Book VIII, where he speaks of the seed of the fig-tree as “a refuge for

the terror-stricken, a shelter for the naked, a veil for modesty, and the sought-for produce to which the Lord came in search of fruit three times and found none.”[73] But it is naturally in the phrases of the pastoral address with which Book X ends that the most salient examples occur. Thus, the unconverted are told that by being instructed in the knowledge of the true God, they will escape the imminent menace of the judgment fire, and the unillumined vision of gloomy Tartarus, and the burning of the everlasting shore of the Gehenna of fire, and the eye of the Tartaruchian angels in eternal punishment, and the worm that ever coils as if for food round the body whence it was bred,[74]--or, as he might have said in one word, the horrors of hell.

Less distinctive than this, although equally noticeable, is the play of words which is here frequently employed. This is not unknown among other ecclesiastical writers of the time, and seems to have struck Charles Kingsley when, fresh from a perusal of St. Augustine, he describes him as “by a sheer mistranslation” twisting one of the Psalms to mean what it never meant in the writer’s mind, and what it never could mean, and then punning on the Latin version.[75] Hippolytus when writing in his own person makes but moderate use of this figure. Sometimes he does so legitimately enough, as when he speaks of the Gnostics initiating a convert into their systems and delivering to him “the perfection of wickedness”--the word used for perfection having the mystic or technical meaning of initiation as well as the more ordinary one of completion[76]; or when he says that the measurements of stellar distances by Ptolemy have led to the construction of measureless “heresies.”[77] At others he consciously puns on the double meaning of a word, as when he says that those who venture upon orgies are not far from the wrath (ὀργή) of God.[78] Sometimes, again, he is led away by a merely accidental similarity of sounds as when he tries to connect the name of the Docetæ, which he knows is taken from δοκεῖν, “to seem,” with “the _beam_ (δοκός) in the eye” of the Sermon on the Mount.[79] He makes a second and more obvious pun on the same word later when he says that the Docetæ do more than _seem_ to be mad; but he is most shameless when he derives “prophet” from προφαίνειν instead of πρόφημι[80]--a perversion which one can hardly imagine entering into the head of any one with the most modest acquaintance with Greek grammar.

But these puns, bad as they are, are venial compared with some of the authors from whom he quotes. None can equal in this respect the efforts of the Naassene author, whose plays upon words and audacious derivations might put to the blush those in the _Cratylus_. Adamas and Adam, Corybas and κορυφή (the head), Geryon and Γηρυόνην (“flowing from earth”), Mesopotamia and “a river from the middle,” Papas and παῦε, παῦε (“Cease! cease!”), Αἰπόλος (“goat herd”) and ἀεὶ πολῶν (“ever turning”), _naas_ (“serpent”) and ναός (“temple”), Euphrates and εὐφραίνει (“he rejoices”) are but a few of the terrible puns he perpetrates.[81] The Peratic author is more sober in this respect, and yet he, or perhaps Hippolytus for him, derives the name of the sect from περᾶν (“to pass beyond”),[82] although Theodoret with more plausibility would take it from the nationality of its teacher Euphrates the Peratic or Mede; and the chapter on the Sethians does not contain a single pun. Yet that on Justinus makes up for this by deriving the name of the god Priapus from πριοποιέω, a word made up for the occasion.[83] “The great Gnostics of Hadrian’s time,” viz.:--Basilides, Marcion and Valentinus, seem to have had souls above such puerilities; but the Docetic author resumes the habit with a specially daring parallel between Βάτος (“a bush”) and βάτος (Hera’s robe or “mist”)[84] and Monoimus the Arab follows suit with a sort of jingle between the Decalogue and the δεκάπληγος or ten plagues of Egypt, which would hardly have occurred to any one without the Semitic taste for assonance.[85] Of the less-quoted writers there is no occasion to speak, because there are either no extracts from their works given in our text or they are too short for us to judge from them whether they, too, were given to punning.

