Section 10 (Page li)
SOURCES OF
GNOSTICISM.
li bers ; also that these two lines of philosophic thought Platonic converge and meet in Egyptian theories, such as have gophy! already been described'.
Evidently the power and energy ~ of the mundane soul was indicated in Egyptian myths as well as in the Platonic theory.
The entire system indeed of Egyptian mythology rested upon deified principles and powers of nature, of which Creuzer has given a closely detailed account in his Symbolik und Mythologie.
If there fore it should be found in the Gnostic, and more specially in the Valentinian system, that the world was animated by a quasi Divine soul, the notion as originating in Egypt may have been the result of fusion of Egyptian and Platonic
theories.
The connexion however between the Pleroma of Valentinus, with its correlative external Hebdomad, and anything similar in the Platonic system, is reserved for future consideration.
One more particular may be mentioned as observable in the language of Plato.
He continually speaks of the creative act as a nin^ats, having reference to that unity of design that formed one of the characteristic attributes of his ideas.
The analogies for instance of comparative anatomy would in his language be referred to the imitative principle.
Thus the Demiurge having caused divine essences to exist, delegated to them the work of creating mortal substance ; and by an imitative act, so\ oe w/xovnevoi, they embodied the divine soul in its material o^fia.
Again, the same divine creative essences3 formed the head of man of a shape that should correspond with the periphery of the universe, to tou ndi/ros a-^/ia aTrofxifxtiaafxevot vepKpepes ov.
The entire material world was but a and be resolvable into the cumulative or for which that of the Latin u was an equational, a, (cf. doXX/es, iriXtanos,) imperfect substitute; perhaps the Gerand j>v9fiJ>s. It may be borne in mind man, «, was nearer to it. also that QcrNCTiLiAN, Inst.
Or. in.
' pp. xxiii. xxiv. x. 37. cf. 1. rv.
14, regrets the loss of 3 Plato, Tim. 690. the true pronunciation of the Greek v, 3 lb. 44 D. d<2
lii SOURCES OF
GNOSTICISM.
Eclectic reflective imitation of the ideal, ^waaa dvaynri rovSe tov Principle. e\K^va T'lvos e}vai.
The phenomena of the visible creation are ^onoiwiiaTa rwv eicel, and the physical attribute of sense is toiovtov olov to ov, such as the ideal reality.
But the entire Platonic theory is based upon this n\\i.riai<s, wherein the material has its true counterpart in the ideal; and Valentinus can have received from no other source his notion, not only that the Pleroma is the 3prototypal form of creation, but that the superior ^Eons were repro duced in their *successors.
5 Omnia in imagines urgent, plane et ipsi imaginarii Christiani.
The Eclectic principle, that had influenced in a greater
or less degree the teaching of every one of the ancient masters, gave a far more impulsive movement to the phi losophy of Alexandria.
The first Macedonian colonists, as barbarians, owed no fealty to the schools of Greece.
Eastern adventurers, linking their fortunes with those of the rising city, introduced modes of thought and theories that had from time immemorial formed the traditions of the East.
The vast stores of learning collected in the famous library of Alexandria represented, we may ima gine, systems that had long subsisted on the banks of the Ganges and Indus, of the Euphrates and of the Nile, as well as the more familiar doctrines of polished Greece.
5The schools of Alexandria maintained at first a distinct character; but it was impossible that a social centre, re presenting so many contending modes of thought, should long preserve any single system pure, and free from mixture
1 Tim.
29 A. and 30 D. merous : " L'expression l'^cole d'Alexan- ' Pheedr.
250 A. drie....est tres impropre puisqu'elle ' Seep. 44; 57, 3; 6a. peut s'appliquer e'galement h l'ecole 4 pp.
24, n. 1; 33, n. 3; 42, 43, des Juifs, a celle des Chretiens, et a 60, n. I ; 62, n.
2 ; 266. celle des Grecs d'Alexandria.
Ce n'est 5 Tbbt. c.
Val. 27. done plus de l'ecole, e'est des nom0 Matter has very justly shewn, that breuses ecoles de cette ville qu'il doit to speak of the School of Alexandria is 6tre question".
Hist, de VicoU d'A lac. highly erroneous; its schools were nupref.
SOURCES
OF GNOSTICISM.
liii with the rest.
Its philosophy, in fact, soon became fully Eclectic Pri°ciple' tinctured with the cosmopolitan character of the place.
It no longer represented the schools of Hellas; and even tually a system grew up, formed upon the eclectic prin ciple of sharing the distinctive peculiarities of all.
