CHAPTER VIII

POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE OPHITES

Although the Ophites were one of the most widely-spread and in some respects the most interesting of the heretical sects which came to light after the foundation of the Christian Church, we know nothing at first hand about their origin. Philastrius, or Philaster of Brescia, writing about 380 A.D., includes them among those “who taught heresies before the Coming of Christ[79]”; but the phrase does not perhaps bear its apparent meaning, and the late date at which he wrote makes it unlikely that he possessed any exclusive evidence on the point. A more plausible tradition, which is common to St Augustine[80], to the tractate _Against All Heresies_ which passes under the name of Tertullian[81], and to the similar one attributed to St Jerome[82], is that the Ophites derived their doctrines from Nicolaus or Nicolas of Antioch, the deacon mentioned in the Acts[83], and that they are therefore alluded to under the name of Nicolaitans[84] in the address to the Church of Ephesus in the Canonical Apocalypse. Origen, on the other hand, in his _Discourse against Celsus_ says that they boasted of one Euphrates as their founder[85]; while Hippolytus declares that their tenets were said by themselves to be due to “the very numerous discourses which were handed down by James the brother of the Lord to Mariamne[86].” From which contradictory statements we may gather that the “heresy” of the Ophites was, even as early as 230 A.D., a very old one, which may have appeared even before Christianity began to show its power, and that it was probably born in Asia Minor and owed much to the Pagan religions there practised and little or nothing to any dominant personality as did the systems of Simon Magus and the heresies treated of in the succeeding chapters.

It is also probable that between the time when the Canonical Apocalypse was written and that of Origen and Hippolytus[87], the Ophites altered their doctrines more than once. We may not be able to go so far as their historian, Father Giraud, who thinks that he can distinguish between their earlier opinions, which he would attribute to the Naassenes or Ophites[88] described by Hippolytus, and those of a later school to which he would assign the name of Ophites specially[89]. Yet many of the Fathers confuse their doctrines with those of the Sethians, the Cainites, and other sects which seem to have had some distinguishing features[90]; while Hippolytus, who shows a more critical spirit than the other heresiologists, says expressly that the other heresies just named were little different in appearance from this one, being united by the same spirit of error[91]. The confusion is further increased by his statement that the Naassenes called themselves Gnostics, although Carpocrates’ followers, who must have been later in time, are elsewhere said to be the first to adopt this name[92]. For there was at least one other sect of heretics who did the same thing, and to whom Epiphanius in his _Panarion_ attributes, together with a theological and cosmological system not unlike that hereafter described, mysteries of unnameable obscenity with which the Ophites were never charged[93]. In this respect it may be as well to remember the words of Tertullian that the heretics

“know no respect even for their own leaders. Hence it is that schisms seldom happen among heretics because, even when they exist, they do not appear; for their very unity is schism. I am greatly in error,” he continues, “if they do not amongst themselves even diverge from their own rules, since every man, as it suits his own temper, modifies the traditions he has received after the same fashion as did he who handed them down to him, when he moulded them according to his own free will.... What was allowed to Valentinus is allowable to the Valentinians, and that is lawful for the Marcionites which Marcion did, _i.e._ to innovate on the faith according to his own judgment. In short, all heresies when investigated are found to be in many particulars disagreeing with their own authors[94].”

If Tertullian was right, it is idle to expect that after the lapse of nineteen centuries we can hope to distinguish between the opinions of an heresiarch and those of his followers who differed from or improved upon his teaching.

Of the country in which the Ophites first appeared, and where to the last they had their strongest following, there can, however, be little doubt. Phrygia, by which is meant the entire central part of Asia Minor or, to use its modern name, Anatolia, must from its situation have formed a great meeting-place for different creeds, among which that of the Jews occupied in the first centuries of our era a prominent place. Seleucus Nicator had followed the example of Alexander in Egypt in granting the Jews full rights of citizenship in all his cities, and Antiochus the Great took even more practical steps towards inducing them to settle there when he transported thither two thousand Jewish families from Mesopotamia and Babylon[95]. These Jews of the Eastern Diaspora or Dispersion had, however, by no means kept whole the faith of their forefathers, and there seems in consequence to have been less racial hatred between them and the earlier inhabitants of the country here than elsewhere[96]. In religious matters, these last, too, seem to have been little affected by the Euhemerism that had destroyed the faith of the more sophisticated Greeks, and the orgiastic worship of Cybele, Attis, and Sabazius found in Phrygia its principal seat. The tendency of the inhabitants towards religious hysteria was not likely to be lessened by the settlement in the centre of Asia Minor of the Celtic tribes known as the Galatae, who had gradually passed under the Roman yoke in the time of Augustus, but seem long to have retained their Celtic taste for innovations in religious matters, and to have supplied from the outset an endless number of heresies to the Church[97]. Moreover, in the Wars of Succession which followed the death of Alexander, Phrygia had been bandied about like a shuttlecock between Antigonus and Lysimachus; in the decadence of the Seleucid house, it had been repeatedly harried by the pretenders to the Syrian crown; and it had, during the temporary supremacy of Mithridates and his son-in-law Tigranes, been subject to the tyranny of the Armenians[98]. Thanks to the policy of these barbarian kings, it had in great measure been denuded of its Greek-speaking inhabitants[99], the growth of its towns had been checked, and the country seems to have been practically divided among a crowd of dynasts or priest-kings, generally the high-priests of temples possessing vast landed estates and preserving their importance by the celebration of yearly festivals. Dr Mahaffy compares these potentates with the prince-bishops and lordly abbots produced by nearly the same conditions in mediaeval Europe[100], and Sir William Ramsay’s and Mr Hogarth’s researches of late years in Anatolia have shown how much truth there is in the comparison.

The religion practised by these priest-kings throughout the whole of Asia Minor differed slightly in form, but was one in substance[101]. It was in effect the worship of the bisexual and mortal gods whom we have already seen worshipped under varying names in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean. These deities, whose alternate appearance as male and female, infant and adult, could only be explained to Western ears as the result of incestuous unions, could all on final analysis be reduced to one great divinity in whom all Nature was contained. The essence of the Anatolian religion, says Sir William Ramsay, when describing the state of things that existed in Phrygia immediately before the preaching of St Paul, was

“the adoration of the life of Nature—that life apparently subject to death, yet never dying, but reproducing itself in new forms, different and yet the same. This perpetual self-identity under varying forms, this annihilation of death through the power of self-reproduction, was the object of an enthusiastic worship, characterized by remarkable self-abandonment and immersion in the divine, by a mixture of obscene symbolism and sublime truths, by negation of the moral distinctions and family ties that exist in a more developed society, but do not exist in the free life of Nature. The mystery of self-reproduction, of eternal unity amid temporary diversity, is the key to explain all the repulsive legends and ceremonies that cluster round that worship, and all the manifold manifestations or diverse embodiments of the ultimate single divine life that are carved on the rocks of Asia Minor[102].”

Whether the Phrygians of Apostolic times actually saw all these sublime ideas underlying the religion of their country may be doubted; but it is fairly certain that at the time in question there was worshipped throughout Anatolia a divine family comprising a goddess known as the Mother of the Gods, together with a male deity, who was at once her son, her spouse, her brother, and sometimes her father[103]. The worship of this pair, who were in the last resort considered as one bisexual being, was celebrated in the form of festivals and mystery-plays like those of the Middle Ages, in which the birth, nuptials, death, and resurrection of the divinities were acted in dramatic form. At these festivals, the worshippers gave themselves up to religious excitement alternating between continence sometimes carried to the extent of self-mutilation on the part of the men, and hysterical or religious prostitution on the part of the women[104]. The gathering of foreign merchants and slaves in the Anatolian cities, and the constant shifting of their inhabitants by their successive masters, had forced on the votaries of these Phrygian deities a _theocrasia_ of the most complete kind, and the Phrygian god and goddess were in turn identified with the deities of Eleusis, of whom indeed they may have been the prototypes, with the Syrian Aphrodite and Adonis, with the Egypto-Greek Serapis and Isis, and probably with many Oriental deities as well[105]. At the same time, their fame and their worship had spread far beyond Phrygia. The primitive statue of the goddess of Pessinus, a black stone or baetyl dignified by the name of the Mother of the Gods, was transported to Rome in the stress of the Second Punic War and there became the centre of a ritual served by eunuch priests supported by the State[106]; while, later, her analogue, the Syrian goddess, whose temple at Hierapolis, according to Lucian, required a _personnel_ of over three hundred ministrants, became the object of the special devotion of the Emperor Nero[107]. As with the Alexandrian divinities, the respect paid to these stranger deities by the legions carried their worship into every part of the Roman world[108].

