4. The Founding of the First Church of Rome and Its Corruption by Simon Magus, Marcus Magus, Montanus and Cerdon (§§1-17)

1. The First Church of Rome was founded shortly after Pentecost. There were Jews from Rome and native-born Romans who had been converted to Judaism¹ amongst the pilgrims from many lands staying at Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost in AD 33². Many believed the message of the Resurrection, when they heard the preaching of Peter and witnessed the miraculous demonstrations of the Holy Spirit’s power performed through the Apostles: some will have returned after the Feast to their native lands, carrying their new faith with them.

2. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans³ written around AD 58, mentions two members of the Church in Rome, Junia (traditionally a woman’s name) and Andronicus, who were Christians before Paul, that is, before c. AD 37. This was several years prior to the conversion of the first Roman Gentiles or non-Jews at the house of Cornelius (c. AD 41), as related in the Acts of the Apostles⁴. Therefore, Junia and Andronicus are unlikely to have heard the Gospel through Gentile intermediaries. They were Jews by birth, not proselytes (Paul calls them his kinsmen), and had come to Christ at a time when the Gospel had not spread beyond the ancient boundaries of Israel and the city of Damascus, except for the individuals from foreign lands who were present at Pentecost and occasional foreign converts such as the Ethiopian eunuch. As they had Roman names, they were perhaps Jews who had been born in Italy, or had natural ties with that country. How and where, then, did these two become Christians so early in the history of the Church? They were either converted at Pentecost or in the first few years thereafter and most probably in the near vicinity of Judaea. If they were originally Jewish residents in Rome, they may have made a pilgrimage to the festival at Jerusalem in AD 33, as Jews who lived in foreign countries commonly did, and there heard Peter preaching on the Day of Pentecost and witnessed for themselves the momentous and miraculous events of that time.

3. They were evidently more than mere spectators. Paul uses an unusual phrase to describe Junia and Andronicus: he says they were “of note among the apostles”. 1) They were OF NOTE (Greek episemoi, literally marked or stamped, i.e., as we might say, they were noticeably of the same fine brand as the Apostles); 2) they were counted AMONG the Apostles; 3) they were counted among THE Apostles. These considerations suggest not only that they were closely associated with the circle of Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem (point 3) but also that they had the same remarkable, supernatural ministry and self-sacrificing energy which distinguished the Galilean Apostles (point 1): Paul uses the image of a seal, imprinting impressions, marks or signs on clay or metal to describe the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in transforming the human personality; the “signs” or “marks” of an Apostle were miraculous operations of the Holy Spirit, like healing and prophecy, that accompanied the ministry, and the patient endurance of suffering and hardship in behalf of the Gospel. Junia and Andronicus were obviously “stamped” with that Apostolic Seal. Paul refers to them as his “fellowprisoners” and this shows they had already suffered for the cause of Christ. The phrase also appears to denote that Andronicus and Junia received the Seal or Stamp of the Holy Spirit “among the Apostles”, i.e. when and where the Apostles received It, confirming their presence at Pentecost. Furthermore, it implies (point 2) that they had a singular call to missionary work and that this work rivaled in importance that of the Apostles themselves. What more likely than that call was in the direction of their adopted home,

The Probable Location of the Upper Room (“Cenacle”) on the Madaba Map Jerusalem Section

to evangelize the capital of the Gentile world as the Apostles evangelized the capital of Israel? At any event, on their return to or arrival in Rome, as joyful, Spirit-filled believers in the Lord Jesus, baptized in His Name, they surely would have spread the Word amongst their Jewish compatriots, and gathered a Jewish Christian circle, as well as Gentile converts, around them. The core of the fellowship would have been what we would call today Messianic Jews, keeping the commandments of the Torah, the Law of Moses, as did the disciples in Jerusalem, but depending wholly on the Messiah Jesus for salvation of their soul.

4. We know that when Emperor Claudius (AD 41-54) enacted legislation against the Jews, first denying them the right to assemble (early AD 41)⁵, and subsequently (c. AD 45-49) expelling all Jews from Rome, it was because he had become alarmed at the increasing number of foreign cults in the city and the disturbances to which they gave rise: the Jews were, according to the Roman historian, Suetonius, continually causing riots because “they were driven to do so by Chrestus”⁶ (Chrestus is the common, pagan Roman, way of spelling the name Christ). This implies there were already Christians in Rome by the time of Claudius and that their preaching had upset the established Jewish community. The same decree of Claudius drove two Jews from Rome, named Aquila and Prisca (or, less formally, Priscilla), a man and his wife. They fled to Corinth, the chief city of Achaea or Southern Greece, and there met the Apostle Paul who was preaching the Gospel in that city. The Acts of the Apostles mentions nothing of their conversion and implies that Paul was immediately at home with them; in fact he set up business with them (both Aquila and Paul made tents for a living). This strongly suggests they were already Christians when Paul met them.

5. There seems, then, to have existed at Rome in the reign of Claudius a community of Christians, composed of Messianic Jews and as many Gentile converts as they had won to Christ, founded between AD 33 and 49 as a consequence of the preaching of Peter at Pentecost, and counting in its ranks the Jewish couple Aquila and Priscilla and probably also the Spirit-anointed Jewish missionaries Andronicus and Junia. The location of this community seems to have been quite close to the center of the city in the crowded Subura, since a remnant of that first church is found in the second century AD holding meetings in an extension of the Subura along the Vicus Lateranus on the Esquiline Hill, priding itself in its status as the “First Church of Rome”; also a second house-church associated with members of the fellowship of Junia and Andronicus listed in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, traditionally a “sister-church” of the one on the Vicus Lateranus, is found located in another extension of the Subura, along the Vicus Patricius on the Viminal Hill, from the latter half of the first century AD, which tends to confirm the connection of the two missionaries with that particular district. The common origin and subsequent estrangement of these twin house-churches will form the central theme of the story as it unfolds. The Subura was a bustling, noisy, red-light zone, described as dirty and wet, frequented by traders in provisions and delicacies and artisans of various sorts, and dotted with the occasional residence of some noble family, including that of Caesar himself and that of L. Arruntius Stella, consul in AD 101. There was, indeed, a Jewish colony in the Subura, as there were in several other regions of the city, including Porta Capena on the Aventine (also traditionally the site of a house-church in the latter half of the first century AD), but the largest Jewish settlement in the reigns of the early emperors was on the Janiculum Hill in Trastevere (Trans Tiberim in Latin), across the River Tiber from the Roman Forum, that being the heartland of the rabbinical Jewish community in the city. Then came the decree banishing Jews — including Christian Jews — from Rome. Emperor Claudius did not revoke his decrees during his lifetime, therefore they were still in force until his death in AD 54. During his 13 year reign only Jewish Christians who did not adhere to the Law of Moses and latterly only Christians who were not of the nation of Israel could practice their faith without hindrance in the city. The Gentile converts of that first church would suddenly have found themselves orphaned⁷: their Jewish teachers and faithful apostles, their spiritual guides, had been driven out of the city. What would become of them in the hostile, pagan, and downright corrupt, environment of first-century Rome? As their subsequent history proves, that fatal wound to the earliest church in the capital was never properly healed.

6. Some years after the death of Claudius, around AD 58, Paul wrote his Epistle to the Roman Christians. He states in that epistle that he had wanted to visit the Christians in Rome for “many years”⁸: “many” must mean more than one or two, and considering that “few” means “eight” elsewhere⁹ in the New Testament epistles, this confirms the existence of a Christian community in Rome at least as early as the reign of Claudius. Now, in Chapter 16 of the epistle, Paul sends greetings to Aquila and Priscilla and Junia and Andronicus. So by AD 58, when Claudius was dead and his decrees had lapsed, the Jewish Christians were back in Rome.

7. In fact Paul refers in his epistle to THREE groups of Christians in Rome at that time. One is the church in the house of Aquila and Priscilla. The church of Santa Prisca on the Aventine near the Circus Maximus occupies the traditional site of their house, in the Porta Capena area with its Jewish colony. The second is the group whose missionaries were Junia and Andronicus. They did not have a pastor at that time and Junia and Andronicus were in prison. It was to this second group mainly that Paul wrote his epistle. Paul said he longed to come to Rome himself and establish these latter Christians in the Faith, imparting to them some spiritual benefit by his presence. Paul’s normal practice would have been, once he arrived there, to exhort them to band around their God-given elders and, depending on the need at the time, to ordain an elder with the necessary qualifications as “overseer” or “supervisor” (Gk. episkopos, “bishop”) of the financial business of the assembly, viz. funding its spiritual and charitable operations. The church leaders in those days were called “elders” (in Greek presbuteroi, from which we get the word “priests”) or “shepherds” (Greek poimenes, pastor is the Latin word for “shepherd”). They were elected by God Himself and equipped with spiritual gifts to do the job. The “supervisors, overseers” (in Greek episkopoi, “bishops”), whose purview was material welfare, though elders also in their own right, were elected by the church-members to their charitable post, confirmed by the ordination or laying-on of hands by apostles, and, if the number of welfare-recipients required, were assisted in the exercise of their commission by “administrators” (“deacons”, Greek diakonoi)^9a. All, elders, overseers and administrators, were supposed to be servants of the laity, not overlords. One of the Christians in this second group, Rufus, is believed by some to have been the Roman senator Rufus Pudens, who later opened his house on the Vicus Patricius for Christian meetings. An overseer to administer the welfare of this assembly was ordained by “apostles”, Paul perhaps one of them, when he finally reached the capital. The church of Santa Pudenziana (Pudentiana), named after Pudens, on the Viminal Hill, marks the traditional site of this ancient house-church. Hermas, another in this second group, a converted slave, later received a prophetic ministry amongst the brethren of Pudens’ fellowship.

8. Finally, Paul refers to a rather mysterious, THIRD group of Christians present in Rome around AD 58. The members of this group, Paul says, were the cause of DIVISIONS in the Christian body of Rome (i.e. they had formed a sect or sects of their own) and they were opposed to the True Faith of the Christians Paul was writing to. Paul said their god was their belly: they were selfish, sensual Christians, interested in Christianity only for what they could get out of it. Paul told the Christians to MARK AND AVOID them. This means they were past correcting in Paul’s judgment. In fact these false ones tried to deceive the simple believers by their show of higher education and oratory, by “good words” and fair speeches. They were a menace to the newly reconstituted churches of the city. No wonder Paul was concerned for that flock without a pastor.

9. Where did this SECT come from? A clue is found in the name “Chrestus” (not “Christus”) which the Roman history gives as the name of the instigator (impulsor) of the Jewish riots in Claudius’ reign and who the wording of the passage implies was actually present in Rome at that time. There was a sect of heretical Christians, called Gnostics (“Knowing Ones”), who claimed to have special divine “Gnosis” (“Knowledge” or “Science” falsely so called — Paul refers to it¹⁰ at the end of his First Epistle to Timothy); they had particular reasons to call Jesus “Chrestus” and the cult-leader who founded their movement is said to have arrived in Rome during the reign of Claudius. The origin and beliefs of this sect will be examined in more detail hereafter. “Chrestus” means the “Good One” and was a title of several heathen gods. The pagans whom the heretics were eager to impress already knew of gods called “Chrestus”, but Jesus’ proper title “Christus” (from the Greek Christos, “Anointed One”, a translation of the Hebrew Mashiach, “Anointed One, Messiah”) meant nothing to them: it is not surprising, therefore, to find the name “Chrestus” for Christ and “Chrestiani” for Christians in common use thereafter amongst the pagan Romans, this being the earliest historical evidence of that usage. Furthermore, the heretics wanted to disassociate their “good” god from what they termed the “evil” god of the Jews. The latter, the Creator God of the Old Testament, was, on their blasphemous theorizing, a veritable demon, a malevolent, inferior, spirit, guilty by his own admission of the murder of innocent, Canaanite, babies, and prone to fits of bad temper, in which, as at Sinai, he thundered down in judgment and damnation on “good”, sweet, loving people (like themselves and the worshipers of the Golden Calf!). He was also responsible, according to them, for all the suffering, pain and death found in the material world which he had created. Such a god, they said, could never have been the Father of their Jesus “Chrestus”, the messenger of Love and Goodness. There are nominal Christians still under the influence of this heretical view of the God of the Old Testament through its appropriation by, and perpetuation in, Roman Catholic Christianity, as well as in certain Protestant movements which sprang from Rome in the Reformation. It breeds anti-Semitism in all its vile forms. Notice the “good words” (Greek CHRESTOlogia) which Paul in the Epistle to the Romans says the heretics used to deceive the faithful. Notice also how Paul begins his letter to the pastorless Roman Christians with a condemnation of certain intellectual pseudo-believers who, like these heretics, had a knowledge (epiGNOSIS) of God but who fell into idolatry and then into all kinds of moral deviation and sexual perversion¹¹.

10. Christian writers in the second century AD claimed that the earliest sect of heretics in Rome were the disciples of the Samaritan cult-leader, Simon Magus¹². Simon Magus is said to have been, originally, a disciple of the prophet, and forerunner of the Messiah, John the Baptist, the most prominent of his inner circle of thirty disciples. However, after acquiring a smattering of Greek learning in Alexandria, Simon drifted into heresy. He became the associate of a false teacher and sorcerer, called Dositheus, who was likewise, originally, one of the thirty disciples of John the Baptist. Dositheus claimed to be nothing less than the manifestation or embodiment of God on earth, the so-called “Standing One”, who would never taste of death. This was his way of asserting that he was the expected “Coming One” (the Christ or Messiah) foretold by John the Baptist. For John had prophesied to those who asked him whether he was the Messiah: “I baptize with water: but there STANDETH one among you, whom ye know not; he it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose”¹³. Dositheus, like John, was the head of thirty disciples. Simon eventually ousted his master from his position of leadership. The story goes that on one occasion, when Dositheus smote Simon with a staff, because of his impudence in asserting his superior knowledge, the staff passed through him as though through smoke. Dositheus asked Simon if it was he, indeed, who was the “Standing One”, and, on receiving an answer in the affirmative, bowed down to him in worship. Filling out his divine title a little, Simon now presented himself as “He Who Stood, Stands and Is To Stand”! Soon he established himself in his home territory of Samaria, bewitching the multitudes by his pretended “signs and wonders” and persuading them to believe that he was indeed the embodiment of the Supreme Power.

10a. That, for the present purposes, would have been the end of the story had not an unusual turn of events brought Simon into contact with the Apostles of Jesus shortly after Pentecost¹⁴. Philip the Evangelist was led by the Spirit to preach the Word of God and the Resurrection of Jesus in Samaria. Simon was astounded at the miracles he saw performed in the ministry of Philip the Evangelist, which far surpassed anything he was able to produce, and which thoroughly convinced the previously bewitched Samaritans of the truth of Philip’s message. Simon, too, was convinced and believed (so far as his intellectual faculties were persuaded by the outward manifestations of the Spirit) and was baptized. A little while later, however, the Apostles Peter and John came to Samaria to pray for the new believers there to receive the Holy Spirit. When Simon saw that the Holy Spirit was received by the Samaritans at the laying-on of hands by the Apostles, Simon imagined that this was some kind of magical rite, through which the supernatural powers he had witnessed in Philip’s ministry could be conferred from person to person. He approached Peter and offered him money to acquire from him the power to lay on hands and transfer the Holy Spirit to others. (Both the creed and the deed thus first exemplified in Simon Magus are prevalent in denominational Christianity to this day.) Peter roundly rebuked him for his shamelessness and blasphemy. His real motivation and lack of heartfelt faith could not be concealed from the all-seeing eye of the Spirit of God in Peter. He was openly denounced as a money-loving hypocrite, thoroughly, still, in bondage to the occult.

10b. Though terrified at Peter’s rebuke and the fate that might befall him as an apostate, Simon was far from being repentant, as his subsequent history proves. He realized that his exposure by the Apostles and the success of the Gospel preached by them amongst the Samaritans spelt the death-knell to his efforts in those parts. Looking for greener pastures in the West, Simon came to Rome IN THE TIME OF THE EMPEROR CLAUDIUS, between AD 41 and 54, precisely in the period when the Jews, including Christian Jews, were expelled from Rome because of rioting at the instigation of “Chrestus”. Though Simon himself seems to have been Jewish on his mother’s side, and Gentile Cypriot on his father’s, he was a Samaritan by nationality, a native of the Samaritan village of Gitto, and also had at least one, very powerful, friend in Claudius’ court¹⁵. Claudius’ ban did not affect him. Later Christian writers claim that Simon deluded and held under his occult sway many Christians present in Rome at that time. The reference must be mainly to Gentile Christians¹⁶ — since faithful Jews had been forced to leave — and indeed, being Gentiles, newly brought to faith in Christ and without Jewish background in the Scriptures, they would have been easy targets for deceivers like Simon¹⁷. Here was the sad remnant of that first church, so cruelly orphaned by Claudius’ decree. Satan had provided the orphans with a “father”. These Gentile Christians were now wholly under the turbulent influence of Simon Magus and his Gnostic heresy¹⁸. But the Samaritan magus also impressed some Romans in high position in the State, because the authorities of Rome sanctioned the erection of a statue to Simon “The Holy God” on the island in the River Tiber at Rome, the base of which with its inscription was discovered in 1574. This was at a point in the River just below the Jewish colony at the foot of the Janiculum Hill, and was, no doubt, a provocation to the Jews. The Roman authorities would in the circumstances have had no objection to such anti-Semitic posturing.

10c. The evidence is that in Rome Simon became acquainted with Claudius’ favorite, the ex-slave and socialite, Antonius Felix. Felix influenced the legislation that Claudius introduced. As Simon’s anti-Semitic sway over Felix increased, Felix encouraged Claudius to act against the Jews. Hence Claudius’ law expelling Jews from Rome (c. AD 45-49). Later in Claudius’ reign, Felix was granted his wish to become, of all things, procurator of Judaea. There his obligation to Simon became even greater. He asked the magus to help him woo the young and beautiful Drusilla from her royal husband, Azizus, king of Emesa. Simon agreed. Sent by Felix to Drusilla, Simon’s hypnotic powers of persuasion prevailed. Drusilla abandoned her husband and married Felix. When, a few years later, the Apostle Paul was arrested in Judaea, he was brought to trial before Felix and his adulterous consort, Drusilla, in Caesarea (c. AD 59). It is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles that Felix trembled when he heard Paul talk about righteousness and the divine Judgment to come, this in spite of the fact that (probably through the magus Simon) Felix had a quite accurate knowledge of Christian doctrine. As was the case with his friend, Simon, Felix’s intellectual appraisal of Christianity was utterly divorced from its practical, moral, application¹⁹. It does not surprise us to find Felix thereafter pursuing anti-Semitic policies in Judaea and provoking Jewish riots. Soon Simon’s dreams were fulfilled. The Jewish reaction led to Roman intervention, then to the Jewish revolt against Rome, and finally to the total destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (AD 70). Nine years later, as the judgment of God on all the players in this drama unfolded, Drusilla’s child, Agrippa III, the offspring of her illegitimate union, perished in the eruption of Vesuvius.

11. In the light of this evidence, we would expect there to be another early church in Roman tradition, apart from Santa Prisca (Aquila and Prisca’s house-church) and Santa Pudenziana (the second house-church in Pudens’ house), which would mark the site of this original Christian fellowship in Rome. To recap, the community was founded, as seems most likely, by Andronicus and Junia during their earlier mission-work in Rome before the reign of Claudius, but subsequently, when its Jewish members were banished from the city, it fell into Gnostic error under the influence of Simon Magus. Another such house-church does appear in the old records, called Santa Prassede. It was located in the Subura district on the Vicus Lateranus (the modern Via S. Martino ai Monti and Via Santa Prassede near S. Maria Maggiore) and is one of the three house-churches said to have existed within the walls of Rome before the middle of the second century AD, these three being Santa Prisca, Santa Pudenziana, and Santa Prassede²⁰: in Roman tradition Santa Prassede is also referred to as a sister-church of Santa Pudenziana, i.e. originally it was closely connected with Pudens’ fellowship and its missionaries Junia and Andronicus. Furthermore, the later bishops of this church insisted that it was the FIRST and ORIGINAL church in Rome, and indeed it was. What they did not say is that it was hopelessly and irremediably backslidden from its original pure Christian faith. We shall see later how this church came to be named after one of Pudens’ faithful daughters, whilst providing an ecclesiastical home for the Gnostic heretics.

12. Simon was a devotee of the religion of the Magi²¹. The form of Magism practiced at Rome in that period was Mithraism, the worship of the god Mithras, and Mithras was one of the deities who was titled “Chrestos” (in Latin, “Chrestus”), the “Good One”. Simon claimed to be the very embodiment of that “Good One” the Gnostics preached about²². so the “Chrestus” or “Good” Christ that drove the Jews to riot in Rome and who the words of the Roman history imply was actually present in Rome at that time as a mover of sedition could well have been Simon Magus himself. There had been bitter blood for centuries between Samaritans and Jews: it would not be at all surprising if in the time of Claudius Jews had been offended to the point of rioting by this Samaritan heretical form of Christianity. One obvious, public provocation, noted by later Christian historians, was the statue of the “god” Simon on the island in the Tiber, which was within sight of the main Jewish colony in Trastevere and stood like a malignant sentinel between the Jews and the city of Rome. Certainly Simon seems to have had quite an impact in the cities where he was active. The whole of Samaria, according to the Acts of the Apostles, was stirred by his phenomenal demonstrations. Similar results were achieved in Rome, if we accept the account of Simon’s fellow Samaritan (and learned heresy-hunter), Justin Martyr, who was well placed to know the facts, and other Christian writers who followed and amplified it. There is, in fact, evidence that a revival or, rather, a recreation of Mithraism occurred about this time: a “religious genius”²³ who lived no later than around AD 100 seems to have combined the ancient Mithraic cult with the popular, syncretic paganism of the early Empire, with Platonism and with themes apparently derived from Christianity in such a way that by the second century AD the new cult of Mithraism was widely accepted throughout the Roman world. Simon was a magus who fitted the bill precisely, operating in the very heart of the empire and combining the Magian cult with elements of Graeco-Roman paganism, philosophy and Christianity, exactly as this reconstruction requires. Mithraism was thereafter the deadly rival of Christianity. If the Roman Empire had not turned officially “Christian” in the time of Constantine, it almost certainly would have turned Mithraic.

13. The secondary effect of Simon’s cultic activity was to cast in a false light the Christian faith preached by the original Jewish Christians. The followers of Simon were not correctable in Paul’s judgment, so Aquila and Priscilla, on their return to Rome, set up their new house-church, in a different location from Simon’s group, on a spur of the Aventine Hill near the Circus Maximus (Santa Prisca). The other group of Christians are found later conducting meetings likewise, at a separate location from the Simonians, in senator Pudens’ house on the Viminal Hill on the Vicus Patricius (now the church of Santa Pudenziana on the Via Urbana). This house-church was, however, much nearer the heretical school than Aquila and Priscilla’s gathering, in the same district of the Subura. Later this proved a liability as some of the elders from the church in Pudens’ house defected to the Gnostics; the geographical proximity perhaps facilitated fellowship between the two groups.

14. The heretics aped the Gentile, pagan, religions and combined Christianity with pagan cults. They were popular with their heathen neighbors and with the authorities of the city. They suffered no persecution²⁴. Popularity and acclaim was what they coveted. All the trappings of paganism, image-worship, multiplicity of gods and goddesses, rituals and sacrifices, they introduced into their “New Age” form of Christianity, retaining only the titles of the original faith and dispensing with the substance. Also they formed themselves into a philosophical “school” like the heathen philosophers. Schools of this kind were common throughout the Roman Empire. The Apostle Paul had taught in the school of one Tyrannus in Ephesus on the coast of Turkey, but he used it only as a place to preach and teach. The Church in Ephesus founded by Saint Paul was different altogether. Schools were academic institutions, the Church was led supernaturally by the Holy Spirit.

14a. In Samaria Simon preached that he himself was the “Great Power [Gk. Dunamis] of God”.^24a According to a citation of Simon’s own writings called the “Great Announcement”, preserved by Irenaeus’ disciple Hippolytus^24b, a spiritual successor of the Apostle John, his beliefs were more fully expressed as follows: Simon taught that “Because the spiritual beings ruled the cosmos badly, through their love of power, he [Simon] came himself to rectify the state of things, transfigured into the likeness of the superior entities, powers and spiritual beings, and so appeared [from the Gk. dokeo] as a human, though he was not human, and appeared to suffer, when he did not actually suffer, but thus appeared to the Jews as Son, in Samaria as Father, and amongst other nations as Holy Spirit, and stooped to being denominated by men with whichever name they pleased.” It is remarkable that Simon’s system and indeed the majority, if not all, the Gnosticizing heresies conceived of the supernal Divine Being as a Trinity or Tri-une Entity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the latter commonly conceived of as female, — a Divine Mother, as it were, — called Barbelo^24c. Unsurprisingly the same kind of Trinity of a Father god, a divine Mother and their Son, was common in the pagan systems of the Roman world, for example in Egyptian paganism, which testified to a Father-god Amun, Mut the Mother-goddess and their son Khensu (Greek Hermes). Paganism was absorbed by Samaritans in particular from Zoroastrianism and Hermeticism, which long before the Christian era identified the pagan god of Time, Zervan, with the Biblical patriarch Shem^24d, and Agathodaimon (Amun) with his prediluvian counterpart Seth^24e. The Gnostics, having strong roots in Samaria, adapted these pre-existing syncretic cults and merged them with their own mystic systems. As for the Gnostic tri-une being: he, in his domain far above the lower heavens, peopled the latter with created angels, who bore the titles of divinity common in the Hebrew Scriptures, like Sabaoth, and these deceitfully presented themselves to the Jews, according to the Gnostic theory, as if they themselves were the Supreme Being^24f. Thus the Trinity of Gnosticism was opposed to the inferior divinity of the Jews. From that very odd system two major heretical streams branched off. The first was “Mere-man-ism”. It propounded that Jesus was a “mere man” into whom the Spirit or Dunamis of God, the Tri-une Entity (viz. Simon himself according to the “Great Announcement”!), descended at his baptism by John the Baptist, ousting his “merely human” soul, empowered the “mere man” Jesus with miraculous power, and then abandoned him before he died on the cross; thus the “mere man” suffered, but not the “Christ” or “Dunamis”^24g. An alternative view was that the Dunamis entered the human body of Jesus at his birth in place of a “merely human” soul^24h. These were two varieties of the heresy called “Psilanthropism” (literally “Mere-man-ism”), or “Adoptianism” — because the “mere man” Jesus was “adopted” by the “Dunamis” to become the Son of God, — or “Dynamic Monarchianism” — from the Gk. Dunamis, the single divine “Power” itself which descended into Jesus. Early exponents in Asia Minor were Carpocrates, who had fallen headlong into the toils of the magic of Simon Magus and his disciples, and Cerinthus²⁴ⁱ, the latter of whom, at least, was known to and rejected by the Apostle John when he set up his missionary work in Ephesus^24j. “Mere-man-ism” was the doctrine denounced by John in his first Epistle as separating (the man) “Jesus” from the “Christ”^24k. Artemon the disciple of Cerinthus was an exponent of the same heresy in the succeeding generation. The second major stream of heretical doctrine was “Apparitionism”. This other form of Simon’s heresy taught that “Christ” was not in any way a “mere man”, but rather was a direct manifestation of God, a divine apparition or phantasm, and not really material, though he “appeared” (Gk. dokeo) to be so. This was the Docetist (“Apparitionist”) heresy, promulgated by Simon’s and Carpocrates’ independent-minded disciple Cerdon and Cerdon’s disciple Marcion^24l. It was the doctrine rebuked by John which denied that Jesus Christ had come “in the flesh”^24m.

