to us alone who are perfect. For the Samothracians explicitly hand down in the mysteries celebrated by them that Adam is the Arch-man. And in the temple of the Samothracians stand two statues of naked men having both hands stretched
1 A direct quotation from the Hymn of the Great Mysteries given later, p. 141 injra. Also a pun between nepapw/jit and tcepas.
2 John 1. 34. 3' «f-
3 Sophia, the third person of the Ophite Triad and Jaldabaoth her son.
4 Something omitted after "cup."
n rpia adra. A Jewish measure equivalent to i| tnodius. Cf Matt. xiii. 33.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 133
forth to heaven and their pudenda turned upwards like that of Hermes on (Mt.) Cyllene. But the aforesaid statues are the images of the Arch-man and of the re-born spiritual one in all things of one substance l with that man. This, he says, is what was spoken by the Saviour : " Unless ye drink my blood and eat my flesh, ye shall not enter . into the kingdom of the heavens ; but even though, He says, ye drink the cup which I drink when I go forth you will not be able to enter there."2 For He knew, he says, from which nature each of His disciples was, and that each of them was compelled to come to his own special nature. For from the twelve tribes, he says, He chose twelve disciples,3 and by them He spake to every tribe. Whence, p. 162 he says, all could not have heard the preachings of the twelve disciples, nor, had they heard them could they have been received. For the things which are not according to 4 nature are with them natural.
This, he says, the Thracians who dwell about Mt. Haemus and like them the Phrygians call Corybas,5 because although he takes the beginning of his descent from the head on high and from the Unportrayable one and passes through all the sources of underlying things, we know not how and in what fashion he comes. This, he says, is the saying : " We have heard his voice, but we have not seen his shape." ° For, he says, the voice of him who is set apart and has been impressed with the ima heard, but no one has seen what is the shape which has come down from on high from the Unportrayable One. But it is in the earthly form and no one is aware of it. This, he says, is the God who dwells in the flood according to the Psalter and "who speaks aloud and cries from many . waters." 8 " Many waters," he says, is the ^manifold generation of mortal men, wherefrom he shouts and cries aloud to the Unportrayable Man : " Deliver my only p. 163.
1 The famous 6/j.oovcrios.
- A compound of John vi. 53 and Mk. x. 38.
A Madras, " disciples," not apostles.
4 The Kara may mean either •' against " or " according to " nature.
5 For this Coryhas and his murder by Ins two brothers see Clem. Alex., Protrept., II. A pun here follows between Corybas and Kopv " head."
6 John v. 3. 7 KexapaKTripur/jLevos. 8 Ps. xxix. 3, 10.
i34 PHILOSOPHUMENA
begotten from the lions ! " l In answer to this, he says, is the saying : " Thou art my son, O Israel. Fear not. If thou passest through the rivers they shall not overwhelm thee; if through the fire, it shall not bum thee."2 By rivers is meant, he says, the moist essence of generation, and by fire the rage and desire for generation. " Thou art mine. Be not afraid." And again he speaks: "If a mother forget her children and pities them not nor gives them suck, yet will I not forget thee." 3 Adamas, he says, speaks to his own men : " But although a woman shall forget these things, yet will I not forget you. I have graven you on my hands."4 But concerning his ascension, that is, the being born again^ that he may be born spiritual, not fleshly, he says, the Scripture speaks : " Lift up the gates, ye rulers, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the
p. 164. King of Glory shall enter in."5 That is the wonder of wonders. " For who," he says, " is this King of Glory ? A worm and not a man, a reproach of man and an object of contempt for the people. This is the King of Glory, he who is mighty in battle." 6 But he means the war which is in the body, because the (outward) form is made from warring elements, he says, as it is written : " Remember the war which is in the body." 7 The same entrance and the same gate, he says, Jacob saw wrhen journeying to Mesopotamia — for Mesopotamia, he says, is the flow of the great Ocean flowing forth from the middle part8 of the Perfect Man — and he wondered at the heavenly gate, saying : " How terrible is this place ! It is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven." 9 Wherefore, he says, the saying of Jesus : " I am the true gate."10 Now He who says this is, he says, the Perfect
p. 165. Man who, has been impressed above (with the image) of the Unportrayable one. Therefore he says, the perfect