The element which the Jews of Asia contributed to Anatolian religion at this period was probably more important than has been generally supposed. M. Cumont’s theory that the epithet of the “Highest” (Ὕψιστος) often applied to the God of Anatolia and Syria really covers the personality of Yahweh of Israel rests upon little proof at present[109]. It may be conceded that the tendency to monotheism—or to speak strictly their hatred for the worshippers of many gods—rooted in the Jews from the Captivity onwards may at first have done much to hasten the progress of the _theocrasia_ which was welding all the gods of the Mysteries into one great God of Nature. But the Babylonian or Oriental Jews, called in the Talmud and elsewhere the Ten Tribes, probably had some inborn sympathy with the more or less exalted divinities of the West. Even in the temple of Jerusalem, Ezekiel sees in his vision “women weeping for Tammuz[110],” while Jeremiah complains of the Jews making cakes to the Queen of Heaven, which seems to be another name for the Mother of the Gods[111]. The feminine side of the Anatolian worship can therefore have come to them as no new thing. Perhaps it was due to this that they so soon fell away from their ancestral faith, and that, in the words of the Talmud, “the baths and wines of Phrygia separated the Ten Tribes from their brethren[112].” That their collection of money for the Temple in Roman times was due not so much to any religious motive, as to some of the financial operations in which the Jews were always engaging, Cicero hints with fair plainness in his Oration in defence of Flaccus[113]. They seem, too, to have intermarried freely with the Greek citizens, while the sons of these mixed marriages did not undergo the circumcision which the Jews of the Western Dispersion demanded not only from native Jews but also from proselytes of alien blood[114].

The Jews also brought with them into Phrygia superstitions or side-beliefs to which they were probably much more firmly attached than to their national religion. The practice of magic had always been popular among the Chosen People as far back as the time of Saul, and the bowls inscribed with spells against enchantments and evil spirits form almost the only relics which they have left in the mounds which mark their settlement at Hilleh on the site of the ancient Babylon[115]. From this and other evidence, it would seem that the Babylonian Jews had borrowed from their Chaldaean captors many of their views as to the importance of the Name in magic, especially when used for the purposes of exorcism or of spells; that they thought the name of their national god Yahweh particularly efficacious; and that the different names of God used in the Old Testament were supposed, according to a well-known rule in magic, to be of greater efficiency as the memory of their meaning and actual significance died out among them[116]. The Babylonian Jews, moreover, as is evident from the Book of Daniel, no sooner found themselves among the well-to-do citizens of a great city than they turned to the professional practice of divination and of those curious arts whereby they could make a living from the credulity of their Gentile neighbours without the manual labour always dreaded by them[117]. Hence Phrygia, like the rest of Asia Minor during the Apostolic Age, was full of strolling Jewish sorcerers who undertook for money to cast out devils, to effect and destroy enchantments, to send and interpret dreams, and to manufacture love philtres[118]. That in doing so they made great use of the name of their national deity seems plain from Origen’s remark that “not only do those belonging to the Jewish nation employ in their prayers to God and in the exorcising of demons the words: God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob, but so also do most of those who occupy themselves with magical rites. For there is found in treatises on magic in many countries such an invocation of God and assumption of the divine name, as implies a familiar use of it by these men in their dealings with demons[119].” This is abundantly borne out by the spells preserved for us by the Magic Papyri before mentioned, where the expressions “God of Abraham,” “God of Isaac,” “God of Jacob” constantly occur. One spell given above contains, as we have seen, along with many unfamiliar expressions drawn from Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and even Sumerian sources, the words “Blessed be the Lord God of Abraham[120],” and in nearly every one do we find the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of God transliterated in the A.V. Jehovah, either with or without some of the other Divine names used in the Old Testament. The names of the angels Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael given in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha are also common in all this literature[121].

Did the Babylonian Jews bring with them into Phrygia any theory of the universe other than the direct and unfettered rule of Jehovah and the creation of the world from nothing, which they gathered from their sacred books? There is little evidence on the point, save some expressions of doubtful import in the Magic Papyri[122] and the statement of Origen that “the name Sabaoth, and Adonai and the other names treated with so much reverence among the Hebrews ... belong to a secret theology which refers to the Framer of all things[123].” It might be possible to deduce from this that the elaborate system known as the Cabala or secret tradition of the Jews was already in existence[124]. This system, on its theoretical or speculative side, attempts to explain the existence of the physical universe by postulating a whole series of intermediate powers emanating from the Supreme Being of whom they are the attributes or names; while, on the other or “practical,” it professes to perform wonders and to reveal mysteries by a childish juggling with letters in the shape of anagrams and acrostics or with their numerical values[125]. As has been said above, follies of this last-named kind were unknown neither to the later Orphics nor to the primitive Church, and might well be thought to have been acquired by the Jews during their stay in Babylon, where the Semitic inhabitants seem from a very early date and for magical reasons to have used numbers instead of letters in writing the names of their gods[126]. It would not have been difficult for them to have acquired at the same time from the Persian masters of Babylon the doctrine of emanation instead of creation which is to be found in the Zend Avesta as well as in all the post-Christian Gnostic systems. But there are other channels besides the Anatolian religion through which these ideas might have come into the West[127], and it will be better not to lay any stress upon this. That the Cabala in the complete form in which it appears in the books known as the _Sepher Jetzirah_ and the _Sepher Zohar_ does not go further back than the VIth or VIIth century of our era, seems to be the opinion of all those best qualified to judge in the matter. M. Isidore Loeb, who has given the most coherent and compact summary of Cabalistic teaching that has appeared of late years, finds its germs in Babylonian Judaism at about the same period which saw the blossoming of the Christian Gnostic sects, without going so far as to derive either of the later doctrines from the other[128].

However this may be, there is a fair consensus of opinion among the Fathers of the Church as to the doctrines current among those whom, for reasons to be presently seen, they called the Ophites or worshippers of the Serpent. The aim of the sect seems to have been to produce an eclectic system which should reconcile the religious traditions current from time immemorial in Western Asia with the worship of the Hellenized gods of Asia Minor, and the teachings of the already powerful Christian Church. With this view they went back to what is probably the earliest philosophical theory of the origin of the universe, and declared that before anything was, there existed God, but God conceived as an infinite ocean of divinity, too great and too remote to be apprehended by man’s intelligence, of whom and of whose attributes nothing could be known or said, and who could only be likened to a boundless sea. Something like this was the view of the earliest inhabitants of Babylonia, who declared that before heaven or earth or the gods came into being there was nothing but a vast waste of waters[129]. At some time or another, the same idea passed into Egypt, when the Egyptians attributed the beginning of things to Nu or the primaeval deep[130]; and it was probably the spread of this tradition into Ionia which induced Thales of Miletus, the earliest of the Ionian philosophers, to assert that water was the first of all things[131]. This unknowable and inaccessible power, the Ophites declared to be ineffable or impossible to name, and he was only referred to by them as Bythos or the Deep. The same idea and the same name were adopted by most of the later Gnostics[132].

From this unknowable principle or Father (Πατὴρ ἄγνωστος) there shone forth, according to the Ophites, a Primordial Light, infinite and incorruptible, which is the Father of all things subsequent to him[133]. Here they may have been inspired, not by the Babylonian, but by its derivative, the Jewish tradition given in the Book of Genesis[134]. But this Light was in effect, though not in name, the chief god of their system, and in Asia Minor the gods had never perhaps been imagined as existing in any but human form. Accordingly they described this Light as the First Man, meaning thereby no terrestrial creature, but a heavenly or archetypal man in whose likeness mankind was afterwards made[135]. From him came forth a second Light sometimes called his Ennoia or Thought, which expression seems to cover the idea that this Second Man or Son of Man, by both which names he was known to the Ophites, was not begotten in the ordinary way of mortals, but was produced from the First Man as a thought or concept is formed in the brain[136]. Or we may, to take another metaphor, regard this Ennoia as the rays of light which emanate or flow forth from a lamp or other source of light, but which have no independent existence and still remain connected with their parent. Such was the Ophite idea with regard to the two great Lights or the First and Second Man whom they refused to consider as separate, giving them both the name of Adamas, or the Unconquered, a classical epithet of the Hades already identified at Eleusis with Dionysos[137]. They also called them, as will be seen later, the Father-and-Son. In this, perhaps, they did not go outside the conception of the Anatolian religion, which always represented the Divine Son as the spouse of the goddess who gave him birth, and in this way eternally begetting himself. Thus, the Phrygian goddess Cybele under the name of Agdistis was said to be violently enamoured of Atys who was in effect her own son[138]. The same idea was familiar to the Egyptians, among whom more than one god is described as the “bull (_i.e._ male or husband) of his mother,” and it may thus have passed into the Alexandrian religion, where Horus was, as we have seen, often given instead of Osiris as the lover of Isis[139]. At Eleusis it was more modestly concealed under the myth which made Dionysos or Hades at once the ravisher of Persephone and her son by Zeus in serpent form—a myth which is summed up in the mystic phrase preserved by Clement of Alexandria that “The bull is the father of the serpent, and the serpent the father of the bull[140].”