This fusion, so far as the Greek modes of philosophy are con cerned, is originally associated with the name of Potamon by 'Diogenes Laertius; although he reduced into order rather, and systematised the eclectic principle, whereby already 'Antiochus had united the Academic and Stoic teaching ; Strabo, the geographer, had harmonised the latter with the Peripatetic method; Sotion, the younger, had combined Stoicism with the ancient theory of Py
thagoras ; and Ammonius of the Academy had brought together the great rival theories of Plato and Aristotle.
A wider application of the same eclectic principle was soon made ; the teaching of the East was incorporated and naturalised ; so that the Magi of Chaldaea and of Persia, the disciple of Pythagoras, and the more subtle disputants of the Academy, of the Lyceum, and of the Porch, were represented in that fusion of the various in tellectual and religious systems of the old world, which has made the Museum famous3.
To these also must be added the Jewish philosophy, or Cabbala, derived originally from Babylon, and modified by later misappreciations of Py thagoras and Plato.
A few observations upon this latter element, (system it can scarcely be called,) will lead to a consideration of the Gnostic theory of the first two
1 "En Si wpb 6\tyov xal luXc/criK^ ns
The eclectic tendency of the atptnt ilaifxfii] viri Hordfiwvos rod 'AXffAlexandrian
Museum presents itself in a highly favourable point of view, as having encouraged a rapid development of the positive sciences.
Geography, fKatTTTji tCiv aifjcatwv.
DlOG.
L-AEBT.
Procem.
9 Qui appellabatur Acadcmicus ; erat geometry, astronomy, optics, anatomy, derived their first, or a considerable im quidcra, si perpauca mutavisset, gerpulse from the city of the Ptolemies. manissimuB StoicuB.
ClO. Acad. XL 22.
liv
SOURCES OF GNOSTICISM.
The centuries, that through Manicheism may be traced down to ——- the present day, in continuous1 modes of thought.
There can be no doubt that the Jews, during the Ba bylonian captivity, received the impress of Orientalism.
There is a close parallel between many of the traditions of the Cabbala and the Zoroastrian theosophy ; taking them conjointly we observe the following characters
: that Boundless Duration, the First Principle, was a source of Ineffable 2Light.
That from this sole origin of all things proceeded Ormuzd, the First Born ; the Cabbalistic Adam Cadmon 3the irpvToyovos tov Qeou of Philo, or objective ideal counterpart of all things.
In the Persian
theory, Ahriman emanated in conjunction with Ormuzd, and a whole world of evil Spirits was created by him ; this was modified, as might be expected, in the Jewish copy, and there the Evil Principle, Belial, and his satellites, are situated in the system Asiah, the lowest of four worlds that emanated from the ten Sephiroth, and therefore the furthest from the Principle of Good.
These ten Sephiroth, evolved first as a triad, from whence proceeded a Heb domad, emanated from Adam Cadmon, and represented the principal attributes of the Deity, with which severally the Divine Names were combined, implying that the Supreme Being is not substantially known in His creation, but only in his various 4 Attributes.
So also in the Zoro astrian order of emanations, Ormuzd and the six Amshaspands that he evolved,
8 the correlatives of the seven lower Sephiroth, were followed by the Ized, or mundane geni, 1 See Baue's Christliche Gnosis, IV.
4 "C'est par cea attribute qu'il se rt3 Z. Avesta, m.343, and of. p. 234,1. vele ; et ce n'est pas Dieu lui-meme que 3 See pp.
134, 2; 196, 197, 124, 1; l'esprit humaine peut reconnaltre daDS
232, 3; 344, I.
The Rabbinical Adam ses ceuvres; ce n'est que son mode do Cadmon is clearly traced in Philo's s'y manifester.
Dans tous les cas, c'est statement; (vSierai Si 6 fiiv Tpeaf}vraune ve'rite' profondement metaphysique ros tov 6mos \6yos us io~8ifra rhv Kbapuov. que les Cabbalistes mettent ici en avant." yfiv yip Ktxl vSap ko.1 itpa koI irvp koX Matter, H. Ct. I. 101. tA Ik tovtwv iTap.Trio~xera.i.
De Prof.
5 See p. 44, n.
1, and cf. Philo de § 20.
Op. 37—39Le'JAll. 4, 5-
SOURCES OF GNOSTICISM.
It the KoanoiTotol ayye\oi of Gnosticism, the satellites as it "were of Mithras ; and these again were in due course suc ceeded by the third order of spiritual beings, the Ferouer, or Divine Archetypal Ideas that preceded immediately the great work of creation, which, like the ideas of Plato, may have had a ruder counterpart in the arcana of Egyptian or Babylonian theosophy.
