HPB-IU v.2 ch.4: Difference between revisions

How daring and desperate were many such deliberate falsifications was shown in the first attempts to compare the original manuscripts with later ones. In Bishop Horseley’s edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s works, several manuscripts on theological subjects were cautiously withheld from publication. The article known as {{Style S-Italic|Christ’s Descent into Hell,}} which is found in the later Apostles’ Creed, is not to be found in the manuscripts of either the fourth or sixth centuries. It was an evident interpolation copied from the fables of Bacchus and Hercules and enforced upon Christendom as an article of faith. Concerning it the author of the preface to the {{Style S-Italic|Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the King’s Library}} (preface, p. xxi.) remarks: “I wish that the insertion of the article of {{Style S-Italic|Christ’s Descent into Hell}} into the Apostles’ Creed could be as well accounted for as the {{Style S-Italic|insertion}} of the {{Style S-Italic|said}} verse” ({{Style S-Italic|First Epistle of John,}} v. 7).^{[#fn1218 1218]}

Now, this verse reads: “For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.” This verse, which has been “appointed to be read in churches,” is now known to be spurious. It is not to be found in any Greek manuscript,” save one at Berlin, which was transcribed from some interpolated paraphrase between the lines. In the first and second editions of Erasmus, printed in 1516 and 1519, this allusion to these three heavenly witnesses is {{Style S-Italic|omitted;}} and the text is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the fifteenth century.^{[#fn1219 1219]} It was not

[#fn1218anc 1218]. See preface to the “Apocryphal New Testament,” London, printed for W. Hone, Ludgate Hill, 1820.

[#fn1219anc 1219]. “It is first cited by Virgilius Tapsensis, a Latin writer of no credit, in the latter end of the fifth century, and by him it is suspected to have been forged.”

178 ISIS UNVEILED.

mentioned by either of the Greek ecclesiastical writers nor by the early Latin fathers, so anxious to get at every proof in support of their trinity; and it was omitted by Luther in his German version. Edward Gibbon was early in pointing out its spurious character. Archbishop Newcome rejected it, and the Bishop of Lincoln expresses his conviction that it is spurious.^{[#fn1220 1220]} There are twenty-eight Greek authors—Irenæus, Clemens, and Athanasius included, who neither quote nor mention it; and seventeen Latin writers, numbering among them Augustine, Jerome, Ambrosius, Cyprian, and Pope Eusebius, who appear utterly ignorant of it. “It is evident that if the text of the heavenly witnesses had been known from the beginning of Christianity the ancients would have eagerly seized it, inserted it in their creeds, quoted it repeatedly against the heretics, and selected it for the brightest ornament of every book that they wrote upon the subject of the Trinity.”^{[#fn1221 1221]}

[#fn1220anc 1220]. “Elements of Theology,” vol. ii., p. 90, note.

[#fn1221anc 1221]. Parson’s “Letters to Travis,” 8vo., p. 402.

179 NIHILISTIC DOCTRINES OF THE SADDUCEES.

path of bigotry and dogmatism; on the other, Paganism^{[#fn1222 1222]} with its grand philosophical truths concealed from sight; unveiling itself but to the few, and leaving the masses hopelessly seeking to discover who was {{Style S-Italic|the}} god, among this overcrowded pantheon of deities and sub-deities. To others, the apostle of circumcision, supported by all his followers, was promising, if they obeyed the “law,” a life hereafter, and a resurrection of which they had no previous idea. At the same time he never lost an occasion to contradict Paul without naming him, but indicating him so clearly that it is next to impossible to doubt whom Peter meant. While he may have converted some men, who whether they had believed in the Mosaic resurrection promised by the Pharisees, or had fallen into the nihilistic doctrines of the Sadducees, or had belonged to the polytheistic heathenism of the Pagan rabble, had no future after death, nothing but a mournful blank, we do not think that the work of contradiction, carried on so systematically by the two apostles, had helped much their work of proselytism. With the educated thinking classes they succeeded very little, as ecclesiastical history clearly shows. Where was the truth; where the inspired word of God? On the one hand as we have seen, they heard the apostle Paul explaining that of the two covenants, “which things are an allegory,” the old one from Mount Sinai, “which gendereth unto bondage,” was {{Style S-Italic|Agar}} the bondwoman; and Mount Sinai itself answered to “Jerusalem,” which now is “in bondage” with her circumcised children; and the new covenant meant Jesus Christ—the “Jerusalem which is above and free;” and on the other Peter, who was contradicting and even abusing him. Paul vehemently exclaims, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son” (the old {{Style S-Italic|law}} and the synagogue). “The son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of