Thus the Ophites accounted for the divinity who was in effect their Supreme God, the still higher Bythos, as we have seen, being put in the background as too awful for human consideration[141]. But it was still necessary to make manifest the feminine aspect of the deity which was always very prominent in Asia Minor. The Mother of the Gods, known as Ma in Lydia, Cybele in Phrygia proper, Artemis at Ephesus, the unnamed Syrian goddess at Hierapolis, and Aphrodite in Cyprus and elsewhere[142], was in the early Christian centuries the most prominent person in the Anatolian pantheon, a fact which Sir William Ramsay would attribute to the matriarchate, _Mutterrecht_, or custom of descent in the female line, which he thinks indigenous to Asia Minor. In the earliest Phrygian religion there seems little doubt that the supreme goddess was originally considered to be bisexual, and capable of production without male assistance, as is expressly stated in the legend of Agdistis or Cybele preserved by Pausanias[143], and perhaps hinted at in the stories of Amazons spread throughout the whole of Asia Minor. But it is probable that, as Sir William Ramsay himself says, this idea had become less prominent with the immigration from Europe of tribes of male warriors without female companions,[144] while Semitic influence was always against it. Hence the Ophites found themselves compelled to make their female deity inferior or posterior to their male. “Below these, again (_i.e._ below the First and Second Man or Father-and-Son),” says Irenaeus in reporting their doctrines, “is the Holy Spirit ... whom they call the First Woman[145].” Neither he nor Hippolytus gives us any direct evidence of the source whence this feminine Power was thought by them to have issued. But Hippolytus says without circumlocution that “this Man,” _i.e._ Adamas or the Father-and-Son, “is both male and female[146],” and he quotes the words of an Ophite hymn[147] addressed to him that: “_From_ thee is Father and _through_ thee is Mother, two names immortal, parents of Aeons, O thou citizen of heaven, Man of mighty name[148]!” Later, he puts in the mouth of the Naassene or Ophite writer from whom he repeatedly quotes, the phrase:

“The Spirit is where the Father and the Son are named, from whom and from the Father it is there born; and this (that is, the Spirit) is the many-named, myriad-eyed Incomprehensible One for whom every nature in different ways yearns,”

or in other words the soul or animating principle of Nature[149]. It therefore seems that the first Ophites made their Supreme God a triad like the Eleusinian, the Alexandrian, and the Anatolian, consisting of three persons two of whom were males and the third a female, or a Father, Mother, and Son, of whom the Son was but another and renewed form of the Father, while the union of all three was necessary to express every aspect of the Deity, who was nevertheless one in essence[150]. This threefold division of things, said the Ophites, ran through all nature “there being three worlds or universes: the angelic (that sent directly from God), the psychic, and the earthly or material; and three Churches: the Chosen, the Called, and the Captive[151].” The meaning of these names we shall see later when we consider the Ophite idea of the Apocatastasis[152] or return of the worlds to the Deity.

First, however, another Power had to be produced which should serve as an intermediary or ambassador from the Supreme Triad to the worlds below it. This necessity may have arisen from Plato’s view, adopted by Philo of Alexandria, that God was too high and pure to be contaminated by any contact with matter[153]. But it may also owe something to the idea common to all Orientals that a king or great man can only communicate with his inferiors through a _wakil_ or agent; and that this idea was then current in Phrygia seems plain from the story in the Acts of the Apostles that in the Lycaonian province Barnabas, who was of majestic presence, was adored and nearly sacrificed to as Zeus, while Paul, who was the principal speaker, was only revered as Hermes[154]. The later Ophite account of the production of this intermediary power or messenger which we find in Irenaeus is that the Father-and-Son “delighting in the beauty of the Spirit”—that is of the First Woman—“shed their light upon her” and thus brought into existence “an incorruptible light, the third man, whom they call Christos[155].” With this last addition the Divine Family was considered complete, and the same author tells us that Christos and his mother were “immediately drawn up into the incorruptible aeon which they call the veritable Church[156].” This seems to be the first appearance in Gnosticism of the use of the word Church as signifying what was later called the Pleroma or Fulness of the Godhead; but it may be compared to the “Great Council” apparently used in the same sense by some unidentified prophet quoted by Origen, of which Great Council Christ was said by the prophet to be the “Angel” or messenger[157].

From this perfect Godhead, the Ophites had to show the evolution of a less perfect universe, a problem which they approached in a way differing but slightly from that of Simon Magus. This last, as we have seen, interposed between God and our own world three pairs of “Roots” or Powers together with an intermediate world of aeons whose angels and authorities had brought our universe into existence. These angels purposely fashioned it from existing matter, the substance most removed from and hostile to God, in order that they might rule over it and thus possess a dominion of their own. But the Ophites went behind this conception, and made the first confusion of the Divine light with matter the result of an accident. The light, in Irenaeus’ account of their doctrines, shed by the Father-and-Son upon the Holy Spirit was so abundant that she could not contain it all within herself, and some of it therefore, as it were, boiled over and fell down[158], when it was received by that matter which they, like Simon, looked upon as existing independently[159]. They described this last as separated into four elements, water, darkness, the abyss, and chaos, which we may suppose to be different strata of the same substance, the uppermost layer being apparently the waste of waters mentioned in Genesis. Falling upon these waters, the superfluity of light of the Holy Spirit stirred them, although before immovable, to their lowest depths, and took from them a body formed apparently from the envelope of waters surrounding it. Then, rising again by a supreme effort from this contact, it made out of this envelope the visible heaven which has ever since been stretched over the earth like a canopy[160]. This superfluity of light which thus mingled with matter, the earlier Ophites called, like the authors of the Wisdom-literature, Sophia, and also Prunicos (meaning apparently the “substitute”) and described as bisexual[161]. Another and perhaps a later modification of their doctrine fabled that it sprang from the left side of the First Woman while Christos emerged from her right. They therefore called it Sinistra and declared it to be feminine only[162]. Both traditions agreed that this Sophia or Prunicos put forth a son without male assistance, that this son in like manner gave birth to another power and so on, until at last seven powers at seven removes sprang from Sophia. Each of them fashioned from matter a habitation, and these are represented as heavens or hemispheres stretched out one under the other, every one becoming less perfect as it gets further from the Primordial Light[163]. Irenaeus and Hippolytus are agreed that the first or immediate son of Sophia was called Ialdabaoth, a name which Origen says, in speaking of the Ophites, is taken from the art of magic, and which surely enough appears in nearly all the earlier Magic Papyri[164]. Hippolytus says that this Ialdabaoth was the Demiurge and father of the visible universe or phenomenal world[165]. Irenaeus also gives the names of the later “heavens, virtues, powers, angels, and builders” as being respectively Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloaeus, Oreus, and Astaphaeus or Astanpheus, which agrees with the Ophite document or Diagram to be presently mentioned[166]. The first four of these names are too evidently the names given in the Old Testament to Yahweh for us to doubt the assertion of the Fathers that by Ialdabaoth the Ophites meant the God of the Jews[167]. The last two names, Oreus and Astaphaeus, Origen also asserts to be taken from the art of magic, and may be supposed to have some connection with fire and water respectively[168]. It is probable that the later Ophites identified all these seven heavens with the seven astrological “planets,” _i.e._ Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon in probably that order[169].