Apart from such comparatively small matters, however, the difference in style between the several Gnostic writers here quoted is well marked. Nothing can be more singular at first sight than the way in which the Naassene author expresses himself. It seems to the reader on the first perusal of his lucubrations as if the writer had made up his mind to follow no train of thought beyond the limits of a single sentence. Beginning with the idea of the First Man, which we find running like a thread through so many Eastern creeds, from that of the Cabalists among the Jews to the Manichæans who perhaps took it directly from its primitive source in Babylon,[86] he immediately turns from this to declare the tripartite division of the universe and everything it contains, including the souls and natures of men, and to inculcate the strictest asceticism. Yet all this is written round, so to speak, a hymn to Attis which he declares relates to the Mysteries of the Mother with several allusions to the most secret rites of the Eleusinian Demeter and, as it would appear, of those of the Greek Isis. The Peratic author, on the other hand, also teaches a tripartite division of things and souls, but draws his proofs not from the same mystic sources as the Naassene but from what Hippolytus declares to be the system of the astrologers. This system, which is not even hinted at in any avowedly astrological work, is that the stars are the cause of all that happens here below, and that we can only escape from their sway into one of the two worlds lying above ours by the help of Christ, here called the Perfect Serpent, existing as an intermediary between the Father of All and Matter. Yet this doctrine, which we can also read without much forcing of the text into the rhapsody of the Naassene, is stated with all the precision and sobriety of a scientific proposition, and is as entirely free from the fervour and breathlessness of the last-named writer as it is from his perpetual allusions to the Greek and especially to the Alexandrian and Anatolian mythology.[87] Both these again are perfectly different in style from the “Sethian” author from whom Hippolytus gives us long extracts, and who seems to have trusted mainly to an imagery which is entirely opposed to all Western conventions of modesty.[88] Yet all three aver the strongest belief in the Divinity and Divine Mission of Jesus, whom they identify with the Good Serpent, which was according to many modern authors the chief material object of adoration in every heathen temple in Asia Minor.[89] They are, therefore, rightly numbered by Hippolytus among the Ophite heresies, and seem to be founded upon traditions current throughout Western Asia which even now are not perhaps quite extinct. Yet each of the three authors quoted in our text writes in a perfectly different style from his two fellow heresiarchs, and this alone is sufficient to remove all doubt as to the genuineness of the document.

These three Ophite chapters are taken first because in our text they begin the heresiology strictly so called.[90] As has been said, the present writer believes them to be an interpolation made at the last moment by the author, and by no means the most valuable, though they are perhaps the most curious part of the book. They resemble much, however, in thought the quotations in our text attributed to Simon Magus, and although the ideas apparent in them differ in material points, yet there seems to be between the two sets of documents a kind of family likeness in the occasional use of bombastic language and unclean imagery. But when we turn from these to the extracts from the works attributed to Valentinus and Basilides which Hippolytus gives us, a change is immediately apparent. Here we have dignity of language corresponding to dignity of thought, and in the case of Valentinus especially the diction is quite equal to the passages from the discourses of that most eloquent heretic quoted by Clement of Alexandria. We feel on reading them that we have indeed travelled from the Orontes to the Tiber, and the difference in style should by itself convince the most sceptical critic at once of the good faith of our careless author and of the authenticity of the sources from which he has collected his information.

6. THE VALUE OF THE WORK

What interest has a work such as this of Hippolytus for us at the present day? In the first place it preserves for us many precious relics of a literature which before its discovery seemed lost for ever. The pagan hymn to Attis and the Gnostic one on the Divine Mission of Jesus, both appearing in Book V, are finds of the highest value for the study of the religious beliefs of the early centuries of our Era, and with these go many fragments of hardly less importance, including the Pindaric ode in the same book. Not less useful or less unexpected are the revelations in the same book of the true meaning of the syncretistic worship of Attis and Cybele, and the disclosure here made of the supreme mystery of the Eleusinian rites, which we now know for the first time culminated in the representation of a divine marriage and of the subsequent birth of an infant god, coupled with the symbolical display of an “ear of corn reaped in silence.” For the study of classical antiquity as well as for the science of religions such facts are of the highest value.

But all this will for most of us yield in interest to the picture which our text gives us of the struggles of Christianity against its external and internal foes during the first three centuries. So far from this period having been one of quiet growth and development for the infant Church, we see her in Hippolytus’ pages exposed not only to fierce if sporadic persecution from pagan emperors, but also to the steady and persistent rivalry of scores of competing schools led by some of the greatest minds of the age, and all combining some of the main tenets of Christianity with the relics of heathenism. We now know, too, that she was not always able to present an unbroken front to these violent or insidious assailants. In the highest seats of the Church, as we now learn for the first time, there were divisions on matters of faith which anticipated in some measure those which nearly rent her in twain after the promulgation of the Creed of Nicæa. Such a schism as that between the churches of Hippolytus and Callistus must have given many an opportunity to those foes who were in some sort of her own household; while round the contest, like the irregular auxiliaries of a regular army, swarmed a crowd of wonder-workers, diviners, and other exploiters of the public credulity, of whose doings we have before gained some insight from writers like Lucian and Apuleius, but whose methods and practices are for the first time fully described by Hippolytus.