1 Ps. xxii. 20, A. V., " My darling from the power of the dog."
2 Isa. xci. 8 ; xliii. 1, 2.
3 Ibid., xlix. 15 ; slightly altered.
4 Ibid., xlix. 16.
5 Ps. xxiv. 7. A.V. omits "rulers" or archons.
6 Ps. xxiv. 8 ; xxii. 6.
7 Job xl. 2.
8 A pun like that on Geryon or Corybas.
9 Gen. xxviii. 17.
10 John x. 7, 9, "I am the door."
THE OPHITE HERESIES 135
man will not be saved unless born again by entering in through this gate.
But this same one, he says, the Phrygians * call also Papas, because he set at rest that which had been moved irregularly and discordantly before his coming. For the name of Papa, he says, is (taken from) all things in heaven, on earth, and below the earth, saying : " Make to cease ! make to cease ! 2 the discord of the cosmos and make peace for those that are afar off,"3 that is, for the material and earthly, and also " for those that are anigh," that is, for the spiritual and understanding perfect men. But the Phrygians say that the same one is also a "corpse," having been buried in the body as in a monument or tomb.4 This, he says, is the saying : " Ye are whited sepulchres filled within with dead men's bones," 5 that is, there is not within you the living Man. And again, he says, "the dead shall leap forth from their graves,''" 6 that is, the spiritual man, not the fleshly, shall be born again from the bodies of the earthly. This, he says, is the resurrection which comes through the gate of the heavens, through which if they do not enter, all p. 166. remain dead. And the same Phrygians, he says again, say that this same one is by reason of the change a god. For he becomes God when he arises from the dead and enters into heaven through the same gate. This gate, he says, Paul the Apostle knew, having set it ajar in mystery and declaring that he " was caught up by an angel and came unto a second and third heaven into Paradise itself and beheld what he beheld, and heard ineffable words which it is not lawful for man to utter." 7 These are, he says, the mysteries called ineffable by all " which (we also speak) not in the words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual ; but the natural 8 man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him " ; 9 and these, he
1 i. e. the worshippers of Cybele. For Attis' name of Pappas, see Graillot, Le Culte de Cybele, p. 15. It seems to mean " leather."
2 wave, -rrave ! ! ! 3 Eph. ii. 1 7.
4 This was an Orphic doctrine. See Forerunners, I, 127, n. I for authorities.
5 Matt xxiii. 27. 6 1 Cor. xv. 52.
7 2 Cor. xii. 3, 4. A.V. omits "second heaven" and the sights seen.
8 \pvxiKbs 5e avQpccTTos. The " natural man" of the A.V. 8 1 Cor. ii. 13, 14,
136 PHILOSOPHUMENA
says, are the ineffable mysteries of the Spirit which we alone behold. Concerning them, he says, the Saviour spake : " No man shall come unto me unless my heavenly Father draw some one (unto me)." 1 For very hard it is, he says, to receive and take this great and ineffable mystery. And
p. 167. again, he says, the Saviour spake : " Not every one who sayeth unto me, Lord ! Lord ! shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he who doeth the will of my Father who is in the heavens." 2 Of which (will) he says, they must be doers and not hearers only to enter into the kingdom of the heavens. And again, says he, He spake: "The publicans and the harlots go before you into the kingdom of the heavens."3 For the publicans, he says, are those who receive the taxes of market- wares, and we are the tax- gatherers "upon whom the ends of the aeons have come down."4 For the "ends," he says, are the seeds sown in the cosmos by the Unportrayable One,5 whereby the whole cosmos is completed ; 6 for by them also it began to be. And this, he says, is the saying : " The sower went forth to sow, and some (seed) fell on the wayside and was trodden under foot, and some upon stony (parts) and sprang up ; and, because it had no root, he says, it withered and died. But some fell, he says, upon the fair and goodly earth and brought forth some a hundredfold, and some sixty and some thirty.