[#fn1222anc 1222]. The term “Paganism” is properly used by many modern writers with hesitation. Professor Alexander Wilder, in his edition of Payne Knight’s “Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology,” says: “It (‘Paganism’) has degenerated into slang, and is generally employed with more or less of an opprobrious meaning. The correcter expression would have been ‘the ancient ethnical worships,’ but it would be hardly understood in its true sense, and we accordingly have adopted the term in popular use, but not disrespectfully. A religion which can develop a Plato, an Epictetus, and an Anaxagoras, is not gross, superficial, or totally unworthy of candid attention. Besides, many of the rites and doctrines included in the Christian as well as in the Jewish Institute, appeared first in the other systems. Zoroastrianism anticipated far more than has been imagined. The cross, the priestly robes and symbols, the sacraments, the Sabbath, the festivals and anniversaries, are all anterior to the Christian era by thousands of years. The ancient worship, after it had been excluded from its former shrines, and from the metropolitan towns, was maintained for a long time by the inhabitants of humble localities. To this fact it owes its later designation. From being kept up in the {{Style S-Italic|Pagi}}, or rural districts, its votaries were denominated {{Style S-Italic|Pagans}}, or provincials.”

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the free woman.” “Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free; be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. . . . Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing!” ({{Style S-Italic|Gal.}} v. 2). What do we find Peter writing? Whom does he mean by saying, “These who speak great swelling words of vanity. . . . While they promise them {{Style S-Italic|liberty,}} they themselves are servants of corruption, for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. . . . For if {{Style S-Italic|they have escaped}} the pollution of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, they are again entangled therein, and overcome . . . it had {{Style S-Italic|been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness,}} than after they have known it to turn from the holy {{Style S-Italic|commandment delivered unto them”}} ({{Style S-Italic|Second Epistle}}){{Style S-Italic|.}}

181 JESUS’ OWN RELATIVES EBIONITES.

{{Style S-Italic|purest form of primitive Christianity}}. . . .”^{[#fn1223 1223]} And who were the Ebionites? The pupils and followers of the early Nazarenes, the kabalistic Gnostics. In the preface to the {{Style S-Italic|Codex Nazaræus,}} the translator says: “That also the Nazarenes did not reject . . . the Æons is natural. For of the Ebionites who acknowledged them (the Æons), these were the instructors.”^{[#fn1224 1224]}

We find, moreover, Epiphanius, the Christian Homer of {{Style S-Italic|The Heresies,}} telling us that “Ebion had the opinion of the Nazarenes, the form of the Cerinthians (who fable that the world was put together by angels), and the appellation of Christians.”^{[#fn1225 1225]} An appellation certainly more correctly applied to them than to the orthodox (so-called) Christians of the school of Irenæus and the later Vatican. Renan shows the Ebionites numbering among their sect all the surviving relatives of Jesus. John the Baptist, his cousin and {{Style S-Italic|precursor,}} was the accepted Saviour of the Nazarenes, and their prophet. His disciples dwelt on the other side of the Jordan, and the scene of the baptism of the Jordan is clearly and beyond any question proved by the author of {{Style S-Italic|Sod, the Son of the Man,}} to have been the site of the Adonis-worship.^{[#fn1226 1226]} “Over the Jordan and beyond the lake dwelt the Nazarenes, a sect said to have existed already at the birth of Jesus, and to have counted him among its number. They must have extended along the east of the Jordan, and southeasterly among the Arabians ({{Style S-Italic|Galat.}} i. 17, 21; ii. 11), and Sabæans in the direction of Bosra; and again, they must have gone far north over the Lebanon to Antioch, also to the northeast to the Nazarian settlement in Berœa, where St. Jerome found them. In the desert the Mysteries of Adonis may have still prevailed; in the mountains Aiai Adonai was still a cry.”^{[#fn1227 1227]}

[#fn1223anc 1223]. “Super. Relig.,” vol. ii., p. 5.