Adam Cadmon, the Philonic Logos, was the Cabbalistic impersonation of this ideal system, who for this reason was termed fxaKpoKoafios, or
PS3X"["3K,
fiaKpovpoawiro's1.
Of each of these systems it may be observed, and the idea was strictly preserved as a Gnostic axiom, that the various emanations were perfect in proportion to their proximity to the First Source of all ;
as in the planetary system, gravity and density increase according to the squares of distance from the Sun, so in the emanative theory, each successive evolution was more imperfect and less spiritual than the preceding, until the more subtle and ethereal forms of matter having been deve loped, gave rise also to those that, by various combination, were of a * denser and grosser substance.
The more defi nite analogies, that identify Gnosticism with the Cabbala, will be considered in the sequel as opportunities offer.
The writings of Philo exhibit another, but a more indirect way, whereby Eclectic opinions in the first in stance, and subsequently the Gnostic heresies, were charged with an Oriental colouring.
These latter, at least in their earliest branches, were imbued with Zoroastrian principles through a more direct contact with them.
For 1 It may be observed that Philo in trated by that which Simon Magus is dicates even the oriental dyad, the ori made to assert in the Clement. Recoyn.
" E'jo virtute mca quodam tempore aerem ginal idea of the Valentinian av'Cvyla. llarpbs nb> OeoD, is Kal ruv ovinriirrwv rertena in aquam, et aquam rurius in iffrl ttcltJip' nijrpbs it troiplas, 5t* sanguinem, carnemque eolidans, novum Jjs rh.
S\a fj\0ev els ybrarar.
Phil. Jcd. de hominem purum formavi," and c. II.
15.
Cf. Horn.
Clem. n.
26, and Diog.
Laebt. vii. in Zenon.
20.
See 366, 288, 2.
Prof.
1; § The ancient notion of the gradual
condensation of matter may be illus
Ivi
SOURCES OF
GNOSTICISM.
at the time of the Babylonian Captivity, when the first deportation of the ten tribes took place, hordes of immi grants from 'Babylon replaced them, and took possession of the most desirable portions of Samaria.
The intro duction of their religion, and their intermarriages with the remnant of Israel, caused the deadly feud that ever since existed between the Jew of pure blood and the hybrid Samaritan.
Simon Magus, a Samaritan, taught a completely Zoroastrian doctrine.
But in all probability it was a doctrine that had subsisted in certain families of Samaria almost from the days of Shalmaneser.
So also the earlier Gnostic heresiarchs settled at Alexandria as immi
grants from Syria and the East; and the mixture of Ori ental notions to be detected in the systems of Basileides, Valentinus, Carpocrates, and others, was the effect of early association ; scarcely of contact with the philoso phising and syncretic Jew of Alexandria.
One consideration must have greatly commended the Oriental and other systems of theosophy to thinking minds, as compared with the religious belief of the more civilised nations of the world; which was, that whereas in Greece and Rome polytheism was upheld as the religion of the body politic, a higher faith possessed the Eastern mind, which recoiled with hearty abhorrence from the gross debasement of every Western form of religion.
Philosophy, in fact, gained a religious element in its union with Theosophy ; and prejudicial as a resulting Gnosticism was to the peace of the Church during the first two cen turies, it is impossible not to see that the evil was not unmixed with good ; and this concretion of ideas possibly afforded a temporary place of rest to the weary spirit of humanity, in its transition from the abominations of pa ganism to the pure faith of the Church of Christ.
Given on the one side the gross darkness of heathen idolatry, 1 2 Kings xvii.
24 —41.
SOURCES OF GNOSTICISM.
Ivii with its unholy and impure rites, and on the other the Recapitulatranscendental beauty of the Christian faith, the high courage, and meek virtues, and self-sacrificing devotion of its followers, and it is no irreverence to suppose that some such condition of twilight may have been needed, to inure the visual faculty in its transition from total dark ness to the otherwise blinding light of heaven.
As in even these aberrations of the human intellect, it^is more pleasing to trace the faintest glimmering of reason than to treat them as one gross stupid blank ; so, there is an inward satisfaction in remembering the certain truth, that the forcible eradication of these tares would have en
dangered the very existence of the true seed upon which Matt, xih. ». they had been scattered broadcast.
They were sown in deed by the malice of the enemy, but when once sown, there was greater danger in their removal than in their toleration.