The conversion of the whole Empire under Constantine broke once for all the power of these enemies of the Church. Schisms were still to occur, but grievous as they were, they happily proved impotent to destroy the essential unity of Christendom. The heathen faiths and the Gnostic sects derived from them were soon to wither like plants that had no root, and both they and the charlatans whose doings our author details were relentlessly hunted down by the State which had once given them shelter: while if the means used for this purpose were not such as the purer Christian ethics would now approve, we must remember that these means would probably have proved ineffective had not Christian teaching already destroyed the hold of these older beliefs on the seething populations of the Empire. That the adolescent Church should thus have been enabled to triumph over all her enemies may seem to many a better proof of her divine guidance than the miraculous powers once attributed to her. We may not all of us be able to believe that a rainstorm put out the fire on which Thekla was to be burned alive, or that the crocodiles in the tank in the arena into which she was cast were struck by lightning and floated to the surface dead.[91] Still less can we credit that the portraits of St. Theodore and other military saints left their place in the palace of the Queen of Persia and walked about in human form.[92] Such stories are for the most of us either pious fables composed for edification or half-forgotten records of natural events seen through the mist of exaggeration and misrepresentation common in the Oriental mind. But that the Church which began like a grain of mustard seed should in so short a time come to overshadow the whole civilized world may well seem when we consider the difficulties in her way a greater miracle than any of those recorded in the Apocryphal Gospels and Acts; and the full extent of these difficulties we should not have known save for Mynas’ discovery of our text.

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: pp. 63, 117, 119; Vol. II, 148, 150 _infra_.]

[Footnote 2: Hippolytus, like all Greek writers of his age, must have been entirely ignorant of the Egyptian religion of Pharaonic times, which was then extinct. The only “Egyptian” Mysteries of which he could have known anything were those of the Alexandrian Triad, Osiris, Isis, and Horus, for which see the translator’s _Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity_, Cambridge, 1915, I, c. 2.]

[Footnote 3: The pre-Christian origins of Gnosticism and its relations with Christianity are fully dealt with in the work quoted in the last note.]

[Footnote 4: Save for a few sentences quoted in patristic writings, the only extant Gnostic works are the Coptic collection in the British Museum and the Bodleian at Oxford, known as the _Pistis Sophia_ and the Bruce Papyrus respectively. There are said to be some other fragments of Coptic MSS. of Gnostic origin in Berlin which have not yet been published.]

[Footnote 5: An account by the present writer of this worship in Roman times is given in the _Journal_ of the Royal Asiatic Society for October 1917, pp. 695 ff.]

[Footnote 6: II, pp. 125 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 7: II, p. 124 _infra_.]

[Footnote 8: The facsimile of a page of the MS. is given in Bishop Wordsworth’s _Hippolytus and the Church of Rome_, London, 1880.]

[Footnote 9: B. E. Miller, _Origenis Philosophumena sive Omnium Hæresium Refutatio_, Oxford, 1851.]

[Footnote 10: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, _Philosophumena_, etc. Göttingen, 1856-1859.]

[Footnote 11: P. M. Cruice, _Philosophumena_, etc. Paris, 1860.]

[Footnote 12: p. 34 _infra_.]

[Footnote 13: _Deutsche Zeitschrift für Christliche Wissenschaft und Christliches Leben_, 1852.]

[Footnote 14: References to nearly all the contributions to this controversy are correctly given in the Prolegomena to Cruice’s edition, pp. x ff. An English translation of Dr. Döllinger’s _Hippolytus und Kallistus_ was published by Plummer, Edinburgh, 1876, and brings the controversy up to date. Cf. also the Bibliography in Salmon’s article “Hippolytus Romanus” in Smith and Wace’s _Dictionary of Christian Biography_ (hereafter quoted as _D.C.B._).]

[Footnote 15: See the English translation: _Early History of the Christian Church_, London, 1909, I, pp. 227 ff.]

[Footnote 16: This is confirmed by Dom. Chapman in the _Catholic Encyclopedia_, _s. vv._ “Hippolytus,” “Callistus.”]

