SIMON MAGUS
SIMON MAGUS
495
how He had heen foretold hy the propliets, and knew that He shouUl be believed on and looked for by every nation, they a;.'ain, as was said before, put forward other men, the Samaritans Simon and ^lenaiuier, wlio did many mighty works l)y ma^ic, anil deceived many, and still keep them deceived. Kor even among yourselves, us we said before, Simon was in the royal eity Home in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and so greatly astonished the saered senate and jieople ol the Romans, that he was considered a god, and honoured, like the others whom you honour as gods, with a statue.' (6) Later I'atristie literature seems to gather its accounts of Simon's teaching from some common ground — probably a lost treatise by Justin. Simon is said to have taught that he was the highest power — the Suiireme Uod Himself, who descendeil to the lower world because its rulers ruled it all. He passed through its regions, apjiearing in every form necessary for the restoration of the lost harmony. Among Jews he manifested himself as the Son, in Samaria as the Father, and anumg other nations as the Holy Spirit. Helena (whom he had purchased in a brothel in Tyre) was his TrpJiTTj ivvoM, mother of all, by whom he had called the angels and archangels into being. She h.ad been laid under bonds by her own children, but after many transmigrations had been rescued at last by the Supreme God — Simon — who came down to deliver her and to bring salvation to all men through the knowledge of himself. He liberated the world and those who were his from the rule of those who had made the world. Those who had hope in him and in Helena miglit freely do as they would, for men were saved according to his grace and not according to good works.
Such a system is obviously an amalgam of pagan- ism and Christianity. It contains a good deal tliat is common to almost all the forms of (Jnostic myths, and it borrows some of its ideas and not a little of its phraseology from Christianity.
i. The historical value of the story. — (a) One explanation of this tradition is that it is the legendary development of the story in Ac 8, imder the influence of a continued conflict between Chris- tianity and the Simonian Gnosis. Tlie Tubingen school, however, explained it in a ditierent waj'. Accorcling to Baur and his followers, the Ebionite Clementine literature contains a caricature of the apostle Paul. Instead of the Simon of the tradition being treated as a historical character, the name is to be interpreted as a term of reproach for Paul. Whenever Simon Magus is mentioned in ancient documents, Paul is meant. The contest between Simon Magus and Simon Peter really represents the conflict between Paul and Peter. .So the Simon of Ac 8 was no real character but only a jire- sentation of Paul. Thus, Peter's refusal to give Simon Magus the power of the Holy Spirit is a covert account of the refusal of the cider Apostle to admit Paul's claims to I'ank with tbem, backed though the claim was by a gift of money for the poor saints in Jerusalem. Starting from this standpoint, Baur's school reconstructed the story of early Christianity with the conflict between Paul and Peter as the key. The Acts of the Apostles was interpreted as a compromise, a book written in a conciliatory interest but resting upon Jewish Christian myths only jjartly understood. The journeys of Peter and his visit to Rome are merely an ecclesiastical tradition reflecting the journeys of Paul, and expressing the belief of the Church that the great Apostle, who had withstood the Simon-Paul everywhere else, must have fol- lowed up his victory in the capital. This theory, ingeniously applied to Patristic and Clementine literature, and worked out with much skill, won many adherents for a time, despite the fact that it
proved the presence of biased and fabricateil history within primitive Chi istianity. But a reaction soon set in. In EBr" (x.xii. 7!0 A. Harnack wrote, ' On no other point arc the proofs of the Tiibingen school weaker than in this.' In £/i/" (xxv. I'.'O) St. George Stock's conclusion is, 'The idea that Siincm Magus is merely a distortion of St. Paul is absurd.' It is not denied that the Clementine literature is marked by hostility to St. Paul. ' The Clementine writings were produced in Rome, early in the third century, by members of the Elkesaite sect. . . . One of the characteristics of these heretics was hostility to Paul, whom they refused to recognize as an apostle' (G. Salmon in Smith-Wace, DVB, London, 1877-87, iv. 687). But, though P. W. Schmiedel (in EBi, art. ' Simon Magus ') defends a moililied position of the Tiibingen school, most modern .scholars would probably accept St. George Stock's summing up in A/>'r" : ' In conclusion, there are of course some grounds for the Tubingen view, but they are whollj' inadequate to bear the structure that has been raised upon them. St. Paul was a hard hitter, and Jewish Christians, who still clung to James and Peter as the only true pillars of the Church, are not likely to h.ave cherished any love for his memory. This is enough to account for the hostility displayed against St. Paul in the Clementines. But to push the equation of St. Paul with Simon Magus further than we are forced to by the facts of the case is to lose sight of the real character of the Clementines as the counter- blast of Jewish to Samaritan Gnosticism and to oliscure the greatness of Simon of Gitta, who was really the father of all heresy.' As I<\ H. Chase puts it in discussing Lipsius' theory that the .Sinumian legend originated the story of Peter's visit to Rome : ' Lipsius' theory is really an ofl'- shoot of the Tiibingen theory of the apostolic age. The main trunk is now seen to be lifeless. The branch cannot but share its decay ' (HDB iii. 777").*