[#fn1224anc 1224]. Norberg: Preface to “Cod. Naz.,” p. v.

[#fn1225anc 1225]. Epiph.: “Contra Ebionitas.”

[#fn1226anc 1226]. See preface, from page 1 to 34.

[#fn1227anc 1227]. Ibid., p. 7, preface.

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writes toward the end of the fourth century.^{[#fn1228 1228]} “In the {{Style S-Italic|evangel}} which the {{Style S-Italic|Nazarenes}} and {{Style S-Italic|Ebionites}} use,” adds Jerome, “which recently I translated from Hebrew into Greek,^{[#fn1229 1229]} and which is called by most persons the {{Style S-Italic|genuine Gospel of Matthew,”}} etc.

That the apostles had received a “secret doctrine” from Jesus, and that he himself taught one, is evident from the following words of Jerome, who confessed it in an unguarded moment. Writing to the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, he complains that “a difficult work is enjoined, since this translation has been commanded me by your Felicities, which {{Style S-Italic|St. Matthew himself, the Apostle and Evangelist,}} did not wish to be openly written. For if it had not been secret, he (Matthew) would have added to the {{Style S-Italic|evangel}} that which he gave forth was his; but he made up this book sealed up in the Hebrew characters, which he put forth {{Style S-Italic|even in such a way}} that the book, written in Hebrew letters and {{Style S-Italic|by the hand of himself,}} might be possessed {{Style S-Italic|by the men most religious,}} who also, in the course of time, received it from those who preceded them. But this very book they never gave to any one to be transcribed, and its {{Style S-Italic|text}} they related some one way and some another.”^{[#fn1230 1230]} And he adds further on the same page: “And it happened that this book, having been published by a disciple of Manichæus, named Seleucus, who also wrote falsely {{Style S-Italic|The Acts of the Apostles,}} exhibited matter not for edification, but for destruction; and that this book was approved in a synod which the ears of the Church properly refused to listen to.”^{[#fn1231 1231]}

He admits, himself, that the book which he authenticates as being written “{{Style S-Italic|by the hand of Matthew”;}} a book which, notwithstanding that

[#fn1228anc 1228]. Hieronymus: “De Virus.,” illust., cap. 3. “It is remarkable that, while all church fathers say that Matthew wrote in {{Style S-Italic|Hebrew}}, the whole of them use the Greek text as the genuine apostolic writing, without mentioning what relation the {{Style S-Italic|Hebrew}} Matthew has to our Greek one! It had many {{Style S-Italic|peculiar additions}} which are wanting in our evangel.” (Olshausen: “Nachweis der Echtheit der sammtlichen Schriften des Neuen Test.,” p. 32; Dunlap: “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 44.)

[#fn1229anc 1229]. Hieronymus: “Commen. to Matthew,” book ii., ch. xii., 13. Jerome adds that it was written in the Chaldaic language, but with Hebrew letters.

[#fn1230anc 1230]. “St. Jerome,” v., 445; “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 46.

[#fn1231anc 1231]. This accounts also for the rejection of the works of Justin Martyr, who used only this “Gospel according to the Hebrews,” as also did most probably Titian, his disciple. At what late period was fully established the {{Style S-Italic|divinity}} of Christ we can judge by the mere fact that even in the fourth century Eusebius did not denounce this book as spurious, but only classed it with such as the Apocalypse of John; and Credner (“Zur Gesch. des Kan.,” p. 120) shows Nicephorus inserting it, together with the Revelation, in his “Stichometry,” among the Antilegomena. The Ebionites, the {{Style S-Italic|genuine}} primitive Christians, rejecting the rest of the apostolic writings, made use only of this Gospel (“Adv. Hœr.” i., 26), and the Ebionites, as Epiphanius declares, firmly believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man “of the seed of a man.”