[Footnote 17: The statue and its inscription are also reproduced by Bishop Wordsworth in the work above quoted.]

[Footnote 18: _Hist. Eccles._, VI, c. 20.]

[Footnote 19: _Haer. Fab._, III, 1.]

[Footnote 20: _Peristeph II._ For the chronological difficulty that this involves see Salmon, _D.C.B._, _s.v._ “Hippolytus Romanus.”]

[Footnote 21: Duchesne, _op. cit._, p. 233.]

[Footnote 22: “The Cross-references in the Philosophumena,” _Hermathena_, Dublin, No. XI, 1885, pp. 389 ff.]

[Footnote 23: “Die Gnostischen Quellen Hippolyts” in Gebhardt and Harnack’s _Texte und Untersuchungen_, VI, (1890).]

[Footnote 24: _Introduction à l’Étude du Gnosticisme_, Paris, 1903, p. 68; _Gnostiques et Gnosticisme_, Paris, 1913, p. 167.]

[Footnote 25: The theory that all existing things come from an “indivisible point” which our text gives as that of Simon Magus and of Basilides reappears in the Bruce Papyrus. Basilides’ remark about only 1 in 1000 and 2 in 10,000 being fit for the higher mysteries is repeated _verbatim_ in the _Pistis Sophia_, p. 354, Copt. Cf. _Forerunners_, II, 172, 292, n. 1.]

[Footnote 26: _Scottish Review_, Vol. XXII, No. 43 (July 1893).]

[Footnote 27: p. 35 _infra_.]

[Footnote 28: p. 39 _infra_.]

[Footnote 29: p. 41; II, p. 83 _infra_.]

[Footnote 30: II, pp. 119, 151 _infra_.]

[Footnote 31: For the arithmomancy see p. 83 ff. _infra_; the borrowings from Sextus begin on p. 70, the tricks of the magicians on p. 92. For other mistakes, see the quotation about the Furies in II, p. 23, which he ascribes to Pythagoras, but which is certainly from Heraclitus (as Plutarch tells us), and the Categories of Aristotle which a few pages earlier are also assigned to Pythagoras. His treatment of Josephus will be dealt with in its place.]

[Footnote 32: This is especially the case with the story of Callistus, as to which see II, pp. 124 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 33: _Haer._ xxxi., p. 205, Oehler.]

[Footnote 34: _Haeret. fab._ I, 17-24.]

[Footnote 35: πάλαι.]

[Footnote 36: In _D.C.B._, _art. cit. supra_.]

[Footnote 37: See Oehler’s edition of Tertullian’s works, II, 751 ff. The parallel passages are set out in convenient form in Bishop Wordsworth’s book before quoted.]

[Footnote 38: _Études sur de nouveaux documents historiques empruntés à l’ouvrage récemment découvert des Philosophumena_, Paris, 1853.]

[Footnote 39: II, pp. 43, 47 _infra_.]

[Footnote 40: ὁμιλοῦντος Εἰρηναίου. For the whole quotation, see Photius, _Bibliotheca_, 121 (Bekker’s ed.).]

[Footnote 41: Tertullian (Oehler’s ed.), II, 751. St. Jerome in quoting this passage says the heretics have mangled the Gospel.]

[Footnote 42: Thus the tractate makes Simon Magus call his Helena Sophia, and says that Basilides named his Supreme God Abraxas. It knows nothing of the God-who-is-not and the three Sonhoods of our text: and it gives an entirely different account of the Sethians, whom it calls Sethitæ, and says that they identified Christ with Seth. In this heresy, too, it introduces Sophia, and makes her the author of the Flood.]

[Footnote 43: Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._ IV, c. 22. He is quoting Hegesippus. See also Origen _contra Celsum_, VI, c. 11.]

[Footnote 44: II, p. 3 _infra_.]

[Footnote 45: II, pp. 61 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 46: pp. 103, 119; II, pp. 1, 57, 148, 149 _infra_.]

[Footnote 47: p. 66 _infra_.]

[Footnote 48: p. 117 _infra_.]

[Footnote 49: II, p. 97 _infra_.]

[Footnote 50: II, p. 116 _infra_.]

[Footnote 51: p. 37 _infra_.]

[Footnote 52: p. 115 _infra_.]