It may be useful here to recapitulate very briefly those points that the Gnostic received from Greece, and from 'Egypt, the early cradle of philosophy, representing the esoteric action of whatever elements of variously diffracted truth survived in the creed of sage and hierophant.
We have 2traced then the existence of certain fundamental religious truths through the patriarchal ages down to the commencement of authentic history.
It is impossible for any one to study the various heathen intellectual systems that grew up subsequently to that period, without being firmly impressed with the consciousness that truths, dis torted it may be, still in their origin substantive truths, existed more generally than is usually imagined, as the inner soul of these systems.
When, however, a totally new class of ideas was introduced from the East, that commended itself to the religious sense of man in a 1 See Creczeb's words, above, p. xviii. n. >.
Iviii
SOURCES OF GNOSTICISM.
Recapitulahigher degree than the vain wrangling of the schools, the lon' natural result shewed itself in a recurrence to those an cient and comparatively unsophisticated principles of the old world, that were antecedent to the various systems of philosophy, and that still maintained a dim subsistence in the old centres of civilisation.
Hence the Gnostic claimed to take his stand upon the 1SiSaciccik'ia avaTohmri, and upon the 2Chaldajc Learning, as the 3 Ancient Philosophy.
We have observed also, as existing in Egypt, clear traces of a belief in 4 One Supreme Deity, who had existed from all eternity 5in a mode that is inconceivable to the human intellect, and was therefore termed negatively 6 a/cores ayvmarov.
That
from this Supreme Being were evolved, in the way of emanation, a subordinate pair of hai/xovia, rIsis and Osiris, who represented the 8 Divine tSeai, or 2o0/a the 9Mother of creation, and the male or Aplastic energy of the Crea tive Principle; while a third emanative Divine Person, Horus, embodied these archetypal ideas in the world of matter.
The first substance evolved was "Light; and every product of Creation was the representative of a transcendental 12e'iicwv in the Divine Ideas.
Matter, of eternal subsistence, 13existed in a chaotic state, as 14Plato also imagined, until reduced into order by its pe'de^is 15with ideal form.
The Egyptian grouping of the deities in subordination to the Supreme, corresponds in order, and in part also numerically with that of the Valentinian
JEons; and was based apparently upon certain 16 arithmetical analogies, 1 Theodotus, ap. Clem. Al.
8 pp. xx. xxi. n. 4, 5 ; xxu. xxiii.
1 Ecnapius in JZdes. ap. Br.
Ph. n. 641.
9 pp. xxi. 3 ; xxiii. xxiv. liv. 4. p. xxi. p. xvm.
" p. mil.
3, 4 ; xxiv. xxxvii.
» Porphtbt, v. Iambi.
* pp. xviii. xxxvi.
13 p. xxiii.
14 p. xlix. s pp. xxiii. n. 3; xxxvii.
6 pp. xxi. 1; cf. xxiii.
7 p. xx.
15 p. xxiv. xlix.
16 p. xxiv. xxv.
SOURCES OF
GNOSTICISM.
lix which 'Pythagoras, whom sVaIentinus certainly copied, Recapitulalearned also in Egypt.
The existence also of an unseen !— world of spiritual essences formed an article of philosophic faith even in the more 3primitive forms of Grecian wis dom; while the dualism, that is usually thought to have been a peculiarly Eastern feature, had a place in the theories of 4Pythagoras and Empedocles as <pi\la and veiKos, and the origin of the material creation was ascribed to war, as an abstraction of all that is evil, by 5Heraclitus.
Here, then, are several points that entered into the specu lations of Gnostic heresiarchs, and that have usually been referred to direct contact with the East; but that lay also
at the fountain-head of the Greek philosophy.
These details indeed give no complete account of the infusion of no tions through Gnosticism, that were strange to the general teaching of Greece, but they enable us better to under stand the ease with which those notions were received, and incorporated with the traditional results of philosophical investigation.
Many points of speculation of course were peculiarly Oriental.
It has already been stated 6that the relation of absolute Truth to the Thinking Intellect formed a prominent point in the discussions of the Alexandrian Museum, in the period that intervened between the commencement of the Christian sera, and the more extensive diffusion of Gnosti cism in the second century ; also that both the Gnostic, and the neo-Platonic philosopher, occupied common ground, in asserting the substantive unity of the Spirit, or Intellect, with that which formed the object of their respective yvwcrts.
But substantive knowledge had been the aspi ration of philosophy from the earliest days and in every 1 pp. xxix. xxxi. xlii —xliv. s TriXe^os irdmav /th war-qp fori, 1 259, 1 !