How now did the earth on which we live come into being? The primitive Babylonians, whose ideas and culture were at a very early date spread over the whole of Asia Minor, conceived the earth not as a globe but as a circular boat like the ancient coracle, over which the heavens stretched like a canopy or hemisphere[170]. Hence we must regard these heavens of the planetary powers, Ialdabaoth and his progeny, as a series of covers fitting one within the other like, in the words of the Fathers, “juggling cups,” or to take another simile, the successive skins of an onion. The earth stretched below these, but was at the stage of creation at which we have arrived really without form and void, being the formless waste of waters which covered the denser darkness and chaos. The ordered shape which it afterwards assumed and which we now see, was, in the Ophite story, the result of the fall of no deity, angel, or heavenly power, but of Man. Irenaeus’ account of this Second Fall is that the six powers descended from Ialdabaoth began to quarrel with their progenitor for supremacy—an idea which perhaps is to be referred either to the Jewish tradition of the revolt of the angels or with more likelihood to the astrological ideas about the benefic and malefic planets[171]. This so enraged him that he glared in his wrath upon the underlying dregs of matter, and his thought (ἔννοια) implanted there took birth and shape[172]. This fresh son of his was possessed of a quality of the possession of which he himself had never given any evidence, and was called Nous or Intelligence like the male of Simon’s first syzygy or pair of roots. But he was said to be of serpent form (ὀφιόμορφος) because, as says the Naassene or Ophite author quoted by Hippolytus, “the serpent is the personification of the watery element,” and therefore, perhaps, the symbol of that external ocean which the ancients thought surrounded the inhabited world[173]. It seems more probable, however, that the Ophites were compelled to introduce this form because the serpent was worshipped everywhere in Asia Minor as the type of the paternal aspect of the earth-goddess’ consort[174]. This is best shown, perhaps, in the Eleusinian legend of Zeus and Persephone; but Alexander himself was said to have been begotten by Zeus in the form of a serpent, and no Phrygian goddess seems ever to have been portrayed without one[175]. So much was this the case that in the Apocryphal _Acta Philippi_ it is said that sacred serpents were kept in all the heathen temples in Asia. Hierapolis is, in the same document, called Ophioryma or the serpent’s stronghold, whence idolatry seems to be spoken of as the Echidna or Viper[176]. The connection of the serpent with the Sabazian rites has already been mentioned.

This Ophiomorphus, or god in serpent form, was in the later Ophite teaching the cause not only of man’s soul but of his passions. The Latin text of Irenaeus says that from him came “the spirit and the soul and all earthly things, whence all forgetfulness, and malice, and jealousy, and envy, and death came into being[177].” This was evidently written under the influence of the Christian idea that the serpent of Genesis was Satan or the Devil. But Hippolytus tells us, no doubt truly, that the Ophiomorphus of the earlier Ophites was in the opinion of his votaries a benevolent and beneficent power. After saying that they worship

“nothing else than Naas, whence they are called Naassenes, and that they say that to this Naas (or serpent) alone is dedicated every temple, and that he is to be found in every mystery and initiatory rite,” he continues, “They say that nothing of the things that are, whether deathless or mortal, with or without soul, could exist apart from him. And all things are set under him, and he is good and contains all things within himself, as in the horn of the unicorn, whence beauty and bloom are freely given to all things that exist according to their nature and relationship[178].”

It can hardly be doubted that the writer from whom Hippolytus here quotes is referring to the soul or animating principle of the world, whom he here and elsewhere identifies with the great God of the Greek mysteries[179]. Hence it was the casting-down to this earth of Ophiomorphus which gave it life and shape, and thus stamped upon it the impress of the First Man[180]. As Ophiomorphus was also the child of Ialdabaoth son of Sophia, the Soul of the World might therefore properly be said to be drawn from all the three visible worlds[181].

We come to the creation of man which the Ophites attributed to the act of Ialdabaoth and the other planetary powers, and represented as taking place not on the earth, but in some one or other of the heavens under their sway[182]. According to Irenaeus—here our only authority—Ialdabaoth boasted that he was God and Father, and that there was none above him[183]. His mother Sophia or Prunicos, disgusted at this, cried out that he lied, inasmuch as there was above him “the Father of all, the First Man and the Son of Man[184]”; and that Ialdabaoth was thereby led on the counsel of the serpent or Ophiomorphus to say, “Let us make man in our own image[185]!” Here the Greek or older text of Irenaeus ends, and our only remaining guide is the later Latin one, which bears many signs of having been added to from time to time by some person more zealous for orthodoxy than accuracy. Such as it is, however, it narrates at a length which compares very unfavourably with the brevity and concision of the statements of the Greek text, that Ialdabaoth’s six planetary powers on his command and at the instigation of Sophia formed an immense man who could only writhe along the ground until they carried him to Ialdabaoth who breathed into him the breath of life, thereby parting with some of the light that was in himself; that man “having thereby become possessed of intelligence (Nous) and desire (Enthymesis) abandoned his makers and gave thanks to the First Man”; that Ialdabaoth on this in order to deprive man of the light he had given him created Eve out of his own desire; that the other planetary powers fell in love with her beauty and begot from her sons who are called angels; and finally, that the serpent induced Adam and Eve to transgress Ialdabaoth’s command not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge[186]. On their doing so, he cast them out of Paradise, and threw them down to this world together with the serpent or Ophiomorphus. All this was done by the secret contrivance of Sophia, whose object throughout was to win back the light and return it to the highest world whence it had originally come. Her manner of doing so seems to have been somewhat roundabout, for it involved the further mingling of light with matter, and even included the taking away by her of light from Adam and Eve when turned out of Paradise and the restoring it to them when they appeared on this earth—a proceeding which gave them to understand that they had become clothed with material bodies in which their stay would be only temporary[187]. Cain’s murder of Abel was brought about by the same agency, as was the begettal of Seth, ancestor of the existing human race. We further learn that the serpent who was cast down got under him the angels begotten upon Eve by the planetary powers, and brought into existence six sons who, with himself, form “the seven earthly demons.” These are the adversaries of mankind, because it was on account of man that their father was cast down; and “this serpent is called Michael and Sammael[188].” Later Ialdabaoth sent the Flood, sought out Abraham, and gave the Law to the Jews. In this, as in everything, he was opposed by his mother Sophia, who saved Noah, made the Prophets prophesy of Christ, and even arranged that John the Baptist and Jesus should be born, the one from Elizabeth and the other from the Virgin Mary[189]. In all this, it is difficult not to see a later interpolation introduced for the purpose of incorporating with the teaching of the earlier Ophites the Biblical narrative, of which they were perhaps only fully informed through Apostolic teaching[190]. It is quite possible that this interpolation may be taken from the doctrine of the Sethians, which Irenaeus expressly couples in this chapter with that of the Ophites, and which, as given by Hippolytus, contains many Jewish but no Christian features[191]. Many of the stories in this interpolation seem to have found their way into the Talmud and the later Cabala, as well as into some of the Manichaean books.

So far, then, the Ophites succeeded in accounting to their satisfaction for the origin of all things, the nature of the Deity, the origin of the universe, and for that of man’s body. But they still had to account in detail for the existence of the soul or incorporeal part of man. Irenaeus, as we have seen, attributes it to Ophiomorphus, but although this may have been the belief of the Ophites of his time, the Naassenes assigned it a more complicated origin. They divided it, as Hippolytus tells us, into three parts which were nevertheless one, no doubt corresponding to the threefold division that we have before seen running through all nature into angelic, psychic, and earthly[192]. The angelic

## part is brought by Christos, who is, as we have seen, the angel or

messenger of the triune Deity, into “the form of clay[193],” the psychic we may suppose to be fashioned with the body by the planetary powers, and the earthly is possibly thought to be the work of the earthly demons hostile to man[194]. Of these last two parts, however, we hear nothing directly, and their existence can only be gathered from the difference here strongly insisted upon between things “celestial earthly and infernal.” But the conveyance of the angelic soul to the body Hippolytus’ Ophite writer illustrates by a bold figure from what Homer in the _Odyssey_ says concerning Hermes in his character of psychopomp or leader of souls[195]. As to the soul or animating principle of the world, Hippolytus tells us that the Ophites did not seek information concerning it and its nature from the Scriptures, where indeed they would have some difficulty in finding any, but from the mystic rites alike of the Greeks and the Barbarians[196]; and he takes us in turns through the mysteries of the Syrian worshippers of Adonis, of the Phrygians, the Egyptian (or rather Alexandrian) worshippers of Osiris, of the Cabiri of Samothrace, and finally those celebrated at Eleusis, pointing out many things which he considers as indicating the Ophites’ own peculiar doctrine on this point[197]. That he considers the god worshipped in all these different mysteries to be one and the same divinity seems plain from a hymn which he quotes as a song of “the great Mysteries,” and which the late Prof. Conington turned into English verse[198]. So far as any sense can be read into an explanation made doubly hard for us by our ignorance of what really took place in the rites the Ophite writer describes, or of any clear account of his own tenets, he seems to say that the many apparently obscene and sensual scenes that he alludes to, cover the doctrine that man’s soul is part of the universal soul diffused through Nature and eventually to be freed from all material contact and united to the Deity; whence it is only those who abstain from the practice of carnal generation who can hope to be admitted to the highest heaven[199]. All this is illustrated by many quotations not only from the heathen poets and philosophers, but also from the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Jewish Prophets, and from the Canonical Gospels and St Paul’s Epistles.