14b. According to Epiphanius, — who compiled the anti-heretical writings of earlier orthodox authors, — Cerinthus the pseudo-Apostle and “Mere-man-ist” (Psilanthropist) was the Judaizing heretic principally condemned in Paul’s letter to the Galatians and other epistles, along with Demas, who forsook Paul on account of the love of the present “Aeon”²⁴ⁿ (a Gnostic term). In the Letters to Timothy it was the “Apparitionist” (Docetist) Archontics, of the Sethian sect, who believed Christ was the supernal divine being Seth come down to earth, that Paul targeted^24o. Clearly then, in Paul’s own words, “the mystery of iniquity” was already at work^24p. Cerinthus followed on from his predecessor Carpocrates and the Caprocratians were Nicolaitans. Nicolaitans were condemned by name in the Book of Revelation as advocating license in sexual mores and indifference towards idolatry^24q. Cerinthus himself had attended the Council in Jerusalem^24r described in the Acts of the Apostles which settled the question whether Gentile Christians were to be circumcised and authorized they should not, but only keep the Noachide blood-guilt laws imposed on all post-diluvian mankind in Genesis, including restrictions on sexual license and idolatry^24s. Cerinthus, of course, took the opposing viewpoint. Artemon was a disciple of Cerinthus, and the inventor of the Christmas festival on the Roman “birthday of the sun-god”, the twenty-fifth day of December, which became a pivotal liturgical event early on in the history of the First Church^24t: indeed, all the backslidden bishops of that group, though not all the members of the congregation, it was claimed, were “Mere-man-ist” Artemonites up until the end of the second century AD^24u, and thus were the most significant body of Nicolaitans in the Christian community. Though this Artemonite label was rejected by the bishops of a later era^24v, it is proven to be true by the personal history of Tertullian, who was a prominent theologian and author in the latter part of the second century AD, and was in communion, at first, with them. Before he was excluded from their fellowship, Tertullian’s views accorded with the leadership of the First Church of Rome, conforming to their original theology, and he was what we would call a (traducianist) Artemonite^24w. He believed the soul of Jesus was nothing but the Tri-une Entity which infused Christ’s body in the womb of Mary. Tertullian is more commonly called a “Montanist”, meaning a follower of the false-prophet Montanus, who was the leader of the so-called “New Prophecy” movement. By later writers Montanists were denounced as “Alogoi”^24x, “Deniers of the Logos”, because they rejected the Logos-doctrine of the gospel of the Apostle John as well as, more particularly, his doctrine of the Paraclete. The latter conflicted with the Montanists’ belief that Montanus, a Phrygian disciple of Simon Magus, and a priest of Apollo, was the Paraclete or Holy Spirit in bodily form. Montanus is said to have been rebuked in consequence by the Apostle Paul^24y. The early date of his floruit is confirmed by the fact that the “prophetess” Quintilla, alleged to be the “Jezebel” of Revelation 2. 20, continued to promote his heresy in the 80s of the first century AD^24z. Montanus lost his senses. He fell into trances in which he blurted out “prophecies”. It seems to have been a condition which overcame him towards the end of a distinguished political career, since he is described in one early source as a “proconsul from Asia”: this effectively identifies him as the priest Titus Junius Montanus, who was the only proconsul of that name contemporary with Paul, being in fact the proconsul of Sicily and thereafter in AD 81 suffect consul at Rome. He was born in Alexandria in the Troad, an important port in the province of Asia, and thus also was “from Asia”. As regards his religious beliefs, Montanus, like other Gnostics, held there were vast numbers of “Aeons” (divine emanations) in the heavenly realms above the material world and below the ultimate Tri-une entity, eight hundred and seventy eight of them, more precisely, in his system. His cult included, according to popular report, the performance of “mysteries” employing blood drawn form a one-year-old infant mixed with flour to form the sacrifice or “eucharist”, and female bishops and elders, as well as prophetesses. It also treated the Virgin Mary as a goddess, and held she was impregnated by an Archon, meaning a creator-god of the lower or material world. It emphasized in a particular, paganizing way the performance of the Passover, a Paschal Spring-festival, which caused a whole series of ecclesiastical disputes between the First Church of Rome and the disciples of the Apostle John in the second century AD and well into the Middle Ages; similarly as regards the use of the name “Catholic” and about the acceptance of penitents: these were the principle matters of contention in the period leading up to the Nicene council. They also falsified and corrupted the text of Scripture in order to make it conform with their doctrines. The Montanists were known as Pepuzians, from the villa of Montanus named after a deserted city on the borders of Phrygia which they believed was the New Jerusalem, and Quintillians^24aa. It was the doctrine of the Alogoi (Montanists) which gave rise to the “Mere-man-ist” heresy of Theodotus of Byzantium^24bb in the latter part of the second century AD. Ultimately therefore Theodotus’ doctrine went back to the “Mere-man-ism” of Cerinthus and his colleague Ebion, the disciples of Carpocrates. The false prophetess Quintilla, too, inherited her doctrines from the Carpocratian Nicolaitans, though the particular sect of that party she belonged to were termed “Caiani” or “Cainites” because they exalted Cain as an adversary of the “evil” god of the Jews, and praised Eve for having partaken of the Tree of “Knowledge” (Greek Phronesis = Gnosis)^24cc. So Tertullian was on account of his traditional Montanist stance an advocate of “Mere-man-ist” Artemonism, adhering to the prophecies of Montanus’ prophetesses Prisca or Priscilla and Maximilla, though he disavowed the “Jezebel” Quintilla condemned by John, and dropped the anti-Johannine bias of the sect’s founders through his adoption of Polycarp’s revivalism, Polycarp being a noted disciple of the Apostle John.

14c. The earliest bishops of the First Roman Church were “Mere-man-ists” also, as aforesaid, and their guru was Marcus the Magus in the days of Clement between Nero’s persecution and Domitian. Marcus was a disciple of Basilides, the disciple of Menander, the disciple of Simon Magus. Marcus founded the so-called Ascodrutae sect, who were known for crossing themselves with their finger on the front of their face, and were later denominated Montanists, after Montanus, the disciple of Simon Magus. Montanus was counted a prophet amongst them, along with the prophetesses Quintilla, Priscilla and Maximilla. Artemon followed in the next generation under bishop Telesphorus (c. AD 120). Artemon’s doctrine prevailed with the Montanist bishops of the First Church up until the end of the second century AD^24dd.

14d. However, the “Apparitionist” (Docetic) wing of the Gnostic movement had a significant presence in Rome also. Its gurus became increasingly popular in the ranks of the laity. The main Roman exponents of “Apparitionism” were Cerdon, Marcion and Valentinus^24ee. Ultimately this “Apparitionist” tendency prevailed in Rome and the West, latterly even amongst the bishops of the First Church, being termed by its opponents “Sabellianism” after a noted proponent of that system at the end of the second century AD^24ff. It penetrated Rome under a Montanist teacher called Aeschines and was hence called Cataeschinetan Montanism, meaning “Montanism according to Aeschines.” “Mere-man-ism” remained more popular in the Greek-speaking East, and was commonly defined as Montanism simpliciter, it may be presumed on account of the prominence at that time of its advocate Tertullian^24gg. A notable exponent of the latter form was Proclus and it was therefore known as Cataptoclan Montanism, “Montanism according to Proclus.” Nothing further is known of either of the eponymous expositors. Both parties clung to their supreme Tri-une being, known variously as Father, Son and Spirit, which terms were conceived of as so many epithets of an eternal “Single Entity” (and each therefore termed in Greek homo-ousios, “of a single entity or substance”)^24hh. The First Church of Rome and western Roman Catholicism has continued to adhere to what was first known as the “Ascodrutist”, and later as the “Montanist” heresy, from the earliest days of its separation in the days of bishop Sixtus, and even to the present day. In the late second century AD the First Church of Rome adopted the Sabellian form of that heresy, which was termed Callistianism, after its advocate bishop Callistus. The Roman Orthodox East retained the earlier “Mere-man-ist” version. In other words the Western Roman Catholic cult is the evolved Cataeschinetan Montanist cult, and the Eastern Roman Orthodox cult the evolved Cataproclan Montanist cult.

15. In the formative days, when their status was not as obvious as that of bishops, the gurus preferred to be addressed by the laity as “Father” (blasphemously assuming God’s paternal title)²⁵, and each developed and modified the Gnostic revelation according to his own “inner light”. With a head start from Simon and his immediate circle of disciples, the Syrian Cerdon launched out on the Gnostic path and took up his residence in Rome²⁶. He taught that the Supreme God was higher than the Creator-god of the Old Testament, and was the ideal Ultimate Good to which the pagan philosophers aspired — if the aim was to seduce intellectuals — or otherwise was the Supreme Deity, the Beneficent or Good Being, of the idolatrous heathen. Spirit was good and was the essence of the Superior God. Matter was evil and was the creation of the inferior god. This doctrine was derived from the dualistic theories of the Zoroastrian Magians. He looked down on the Jewish Law and the Scriptures of the Old Testament, believing them to be inspired by the inferior Creator-god. Jesus was the Son of the Superior God, on his theory, and was consequently a pure Spirit-being, having no real, fleshly, body. He was not born in a literal sense from the Virgin and did not really suffer on the Cross (for how could a pure Spirit be born or die?). The kind of Gnostic theories to which Cerdon subscribed held that whilst the Supreme God appeared in an apparitional body as Jesus, his proper, material, body was BREAD (!), the bread of the eucharist, and Gnostics of this stamp refused to hold communion with Bible-believing Christians who held otherwise²⁷. The same doctrine influenced the rival “Mere-man-ist” school of the bishops of the First Church in the second century AD and Sabellius rose up amongst these Montanists as an advocate of “Apparitionism” and of the dogma that the eucharist was the Tri-une Entity itself in physical form^24ff. Initiates were “born again” or “redeemed”, according to Cerdon, not by faith in the risen Jesus and reception of the Holy Spirit as taught by the Apostles, but by the literal waters of baptism, or by sprinkling, followed by an anointing with oil and a benediction of “peace” — all these nonbiblical, magical, rites being performed with a strictly prescribed, liturgical, formula, in a language foreign to the hearers. In other forms of the Gnostic “rebirth” the initiate dressed up in bridal attire, or, if on the point of death, received an anointing with oil which was supposed to guarantee entrance into the realm of the Supreme God. Some believed, contrariwise, that the acceptance of the ridiculously complex theories of the Gnostic gurus was itself the true “rebirth”²⁸. A literal Resurrection of the body Cerdon denied outright. At death, the human soul entered into eternal life, that being the “Resurrection” referred to in those Scriptures which he accepted as inspired by the Superior God. Being wholly averse to the Jewish Law, and imagining that the Apostle Paul sympathized with that viewpoint²⁹ Cerdon accepted only the Gospel of Luke (Paul’s Gospel) as authentic. However, all the passages in that Gospel which contradicted his Gnostic theory he excised from the text. He treated the Epistles of Paul likewise. The Acts of the Apostles and the Revelation of John he rejected altogether. In the course of a long and prosperous career as head of the Roman school he managed to corrupt some eminent members of the rival, Bible-believing, fellowship. However, it was not long before the Bible teachers exposed Cerdon’s ecclesiastical charade. Cerdon, in turn, was succeeded by the infamous archheretic, Marcion, in the first half of the second century AD. The modifications introduced by each successor resulted in further degradation of the original, Pentecostal, Christian, faith. Also splinter-groups broke away from Simon’s school and formed schools of their own, aping once again the pagan philosophies. By AD 62 there were already seven sects of heretics³⁰, of which Simon’s was the first³¹. By the middle of the second century AD, a whole swarm of Gnostic heresies³² had spread over the Roman Empire from the breeding-ground in the capital, a significant portion of them from the school of Cerdon and Marcion. The demonic inspiration for these movements came from the East, and usually the founding gurus made their way from the East to Rome, from Alexandria in Egypt or from Antioch in Syria, but the whole movement began to center around Rome itself. These cult-leaders wanted to become famous in the capital city of the Empire. They hoped to rise up the social ladder by peddling their “Gnosis”, or theological “Science”, amongst the rich and idle upper classes of Rome. Lust for influence and wealth was what motivated them.

15a. From a letter of Emperor Hadrian, sent in AD 134 at the time of the Bar-Kokhba revolt to his brother-in-law Servianus, we obtain a glimpse of what the Gnostic gurus appeared like in their eastern homelands to well-informed contemporaries. (The letter was cited originally in a lost work of Phlegon, the freedman of Hadrian, from which, in turn, it was quoted by Vopiscus, in Vita Saturnini VIII. 1-7:) “Hadrian Augustus to Servianus, Consul, greetings! My dearest Servianus, I have now got the measure of Egypt, which you praised up to me. It is full of vanity, dependent on others to prop it up, and ready to fly at every rumor doing the rounds. The worshipers of Serapis are Christians, and those who call themselves bishops [Latin: episcopos] of Christ are under vow in the service of Serapis. There is not a leader of a Jewish synagogue, not a Samaritan, not a Christian presbyter [Latin: presbyter], who is not an astrologer [Latin: mathematicus], a diviner [Latin: aruspex] or anointer [Latin: aliptes]. The patriarch [Latin: patriarcha] himself, when he arrives in Egypt, by some is huddled off to worship Serapis, by others Christ. It is a social group always ready to promote seditions, full of empty boasting, and dangerous in the extreme … They have only one god — money! The Christians worship him, the Jews worship him, and so do all the racial communities ….”³³. Note that the fusion of the obscene cult of Serapis with that of Christ went hand in hand in Egypt with the affectation of hierarchical, non-Scriptural, titles, like “patriarch” (= “chief father”), by the leaders of the paganizing pseudo-Christians, which had the effect of elevating them above the ordinary members of their congregation. Note also the use of the word “bishop” (episcopus), which was originally in Apostolic Christianity a name for a treasurer, to denote a priest in the service of Serapis, that is, of “Chrestus” the “Good God”. The heretical Christian sects will be found to have given the word episcopus, “bishop”, a meaning higher than that of presbyter, “elder” or “priest”, and to have eventually passed this usage on to many otherwise orthodox groups. There is strong archaelogical evidence of a fusion of Egyptian paganism with the doctrine of the Syrian Gnostic gurus in the form of “Abraxas” gems. These are semi-precious stones unearthed in Egypt and neighboring regions engraved with magical symbols, and depictions of Serapis and other gods and mythological figures, bearing also the Gnostic mantra “Abraxas”, which was the invention of the Gnostic Basilides. (Basilides was the disciple of Menander and Menander of Simon Magus^33a.) For example there is a gem depicting on one face the goddess Isis seated on a lotus alongside an image of the moon, her right hand extended and an ape in an obscene posture within her view, bearing the inscription “One Zeus Serapis”, and on the other face a second inscription commemorating Abraxas^33b. Others declare “Serapis Iao” to be the only god^33c. There are multiple variations, with particular respect being paid to the pagan cult of the sun-god, and a plethora of magic formulae. They treat Serapis as if he is identical to the Greek Zeus and the Jewish Jehovah (Iao). The Greek word Abraxas was formed of letters which functioned as numerals, totaling 365, and this, in Basilides’ system, was the number of heavens and cosmic powers through which the supernal Divine Being descended to earth, to appear among men as the Savior Jesus.

16. When Paul arrived in Rome around AD 61, he was a “house-prisoner” awaiting trial by Caesar. The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem hoped he would be found guilty of causing public disturbances and punished (preferably executed) by the Roman authorities. The Jews in Rome had heard nothing from the religious authorities in Jerusalem about Paul and he was able to preach the Word amongst them for at least two years, according to Luke’s account in the Acts of the Apostles. He used his hired accommodation in Rome as a meeting-house. At some point following that period he was transferred to the Praetorium, or Praetorian Camp, which was the military garrison and barracks of the Praetorian Guard which policed the city. His presence in Rome must have been a great encouragement to the Christians there. The modest gatherings of disciples mentioned in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans swelled to a “huge multitude”³⁴ (implying hundreds, if not thousands) while Paul was in the city, though their days were destined to be few in the “vale of tears”.

17. Whilst under arrest, Paul also wrote letters to the churches he had helped to set up in Europe and Asia. In these letters we find Paul mentioning the heretical Christian sect. They were clearly still active in the city. In his letter from Rome to the Christian Church in Philippi in Macedonia (Northern Greece), around AD 63, Paul mentions a group of so-called Christians in Rome who preached Christ, but with wrong motives. They were envious of the true believers and argued and disputed with them. Of false brethren like these Paul says in his letter, their god is their belly, they are proud of what they ought to be ashamed of, they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, they are concerned with worldly affairs, and their end is destruction; he refers to “dogs” (religiously-motivated sodomites) and “evil-workers” and to the “concision” (meaning circumcised professors of Christianity — both Samaritans and Jews were circumcised and there were Gnostics who were also circumcised Jews); by contrast, true Christians, he says, belong to a heavenly Kingdom, waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus, and the transformation of the body He will effect at that time, and have nothing to do with secular politics. “Belly-worship” is the identical phrase Paul used to describe the Roman heretics in his earlier Epistle to the Romans. The phrase is not mere metaphor as some actually worshiped the phallic god Priapus under the title the “Good God”³⁵. These false brethren wanted to make Paul’s situation worse, hoping that the authorities would punish him with something more than imprisonment. Indeed, it is in this very letter, and immediately before his mention of the heretics’ agitation against him, that Paul refers for the first time to his imprisonment in the Praetorian military garrison. Paul’s penal conditions had deteriorated since the days of his house-arrest. The provocateurs were not Jews by religion, they were — nominally — Christians. Also they were active, spreading their propaganda around the city by public preaching. They were OF the world, not merely IN it. They wanted to obtain their objectives by USING THE SECULAR AUTHORITIES AGAINST THE TRUE CHRISTIANS. This was the technique of Simon and his Gnostic disciples.

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Footnotes 1-35

1. Acts, 2. 1-13: ¶ And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. 5 ¶ And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. 6 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. 7 And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? 8 And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? 9 Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, 10 Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. 12 And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? 13 Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.

2. On the date AD 33 rather than AD 30 and for other details about the events at the Crucifixion, see Appendix 1.

3. In the following passage of Romans, we find Paul addressing a group of Christian believers, listed by name, amongst them Andronicus and Junia (v. 7) , but no pastor or bishop is designated amongst that group. There is no indication that this group was divided into different fellowships. Paul also mentions (v. 3) a separate church (ekklesia) in the house of Aquila and Priscilla. Here, then, in AD 58 we find two fellowships in Rome, one a church (ekklesia) so called under Paul’s steadfast adherents, Aquila and Priscilla, and a second group, apparently forming a looser fellowship, who included the missionaries Andronicus and Junia, but were without a pastor. Finally, vv. 17-18, is mentioned a group of schismatics and heretics, who were a danger to the simple-hearted believers. Romans, 16. 1-20: “¶ I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea: 2 That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also. 3 Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus: 4 Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. 5 Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my wellbeloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ. 6 Greet Mary, who bestowed much labor on us. 7 Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellowprisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. 8 Greet Amplias my beloved in the Lord. 9 Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ, and Stachys my beloved. 10 Salute Apelles approved in Christ. Salute them which are of Aristobulus’ household. 11 Salute Herodion my kinsman. Greet them that be of the household of Narcissus, which are in the Lord. 12 Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord. Salute the beloved Persis, which labored much in the Lord. 13 Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine. 14 Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and the brethren which are with them. 15 Salute Philologus, and Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints which are with them. 16 Salute one another with an holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you. 17 ¶ Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. 18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words [chrêstologia] and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. 19 For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil. 20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.”

4. The beginning of the Gentile Church was held to have been the conversion of Cornelius and his friends: Acts of the Apostles, Ch. 10 (passim) and 15. 7: Acts 10. 45-48: “And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then prayed they him to tarry certain days.” Acts 15. 7: “And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.”

5. Dion Cassius, LX. vi: “The Jews had by this time increased in numbers again and it would have been difficult to remove them from the city without a disturbance of their own people; so, he [Claudius] did not expel them, but brought in legislation forbidding them to assemble, whilst they continued to order their daily lives by their ancestral Law. The associations reintroduced by Gaius [Caligula], he dissolved.”. On the dating to AD 41 compare Dion Cassius LX. viii. 1-4: [A series of intervening acts] “Next [my emphasis, the decree of Claudius relating to the Jews being mentioned earlier in Dion’s account] he [Claudius] restored Commagene to Antiochus, since Gaius, though he had himself given him the district, had taken it away again; and Mithridates the Iberian, whom Gaius had summoned and imprisoned, was sent home again to resume his throne. To another Mithridates, a lineal descendant of Mithridates the Great, he granted Bosporus, giving to Polemon some land in Cilicia in place of it. He enlarged the domain of Agrippa [I] of Palestine, who, happening to be in Rome, had helped him to become emperor, and bestowed on him the rank of consul; and to his brother Herod he gave the rank of praetor and a principality. And he permitted them to enter the senate and to express their thanks to him in Greek. The acts I have named, now, were the acts of Claudius himself, and they were praised by everybody; but certain other things were done at this time of quite a different nature by his freedmen and by his wife Valeria Messalina ….” The decree of Claudius on the Jews preceded [“next” viii. 1] these acts but was effected at the same period [“at this time” viii. 4], according to the simple reading of Dion Cassius, and according to Josephus, Wars, II. xi. 5, the donation of Claudius to Agrippa happened “immediately” after and as a consequence of the help Agrippa gave to Claudius when he was raised to the imperial purple. This dates the decree to AD 41, as Claudius was made emperor at the very beginning of AD 41 on Jan 24th of that year. The decree of Claudius reads as follows: “Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, pontifex maximus, holding the tribunician power, proclaims:….Therefore it is right that also the Jews, who are in all the world under us, shall maintain their ancestral customs without hindrance and to them I now also command to use this my kindness rather reasonably and not to despise the religious rites of the other nations, but to observe their own laws.”

6. Suetonius, Life of Claudius, XXV. 4: Suetonius writes “Iudaeos impulsore Chresto adsidue tumultantis Roma expulsit.” “The Jews, who were persistently causing public disturbances because they were driven to do so by Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled from Rome.”

7. This word is used by the Apostle Paul regarding the new, Gentile, converts of Thessalonica in Macedonia (I Thess. 2. 7: Gk. ‘êmeis de adelphoi aporphanisthentes aph’ ‘umôn …., i.e. “We, brethren, having been separated from you like (parents from) orphans ….” Cp. ibid. 2. 7, 11. When Paul wrote I Thessalonians from Athens, he, Silvanus and Timothy had been compelled by circumstance to leave the new converts without spiritual guidance at a time when they were under persecution from the local authorities and Jewish radicals. A similar situation is envisaged here. In fact in I Thessalonians, Paul uses expressions in this connection almost identical to those in the first chapter of Romans, describing his great desire to see the “orphaned” brethren face to face and to supply any deficiency in their knowledge of Christ (cp. I Thess. 2. 17f. and 3. 10 with Romans 1. 10-13).

8. Romans, 15. 22-24: “22 For which cause also I have been much hindered from coming to you. 23 But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come unto you; 24 Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company.”

9. I Peter, 3. 20: “… Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”

9a. The difference between the presiding elders called pastors (shepherds) and the presiding elders called overseers (bishops) is of major importance in this regard. The elders known as shepherds (pastors) are in the New Testament sovereign gifts of Christ to His Body universal: Ephesians 4. 11ff.: “11 And he {Christ} gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors {lit. “shepherds”} and teachers; 12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, etc.” Christ Himself appoints them to this post (verse 11), as He does the other gifted ministers in the fivefold ministry detailed here. For example Christ Himself selected and appointed the twelve apostles in the days of His flesh (apostles being one of the callings in the fivefold ministry of Ephesians 4). The elders called overseers (bishops), on the other hand, are chosen for their overseeing post by the members of the flock, this choice being confirmed by the senior presiding elders present, for example by apostles in the New Testament, with the blessing of God over the whole process. The overseers, as overseers, are literally “clerks” (that is holders of an allotted position, from Gk. kleros, lot, or, a position for which lots, that is, votes, are cast). That is the word used in Acts 1. 26 (when the lots were cast for Matthias as bishop) and I Peter 5. 3 (where the overseers or bishops are said literally to have oversight of the “lots”, meaning of the positions into which they were voted). Peter knew the meaning of this word when he wrote his Epistle because he had presided over the original process in Acts 1. Assisted, as we shall see, by deacons or administrators, theirs is a “business” relating to “tables” (Acts 6. 2-3), not a purely spiritual calling: the fivefold ministry, on the contrary, relates to ministry of the Word of God. The first overseer (bishop) was Judas, and his elected job was to hold the funds for the apostolic band and provide funds from it to the other apostles and for the poor (John 12. 6, 13. 29). When Judas apostatized his post as overseer was filled by a vote amongst the one hundred and twenty disciples, which elected two men with an equal tally of votes. Then the apostles cast lots between the two with the blessing of God and the lot fell on Matthias. (Acts 1. 15-26.) He was the elected overseer to replace Judas, and his job was identical. Notice this was by vote of all the members, laity and ministers, and confirmed by the senior presiding elders, the apostles, not by sovereign appointment of Christ Himself through the Spirit. This overseer (bishop), like all future ones in apostolic Christianity, was already an elder by divine appointment (as Matthias had been a witness of the ministry of Christ along with the eleven remaining apostles, Acts 1. 21-22), but was voted into his extra position as overseer, just as Judas was already an elder, an apostle chosen by Christ, and additionally was elected by the disciples as overseer. When the number of disciples grew from one hundred and twenty to thousands, after Pentecost, faithful, approved and Spirit-filled laymen (not elders for this post) were likewise elected as “deacons” in Jerusalem, that is, administrators, to assist in the charitable distributions under the supervision of the elected overseer (Matthias). Acts 6. 1-6. This was purely because of the expansion of the work in Jerusalem, and therefore also of the need. When Paul led the mission-work into Gentile lands, he appointed (lit. “appointed by vote with a show of hands”) as overseers certain elders whom God had raised up amongst the new believers, following precisely the apostolic practice after Pentecost. The process is described in Acts 14. 23, and enjoined on Titus also in Titus 1. 5. Already-existing elders (Gk. presbuteroi) are “appointed by vote with a show of hands” (the word in Acts, Gk. cheirotoneo), or “constituted” (the word in Titus, Gk. kathistemi), by Paul and his fellow-missionaries, — Titus in the latter case, — to occupy an office which ipso facto was an office into which they could be placed by men, not by a sovereign act of God, and which could only be, therefore, that of an episkopos (supervisor, “bishop”). The same is confirmed in the case of Titus by the fact that the immediately following verses (7ff.) list the requirements for the office of episkopos to which these elders (presbuteroi) were enrolled. The “constituting” by the leading apostolic envoy(s) was the same as that bestowed by Peter and his fellow apostles in Acts 1 on the election of Matthias as episkopos, viz. by their authorization and regulation of, and blessing on the process. Accordingly in both instances the apostles’ effort is said to have been expended in the Greek original “kata” each assembly (in Acts 14. 23) and “kata” each Cretan city (in Titus 1. 5): this not only means “in” each assembly/city, but also means “agreeably to” each assembly/city. (Thayer, Lexicon, kata II.3.c.) In other words the “appointing” and “constituting” is specified to have been authorized, not only by the apostles themselves, but by the members of each assembly, and by the believers in each city (“city” in Titus 1.5 being a periphrasis for “the Christian believers in each city”). Paul explains in his Pastoral Epistles (I Timothy 3. 1-7, Titus 1. 5-9) what qualifications the elected overseers must meet to fulfill the duty of ministering faithfully in the distribution of God-given funds, and those qualifications are strict; likewise in the case of deacons (administrators), and the qualifications for the latter are, in certain respects, even stricter. (I Timothy 3. 8-13.) Similarly stringent regulations are applied to widows and others who are to be the recipients of the charitable distributions of believers. (I Timothy 5. 3-16.) The temptation to abuse the Church’s generosity is the reason for its regulation, since the love of money, as Paul himself pointed out, is “the root of all evil” (I Timothy 6. 10). The qualifications applied to elders in the fivefold ministry of Ephesians 4 are the spiritual qualifications of men elected by Christ Himself, beyond and above the say of man, but every ministry must be tested on the anvil of the written Word of God before it is accepted by faithful believers. It is not enough for a pastor (elder) to say, Christ has called me to this position. He must prove by his life, signs and works, to the satisfaction of Bible-believing brethren, that he is Word-qualified. There are some elders who are simply “elders” (older in the Lord), there are some elders who “rule” or “preside” (meaning they have a calling or position of responsibility in the ministry, either in the fivefold or spiritual ministry of Ephesians 4, laboring in the Word and doctrine, or as an overseer, a bishop, in material distribution), and there are some elders who “rule well”. (I Timothy 5. 17.) The last, of course, is the preferred state. The overseer’s ministry is to a single local flock where he exercises his responsibility for distribution, but the elders of the fivefold ministry have a universal ministry which covers both local flocks and other flocks wherever they are located across the world, perhaps through missionary (apostolic) work, or through letter etc. The difference is clearly in view in Acts 20. 28 which reads: (Paul speaking to the Ephesian elders) “Take heed therefore to yourselves, and to the whole flock, in which the Holy Spirit had you overseers placed, to feed {lit. “shepherd”} the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.” (The verb “ … had you placed …” exactly as in Acts 12. 4, middle voice, where Herod “had Peter placed” in prison.) Here Paul says to the elders to “feed (shepherd) THE CHURCH OF GOD” purchased by the blood of God, that is the whole Church of Christ universally. That confirms the application of the ministry of elders-pastors as one of the fivefold ministries to the universal Church. Likewise he says to those elders who are also overseers, that is bishops (it may be all these elders or only some of them who were also bishops, it is not stated directly) to take heed to “the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit had you overseers (bishops) placed”. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. III. xiv. 2) understood this passage to relate to two groups of ministers, 1) elders and 2) overseers (bishops): “In Miletus … were called together the bishops (episcopi) and the elders (presbyteri) from Ephesus and the rest of the neighboring settlements”. In Acts 20. 28 certainly there is a difference made between the “whole flock” (whole individual flock) in which certain elders happen to have been placed as overseers by the foreordination of the Holy Spirit, and the “Church of God” (universal) purchased by the blood of God, to which all the elders have a ministry. That is because an overseer was an overseer of a local flock, there being perhaps several local flocks in Ephesus (and its dependent territories), and the overseer’s individual ministry of distribution was for that local flock only. If Paul had meant that these elders had been ordained bishops of the whole church of Ephesus or the church universal, higher than and as leaders of other elders, he would have simply said, “Take heed to yourselves and the whole flock or church of God over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers”. His separation of the local flock of oversight and the universal Church is precisely in accord with the Scriptures already examined. The contrast the Apostle was drawing, by implication, was between the attitude of Judas, — that of the very first bishop or overseer (episkopos), — who betrayed his Master and caused the shedding of God’s blood in promoting the material interests of his local (Judaean) flock above the universal interests of the Church of God, and the opposite attitude impressed on these elders. We will notice, as the history unfolds, that the role of overseer (bishop) was changed from one of material distribution to spiritual governance, in complete contradiction to the Biblical order. This occurred by error (no doubt) in the first instance, when the expedient was adopted by Ignatius, a disciple of the apostles, to defend against heresy: he ensured by this means that the elders appointed as bishops by himself and his adherents were the elders who would be in authority, because he knew they were untainted by heresy. It was a means of guaranteeing their doctrine was wholesome: he himself or his like-minded brethren had personally ordained these elders to be bishops, and their faith was proven first. This seemed to be the way forward, as it prevented some heretic’s rising up and proclaiming he was “anointed by Christ” to preach. In one of the few pre-Ignatian sub-Apostolic works to have survived the devastation of the ages, viz. in the Shepherd of Hermas, we find the work of the overseer or bishop (episkopos) clearly defined as follows: (Similitude IX. xxvii. 2) “Bishops (episkopoi) and hospitable men who at all times received the servants of God into their houses gladly and without hypocrisy; and the bishops (episkopoi) ever ceaselessly sheltered the destitute and the widows by their ministration (diakonia), and ever behaved with holiness”. However, Ignatius refused to treat even deacons as the “ministers of tables” they very clearly were in the Acts of the Apostles (6. 2), stating (Trallians 3. 2) that deacons are not “ministers (diakonoi) of food and drink, but servants of the Church of God”. Ignatius’ modifications were not authorized by the Word of God and the doctrine of the apostles. They led quickly to a system in which man-ordained bishops, not God-ordained elders, became the leaders of the Church. The average member of the Body was not now expected to test the spirits of preachers and teachers by the Word before accepting them, as God commanded (I John 4. 1ff.), he just had to accept the committee’s appointees, and the inevitable result was “Organization”, the cancer which has sapped the strength of the Spirit-directed Body of Christ through the centuries. It was precisely this situation which the elder Clement addressed in his letter to the Corinthians (I Corinthians). There “one or two” persons attempted to overthrow the approved “elders” (presbuteroi) of the church and install others in the office of “supervisor” (episkope). Clement pointed out Christ and the Apostles warned there would be strife over the meaning of the term episkopos, and that prophecy was fulfilled in the Corinthian schism. Clement pastored the Roman flock with the prophet Hermas, and we find him here defending the Apostolic teaching on elders and supervisors as Hermas did. Both were held up by Irenaeus as champions of the Apostolic faith against the newly emergent heresies he targeted in his opus magnum.