29^> /• ■ t&i>twv Si f}a<n\cvs, as quoted by Hipp.
Pk. ix. 9, p. xxxix. xxx. 8; xxxi. r ; xl. xlv.
6 pp. xl. xli.
Ix ORIGIN OF TIIE TERM.
Philosophic clime.
1 Heraclitus claimed for himself an exclusive title v™""to it.
Plato affirmed something of the same kind, when he said that *" to discover the Creator of the universe is a work of difficulty, but to bring him within the cognizance of all, impossible."
In the Thecctetus, indeed, the subject of which is a discussion of the question, " what is know ledge?" three principal theories are advanced and refuted, without arriving at any positive solution to the question ; yet the overthrow of these theories only proves the earn estness with which each of the three teachers,
Heraclitus, Protagoras, and Theaetetus had claimed for their respec tive systems an exclusive origin from the fountain-head of
knowledge.
'Elsewhere, a true yvwais is identified with an intellectual, that is at the same time inseparable from a moral perception of the Divine Principle.
In Persia, * Zoroaster asserted a still more lofty principle, in engaging his followers to an intellectual abstraction from the world of matter.
The very name yvwariKos is a translation rather of the 5 Oriental synonyms for (pi\6cro(pos, than a term of indigenous growth, and marked the votary of esoteric knowledge; while the union of the spiritual principle in man with the Divine Substance, was the yvtoan with which it professed to deal, and represented that contemplative abstraction of the faculties of the soul, and ecstatic union with the Divine Principle, that has always been the great object of aspiration to the Eastern devotee ; and that formed so marked a feature in the 6neo-Platonic School of Alexandria.
1 See p. xxxix. s As such it is a fit exponent of the * rbv nkv o&v voiijrty Kal iraripa fusion of the systems of the East and roCJe toC travrbt eiipetv re tpyov, Kal West.
It expresses perhaps such terms fvpdma els vdrras dSiyarov 'Keyeiv. as in the Hebrew, and Chaldaic, Timoe. cf. Philolam, Boeckh, p. 6». s '
I Rep. VI. 490 B.
Compare also the M als0 in Arabic.
The Persian application of the beautiful allegory that * opens the seventh Book.
See also Plut.
^vm Magus as derived from f^yas de Is. et Os. §§ I, 1, 78. corresponds rather with the Hebrew * Zend A v. 1. cccclxxix. D'Asq. P.
3").
ORIGIN
OF THE TEItM.
But beside this philosophical and theurgical affectation Mystic of a superior yvwan, there was also a mystical application of the term, whereby it expressed a spiritual appreciation of allegory that could only be known to the initiated. yvujffts.
1 Baur has shewn that several instances of this use of the term occur in the epistle of Barnabas.
Still better proof has come to light in the Ophite hymn 2preserved by Hippolytus, which concludes as follows :
Tovrov fie \apiv ireix^rov, irdrep' j cr(ppayt$a$ e^tov Karafiqaonai, alwvas oXous oiooevatt, fivarijpia izdvTa Siavol^vo, (f. cT 1.
dvoi^w) _ •nop(pd$ $e /uop(pds tb) (f.
Qeoov 6TriSel^a>'
Kai Ta K€Kpv/ifieva Trjs dylas 6$ou yvwaiv icaXecras irapa&waw.
We could hardly have better proof of the sense in which the Ophite adopted the title of Gnostic; involved it Clement of Alexandria without AtA toOt'+ {\a<ppai> p-opiprp irepiKcipJrri being aware of
may have inherited Kewrif dandrif pe\irrip.a Kpa.rovp.ivrf his definition of yvCiais from a Magian ItoTlip.ivf)B.<Tt\dai>l'xov<rap\e'TrftTb<pws, it yrwins Si iirurriipri toO 6vtos Hori els (\eov ifijuppiri) Khala, source S'
; abrov.
Strom. II.
17.
Ilore Si K\alerat, xalpei, Christliche Gnosis, p. 87 ff.
See Utrri Si xXofa, uplverai,
note 2, p. lxiii.
Ilori Si Kphmox, 6vr)(XK<:i, The relic IIoTe Si ylverai (W£o8os pe\4a »ca/c<p, as instructive as
is it is r) curious \afivpw60v dtrrjkBe ir\<u>wpji>ii.
Jp> irpfiros Eliro'
'I?;ffoOj§ labpa., virep, 8" ycvixos tov iravrbs ISSfios b vbof {irrripa Kax&v M. x^bm "0 Si Sevrepos rjv tov rpurorbicov to xvObi airb arfs nvorjs ftrorXdfeTat.