p. 168. He that hath ears to hear, let him bear." 7 This is, he says, that no one becomes a hearer of these mysteries save only the perfect Gnostics. This, he says, is the fair and goodly earth of which Moses spake : " I will bring you to a fair and goodly land, to a land flowing with milk and honey." 8 This, he says, is the honey and the milk, tasting which the perfect become kingless and partakers of the fulness.9 The same, he says, is the Pleroma, whereby all things that are
1 John vi. 44, "draw him unto me." 2 Matt. vii. 21,
3 Matt. xxi. 31, "Kingdom of God."
4 1 Cor. x. 11. A pun on tcAt?, " taxes," and T6A77, " ends."
5 Cf. the Stoic doctrine of \6yoi atrep/aaTiKot, Arnold, l\oman Stoicism, p. 161.
6 Lit., " brought to an end."
7 A condensation of Matt. xiii. 3-9.
8 Deut. xxxi. 20.
9 i. e. become united with the Godhead. The newly-baptized were given milk and honey. Cf. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, above quoted, p. 300.
T-HE OPHITE HERESIES 137
begotten by the unbegotten have come into being and are filled.
But the same one is called by the Phrygians *•' unfruitful." For he is unfruitful when he is fleshly and performs the desire of the flesh. This, he says, is the saying: "Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire." 1 For these fruits, he says, are only the rational, the living man who enter by the third gate.2 They say, indeed : " Ye who eat dead things and make living ones, what will ye make if ye eat living things ? " 3 For they say that words4 and thoughts and men are living things cast down by that Unportrayable One into the form, below. This, he says, is what he means: "Throw not P- i°9- your holy things to the dogs nor pearls to the swine," B saying that the intercourse of woman with man is the work of dogs and swine.
But this same one, he says, the Phrygians call goatherd, not because, he says, he feeds goats and he-goats, as the psychic man calls them, but because, he says, he is Aipolos, that is, he who is ever revolving6 and turning about and driving the whole cosmos in its circumvolution. For to revolve is to turn about and to change the position of things, whence, he says, the two centres of the heaven men call Poles. And the poet says : —
"What unerring ancient of the sea turns hither The Immortal Egyptian Proteus." —
{Odyssey, IV, 384.)
He 7 is not betrayed (by Eidothea), he says, but turns himself about, as it were, and goes to and fro. He says, too, that cities wherein we dwell are called 7ro'A.ei9, because we turn and go about in them. Thus, he says, the p. 170, Phrygians call him Aipolos, who turns everything always in every direction and changes it into what it should be. But the Phrygians also call the same one "of many fruits," because (the Naassene writer) says, "the children of the
1 Matt. iii. io.
2 This "third gate" is evidently baptism. For the reason see Forerunners, II, p. 73, n. 2.
3 This seems to be a quotation from the Naassene author.
4 Perhaps an allusion to the \6yot (nrepfiariKoi. 5 Matt. vii. 6.
6 The derivation to be tolerable should be *a€tir6\os !
7 i, e. Proteus.
1 38 PHILOSOPHUMEN A
desolate are more in number than those of her who has a husband " ; : that is, the deathless things which are born again and ever remain are many, if few are those which are born (once) ; but all the things of the flesh, he says, are corruptible, even if those which are born are many. Where- fore, he says, Rachel mourned for her children and would not be comforted when mourning over them, for she knew, he says, that they were not.2 And Jeremiah wails for the Jerusalem below, not the city in Phoenicia,3 but the mortal generation below. For Jeremiah, he says, also knew the Perfect Man who has been born again of water and the spirit and is not fleshly. The same Jeremiah indeed said : " He is a man, and who shall know him ? " 4 Thus, he says, the knowledge of the 'Perfect Man is very deep and hard to comprehend. For the beginning of perfection, he says, is the knowledge of man ; but the knowledge of God is com- pleted perfection.