The connection of such a system with orthodox Christianity seems at first sight remote enough, but it must be remembered that Hippolytus was not endeavouring to explain or record the Ophite beliefs as a historian would have done, but to hold them up to ridicule and, as he describes it, to “refute” them. Yet there can be no doubt that the Ophites were Christians or followers of Christ who accepted without question the Divine Mission of Jesus, and held that only through Him could they attain salvation. The difference between them and the orthodox in respect to this was that salvation was not, according to them, offered freely to all, but was on the contrary a magical result following automatically upon complete initiation and participation in the Mysteries[200]. Texts like “Strait is the way and narrow is the gate that leadeth into eternal life” and “Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven” were laid hold of by them as showing that complete salvation was confined to a few highly instructed persons, who had had the sense to acquire the knowledge of the nature of the Deity and of the topography of the heavenly places which underlay the ceremonies of the Mysteries. Such an one, they said after his death would be born again not with a fleshly but with a spiritual body and passing through the gate of heaven would become a god[201]. It does not follow, however, that those who did not obtain this perfect _gnosis_ would be left, as in some later creeds, to reprobation. The cry of “all things in heaven, on earth, and below the earth[202]” that the discord of this world[203] might be made to cease, which the Naassene author quoted by Hippolytus daringly connects with the name of Pappas given by the Phrygians to Sabazius or Dionysos, would one day be heard, and the Apocatastasis or return of the world to the Deity would then take place[204]. If we may judge from the later developments of the Ophite teaching this was to be when the last spiritual man (πνευματικός) or perfect Gnostic had been withdrawn from it. In the meantime those less gifted would after death pass through the planetary worlds of Ialdabaoth until they arrived at his heaven or sphere, and would then be sent down to the earth to be reincarnated in other bodies. Whether those who had attained some knowledge of the Divine nature without arriving at perfect Gnosis would or would not be rewarded with some sort of modified beatitude or opportunity of better instruction is not distinctly stated, but it is probable that the Ophites thought that they would[205]. For just as those who have been admitted into the Lesser Mysteries at Eleusis ought to pause and then be admitted into the “great and heavenly ones,” the progress of the Ophite towards the Deity must be progressive. They who participate in these heavenly mysteries, says the Naassene author, receive greater destinies than the others[206].

It might seem, therefore, that the Mysteries or secret rites of the heathens contained in themselves all that was necessary for redemption, and this was probably the Ophite view so far as the return of the universe to the bosom of the Deity and the consequent wiping out of the consequences of the unfortunate fall of Sophia or Prunicos were concerned. A tradition. preserved by Irenaeus says that Sophia herself “when she had received a desire for the light above her, laid down the body she had received from matter—which was, as we have seen, the visible heaven—-and was freed from it[207].” But this seems to be an addition which is not found in the Greek version, and is probably taken from some later developments of the Ophite creed. It is plain, however, that the whole scheme of nature as set forth in the opinions summarized above is represented as contrived for the winning-back of the light—for which we may, if we like, read life—from matter, and this is represented as the work of Sophia herself. The futile attempt of the arrogant and jealous Ialdabaoth to prolong his rule by the successive creation of world after world, of the archetypal or rather protoplasmic Adam, and finally of Eve, whereby the light is dispersed through matter more thoroughly but in ever-diminishing portions[208], is turned against him by his mother Sophia, the beneficent ruler of the planetary worlds, who even converts acquaintance with the “carnal generation” which he has invented into a necessary preparation for the higher mysteries[209]. Thus Hippolytus tells us that the Naassenes

“frequent the so-called mysteries of the Great Mother, thinking that through what is performed there, they see clearly the whole mystery. For they have no complete advantage from the things there performed except that they are not castrated. [Yet] they fully accomplish the work of the castrated [_i.e._ the Galli]. For they most strictly and carefully preach that one should abstain from all companying with woman, as do the castrated. And the rest of the work, as we have said at length, they perform like the castrated[210].”

So far, then, as the general scheme of the redemption of light from matter is concerned, there seems to have been no fundamental necessity in the Ophite view for the Mission of Jesus. But they assigned to Him a great and predominant part in hastening the execution of the scheme, and thus bringing about the near approach of the kingdom of heaven. We have seen that Sophia provided in spite of Ialdabaoth for the birth of the man Jesus from the Virgin Mary, and the Naassene author said that

“into this body of Jesus there withdrew and descended things intellectual, and psychic, and earthly: and these three Men (_i.e._ the First Man, the Son of Man, and Christos) speak together through Him each from his proper substance unto those who belong to each[211].”

The Latin text of Irenaeus amplifies the statement considerably and says that Prunicus, as it calls Sophia, finding no rest in heaven or earth, invoked the aid of her mother the First Woman. This power, having pity on her repentance, implored the First Man to send Christos to her assistance. This prayer was granted, and Christos descended from the Pleroma to his sister Sophia, announced his coming through John the Baptist, prepared the baptism of repentance, and beforehand fashioned Jesus, so that when Christos came down he might find a pure vessel, and that by Ialdabaoth her own son, the “woman” might be announced by Christ. The author quoted by Irenaeus goes on to say that Christ descended through each of the seven heavens or planetary worlds in the likeness of its inhabitants, and thus took away much of their power. For the sprinkling of light scattered among them rushed to him, and when he came down into this world he clothed his sister Sophia with it, and they exulted over each other, which they (the Ophites) “describe as the [meeting of] the bridegroom and the bride.” But “Jesus being begotten from the Virgin by the operation of God was wiser, purer, and juster than all men. Christos united to Sophia descended into Him [in His baptism] and so Jesus Christ was made[212].”

Jesus then began to heal the sick, to announce the unknown Father, and to reveal Himself as the Son of the first man. This angered the princes of the planetary worlds and their progenitor, Ialdabaoth, who contrived that He should be killed. As He was being led away for this purpose, Christos with Sophia left Him for the incorruptible aeon[213] or highest heaven. Jesus was crucified; but Christos did not forget Him and sent a certain power to Him, who raised Him in both a spiritual and psychic body, sending the worldly parts back into the world. After His Resurrection, Jesus remained upon earth eighteen months, and perception descending into Him taught what was clear. These things He imparted to a few of his disciples whom He knew to be capable of receiving such great mysteries, and He was then received into heaven. Christos sate down at the night hand of Ialdabaoth that he might, unknown to this last, take to himself the souls of those who have known these mysteries, after they have put off their worldly flesh. Thus Ialdabaoth cannot in future hold holy souls that he may send them down again into the age [_i.e._ this aeon]; but only those which are from his own substance, that is, which he has himself breathed into bodies. When all the sprinkling of light is thus collected, it will be taken up into the incorruptible aeon. The return to Deity will then be complete, and matter will probably be destroyed. In any case, it will have lost the light which alone gives it life[214].

What rites or form of worship were practised by these Ophites we do not know, although Epiphanius preserves a story that they were in the habit of keeping a tame serpent in a chest which at the moment of the consecration of their Eucharist was released and twined itself round the consecrated bread[215]. Probably the very credulous Bishop of Constantia was misled by some picture or amulet depicting a serpent with his tail in its mouth surrounding an orb or globe which represents the mundane egg of the Orphics. In this case the serpent most likely represented the external ocean which the ancients thought surrounded the habitable world like a girdle. But the story, though probably untrue, is some evidence that the later Ophites used, like all post-Christian Gnostics, to practise a ceremony resembling the Eucharist, and certainly administered also the rite of baptism which is alluded to above in the tale of the descent of Christos. Hippolytus also tells us that they used to sing many hymns to the First Man; and he gives us a “psalm” composed by them which, as he thinks, “comprehends all the mysteries of their error[216].” Unfortunately in the one text of the _Philosophumena_ which we have, it is given in so corrupt a form that the first German editor declared it to be incapable of restoration. It may perhaps be translated thus:

The generic law of the Whole was the first Intelligence of all The second [creation?] was the poured-forth Chaos of the First-born And the third and labouring soul obtains the law as her portion Wherefore clothed in watery form [Behold] The loved one subject to toil [and] death Now, having lordship, she beholds the Light Then cast forth to piteous state, she weeps. Now she weeps and now rejoices Now she weeps and now is judged Now she is judged and now is dying Now no outlet is found, the unhappy one Into the labyrinth of woes has wandered. But Jesus said: Father, behold! A strife of woes upon earth From thy spirit has fallen But he [_i.e._ man?] seeks to fly the malignant chaos And knows not how to break it up. For his sake, send me, O Father; Having the seals, I will go down Through entire aeons I will pass, All mysteries I will open And the forms of the gods I will display, The secrets of the holy Way Called knowledge [Gnosis], I will hand down.