The letter of Clement describes the situation as follows:

I Clement xlii:

“In rural districts and towns, as they [the Apostles] preached, they appointed the firstfruits of those regions, having proved them by the Spirit, to be supervisors [episkopoi, “bishops”] and attendants [diakonoi, “deacons”] of the believers of the oncoming generation. And this was not an innovation inasmuch as long before it was written so of supervisors and attendants: for the Scripture says in some place [Isa. 60. 17] the following: “I shall appoint their supervisors [Gk. episkopoi = Heb. nogesim = treasurers, finance officers] in righteousness and their attendants [Gk. diakonoi = Heb. pequddah, a delegated office] in faith/security.” [Clement’s translation: “katasteso tous episkopous auton en dikaiosunei kai tous diakonous auton en pistei”; LXX: “kai doso tous arkhontas sou en eirenei kai tous episkopous sou en dikaiosunei”; Heb: “samti pequddatek shalom ve-nogesayik zedakah.]”

Note 1) episkopoi = finance officers, as in the NT and Hermas.

Note 2) Clement is looking to the “oncoming generation” [ton mellonton pisteuein] when the conflict over the title “supervisor” was due to arise (next ch. of Clement’s letter).

So in this case a few seditious false brethren were attempting to oust the faithful presbuteroi (“elders”) to establish a different episkope (xlvii). He asks rhetorically (xliii) why did the Apostles authorize the offices of episkopos and diakonos when they knew it was going to produce strife? Answer: it was done for a witness to future generations, in order to prove the excellence of the true priestly type (represented by Christ Himself). It was going to be resolved as with Aaron’s rod, by the miraculous budding and fruiting of the chosen priestly rod. Clement rebukes the seditionists throughout his letter for lacking such fruit and points to the original elders the seditionists were attempting to oust (xliv. 5, xlvii. 6, lvii. 1) as the spiritually fruitful party in the strife.

The assertion that the Apostles knew through Jesus there would be strife over the title episkopos is doubtless based on the fact that the title “son of perdition” (which is only otherwise in the NT applied to Judas) is given by Paul to the “man of sin” at the head of the prophesied future great apostasy (apostasia, “apostasy”, from the same root as stasis, “sedition”, in Clement’s letter), in anticipation of which the mystery of iniquity was already at work. (II Thess. 2. 3-12.) It was Judas’ “episkope” or “bishopric”, that is, “supervisor’s office”, translating Heb. pequddah (“delegated office”, Ps. 109. 8, Acts 1. 20; Vulgate: episcopatus), that another was foretold to take because he lifted up his heel against the Messiah. The Judas-like apostate in the Church of Jesus Christ according to this type, would be similarly faithless in the episkope. Like Judas, he would be put into that office, regardless of the fact that his disposition was foreknown to Jesus (Jn. 6. 64, 13. 11): he was given even a wider opportunity to exercise his evil inclination (to be a thief) by being granted oversight of the mission’s finances. This according to Clement was done in order to prove in public the excellence of God’s true ministerial class, typed by the budding and fruiting rod of Aaron.

10. I Timothy, 6. 20f.: “20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science [Greek: gnosis] falsely so called: 21 Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.”

11. Romans, 1: 18-32: “18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; 19 ¶ Because that which may be known [Greek: to gnoston] of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew [Greek: gnontes] God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge [Greek: epignosei], God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing [Greek: epignontes] the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

12. §1. The most reliable traditions relating to Simon Magus outside of the New Testament are those found in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, dating from around the middle of the second century AD, along with an account in Josephus relating to Felix’s associate, Simon. Justin, First Apology, 26: “…. After Christ’s ascension into heaven the devils put forward certain men who said that they themselves were gods; and they were not only not persecuted by you, but even deemed worthy of honors. There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto, who in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic, by virtue of the art of the devils operating in him. He was considered a God, and as a God was honored by you with a statue, which statue was erected on the river Tiber, between the two bridges, and bore this inscription, in the language of Rome: — “Simoni Deo Sancto,” “To Simon the holy God.” And almost all the Samaritans, and a few even of other nations, worship him, and acknowledge him as the first God; and a woman, Helena, who went about with him at that time, and had formerly been a prostitute, they say is the first idea generated by him. And a man, Menander, also a Samaritan, of the town Capparetaea, a disciple of Simon, and inspired by devils, we know to have deceived many while he was in Antioch by his magical art. He persuaded those who adhered to him that they should never die, and even now there are some living who hold this opinion of his. And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other God greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds — the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh — we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you.” Also Dial.Tryph. cxx: “For I gave no thought to any of my people, that is, the Samaritans, when I had a communication in writing with Caesar, but stated that they were wrong in trusting to the magician Simon of their own nation, who, they say, is God above all power, and authority, and might.” Irenaeus Adv. Haer. I. xxiii. 1-4: “CHAPTER 23 DOCTRINES AND PRACTICES OF SIMON MAGUS AND MENANDER 1. Simon the Samaritan was that magician of whom Luke, the disciple and follower of the apostles, says, “But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who beforetime used magical arts in that city, and led astray the people of Samaria, declaring that he himself was some great one, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This is the power of God, which is called great. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had driven them mad by his sorceries.” This Simon, then — who feigned faith, supposing that the apostles themselves performed their cures by the art of magic, and not by the power of God; and with respect to their filling with the Holy Ghost, through the imposition of hands, those that believed in God through Him who was preached by them, namely, Christ Jesus — suspecting that even this was done through a kind of greater knowledge of magic, and offering money to the apostles, thought he, too, might receive this power of bestowing the Holy Spirit on whomsoever he would, — was addressed in these words by Peter: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God can be purchased with money: thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God; for I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.” He, then, not putting faith in God a whit the more, set himself eagerly to contend against the apostles, in order that he himself might seem to be a wonderful being, and applied himself with still greater zeal to the study of the whole magic art, that he might the better bewilder and overpower multitudes of men. Such was his procedure in the reign of Claudius Caesar, by whom also he is said to have been honored with a statue, on account of his magical power. This man, then, was glorified by many as if he were a God; and he taught that it was himself who appeared among the Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit. He represented himself, in a word, as being the loftiest of all powers, that is, the Being who is the Father over all, and he allowed himself to be called by whatsoever title men were pleased to address him. 2. Now this Simon of Samaria, from whom all sorts of heresies derive their origin, formed his sect out of the following materials: — Having redeemed from slavery at Tyre, a city of Phoenicia, a certain woman named Helena, he was in the habit of carrying her about with him, declaring that this woman was the first conception of his mind, the mother of all, by whom, in the beginning, he conceived in his mind [the thought] of forming angels and archangels. For this Ennoea leaping forth from him, and comprehending the will of her father, descended to the lower regions [of space], and generated angels and powers, by whom also he declared this world was formed. But after she had produced them, she was detained by them through motives of jealousy, because they were unwilling to be looked upon as the progeny of any other being. As to himself, they had no knowledge of him whatever; but his Ennoea was detained by those powers and angels who had been produced by her. She suffered all kinds of contumely from them, so that she could not return upwards to her father, but was even shut up in a human body, and for ages passed in succession from one female body to another, as from vessel to vessel. She was, for example, in that Helen on whose account the Trojan war was undertaken; for whose sake also Stesichorus was struck blind, because he had cursed her in his verses, but afterwards, repenting and writing what are called palinodes, in which he sang her praise, he was restored to sight. Thus she, passing from body to body, and suffering insults in every one of them, at last became a common prostitute; and she it was that was meant by the lost sheep. 3. For this purpose, then, he had come that he might win her first, and free her from slavery, while he conferred salvation upon men, by making himself known to them. For since the angels ruled the world ill because each one of them coveted the principal power for himself, he had come to amend matters, and had descended, transfigured and assimilated to powers and principalities and angels, so that he might appear among men to be a man, while yet he was not a man; and that thus he was thought to have suffered in Judaea, when he had not suffered. Moreover, the prophets uttered their predictions under the inspiration of those angels who formed the world; for which reason those who place their trust in him and Helena no longer regarded them, but, as being free, live as they please; for men are saved through his grace, and not on account of their own righteous actions. For such deeds are not righteous in the nature of things, but by mere accident, just as those angels who made the world, have thought fit to constitute them, seeking, by means of such precepts, to bring men into bondage. On this account, he pledged himself that the world should be dissolved, and that those who are his should be freed from the rule of them who made the world. 4. Thus, then, the mystic priests belonging to this sect both lead profligate lives and practice magical arts, each one to the extent of his ability. They use exorcisms and incantations. Love-potions, too, and charms, as well as those beings who are called “Paredri” (familiars) and “Oniropompi” (dream-senders), and whatever other curious arts can be had recourse to, are eagerly pressed into their service. They also have an image of Simon fashioned after the likeness of Jupiter, and another of Helena in the shape of Minerva; and these they worship. In fine, they have a name derived from Simon, the author of these most impious doctrines, being called Simonians; and from them “knowledge, falsely so called,” received its beginning, as one may learn even from their own assertions.”

§2. More detailed accounts of the background and history of Simon Magus are found in less reliable, but still rather circumstantial and, to that extent, creditworthy, heretical writings. The following are expurgated versions of an heretical tract of an Elkesaite tendency, dating from the first half of the third century AD. The underlying heretical tract was an adaptation of sub-apostolic traditions relating to Peter and Simon Magus. Clementine Homilies II. xxiii-xxv: “CHAPTER 23 SIMON A DISCIPLE OF THE BAPTIST “But that he came to deal with the doctrines of religion happened on this wise. There was one John, a day-baptist, who was also, according to the method of combination, the forerunner of our Lord Jesus; and as the Lord had twelve apostles, bearing the number of the twelve months of the sun, so also he, John, had thirty chief men, fulfilling the monthly reckoning of the moon, in which number was a certain woman called Helena, that not even this might be without a dispensational significance. For a woman, being half a man, made up the imperfect number of the triacontad; as also in the case of the moon, whose revolution does not make the complete course of the month. But of these thirty, the first and the most esteemed by John was Simon; and the reason of his not being chief after the death of John was as follows: — CHAPTER 24 ELECTIONEERING STRATAGEMS “He being absent in Egypt for the practice of magic, and John being killed, Dositheus desiring the leadership, falsely gave out that Simon was dead, and succeeded to the seat. But Simon, returning not long after, and strenuously holding by the place as his own, when he met with Dositheus did not demand the place, knowing that a man who has attained power beyond his expectations cannot be removed from it. Wherefore with pretended friendship he gives himself for a while to the second place, under Dositheus. But taking his place after a few days among the thirty fellow-disciples, he began to malign Dositheus as not delivering the instructions correctly. And this he said that he did, not through unwillingness to deliver them correctly, but through ignorance. And on one occasion, Dositheus, perceiving that this artful accusation of Simon was dissipating the opinion of him with respect to many, so that they did not think that he was the Standing One, came in a rage to the usual place of meeting, and finding Simon, struck him with a staff. But it seemed to pass through the body of Simon as if he had been smoke. Thereupon Dositheus, being confounded, said to him, ‘If you are the Standing One, I also will worship you.’ Then Simon said that he was; and Dositheus, knowing that he himself was not the Standing One, fell down and worshiped; and associating himself with the twenty-nine chiefs, he raised Simon to his own place of repute; and thus, not many days after, Dositheus himself, while he (Simon) stood, fell down and died. CHAPTER 25 SIMON’S DECEIT “But Simon is going about in company with Helena, and even till now, as you see, is stirring up the people. And he says that he has brought down this Helena from the highest heavens to the world; being queen, as the all-bearing being, and wisdom, for whose sake, says he, the Greeks and barbarians fought, having before their eyes but an image of truth; for she, who really is the truth, was then with the chiefest God. Moreover, by cunningly explaining certain things of this sort, made up from Grecian myths, he deceives many; especially as he performs many signal marvels, so that if we did not know that he does these things by magic, we ourselves should also have been deceived. But whereas we were his fellow-laborers at the first, so long as be did such things without doing wrong to the interests of religion; now that he has madly begun to attempt to deceive those who are religious, we have withdrawn from him.” Clementine Recognitions II. vii-xv: CHAPTER 7 “This Simon’s father was Antonius, and his mother Rachel. By nation he is a Samaritan, from a village of the Gettones; by profession a magician yet exceedingly well trained in the Greek literature; desirous of glory, and boasting above all the human race, so that he wishes himself to be believed to be an exalted power, which is above God the Creator, and to be thought to be the Christ, and to be called the Standing One. And he uses this name as implying that he can never be dissolved, asserting that his flesh is so compacted by the power of his divinity, that it can endure to eternity. Hence, therefore, he is called the Standing One, as though he cannot fall by any corruption. CHAPTER 8 SIMON MAGUS: HIS HISTORY “For after that John the Baptist was killed, as you yourself also know, when Dositheus had broached his heresy, with thirty other chief disciples, and one woman, who was called Luna — whence also these thirty appear to have been appointed with reference to the number of the days, according to the course of the moon — this Simon ambitious of evil glory, as we have said, goes to Dositheus, and pretending friendship, entreats him, that if any one of those thirty should die, he should straightway substitute him in room of the dead: for it was contrary to their rule either to exceed the fixed number, or to admit any one who was unknown, or not yet proved; whence also the rest, desiring to become worthy of the place and number, are eager in every way to please, according to the institutions of their sect each one of those who aspire after admittance into the number, hoping that he may be deemed worthy to be put into the place of the deceased, when, as we have said, any one dies. Therefore Dositheus, being greatly urged by this man, introduced Simon when a vacancy occurred among the number. CHAPTER 9 SIMON MAGUS: HIS PROFESSION “But not long after he fell in love with that woman whom they call Luna; and he confided all things to us as his friends: how he was a magician, and how he loved Luna, and how, being desirous of glory, he was unwilling to enjoy her ingloriously, but that he was waiting patiently till he could enjoy her honorably; yet so if we also would conspire with him towards the accomplishment of his desires. And he promised that, as a reward of this service, he would cause us to be invested with the highest honors, and we should be believed by men to be gods; ‘Only, however, on condition,’ says he, ‘that you confer the chief place upon me, Simon, who by magic art am able to show many signs and prodigies, by means of which either my glory or our sect may be established …. CHAPTER 11 SIMON MAGUS, AT THE HEAD OF THE SECT OF DOSITHEUS “Meantime, at the outset, as soon as he was reckoned among the thirty disciples of Dositheus, he began to depreciate Dositheus himself, saying that he did not teach purely or perfectly, and that this was the result not of ill intention, but of ignorance. But Dositheus, when he perceived that Simon was depreciating him, fearing lest his reputation among men might be obscured (for he himself was supposed to be the Standing One), moved with rage, when they met as usual at the school, seized a rod, and began to beat Simon; but suddenly the rod seemed to pass through his body, as if it had been smoke. On which Dositheus, being astonished, says to him, ‘Tell me if thou art the Standing One, that I may adore thee.’ And when Simon answered that he was, then Dositheus, perceiving that he himself was not the Standing One, fell down and worshiped him, and gave up his own place as chief to Simon, ordering all the rank of thirty men to obey him; himself taking the inferior place which Simon formerly occupied. Not long after this he died. CHAPTER 12 SIMON MAGUS AND LUNA “Therefore, after the death of Dositheus Simon took Luna to himself; and with her he still goes about, as you see, deceiving multitudes, and asserting that he himself is a certain power which is above God the Creator, while Luna, who is with him, has been brought down from the higher heavens, and that she is Wisdom, the mother of all things, for whom, says he, the Greeks and barbarians contending, were able in some measure to see an image of her; but of herself, as she is, as the dweller with the first and only God, they were wholly ignorant. Propounding these and other things of the same sort, he has deceived many. But I ought also to state this, which I remember that I myself saw. Once, when this Luna of his was in a certain tower, a great multitude had assembled to see her, and were standing around the tower on all sides; but she was seen by all the people to lean forward, and to look out through all the windows of that tower. Many other wonderful things he did and does; so that men, being astonished at them, think that he himself is the great God.’ …. CHAPTER 14 SIMON MAGUS, PROFESSES TO BE GOD “At those sayings of his Simon grew pale; but after a little, recollecting himself, he thus answered: ‘Do not think that I am a man of your race. I am neither magician, nor lover of Luna, nor son of Antonius. For before my mother Rachel and he came together, she, still a virgin, conceived me, while it was in my power to be either small or great, and to appear as a man among men. Therefore I have chosen you first as my friends, for the purpose of trying you, that I may place you first in my heavenly and unspeakable places when I shall have proved you. Therefore I have pretended to be a man, that I might more clearly ascertain if you cherish entire affection towards me.’ But when I heard that, judging him indeed to be a wretch, yet wondering at his impudence; and blushing for him, and at the same thee fearing lest he should attempt some evil against us, I beckoned to Niceta to feign for a little along with me, and said to him: ‘Be not angry with us, corruptible men, O thou incorruptible God, but rather accept our affection, and our mind willing to know who God is; for we did not till now know who thou art, nor did we perceive that thou art he whom we were seeking.’”

13. John 1. 26-27.

14. Acts, 8. 9-25: 9 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: 10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God. 11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries. 12 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13 Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done. 14 ¶ Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: 15 Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: 16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) 17 Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. 18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, 19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. 20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. 21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. 22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. 23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. 24 Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me. 25 And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

15. §1. On Felix: Ancient sources: Acts 23. 24-26, 24, 25.14; Josephus, Antiquities 20.7.1-2, 20.8.5-7, 20.8.9; War 2.12.8, 2.13.2, 2.13.4-5, 2.13.7; Tacitus, Histories 5.9; Annals 12.54; Suetonius, Claudius 28.

The earliest account in Acts locates Simon in Samaria but says nothing of his family or origin. The next account in Josephus (below) tells us of a magus by the name of Simon who was an intimate associate of Antonius Felix the procurator of Judaea before whom Paul appeared in Caesarea c. AD 59. This Simon the magus was already a friend of Felix in the early years of his procuratorship during the latter part of the reign of Claudius. At the prompting of Felix, Simon won over the young and beautiful Drusilla, daughter of Herod Agrippa I and wife of Azizus, king of Emesa, and persuaded her to commit adultery and marry Felix (c. AD 54). Josephus says Simon was a Jew and by birth a Cypriot. (A scribal slip seems to have produced the impossible “Atomos” as the name of this magus in a couple of MSS., probably through the insertion and corruption of the name Antonius [Felix], and perhaps also through Simon’s adoption of this, his Roman patron’s, name. Note that in the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions the “father” of the Biblical Simon Magus is called Antonius and the magus denies this Antonius was his real father — though admittedly only to claim a virgin birth for himself! [Below.]) Felix was one of the chief favorites of the Emperor Claudius (r. AD 41-54) amongst his freedmen, second only, if not equal, in Claudius’ esteem, to the freedman Posides. Claudius granted the procuratorship of Judaea to Felix (c. AD 52-53) as an imperial favor. The close relationship between Felix and Claudius, on the one hand, and between Simon the magus and Felix, on the other, would have given Simon considerable influence in imperial circles in Rome.

§2. The next account in Justin Martyr tells us that a magus called Simon, the one mentioned in Acts, came from Samaria to Rome in the days of Claudius and received great honors there. He was worshiped as a god and a statue of Simon, identifying him with the Roman deity Semo Sancus, was erected on the Isle in the Tiber. Simon Magus was the founder of a sect of heretics in Rome and founded a school which gave birth to a swarm of other Gnostic heresies. (The setting of the Dialogue with Trypho is Ephesus at some period near or just after the end of the Bar-Kokhba revolt c. AD 135-145, and the First Apology dates from around the third quarter of the second century AD.) Justin’s account is corroborated by Irenaeus (c. AD 180), Adv. Haer. I. xxiii. 1. The likelihood is, as has frequently been observed, that Acts, Josephus and Justin are talking about the same magus. It would be highly improbable that there were two magi of the name Simon, both connected with the area of Judaea and Samaria in the days of Claudius, and, at the same time, having access to, and great influence with, the inner circles of the imperial court in Rome. (Scholars of both the conservative and the critical schools have accepted the identity of the two Simons; Waitz says the identification is “not improbable” in the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. X, col. 420a, s.v. Simon Magus.) We find that when Felix was made procurator of Judaea, towards the end of the reign of Claudius, he embarked on a policy of wicked aggravation of his Jewish subjects. His period in office marked, according to Tacitus and Josephus, a milestone in the deterioration of the relationship between the Jews and the Romans, which finally culminated in the disastrous Jewish revolt and the sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70. And the fault, Tacitus tells us, was on the part of Felix. Is it a coincidence that the Gnostic teaching of Simon Magus, Felix’s close friend and spiritual advocate, was markedly anti-Semitic?

§3. But even before Felix arrived in Judaea, we find anti-Semitic policies being put into effect by Claudius, viz. the expulsion of Jews from Rome (c. AD 45-49). (Dion Cassius tells us that the earlier decree of AD 41, forbidding Jews to assemble, was Claudius’ own. The earlier decree was moderate in tone and tolerant, the second decree draconian.) According to Suetonius, the reason for the expulsion was that the Jews were continually causing riots, “because they were driven to do so by Chrestus” (impulsore Chresto). “Chrestus” is a common, pagan, Roman way of spelling the name Christ (the Messiah), but was also a heathen divine name, meaning the “Good One”. Seemingly there was someone in Rome stirring up Jewish riots who called himself the “Good One” or “Christ”. Claudius’ legislation, however, did not expel the alleged troublemaker, “Chrestus”, but rather the Jews whom he provoked to riot. Suetonius also informs us (Claudius 25) that the inspiration for these and other legal pronouncements did not originate with Claudius himself but with his favorites. And we know that one of his chief favorites was Felix, with his anti-Semitic spiritual advocate, Simon Magus. Again, can it be coincidence that Simon Magus, according to the later Christian and apocryphal writers, called himself “Christ” (Christus or Chrestus) and also identified himself as the pagan supreme deity, the “Good One”? It would appear that these Jewish riots in Rome in the days of Claudius were stirred up by Felix’s friend Simon Magus, who blasphemously assumed the titles of godhead and Messiahship, and used his influence with Felix to attack the Jews, first in Rome, then in Judaea, when Felix became procurator there. Simon’s Gnostic followers are known to have adopted an identical policy of anti-Semitic provocation and aggravation in the reigns of the Emperors Domitian and Trajan.

§4. The contradiction some have seen in the different accounts of Simon’s background is illusory. Josephus says by BIRTH Simon was of Cypriot origin and that he was a Jew. The apocryphal Vercelli Acts of Peter (going back to a source c. AD 200), ch. vi., likewise call Simon — the biblical Simon Magus — a Jew. According to Justin, Simon was from the Samaritan village of Gitto. Samaria was a region populated by a rich mix of races. Because Simon’s home was Gitto in Samaria, that need not mean that his parents were Samaritan. The “Samaritan” tag is linked with the village and is an indication of Simon’s geographical origin, whilst Josephus is talking about his genetic origin. The next account in Irenaeus (c. AD 180) repeats and corroborates the account of Justin. The next account in the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions adds a few details about Simon’s family, stating that the name of his father, or alleged father, was Antonius, and his mother’s name, Rachel, and confirming that his home town was Gitto (called Gitthae in the Apostolic Constitutions, and the village of the Gettones or Gitthae or Gitthi in the pseudo-Clementines). Rachel could be either a Jewish or a Samaritan name (hence Simon could have been Jewish on his mother’s side), whilst Antonius is non-Jewish, Roman in form, and is, perhaps, derived from Simon’s Roman patron, Antonius Felix. When a foreigner became a Roman citizen, he adopted a new name which was formed like that of the freedman. He chose his own praenomen (Roman personal name); he received the nomen (Roman family or gens name) of his citizen sponsor; and he adopted his original name as cognomen. For example, when the Greek poet Archias became a citizen, his name changed to Aulus Licinius Archias. He had been attached to the Luculli family so he adopted the nomen of his patron, L. Licinius Lucullus. In this case the nomen would be Antonius, taken from Antonius Felix, and the cognomen Simon. We can presume that Simon was the recipient of Roman citizenship, considering he was the recipient of Roman divinity! (For the later history of Simon Magus, after his adventures in Rome, see below, n. 20 §3.)