P- 17 !• The Phrygians also say, however, that he is a "green ear of corn reaped " ; and following the Phrygians, the Athenians when initiating (any one) into the Eleusinian (Mysteries) also show to those who have been made epopts the mighty and wonderful and most perfect mystery for an epopt 5 there — a green ear of corn reaped in silence.6 And this ear of corn is also for the Athenians the great and perfect spark of light from the Unportrayable One ; just as the hierophant himself, not indeed castrated like Attis, but rendered a eunuch by hemlock, and cut off from all fleshly generation, celebrating by night at Eleusis the great and ineffable mysteries beside a huge fire, cries aloud and makes proclamation, saying : " August Brimo has brought forth a holy son, Brimos," that is, the strong (has given birth) to the strong.7 For august is, he says, the generation which is spiritual or heavenly or sublime, and strong is that which is thus generated. For the mystery is called Eleusis or Anacterion : " Eleusis," he says, because we spiritual ones
P- x72. came on high rushing from the Adamas below. s For
1 Gal. iv. 27. 2 Je> em. xxxi. 15.
3 The mistake in geography shows that Hippolytus was not a Jew.
4 Jerem. xviii. 9. 5 iiroTrnxlu . . . ^.var-hpiov.
6 This is in effect the first real information we have as to the final secret of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
7 Hesychius also translates Brimos by lirx^pSs.
8 Hades or Pluto.
•fHE OPHITE HERESIES 139
eleusesthai, he says is to come, but anactoreion the return on high. This, he says, is what they who have been initiated into the mysteries of the Eleusinians say. But it is a regulation that those who have been initiated into the Lesser Mysteries should moreover be initiated into the Great. For greater destinies obtain greater portions.1 But the Lesser Mysteries, he says, are those of Persephone below and of the way leading thither, which is wide and broad and bears the dead to Persephone, and the poet says : —
" But under her is a straight and rugged road Hollow and muddy, but the best to lead To the delightful grove of much-reverenced Aphrodite." 2
These, he says, are the Lesser Mysteries, those of fleshly generation, after being initiated into which men ought to cease (from the small) and be initiated into the great and p. 173. heavenly ones. For those who have obtained greater destinies, he says, receive greater portions. For this, he says, is the gate of heaven and this the house of God where the good God dwells alone,3 into which will not enter, he says, any unpurified, any psychic or fleshly one ; but it is kept for the spiritual only, where those who are must cast aside 4 their garments and all become bridegrooms, having come to maturity through the virgin spirit.5 For this is the virgin who bears in her womb and conceives and gives birth to a son not psychic or corporeal, but the blessed Aeon of Aeons. Concerning these things, he says, the Saviour expressly spake: "Narrow and straitened is the way that leads to life and few are those who enter into it;
1 Schleiermacher attributes this saying to Ileraclitus. 1 Mcineke {ap. Cr. ) attributes these lines to Par men id t?.
3 Cf. Justinus later, p. 175 infra.
4 Schneidewin and Cruice both read AajSetV, " receive " (their vestures) [ox $a\siv.
5 Cr. translates air-qpaevw/iivovs, exuta virilitafc ; but it seems to be a participle of airappev6oj = airav8p6u). The idea that the Gnostic pneumatics or spirituals would finally be united in marriage with the angels or ^0701 runners, II, I IO. The "virgin spirit" was probably that Barbelo whom Irenseos, I, 26, if. (pp. 221 ff., Harvey), describes under that name as reverenced by the " Barbeliotae or Naassenes" ; in any case, probably, some analogue of the earth-goddess, ever bringing forth and yet ever a virgin.
VOL. I. K
i4o PHILOSOPHUMENA
but wide and broad is the way leading to destruction and many are they who pass along it." x
9. But the Phrygians further say that the Father of the
p 174. universals is Amygdalus, not a tree, he says, but that pre- existent almond2 which containing within itself the perfect fruit (and) as if pulsating and stirring in the depth, tore asunder its breasts and gave birth to its own invisible and unnameable and ineffable boy of whom we are speaking.3 For " Amyxai " is as if to burst and cut asunder,4 as he says, in the case of inflamed bodies having within them any gathering, the surgeons who cut them open call them " amychas." Thus, he says, the Phrygians call the almond from whom the invisible one proceeded and was born, and through whom all things came into being and apart from whom nothing came into being.