It is probable that this psalm really did once contain a summary of the essential parts of the Ophite teaching. In whatever way we may construe the first three lines, which were probably misunderstood by the scribe of the text before us, there can hardly be a doubt that they disclose a triad of three powers engaged in the work of salvation[217]. The fall of Sophia seems also to be alluded to in unmistakable terms, while the Mission of Jesus concludes the poem. Jesus, not here distinguished from the Christos or Heavenly Messenger of the Trinity, is described as sent to the earth for the purpose of bringing hither certain “mysteries” which will put man on the sacred path of Gnosis and thus bring about the redemption of his heavenly part from the bonds of matter. These “mysteries” were, as appears in Hippolytus and elsewhere, sacraments comprising baptism, unction, and a ceremony at least outwardly resembling the Christian Eucharist or Lord’s Supper[218]. These had the magical effect, already attributed by the Orphics to their own homophagous feast, of changing the recipient’s place in the scale of being and transforming him _ipso facto_ into something higher than man. That the celebration of these mysteries was attended with the deepest secrecy accounts at once for their being nowhere described in detail by Hippolytus’ Ophite author, and also for the stories which were current among all the heresiological writers of filthy and obscene rites[219]. Fortified by these mysteries, and by the abstinences and the continence which they entailed—at all events theoretically, and as a counsel of perfection—the Ophite could attend, as we have seen, all the ceremonies of the still pagan Anatolians or of the Christian Church indifferently, conscious that he alone understood the inner meaning of either.

Another practice of the Ophites has accidentally come down to us which deserves some mention. The division of the universe into three parts, _i.e._ angelic, psychic, and earthly, which we have already seen in germ in the system of Simon Magus, was by the Ophites carried so much further than by him that it extended through the whole of nature, and seriously affected their scheme of redemption. Father Giraud, as we have seen, goes so far as to say that in the opinion of Naassenes, matter hardly existed, and that they thought that not only did Adamas, or the first man, enter into all things, but that in their opinion all things were contained within him[220]. This pantheistic doctrine may have been current in Phrygia and traces of it may perhaps be found in the Anatolian worship of nature; but the words of the Naassene psalm quoted above show that the Naassenes, like all the post-Christian Gnostics of whom we know anything, thought that matter not only had an independent existence, but was essentially malignant and opposed to God. They divided, as we have seen, the universe which came forth from Him into three parts of which the angelic, noëtic, or pneumatic included, apparently, nothing but the Pleroma or Fulness of the Godhead consisting of the Trinity of Father, Son and Mother with their messenger Christos. Then followed the second, psychic, or planetary world, containing the heaven of Sophia with beneath it the holy hebdomad or seven worlds of Ialdabaoth and his descendants[221]. Below this came, indeed, the choïc, earthly, or terrestrial world, containing some sparks of the light bestowed upon it consciously by Sophia and unconsciously by Ialdabaoth, and inhabited by mortal men. But this world was the worst example of the “discord” (ὰσυμφωνία), or as it was called later, the “confusion” (κέρασμος), caused by the mingling of light with matter, and as such was doomed to extinction and to eternal separation from the Divine.[222] In like manner, the soul of man consisted of three parts corresponding to the three worlds, that is to say, the pneumatic, psychic, and earthly; and of these three, the last was doomed to extinction. Only by laying aside his earthly part as Jesus had done and becoming entirely pneumatic, could man attain to the light and become united with the Godhead. But to do so, his soul must first pass from choïc to psychic and thence to pneumatic, or, as the Naassene author quoted by Hippolytus puts it, must be born again and must enter in at the gate of heaven[223].

This rebirth or passage of the soul from the choïc to the psychic, and thence to the pneumatic, was, as has been said, the work of the mysteries, especially of those new ones which the Ophite Jesus or Christos had brought to earth with Him from above. The process by which these “changes of the soul” were brought about was, according to the Naassenes, “set forth in the Gospel according to the Egyptians[224].” The only quotation pertinent to the matter which we have from this lost work is one preserved for us by Clement of Alexandria which refers to the coming of a heavenly age “when the two shall be made one, and the male with the female neither male nor female[225]”—a saying which seems to refer to the time when all the light now scattered among the lower worlds shall return to the androgyne Adamas from whom it once issued. But it is probable that this gospel only described the upward passage of the soul in figures and parables probably conveyed in texts of the Canonical Gospel divorced from their context and their natural meaning, as in the Naassene author quoted by Hippolytus. Such a gospel might be a sufficient means of instruction for the living, who could puzzle out its meaning with the help of their mystagogues or priests[226]; but it must always have been difficult for the best-instructed to remember the great complications of worlds, planets, and celestial powers that lay at the root of it. How difficult then must it have been thought for the disembodied soul to find its way through the celestial places, and to confront the “guardians of the gate” of each with proof of his exalted rank in the scale of being? What was wanted was some guide or clue that the dead could take with him like the _Book of the Dead_ of the ancient Egyptians, some memory or survival of which had evidently come down to the Alexandrian worship[227], or like the gold plates which we have seen fulfilling the same office among the worshippers of the Orphic gods[228].

That the Ophites possessed such documents we have proof from the remarks of the Epicurean Celsus, who may have flourished in the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138)[229]. In his attack on Christianity called _The True Discourse_, he charges the Christians generally with possessing a “diagram” in which the passage of the soul after death through the seven heavens is portrayed. Origen, in refuting this Epicurean’s arguments more than a century later, denies that the Church knew anything of such a diagram, and transfers the responsibility for it to what he calls “a very insignificant sect called Ophites[230].” He further says that he has himself seen this diagram and he gives a detailed description of it sufficient to enable certain modern writers to hazard a guess as to what it must have looked like[231]. It seems to have been chiefly composed of circles, those in the uppermost part—which Celsus says were those “above the heavens”—being two sets of pairs. Each pair consisted of two concentric circles, one pair being inscribed, according to Origen, Father-and-Son, and according to Celsus, “a greater and a less” which Origen declares means the same thing[232]. By the side of this was the other pair, the outer circle here being coloured yellow and the inner blue; while between the two pairs was a barrier drawn in the form of a double-bladed axe[233].

“Above this last” Origen says “was a smaller circle inscribed ‘Love,’ and below it another touching it with the word ‘Life.’ And on the second circle, which was intertwined with and included two other circles, another figure like a rhomboid ‘The Forethought of Sophia.’ And within their (?) point of common section was ‘the Nature of Sophia.’ And above their point of common section was a circle, on which was inscribed ‘Knowledge,’ and lower down another on which was the inscription ‘Comprehension[234].’”

There is also reference made by Origen to “The Gates of Paradise,” and a flaming sword depicted as the diameter of a flaming circle and guarding the tree of knowledge and of life; but nothing is said of their respective places in the diagram.

Jacques Matter, whose _Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme_ appeared in 1843, without its author having the benefit of becoming acquainted with Hippolytus’ _Philosophumena_, which tells us so much as to the doctrines of the Naassenes or early Ophites, and Father Giraud, who has on the contrary drawn largely from it, and whose dissertation on the Ophites was published in 1884, have both given pictorial representations of the Ophite diagram. Although they differ somewhat in the arrangement of the circles, both are agreed that the blue and yellow circles signify the Holy Spirit and Christos. The Pleroma or Fulness of the Godhead consisting of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with the Christos their messenger, therefore seems figured in these two pairs of circles. Both Matter and Father Giraud also arrange four other circles labelled respectively Knowledge, Nature, Wisdom, and Comprehension (Γνῶσις, Φύσις, Σοφία, and Σύνεσις) within one large one with a border of intertwined lines which they call the Forethought of Sophia (Πρόνοια Σοφίας). This may be the correct rendering, but it is hardly warranted by Origen’s words given above, nor do we know of any powers, aeons, or other entities in the Ophite system called Gnosis or Physis[235]. In any event, however, it is fairly clear that this part of the diagram represents the Sophia who fell from the Holy Spirit into matter, and that her natural or first place should be the heaven stretched out above the seven planetary worlds. Yet Irenaeus tells us that the Ophites he describes thought that Sophia succeeded finally in struggling free from the body of matter and that the super-planetary firmament represented merely the lifeless shell she had abandoned[236]. This is, perhaps, the view taken by the framers of the diagram.