X<los' firei Si tpvydv to iriKpbv x^"5, TptrirTj \jivx*l fKapev* ipyafopJvri vbkoX o6k oI8e tus SiekcicrtTtu.
V ftov.
Toi/rou px x<tyw">«< supra.
* Ed. Mm. ipya£oiLtvr\v. of Plato.
The nine following verses exhibit lb. iXajfyov. the antagonism of the Spirit of Life pouring itself through the world of gross and perish ing matter, the prototypal idea of the Valentinian Achamoth and her Trd&rj t lb. abut, iUv. t Cod. ia'op.
The reader of Philo will re cognise in the first three verses his three manifestations of the Divine Wisdom and Power; The Source and Father of All; The First Bom Logos, or Exemplar, whereby Chaos was reduced to order i while : the concluding twelve verses describe the Valetitinian mission of Christ from the Pleroma for the formation of Achamoth, first Ko.T ahaiav, p.
32, and subsequently, Kara the Spirit of Life corresponding with the Mundane Soul ; yvuaiVf p. 39.
Ixii ORIGIN OF THE TERM.
Mystio every shade of allegory, and mysticism in its wildest yvw""' mood.
Again, the same writer records the Ophite gloss upon the LXX version of Jer. xvii. 9 :
"'AvOpwn-os ean koi t/s yvtoaerai avrov."
O'vTWi, (ptjaw, earl iravu fiaOeia nat SvGKaTclXijTrTos rj tov TeXelov avOpwirov yvwais.
Ap%t) yuP'
(prjalv, TeXeitoaewi, yvwarts avOpdirov'
Qeov &e yvwots, airrjprtaixevtj reXeiWis.
The passage occurring in a cento of allegorical expositions, sufficiently explains the Ophite meaning of the term yvwai<;.
Now bearing in mind the taste for allegory that had been fostered by the old heathen mysteries, this term ap pears to have been of a very natural growth.
Charged
to the full, as they were, with gross and debasing super stition, and even worse, these mystic perversions still ori ginated in some remote core of truth ; whereby generally the varied relations of the Divine Being with respect to the world of his creation were designated
; and unsophis ticated truths, that subsisted in the faith of a patriarchal age, were gradually debased and lowered by admixture with a ceremonial that addressed itself to the mere animal cit. d. til principle of the multitude.
S. Augustin perhaps spoke of the Samothracian mysteries in irony, as, nobilia Samothracum mysteria; and yet certain really noble ideas of the Deity in many instances gave a starting point to such mysteries, and early teachers thought to fix these by the medium of allegories, around which the grossest absurdities were only too sure to accrue.
In these mysteries all had an allegorical interpretation.
The remote sense was shut up, ixenvriixevov, from the multitude ; it was disclosed only to the initiated, who were then reXeiovtievoi, and had nothing more to learn.
But such a system naturally led to the multiplication of allegory, and devotees who possessed the key to this figurative teaching, arrogated to themselves a science, or yvwats, that was denied to the many.
These three very distinct bearings of the term yvwait,
ORIGIN
OF THE TERM.
lxiii observed in the Philosophic, Oriental, and Mystical systems, Philonic are not unfrequently combined in a writer, who was the yrwr"' immediate precursor of Gnosticism at Alexandria, the philosophical and mystic minded Philo Judaeus.
They are exemplified in a passage in his treatise de Somniis, in which he discourses upon the angelic vision in Bethel, and ima gines the mid air to be peopled, as some teeming city, with souls, and spirits, and angels.
He allegorises from revealed data, and his allegory is by no means unworthy of Plato, either in its beauty, or in the riches of moral and intellectual knowledge that it declares to be within the reach of man.
At the same time the spiritual entities
that it represents as peopling the air, and the 'complete sublimation of the contemplative spirit, are purely Zoroastrian.
Indeed Philo for ever speaks in the spirit of an eclectic Gnosticism, without, so far as I am aware, ever making use of the term •yvwais, otherwise than in the con ventional meaning of the word ; a good proof perhaps that in his day the term had not yet been restricted to express the tenets of any particular sect.
As is often to be ob served in the history of the human intellect, opinions long float in a loose and disengaged form, ready to coalesce and crystallise around the first convenient nucleus, until at length circumstances present themselves that are favour able to the process ; and theories that had long subsisted become known by some appropriate name, and gain their place in history.
Very much of this character appears to have been the origin of Gnosticism at Alexandria ; and modes of expression were adopted even in 2ecclesiastical 1 Tofrrwv (twv \pi%Gn>, sc.) at /ilv tA QapBeTaai p.erewporo\ovaiTbv aldva.