But the Phrygians say that he who was thence born is a piper, because that which was born is a melodious spirit. For God, he says, is a Spirit, wherefore neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall the true worshippers prostrate them- selves, but in spirit.5 For spiritual, he says, is the prostration of the perfect, not fleshly. But the Spirit, he says, (is) there where both the Father and the Son are named, being
P- l75- there born from this (Son and from) the Father.6 This, he says, is the many-named, myriad-eyed 7 incomprehensible One for whom every nature yearns, but each, in a different way. This, he says, is the Word8 of God, which is, he says, the word of announcement of the great Power. Wherefore it will be sealed and hidden and concealed, lying in the habitation wherein the root of the universals 9 is established, that is 10 (the root) of Aeons, Powers,
1 Matt. vii. 13, 14. The A.V. has etWpxoA"" for dtepxofiai.
2 See n. on p. 119 supra. 3 i.e. Attis.
4 a/iiWo) is rather to " scratch/* or " scarify," than as in the text.
5 Cf. John iv. 21.
c Cruice's restoration. Schneidewin's would read: "The Spirit is there where also the Father is named, and the Son is there born from the Father."
7 Cf. Ezekiel x. 12. e prj/xa, not \6yos.
9 Here we see the interpretation put by Hippolytus on the Aris- totelian Ta o\a.
10 6e/u.€\i6w. The whole of this sentence singularly resembles that in the Great Announcement ascribed to Simon Magus, for which see II, p. 12 infra.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 141
Thoughts, Gods, Angels, Emissary Spirits, things which are, things which are not, things begotten, things un- begotten, things incomprehensible, things comprehensible, years, months, days, hours (and) of an Indivisible Point,1 from which what is least begins to increase successively. The Point, he says, being nothing and consisting of nothing (and) being indivisible will become of itself a certain magni- tude incomprehensible by thought.2 It, he says, is the kingdom of the heavens, the grain of mustard seed, the Indivisible Point inherent to the body which none knoweth, he says, save the spiritual alone. This, he says, is the saying : "There are no tongues nor speech where their voice is not heard."3 P- 176.
Thus they hastily declare that the things which are said and are done by all men are to be understood in their way, imagining that all things become spiritual. Whence they also say that not even they who exhibit (in the) theatres say or do anything not comprehende4 in advance.4 So for example, he says, when the populace have assembled in the theatres 5 some one makes entrance clad in a notable robe bearing a cithara and singing to it. Thus he speaks chanting the Great Mysteries 6 (but) not knowing what he is saying : —
" Whether thou art the offspring of Kronos, or of blessed Zeus, Or of mighty Rhea, Hail Attis, the sad mutilation of Rhea.7 The Assyrians call thee the muchdonged-for Adonis, Egypt names thee Osiris, heavenly horn of the Moon.8 p. 177.
1 This idea of the Indivisible Point, which recurs in several Gnostic writings, including those of Simon and Basilides, seems founded on the mathematical axiom that the line and therefore all solid bodies spring from the point, which itself has "neither parts nor magnitude."
9 'Etrivoia. This also is used by Simon as the equivalent oCEvuoia.
3 Ps. xix. 3.
4 airpovo7)Tws, Cr., sine numine qnidquam ; Macmahon, " without premeditation."
5 Performances in the theatres formed part of the Megalesia or Festival of the Great Mother.
6 I should be inclined to read t>)s MeyaATjs fivcrr-hpta, ** Mysteries of the Great Mother."
7 An allusion to the variant of the Cybele legend which makes her the emasculate* of Attis.
8 So Conington, who translated the hymns into English verse, and Schneidewin. Ilippolytus, however, evidently gave this invocation to the Greeks. See p. 132 supra.