§5. Jos. Ant XX vii. 2: But for the marriage of Drusilla with Azizus, it was in no long time afterward dissolved upon the following occasion: While Felix was procurator of Judea, he saw this Drusilla, and fell in love with her; for she did indeed exceed all other women in beauty; and he sent to her a person whose name was Simon, one of his friends; a Jew he was, and by birth [note] a Cypriot, and one who pretended to be a magician, and endeavored to persuade her to forsake her present husband, and marry him; and promised, that if she would not refuse him, he would make her a happy woman. Accordingly she acted ill, and because she was desirous to avoid her sister Bernice’s envy, for she was very ill treated by her on account of her beauty, was prevailed upon to transgress the laws of her forefathers, and to marry Felix; and when he had had a son by her, he named him Agrippa. But after what manner that young man, with his wife, perished at the conflagration of the mountain Vesuvius, in the days of Titus Caesar, shall be related hereafter.

§6. For Justin Martyr’s account, see note 12.

§7. Apost Const. VI. 7: . Now the original of the new heresies began thus: the devil entered into one Simon, of a village [note] called Gitthae, a Samaritan, by profession a magician, and made him the minister of his wicked design.

§8. Rec. Clem II. 7: This Simon’s father was Antonius, and his mother Rachel. By nation [note] he is a Samaritan, from a village [note] of the Gettones; by profession a magician yet exceedingly well trained in the Greek literature; desirous of glory, and boasting above all the human race, so that he wishes himself to be believed to be an exalted power, which is above God the Creator, and to be thought to be the Christ, and to be called the Standing One. And he uses this name as implying that he can never be dissolved, asserting that his flesh is so compacted by the power of his divinity, that it can endure to eternity. Hence, therefore, he is called the Standing One, as though he cannot fall by any corruption.

§9. Rec. Clem II. 14: “At those sayings of his Simon grew pale; but after a little, recollecting himself, he thus answered: ‘Do not think that I am a man of your race. I am neither magician, nor lover of Luna [“Moon” = Helena], nor son of Antonius. For before my mother Rachel and he came together, she, still a virgin, conceived me, while it was in my power to be either small or great, and to appear as a man among men. Therefore I have chosen you first as my friends, for the purpose of trying you, that I may place you first in my heavenly and unspeakable places when I shall have proved you.

§10. For Claudius and his favorites: see Suetonius: Lives of the Caesars, Claudius, 25 … The Jews, who were persistently causing public disturbances because they were driven to do so by Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled from Rome …. But in these and other things, and indeed the greater part of his administration, he was directed not so much by his own judgment, as by the influence of his wives and freedmen; for the most part acting in conformity to what their interests or fancies dictated. … 28. Amongst his freedmen, the greatest favorite was the eunuch Posides, whom, in his British triumph he presented with the headless spear, classing him among the military men. Next to him, if not equal, in favor was Felix, whom he not only preferred to commands both of cohorts and troops, but to the government of the province of Judea; and he became, in consequence of his elevation, the husband of three queens.

§11. On Felix as a vexatious procurator who had a hand in stirring up the Jewish Revolt, cf. Tacitus Annals 12. 54: “Not equally moderate was his [Pallas’] brother, surnamed Felix, who had for some time been governor of Judaea, and thought that he could do any evil act with impunity, backed up as he was by such power. It is true that the Jews had shown symptoms of commotion in a seditious outbreak, and when they had heard of the assassination of Caius [Caligula], there was no hearty submission, as a fear still lingered that any of the emperors might impose the same orders. Felix meanwhile, by ill-timed remedies, stimulated disloyal acts; while he had, as a rival in the worst wickedness, Ventidius Cumanus, who held a part of the province, which was so divided that Galilea was governed by Cumanus, Samaria by Felix. The two peoples had long been at feud, and now less than ever restrained their enmity, from contempt of their rulers. And accordingly they plundered each other, letting loose bands of robbers, forming ambuscades, and occasionally fighting battles, and carrying the spoil and booty to the two procurators, who at first rejoiced at all this, but, as the mischief grew, they interposed with an armed force, which was cut to pieces. The flame of war would have spread through the province, but it was saved by Quadratus, governor of Syria. In dealing with the Jews, who had been daring enough to slay our soldiers, there was little hesitation about their being capitally punished. Some delay indeed was occasioned by Cumanus and Felix; for Claudius on hearing the causes of the rebellion had given authority for deciding also the case of these procurators. Quadratus, however, exhibited Felix as one of the judges, admitting him to the bench with the view of cowing the ardor of the prosecutors. And so Cumanus was condemned for the crimes which the two had committed, and tranquillity was restored to the province.”

§12. Histories 5. 9: “Under Tiberius all was quiet. But when the Jews were ordered by Caligula to set up his statue in the temple, they preferred the alternative of war. The death of the Emperor put an end to the disturbance. The kings were either dead, or reduced to insignificance, when Claudius entrusted the province of Judaea to the Roman Knights or to his own freedmen, one of whom, Antonius Felix, indulging in every kind of barbarity and lust, exercised the power of a king in the spirit of a slave. He had married Drusilla, the granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra, and so was the grandson-in-law, as Claudius was the grandson, of Antony. Yet the endurance of the Jews lasted till Gessius Florus was procurator. In his time the war broke out.”

§13. Josephus, Ant. XX. viii. 5: “Felix also bore an ill-will to Jonathan, the high priest, because he frequently gave him admonitions about governing the Jewish affairs better than he did, lest he should himself have complaints made of him by the multitude, since he it was who had desired Caesar to send him as procurator of Judea. So Felix contrived a method whereby he might get rid of him, now he was become so continually troublesome to him; for such continual admonitions are grievous to those who are disposed to act unjustly. Wherefore Felix persuaded one of Jonathan’s most faithful friends, a citizen of Jerusalem, whose name was Doras, to bring the robbers [the so-called sicarii] upon Jonathan, in order to kill him; and this he did by promising to give him a great deal of money for so doing. Doras complied with the proposal, and contrived matters so, that the robbers might murder him after the following manner: Certain of those robbers went up to the city, as if they were going to worship God, while they had daggers under their garments, and by thus mingling themselves among the multitude they slew Jonathan and as this murder was never avenged, the robbers went up with the greatest security at the festivals after this time; and having weapons concealed in like manner as before, and mingling themselves among the multitude, they slew certain of their own enemies, and were subservient to other men for money; and slew others, not only in remote parts of the city, but in the temple itself also; for they had the boldness to murder men there, without thinking of the impiety of which they were guilty. And this seems to me to have been the reason why God, out of his hatred of these men’s wickedness, rejected our city; and as for the temple, he no longer esteemed it sufficiently pure for him to inhabit therein, but brought the Romans upon us, and threw a fire upon the city to purge it; and brought upon us, our wives, and children, slavery, as desirous to make us wiser by our calamities.”

§14. According to a passage of Josephus preserved in Eusebius Hist. Ecc. the War was divine punishment for the Jews’ murder of James the brother of Jesus, which murder was induced by heretics spawned by the school of Simon Magus. In this case, too, impulsore Chresto, Simon was the instigator of the Jews’ misfortune.

§15. The role of the heretics in fomenting disturbances, war and captivity in Judaea is probably alluded to also in I Clement 3. 2.

16. See Appendix 2.

17. The apocryphal Vercelli Acts of Peter, which go back to a Docetic heretical source c. AD 200, and draw on ancient ecclesiastical traditions, mixed with myth and legend, describe just such a situation in Rome (op. cit. chs. iv, v, vi and vii): “[IV.] …. And the brethren were not a little offended among themselves, seeing, moreover, that Paul was not at Rome, neither Timotheus nor Barnabas, for they had been sent into Macedonia by Paul [this dates the terminus a quo to the latter part of the reign of Claudius, as Timothy does not appear till then, in Acts 16], and that there was no man to comfort us, to speak nothing of them that had but just become catechumens. And as Simon exalted himself yet more by the works which he did, and many of them daily called Paul a sorcerer, and others a deceiver, of so great a multitude that had been stablished in the faith all fell away save Narcissus the presbyter and two women in the lodging of the Bithynians, and four that could no longer go out of their house, but were shut up (day and night): these gave themselves unto prayer (by day and night), beseeching the Lord that Paul might return [sic in these Acts] quickly, or some other that should visit his servants, because the devil had made them fall by his wickedness. [V.] And as they prayed and fasted, God was already teaching Peter at Jerusalem of that which should come to pass. For whereas the twelve years which the Lord Christ had enjoined upon him were fulfilled, he showed him a vision after this manner, saying unto him: Peter, that Simon the sorcerer whom thou didst cast out of Judaea, convicting him, hath again come before thee (prevented thee) at Rome. And that shalt thou know shortly (or, and that thou mayest know in few words): for all that did believe in me hath Satan made to fall by his craft and working: whose Power Simon approveth himself to be …. [VI] … a certain Jew had broken into the city, named Simon, and with his charms of sorcery and his wickedness hath he made all the brotherhood fall away this way …. [VII.] …. if he [Satan] overthrew me [Peter] and persuaded me to flee as if I had put my trust in a man, what think ye will he do unto you [Roman believers deceived by Simon] which are but young in the faith?

18. See Appendix 3.

19. There was little to choose morally between Drusilla and her sister Bernice. The latter was living in incestuous marriage with her brother Agrippa II when Festus had Paul testify before Agrippa II after two years’ confinement in Caesarea! “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” said Agrippa II to Paul, but almost was not enough. (Acts 24. 24 — 26. 32).

20. The traditional connection of these three, earliest, house-churches in Rome with the family of Pudens, with the earliest of the Roman Catacombs, and with the Christians greeted by Paul in Romans 16, is brought out in the online Catholic Encyclopedia’s article “Early Roman Christian Cemeteries” at www.newadvent.org/cathen (Section “C”): “Cemetery of Priscilla. This is the oldest general cemetery of Early Christian Rome (Kaufmann) and in several respects the most important. It takes its name from Priscilla, the mother of the Senator Pudens in whose house St. Peter, according to ancient tradition, found refuge. The sepulchral plot (area) of Pudens on the New Salarian Way became the burial-place of Aquila and Prisca (Rom., xvi, 3), and of Sts. Pudentiana and Praxedes, daughters of Pudens. In this manner the history of the very ancient Roman churches of Santa Pudentiana and Santa Prassede, also that of Santa Prisca on the Aventine, being originally the meeting-places (domesticæ ecclesiæ, Rom., xvi, 5), of the little Christian community, became intimately connected with the burial-site of the family to which they originally belonged.”

21. See Appendix 4.

22. §1. Observation 1.: Simon’s doctrine was built on earlier theories mixing paganism and Judaism like those of the Naassenes, the Peratae, the Sethians, and individual heretics like Justinus. The supreme “Good One” in the Naassene system was (in one of his principal manifestations) the Egyptian grain-god Osiris, whilst in the system of Justinus he was actually the pagan phallic deity Priapus (!) who, in turn, was identified with the Egyptian Osiris. Osiris was commonly titled “The Good or Beneficent Being” (wnn nfr), or more precisely “He whose coming is delightful”. Simon Magus was educated in Egypt, in Alexandria, and so were many of the Gnostics who succeeded him. The High God, worshiped, under whatever name, by heathen idolaters and allegorized by heathen philosophers, retained his supremacy in Gnosticism and the God of the Jews was demoted to an inferior position under him: by this expedient paganism replaced Judaism. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, V. 21: “[Hippolytus is in the middle of an account of the “pseudo-Gnostic” system of Justinus, having summarized before this the doctrines of the Naassenes, the astrological Peratae and the Sethians] …. ‘Finally, however, in the days of Herod the king, Baruch is dispatched, being sent down once more by Elohim; and coming to Nazareth, he found Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, a child of twelve years, feeding sheep. And he announces to him all things from the beginning, whatsoever had been done by Eden and Elohim, and whatsoever would be likely to take place hereafter, and spoke the following words: “All the prophets anterior to you have been enticed. Put forth an effort, therefore, Jesus, Son of man, not to be allured, but preach this word unto men, and carry back tidings to them of things pertaining to the Father, and things pertaining to the Good One, and ascend to the Good One, and sit there with Elohim, Father of us all.” And Jesus was obedient unto the angel, saying that, “I shall do all things, Lord,” and proceeded to preach. Naas therefore wished to entice this one also. (Jesus, however, was not disposed to listen to his overtures), for he remained faithful to Baruch. Therefore Naas, being inflamed with anger because he was not able to seduce him, caused him to be crucified. He, however, leaving the body of Eden on the (accursed) tree, ascended to the Good One; saying, however, to Eden, “Woman, thou retainest thy son,” that is, the natural and the earthly man. But (Jesus) himself commending his spirit into the hands of the Father, ascended to the Good One. Now the Good One is Priapus [the phallic god], (and) he it is who antecedently caused the production of everything that exists. On this account he is styled Priapus, because he previously fashioned all things (according to his own design). For this reason, he says, in every temple is placed his statue, which is revered by every creature; and (there are images of him) in the highways, carrying over his head ripened fruits, that is, the produce of the creation, of which he is the cause, having in the first instance formed, (according to His own design), the creation, when as yet it had no existence’ [end of explanation of system of Justinus] …. Since, then, we have explained the attempts (at a system) of the pseudo-gnostic Justinus, it appears likewise expedient in the following books to elucidate the opinions put forward in heresies following [in the way of consequence on the systems already described], and to leave not a single one of these (speculators) unrefuted. Our refutation will be accomplished by adducing the assertions made by them; such (at least of their statements) as are sufficient for making a public example (of these heretics). (And we shall attain our purpose), even though there should only be condemned the secret and ineffable (mysteries) practiced amongst them, into which, silly mortals that they are, scarcely (even) with considerable labor are they initiated. Let us then see what also Simon [Magus] affirms….”

§2. Observation 2.: Simon Magus identified himself with the so-called Supreme God (the Good One): Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I. xxiii. 1: “This man [Simon Magus], then, was glorified by many as if he were a God; and he taught that it was himself who appeared among the Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit. He represented himself, in a word, as being the loftiest of all powers, that is, the Being who is the Father over all, and he allowed himself to be called by whatsoever title men were pleased to address him.” and op. cit., II. ix. 1: “This God, then, being acknowledged, as I have said, and receiving testimony from all to the fact of His existence, that Father whom they conjure into existence is beyond doubt untenable, and has no witnesses [to his existence]. Simon Magus was the first who said that he himself was God over all, and that the world was formed by his angels. Then those who succeeded him, as I have shown in the first book, by their several opinions, still further depraved [his teaching] through their impious and irreligious doctrines against the Creator. These [heretics now referred to], being the disciples of those mentioned, render such as assent to them worse than the heathen. For the former “serve the creature rather than the Creator,” and “those which are not gods,” notwithstanding that they ascribe the first place in Deity to that God who was the Maker of this universe. But the latter maintain that He, [i.e., the Creator of this world,] is the fruit of a defect, and describe Him as being of an animal nature, and as not knowing that Power which is above Him, while He also exclaims, “I am God, and besides Me there is no other God.” Affirming that He lies, they are themselves liars, attributing all sorts of wickedness to Him; and conceiving of one who is not above this Being as really having an existence, they are thus convicted by their own views of blasphemy against that God who really exists, while they conjure into existence a God who has no existence, to their own condemnation. And thus those who declare themselves “perfect,” and as being possessed of the knowledge of all things, are found to be worse than the heathen, and to entertain more blasphemous opinions even against their own Creator.”

§3. Observation 3.: Simon Magus’ doctrine represented the Apostles as under the influence of Judaism and its so-called inferior Creator-god. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. xii. 12: “For all those who are of a perverse mind, having been set against the Mosaic legislation, judging it to be dissimilar and contrary to the doctrine of the Gospel, have not applied themselves to investigate the causes of the difference of each covenant. Since, therefore, they have been deserted by the paternal love, and puffed up by Satan, being brought over to the doctrine of Simon Magus, they have apostatized in their opinions from Him who is God, and imagined that they have themselves discovered more than the apostles, by finding out another God; and [maintained] that the apostles preached the Gospel still somewhat under the influence of Jewish opinions, but that they themselves are purer [in doctrine], and more intelligent, than the apostles. Wherefore also Marcion and his followers have betaken themselves to mutilating the Scriptures, not acknowledging some books at all; and, curtailing the Gospel according to Luke and the Epistles of Paul, they assert that these are alone authentic, which they have themselves thus shortened. In another work, however, I shall, God granting [me strength], refute them out of these which they still retain. But all the rest, inflated with the false name of “knowledge,” do certainly recognize the Scriptures; but they pervert the interpretations, as I have shown in the first book. And, indeed, the followers of Marcion do directly blaspheme the Creator, alleging him to be the creator of evils, [but] holding a more tolerable theory as to his origin, [and] maintaining that there are two beings, gods by nature, differing from each other, — the one being good, but the other evil. Those from Valentinus, however, while they employ names of a more honorable kind, and set forth that He who is Creator is both Father, and Lord, and God, do [nevertheless] render their theory or sect more blasphemous, by maintaining that He was not produced from any one of those Aeons within the Pleroma, but from that defect which had been expelled beyond the Pleroma. Ignorance of the Scriptures and of the dispensation of God has brought all these things upon them. And in the course of this work I shall touch upon the cause of the difference of the covenants on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of their unity and harmony.”

23. Britannica.com (1999-2000), s.v. Mithraism: “There is little notice of the Persian god in the Roman world until the beginning of the 2nd century, but, from the year AD 136 onward, there are hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions to Mithra. This renewal of interest is not easily explained. The most plausible hypothesis seems to be that Roman Mithraism was practically a new creation, wrought by a religious genius who may have lived as late as c. AD 100 and who gave the old traditional Persian ceremonies a new Platonic interpretation that enabled Mithraism to become acceptable to the Roman world.”

24. Justin, First Apology, 26: “All who take their opinions from these men [Simon, Menander, Marcion and the Gnostics], are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds — the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh — we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you.” Also, e.g., pseudo-Tertullian, Against All Heresies, 1: “Afterwards broke out the heretic Basilides. … Martyrdoms, he says, are not to be endured. The resurrection of the flesh he strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to bodies.”

24a. Acts 8. 10: Simon claimed to be the “Great Power of God”. The Greek word for “Power” is Dunamis.

24b. Refutation, VI. 19.

24c. The Trinity or Tri-une Power plays an important role in all the systems, beginning with that of Simon Magus. Simon claimed he manifested himself as Father to the Samaritans and as Son to the Jews, appearing (dokeo) to suffer crucifixion, but in reality not (Epiphanius Panarion I. ii. Haer. I or XXI. 1), whilst the Mind (Gk. Ennoia) of the Tri-une entity, called the Holy Spirit and Prunicus, the Harlot, came down to earth in the form of Simon’s consort Helena (as well as earlier in the form of Helen of Troy etc.). Panarion ibid. 2. Simon was identified with the Greek Zeus and Helena with Athena (ibid. 1), which deities correspond to the Egyptian Serapis (Zeus) and Isis (Athena), their son being Horus (Apollo). This was the very ancient pagan Egyptian Trinity of the Theban system: Amun (= Serapis, Zeus), Mut (= Isis, Athena) and Khensu (= Horus, Apollo). The Supernal Tri-une Power created angels who subsequently created the world of matter, which was essentially evil. This element in the theology was derived from the dualistic theory of the Magi. The Supernal Power had nothing to do with evil matter and could therefore only “appear” in that lower world, as the Docetists or “Apparitionists” believed, rather than being incarnated (since in the latter case he would be partaking of evil), or alternatively, as the Psilanthropists or “Mere-man-ists” held, he operated through a human body, without partaking of the same and without taking on a created human soul. This model was adopted, with unimportant variations, by all the subsequent systems. The emphasis was on a superior Tri-une Deity with a female Spirit aspect, who was unknowable and immaterial, and a lower rank of powers including the creator-god of the Jews, who fashioned the evil material world: into this world of matter the supernal Deity descended (in the form of Christ, Simon or some other guru) in order to redeem the lost female aspect. Explicit Trinitarianism in the nature of the Supernal Entity is found, according to the useful compendium of Epiphanius, in the “Gnostic” sects, so called, with their Father, Barbelo and Christ in the eighth heaven (ibid. I. ii. Haer. VI or XXVI, 10. 4), and including the “Mere-man-ist” Carpocratians (Epiphanes’ group), which employed tropes associated in popular myth with Nicolaus; similarly amongst the Cerinthians, with their Father and Christ, the latter being identical with the Holy Spirit which descended into the “mere man” Jesus at his baptism (ibid. Haer. VIII or XXVIII, 1. 4), and again amongst the Ebionites (ibid. Haer. XXX or X, 16. 3); and amongst the “Apparitionist” Valentinians (ibid. Haer. XXXI or XI, 13, and esp. 13. 4), according to whom the Pleroma or Godhead comprised multiple forms or emanations, variously configured, but which all became “fixed” after the fall and restoration of the Female aspect (Sophia), as so many forms of Christ and Holy Spirit, along with Father. The identical Trinitarian supernal entity is implicit in all the other Gnostic systems inherited from Simon Magus, and whenever the unbegotten Father is mentioned in the highest heaven, above the god of the Jews, we may assume he is masculo-feminine in Simon’s sense, and that his female complement is “Holy Spirit”; and when further he is described as having descended in the form of Jesus or whatever guru through the lower heavens, we may assume he came down as “Son” to redeem that fallen female aspect. It is from Gnosticism, then, that the Christianized Roman Empire adopted the idea of a Trinity of three co-eternals, Father, Son and Spirit. This is indicated by the absolute insistence in the Roman creeds on the “co-eternity” of the three members of the Godhead, meaning their separation from the world of time, space and matter, along with the rejection of all things smacking of Judaism, and the exaltation and assumption to heaven of the Divine Female (Mary). The Supernal Deity was a “single prosopon” or “single person” in the original system (that person being Simon Magus!), and hence the various creeds from Nicea onwards sought to distance their Tri-une Monad from the rival Origenist and truly Biblical concept that the Eternal God (one hypostasis or reality) became Father and generated His Son (a second hypostasis or reality, being the “Image” of the original hypostasis, Hebrews 1. 3), at the intersection of eternity and time, and in the medium of the Spirit (a third hypostasis or reality) which proceeded from the Father (John 15. 26), and that the Son took up His abode in a perfect created human soul, animating the created human body of Jesus of Nazareth. The creed of Nicea dogmatized on the contrary that the word hypostasis was the same as ousia (which, — depending on context and semantic structure, — it could actually be), whilst emphasizing there was only one hypostasis/ousia (homo-ousios), and so the three different hypostaseis Father, Son and Spirit, representing the unfolding expression of the Godhead in time and space, were reduced to mere labels of one and the same eternal entity: then the creed of Constantinople formulated that the word hypostasis was the same as prosopon (which it most certainly could not be in this semantic context), so God as a single ousia (homo-ousios) was also a single prosopon, and “Sabellianism” or “Montanism” (heretical Monarchianism of the Simonian variety) became the creed of the whole Christianized Roman Empire.

24d. On Zervan = Shem see https://www.christianhospitality.org/resources/6-days-creation-online/content/6-days-creation21.html#Section285, https://www.christianhospitality.org/resources/6-days-creation-online/content/6-days-creation20.html#Section238, with cross-references. This identification goes back at least to the earliest section of the Sibylline Oracles in the second century BC, where Kronos or Khronos (translated Zervan) is Shem son of Noah.

24e. On Agathodaimon = Seth see https://www.christianhospitality.org/resources/6-days-creation-online/content/6-days-creation24.html#Section346-01, https://www.christianhospitality.org/resources/6-days-creation-online/content/6-days-creation27.html#Section448 (sub fin.), with cross-references. This identification goes back to the Hellenic paganism of Syria (Harran) later known as Sabianism, and to syncretistic cults of Hermes (Thoth) and Agathodaimon (Osiris, Kem-Atef) which spread in Hellenistic times throughout the Near East and beyond. An early reference to Hermes and Agathodaimon is found in the Book of Sothis ascribed to Manetho (writing to Ptolemy Philadelphus in the second century BC, apud Syncellus, Chronographica, ed. Mosshammer p. 40f. = ed. Dindorf p. 72ff.), and the context is the transmission of prediluvian wisdom through the Flood from the prediluvian Hermes to another postdiluvian Hermes and a postdiluvian Agathodaimon. The identification of the prediluvian Seth with Agathodaimon implies a multiplicity of Agathodaimons pre- and post-Flood likewise. Because Zervan and Agathodaimon were pagan gods, the Biblical patriarchs identified with them could be thought of by the Gnostics as being divine apparitions, gods or celestial powers appearing to be human, but not partaking of “evil” matter. Likewise in the case of Jesus the “Son of Adam/Man”, who was treated as another manifestation of Seth son of Adam, and in the case of Simon Magus etc.

24f. Epiphanius ibid. Haer. XXV or V. 2. 2ff.

24g. This form of the heresy was based on the Biblical concept that God anointed Jesus at baptism with the Holy Spirit and “Power” (Dunamis), Acts 10. 38. In Gnostic theory the Dunamis was “Christ”, viz. the Eternal Monad, above the God of the Jews, who revealed himself to the world through the “mere man” Jesus, now adopted as the Son of God (“Thou art My Son ….”, Luke 3. 22 etc.). An early example of the “Mere-man-ism” of this type is the Cerinthian system. Cerinthus taught that the Dunamis or “Christ” entered into Jesus at his baptism in a dove-like form, Epiphanius, ibid., Haer. XXVIII or VIII. 1. The “mere man” Jesus was begotten in the normal way by Joseph and Mary. Marcus the Magus held that the Tri-une Being, known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, entered the man Jesus at his baptism and spoke and worked supernaturally through him thereafter, but in his system the man Jesus was virgin-born, through the operation of “powers” (dunameis) emanating from the supernal realm of the Father. (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., ed. Harvey, I. viii. 14 = Hippolytus, Ref. VI. 51.)

24h. This form of the heresy was based on the Biblical concept that the “Power” (Dunamis) of the Most High God overshadowed Mary (Luke 1. 35), in order for her to give birth to Christ. The Gnostic theory was that the overshadowing Dunamis was the Eternal Monad, or “Christ”, which thus entered the body of the “mere man” Jesus at birth. An early example of this type is the Carpocratian system. Carpocrates taught that the (uncreated) “pure soul” of Christ in the “periphora” (heavenly circle, sphere) of the Father, having been equipped with “power” (Dunamis) by the Father to combat the creator angels of the lower realms, entered into the “mere man” Jesus at birth, the latter being begotten in the normal way by Joseph and Mary, then returned to the supernal realm of the Father, Irenaeus, ed. Harvey 1. xx. 1, Hippolytus, Ref. VII. 32. 1-4, Epiphanius ibid., Haer. XXVII or VII. 2. This variation emphasized it was the “soul” of Christ in the supernal realm that descended, and returned, and other souls, — meaning other human beings, particularly of the Gnostic stamp, — might be held to have similar, if not greater Power (Dunamis), surpassing even Christ and the apostles (ibid.). The two varieties of “Mere-man-ism” are described briefly in Theodoretus Hist. Fab. II. i, under the Ebionite label, one holding that Jesus was begotten from Joseph and Mary a “mere man” (into whom the Dunamis entered later at his baptism in the form of a dove according to the Cerinthian belief, ibid., II. iii), and the other that Jesus was virgin-born (and that the Dunamis entered him at conception according to the Artemonites, ibid. iv, and the Melchizedekians, and according to Theodotus the Silver-smith, ibid., vi, and Elkesaites, ibid. vii, each with particular variations). The same basic division of the Ebionite doctrine is found already in Eusebius Hist. Ecc. III. xxvii. 1-3.