De Somn. I. 21. cdvrpo<pa Kal awifii\ toO Svifrov fllov * e. g. Ep. S. Bam.
§ 2, and, ri \4To6ov<rai TraKivSpoiLovaiv a&6ii, til Si yei ii yvuais pAOere, 'EKwlaare ^iri riv b ?r6Xk})v <p\vaplav airov Karayrovvai, Seapar-qpiov pib> Kal ti^/Sop iniXeaav rb aapxl pJWovra. <pavepova6ai iply '\t\aovv, awp.a, tpvyovatu Si iSavep ^| ei/wcTj)s $ § 6.
More in the spirit of Gnostic mys prfyuerot, Saw Koi<pois xrepoii r/>4» al$ipa ticism, the
persons {Grace, Tirf)
Ixiv
ORIGIN OF THE
TERM. writers that were afterwards tacitlv resigned to the heretic.
So there can be no doubt but that Gnosticism in its essence, so far as it affected a recognition of the Chris tian history, dated from Simon Magus ; and yet the name of Gnostic was only first adopted, as a body, by the Ophites or Naassenes, of whom Hippolytus has said, fxerd $e raura eireKuXeoav eavrovs Y vwcttikovs'
(pacrKovTes fxovoi rd ($d9}] yivwaneiv, ei~ <ov d.Trofxepia9evTes ttoWoi TroXva^iS^ Ttjv alpeaiv eiro'itjaav fxlav, Siatpopois Soy/maai rd aura Sirjyovfievoi.
Both philosophy and theosophical teaching, as exhibited at Alexandria, laid claim to an esoteric assimilation with the
Source of spiritual Light and Knowledge.
Heathen Mys ticism in the same way claimed a knowledge of the deep Truths that were sealed up in its arcana, and the system that affected to incorporate the more salient points of each, could hardly have received a more convenient term than yvwats, to symbolise the eclecticism to which it owed its origin.
The term yvw<rt% therefore embodies a highly complex idea, when we consider the various elements of which it was the outward expression ; and in proportion as any one of these elements has been clearly perceived, writers upon the Gnostic theories of the primitive ages of the Church, have referred them generically to this or that particular class of opinion.
Mosheim has treated them as almost entirely of Oriental growth ; Neander divides them into the two families of Jewish, and anti-Jewish Gnosticism, mentioned, Gen. xiv.
14, allegorise the heathen initiation, represented the chaname IHiroOs, and T. the cross, but the racter of the more perfect and formed solution is introduced with the question, Christian ; and of this there is a sketch
Us otv ti SoSetaa roirrif yvSkris, ib.
9 ; in the same Epistle, § 18, 19, as the similarly, Aapfidvei Si rpluv Soyii&rwv Way of Light. Cf. 07/0 656s, p. lxi. Clem. yvGxriv Aa/3i5, ib. 10, and a mystical inAlex, also retained the name of Gnostic, terpretation of Ps. i. follows.
There as applicable, in the better sense of the was a yv&ais however of a more practiterm, to the consistent and more perfect cal type, which, as the correlative of Christian.
PRIMITIVE
GNOSTICISM.
Ixv while Simon Magus, the father of them all, is referred to Chronolothe lesser eclectic communities.
Matter, scarcely Neanproposed™ der's equal, where he does not copy him, arranges the Gnostic sects in certain schools, which he names according to their locality, Syrian, Egyptian, and Asiatic.
The objec tion instantly suggests itself to this classification, that most of the Gnostic teachers who taught in Egypt, learned their craft in Syria ; and in the case of Valentinianism, the heresiarch came to Egypt from Cyprus, from whence he passed to Rome ; while Theodotus in the East, and Pto lemy and Heracleon in the West, as his followers, struck widely different notes, and neither in the one case nor the other had they much in common with the home of their
adoption.
For this reason it is proposed to take the vari ous sects in chronological order, for which the recently recovered work of Hippolytus gives excellent material, though it is somewhat uncritically arranged.
The first Gnostic teacher, who engrafted anything like a Christology upon the antecedent systems, was Simon Magus.
'Early patristical authorities are very unanimous upon this point.
In other respects his doctrine was emi nently Zoroastrian.
His Supreme Deity was an soccult spiritual fire.
Like the to aireipov of Anaximander, the ^IDTtf of the Cabbala, and the Zeruane Akerene of Zoroaster, his fiery principle was Infinite Power, sdirepavro<! livcuus.