142 PHILOSOPHUMENA
The Greeks Sophia,1 the Samothracians, the revered Adamna,
The Thessalians, Corybas, and the Phrygians
Sometimes Papas, now the dead, or a god,
Or the unfruitful one, or goatherd,
Or the green ear of corn reaped,
Or he to whom the flowering almond-tree gave birth
As a pipe-playing man." 2
This, he says, is the many-formed Attis to whom they sing praises, saying : —
" I will hymn Attis, son of Rhea, not making quiver with a buzzing sound, nor with the cadence of the Idtean Curetes' flutes, but I will mingle (with the hymn) the Phoebun music of the lyre. Evohe, Evan, for (thou art) Bacchus, (thou art) Pan, (thou art the) shepherd of white stars."
For such and such-like words they frequent the so-called Mysteries of the great Mother, thinking especially that by means of what is enacted there, they perceive the whole mystery. For they get no advantage from what is acted there except that they are not castrated. They merely perfect the work of the castrated;3 for they give most pointed and careful instructions to abstain as if castrated from intercourse with women. But the rest of the work as p. 17S. we have said many times, they perform like the castrated. But they worship none other than the Naas, calling them- selves Naassenes. But Naas is the serpent, from whom he says, all temples under heaven are called naos from the Naas ; and that to that Naas alone is dedicated every holy place and every initiation and every mystery, and generally that no initiation can be found under heaven in which there is not a naos and the Naas within it, whence it has come to be called a naos. But they say that the serpent is the watery substance, as did Thales of Miletos4 and that no being, in short, of immortals or mortals, of those with souls or of those without souls, can be made without him. And that all things are set under him, and that he is good and
1 8' ocpiav, according to Schneidewin's restoration (for which see p. 176 Cr.), seems better sense, if w?e can suppose that the Sabazian serpent was so called.
2 The whole hymn with the next fragment is given as restored to metrical form where quoted in last note.
3 That is of the Ga//i, or eunuch-priests of Attis and Cybele.
4 Thales only said, so far as we know, that water was the beginning of all things.
'THE OPHITE HERESIES 143
contains all things within him as in the horn of the one- horned bull 1 (so as) to contribute beauty and bloom to all things according to their own nature and kind, as if he had passed through all "as if he went forth from Edem and cut himself into four heads."2
But this Edem, they say, is the brain, as it were bound and enlaced in the surrounding coverings as in the heavens ; p. 179- and they consider man as far as the head alone to be Paradise. Therefore "the river that came forth from Eden " — that is from the brain — they think " is separated into four heads and the name of the first river is called Phison ; this it is which encompasses all the land of ' Havilat. There is gold and the gold of that land is good, and there is bdellium and the onyx stone." 3 This, he says, (is the) eye, bearing witness by its honour (among the other features) and its colours to the saying : " But the name of the second river is Gihon ; this it is which encompasses all the land of Ethiopia." This, he says, is the hearing, being somewhat like a labyrinth. "And the name of the third is Tigris ; this it is which goes about over against the Assy- rians." This, he says, is the smell which makes use of the swiftest current of the flood. And it goes about over against the Assyrians because in inspiration the breath drawn in from the outer air is sharper and stronger than the respired breath. For this is the nature of respiration. "The fourth river is Euphrates." This they say, is the mouth, which is the seat of prayer and the entrance of food, which gladdens4 and nourishes and characterizes5 the p. 180. spiritual perfect man. This, he says, is the water above the firmament concerning which, he says, the Saviour spake: "If thou knewest who it is that asks thou would have asked of him, and he would have given thee to drink living rushing water.''6 To this water, he says, comes every
1 The cornucopia : horn ot the goat (not bull) Amalthea seems to have been intended. I see no likeness between this and the passage in Deut. xxxiii. 17, to which Macmahon refers it.
2 Gen. ii. 10.
3 This and the three following quotations are from Gen. ii. 10-14 and follow the Septuagint version.
1 Play upon Euphrates and eixppaluei, "rejoices."
5 xaPaKTVpi^1- "Stamps" would be more correct, but singularly incongruous' with water.