24i. Carpocrates and Cerinthus following him were both Psilanthropists, Ps-Tertullian Haer. 3. Carpocrates adopted the Magism of Simon Magus and his immediate circle, Epiphanius ibid., Haer. XXVII or VII. 7. 1, and ibid., 1. 1. Ibid., 7. 1 “…. Carpocrates fell into the magic of Simon and the rest ….”; and ibid., 1. 1: “Carpocrates … founded his own unlawful school of his falsely named opinion, and his character is the worst of all. (2) (For the sect of what is falsely termed “Knowledge,” which called its members Gnostics, arose from all of these—Simon and Menander, Satornilus, Basilides and Nicolaus, Carpocrates himself, and further, because of Valentinus. I have already given a description of one branch of it — the “Knowledgeable,” though in their behavior they are despicable.)” Carpocrates is notable for having given birth to the so-called Nicolaitan movement, which justified its extreme antinomianism by (wrongly) adducing the example of Nicolaus the Deacon in respect of his wife. Footnote 26 section §5, below, >>.

24j. See on this footnote 85, below, >>.

24k. I John 2. 22.

24l. Basilides was an “Apparitionist”, but merged his version of that system with a curious form of “Mere-man-ism”. “Christ” the Son of the Father was an apparition (Epiphanius, ibid., Haer XXIV or IV. 3), having no real fleshly body. He was able to exchange his outward form at will, and became Simon of Cyrene on the day of the crucifixion, whilst Simon of Cyrene became Jesus, and was crucified. Christ or the Son returned to heaven to be with the Father in the supernal realm and suffered nothing. (Ibid.) The Son was otherwise known as Nous (Mind), the first “projection” of the unbegotten Monad or Father. It was he who entered into the “man” Jesus (meaning the former Simon of Cyrene), and abandoned him shortly before the crucifixion (ibid. and Irenaeus, ed. Harvey, Adv. Haer. I. xix. 2). The Eternal Monad had multiple emanating forms (365) in his system, Nous, as aforesaid, being the first, and the Father was therefore known as “Abraxas” or “Abrasax”, the Greek letters/numerals of which name total 365. (Basilides is described as an “Asian” and as the “founder” [constitutor] of the Cataphrygians [Montanists] in the Muratori Canon, fol. 11r, lines 84-85, but since Basilides was a Syrian, not an Asian, this should be corrected to read with the alternative versions of the text: “[We do not receive]…. Basilides or (siue) the Asian founder of the Cataphrygians” [Das muratorische fragment, ed. Lietzmann, Bonn, 1902, pp. 10-11, notes to line 84], the last phrase being a reference to Montanus. The major influence on the emergent Cataphrygian [Quintillian] movement was the more conventionally “Mere-man-ist” Cainite heresy, which was a later name for the Carpocratian Nicolaitans. On the Cainites and Quintillians see the reference in footnote 24cc.) Cerdon, originally a disciple of Carpocrates, and Marcion his successor, were classic “Apparitionists” in the first half of the second century AD, on whose beliefs see further Section 15, above, >>.

24m. I John 4. 2f.

24n. Epiphanius Panarion XXVIII or VIII and on Demas (2 Tim. 4. 10), ibid., Haer. LI or XXXI. 6.

24o. Epiphanius Panarion XL or XX. 8, including one Hermogenes, which presumes it is a different Hermogenes who is described as a “Mere-man-ist” in Haer. LI or XXXI. 6.

24p. II Thess. 2. 7.

24q. Revelation 2. 6, 15. Irenaeus, ed. Harvey, Adv. Haer. I. xxiii., Hippolytus Ref. VII. 36. 3.

24r. Epiphanius Panarion XXVIII or VIII. 2: Cerinthus was one of the Judaizers who opposed Peter’s contact with Cornelius (Acts 10. 1ff., and esp. 11. 2ff.), wrote against Paul’s teaching on circumcision (Acts 15. 1ff.), and opposed Paul in the Council of Jerusalem (ibid., 5ff.), before traveling to Asia and spreading his doctrine there.

24s. Acts 15. 20, 29.

24t. Paul of Taron (d. AD 1123), Epistle Against Theopistus, Constantinople edition dated year of the Armenians 1201 = AD 1752-3, p. 222, apud Conybeare, Key of Truth, 1898, p. clvi, with my notes in braces { }: “Artemon said this: ‘The Holy Spirit has revealed to me the day of the Birth of Christ (i.e. Jesus).’ And the revelation was this: Jesus was twelve days short of thirty years old when he was baptized. Zachariah went away to his house on Tishri the tenth {sic = Sep. 25, this date assuming Zechariah was exercising his priestly function in the Temple on the Day of Atonement, 10th of Tishri, Luke 1. 8ff.}. From that day Artemon reckoned the six months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, and on this foundation he calculated the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin to be on March 25. From this last day he reckoned nine months and five days for the Virgin’s pregnancy; and accordingly they (i.e. the Artemonites) kept on Dec. 25 the birth, not, however, of the Divine Being, but only of the mere man. Then on Jan. 6 they kept the Feast of the Baptism, and divided one feast into three {viz. the two supposedly original and authentic Feasts, of the Baptism and Birth on 6 Jan., and now the heretical Feast of the Birth on 25 Dec.}.” Also ibid. p. clvii: “…. From the catechism [lit. inquiries-by-question] of the Syrian Doctors. Sahak answered Afrem his teacher: ‘So then, as it was ordained many a time that on the sixth of January, on the last of Qanun, the Son of God was born of the Virgin; why, if so, do the Churches feast December 25, which is the first of Qanun?’ The teacher said: ‘The Roman world does so from idolatry, because of the worship of the Sun. And [it feasts] on the 25th of December, which is the first of Qanun; when the day made a beginning out of the darkness (or the night), they feasted the Sun with great joy, and declared that day to be the nuptials of the Sun. However, when the Son of God was born of the Virgin, they celebrated the same feast, although they had turned from their idols to God. And when their bishops {or primates) saw this, they proceeded to take the Feast of the Birth of Christ, which was on the sixth of January, and placed it then (viz. on Dec. 25). And they abrogated the Feast of the Sun, because it (the Sun) was nothing, as we said before. But the Birth of Christ is truly on the sixth of January, which is the last of Qanun; as the holy apostles wrote in their book of canons in the descent of the Spirit. This the blessed Luke learned and wrote in his Gospel: Jesus was thirty years of age, beginning the day on which he was baptized. For there is a great mystery in the celebration of the birth and the baptism on the same day. For as the two natures, to wit, of God and man, were united without confusion, so also the two feasts were united in one, so as to become the faith of the holy Church.’” Ananias of Shirak (early 7th century AD): “…. this festival was invented, as some say, by the disciples of the heretic Cerinthus.” (Conybeare, Ananias of Shirak Upon Christmas I, The Expositor 1896, p. 324.)

24u. Caius’ Little Labyrinth, cited in Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. V. xxviii. 3, cf. ibid. 1-2. On the authorship of the Labyrith see Photius Bibliotheke xlviii.

24v. Ibid., and esp. 4ff.

24w. See further footnote 147, below, >>. Tertullian was a presbyter in communion with the First Church of Rome till middle age, and only broke with them when (according to his notion) they abandoned Montanus for the doctrine of Praxeas. Jerome, De Viris Illustribus LIII. 4: “Though he {Tertullian} had remained a presbyter in the church till middle age, thereafter, having fallen into the dogma of Montanus, he makes mention of the New Prophecy in many of his books with envy and reproaches against the clerics of the Roman church.” Formerly, the Roman bishop accepted the prophecies of Montanus: Adv. Prax. 1. 4, “For he {Praxeas} first brought this form of perversity {viz. “Apparitionist” modalism, according to which Father, Son and Holy Spirit are nothing more than three names or modes of a single divine entity} to Rome …. 5. The Roman bishop at that time already accepted the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla, and conferred peace on the churches of Asia and Phrygia on the basis of that acceptance, but he {Praxeas}, by asserting false things about these prophets and their churches, and defending the authority of his {the bishop’s} predecessors {viz. the non-Montanist ones, which certainly included the pre-Sixtine elders} compelled him to revoke the letters of peace already sent and to retreat from his previous position of receiving the charismatic ministries. Thus Praxeas accomplished two things for the Devil: he drove out prophecy and brought in heresy, he caused the Paraclete to flee and crucified the Father {viz. Praxeas considered the Father and Son to be a single entity and therefore the Father, rather than the Son only, was crucified}.” Tertullian describes his previous attitude to the Roman church as follows: De Pudicitia 1. 10, “This too, therefore, shall be a count in my indictment against the Psychics {viz. “carnal” as opposed to “spiritual”}; against the fellowship of sentiment also which I myself formerly maintained with them; in order that they may the more cast this in my teeth for a mark of fickleness. Repudiation of fellowship is never a pre-indication of sin. As if it were not easier to err with the majority, when it is in the company of the few that truth is loved!” This shows Tertullian fellowshiped with the Roman church happily when they accepted Montanism, and when, as he thought, they went astray and abandoned it, he ceased to fellowship with them. The break occurred in the days of Soter, c. AD 166-175, not of Victor towards the end of the second century, as is commonly assumed. Sic Praedestinatus, De Haer. lxxxvi: “We read that the Tertullianists were condemned at one point in time by Soter the Roman pope. …. Now Tertullian was a citizen and presbyter of Carthage {in North Africa}. He produced many most eloquent and fervent works in defense of the truth. He frequented the basilica in Carthage, where many attended his service. …. Now the catholic authorities restrained Tertullian, because he claimed the soul was born from a soul {viz. traducianism, according to which theory the soul was inherited naturally from the father at birth} and he defended Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla contrary to the catholic faith, and contrary to Apollonius an eastern bishop, and contrary to Soter the pope of the city of Rome, as aforesaid, where we unmask the Cataphrygian {Montanist} heretics. Having latterly split from these, and in order to ensure that the Montanist people might not be seen to exclude the name of Tertullian, he poured out of himself the whole Phrygian {viz. Montanist} vanity, and encouraged the spread of Tertullianist conventicles, but altered nothing in the belief system. For he also condemned second marriages, as we said, claimed the soul comes into the world by transmission {Latin traduce, viz. according to the traducianist theory} and gave us catholics the name of Psychics {viz. “soulish” as opposed to “spiritual” Christians}. You merely have to read Tertullian’s ‘Against the Psychics’ to see he means the catholics.” Also id. ibid. Haer. xxvi: “ …. the Cataphrygians …. whose founders were Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla …. Soter pope of Rome wrote a book against them as did Apollonius priest of the Ephesians. Tertullian the presbyter of Carthage wrote against them. Though he wrote much that is admirable, authentic and incomparabe, in this one matter he opened himself up to criticism, in that he defended Montanus, agitating against the aforesaid Soter pope of Rome, and asserting that what was claimed about infant’s blood was untrue, but (proclaiming) the trinity in unity of the godhead, penitence for the lapsed, and the identical paschal celebration with the same mysteries as ourselves. On this only do we differ, he says, that we do not accept second marriages, and that we make a positive judgment on Montanus’ prophetic announcements about the future. Some take objection to Tertullian’s belief that the soul arrives in this world by transmission {traducianism}, that is his claim that the soul is born from a (preceding) soul, as the body is from (preceding) bodies. The catholic faith vehemently condemns this belief.”

24x. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., ed. Harvey, III. 11. 9: “Others indeed, in order that they may make of no effect the gift of the Spirit which in these recent times by the good grace of the Father has been poured out on the human race, do not accept that form which is according to the Gospel of John, in which the Lord promised the Paraclete would be sent, and so at one and the same time banish the Gospel and the Spirit of prophecy.” Here the “New Prophecy” movement, known as Montanism after its founder, is described in terms of what was given the sobriquet “Alogism” (Alogos = “Logos-less”) by Epiphanius. (See Epiphanius Haer. LI or XXXI, esp. ibid. section 33, where these Alogoi are more specifically the Cataphrygians or Montanists, who brought the church in Thyatira in Asia Minor and the surrounding communities under the sway of their female prophetesses in the 93-year period AD 33 to AD 126, thus demonstrating the appropriateness of the condemnation in the Apocalypse of “that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess” and of her seduction of the servants of God in the city, Rev. 2. 18ff.) John was the exponent of the “Logos” (Word) theology, so a “Logos-less” theology was anti-Johannine. It was also a word-play, since the Greek word “alogos” denoted a “dumb beast”, and that is how Epiphanius thought of the self-proclaimed “prophets”. The prophetic movement was “New” because it rejected the Biblical idea that the Paraclete (“Comforter, Advocate”) promised by Jesus in the Gospel of John (John 14. 16, 26, 15. 26, 16. 7) was the Holy Spirit which fell on Pentecost in Jerusalem AD 33 (Acts 2. 1ff.): the Paraclete of Acts 2 endowed Christians from that day forward with the gift of prophecy and other charismata. The “new prophets” held instead that Montanus was the promised Paraclete in bodily form. (See the following note.) The prophets and prophetesses of Montanism were filled with the spirit of the “Paraclete” Montanus. Also the New Prophecy rejected wholesale the Logos-theology of John, whereby the Eternal God took on the form of the Logos or Son of God in a perfect human Mediator, Jesus Christ, with two natures, divine and human, and a spotless human soul, in favor of its own formula, which conceived of a single and eternal Trinitarian Entity, variously named Father, Son and Holy Spirit, entering the human body of Jesus in place of the human soul. The overt anti-Johannism of the original heresy was rejected by Tertullian in the latter part of the second century AD and his diluted version of the heresy encouraged the spread of Montanus’ “Mere-man-ist” theology throughout Africa and the Near East, since it was more acceptable to those who received the Johannine writings in those regions, and trod otherwise in the footsteps of Ignatius and Polycarp. A similar dilution of the “Apparitionist” heresy occurred in the case of Sabellius, under the beneficial influence of Hippolytus, the disciple of Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp. It was the modified versions of Montanism and Sabellianism which became dominant in the Eastern and Western divisions of the Roman Empire respectively following the Council of Nicea.

24y. On Montanus’ claim to be the Paraclete or Holy Spirit, Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. XVI. viii. PG XXXIII. col. 928, Dispute between a Montanist and an Orthodox, ed. Ficker, ZKG xxvi (1905), p. 446-463 (and ibid. on Montanus the priest of Apollo), Ambrosiaster in II Ep. ad Thess. v = PL XVII. col. 478, etc. On Montanus’ belief in the same kind of eternal monad as Simon Magus, and the identity of the three hypostaseis, which in his system were three different names for the same eternal God, see Didymus of Alexandria, On the Trinity, III. xxiii = PG XXXIX. col 924, and id., III. xli. = PG ibid., col 984 etc., where Montanus says “I am the Father and the Son and the Paraclete,” as well as identifying himself simply as the Paraclete. The level of complete identification of Montanus with the Paraclete is demonstrated by an inscription from Mascula in Numidia, North Africa, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum VIII. I. p. 252, no. 2272: “Flabius Abus domesticus i(n) nomine Patris et Filii [et] domini Muntani quod promisit compleuit”, that is: “Flavius Avus the household servant, has fulfilled what he vowed in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Lord Montanus.” On Montanus’ rebuke by the Apostle Paul, De Pseudoprophetis (around 7th century AD, variously ascribed to John Chrystostom [for whom some would substitute John IV the Faster of Constantinople, fl. late 6th century] and Anastasius of Sinai, 7th century), ed. Savile, 1612, Tom. 7 of the works of Chrysostom, p. 216, section 5: “Be imitators of the blessed Apostle {Peter}, in the way he did not remain silent for a moment, nor was wrong-footed, when in Rome the thrice-cursed Simon {Magus} was uttering his blasphemies and calling himself the Power of God, but rather reproved him and showed him to be a deceiver, a robber and an anti-God, casting him down headlong and handing him over to destruction. His or rather the Devil’s son, likewise, Montanus, the foul, the impure and godless, along with his two adulteresses, the Apostle Paul reproved with great zeal, and proved to be an anti-God, a pseudo-Christ and pseudo-prophet, putting him to silence and shutting his foul mouth in the name of Jesus Christ, without allowing him to continue, and was not wrong-footed by his blasphemy. So do you also, you pastors ….” And section 6 (ed. Savile, ibid., p, 217): “Where now is Simon Magus, the first to broach a heresy, the disciple and fore-runner of Antichrist? Where now is his evil offshoot, the successor to his mania and impurity, Montanus, the prince of evil with his two adulteresses, and the foul mysteries claimed to be authored by them, which are fit only for the depth of silence, abominable and unclean, concerning which the Apostle {Paul, Ephesians 5. 12} declared: ‘the things which are done in secret by them it is shameful even to put into words.’” In the Book of Revelation (2. 20) the harlot church or “Synagogue of Satan” is identified with the Thyatiran Jezebel (meaning Quintilla, the Nicolaitan associate prophetess of Montanus, as the earthly embodiment of the Gnostics’ supreme entity in its female aspect, Barbelo, Athena etc.), and (in chapter 17) her consort is the seven-headed beast, the embodiment on earth of the beast from the bottomless pit (Rev. 9. 11, cf. 11. 7, 17. 8, Apollyon = Apollo, the god who was worshiped by Montanus). Of course, the false prophetess’s consort was Montanus himself, the “Paraclete.” Thus the seven-headed beast would naturally be the Montanists’ “Paraclete” in a continuation of this imagery and it is remarkable fact the beast is said to have come back to life after a fatal wound (Rev. 13. 3, 12), in the same way the genuine Paraclete was the returned spirit-form of the crucified Messiah, the seven-horned, seven-eyed Lamb (Rev. 5. 6). Its seven heads were seven “mountains” (Rev. 17. 9, Montanus meaning “he of the mountain”), more specifically the seven mountains of Rome (Rev. 17. 18). The female consort of the beast, seated upon the beast, is therefore Roma (the goddess Rome, representing the city itself) and Roma was a form of Athena (see https://www.christianhospitality.org/​resources/6-days-creation-online/​content/​6-days-creation36.html​#Section889-89-02 sub fin.), who, in turn, was identified with the Montanist prophetess, and consort of the Chrestian god in human form (Montanus, the beast). It would be natural to conclude that the mysterious name of the beast (Rev. 13. 1, 17, 14. 11, 15. 2) would be Roman, too; and a particularly Roman or Latin designation of the Paraclete, a Montanist designation, was Vicarius Christi or Domini, the “Vicar or Substitute for Christ, or the Lord,” which is already exemplified in the writings of the Montanist Tertullian in the latter half of the second century AD. (De Praescriptio Haer. XIII. 5, vicariam vim spiritus sancti, id. XXVIII. 1, Vicarius Christi, De Virginibus Velandis I. 6, Vicario Domini, spiritu sancto.) In the form Vicarivs Filii Dei this title of the Paraclete was officially applied to the bishop of the First Church of Rome in the Middle Ages (e.g. in the so-called Donation of Contantine) and it contains in Roman numerals the number 666 (V​+I​+C​+I​+V​+I​+L​+I​+I​+D​+I). It is thus, doubtless, the very name of the beast alluded to in the Book of Revelation. It was the “blasphemous name” because it was in a very special sense the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which could never be forgiven. The name in the Book of Revelation is put upon the forehead (= mind) or otherwise the forehead is imprinted with the “mark” of the name (Rev. 14. 11). This represents the nature of the spirit or mind of the marked one. It is also a reflex of Ezekiel’s prophecy (Ezek. Chapter 9, cf. 11. 19f.) that a mark or cross (Hebrew tav) was written on the forehead of the redeemed, as a cross is (even to this day) commonly substituted for the name when the signatory is unable to write (Gesenius-Tregelles Hebrew Lexicon, s.v. tav). In the case of the redeemed it is the name or mark of God, and in the case of the lost it is the name or mark of the Beast. In the case of the Beast it is not, therefore, a Christian cross, the cross of Christ, but rather the cross of Chrestos, the “Good One,” which word was abbreviated around the turn of the Christian era into the form of the pseudo-cross or chi-rho mark. This turned out to be the very form of the supposedly “Christian” (really Chrestian) cross adopted by Constantine on the labarum, as the official symbol of the Roman cult. The “number” of the Beast is written in the earliest Greek manuscript fragment exemplifying it as X I C (X [the Greek letter chi] = 600, I [properly ᵻ, the

P115 or Papyrus Oxy. LXVI 4499 c. AD 225-275

Greek letter xi] = 60 and C [the Greek stigma, pronounced “st”] = 6). These three letters/numerals in succession produce the consonant string “CH-S[or X]-ST” which is clearly an echo of the name Chrestos, or otherwise the pagan substitute name for Christos, Christ. Reversing the last letter/numeral C and placing it on the top right-hand side of the second letter/numeral produces the rho symbol P, and when the chi (X) is placed cross-ways at the bottom of the same we have precisely the chi-rho sign of the labarum (above). In a further development, we can take the individual Roman letters/numerals of VICARIVS FILII DEI (V​+I​+C​+I​+V​+I​+L​+I​+I​+D​+I), and place them in a similar way to form the chi-rho symbol thus:

24z. Epiphanius, ibid., Haer. XLVIII or XXVIII. 2, according to which Quintilla’s sister prophetess and disciple of Montanus, Maximilla, uttered her prophecies 290 years, more or less, before the 12th year of Valentinian (= AD 375), and so around AD 85. This tends to confirm the preceding assertion that Montanus himself was a contemporary of Paul around AD 60. It is further confirmed by the assertion that the “Alogist” Montanists occupied Thyatira in the period AD 33 to AD 126 (Epiphanius, Haer LI or XXXI, section 33), as alluded to in the prophecy of the false prophetess Jezebel, Rev. 2. 18ff., see footnote 24w. It is yet further confirmed by the biographical information concerning Montanus which can be extracted from Eusebius’ anonymous source and recent archaeological research, see the succeeding note ad init. There are no other firm dates for Montanus, and he is commonly assumed (without any evidence) to have lived in the middle years of the second century AD, when his movement became more widespread in the West.

