Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/319

 Persistence of Primitive Beliefs in Theology. 287

Elkesaites ; here again Adam and Christ are one. But already the late Chaldean Planet-rulers (seven in number), had entered into the world of speculation, and the heathen Gnosis largely builds upon this ; for Gnosis, after all, is merely an extension of the old Egyptian individualist magic, for securing safety from the demonic attacks in the next life and getting through safe to Paradise.^ But, for the less selfish who still retained an interest in history and world- progress, this spatial theory gave way to a temporal ; that is, instead of the common Four Ages we have seven. ^ The peculiar Mandean ' Gnostics ' found to-day near Basra and in Khusistan have as their heroes Abel, Seth, and Enoch. Other Gnostics seem to reproduce the intimate relation of the Mother with the Tammuz-Adonis in Sophia's con- nexion with Soter ; the Mandeans make Ur the devil marry his mother Namsur : the Magians are also believed to have recommended this as the holiest of all unions.

Mani, the great founder of a system which only narrowly escaped becoming a world-religion, learnt from every other creed and was perhaps indebted to the early Mandeans in century III. a.d. He has his own list of true prophets. Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, probably Zoroaster and Buddha, and the phantom Christ (to be carefully distin- guished from the diabolical Messiah of the Jews). If some of his school believed that this phantom was Primal Man himself come back in human form, this makes our point all the more clear. The Clementine Homilies which were taking final shape in Mani's lifetime are strongly dualist and the Seven Ages are marked by pairs of prophets, the true and the false : from Adam proceed evil Cain, good Abel ; next Ishmael, Isaac ; Esau, Jacob ; Aaron, Moses ; John Baptist, Christ ; Simon Magus and Peter (cf. my article in Stiidia Bihlica, ' Subordinate Dualism,' 133-188, Oxford, 1896). The Recognitions (the latin version) gives the follow-

^See my Religious Thought, pp. 586-600.


 * Thii is first found in Christian writers in Austin, Civ. D. xxii. 30.