6 John iv. 10. No substantial difference from A.V.
i44 PHILOSOPHUMENA
nature to choose its own substances.1 and from this water goes forth to every nature that which is proper to it, he says, more (certainly) than iron to the magnet, gold to the spine of the sea-falcon and husks to amber.2 But if any- one, he says, is blind from birth, and has not beheld the true light which lightens every man who cometh into the world,3 let him recover his sight again through us, and behold how as it were through some Paradise full of all plants and seeds, the water flows among them. Let him see, too, that from one and the same water the olive-tree chooses and draws to itself oil, and the vine wine, and each of the other plants (that which is) according to its kind.
p. 181 But that Man, he says, is without honour in the world, and much honoured [in heaven, being betrayed] by those who know not to those who know him not, and accounted like a drop which falleth from a vessel.4 But we are, he says, the spiritual who have chosen out of the living water, the Euphrates flowing through the midst of Babylon, that which is ours, entering in through the true gate which is Jesus the blessed. And we alone of all men are Christians, whom the mystery in the third gate has made perfect, and have been anointed 5 there with silent ointment from the horn like David and not from the earthen vessel, he says, like Saul,6 who abode with the evil spirit of fleshly desire.
10. These things, then, we have set forth as a few out of many : for the undertakings of folly which are nonsensical and madlike are innumerable. But since we have expounded to the best of our ability their unknowable gnosis, we have thought it right to add this also. This psalm has been concocted by them, whereby they seem to hymn all the
p. 182. mysteries of their error thus : — 7
1 ovffiai, but not in the theological sense.
2 This simile, repeated often later, has been the chief support of Salmon and Stahelin's forgery theory. Yet Clement of Alexandria (Book VII, c. 2, Stromateis) also uses it, and the turning of swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks appears in Micah iv. 3, as well as in Isaiah ii. 4, without arguing a common origin.
3 John I. 9. 4 Isn. xl. 15.
5 Play upon x?lH^VQl> "anointed," and xPL
6 1 Sam. x. I ; xvi. 13, 14.
7 The hymn which follows is so corrupt that Schneidewin declared it beyond hope of restoration. Miller shows that the original metre was anapaestic, the number of feet diminishing regularly from 6 to 4 He
THE OPHITE HERESIES 145
The generic law of the universe was the primordial mind ;
But the second was the poured-fbrth light1 of the First-born :
And the third toiling soul received the Law as its portion.
Whence clothed in watery shape,
The loved one subject to toil (and) death,
Now having lordship, she beholds the light, P- 183.
Now cast forth to piteous state, she weeps.
Now she weeps (and now) rejoices ;
Now laments (and now) is judged ;
Now is judged (and now) is dying.
Now no outlet is left or she wandering
The labyrinth of woes has entered.2
But Jesus said : Father, behold !
A strife of woes upon Earth
From thy breath has fallen,
But she seeks to flee malignant chaos.
And knows not how to win through it,
For this cause send me, O Father,
Holding seals I will go down, p. i$a
Through entire aeons I will pass,
All mysteries I will disclose ;
The forms of the gods I will display ;
The secrets of the holy way
Called Gnosis, I will hand down.
These things the Naassenes attempt, calling themselves Gnostics.3 But since the error is many-headed and truly
likens this to that of the hymns of Synesius and the Tragopodagra of Lucian.
1 Reading
2 This seems (o correspond with the Ophite description of Sophia or the third Person of their Triad in Chaos. Cf. Irenieus, I> 28.
3 The source of this chapter on the Naassenes is so far undiscover- able. Contrary to his usual practice, Hippolyt.ua here mentions the name of no heretical author as he does in the following chapters of this Book. It is probable, therefore, that he may have taken down his account of "Naassene" doctrines from the lips of some convert, which would account for the extreme wildness of the quotations and to the incoherence with which he jumps about from one subject to another. This would also account for the heresy here described being far more Christian in tone than the other forms of Ophitism which follow it in the text, and the quotations from Scripture, especially the N.T., being more numerous and on the whole more apposite than in the succeeding chapters. The style, such as it is, is maintained throughout and its continuity should perhaps forbid us to see in it a plurality of authors. Little prominence in it is given to the Serpent which gives its name to the sect, although it is here said that he is good, and this seems to point to the Naassene being more familiar with the Western than with the Eastern forms of Cybele- worship.
