Simon Magus by George Robert Stowe Mead

Author:George Robert Stowe Mead [Mead, George Robert Stowe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2004-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

All societies that have secret rites and a public position, as was the case with all the early communities of Christians and Gnostics, have had like accusations brought against them. The communities of the Simonians and Christians may or may not have been impure, it is now impossible to pronounce a positive opinion. The important point to notice is that the accusations being identical and the evidence or want of evidence the same, condemnation or acquittal must be meted out to both; and that if one is condemned and the other acquitted, the judgment will stand condemned as biassed, and therefore be set aside by those who prefer truth to prejudice.

So eager were the fathers to discredit Simon that they contradict themselves in the most flagrant fashion on many important points. On the one hand we hear that Samaria received the seed of the Word from the apostles and Simon in despair had to flee, on the other hand Justin, a native of Samaria, tells us, a century after this supposed event, that nearly all the Samaritans are Simonians. The accounts of Simon's death again are contradictory; if Simon perished so miserably at Rome, it is the reverse of probable that the Romans would have set up a statue in his honour. But, indeed, it is a somewhat thankless task to criticize such manifest inventions; we know the source of their inspiration, and we know the fertility of the religious imagination, especially in matters of controversy, and this is a sufficient sieve wherewith to sift them out of our heap.

I must now say a few words on Simonian literature of which the only geniune specimens we can in any way be certain are the quotations from the Apophasis of Simon in the text of the Philosophumena.

That there was a body of Simonian scriptures is undoubtedly true, as may be seen from the passages we have quoted from the Recognitions, Jerome, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arabic Preface to the Nicaean Council, and for some time I was in hopes of being able to collect at least some scattered fragments of these works, but they have all unfortunately shared the fate of much else of value that the ignorance and fear of orthodoxy has committed to the flames. We know at any rate that there was a book called The Four Quarters of the World, just as the four orthodox gospels are dedicated to the signs of the four quarters in the old MSS., and that a collection of sentences or controversial replies of Simon were also held in repute by Simonians and were highly distasteful to their opponents. Matter[88] and Amélineau[89] speak of a book by the disciples of Simon called De la Prédication de S. Paul, but neither from their references nor elsewhere can I find out any further information. In Migne's Encyclopédie Théologique,[90] also, a reference is given to M. Miller (Catalogue des Manuscripts Grecs de l'Escurial, p. 112), who is said to mention a Greek MS. on the subject of Simon ("un écrit en grec relatif à Simon").

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