24aa. On the passage of Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica V. xvi. 7, we should read: “There is said to be a village in Mysia in Phrygia called Ardabau. There, as is reported, one of those who had recently become a believer, Montanus by name, according to Gratus, a proconsul from Asia, in the unbounded lust of his soul for leadership gave access to himself to the Adversary, became obsessed, and suddenly fell into frenzy and convulsions.” What we take to be the reference to the proconsulship of Montanus is found in a grammatically ambiguous phrase, Greek: entha phasi tina ton neopiston protos Montanon tounoma kata Graton Asias anthupaton …. The Greek kata in the segment kata Graton Asias anthupaton could mean either “in the time of” or “according to.” In the first sense the whole phrase might be translated “one of those who had recently become a believer, Montanus by name, in the time of [Gk. kata] Gratus, the proconsul of Asia, .…” This is the common rendering. The difficulty is no proconsul of Asia called Gratus is known to history till the third century AD, whereas the heretic Montanus can be proven to have lived before the middle of the second century AD. Still taking kata in the sense “in the time of,” the phrase might alternatively be rendered “one of those who had recently become a believer, Montanus by name, a proconsul of (or from [gentive of origin]) Asia in the time of [Gk. kata] Gratus, .…” meaning the proconsul was Montanus, not Gratus, and he flourished, or perhaps was born, in the time of the famous Valerius Gratus, predecessor of Pontius Pilate as procurator of Judaea AD 15-27. The second possibility is that kata means “according to,” not “in the time of.” In that case we could translate the phrase this way: “one of those who had recently become a believer, Montanus by name, according to [Gk. kata] Gratus, a proconsul of (or, from) Asia, … etc.” Here, too, the proconsul is Montanus, not Gratus. The use of the Greek word kata in the identical sense (“according to” Gratus) is found elsewhere in this work quoted by Eusebius at V. xvi. 17 (“according to Asterius Orbanus”). Another possible translation is: “ … Montanus by name, according to Gratus of Asia, a proconsul ….” Gratus, or Gratus of Asia, would be a Christian writer and one of the witnesses known to Eusebius’ source in this passage (“as is reported”), who is not otherwise identified; and, indeed, a significant proportion of the personal names in the works cited by Eusebius here are not attested elsewhere. What is clear, however, is that the majority of the possible translations (supra) of the important, but ambiguous, phrase cited by Eusebius concerning the heretic Montanus, represent him as a prominent politician, a proconsul of, or from, the Roman province of Asia. We have further to observe that, in contrast to Gratus, a proconsul called Montanus, originating from Asia, is known to history. His name is Titus Junius Montanus. He was proconsul of Sicily in the 70s AD, and then suffect consul at Rome AD 81. His home town was Alexandria Troas in the province of Asia, where he was commemorated in an inscription, which is extant, hence he was “from Asia” (genitive of origin). In his early days this Montanus served in a variety of offices under Nero, implying he was, indeed, born around the time of Gratus’ procuratorship. His career started in the 60s AD and he was therefore also a contemporary of Paul. This accords with the ecclesiastical tradition that the heretic Montanus was a contemporary of Paul. The heretic Montanus is said to have been a priest. The proconsul Montanus, too, was a priest, in his case of the Titii Sodales in Rome. The inscription commemorating the career of the proconsul Montanus is found, with biographical details, in The Troad, Cook, 1973, Bean’s list of inscriptions Num. 49, ibid., p. 411. It reads (in Latin): T. Iunio C.f. Ani(ensi tribu) Montano | III vir(o) a(ere) a(rgento) a(uro) f(lando) f(eriundo), tr(ibuno) | mil(itum) leg(ionis) V Mac(edonicae), q(uaestori) | Ponti et Bithyniae, | tr(ibuno) pl(ebis), pr(aetori), sodali Titio, | proco(n)s(uli) provinc(iae) Sicilia[e] | co(n)s(uli), | patrono coloniae | decreto d(ecurionum). “Titus Junius Montanus son of Caius of the Aniensis tribe, Triumvir responsible for casting and striking bronze, silver and gold, Military Tribune of V Macedonian Legion, Quaestor of Pontus and Bithynia, Tribune of the People, Praetor, Member of the Titii Sodales, Proconsul of the Province of Sicily, Consul, Colonial Patronus, by decree of decurions.” The Titii Sodales were instituted by the ancient Sabine king Titus Tatius, who introduced the Romans to the cult of Sol, the sun-god, otherwise Apollo, the Christian heretic Montanus being said to have been, accordingly, a priest of Apollo. The cult of Sol Invictus became popular at this period, and the festival of the birthday of Sol Invictus on 25th December merged into the New Year’s 1st January celebration with boughs of trees and gifts (Latin: strenae) instituted by the same Sabine king, which would hence be known to Montanus. These were brought by that king from the grove of the goddess Strenia, otherwise Salus (“Welfare, Health”), known as Semonia (“of Semo” meaning the god Semo Sancus), a form of Athena Hygeia, daughter of Zeus. Simon Magus was identified with Zeus/Semo and his consort Helena with Athena, and Montanus was a disciple of Simon with a particular interest, as a consequence, in these two deities. The Montanist prophetesses identified themselves with the (female) Holy Spirit, viz. Athena in the Simonian interpretation. On the identification of Maximilla and Priscilla, the Montanist prophetesses (the latter being sometimes not clearly differentiated from Quintilla, Epiphanius Haer. XLIX or XXIX. 1), with the Paraclete, see Theodore of Heraclea, On the Gospel of John, xiv. 17 (ed. Migne, PG X, 471, note 35), Basil of Caesarea, Ep. clxxxviii (PG XXXII, 664), Jerome, Ep. xli ad Marcellam (PL XXII, 474), Augustine, De Agone Christiano, xxviii, 397 (PL XL, 305), De Haer. xxvi (ed. Oehler, Corp. Haer. I, 201), Ep. ccxxxvii (PL XXXIII, 1035), Praedestinatus, I, xxvi (ed. Oehler, Corp. Haer. I, 241), etc. Athena, the Gnostics’ Holy Spirit, was, in turn, equated with the Egyptian Venus, Isis, and Venus with the Sibyl Sabbe or Sheba, called Sambethe, who had a shrine at Thyatira where the Montanist prophetesses operated in the Apostolic era, according to Epiphanius. A prophetess there is referred to as “Jezebel” (which clearly echoes the name Sibyl) in the Book of Revelation (2. 20) and condemned for seducing the servants of God by her Satanic utterances. As Sabbe was the ancestress of the Sabines, we can see that on this account also the Montanists would have a particular interest in the cult of the Sabine Titii Sodales. Respecting Montanus’ 878 Aeons see Libellus Synodicus, 9th century AD, in Mansi, Sacr. Concil. re-ed. Welter, 1901, p. 723f. Refer to Johannes Damascenus De Haeresibus xlix on the names of the sect and the two places called Pepuza, the deserted city, and “another Pepuza”, and Philastrius De Haeres. xlix, and Augustine De Haeres. xxvii on Pepuza the villa (not city) of Montanus and his prophetesses which they called Jerusalem. Augustine ibid. on Quintilla and Priscilla, the latter also being there referred to as Prisca, both receiving a revelation of Christ in a female form in Pepuza, whence the Cataphrygians (Montanists) or Pepuzians were called Quintillians, as well as Priscillians (Epiphanius, Haer. XLIX or XXIX). They also had female bishops, and elders, as well as prophetesses (Epiphanius ibid.). Augustine, ibid., xxvi on the Cataphrygians generally: “They are reputed to celebrate death-dealing sacraments. For they are reputed to make what passes for their eucharist out of the blood of a year-old infant, which they extract from wounds in the form of minute punctures, mixing it with flour and so making bread. If the boy dies he is counted by them for a martyr, if he survives, for a chief priest.” Similarly in Epiphanius, Haer. XLVIII or XXVIII. 14f. The Montanist “martyrs” are dismissed in the source used by Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. V. xvi. 20-22. We must question, therefore, the common belief that Montanists had “martyrs” in their number, though, of course, some were persecuted merely for their profession of Christianity, along with the rest. On their treatment of Mary as a goddess see Maruta priest of Maipherkat, De Sancta Nicaena Synodo (TU XIX. i [1899], p. 17), XI (my translation of the French version of the original Syriac): “The heresy of Montanus. These refer to the blessed Mary as a goddess and say that an Archon united with her and it was from her the Son of God was born. They introduce into their history statements in a strange manner of speech which can be given no credit. They have also falsified the Scriptures. They observe in a single year four festivals of forty days each.” and ibid. from the Latin version of the Arabic of Abraham Ecchellensis: “The fifteenth sect is that of the Montanists who sprang from Montanus, who also are called Marianites, on account of the great honor they gave to Mary, conferring on her reverential worship and deity. They also asserted that an Archon-like being [Latin: Archonita] had commerce with her, from which the Son of God was born. They further mix into their histories many wonderfully fabulous elements, and alien from all veracity, of what might further be termed an execrable nature. There is too a law sanctioned among them that four fasts should be celebrated in a year, lasting forty days each. They have also altered and corrupted the Scriptures, accommodating them to their dogmas and assertions.” On the consequent disputes about their Paschal festival (including the forty days fast of “Lent”) which racked the ecclesiastical world from the second century AD on, see Pacian of Barcelona, Epist. I ad Sympronianum nouatianum, ii.: “Following Montanus, Maximilla and Priscilla, how multifold were the controversies they stirred up about the Paschal day, about the Paraclete, about apostles, about prophets, and many other matters, including even about the name Catholic, and about the pardon for penitence.” It has been thought, with a high degree of credibility, that Montanus is the corpulent senator mentioned in Juvenal’s 4th Satire, present at a drunken party of Domitian’s along with Acilius Glabrio the Elder (Satire 4. 107, 137, Syme, Arval Brethren, p. 54, n. 14, p. 35, n. 1). There Montanus jokes with Domitian in a rather obtuse way about the fate of a large “fish”. Fishes symbolize baptized Christians in the Montanist Tertullian’s tract De Baptismo (ibid. 1), and the Fish par excellence is Christ himself in the Montanizing inscription of Alexander (see the note infra). Further, Christ is designated the “Fish” (ICHTHUS) in an acrostic in the Sibylline Oracles of Sambethe “daughter of Gnostos”, and is identified in the same acrostic with the Valentinian Aeon Stauros, which items of evidence confirm a number of others that the Oracles in their extant form have gone through a Gnostic editing some time around the middle of the second century AD. The connection of the Sibyl Sambethe with the Montanist Quintillians has already been referred to. Juvenal’s Satire itself depicts the big fish as a portent of some important person targeted by the Emperor. Hence, on account of its Christian associations, it is likely to represent Acilius Glabrio the Younger, whose persecution by Domitian will be recounted in the next chapter. The fish is described as having been drawn out of the Adriatic Sea, between Greece and Italy, and it was from the shores of the Peloponnese in Greece that the founder of the Acilian family crossed over to Rome in the third century BC, Archagathus, the first doctor to open up a practice in Republican Rome. The fish’s size is compared with that of the Black Sea varieties which enter the Aegean through the Hellespont, and it was precisely this region, in the Troad in Asia, that was Montanus’ home, and from which he sailed to Rome to become one of the first easterners honored with the consulship: he was the other notable “Christian” (fish) referenced in the discussion. The Gnostic cult responsible for Domitian’s persecution, though not named “Montanist” at the time, evidently included the prominent senator Montanus. It was an offshoot of the Marcosians. Marcus the Magus their founder was a disciple of Basilides (Jerome, Ep. lxxv. 3), and Basilides a disciple of Menander, the disciple of Simon Magus (Theodoretus, Hist. Fab. I. ii). Marcus also drew on the teaching of the “Apparitionist” Valentinus, though he was himself a “Mere-man-ist”. He was one of the principal gurus in the First Church of Rome in the time of Domitian and gave rise to the Quintillian Ascodrutae, otherwise known as Ascodrupitae (Theodoretus, Hist. Fab. I. ix-x), and Ascodrugitae, who were Montanists, according to the later terminology. Hence arose the belief that the Montanist Novatians from North Africa were the disciples of Marcus Magus. Jerome compounded the problem by confusing the Novatians with the similarly-named evangelical Novatianists, as was the practice in his era and commonly thereafter throughout the Dark Ages, and accused the Spanish Novatianist Priscillian of being a Marcosian (Jerome, Ep. lxxv. 3, Comm. Isa. lxiv), thus initiating and justifying the Roman authorities’ execution of evangelicals in the name of the “Catholic Church”. According to Philastrius (Haer. lxxv) and Praedestinatus (Haer. lxii, lxiii), this Ascodrugite (otherwise Ascite) sect of Marcus Magus adopted pagan practices from the cult of Bacchus, the wine-god. They placed an inflated open wine-skin covered with linen at the base of the altar, into which they poured the “blood of the lord” that was “produced” in the ceremony (confectum cruoris domini ibi adiiciunt). It was all on account, they claimed, of Jesus’ statement that new wine-skins should be used for new wine, thus “preserving” both (Matthew 9. 17), — but wine in the cult of Bacchus was the god himself in liquid form, which explains why they also paid homage to it. That has an obvious bearing on the later belief that wine when “consecrated” in communion was “transubstantiated” into the literal blood of God. Their founding guru Marcus Magus gave out that he transmuted the wine by his magic blessing into the literal blood of “Charis” (the female Holy Spirit in the supernal Trinity), and thus those who partook of it were receiving the Holy Spirit in physical liquid form. (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. ed. Harvey I. vii. 2.) Some members of the same sect were termed “Crosslet-snout-ites” (Passalorynchites or Tascodrugites) and they put their hand to their face (“snout”), on their noses, lips and mouths, as a sign of religious secrecy and silence, similar to that enjoined on Pythagoreans. Passalos is Latin paxillus, diminutive of palus, stake, which last word is one of the common terms to denote the execution stake or cross. The practice of the Passalorynchites was retained in Tertullianist Montanism as the “sign of the cross [viz. the stake]”: Tertullian (De Cor. Mil., iii), “we mark the forefront of our face with the sign of the cross”. The passalos was specifically a little stake, and the tracing of a little cross down from the top of the nose to the lips below and then across the mouth is indicated here. Sixtus, the sixth bishop of Rome and the first who crossed over to the Gnostic heretics, adopted Pythagoreanism, and it was in his era (the era of Clement) that Marcus gave birth to the Ascodrugite and Passalorynchite sects. Marcus’ mentor Basilides imposed a vow of silence in the Pythagorean style, according to Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. IV. vii. 7. It was then also that the First Church of Rome adopted the paganizing Spring Festival ritual retained by the latter-day Ascodrugitae, the Montanists, which was contraverted by the orthodox of the school of John the Apostle. These “Alogoi” heretics customarily “reserved” a portion of the paschal elements and sent them as eulogiae (“blessings”) to farflung parishes in order to extend the influence of their cult and form a “super-communion.” The post-Sixtus bishops of the First Church had the identical custom, and thus similarly magnified the extent of their presiding bishop’s authority. It became redundant when the Roman cult was imposed by law on the whole Empire under Constantine and his successors. (Canon 14 of the fourth-century Council of Laodicea forbad the practice, and Canon 32 forbad also the reception of the eulogiae of “heretics,” the identity of these “heretics” being revealed by the statement that their eulogiae were, rather, “alogiae.” The Letter of Innocent I c. AD 401-417, ed. Migne PL XX, 556f., allows the related practice of sending the reserved eucharist or “fermentum” by the bishop of Rome to churches within the city only, in order for them not to be considered “separated from our communion” [a nostra communione … separatos], but points out the needlessness of now doing the same for more farflung parishes [quod per parochias fieri debere non puto], as the presbyters there have been granted the “right and licence” to celebrate themselves [presbyteri eorum conficiendorum jus habent atque licentiam].) In the myth of Bacchus the askos or wineskin (whence the name Asco-drugitae) was the skin of the flayed hero Marsyas hanging on a stake. Marsyas, otherwise the giant Askos, was the eponymus of Damascus, which city-name was interpreted to mean “Blood [Heb. dam] of the Wineskin [Heb. sak = Gk. askos]’. Marsyas/Askos was a form of Seilenos/Sylvanus or Faunus, viz. Hermes Trismegistus, the divine Logos or Reason, and Liber Pater or Bacchus (otherwise Chrestos the “Good One,” see further https://www.christianhospitality.org​/wp/6-days-creation17​/#Section​140, and following paragraphs): the Ascodrugites are likely to have borrowed this figure from pre-Christian Hermeticism, identifying Hermes, the Logos, with Christ (Chrestos) the Logos. The pouring of a libation of wine by Maron, the attendant and alter ego of Bacchus, into Seilenos (Sylvanus), now turned into a river, who was himself a later form of Marsyas/Seilenos, turned first into a wineskin, then likewise into a river, is referred to in Nonnus, Dionysiaca, XIX. 158ff., esp. 295-327. Marsyas’ pelt in the Ascodrugite cult was transmogrified into the flesh (wineskin) of the crucified Jesus, filled with blood (wine). The placing of a leather pouch at the base of the altar to receive the “consecrated” wine, the linen covering of the wine, and the wine’s “reservation” (preserving, retention) in this Ascodrugite ceremony continued in the ceremony of the mass in Roman Catholicism. The church altar regularly had and still has at its base, its side, or its near vicinity, a “piscina” (literally “fish-pond,” a water reservoir, that is, for the Montanist adepts called “pisces,” fishes), used to dispose of the water with which the utensils are washed etc., and near to it or as part of its structure niches (“ambries”) with a container (“pyx”) for the wine “reserved” for absent participators and for the purpose of the cult’s now limited “super-communion,” into which the remaining wine is poured following the ceremony at the altar. The pyx is carried in a leather pouch called a “burse.” In the original ceremony the leather pouch was itself the container for the wine, that being the common practice in antiquity. Linen cloths are still used as coverings to prevent pollution of the “consecrated” wine.

Note: The passage about the proconsulship of Montanus is found in a tract quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. V. xvi. 3ff., addressed to one Abercius Marcellus, who is being advised by an anonymous correspondent around the middle of the second century AD on the errors of the false prophets of Montanus. There is extant a medieval legendary Life of this same Abercius, the original of which seems to have been composed some time after AD 350, and which cites a curiously worded epitaph allegedly inscribed on an altar by Abercius in his native city of Hieropolis in Asia (Simeon Metaphrastes, ed. Migne PG CXV, col. 1245f.). Ancient Hieropolis is modern Kochisar, a village in the District of Sandikli, Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey, near Suhut (ancient Synnada). The epitaph seems to have been patched together out of actual inscriptions in Hieropolis, fragments of which are still extant. The combined text as found in the legendary Life (with some necessary alterations where marked) is translated infra. Sections A and C (bold) are from a public monument outside the mosque at ‘Kelendres’ (today Karadirek), which is three miles north of Hieropolis (Kochisar), dated to AD 216, and this contains two sections of the text, viz. the very beginning and the very end of it, but there forming a single continuous record. Section B (bold indented) is from an altar at the entrance to the bath-house three miles south of Hieropolis, which contains part of the middle section of the text of the epitaph. Variations in the legendary Life’s much later version of the epitaph, which combines the texts from the monument and altar into a single record, are noted:

Section A:

A citizen of an elect city, I made this,
while living, so that I might have a visible place of deposition for my body here.
Alexander son of Antonius {Alexander son of Antonius is replaced by “Abercius” in the legendary Life} is my name, one who is a disciple of a holy shepherd,

{The legendary Life adds: “who pastures flocks of sheep on mountains and plains,
who has huge eyes which oversee everything.
For this one taught me trustworthy texts.”}

Section B:

To Rome he sent me to look upon a regal domain
and to see a regal female, golden-stoled, golden-sandaled.
I saw a people there, having a resplendent seal.
And I saw the land of Syria and all the towns, [even] Nisibis
after crossing the Euphrates. Everywhere I had companions,
having Paul behind {replaced by “within” in the legendary Life} me, faith everywhere went before me,
and served up food everywhere, fish from a fountain
utterly huge and pure, which a holy virgin grasped
and she freely distributed this to friends to eat at all times,

{The legendary Life adds: “having good (chrestos) wine (or: wine of Chrestos), giving it mixed, with bread.
When standing here, I, Abercius, said these things should be written just so
Seventy-two years was I, in truth.
Let the one who understands these things pray for Abercius, everyone in tune.”}

Section C:

Nevertheless, no one will deposit another in my tomb.
But if anyone does, he will deposit 2000 gold pieces in the Roman treasury
and 1000 gold pieces in my good home-city, Hieropolis.

{The legendary Life omits the following lines:}

It was inscribed in the 300th year and the 6th month of the (still-)living one.
Peace be to those who pass by and make remembrance of us.

The discovery of lengthy portions of the epitaph, with their unique phraseology, in the ruins of Hieropolis in Phrygia Salutaris in Asia Minor in the 19th century, confirms, if nothing else, the historical authenticity of the text in general structure and turn of phrase. The public monument section (Sections A and C supra combined) is dated to AD 216 (300th year of the Phrygian era employed at that period, the so-called Sullan era commencing 85 BC, Section C supra), and it is this section which features the name of the person celebrated (Section A supra). However, where the legendary Life places the name Abercius on this epitaph in the first lines, the historical public monument places the name Alexander son of Antonius. Undoubtedly we should accept the latter as the person originally celebrated in the inscription, because that is what is archaeologically attested. It would be strange, certainly, for a devoted orthodox Christian such as Abercius to have (the middle part of) his epitaph inscribed on an altar of the type which adorned the tombs of pagans (Section B supra), as the legendary Life alleges he did, and on which pagans offered sacrifice to the spirit of the person entombed. This presents us with the conundrum of how the name Abercius came to oust that of Alexander in the legendary Life’s version of the text. The answer is surely found in the Life itself, where it relates that Abercius, whilst in Rome, cast out a daimon or demonic spirit from a possessed female and the daimon requested to be allowed to reside in the altar, which then flew by the daimon’s supernatural power from Rome to its homeland in Hieropolis. This, of course, is a rather ridiculous device intended to explain how the pagan altar came to be associated with the orthodox saint, Abercius. But it tells us what the connection was: Abercius expelled, or was believed to have expelled, the daimon in the altar. The daimon, — a technical Greek word meaning the spirit of a deceased pagan hero worshiped as a god, — was Alexander son of Antonius, and that spirit, it was thought, was cast out by Abercius. It can be concluded the altar inscription came to be known as the “inscription of Abercius” because he was the expeller of the daimon resident in the altar. At some time the name Abercius was mistakenly inserted in place of Alexander in the text of the inscription preserved in the Life, just because it had become named the “inscription of Abercius”, and so the tradition passed down into medieval times. This meant also that the references in the inscription to Alexander’s journey to the “regal domain” (Rome) and to the “regal female” there, arrayed in gold and having golden slippers on her feet, and then to his journey to the East and Nisibis, were wrongly transferred to Abercius in the legendary Life. It was imagined Abercius had become famous in Hieropolis for his exorcisms and had been invited by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his wife (who were the contemporaries of the historical Abercius) to Rome where he delivered their “regal female” daughter of a daimon, which then entered the altar and transported it to Hieropolis as described. This is the story in the legendary Life. Returning to the historical subject of the inscription, Alexander, we should ask why Abercius might be believed to have exorcised the “spirit of Alexander” from this altar? which is how, in that case, the confusion in the legendary Life came about. We should note, first of all, that Abercius only appears elsewhere in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, and there he is depicted as an orthodox Christian, being warned by his anonymous correspondent of the “demon spirits” of the false prophets of the Montanist cult. This suggests the possibility that the historical Alexander was a false prophet of this kind, viz. of the Montanist cult. Alexander’s status is indicated by the sumptuous nature of the monuments erected to him, and the divine honors which may be presumed to have been paid to him on the altar. A prophet, and particularly a deceased prophet, in the Classical view was little different from a god. That Alexander was a Montanist is hinted at in the inscription on the altar, since not only does it express its Christianity (if it can truly be called Christianity) in a mysticizing and paganizing Gnostic manner, characteristic of Montanism in its original form, it also mentions “Paul” as being connected with the journey to the East commemorated on it. The discoverer of the altar in the 19th century, Ramsay, observed at first that the altar had been deliberately defaced here, in his view because the name “Paul” (Ramsay took it to be the name of the Apostle) reminded some ancient churchmen of the heretical Paulicians or followers of Paul of Samosata, because they specially honored the Apostle Paul. The churchmen wished to rid the city of this heretical defilement. He later changed his opinion on the deliberate erasure, but if there was, indeed, some connection with the Paulicians, then there is in this respect too a Montanist connection, because the Paulicians were classed as Montanists in the orthodox East. (Conybeare, Key of Truth, 1898, p. clxxxvi, referring to a Letter to the Emperor Theophilus published among the works of John Damascenus, PG XCV, sections 22-23, cols. 373-376: “In it the Iconoclast patriarchs … are called first Paulicians and then Montanists. And of the Iconoclastic triumph the writers exclaim: ‘Again the Jews are glad … again the Montanists have seized the land.’” This accords with the established fact that Paul of Samosata, founder of the Paulicians, was an Artemonite, and Artemonism was the preferred dogma of all the bishops of the First Church in the period when they were Montanists of the older “Mere-man-ist” school, before their break with Tertullian. See footnotes 24ff and 24gg infra.) In the legendary Life the relevant lines relate how “Abercius” (originally Alexander) traveled to the East with “Paul within (Gk. esothen) him” and Faith going “before” him. This, of course, is a rather unusual statement. In the historical altar the phrase reads with “Paul …. [mostly fragmentary word or words], and Faith went before.” The letters, in some cases fragmentary letters, of the doubtful section are EXÔNEPO …, and therefore, almost certainly, in the context, the phrase should read: “Paul (I) had (EXÔN = Gk. echôn) behind (EPO… = Gk. epo[pisthen]), and Faith went before.” If the Paul referred to is the Apostle, then he is being denegrated in comparison to Alexander (put “behind” him). If not, the reference could only be to an obscure disciple of Alexander called Paul, important to Alexander personally, perhaps his literal and/or spiritual son; but the way the name is left undefined suggests it was borne by some-one well-known, and that again could only be the Apostle. In the legendary Life it is implied the person referred to is the Apostle Paul. The idea that the Apostle was “behind” Abercius (Abercius having replaced Alexander) had then to be swapped for the idea that the Apostle was “within” him, and esothen exchanged for opisthen. The rejection and denegration of the Apostle Paul in the original suggests Alexander belonged to the school of the “Mere-man-ist” Ebionites, Cerinthians and Elkesaites, who expressly rejected the Apostle Paul, and exalted Peter in his place. In conclusion, the historical Alexander seems to have been a paganizing Gnostic of the “Mere-man-ist” variety and also a man of semi-divine or prophetic status in the eyes of his contemporaries. His spirit was believed to have been opposed by the orthodox Christian Abercius. This tends to be confirmed by the only surviving historical evidence for Abercius, which is found in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius: in the extracts quoted there the anonymous correspondent of Abercius warns him specifically of a (“Mere-man-ist”) Montanist false prophet called Alexander. For the reasons stated this is likely to be the Alexander celebrated in the inscriptions on the monument and the altar. The historical Alexander flourished some time preceding AD 216. We can conclude that in his earlier life he made a journey to the “regal domain” of Rome, because he considered the church there, termed in the inscription’s mystical phraseology the “regal female” arrayed in gold, as the presiding (“regal”) church of his sect. This, of course, will have been the Montanizing (Artemonite and consequently also Cerinthian) First Church of Rome.

24bb. Epiphanius, Panarion LIV. 1.

24cc. Tertullian, De Baptismo 1. 2-3, orig. Gelenius edition, 1550, p. 703: “A certain female viper from the Cainite heresy, who recently spent some time here {meaning in this world}, carried off a good number with her exceptionally pestilential doctrine … Thus it was that Quintilla, that portent of a woman, who had no right to teach even correctly, knew very well how to kill the little fishes {= new converts} by taking them out of the water {= denying water baptism of the Roman variety}.” and ibid. 17. 4: “But the impudence of that woman who assumed the right to teach, is evidently not going to arrogate to her the right to baptize as well, unless perhaps some new serpent appears like that original one, so that as that woman abolished baptism, some other of her own authority should confer it.” Some versions of the text omit the name Quintilla in cap. 1, but it is clearly she who is intended by reference to her advocacy of female bishops, elders etc, for which see the following reference, and the belief that Eve received benefit by partaking of the tree of knowledge, at the direction of the serpent, on account of which circumstance she is referred to here as a “female viper.” On Quintilla and her doctrine of Eve and the tree of knowledge, see Epiphanius, Haer. XLIX or XXIX. 2. The Cainite heresy to which Quintilla belonged was a later form of the cult named after Nicolaus (Nicolas) the deacon, the Nicolaitans, and this cult of Nicolaus is found centered from the second century onwards at Myra in Lycia, which promoted the same unique doctrines that Eve benefited by eating of the tree of knowledge, and that the cult-center in Myra was a new “Jerusalem”. See further Appendix 12, below, >>. and ibid., below, >>. On Tertullian’s acceptance of the prophecies of Prisca/Priscilla and Maximilla, see De Resurr. Carnis, xi, De Ieiunio, i. 3, Adv. Prax. i.

24dd. Praedestinatus, De Haer. xiv: “The fourteenth heresy was the invention of one Marcus, who denied the resurrection of the flesh, and hence attempted to spread the idea that Christ did not truly suffer, but merely appeared to do so. The sainted Clement, bishop of the Romans and most worthy martyr, confuted him with solid and sound arguments and unmasked him before all the people in church, and punished him with eternal damnation, teaching that our Lord Jesus Christ truly was born and suffered, and reminding them that nothing was done by him in an apparitional manner, but demonstrating clearly by his instruction that truth, being inimical to falsehood, cannot have the least element of falsehood in it, just as light cannot have any darkness in it, nor blessing cursing, and even if it were possible for these to be mixed, it was impossible that God should have ought to do with mendacity.” On Marcus the disciple of Basilides see Jerome, Ep. lxxv. 3, and on Basilides the disciple of Menander, the disciple of Simon Magus see Theodoretus, Hist. Fab. I. ii. On Marcus as the founder of the Ascodrutae or Montanists, see footnote 24aa.

24ee. On Cerdon and Marcion see the succeeding paragraph, on Valentinus as an “Apparitionist”: Christ was an emanation from Nous or the Son and entered into the body of Jesus at the baptism, which body was created different from a “mere man’s” body by the Demiurge in the womb of Mary and emerged from her, as “water through a tube”, an image of the Demiurge, and in an apparitional form which could be handled and felt. Irenaeus Adv. Haer. ed. Harvey, I. i. 11, 13, with Harvey’s notes ibid., pp. 52f. n. 5 and 60 nn. 2 and 3. His system incorporated, therefore, some elements of the “Mere-man-ist” theory in relation to the descent of Christ on Jesus at the baptism. Valentinus flourished at a time when the Apostle John was still living: Victorinus (fl. AD 270) in his Commentary on the Apocalypse 11. 1.: “A reed was shown like to a rod. This itself is the Apocalypse which he {John} subsequently exhibited to the churches; for the Gospel of the complete faith he subsequently wrote for the sake of our salvation. For when Valentinus, and Cerinthus, and Ebion, and others of the school of Satan, were scattered abroad throughout the world, there assembled together to him {John} from the neighboring provinces all the bishops, and compelled him himself also to draw up his testimony.” And Ambrosius Ansbertus (otherwise Aucbertus, Auctbertus, fl. 8th century AD) In Sancti Iohannis Apocalypsim on Apocalypse 22. 18f.: “At the same time John wrote these words, there arose in Asia the heretics, Valentinus, that is, Ebion and Cerinthus, whom he calls antichrists in his epistle.”

24ff. On western Sabellianism see further Section 8 para. 100ff., below, >>. The Sabellians (and the related Noetians), according to Epiphanius, Haer. LXII or XLII. 2. 4-5, took their doctrine of the single Tri-une entity from the Sethian “Gospel of the Egyptians”, remnants of which Sethian Gnosis have been discovered at Nag Hammadi. The Sethians were “Apparitionists”. As regards the particular faction who transmitted the theology of this Gospel to Sabellius, Nicephorus records it was a Montanist group, Nicephorus Ecc. Hist. IV. xxii. “Some of his [Montanus’] adherents in later times held the opinion that the three hypostaseis in the godhead were one, saying that the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit were the same entity. It is claimed the Libyan Sabellius also took the origins of his heresy from these.” This school of Montanism was founded on the doctrine of one Aeschines (otherwise unknown) and was therefore labeled “Cataeschinetan” in contrast to the mainline or earlier Montanists of the school of Proclus, the “Cataproclans” (pseudo-Tertullian, Haer. ed Oehler, cap xxi.). Sabellianism was a development of the Montanist system, which had a different view of the humanity, inasmuch as Sabellians saw the manhood as a direct manifestation of the supernal Entity (the Tri-une Father/Son/Spirit). The mainline Montanists of the older school viewed the Tri-une Entity itself identically, but held that Entity entered into the “mere man” Jesus in place of the human soul. The “Apparitionist” tenets of the Sabellians lent credit to their belief that the “Eucharist” (the bread and wine of communion) was the literal Tri-une Entity in physical form: “In the year 427 in the days of Hadrian, the king, Sabellius arose against the Church, 117 years after the birth of Christ, and said there was one person in the Trinity, and that the body and blood which we receive from the altar is the Trinity. And forty-three bishops met at Ancyra, of Galatia, and excommunicated him from the Church.” Syriac Miscellanies or Extracts etc., B H Cowper 1861, p 88, from the Syriac ms. No. 14643 Add. MSS. 2nd section, a notice of Synods, at the conclusion of the volume (following p. 92).

24gg. On the eastern Artemonism of Paul of Samosata, from whom Arius and the eastern Arianizing factions sprang, see further Appendix 6, below, >>, Appendix 7, below, >>, and Eusebius Hist. Ecc. V. xxviii. 1-3.