183 THE CRAFT OF ST. JEROME.

he translated it twice, was nearly unintelligible to him, for it was arcane or {{Style S-Italic|a secret.}} Nevertheless, Jerome coolly sets down every commentary upon it, except his own, as {{Style S-Italic|heretical.}} More than that, Jerome knew that this {{Style S-Italic|original Gospel of Matthew}} was the expounder of the only true doctrine of Christ; and that it was the work of an evangelist who had been the friend and companion of Jesus. He knew that if of the two {{Style S-Italic|Gospels,}} the Hebrew in question and the Greek belonging to our present Scripture, one was spurious, hence heretical, it was not that of the Nazarenes; and yet, knowing all this, Jerome becomes more zealous than ever in his persecutions of the “Hæretics.” Why? Because to accept it was equivalent to reading the death-sentence of the established Church. The {{Style S-Italic|Gospel according to the Hebrews}} was but too well known to have been the only one accepted for four centuries by the Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. And neither of the latter accepted the {{Style S-Italic|divinity}} of Christ.

After having produced Ilda-Baoth, Ilda from ילד [or ילדה, yaldāh], a child, and Baoth from ביוץ [biyūṣ] the egg, or בהות [ḇōhūṯ], {{Style S-Italic|Baoth,}} a waste, a desolation, Sophia-Achamoth suffered so much from the contact with matter, that after extraordinary struggles she escapes at last out of the muddy chaos. Although unacquainted with the pleroma, the region of her mother, she reached the middle space and succeeded in shaking off the material parts which have stuck to her spiritual nature; after which she immediately built a strong barrier between the world of intelligences (spirits) and the world of matter. Ilda-Baoth, is thus the “son of darkness,” the creator of our sinful world (the physical portion of it). He follows the example of Bythos and produces from himself six stellar spirits (sons). They are all in his own image, and reflections one of the other, which become darker

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as they successively recede from their father. With the latter, they all inhabit seven regions disposed like a ladder, beginning under the middle space, the region of their mother, Sophia-Achamoth, and ending with our earth, the {{Style S-Italic|seventh}} region. Thus they are the genii of the seven planetary spheres of which the lowest is the region of our earth (the sphere which surrounds it, our æther). The respective names of these genii of the spheres are {{Style S-Italic|Iòve}} (Jehovah), {{Style S-Italic|Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi, Ouraios, Astaphaios.^{[#fn1232 1232]}}} The first four, as every one knows, are the mystic names of the Jewish “Lord God,”^{[#fn1233 1233]} he being, as C. W. King expresses it, “thus degraded by the Ophites into the appellations of the subordinates of the Creator; the two last names are those of the genii of fire and water.”

Ilda-Baoth, whom several sects regarded as the God of Moses, was not a pure spirit; he was ambitious and proud, and rejecting the spiritual light of the middle space offered him by his mother Sophia-Achamoth, he set himself to create a world of his own. Aided by his sons, the six planetary genii, he fabricated man, but this one proved a failure. It was a monster; soulless, ignorant, and crawling on all fours on the ground like a material beast. Ilda-Baoth was forced to implore the help of his spiritual mother. She communicated to him a ray of her divine light, and so animated man and endowed him with a soul. And now began the animosity of Ilda-Baoth toward his own creature. Following the impulse of the divine light, man soared higher and higher in his aspirations; very soon he began presenting not the image of his Creator Ilda-Baoth but rather that of the Supreme Being, the “primitive man,” Ennoia. Then the Demiurgus was filled with rage and envy; and fixing his jealous eye on the abyss of matter, his looks envenomed with passion were suddenly reflected in it as in a mirror; the reflection became animate, and there arose out of the abyss Satan, serpent, Ophiomorphos—“the embodiment of envy and of cunning. He is the union of all that is most base in matter, with the hate, envy, and craft of a spiritual intelligence.”^{[#fn1234 1234]}

[#fn1232anc 1232]. See King’s “Gnostics,” p. 31{{Style S-Italic|.}}

[#fn1233anc 1233]. This Iove, Iao, or Jehovah is quite distinct from the God of the Mysteries, IAO, held sacred by all the nations of antiquity. We will show the difference presently.