It was also the source, as in the Heraclip.*xxix. tean theory, of the physical creation4.
His Hebdomad of primary emanations from the First Cause, was as the 8Amshaspands of the Persian system, and was designated by
195, 119, n. 3; 11X, 249, 271, &o. airepdvrov.
Aid ftrrai iatppa.ya7p.iv0v, ' HlPPOL. Phil. VI. 9, 17.
KtKpvfinimr, KeKa\v/ip.ivov, Kel/urop iv 3 Hippol.
Phil.
VI.
9, where the Tip oUrfniplip ov r/ pifa ruv i\Qv reBe/iewords of the Mage are quoted: iiripav- \lurrai 'Eor! Si ii itripavroi Stivafusri roy 5i dvai ovvamv 62lpwv irpoaayopeijei wop Kara, rbv 2ip.Cn>a. K.r.A. t&v SXuv rip Apxh") otfrws* Hovto 4 dxA irvpbs ^ ipx^l TVS yeviaeut . . . to ypdfifia airo$dffews (puvijs Kal dvdfiatrdvrwv Sffuv yiveais a.vb irvp6s.
VI. 17. rot i( ivwotas, rijt pxyd\->is owdpteus rrjs ° Ormvad being the seventh.
VOL. I. e
lxvi
PBIMITIVE
Simon him as 1vovi, eirlvoia, ovona, (piovtj, Xoyicrnoi, ev9ufiri<ris, Magus. eoTuis-cTTas-crTritronevos.
In the Mithratic worship especial x. xm. b. veneration was paid to the Sun, Moon, and material ele ments; in the same way 3 Simon paired off the above six emanations, as the heavenly counterparts of material cor relative objects of sense ; and he called vovs and eirlvoia, ovpavos ical yij, while ovona koi (f>u>v)j represented the Sun and Moon, and the last two, Air and Water.
The self-same p * objects are instanced by Herodotus in his account of the old Persian religion.
In the Zoroastrian system again, the human prototypal substance was 4evolved, prior to the creation of its material organism; 5 the Cabbala borrowed
the same notion; 6Philo adopted it; and Simon Magus, as we might imagine, exhibited a similar feature in his system; ^eTrXaae <ptj<riv 6 Qeos tov avQpwirov, -^ovv dwo rijy yrj$ Xafiwv' eirXaae ovy_ aitXovv, aXXa 8nrXovi>, Kar e'iKova koi naff ofiolaiatv.
In other respects, he converted the Hexaemeron into an 7allegory, in which the notions of Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, are strangely intermixed.
Hippolytus has preserved a few sentences from the 'Airoipdo-eis, or Expositions of the Mage, that are of singular value, as enabling us to define the precise features of Gnosticism, when it first affected the History of Chris tianity.
The passage runs as follows :
8" For concerning this, Simon says explicitly in his 1 Hippol. Phil. rv.
51 ; VI.
12, 13.
Kar' cUtra. ib. § 16, and see p. 134, end s The Simonian Trinity.
Ph. VI. of note 2.
And cf. 344, 1.
17.
7 Hipp. Ph. vi.
14.
3 Hipp. Ph. VI.
13.
8 A4yct yb.p Slpwv Siapp^Sijp ircpl 4 Shabistani op. Hyde, de Rel. vet. rotirov b tj 'Kiro<t>daa ovruf 'Tfur o!v Peri. XXII. p. 298.
\iyu i Xiycv, (toJ ypdtpw a ypd<pw rb 5 See p. 224, n.
1 ; 232, 3. ypdpp-a toCto"
A60 elal rapaspvdSes tuv * AtTTO dvBptlnruv ybnf b p.iv yip SXwv al&vw, /ff/re dpxty H^P"' ripas iarw oipdnios ivffpunros, & Si yqivos.
'0 txovaai, iwb pxas bl^s, ilrts (<rrl 86p.b> o!w ivOpuTot, ire Kar' tUbya 9eoO rapa 2ty^, iiparot, dicaTdXjprros, vr yeyovws, ...b Si y^Ivos (k <TTopdSos S\ip, 'h pia tpalycrai &i>g>$o>,jJt« i(rrl fieydXti 12.
Sfoapjs, eoGs tot SXuv, Stirwv tA rdvra, x°v" xinXriKcv.
De M.
Op. fjo § uS<xre S60 avOpuirovs (Is rbv TrapdSeiaov dparpi.
'H Si iripa, xdruBev, iirlvota clcdyeadai, rbv piv irettKaapLivw, rbv Si peyd\r), (HpKeia, yevvwja tA rdrra. "&