24hh. The Origenist Eusebius of Caesarea combated the Roman “Sabellian” (modalist) faction and the eastern “Montanist” (Arianizing) faction on account of their use of the word homo-ousios at the Nicene council, which term they employed in the Gnosticizing sense. Socrates, Hist Ecc. I. xxiii: “Eusebius Pamphilus says, that immediately after the Synod, Egypt became agitated by intestine divisions: not assigning, however, the reason for this, so that hence he has won the reputation of disingenuousness, and of avoiding to specify the causes of these dissensions, from a determination on his part not to give his sanction to the proceedings at Nicaea. Yet as we ourselves have discovered from various letters which the bishops wrote to one another after the Synod, the term homo-ousios troubled some of them. So that while they occupied themselves in a too minute investigation of its import, they roused the strife against each other; it seemed not unlike a contest in the dark; for neither party appeared to understand distinctly the grounds on which they calumniated one another. Those who objected to the word homo-ousios, conceived that those who approved it favored the opinion of Sabellius and Montanus; they therefore called them blasphemers, as subverting the existence of the Son of God. And again the advocates of this term, charging their opponents with polytheism, inveighed against them as introducers of heathen superstitions. Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, accuses Eusebius Pamphilus of perverting the Nicene Creed; Eusebius again denies that he violates that exposition of the faith, and recriminates, saying that Eustathius was a defender of the opinion of Sabellius.” And Sozomen, Hist. Ecc. II. xviii: “At this period, the bishops had another tumultuous dispute among themselves, concerning the precise meaning of the term ‘consubstantial’ {homo-ousios}. Some thought that this term could not be admitted without blasphemy; that it implied the non-existence of the Son of God; and that it involved the error of Montanus and Sabellius. Those, on the other hand, who defended the term, regarded their opponents as Greeks (or pagans), and considered that their sentiments led to polytheism. Eusebius, surnamed Pamphilus, and Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, took the lead in this dispute. They both confessed the Son of God to exist hypostatically, and yet they contended together as if they had misunderstood each other. Eustathius accused Eusebius of altering the doctrines ratified by the council of Nicæa, while the latter declared that he approved of all the Nicaean doctrines, and reproached Eustathius for cleaving to the heresy of Sabellius.” Thus also in Contra Marcellum (I. 14) Eusebius says, with reference to the Sabellians’ denial of the independent existence of the Son of God, and their consequent expulsion from the church: “… so the first ambassadors of our Savior named those persons Ebionites, calling them by a Hebrew term ‘poor’ in intellect, who confessed that they acknowledged one God, and did not deny the reality of our Savior’s body, but did not acknowledge the divinity of the Son.” In another passage (I. 20) he says, “If Marcellus {who was a Sabellian} denies that the Son has a real personal existence, it is time for him to suppose him to be a mere man, composed of body and soul, so as to differ in no respect from the common nature of man. But this doctrine has also been expelled from the Church; for this was the notion which was held long ago by the Ebionites, and lately by Paul of Samosata, and those who are called after him Pauliani.” Here Eusebius derives Paul of Samosata’s doctrine from the Ebionites, since Artemon, the precursor of Paul of Samosata, was a disciple of Cerinthus, the Mere-man-ist associate of Ebion, and founding father of the Mere-man-ist Montanists, and notes that the Monarchianism of Paul of Samosata was shared by the Sabellian Marcellus, though they differed in their views on the humanity.

25. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. iv. 3: “But the rest, who are called Gnostics, take rise from Menander, Simon’s disciple, as I have shown; and each one of them appeared as both the father and the high priest of that doctrine into which he has been initiated.” Op. cit., I.xxiii.1: “This man [Simon Magus], then, was glorified by many as if he were a God; and he taught that it was himself who appeared among the Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit. He represented himself, in a word, as being the loftiest of all powers, that is, the Being who is the Father over all, and he allowed himself to be called by whatsoever title men were pleased to address him.” (On the last assertion, compare Simon’s teaching in the so-called “Great Announcement” apud Hippolytus, Refutation, VI. 14: “And so [it was that Jesus] appeared as man, when in reality he was not a man. And [so it was] that likewise he suffered — though not actually undergoing suffering, but appearing to the Jews to do so — in Judea as ‘Son,’ and in Samaria as ‘Father,’ and among the rest of the Gentiles as ‘Holy Spirit.’” And [Simon alleges] that Jesus tolerated being styled by whichever name [of the three just mentioned] men might wish to call him. “ This shows that, according to Irenaeus’ account, Simon assumed any and all the titles of divinity that belonged to Jesus.) On the proper Scriptural use of the word “father” see further §54.

26. §1. Quotation 1: Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. iv. 3 (Greek in Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. IV. xi. 1): “For, prior to Valentinus [another notorious Gnostic heretic], those who follow Valentinus had no existence; nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion; nor, in short, had any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have above enumerated, any being previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity. For Valentinus came to Rome in the time of Hyginus, flourished under Pius, and remained until Anicetus. Cerdon, too, himself, Marcion’s predecessor, having come [Gk. elthôn] into the church and (now) professing true faith [Gk. exomologoumenos], continued on in this fashion in the time of Hyginus, who was the ninth bishop, being at one time [Gk. pote men] a secret teacher [viz. of heresy, Gk. lathrodidaskalôn], then again [Gk. pote de palin] a professor of the true faith [Gk. exomologoumenos], and then [Gk. pote de] denounced for corrupt teaching and separated from communion with [Gk. aphistamenos] the assembly [Gk. synodia] of the brethren. Now, Marcion, succeeding him, flourished under Anicetus, who held the tenth place of the episcopate. But the rest, who are called Gnostics, take rise from Menander, Simon’s disciple, as I have shown; and each one of them appeared as both the father and the high priest of that doctrine into which he has been initiated. But all these [the Marcosians, another group of heretics] broke out into their apostasy much later, even during the intermediate period of the Church [i.e. the period between Anicetus and Eleutherus, the bishop when Irenaeus was writing this account].”

§2. Quotation 2: Ibid. I. xxvii. 1 (Greek in Eusebius Hist. Ecc. IV. x. 2): A certain Cerdon received from Simon and his immediate circle the wherewithal to launch out, and came to live at Rome. In the time of Hyginus, who held the ninth place in the episcopal succession from the apostles downwards, he taught that the God proclaimed by the law and the prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the former was known, but the latter unknown; while the one also was righteous, but the other benevolent. 2. Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and increased the school, blaspheming unblushingly. [The following concerns Marcion but illustrates the common ground between him and Cerdon, whose particular theories are outlined in the next quotation from pseudo-Tertullian] In so doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world, and coming into Judaea in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Caesar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judaea, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most clearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord. 3. Salvation will be the attainment only of those souls which had learned his doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from the earth, is incapable of sharing in salvation. In addition to his blasphemy against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct opposition to the truth, — that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and that they welcomed Him into their kingdom. But the serpent which was in Marcion declared that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men who sprang from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For since these men, he says, knew that their God was constantly tempting them, so now they suspected that He was tempting them, and did not run to Jesus, or believe His announcement: and for this reason he declared that their souls remained in Hades. 4. But since this man is the only one who has dared openly to mutilate the Scriptures, and unblushingly above all others to inveigh against God, I purpose specially to refute him, convicting him out of his own writings; and, with the help of God, I shall overthrow him out of those discourses of the Lord and the apostles, which are of authority with him, and of which he makes use. At present, however, I have simply been led to mention him, that thou mightest know that all those who in any way corrupt the truth, and injuriously affect the preaching of the Church, are the disciples and successors of Simon Magus of Samaria. Although they do not confess the name of their master, in order all the more to seduce others, yet they do teach his doctrines. They set forth, indeed, the name of Christ Jesus as a sort of lure, but in various ways they introduce the impieties of Simon; and thus they destroy multitudes, wickedly disseminating their own doctrines by the use of a good name, and, through means of its sweetness and beauty, extending to their hearers the bitter and malignant poison of the serpent, the great author of apostasy.

§3. Observations: The second quotation from Irenaeus has been interpreted (first in Cyprian’s Latin adaptation of Irenaeus’ words, Ep. 74 ad Pompeium) in the sense that Cerdon arrived in Rome in the time of Hyginus. That this is a mistake is shown 1) by the fact that it was “Simon and his immediate circle” (this is the proper meaning of the Greek idiom tôn peri ton Simôna) who provided Cerdon with the “wherewithal to launch out” (Gk. aphormas) — the former phrase asserting, and the word aphormas suggesting, immediate succession from Simon — and this latter phase of Simon’s career must be dated to the second half of the first century AD and certainly no later than the first few years of the second century AD. Simon is not otherwise known to have been alive beyond the reign of Nero in the 60s of the first century, and then only apocryphal legends connect him with Nero rather than Claudius. However, this quotation of Irenaeus — an historical, not a legendary source — implies he was (back) in the area of Syria when he commissioned/prompted Cerdon to head the Gnostic movement in Rome. That Cerdon arrived in Rome before the time of Hyginus is demonstrated further 2) by the first quotation from Irenaeus which states that Cerdon continued as a professing Christian in the days of Hyginus (whose episcopate is dated traditionally c. AD 136-140), which means he already professed orthodox Christianity before the episcopate of Hyginus at least as early as the days of Telesphorus (traditionally c. AD 125-136, but more probably c. AD 90-120), and prior to that he is stated to have been a secret teacher of heresy. (On secret teaching see para. 19, below, >>) Some time between the late 60s of the first century AD and the episcopate of Telesphorus, Cerdon switched from being a Simonian Gnostic to being, professedly, a Christian. The evidence cited indicates the time of Telesphorus’ predecessor, Sixtus, as the point when Cerdon “joined the Church”. (Sixtus’ episcopate is traditionally dated c. AD 115-125, but this is contradicted by the only contextual historical information about him which still survives, that he was bishop at the time of the Neronian persecution. A more probable date for his episcopate is c. AD 58-90.). According to the third-century Anti-Marcionite poem, Cerdon arrived in Rome in the time of Telesphorus, but only to afflict new wounds on the church there at that time, having been prior to that involved in secret teaching, and therefore expelled from communion. (See footnote 83, below, >>, §7.) This implies that Cerdon’s teaching in the time of Telesphorus and his successor, Hyginus, referred to by Irenaeus, viz. the two-gods doctrine commonly associated with the name of Cerdon, was propagated by him after he had temporarily left Rome and returned, at the latest in the time of Telesphorus. The period of secret teaching, of his nominal acceptance of orthodox Christianity and of his exposure by the orthodox Bible-teachers preceded that, and the last event, as is implied by the Anti-Marcionite poem, led to his temporary departure from Rome. (Simon’s follower Cerdon could have lived on well on into the second century AD, even as late the second half of that century, on the analogy of John the Apostle’s disciple, Polycarp, John himself being a contemporary of Simon Magus. Polycarp was martyred as late as AD 180, according to the most probable chronology, or in AD 156 on the usual, modern, dating. For example, if Cerdon was a young man of 20 in the latter phase of the career of Simon Magus c. AD 65, he would have been an old man of 99 when Marcion succeeded him c. AD 144. For comparison, Symeon son of Clopas, the natural cousin of Jesus, was 120 years old, Polycarp a minimum of 86 years, and Pothinus over 90 years, at the time they were martyred, Eusebius Hist. Ecc. III. xxxii. 6, IV. xv. 20, V. i. 29.)

Note: The history of Simon reconstructed here, including a return of Simon to the area of Syria in the second half of the first century AD, most probably explains the Kabbalistic tradition that Jewish magic was based on the teaching of a Rabbi called Shimeon (Simon), who visited Rome and was patronized there by a noble Roman imperator called “Antoninus” (sic, presumably Antonius [Felix], rather than the emperor Antoninus Pius), and who was present in Palestine between the First and the Second Jewish Revolts against Rome. The Kabbalah has strong affinities to Mandaism, which, in turn, goes back to first century Gnosis of a kind similar to that espoused in the second and third centuries by the Elkesaites. It is this very same form of Gnosis which underlies the third-century, pseudo-Clementine, traditions relating to Simon Magus and his supposed dealings with Peter in Rome. In the native Jewish tradition Shimeon is called Bar (son of) Yohai. Yohai can be demonstrated to be the Hebrew form of the name of the great Mandaean prophet Yahia (John the Baptist). Yahia has a dual name in Mandaic, Yahia Yuhana. The second name here, Yuhana, a laqab or secular name, is the same as the Hebrew Yohanan, Greek Ioannes, John. The first name Yahia is a malwasha or spiritual (magical, zodiacal) name. The Mandaic Yahia is the same as the Arabic Yahya (though the aspirated h in Arabic is softened in Mandaic), and traditionally the Arabic name was uniquely given to John, amongst other alleged reasons, because he (initial “y”, “he”) “came to life” (the root haya, be alive, come to life) in his mother Elizabeth’s womb when Mary greeted her with the news of Jesus’ conception, or because he “lived by faith” or “lived after martyrdom”, by God’s enabling power. (Al-Kirmani in Jalaluddin Abd ar-Raḥman al-Suyuṭi, Al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Quran, 1987, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah: Beirut, First Edition, Volume 2, Section 69: “The Names, Surnames and Titles that Occur in the Quran”, pp. 304-305.) The Hebrew Yohai (y-w-h-y or y-w-h-’-y), with aspirated h, retains in the initial syllable the fuller form “Yo”, whereas the Mandaic and Arabic reduce that specifically Hebrew divine name “Yo” to “y”, he, viz. God, though it might also be taken, as in the interpretations supra, to be a reference to John. Yohai means “Jehovah lives”. Thus Hebrew Yo-hai = Mandaic/Arabic Ya-hia, first element “Yo, Jehovah”, or “Y = He, he”, second element hai = hia = lives. Thus Shimeon was a “son” of Yohai, otherwise Simon (Magus) was a “son” of Yahia (John the Baptist). Simon Magus was a “son of John the Baptist” in the Jewish idiomatic sense that he was his disciple. Furthermore, the Kabbalistic tradition is that Shimeon Bar Yohai was present in the area of Palestine (Syria), or, more specifically in Galilee, living as an ascetic in a cave and teaching in his own school there, in the second half of the first century and in the early years of the second century AD, where he was involved, with Rabbi Aqiba, in the disastrous uprising of Bar Kokhba against the Romans. This resulted in the utter extirpation of the Jews from their homeland and is precisely the kind of role we would expect Simon Magus to have taken if he did indeed return to the area of Syria in the second half of the first century AD. It could be that Justin Martyr is referring to Simon’s recent participation in the second Jewish revolt in the following passage of the Dialogue with Trypho, the setting of which is Ephesus, shortly after the Bar Kokhba debacle referred to elsewhere in the work (ibid. i): Dial.Tryph. cxx: “For I [Justin] gave no thought to any of my people, that is, the Samaritans, when I had a communication in writing with Caesar, but stated that they were wrong in trusting to the magician Simon of their own nation, who, they say, is God above all power, and authority, and might.” It is thought that a break in the text of Hippolytus’ Refutation, in a passage relating to Simon Magus’ travels after leaving Rome, which reads “elthôn en t . . . . tê,” covers an original reading “elthôn en têi Gittêi”, i.e. “repairing to Gitta,” which would likewise indicate a return of Simon to his homeland. (On the reading see Hippolytus, ed. Marcovich, 1986, p. 228, line 13 and note 13.) The passage reads as follows: Hippolytus, Refut. VI. xv. = ed. Miller VI. 20 (67r) (for the Greek, see Appendix 13 §8): “This Simon, deceiving many in Samaria by his sorceries, was reproved by the Apostles, and was laid under a curse, as it has been written in the Acts. But he afterwards abjured the faith, and attempted these (aforesaid practices). And journeying as far as Rome, he fell in with the Apostles; and to him, deceiving many by his sorceries, Peter offered repeated opposition. This man, ultimately repairing to <Git?>ta (and) sitting under a plane tree, continued to give instruction (in his doctrines). And in truth at last, when conviction was imminent, in case he delayed longer, he stated that, if he were buried alive, he would rise the third day. And accordingly, having ordered a trench to be dug by his disciples, he directed himself to be interred there. They, then, executed the injunction given; whereas he remained (in that grave) until this day, for he was not the Christ.” Shimeon bar Yohai is believed to have died in Zphat (Safed) in Galilee and Safed Sanjak, the “District of Safed”, spanned the whole of Galilee during the Muslim occupation, when Kabbalah took on its modern aspect. Safed or Zphat, meaning the district so called, included a notable town called Gith or Git, viz. Gath (or Gith) Hepher near Nazareth, and in the vicinity of Safed and Tiberias. Gath Hepher was the birth place of Jonah the prophet. It was included in Jonah’s own era within the territory of Samaria. Thus if Simon (Shimeon) died in or near Gitthae, then he also died in Zphat, the District of Safed, and the Kabbalistic tradition is explained. It is remarkable that the corruption of all three monotheistic faiths, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, in that case resulted specifically from the admixture of Simonian Gnosis in an Elkesaite form, Christianity from the kind of Gnosis adopted by the First Church of Rome, Judaism from Kabbalistic Gnosis and Islam from the Gnosis of the Subba, or Mandaeans, who are treated with special favor in the Koran, along with Christians and Jews, as “people of the Book”.

§4. Quotation 3: As regards Cerdon’s teaching, and his pre-Marcionite attack on the Canon of Scripture, the following quotation is illuminating. Pseudo-Tertullian, Against All Heresies, Ch. 6. 1-2: “To this is added one Cerdo. He introduces two first causes, that is, two Gods — one good, the other cruel: the good being the superior; the latter, the cruel one, being the creator of the world. He repudiates the prophecies and the Law; renounces God the Creator; maintains that Christ who came was the Son of the superior God; affirms that He was not in the substance of flesh; states Him to have been only in a phantasmal shape, to have not really suffered, but undergone a quasipassion, and not to have been born of a virgin, nay, really not to have been born at all. A resurrection of the soul merely does he approve, denying that of the body. The Gospel of Luke alone, and that not entire, does he receive. Of the Apostle Paul he takes neither all the epistles, nor in their integrity. The Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse he rejects as false. After him emerged a disciple of his, one Marcion by name, a native of Pontus, son of a bishop, excommunicated because of a rape committed on a certain virgin. He, starting from the fact that it is said, “Every good tree beareth good fruit, but an evil evil,” attempted to approve the heresy of Cerdo; so that his assertions are identical with those of the former heretic before him.” Latin: “VI. [1] Accedit his Cerdon quidam. Hic introducit initia duo, id est duos deos, unum bonum, et alterum saevum, bonum superiorem, saevum hunc mundi creatorem. Hic prophetias et legem repudiat, deo creatori renuntiat, superioris dei filium Christum venisse tractat, hunc in substantia carnis negat, in phantasmate solo fuisse pronuntiat, nec omnino passum, sed quasi passum, nec ex virgine natum, sed omnino nec natum. Resurrectionem animae tantummodo probat, corporis negat. Solum evangelium Lucae, nec tamen totum recipit. Apostoli Pauli neque omnes neque totas epistolas sumit. Acta Apostolorum et Apocalypsim quasi falsa reicit. [2] Post hunc discipulus ipsius emersit Marcion quidam nomine, Ponticus genere, episcopi filius, propter stuprum cuiusdam virginis ab ecclesiae communicatione abiectus. Hic ex occasione qua dictum sit, Omnis arbor bona bonos fructus facit, mala autem malos, haeresim Cerdonis approbare conatus est, ut eadem diceret quae ille superior haereticus ante dixerat.”

§5. Quotation 4: According to Hippolytus, Refutation VII. xxiv-xxv, Cerdon followed in the footsteps of the Nicolaitans and Simon, the Nicolaitans encouraging the spread of the Gnostic movement by advocating indifference as regards the eating of meat sacrificed to idols and participation in forbidden sexual relationships (on the Nicolaitans and their connection with Nicolaus of Myra, “Santa Claus”, see Appendix 12): “There are, however, among the Gnostics diversities of opinion; but we have decided that it would not be worth while to enumerate the silly doctrines of these (heretics), inasmuch as they are (too) numerous and devoid of reason, and full of blasphemy. Now, even those (of the heretics) who are of a more serious turn in regard of the Divinity, and have derived their systems of speculation from the Greeks, must stand convicted (of these charges). But Nicolaus has been a cause of the widespread combination of these wicked men. He, as one of the seven (that were chosen) for the diaconate, was appointed by the Apostles. (But Nicolaus) departed from correct doctrine, and was in the habit of inculcating indifference of both life and food [sic Bunsen’s emendation, text “giving credit” sc. to an idol and meat sacrificed to idols]. And when the disciples (of Nicolaus) continued to offer insult to the Holy Spirit, John reproved them in the Apocalypse as fornicators and eaters of things offered unto idols. CHAPTER 25 THE HERESY OF CERDON But one Cerdon himself also, receiving occasion in like manner from these (heretics) and Simon, affirms that the God preached by Moses and the prophets was not Father of Jesus Christ. For (he contends) that this (Father) had been known, whereas that the Father of Christ was unknown, and that the former was just, but the latter good. And Marcion corroborated the tenet of this (heretic) in the work which he attempted to write, and which he styled Antitheses. And he was in the habit, (in this book,) of uttering whatever slanders suggested themselves to his mind against the Creator of the universe. In a similar manner likewise (acted) Lucian, the disciple of this (heretic).”

§6. Observations: This notice takes us back to the early Apostolic era (another indicator of Cerdon’s early date), when the problem of meat sacrificed to idols and fornication was addressed by the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem. This issue was a point of debate between those Christians who adhered over-enthusiastically to the Jewish Law and those who advocated leniency in an attempt to more easily absorb Gentile converts. Nicolaus seems to have tended in the latter direction (he was a proselyte from a Gentile background in Antioch and was involved in the distribution of food to the Hellenist or Greek-speaking members of the Church in Jerusalem shortly after Pentecost, Acts 6. 1-5), but according to Clement of Alexandria (Strom. III. xxv, xxvi, Eusebius Hist. Ecc. III. xxix) he himself and his children were orthodox in faith and morally blameless. Some, including Hippolytus, reported he departed from orthodox doctrine, in the sense he thought it of no importance whether a believer kept the Noachide laws advocated in the Council of Jerusalem. This is termed “indifference” in food matters or eating of things sacrificed to idols (Irenaeus, ed. Harvey I. xxiii, in relation to his avowed followers) and daily habits (Hippolytus supra) or more specifically fornication (Irenaeus ibid., again of his avowed followers). Those who claimed him as their master, the “Nicolaitans”, took an extreme position and thus encouraged the development of Gentile Gnosticism which pandered to Gentile idolatry and the sexual immorality associated with it. The deacon Nicolaus had nothing to do with the Gnostic sect which stole his name and his identity. According to Dorotheus (De Septuaginta Domini Discipulis Commentarius, num. 12, ed. Venice, 1729, p. 343), the deacon Nicolaus later “became a bishop of Samaria,” and the heterodox companion of Simon, and thus founded the Nicolaitan sect. This is the only pre-Nicene mention of a bishop Nicolaus, and here he is a Gnostic heretic. Given the prominence of the name Nicolaus in that circle, and the popularity of the doctrine of re-incarnation amongst Gnostic heretics in general, it is likely the Simonian bishop mentioned by Dorotheus believed he was a re-incarnation of Nicolaus the deacon, on account of the particular sexual fault thought to have been committed by the latter in relation to his attractive wife. It was said Nicolaus the deacon was stung by rumors he was too attached to his wife, and therefore abstained from sexual relations with her. (Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. XXV, ed. Migne XLI, col. 321.) The Gnostics took this to mean he had become “celibate”. (“Celibacy” in the Gnostic system involved abstaining from normal marital relationships and consorting freely with unmarried “sisters”.) Thus, the deacon’s conduct after that incident, when he continued to treat her as his wife, and his wife alone, was seen as a “fall from grace” on his part, and a reversion to the “selfish, materialistic, lustful” behavior characteristic of the followers of the Jewish Creator-god. The “Gnostic Nicolaus” would surely eschew such “selfishness”, and treat all “sisters” as common property (barring the occasional “selfish lapse”). This fit in well with the tenets of Gnosticism, according to which the archetypal Female Principle fell into the world of sin and lust, under the dominion of the Creator-god of the Jews, and was ultimately redeemed only by the Gnostic Savior-figure (as embodied, they thought, in Simon, bishop Nicolaus etc.). The Apocalypse of John which rebuked bishop Nicolaus’ followers by name was, of course, utterly rejected by Cerdon, and fought for recognition even in some ecclesiastical circles where Gnosticism had gained a footing. The testimony of Clement of Alexandria (Strom. III. xxv, xxvi), suggests the Nicolaitans were actually Carpocratians, who improperly adduced the example of Nicolaus’ selfless, though, perhaps reckless, submission to the will of God in his marital relations to justify their own antinomianism: Clement of Alexandria Stromateis III. xxv: “And we made mention also of the godless ‘communion’ of women advocated by Carpocrates, after discoursing additionally on what is reported of Nicolaus, though we failed to include the details. It is said he had a beautiful wife, and that after the Ascension of the Savior he was accused of jealousy before the Apostles. On which occasion he brought his wife into the assembly and gave permission for her to be married to anyone who was willing. According to the report, this action was a direct consequence of the aforesaid assertion, that it is a duty to ‘abuse the flesh’. Taking this event and what is related concerning it as their precedent, those who promote his {viz. Carpocrates’} heresy fornicate licentiously in the most extreme manner without any shame.” The same is implied in Epiphanius’ assertion (Haer. XXV or V, 2.1) that “from this source {Nicolaus’ treatment of his wife and how it was employed by the Nicolaitans after him, ibid. 1} the founders of what is falsely termed “Knowledge” began their evil sprouting in the world — I mean the people who are called Gnostics and Phibionites, the so-called disciples of Epiphanes {Carpocratians of the school of Epiphanes son of Carpocrates}, the Stratiotics, Levitics, Borborites and the rest. For each of these, in attracting his own sect with his own passions, invented countless ways of doing evil.” Their presence in Asia brought these Carpocratian Nicolaitans to the notice of the Apostle John in his message to the Seven Asian Churches. Later the name “Nicolaitans” became attached to a sect originating from the Carpocratians, called Caians or Cainites (Tertullian, Praescr. 33, Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. XXXVIII, ii, ed. Migne, XLI, col. 656C); the latter believed that all the figures in the Old and New Testament castigated by the God of the Jews (i.e., on their theory, by the wicked Creator-god), viz. Cain, the Sodomites, Judas etc., must, necessarily, be held up as examples of moral rectitude, and their practices emulated! For why, otherwise, they reasoned, would the wicked Creator-god be so antagonistic to such? Note that Hippolytus says Cerdon drew for his heresy on two sources: 1) the Gnosis of the Nicolaitans (i.e. Carpocratians) and 2) the Gnosis of Simon himself. See further on this the following subsection.

§7. Cerdon, according to Irenaeus (a reliable witness) received the wherewithal to launch out on the Gnostic path from Simon and his immediate circle, whilst, according to Epiphanius (Panarion, XLI [XXI]. i.), a less reliable witness, but one who preserved much circumstantial detail about the heretics from earlier sources, Cerdon was a successor of Heracleon, being of the school of Simon and Saturninus (otherwise, Saturnilus). Saturninus is doubtless one of the “immediate circle of Simon” referred to by Irenaeus. Syrian Gnosticism was formed principally out of the teachings of Simon, Simon’s successor, Menander and Menander’s twin scions, Saturninus (whose residence was Antioch in Syria) and Basilides (who subsequently migrated to Egypt). Again, according to Epiphanius (ibid., agreeing with Irenaeus), Cerdon migrated from Syria to Rome and preached his Gnostic gospel there during the episcopate of Hyginus. Heracleon himself was a successor of Colorbasus (Epiphanius ibid. XXXVI [XVI]. i.), whilst the roots of the Gnosticism of Colorbasus were the same as those of the Valentinian Ptolemaeus (ibid. XXXV [XV]. i.) and the doctrine of both Valentinus (Epiphanius, Haer. XXXVIII, ii, ed. Migne, XLI, col. 656C, and the following citation) and Ptolemaeus was derived ultimately from the school of Secundus and Epiphanes, the son of Carpocrates (XXXIII [XIII]. i.). Heracleon is usually dated some time in the second century AD, and belonged to what is known as the Italian or Western branch of Valentinian Gnosis. The details of his life are, however, obscure. It is probable that Cerdon’s contact with and adoption of Heracleon’s Gnosis occurred after he had migrated to Rome, and were super-added to his foundational Syrian beliefs. Cerdon’s career had, indeed, as we have seen, two main phases. In the earlier phase he taught his Syrian Gnostic theories secretly (like his precursor Simon). It was during this phase that he “came into” the Catholic communion. Bishop Sixtus seems to have provided him an ecclesiastical umbrella. After his exposure by the orthodox Bible-teachers, he left Rome temporarily and then returned to afflict “new wounds” on the church in the city during the episcopate of Telesphorus, the successor of Sixtus and precursor of Hyginus. In this phase he taught his Gnosticism publicly. This is most likely the period when he adopted and adapted the theories of the Italian Gnosis of Heracleon, with its roots in the teaching of Carpocrates, since the school of Carpocrates (that of the Nicolaitans) seems to have practiced its Gnostic occultism openly from the beginning (see further on Carpocrates’ public teaching, footnote 38, below, >>).

27. Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, VII. 1: “They abstain from thanksgiving [Gk. eucharistia, “eucharist”] and prayer, because of a failure to agree that the thanksgiving [“eucharist”] is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins, which the Father raised up by His goodness.” A common misinterpretation of this passage is that the Docetists abstained from the eucharist because they did not agree that the bread was the body of Jesus (period). This interpretation can be shown to be erroneous. Cerdon (see footnote 26), and Gnostics like Cerdon, are probably the Docetists Ignatius is referring to in this passage. Yet Marcion, the Docetist par excellence, who adopted the Gnostic theories of Cerdon wholesale, we know had an “eucharist” (eucharistia) with literal bread. (Wine was excluded because of his otherworldly, pseudo-ascetic, principles.) Furthermore, he considered the bread to be the proper body of the Supreme Good God who manifested himself as Jesus, whilst Jesus’ human body was a mere apparition (see the quotations from Tertullian below). This suggests that the statement of Ignatius should be interpreted otherwise, and with proper emphasis given to all the phrases in the statement: that the Docetists abstained from the orthodox “thanksgiving” (eucharistia) because they identified this “eucharistia” with the body of Jesus, yet the orthodox held that the body of Jesus was a normal human body that had suffered and was then raised up by God, and the Docetists did not believe in a physical, human, body of Jesus that had so suffered and been resurrected. Docetists of the earliest period believed Jesus’ human body was a mere apparition, that it was a phantasmic manifestation of the highest God. However, they also believed that that same supreme Deity did have a proper material body by which he was exhibited to the world — and that was the bread of the “eucharist”! This inevitably led to a separation in their theory, as it developed, between the bread-body of Jesus and the human body of Jesus, which the doctrine of transubstantiation in Roman Catholicism was concocted to address. In the disputes over transubstantiation between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the Protestants affirmed that the communion bread could not be the body of Jesus in the sense Roman Catholics held it to be (the literal body) because that had been raised up by God and was now seated in glory. In the dogmatic madness of transubstantiation, on the contrary, the communion bread is the real body of Jesus, for it only appears to be bread, but is, in substance, the flesh of Jesus. And, in the world as it actually is, rather than as it exists in the mind of the Roman theologian, we have a human body of Jesus which is a phantasm, appearing in the form of a piece of bread, and a piece of bread which is dogmatically asserted to be Jesus’ actual body. This is nothing but the old Docetism Ignatius combated in a modern sophistic guise. As regards the terminology, the juxtaposition of “thanksgiving” and “prayer” in this passage (Smyrnaeans VII. 1) suggests “thanksgiving” meant just that to Ignatius: the Docetists abstained from the prayers and vocal thanksgivings of the orthodox, because there was a difference between the two parties over the nature of “thanksgiving”. Ignatius defines that as the belief that the “thanksgiving” (eucharistia) was the “body” of Jesus. Certainly the orthodox did not believe the (vocal) thanksgiving had that nature, so it must have been the Docetists. A little later Ignatius (VIII. 1) refers to “thanksgiving” (eucharistia) as something that must be done under the supervision of the bishop (episkopos); then after a few phrases he refers (VIII. 2) to “baptism and the agape (love-feast)” as duties which must similarly be performed only under the eye of the bishop. The fact that Ignatius distinguishes eucharistia and agape here, and at the same time juxtaposes agape with baptism, suggests he used the word agape to describe the meal during which communion was commonly celebrated, and treated eucharistia as something akin to prayer, as in the earlier passage (VII. 1). This same, then, is the first intimation that heretics applied the word “eucharist” (eucharistia, “thanksgiving”) to the communion bread. They did this, perhaps, because Paul referred to “praise” as the “sacrifice of our lips” in Heb. 13. 15. This could be taken (wrongly) to be a reference to the bread that goes into the believer’s lips, rather than the praise that goes out of them. If it was applied as a name to the communion bread, it would turn the bread into a sacrifice. There is evidence from a later period that the communion meal was treated as a “sacrifice” by the Docetists of the First Church of Rome. (See §83, below , >>.) The thought suggests itself: why should the Docetists have held so dogmatically to the idea that the proper material body of the supreme God was BREAD if it was not because their supreme God, the “Good One”, was, in fact, as in the system of the Naassenes, just the fertility-god of the pagan mysteries, the GRAIN-GOD OSIRIS (identified with SERAPIS and PRIAPUS etc.), THE “GOOD GOD” OF EGYPTIAN PAGANISM? The following quotations are from Tertullian’s Five Books Against Marcion (Adv. Marc.) and refer to Marcion’s eucharistic beliefs and practices: Tertullian Adv. Marc. I. xiv. 3: “Indeed, up to the present time, he [Marcion’s highest or Good God] has not disdained the water which the Creator [Marcion’s inferior god] made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body [lit. presents in manifest form his own very body, ipsum corpus suum repraesentat], thus requiring in his very sacraments the “beggarly elements” of the Creator.” (Sed ille quidem usque nunc nec aquam reprobavit creatoris qua suos abluit, nec oleum quo suos unguit, nec mellis et lactis societatem qua suos infantat, nec panem quo ipsum corpus suum repraesentat, etiam in sacramentis propriis egens mendicitatibus creatoris.) Ibid. III. xix. 3-4: “This tree [the Cross] it is which Jeremiah likewise gives you intimation of, when he prophesies to the Jews, who should say, ‘Come, let us destroy the tree with the fruit, (the bread) thereof,’ that is, His body. For so did God in your [Marcion’s] own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given to His body the figure [note Tertullian emphatically states the figurative interpretation] of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively [note] turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an interpretation of the mystery.” (Hoc lignum et Hieremias tibi insinuat, dicturis praedicans Iudaeis, Venite, iniciamus lignum in panem eius, utique in corpus. [4] Sic enim deus in evangelio quoque vestro revelavit, panem corpus suum appellans, ut et hinc iam eum intellegas corporis sui figuram panis dedisse, cuius retro corpus in panem prophetes figuravit, ipso domino hoc sacramentum postea interpretaturo.) Ibid. IV. xxxiv. 5: [Marcion had an eucharist and strict admission rules to it] “If, however, you [Marcion] deny that divorce is in any way permitted by Christ, how is it that you on your side destroy marriage, not uniting man and woman, nor admitting to the sacrament of baptism and of the eucharist those who have been united in marriage anywhere else, unless they should agree together to repudiate the fruit of their marriage, and so the very Creator Himself?” (Aut si omnino negas permitti divortium a Christo, quomodo tu nuptias dirimis, nec coniungens marem et feminam, nec alibi coniunctos ad sacramentum baptismatis et eucharistiae admittens nisi inter se coniuraverint adversus fructum nuptiarum, ut adversus ipsum creatorem?) ( Ibid. IV. xl. Tertullian offers arguments from the eucharist against Marcion’s theory of an apparitional body of Christ, implying throughout Marcion’s literal eucharist.) For an example of the striking perpetuation in Roman Catholicism of Gnostic theory, and even terminology, in the matter of the Eucharist, consider the following quotation (one amongst many that could be cited) from a book about the convent experiences of a nun: “The old priest to whom I applied was Father Rocque. He is still [1836] alive. He was, at that time, the oldest priest in the seminary, and carried the Bon Dieu, Good God, as the sacramental wafer is called. When going to administer it in any country place, he used to ride with a man before him, who rang a bell as a signal. When the Canadians heard it, whose habitations he passed, they would come and prostrate themselves to the earth, worshiping it as a God.” (The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, Milner and Company, Manchester, 1836, p. 19. A copy of this work can be downloaded at the following link: http://www.christianhospitality.org/resources/maria-monk-illus.pdf.)

28. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I. xxi: “1. It happens that their tradition respecting redemption is invisible and incomprehensible, as being the mother of things which are incomprehensible and invisible; and on this account, since it is fluctuating, it is impossible simply and all at once to make known its nature, for every one of them hands it down just as his own inclination prompts. Thus there are as many schemes of “redemption” as there are teachers of these mystical opinions. And when we come to refute them, we shall show in its fitting-place, that this class of men have been instigated by Satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God, and thus to a renunciation of the whole [Christian] faith. 2. They maintain that those who have attained to perfect knowledge must of necessity be regenerated [= “born again”] into that power which is above all. For it is otherwise impossible to find admittance within the Pleroma, since this [regeneration] it is which leads them down into the depths of Bythus. For the baptism instituted by the visible Jesus was for the remission of sins, but the redemption brought in by that Christ who descended upon Him, was for perfection; and they allege that the former is animal, but the latter spiritual. And the baptism of John was proclaimed with a view to repentance, but the redemption by Jesus was brought in for the sake of perfection. And to this He refers when He says, “And I have another baptism to be baptized with, and I hasten eagerly towards it.” Moreover, they affirm that the Lord added this redemption to the sons of Zebedee, when their mother asked that they might sit, the one on His right hand, and the other on His left, in His kingdom, saying, “Can ye be baptized with the baptism which I shall be baptized with?” Paul, too, they declare, has often set forth, in express terms, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; and this was the same which is handed down by them in so varied and discordant forms. 3. For some of them prepare a nuptial couch, and perform a sort of mystic rite (pronouncing certain expressions) with those who are being initiated, and affirm that it is a spiritual marriage which is celebrated by them, after the likeness of the conjunctions above. Others, again, lead them to a place where water is, and baptize them, with the utterance of these words, “Into the name of the unknown Father of the universe — into truth, the mother of all things — into Him who descended on Jesus — into union, and redemption, and communion with the powers.” Others still repeat certain Hebrew words, in order the more thoroughly to bewilder those who are being initiated, as follows: “Basema, Chamosse, Baoenaora, Mistadia, Ruada, Kousta, Babaphor, Kalachthei.” The interpretation of these terms runs thus: “I invoke that which is above every power of the Father, which is called light, and good Spirit, and life, because Thou hast reigned in the body.” Others, again, set forth the redemption thus: The name which is hidden from every deity, and dominion, and truth which Jesus of Nazareth was clothed with in the lives of the light of Christ — of Christ, who lives by the Holy Ghost, for the angelic redemption. The name of restitution stands thus: Messia, Uphareg, Namempsoeman, Chaldoeaur, Mosomedoea, Acphranoe, Psaua, Jesus Nazaria. The interpretation of these words is as follows: “I do not divide the Spirit of Christ, neither the heart nor the supercelestial power which is merciful; may I enjoy Thy name, O Savior of truth!” Such are words of the initiators; but he who is initiated, replies, “I am established, and I am redeemed; I redeem my soul from this age (world), and from all things connected with it in the name of Iao, who redeemed his own soul into redemption in Christ who liveth.” Then the bystanders add these words, “Peace be to all on whom this name rests.” After this they anoint the initiated person with balsam; for they assert that this unguent is a type of that sweet odor which is above all things. 4. But there are some of them who assert that it is superfluous to bring persons to the water, but mixing oil and water together, they place this mixture on the heads of those who are to be initiated, with the use of some such expressions as we have already mentioned. And this they maintain to be the redemption. They, too, are accustomed to anoint with balsam. Others, however, reject all these practices, and maintain that the mystery of the unspeakable and invisible power ought not to be performed by visible and corruptible creatures, nor should that of those [beings] who are inconceivable, and incorporeal, and beyond the reach of sense, [be performed] by such as are the objects of sense, and possessed of a body. These hold that the knowledge of the unspeakable Greatness is itself perfect redemption. For since both defect and passion flowed from ignorance, the whole substance of what was thus formed is destroyed by knowledge; and therefore knowledge is the redemption of the inner man. This, however, is not of a corporeal nature, for the body is corruptible; nor is it animal, since the animal soul is the fruit of a defect, and is, as it were, the abode of the spirit. The redemption must therefore be of a spiritual nature; for they affirm that the inner and spiritual man is redeemed by means of knowledge, and that they, having acquired the knowledge of all things, stand thenceforth in need of nothing else. This, then, is the true redemption. 5. Others still there are who continue to redeem persons even up to the moment of death, by placing on their heads oil and water, or the pre-mentioned ointment with water, using at the same time the above-named invocations, that the persons referred to may become incapable of being seized or seen by the principalities and powers, and that their inner man may ascend on high in an invisible manner, as if their body were left among created things in this world, while their soul is sent forward to the Demiurge.” The “Redemption” or “Rebirth” in its bridal form was followed, in some cases at least, by a literal carnal connexion between the female initiates and their Gnostic instructors: Ibid. I. xiii: “6. Some of his [Marcus’] disciples, too, addicting themselves to the same practices, have deceived many silly women, and defiled them. They proclaim themselves as being “perfect,” so that no one can be compared to them with respect to the immensity of their knowledge, nor even were you to mention Paul or Peter, or any other of the apostles. They assert that they themselves know more than all others, and that they alone have imbibed the greatness of the knowledge of that power which is unspeakable. They also maintain that they have attained to a height above all power, and that therefore they are free in every respect to act as they please, having no one to fear in anything. For they affirm, that because of the “Redemption” it has come to pass that they can neither be apprehended, nor even seen by the judge. But even if he should happen to lay hold upon them, then they might simply repeat these words, while standing in his presence along with the “Redemption:” “O thou, who sittest beside God, and the mystical, eternal Sige, thou through whom the angels (mightiness), who continually behold the face of the Father, having thee as their guide and introducer, do derive their forms from above, which she in the greatness of her daring inspiring with mind on account of the goodness of the Propator, produced us as their images, having her mind then intent upon the things above, as in a dream, — behold, the judge is at hand, and the crier orders me to make my defense. But do thou, as being acquainted with the affairs of both, present the cause of both of us to the judge, inasmuch as it is in reality but one cause.” Now, as soon as the Mother hears these words, she puts the Homeric helmet of Pluto upon them, so that they may invisibly escape the judge. And then she immediately catches them up, conducts them into the bridal chamber, and hands them over to their consorts.” The ritual of the bridal chamber continued and continues to be practiced in closed orders of the First Church of Rome: “The Christian homes of England and America may be pointed out, thank God, as illustrating the divine wisdom; while the degraded monasteries of Italy and Spain and South America, with the horrible history of enforced celibacy in the Latin priesthood, are proofs of the unwisdom of those who imported into the Western churches the very heresies and abortive argumentations which Clement [of Alexandria] disdains [in his denunciation in the Stromata Book III of Carpocratian Gnostics and related groups], while he pulverizes them and blows them away, thoroughly purging his flour, and burning up this chaff.” A. Cleveland Coxe, Ante-Nicene Church Fathers, vol. 2, p. 808, Stromata Book III, Elucidation 6. For the practice in the 19th and 20th centuries see the testimonies of escaped closed order nuns Maria Monk and Charlotte Keckler online at:

https://www.christianhospitality.org/wp/expose-of-roman-catholicism/

29. Paul addressed this problem himself in his Epistle to the Romans 3. 5-8, where he denounced the teaching that was circulating at that time that God was unjust to punish sin if he predestinated all things, and which led, as he pointed out, to an antinomian perversion of his own Gospel of Grace. That was c. AD 58. Similarly, Peter, a few years thereafter (in II Peter 3. 16), rebuked the unstable ones (asteriktoi) who twisted the writings of Paul, and also referred to such (in v. 17) as lawless ones (athesmoi). Both of these words are used in the preceding chapter (vv. 7 and 14) of the type of people involved in the heresies of the false teachers and false prophets operating at that time within the nominal Church. The reference here, at least in part, is to the antinomian, Carpocratian, form of Gnosticism. Cerdon is known to have wrested Paul’s writings and is dateable likewise within the first generation of heretics contemporary with Simon Magus, though he belonged originally to the pseudo-ascetic school of Syrian Gnosticism, not the antinomian. Cerdon may be one, perhaps the chief, target of Ignatius’ attacks on Docetism (the belief that Jesus’ body was not real flesh and blood) in his Epistles (Trallians ix-xi, Smyrnaeans i-vii), and his followers the target of his condemnation of heretics who disputed what was and what was not in the true Scriptures (Philadelphians viii. 2) . Cerdon, like Ignatius, originated from Syria, and no doubt Ignatius was familiar with other and similar forms of Syrian Gnosticism. Compare also Polycarp’s denunciation (Philippians 7. 1) of any such teacher as “the firstborn of Satan” — a phrase which Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. III. iii. 4) states he used later to describe Marcion, Cerdon’s successor.

30. Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. II. xxiii. 8-9, quoting Hegesippus, in a passage describing how members of the seven Gnosticizing sects acted as agents-provocateurs to bring about the death of James the brother of the Lord in Jerusalem in AD 62: “Now some of the seven [Gnostic] sects [see footnote 31], which existed among the people and which have been mentioned by me in the Memoirs, asked him [James], ‘What is the gate of Jesus?’ and he replied that he was the Savior. On account of these words some believed that Jesus is the Christ. But the sects mentioned above did not believe either in a resurrection or in one who is coming to give to every man according to his works.”

31. Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. IV. xxii. 4-6, quoting Hegesippus: “HEGESIPPUS in the five books of Memoirs ….: “And after James the Just had suffered martyrdom [AD 62], as the Lord had also on the same account, Symeon, the son of the Lord’s uncle, Clopas, was appointed the next bishop. All proposed him as second bishop because he was a cousin of the Lord. Therefore, they called the Church a virgin, for it was not yet corrupted by vain discourses. But Thebuthis, because he was not made bishop, began to corrupt it from the seven sects among the people, amongst whose numbers he was included, (namely) from those who included Simon, from whom came Simonians, and Cleobius, from whom came Cleobians, and Dositheus, from whom came Dositheans, and Gorthaeus, from whom came Goratheni, and Masbothaeans {five sects are named here out of the seven that existed in the time of James and were the source of errors introduced by Thebuthis into the virgin Church}. From these sprang the Menandrianists, and Marcionists, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians. Each introduced privately and separately his own peculiar opinion. From them came false Christs, false prophets, false apostles, who divided the unity of the Church by corrupt doctrines uttered against God and against his Christ.” The earlier generation of Gnostics (which did not include Marcion) often claimed to be following the teaching of the Apostles as transmitted to them through certain ones who were personal hearers of the Apostolic preaching: Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VII. xvii: “For the teaching of our Lord at His advent, beginning with Augustus and Tiberius, was completed in the middle of the times of Tiberius. And that of the apostles, embracing the ministry of Paul, ends with Nero. It was later, in the times of Hadrian the king, that those who invented the heresies arose; and they extended to the age of Antoninus the elder, as, for instance, Basilides, though he claims (as they boast) for his master, Glaucias, the interpreter of Peter. Likewise they allege that Valentinus was a hearer of Theudas. And he was the pupil of Paul. (For Marcion, who arose in the same age with them, lived as an old man with the younger [heretics].) And after him [viz., presumably, Theudas] Simon heard for a little the preaching of Peter.” The Theudas who heard Paul must have done so before Simon Magus went to Rome (c. AD 45), as Simon is said here to have heard Peter after Theudas heard Paul and there is no reliable evidence that Simon met Peter outside of Samaria and Caesarea. This would probably date Theudas’ meeting with Paul in the early years of Paul’s conversion, before Paul left for Tarsus, where he remained c. AD 37-43 (Acts 9. 30 and 11. 25). It was during Paul’s absence that Cornelius was converted in Caesarea through the ministry of Peter (Acts 10) and an early sub-Apostolic tradition represents Peter as disputing with Simon Magus in Caesarea at that period. Theudas, therefore, seems to have heard Paul around AD 35-37 either in Damascus (Acts 9. 20-22) or in Jerusalem (Acts 9. 28), and Simon Magus seems to have heard Peter in Caesarea some time between AD 41 and AD 45. Like the elders in Ephesus, Theudas himself may have drifted into heresy, or Valentinus distorted Theudas’ teaching. (On the Ephesian elders see Acts 20. 29: “For I [Paul] know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”) Since nothing is known of Theudas elsewhere in the literature of Gnosticism, the latter is the more probable hypothesis, particularly as Valentinus is said to have originally been orthodox, falling into heresy because he did not receive the bishopric in some orthodox church (Tertullian Adv. Val. I. 4). Cerdon, according to Irenaeus (a reliable witness) received the wherewithal to launch out on the Gnostic path from Simon and his immediate circle, and Simon was a “hearer” of Peter. As the Apostle John said (1 John 2. 19): “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”

32. See Appendix 5.

33. VII. 1 Saturninus oriundo fuit Gallus, ex gente hominum inquietissima et avida semper vel faciendi principis vel imperii. 2 huic inter ceteros duces, quod vere summus vir esset, certe videretur, Aurelianus limitis orientalis ducatum dedit, sapienter praecipiens, ne umquam Aegyptum videret. 3 cogitabat enim, quantum videmus, vir prudentissimus Gallorum naturam et verebatur, ne, si praeturbidam civitatem vidisset, quo eum natura ducebat, e<o> societate quoque hominum duceretur. 4 sunt enim Aegyptii, ut satis nosti, <in>venti ventosi, furibundi, iactantes, iniuriosi atque adeo vani, liberi, novarum rerum usque ad cantilenas publicas cupientes, versificatores, epigrammatarii, mathematici, haruspices, medici. 5 nam <in> eis C<h>ristiani, Samaritae et quibus praesentia semper tempora cum enormi libertate displiceant. 6 ac ne quis mihi Aegyptiorum irascatur et meum esse credat, quod in litteras rettuli, Hadriani epistolam, <p>romam ex libris Flegontis liberti eius proditam, ex qua penitus Aegyptiorum vita detegatur. VIII. 1 ‘Hadrianus Augustus Serviano consuli salutem. Aegyptum, quam mihi laudabas, Serviane carissime, totam didici levem, pendulam et ad omnia famae momenta volitantem. 2 illic qui Serapem colunt, C<h>ristiani sunt et devoti sunt Serapi, qui se C<h>risti episcopos dicunt, nemo illic archisynagogus Iud<a>eorum, nemo Samarites, nemo C<h>ristianorum presbyter non mathematicus, non haruspex, non aliptes. 4 ipse ille patriarcha cum Aegyptum venerit, ab aliis Serapidem adorare, ab aliis cogitur Christum. 5 genus hominum seditiosissimum, vanissimum, iniuriosissimun, civitas opulenta, dives, fecunda, in qua nemo vivat otiosus. 6 alii vitrum, conflant, aliis c<h>arth[h]a conficitur, omnes certe linifiones <aut> cuiuscumque artis et <professionis> videntur; et habent podagrosi, quod agant, habent <prae>cisi, quod agant, habent caeci, quod faciant, ne chiragrici quidem apud eos otiosi vivunt. unus illis deus nummus est. 7 hunc Christiani, hunc Iud<a>ei, hunc omnes venerantur et gentes. et utinam melius esset morata civitas, digna profecto, quae pro sui f<ec>unditate, quae pro sui magnitudine totius Aegypti tenea[n]t principatum. 8 huic ego cuncta concessi, vetera privilegia reddidi, nova sic addidi, ut praesenti gratias agerent. denique ut primum inde discessi, et in filium meum Verum multa dixerint, et de Antin[in]o<o> quae dixerint, comperisse te credo. 9 nihil illis opto, nisi ut suis pullis alantur, quos quem ad modum fecundant, pudet dicere. 10 calices tibi allassontes <di>versi coloris transmisi, quos mihi sacerdos templi obtulit, tibi et sorori meae specialiter dedicatos, quos tu velim festis diebus conviviis adhibeas. caveas tamen, ne his Africanus noster indulgenter utatur.’

Translation (Lacus Curtius): “VII. 1 Saturninus was a Gaul by birth, one of a nation that is ever most restless and always desirous of creating either an emperor or an empire. 2 To this man, above all the other generals, because it seemed certain that he was truly the greatest, Aurelian had given the command of the Eastern frontier, wisely charging him never to visit Egypt. 3 For, as we see, this far-sighted man was well acquainted with the Gallic character and feared that if Saturninus visited this turbulent land he might be drawn by association with the inhabitants to a course toward which he was by nature inclined. 4 For the Egyptians, as you know well enough, are puffed up, madmen, boastful, doers of injury, and, in fact, liars and without restraint, always craving something new, in their popular songs, writers of verse, makers of epigrams, astrologers, soothsayers, quacksalvers. 5 Among them, indeed, are Christians and Samaritans and those who are always ill-pleased by the present, though enjoying unbounded liberty. 6 But, lest any Egyptian be angry with me, thinking that what I have set forth in writing is solely my own, I will cite one of Hadrian’s letters, taken from the works of his freedman Phlegon, which fully reveals the character of the Egyptians. VIII. 1 From Hadrian Augustus to Servianus the consul, greeting. The land of Egypt, the praises of which you have been recounting to me, my dear Servianus, I have found to be wholly light-minded, unstable, and blown about by every breath of rumour. 2 There those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are, in fact, devotees of Serapis. 3 There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer. 4 Even the Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Christ. 5 They are a folk most seditious, most deceitful, most given to injury; but their city is prosperous, rich, and fruitful, and in it no one is idle. 6 Some are blowers of glass, others makers of paper, all are at least weavers of linen or seem to belong to one craft or another; the lame have their occupations, the eunuchs have theirs, the blind have theirs, and not even those whose hands are crippled are idle. 7 Their only god is money, and this the Christians, the Jews, and, in fact, all nations adore. And would that this city had a better character, for indeed it is worthy by reason of its richness and by reason of its size to hold the chief place in the whole of Egypt. 8 I granted it every favour, I restored to it all its ancient rights and bestowed on it new ones besides, so that the people gave thanks to me while I was present among them. Then, no sooner had I departed thence than they said many things against my son Verus, and what they said about Antinous I believe you have learned. 9 I can only wish for them that they may live on their own chickens, which they breed in a fashion I am ashamed to describe. [According to Aristotle, Hist. Anim. vi.2, they hatched the eggs by burying them in dung-heaps.] 10 I am sending you over some cups, changing colour and variegated, presented to me by the priest of a temple and now dedicated particularly to you and my sister. I should like you to use them at banquets on feast-days. Take good care, however, that our dear Africanus does not use them too freely.”

This letter has been thought by some to be spurious, but Lightfoot, amongst the more reputable critics, accepted it as genuine.

33a. On Basilides as the disciple of Menander, and he of Simon Magus, see Theodoretus, Hist. Fab. I. ii (and ibid. i).

33b. Montfaucon, Palaeographia Graeca, Paris, 1708, p. 178.

33c. Elements of Gnostic Concepts in Depictions on Magical Gems, Bakowska-Czerner, The Polish Journal of the Arts and Culture No. 13 (1/2015), p. 33.

34. This is the “great multitude” martyred under Nero, I Clement, 6 and Tacitus, Annals, XV. 44.

35. Philippians, 1. 12-18: “12 But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel; 13 So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places; 14 And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. 15 Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: 16 The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds: 17 But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. 18 What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” Ibid., 3. 2-3, 17-21: “2 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. 3 For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. 17 Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. 18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) 20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.” Compare Romans, 16. 18: “For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words (CHRESTOlogia) and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.”

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