[#fn1234anc 1234]. King’s “Gnostics.”

185 THE REVENGE OF ILDA-BAOTH.

mysteries of the superior world. But Sophia-Achamoth, who loved and protected the man whom she had animated, sent her own genius Ophis, in the form of a serpent to induce man to transgress the selfish and unjust command. And “man” suddenly became capable of comprehending the mysteries of creation.

Achamoth, afflicted with the evils which befall humanity, notwithstanding her protection, beseeches the celestial mother Sophia—her antitype—to prevail on the unknown Depth to send down Christos (the son and emanation of the “Celestial Virgin”) to the help of perishing humanity. Ilda-Baoth and his six sons of matter are shutting out the divine light from mankind. Man must be saved. Ilda-Baoth had already sent his own agent, John the Baptist, from the race of Seth, whom he protects—as a prophet to his people; but only a small portion listened to him—the Nazarenes, the opponents of the Jews, on account of their worshipping Iurbo-Adunai.^{[#fn1235 1235]} Achamoth had assured her son, Ilda-Baoth, that the

[#fn1235anc 1235]. Iurbo and Adunai, according to the Ophites, are names of Iao-Jehovah, one of the emanations of Ilda-Baoth. “Iurbo is called by the Abortions (the Jews) Adunai” (“Codex Nazaræus,” vol. iii., p. 73).

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reign of Christos would be only temporal, and thus induced him to send the forerunner, or precursor. Besides that, she made {{Style S-Italic|him cause}} the birth of the {{Style S-Italic|man}} Jesus from the Virgin Mary, her own type on earth, “for the creation of a material personage could only be the work of the Demiurgus, not falling within the province of a higher power. As soon as Jesus was born, Christos, the perfect, uniting himself with Sophia (wisdom and spirituality), descended through the seven planetary regions, assuming in each an analogous form, and concealing his true nature from their genii, while he attracted into himself the sparks of divine light which they retained in their essence. Thus, Christos entered into the {{Style S-Italic|man}} Jesus at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan. From that time Jesus began to work miracles; before that, he had been completely ignorant of his mission.”^{[#fn1236 1236]}

Ilda-Baoth, discovering that Christos was bringing to an end his own kingdom of matter, stirred up the Jews against him, and Jesus was put to death.^{[#fn1237 1237]} When on the Cross, Christos and Sophia left his body and returned to their own sphere. The material body of the man Jesus was abandoned to the earth, but he himself was given a body made up of {{Style S-Italic|æther}} (astral soul). “Thenceforward he consisted of merely {{Style S-Italic|soul}} and {{Style S-Italic|spirit,}} which was the reason why the disciples did not recognize him after the resurrection. In this spiritual state of a {{Style S-Italic|simulacrum,}} Jesus remained on earth for eighteen months after he had risen. During this last sojourn, he received from Sophia that perfect knowledge, that true Gnosis, {{Style S-Italic|which he communicated to the very few among the apostles}} who were capable of receiving the same.”

[#fn1236anc 1236]. King: “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 31.

[#fn1237anc 1237]. In the “Gospel of Nicodemus,” Ilda-Baoth is called {{Style S-Italic|Satan}} by the pious and anonymous author;—evidently, one of the final flings at the half-crushed enemy. “As for me,” says Satan, excusing himself to the prince of hell, “I tempted him (Jesus), and stirred up my old people, the Jews, against him” (chap. xv. 9). Of all examples of Christian ingratitude this seems almost the most conspicuous. The poor Jews are first robbed of their sacred books, and then, in a spurious “Gospel,” are insulted by the representation of Satan claiming them as his “old people.” If they were his people, and at the same time are “God’s chosen people,” then the name of this God must be written Satan and not Jehovah. This is logic, but we doubt if it can be regarded as complimentary to the “Lord God of Israel.”