However that may be, Origen’s discourse agrees with Celsus in describing a “thick black line marked Gehenna or Tartarus” which cuts, as he says, the diagram in two. This is specially described by Celsus; and if it surprises anyone to find it thus placed above the planetary heavens, it can only be said that later Gnostics, including those who are responsible for the principal documents of the _Pistis Sophia_ to be presently mentioned, put one of the places where souls were tortured in “the Middle Way” which seems _above_, and not, like the classical Tartarus, _below_ the earth[237]. Below this again, come the seven spheres of the planets dignified by the names of Horaios, Ailoaios, Astaphaios, Sabaoth, Iao, Ialdabaoth and Adonai respectively. These names are, indeed, those given in Irenaeus as the names of the descendants of Sophia, although the order there given is different. As to the meaning of them, Origen declares that Ialdabaoth, Horaios, and Astaphaios are taken from magic and that the others are (the Hebrew) names of God[238]. But it should be noticed that Origen is in this place silent as to their situation in the diagram, and that those assigned to them in Matter’s and Father Giraud’s reconstructions are taken from the prayers or “defences” which will be given independently of it.

The division which Matter calls “Atmosphère terrestre” and Father Giraud “The Fence of Wickedness” (Φραγμὸς Κακίας) is also not to be found in Origen’s description of the diagram, but is taken from another passage where he defines it as the gates leading to the aeon of the archons[239]. The remaining sphere, containing within itself ten circles in Matter’s reconstruction and seven in Father Giraud’s, is however fully described. The number ten is, as Matter himself admitted to be probable, a mistake of the copyist for seven[240], and there can be no doubt that the larger sphere is supposed to represent our world. The word “Leviathan” which in accordance with Origen’s description is written both at the circumference and at the centre of the circle[241] is evidently Ophiomorphus or the serpent-formed son of Ialdabaoth whom we have seen cast down to earth by his father together with the protoplasts Adam and Eve[242]. He should according to the later Gnostics be represented in the shape of a “dragon” or serpent coiled round the world and having his tail in his mouth, while the seven circles within the ring thus formed are the seven Archons or ruling spirits created by him in imitation of Ialdabaoth. These are represented in beast-like form and are, as we have seen, hostile to man. The first four have the Hebrew angelic names of Michael, Suriel, Raphael, and Gabriel, perhaps because the four planetary worlds to which they correspond bear also Hebrew names of God[243]. The remaining three Thauthabaoth, Erataoth, and Thartharaoth are probably taken from the peculiar corruption of Hebrew and Egyptian words to be found in the Magic Papyri. Some of them, at any rate, we meet again later. The word Behemoth which appears at the foot of the diagram may be translated “animals[244].” It may either be a further description of the seven Archons—as seems most likely—or be taken in its etymological sense as the animal kingdom which in the scale of being succeeds terrestrial man.

To this diagram, Origen adds the prayers or defences above alluded to, which he draws from some source not mentioned. He calls them the “instruction” which they (_i.e._ the Ophites) receive after passing through the “fence of wickedness,—gates which are subjected to the world of the Archons[245]”; but we know from other sources that they are the speeches, “defences” or passwords required to be uttered by the soul of the initiated when, released from this world by death, she flies upwards through the planetary spheres[246]. As they contain many instructive allusions, they can best be given in Origen’s own words, at the same time remarking that the reading is not in all cases very well settled. The first power through whose realm the soul had to pass is not here mentioned by name, but by the process of exhaustion is plainly the one whom Irenaeus calls Adonaeus or Adonai.

To him the soul of the dead is to say:

“I salute the one-formed king, the bond of blindness, thoughtless oblivion, the first power preserved by the spirit of Pronoia and by Sophia; whence I am sent forth pure, being already part of the light of the Son and of the Father. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[247]!”

In passing through the next mentioned, which is the realm of Ialdabaoth:

“Thou O First and Seventh, born to command with boldness, Ialdabaoth the Ruler (Archon) who hast the word of pure Mind (νοῦς), a perfect work to the Son and the Father, I bring the symbol of life in the impress of a type, and open the door to the world which in thy aeon thou didst close, and pass again free through thy realm. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[248]!”

Arrived at Iao, he ought to say:

“Thou, O Second Iao and first lord of death, who dost rule over the hidden mysteries of the Son and the Father, who dost shine by night, part of the guiltless one. I bear my own beard as a symbol and am ready to pass through thy rule, having been strengthened by that which was born from thee by the living word. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[249]!”

To Sabaoth:

“Ruler of the Fifth realm, King Sabaoth, advocate of the law of thy creation. I am freed by grace of a mightier Pentad. Admit me, when thou beholdest the blameless symbol of thy art preserved by the likeness of a type, a body set free by a pentad. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[250]!”

To Astaphaios:

“Ὁ Astaphaios, Ruler of the third gate, overseer of the first principle of water, behold me an initiate, admit me who have been purified by the spirit of a virgin, thou who seest the substance of the Cosmos. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[251]!”

To Ailoaios:

“O Ailoaios, ruler of the second gate, admit me who brings to thee the symbol of thy mother, a grace hidden from the powers of the authorities. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[252]!”

and to Horaios:

“O Horaios, who didst fearlessly overleap the fence of fire receiving the rulership of the first gate, admit me when thou beholdest the symbol of thy power, engraved on the type of the Tree of Life, and formed by resemblance in the likeness of the Guiltless One. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[253]!”

These defences have evidently got out of their proper order, and have probably been a good deal corrupted as well[254]. But their form and general purport are mostly intelligible and show undoubted signs of Egyptian origin. They were therefore probably not the work of the earlier Ophites or Naassenes, but were most likely introduced when the Ophite doctrines began to leave their primitive seat in Phrygia and to spread westward into North Africa and the south-east of Europe. The diagram itself seems to be fairly expressive of the more ancient teaching and in particular the division of all things below the Godhead into three parts. Thus we find in it the “middle space” or heaven of Sophia, itself perhaps the Paradise whence the protoplasts and Ophiomorphus were hurled, then the world of seven planets, and finally this earth under the government of Ophiomorphus’ seven angels. To judge from Origen’s remark that “they say there is a sympathy (συμπάθεια) between the Star Phaenon (_i.e._ Saturn) and the lion-like power (Michael)[255],” it is probable that the Ophites, like the Babylonian astrologers, looked upon the system of “correspondences,” as it was afterwards called, as running through all nature in such a way that every world and every power inhabiting it was a reflection of the one above it[256]. That each world according to the Naassenes contained a “Church” or assembly of souls[257] is stated in the text quoted above, the “Captive” Church there mentioned being evidently composed of the souls still held in the grip of matter, the “Called” of those who had passed into the planetary worlds, and the “Chosen” of those who were purified enough to be admitted into the middle space or Paradise of Sophia[258]. That these last were thought to be eventually united with the Deity appears in some later developments of the Ophite faith, but the doctrine seems also to have been known to the Naassenes, since the author quoted by Hippolytus speaks of “the perfect gnostics” becoming “kingless” (that is, subject to no other being) and as appointed to “share in the Pleroma[259].”

Of the amount of success which the speculations of the Ophites enjoyed we know very little. Origen, as we have seen, speaks of them as being in his day “an insignificant sect”; and we have no proof that their numbers were ever very large[260]. Father Giraud asserts on the faith of some of the smaller heresiologists and Conciliar Acts that they spread over the whole of Asia Minor, through Syria and Palestine into Egypt on the one hand, and, on the other, to Mesopotamia, Armenia, and even to India, and this is probably more or less correct[261]. But those who had actually read their writings, as Irenaeus and Hippolytus evidently had done, seem to have looked upon them more as the source of many later heresies than as formidable by their own numbers. Whether the Sethians with whom Irenaeus would identify them were really a subdivision of the Ophite sect may be doubted, because in Hippolytus’ account of the Sethian doctrines, the existence of Jesus is never mentioned or referred to, and there is some reason for thinking them a non-Christian sect[262]. But the heresies of the Peratae and of Justinus, which Hippolytus describes as not differing much from the Ophites, certainly resemble that which has been summarized above too closely for the resemblance to be accidental; while the same remark applies to those of the Barbeliotae and Cainites described by Irenaeus, and to the Gnostics, Archontics, and others of whom we read in Epiphanius’ _Panarion_. Most of these sects seem to have flourished on the Eastern or Asiatic outskirts of the Roman Empire, although some of them probably had settlements also in Egypt, Greece, Crete, and Cyrene. As the first Ophites had contrived to make an amalgam of the fervent and hysterical worship of nature in Anatolia with the Jewish and Christian tenets, so no doubt these daughter sects contrived to fit in with them the legends of the local cults among which they found themselves. But such compromises were not likely to last long when the Catholic Church began to define and enforce the orthodox faith, and the Ophites seem to have been one of the first to succumb. In the Vth century A.D., there were still Ophite “colleges” to be found in the province of Bithynia; for Theocritus and Evander, the bishops of Chalcedon and Nicomedia, “refuted” their leaders publicly with such effect, says Praedestinatus, that they afterwards broke into their “secret places” at the head of a furious mob, drove away their priests, killed the sacred serpents, and “delivered the people from that danger[263].” This is the last that we hear of them as an organized sect, and although Justinian in A.D. 530 thought right to include them by name in his law against heretics, it is probable that by then their opinions had long since passed into other forms[264].