146 PHILOSOPHUMENA
of diverse shape like the fabled Hydra, we, having struck off its heads at one blow by refutation, (and) using the rod of Truth, will utterly destroy the beast. For the remaining heresies differ little from this, they all being linked together by one spirit of error. But since they by changing the words and the names wish the heads of the serpent to be many, we shall not thus fail to refute them thoroughly as they will.
2. Peratce}
12. There is also indeed a certain other (heresy), the Peratic, the blasphemy of whose (followers) against Christ has for many years evaded (us). Whose secret mysteries it now seems fitting for us to bring into the open. They suppose the cosmos to be one, divided into three parts. But of this triple division, one part according to them is, as it were, a single principle like a great source 2 which may be
1 No mention of this sect is made by Irenreus or Epiphanius, and Theodoret's statements concerning it correspond so closely with those of our text as to make it certain either that they were drawn from it or that both he and llippolytus drew from a common source. Yet Clement of Alexandria knew of the Peratics (see Stromateis VII, 16), and Origen [cont. Cels. VI, 28) speaks of the Ophites generally as boasting Euphrates as their founder. The name given to them in our text is said by Clement [ttbi cit.) to be a place-name, and the better opinion seems to be that it means " Mede" or one who lives on the further side of the Euphrates. The main point of their doctrine seems to be the great prominence given in it to the Serpent, whom they call the Son, and make an intermediate power between the Father of All and Matter. In this they are perhaps following the lead of some of the Grreco- Oriental worships like that of Sabazius, one of the many forms of Attis, or that of Dionysos whose symbol was the serpent. The proof of their doctrines, however, they sought for not, like the Naassenes, in the mystic
■ rites, but in a kind of astral theology which looked for religious truths in the grouping of the stars ; and it was in pursuit of this that they identified the Saviour Serpent with the constellation Draco. Yet they were ostensibly Christians, being apparently perfectly willing to accept the historical Christ as their great intermediary. Their attitude to Judaism is more difficult to grasp because, while they quoted freely "from the Old Testament, they apparently considered its God as an evil, or at all events, an unnecessarily harsh, power, in which they anticipated Manes and probably Marcion. Had we more of their writings we should probably find in them the embodiment of a good deal of early Babylonian tradition, to which most of these astrological heresies paid great attention.
2 irrjyr).
THE OPHITE HERESIES 147
cut by the mind into boundless sections. And the first and p. 186. chiefest section according to them is the triad and (the one part of it)1 is called Perfect Good and Fatherly Greatness.2 But the second part of this triad of theirs is, as it were, a certain boundless multitude of powers which have come into being from themselves, while the third is (the world of) form. And the first is unbegotten and is good ; and the second is good (and) self-begotten, while the third is be- gotten.3 Whence they say expressly that there are three Gods, three /ogoi, three minds, and three men. For they assign to each part of the world of the divided divisibility, gods and logoi and minds and men and the rest. But they say that from on high, from the unbegottenness and the first section of the cosmos, when the cosmos had already been brought to completion, there came down through causes which we shall declare later 4 in the days of Herod a certain triple-bodied and triple-powered :> man called Christ, con- taining within Himself all the compounds 6 and powers from the three parts of the cosmos. And this, he says is the p. 1S7. saying : "The whole Pleroma was pleased to dwell within Him bodily and the whole godhead" of the Triad thus divided "is in Him."7 For, he says that there were brought down from the two overlying worlds, (to wit) the unbegotten and the self-begotten, unto this world in which we are, seeds of all powers. But what is the manner of their descent we shall see later.8 Then he says that Christ was brought down from on high from the unbegottenness so
1 to fxku eV /j.epos. Cruice thinks these words should bo added here instead of in the description of the "great source" just above. See