[Footnote 53: II, p. 20. In II, p. 49, it is mentioned in connection with the heresy of Marcus, and on p. 104 the same theory is attributed to the “Egyptians.”]

[Footnote 54: p. 66; II, pp. 21, 64 _infra_.]

[Footnote 55: ἀγαπητοί, p. 113 and p. 180 _infra_. It also occurs on p. 125 of Vol. II in the same connection.]

[Footnote 56: λόγος, pp. 107 and 120 _infra_. He uses the word in the same sense on p. 113.]

[Footnote 57: p. 35 _infra_.]

[Footnote 58: p. 117 _infra_.]

[Footnote 59: Pseudo-Hieronymus, Isidorus Hispalensis, and Honorius Augustodunensis, like Epiphanius, begin their catalogues of heresies with the Jewish and Samaritan sects. Philastrius leads off with the Ophites and Sethians whom he declares to be pre-Christian, and then goes on to Dositheus, and the Jewish “heresies” before coming to Simon Magus. Pseudo-Augustine and Prædestinatus begin with Simon Magus and include no pre-Christian sects. See Oehler, _Corpus Hæreseologicus_, Berlin, 1866, t. i.]

[Footnote 60: II, p. 150 _infra_.]

[Footnote 61: δόγματα, p. _cit_.]

[Footnote 62: So Origen, _Cont. Cels._, VI, 24, speaks of “the very insignificant sect called Ophites.”]

[Footnote 63: II, p. 116 _infra_, where he says that he did not think them worth refuting.]

[Footnote 64: For the search made both by pagan and Christian inquisitors for their opponents’ books, see _Forerunners_, II, 12.]

[Footnote 65: See n. on p. 51 _infra_.]

[Footnote 66: Cf. Salmon in _D.C.B._, s.v. “Hippolytus Romanus.”]

[Footnote 67: Hippolytus’ denial of the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews probably appeared in some work other than our text. Or it may have been cut out by the scribe as offensive to orthodoxy.]

[Footnote 68: A flagrant case is to be found in p. 81 Cr. where Π (P) has, according to Schneidewin, been written for R, a mistake that could only be made by one used to Roman letters. Cf. _Serpens_ and _serviens_, p. 487 Cr.]

[Footnote 69: ἀφότε for ἀφ’ οὗ, p. 453 Cr.]

[Footnote 70: _e. g._ φυσιογονική (p. 9 Cr.), κοπιαταὶ (p. 86), ἰχθυοκόλλα (p. 103), ἀρχανθρώπος (p. 153), ἀπρονοήτος (p. 176), κλεψιλόγος (p. 370), πρωτογενέτειρα (p. 489), κατιδιοποιούμενος (p. 500), ἀδίστακτος (p. 511), ταρταρούχος (p. 523).]

[Footnote 71: p. 35 _infra_.]

[Footnote 72: p. 166 _infra_.]

[Footnote 73: II, p. 99 _infra_.]

[Footnote 74: II, pp. 177 ff.]

[Footnote 75: See Augustine’s sermon in _Hypatia_.]

[Footnote 76: p. 33 _infra_.]

[Footnote 77: p. 83 _infra_.]

[Footnote 78: II, p. 2 _infra_.]

[Footnote 79: II, p. 99 _infra_.]

[Footnote 80: II, p. 175 _infra_.]

[Footnote 81: See pp. 122, 133, 134, 135, 137, 142, 143 _infra_.]

[Footnote 82: p. 154 _infra_.]

[Footnote 83: p. 178 _infra_.]

[Footnote 84: II, p. 102.]

[Footnote 85: II, p. 109.]

[Footnote 86: See _Forerunners_, I, lxi ff.]

[Footnote 87: This applies to the chief Peratic author quoted. The long catalogue connecting personages in the Greek mythology with particular stars is, as is said later, by another hand, and is introduced by a bombastic utterance like that attributed to Simon Magus.]

[Footnote 88: Hippolytus attributes it to the Orphics; but see de Faye for another explanation.]

[Footnote 89: _Forerunners_, II, 49.]

[Footnote 90: Justinus is left out of the account because he does not seem to have been an Ophite at all. The Serpent in his system is entirely evil, and therefore not an object of worship, and his sect is probably much later than the other three in the same book.]

[Footnote 91: _Acts of Paul and Thekla_, _passim_.]

[Footnote 92: E. A. T. Wallis Budge, _Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in Dialect of Upper Egypt_, London, 1915, pp. 579 ff.]