Probably one of the first changes to take place in the Ophite faith was the withdrawal into the background of the serpent worship which respect for the ancient cults of Asia Minor had imposed upon the earlier members of the sect. In the diagram, Ophiomorphus does not seem to have been depicted in his proper shape, although he may perhaps be identified with the Leviathan there shown as surrounding the terrestrial world. Those Ophites who wished to obtain proselytes among Christian catechumens no doubt felt the advisability of not insisting upon this conception, inasmuch as “the serpent” was the figure under which the Oriental Christians loved to allude to the Pagan worships which still opposed them in Asia Minor[265]. Hence there arose much confusion among the Ophites themselves as to the character of the serpent, and while some, according to Irenaeus, asserted that Sophia the mother of Ialdabaoth herself became the serpent[266], Theodoret, a very late witness, thinks that the Ophites of his time held that Ophiomorphus, although originally the minister of Sophia, had gone over to the other side, and had become the enemy of mankind[267]. In this we may also, perhaps, see, if we will, the effect of Egyptian influence upon the earlier Ophite teaching; for in Egypt, the serpent Apep was always looked upon as the enemy of Râ, the Sun-god, who was rightly considered the great benefactor of humanity. It is no doubt due to the same influence that in one of the documents of the _Pistis Sophia_—one part of which, as will be seen later, was probably written for the furtherance of a late form of the Ophite heresy—the serpent, while keeping his place in the Cosmos as the great ocean which surrounds the earth, is transformed into the outer darkness of the Canonical Gospels, and described as a huge torture-chamber for the punishment of souls[268]. The same document shows us how the Ophites, while adopting all the ideas of their predecessors the Orphics as to the respective states of the initiated and uninitiated after death,—including therein their reincarnation, the draught from the lake of memory and the like—contrived to mix with them the current astrological ideas of the time which made all these events happen in an order determined by the motions of the stars[269]. This tendency, already visible in Hippolytus’ time in the Ophite sect which he calls the Peratae[270], will, however, be better considered when we come to deal with the documents of the _Pistis Sophia_ themselves.

There remains to be said that _the Gospel according to the Egyptians_ mentioned above is the only apocryphal document that Hippolytus directly attributes to the earlier Ophites or Naassenes. The sects derived from them seem to have made use of a great number of others, among which we find a _Book of Baruch_ otherwise unknown to us, _The Paraphrase of Seth_, the _Gospels of Nicodemus_, _Philip_, and _Thomas_, together with a _Gospel according to the Hebrews_, which may or may not have been identical with the one which Hippolytus calls that according to the Egyptians[271]. Of these, the first two are entirely lost, and the documents which we possess bearing the name of the Gospel of Nicodemus relate the events of the Crucifixion in much the same way as the Canonical Gospels, but add thereto the visit of Jesus to Hades. A _Gospel of Thomas_, which is also extant, contains only the account of miracles performed by Jesus in His infancy, and therefore goes to controvert the Ophite theory that Christos and Sophia only descended upon Him at His baptism, and that up to that period He was as other men. It is probable, however, that our copies of these Apocryphal Gospels have been severely edited so as to expunge everything which savoured of Gnostic teaching and may really have been partly or wholly the work of Ophites[272]. Of the _Gospel of Philip_, Epiphanius has preserved a short passage as follows:

“The Lord has revealed to me what the soul ought to say when she goes to heaven, and how she ought to answer each of the Powers on high. ‘I have known myself,’ she says, ‘and I have collected myself from everywhere, and I have not begotten children for the Archon, but I have rooted out his roots, and I have collected the scattered members, and I know thee what thou art. For I, she says, am from above[273].’ And thus he [_i.e._ Philip] says, she is set free. But if, he says, she is found to have begotten a son, she is retained below, until she can receive again her own children, and draw them up to herself[274].”

Similar expressions are to be found in two of the documents of the _Pistis Sophia_, and the abstinence from sexual intercourse which they enjoin is direct and first-hand evidence rebutting the accusation of promiscuous immorality which Epiphanius brings against the Ophites or their related sects. Epiphanius attributes to the same sect of “Gnostici” the use of a _Gospel of Perfection_ which “others”—the context shows that he means certain Ophites—“are not ashamed to call the Gospel of Eve.” Of this he also preserves a single passage as follows:

“I stood upon a high mountain, and I saw a huge man and another who was mutilated [or perhaps only smaller, κολοβὸν] and I heard a voice of thunder, and I drew near to hearken and he spoke to me and said, ‘I am thou and thou art I; and where thou art, there am I, and I am scattered through all things. And whencesoever thou dost wish, collect me, and in collecting me, thou dost collect thyself[275].’”

Is the greater and lesser man here the Adamas or Father-and-Son of the Ophites, in which case the latter part of the passage doubtless refers to the scattering of the light through the world of matter and the necessity of its collection and return to the Godhead. The “I am thou and thou art I” phrase is repeated in the _Pistis Sophia_ by the risen Jesus to His disciples[276], and seems to refer to the final union of the perfected human soul with the Deity.

In addition to these books, the Ophites whom Irenaeus and Hippolytus describe quoted freely from the Canonical books of the Old Testament, from one of the apocryphal books of Ezra and from the Book of Tobit, as also from such books of the Canonical New Testament as the Gospels, including that of St John, and most of the Pauline Epistles, including that to the Hebrews[277]. But it would be going too far to say that they “accepted” these or attributed to them a Divine origin, or thought them inspired in the sense in which the word was used by the Catholic Church. On the contrary, Epiphanius complains that they thought many of the contents of the Old Testament Books at any rate were inspired only by Ialdabaoth and the creators of the world of matter for the purpose of misleading mankind[278]; and throughout they seem to have considered all the Canonical Scriptures that they quote as on an equality with the writings of Homer, Hesiod, the legendary Orpheus, and other heathen writers such as Herodotus. Without attempting to deny or question the historical truth of the facts or legends recorded by all these authors, they regarded them merely as figures having an allegorical or typical meaning, which they could interpret in any manner they pleased, so as to make them accord with their own preconceived theories. Thus the Naassenes when they found St Luke quoting from the Proverbs of Solomon that “the just will fall seven times and rise again,” declared that this referred to the downward passage of man’s soul through the planetary heavens[279]; and Justinus, one of the Ophite teachers, finding a story in Herodotus about Heracles and the serpent-tailed girl whom he met in Scythia, said that it was a type of the generation of the universe by the combination of the invisible and unforeseeing Demiurge and the female principle or Sophia[280]. The same dialectic had already been made use of by the Orphics, by Philo of Alexandria, and by Simon Magus; but the Ophites seem to have been the first to apply it to all literature. The full effect of this method of interpretation we shall see later.

Generally speaking, it may be said that the Ophites seem to have been the first to bring about any kind of amalgamation between the popular religions of the Near East and the rising faith of Christianity. By interpreting the “mysteries” or secret rites of Asia Minor and elsewhere in their own sense, they supplied Christianity with a mythology which it would otherwise have lacked and the absence of which must always have proved a bar to its propagation among other than Semitic peoples. At the same time they greatly exalted the figure of Christ, who in their system became much less the personal teacher and master of the Jewish-Christian communities[281] than the angel or messenger of the Supreme Being sent from above in pursuance of a vast scheme for the redemption of the human race. In this capacity it went some way towards identifying the historical Jesus with the great god of the Mysteries and towards giving the sacraments of the newly-founded Church the secular authority of the rites practised in them. The influence of the Ophite system or systems upon the sects which succeeded them is at present hard to define, but there can be little doubt that some of the documents, which have come down to us in the Coptic MSS. before mentioned and will be more fully described in