187 THE REAL OPHITE THEOGONY.

The foregoing is from the description given by Theodoret and adopted by King in his {{Style S-Italic|Gnostics,}} with additions from Epiphanius and Irenæus. But the former gives a very imperfect version, concocted partly from the descriptions of Irenæus, and partly from his own knowledge of the later Ophites, who, toward the end of the third century, had blended already with several other sects. Irenæus also confounds them very frequently, and the real theogony of the Ophites is given by none of them correctly. With the exception of a change in names, the above-given theogony is that of all the Gnostics, and also of the Nazarenes. Ophis is but the successor of the Egyptian {{Style S-Italic|Chnuphis,}} the Good Serpent with a lion’s radiating head, and was held from days of the highest antiquity as an emblem of wisdom, or Thauth, the instructor and Saviour of humanity, the “Son of God.” “Oh men, live soberly . . . win your immortality” exclaims Hermes, the thrice-great Trismegistus. “Instructor and guide of humanity, I will lead you on to salvation.” Thus the oldest sectarians regarded Ophis, the Agathodæmon, as identical with Christos; the serpent being the emblem of celestial wisdom and eternity, and, in the present case, the antitype of the Egyptian Chnuphis-serpent. These Gnostics, the earliest of our Christian era, held: “That the supreme Æon, having emitted other Æons out of himself, one of them, a female, {{Style S-Italic|Prunnikos}} (concupiscence), descended into the chaos, whence, unable to escape, she remained suspended in the mid-space, being too clogged by matter to return above, and not falling lower where there was nothing in affinity with her nature. She then produced her son Ilda-Baoth, the God of the Jews, who, in his turn, produced seven Æons, or angels,^{[#fn1238 1238]} who created the seven heavens.”

In this plurality of heavens the Christians believed from the first, for we find Paul teaching of their existence, and speaking of a man “caught up to the {{Style S-Italic|third}} heaven” (2 {{Style S-Italic|Corin.,}} xiii.). “From these seven angels Ilda-Baoth shut up all that was above him, lest they should know of anything superior to himself.^{[#fn1239 1239]} They then created man in the image of their Father,^{[#fn1240 1240]} but prone and crawling on the earth like a worm. But the heavenly mother, Prunnikos, wishing to deprive Ilda-Baoth of the power

[#fn1238anc 1238]. This is the Nazarene system; the Spiritus, after uniting herself with Karabtanos ({{Style S-Italic|matter}}, turbulent and senseless), brings forth {{Style S-Italic|seven badly-disposed stellars,}} in the Orcus; “Seven Figures,” which she bore “witless” (“Codex Nazaræus,” i., p. 118). Justin Martyr evidently adopts this idea, for he tells us of “the sacred prophets, who say that one and the same {{Style S-Italic|spirit}} is divided into {{Style S-Italic|seven}} spirits” (pneumata). “Justin ad Græcos;” “Sod,” vol. ii., p. 52. In the Apocalypse the Holy Spirit is subdivided into “{{Style S-Italic|seven}} spirits before the throne,” from the Persian Mithraic mode of classifying.

[#fn1239anc 1239]. This certainly looks like the “{{Style S-Italic|jealous}} God” of the Jews.

[#fn1240anc 1240]. It is the {{Style S-Italic|Elohim}} (plural) who create Adam, and do not wish man to become “as one of US.”

