Chapter VII

, _supra_.

Footnote 128:

Isidore Loeb, _La Grande Encyclopédie_, _s.v._ La Cabbale juive; _ibid._ F. Herman Krüger, _s.v._ Gnosticisme, and Franck, _La Kabbale_, Paris, 1843, p. 203, both notice the likeness between Gnosticism and the Cabala and say that they are derived from the same source.

Footnote 129:

See the Sumerian Hymn of Creation translated by Sayce, _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_ (Gifford Lectures), Edinburgh, 1902, p. 380; Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, Boston, U.S.A. 1898, p. 490; King, _Seven Tablets_, p. 3; Rogers, _Rel. of Bab._, p. 108.

Footnote 130:

“Au commencement était le Nun, l’océan primordial, dans les profondeurs infinies duquel flottaient les germes des choses. De toute éternité Dieu s’engendra et s’enfanta lui-même au sein de cette masse liquide sans forme encore et sans usage.” Maspero, _Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient_, p. 326.

Footnote 131:

Diogenes Laertius, _Vit. Philosoph._ Bk I. c. 6.

Footnote 132:

Including in that name some who attained to high office in the Catholic Church. Thus Hatch, _H. L._ p. 255, says with apparent truth that Clement of Alexandria “anticipated Plotinus in conceiving of God as being ‘beyond the One and higher than the Monad itself,’ which was the highest abstraction of current philosophy.” The passage he here relies on is in Clement’s _Paedagogus_, Bk I. c. 8. Hatch goes on to say, “There is no name that can properly be named of Him: ‘Neither the One nor the Good, nor Mind, nor Absolute Being, nor Father, nor Creator, nor Lord’”—expressions to be found in Clement’s _Stromata_, Bk V. c. 12. Clement’s orthodoxy may be called in question; but no fault has been found in that respect with Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais and the friend of Hypatia. Yet in his Hymns he uses expressions which would have come naturally to the lips of any Ophite. Thus:

Σὺ δ’ ἄρρην, σὺ δὲ θῆλυς, Σὺ δὲ φωνά, σὺ δὲ σιγά, Φύσεως φύσις γονῶσα, Σὺ δ’ ἄναξ, αἰῶνος αἰών, Τὸ μέν, ᾗ θέμις βοᾶσαι;

“Male thou and female, Voice thou and silence, Nature engendered of Nature, Thou King, Aeon of Aeons, What is it lawful to call thee?”

and again

Πατέρων πάντων Πάτερ, αὐτοπάτωρ, Προπάτωρ, ἀπάτωρ, Υἱὲ σεαυτοῦ.... Μύστας δὲ νόος Τά τε καὶ τὰ λέγει, Βυθὸν ἄρρητον Ἀμφιχορεύων.

“Father of all Fathers, Father of thyself, Propator [Forefather] who hast no father, O Son of thyself.... But the initiated mind Says this and that, Celebrating with dances The Ineffable Bythos.“

(Hymn III)

The ineffability of divine names was an old idea in Egypt, especially in the Osirian religion, where it forms the base of the story of Ra and Isis. So the name of Osiris himself was said to be ineffable. See Eug. Lefébure in _Sphinx_, Stockholm, vol. I. pp. 99-102. The name of Marduk of Babylon is in the same way declared ineffable in an inscription of Neriglissar, _Trans. Roy. Soc. Litt._ 2nd series, vol. VIII. p. 276. The name of Yahweh became ineffable directly after Alexander. See Halévy, _Revue des Études juives_, t. ix. (1884), p. 172. In every case, the magical idea that the god might be compelled by utterance of his secret name seems to be at the root of the practice. Cf. Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_, Eng. ed. p. 354.

Footnote 133:

The whole account of Ophite doctrine as to the origin of things is here taken from Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 226 _sqq._, Harvey.

Footnote 134:

Genesis i. 8.

Footnote 135:

Philo explains that there is a vast difference between man as now made and the first man who was made according to the image of God, _De opificio mundi_, c. 46. This idea of an archetypal man was widely spread over Eastern Europe and Asia, and Bousset, _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, Göttingen, 1907, Kap. IV., “Der Urmensch,” has collected all or nearly all the references to it in the literature of the period that could be produced up to that date. As to its origin, the issue is still very doubtful. While we should naturally expect to find it in the Babylonian legends, the Tablets of Creation contain no certain allusion to it, while it is certainly to be traced in the Zend Avesta and its related books. Until we are able to compare the dates of these two sources it seems idle to speculate as to which is the original one and which the derived. But see Introduction (pp. lxi-lxiii and note on last page quoted) _supra_.

Footnote 136:

This is a less primitive and therefore probably later way of accounting for the birth of one spiritual or superhuman being from another, than that of Simon Magus who made his Supreme Being androgyne.

Footnote 137:

Theocritus, _Idyll_, II. l. 34. For the identity of Hades and Dionysos see