Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/96

 80 SIMON MAGUS whom lie brought to Rome with him, and who had previ- ously been a prostitute in Tyre, 1 as the " first idea " (-rrpwrrj Ivvoia) of Simon. As regards the first of these statements we may point to a Samaritan village "Git" (Karjet-Git), not quite 3 miles south-south-west from the town of Samaria. 2 Justin's account in this particular seems trustworthy. On the other hand, the allegation that a statue was erected to Simon in Rome is not authentic, 3 and consequently most critics have regarded the narrative of Simon's journey to Rome as legendary. Some suppose that Justin was led only through the words of the inscription which he has wrongly referred to Simon to believe that Simon himself was in Rome; others (the Tiibingen critics) think, on the contrary, that Justin had been already acquainted with the Jewish-Christian Acts of the Apostles, and had thence learned that Simon (Paul) had gone to Rome and that the inscription therefore only confirmed him in the belief of Simon's presence there. But in either case the distinct assertion of Justin that Simon went to Rome in the time of Claudius remains unexplained ; for the hypothesis that Justin added the arrival of Simon under Claudius because he already knew and credited the legend of Peter's having lived twenty-five years in Rome deserves no refutation. Consequently we may assume seeing there is absolutely no trace of any influence of the Jewish-Christian legend upon Justin that in the Roman community, in the time of that author, a tradition was current that Simon Magus visited Rome in the reign of Claudius. We are no longer in a position to test the trustworthiness of this tradition; but, seeing there is no indication of any tendency out of which it could have arisen, we have no ground for declar- ing it incredible. The fact attested by Justin, Celsus, and Origen, that there were Simon ians also beyond the limits of Samaria (ev aAAois Wvecrw), favours the view that Simon had travelled. With reference, lastly, to the statement about Helena, we have to observe that here Justin has reported a doctrine not of Simon but of the Simonians. Simon, we are to understand, came to Rome with a woman named Helena, and his adherents afterwards took her for the seon mentioned. Justin gave fuller accounts of Helena and the doctrines of the Simonians in his Syntagma ; and we know their substance from Hegesippus, Irenseus, Tertullian, pseudo-Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Philastrius. Simon, it would appear, declared himself to be " the highest power " the Supreme God Himself ; he taught that among the Jews he mani- fested himself as the Son, in Samaria as the Father, and among other nations as the Holy Spirit. Helena, whom he had purchased in a brothel at Tyre, he gave out to be his irpwr-r) tWoia, the mother of all, by whom he had called the angels and archangels into being. She had proceeded from him, had been initiated into his purposes, had voluntarily come down from heaven and become the mother of the angels and powers who created this world ; but after the completion of her work she had been laid under bonds by her own children, the world-creating angels, who desired to be independent, and who knew not the first father Simon ; they imprisoned her in a human 1 This does not corne directly from the extant manuscript of Justin's Apology, but from Eusebius's quotations (Euseb., //. ., ii. 13). 2 See Lipsius, Quellen der rom. Petrussage, p. 34. 3 A happy accident of the rarest kind lias put us in a position to correct Justin's statement. In 1574 a stone which had once served as the base of a statue was dug out upon the Tiber Island. It bore the following inscription : SEMONI BANCO DEO . FIDIO SACRVM (see Orelli, Inscr., vol. i. p. 337 n., 1860). "Semo Sancus" is a Sabine god (Ovid, Fast., vi. 213 sq. ; Lactantius, Inst. Div., i. c. 15). The inscription having been found in the very place where, according to Justin, Simon's statue must have stood, most scholars suppose, and rightly, that Justin by mistake confounded "Semo Sancus" with "Simon Sanctus." body, and subjected her to every affront; she had to migrate out of one body into another ; she became, e.g., that Helen on whose account the Trojan War was waged ; finally she found herself in a brothel, out of which Simon at length rescued her, thereby fulfilling the parable of the lost sheep. The supreme god Simon had come down in order to redeem his TT/JWT?; Zvvoia., and to bring salva- tion to all men through the knowledge of himself. He decided upon this descent on seeing that the angels, from their desire for supremacy, were in conflict with each other and were misgoverning the worlds. He assumed every form necessary for the restoration of lost harmony : to men he appeared as man, without being really a man, and in appearance he suffered in Judaea. Henceforth it was a duty to believe in Simon and Helena, but to disbelieve the prophets, who were inspired by the world- creating angels, and not by Simon. Believers in Simon are at liberty to do what they will, for by the grace of Simon should men be blessed but not on account of good works. Should a Simonian do anything wicked he is nevertheless undeserving of punishment, for he is not wicked by nature but only of his free-will ; the law proceeded from the world-creating angels, who thought thereby to enslave their subjects; Simon, however, will bring the world to nought along with the dominion of those angels, and save all who Relieve on him. To this it is added that the Simonians live dissolutely, vie with each other in the practice of magic, make use of exorcisms, charms, mystic formulas, &c., and further that they wor- ship images of Simon (as Zeus) and of Helena (as Athene), under the names of "The Lord" and "The Lady." We may regard this account, which, according to Irenseus, is partly based upon direct statements of the Simonians themselves, as essentially derived from the Syntagma of Justin. 4 That we have here before us, not the genuine teaching of Simon, but the gnosis of the Simonians is very evident ; this gnosis, however, is just as much bound up with the person of Simon as is the Christian gnosis with the person of Jesus Christ. Simoo is the manifested Deity Himself ; but and herein lies the Christian, or more properly the anti-Christian element Simon is at the same time represented as Christ, i.e., is identified with Christ. The fusing together of Simon and Christ, a syncretistic-gnostic conception of the world and its creation, and an ethical antinomianism are the distinctive features of this new universal religion. That we have here an attempt to found a new religion, and that a world-religion, upon the principle of embodying all important articles of the older ones, appears also from the fact that Simon is identified not only with Christ but also with Zeus, and that Greek legends and mythologies are utilized for the system. We have therefore in Simon- ianism a rival system to Christianity, in which the same advantages are offered, and in which accordingly Christian elements are embodied, even Christ Himself being iden- tified with the Supreme God (Simon). The attempt to establish such a system in that time of religious syncretism has nothing incredible about it ; and in view of the religious conditions then prevailing in the locality it can easily be understood that it proceeded from a Samaritan. 4 This work must also have had something to say about the rela- tions of Simon to other Samaritan pseudo-Messiahs, viz., to Dositheus, Cleobulus, and Menander (see Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius, H. E., iv. 22); but the nature of its statements can no longer be with cer- tainty ascertained. We are in the dark especially as to the relation between Simon and Dositheus. But the mere fact that in Samaria, in the time of the apostles, so many Messiahs purporting to be founders of religions should have appeared on the scene is extremely interesting. It is a very noteworthy circumstance also that Justin, Hegesippus, and Irenaeus knew nothing about Peter having met Simon in Rome, and having withstood him there.