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with which she had unwittingly endowed him, infused into man a celestial spark—the spirit. Immediately man rose upon his feet, soared in mind beyond the limits of the seven spheres, and glorified the Supreme Father, {{Style S-Italic|Him that is above Ilda-Baoth.}} Hence, the latter, full of jealousy, cast down his eyes upon the lowest stratum of matter, and begot a potency in the form of a serpent, whom they (the Ophites) call his son. Eve, obeying him as the son of God, was persuaded to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.^{[#fn1241 1241]}

This controversy about the supremacy of Jehovah, between the Presbyters and Fathers on the one hand, and the Gnostics, the Nazarenes, and all the sects declared heterodox, as a last resort, on the other, lasted till the days of Constantine, and later. That the peculiar ideas of the Gnostics about the {{Style S-Italic|genealogy}} of Jehovah, or the proper place that had to be assigned, in the Christian-Gnostic Pantheon, to the God of the Jews, were at first deemed neither blasphemous nor heterodox is evident in the difference of opinions held on this question by Clemens of Alexandria, for instance, and Tertullian. The former, who seems to have known of Basilides better than anybody else, saw nothing heterodox or blamable in the mystical and transcendental views of the new Reformer. “In his eyes,” remarks the author of {{Style S-Italic|The Gnostics,}} speaking of Clemens, “Basilides was not a heretic, {{Style S-Italic|i.e.}}, an innovator as regards the doctrines of the Christian Church, but a mere theosophic philosopher, who sought to express {{Style S-Italic|ancient truths}} under new forms, and perhaps to combine them with the new faith, the truth of which he could admit without necessarily renouncing the old, exactly as is the case with the learned Hindus of our day.”^{[#fn1242 1242]}

Not so with Irenæus and Tertullian.^{[#fn1243 1243]} The principal works of the latter {{Style S-Italic|against the Heretics,}} were written after his separation from the Catholic Church, when he had ranged himself among the zealous followers of Montanus; and teem with unfairness and bigoted prejudice.^{[#fn1244 1244]}

[#fn1241anc 1241]. Theodoret: “Hæret.”; King’s “Gnostics.”

[#fn1242anc 1242]. “Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 78.

[#fn1243anc 1243]. Some persons hold that he was Bishop of Rome; others, of Carthage.

[#fn1244anc 1244]. His polemical work addressed against the so-called orthodox Church—the Catholic—notwithstanding its bitterness and usual style of vituperation, is far more fair, considering that the “great African” is said to have been expelled from the Church of Rome. If we believe St. Jerome, it is but the envy and the unmerited calumnies of the early Roman clergy against Tertullian which forced him to renounce the Catholic Church and become a Montanist. However, were the unlimited admiration of St. Cyprian, who terms Tertullian “The Master,” and his estimate of him merited, we would see less error and paganism in the Church of Rome. The expression of Vincent of Lerius, “that every word of Tertullian was a sentence, and every sentence a triumph {{Style S-Italic|over error,”}} does not seem very happy when we think of the respect paid to Tertullian by the Church of Rome, notwithstanding his partial apostasy and the {{Style S-Italic|errors}} in which the latter still abides and has even enforced upon the world as {{Style S-Italic|infallible}} dogmas.

189 TERTULLIAN’S ABUSE OF BASILIDES.

He has exaggerated every Gnostic opinion to a monstrous absurdity, and his arguments are not based on coercive reasoning but simply on the blind stubbornness of a partisan fanatic. Discussing Basilides, the “pious, god-like, theosophic philosopher,” as Clemens of Alexandria thought him, Tertullian exclaims: “After this, Basilides, the {{Style S-Italic|heretic,}} broke loose.^{[#fn1245 1245]} He asserted that there is a Supreme God, by name Abraxas, by whom Mind was created, whom the Greeks call {{Style S-Italic|Nous.}} From her emanated the Word; from the Word, Providence; from Providence, Virtue and Wisdom; from these two again, Virtues, {{Style S-Italic|Principalities,^{[#fn1246 1246]} and Powers}} were made; thence infinite productions and emissions of angels. Among the lowest angels, indeed, and those that made this world, he sets {{Style S-Italic|last of all}} the god of the Jews, whom he denies to be God himself, affirming that he is but one of the angels.”^{[#fn1247 1247]}

It would be equally useless to refer to the direct apostles of Christ, and show them as holding in their controversies that Jesus never made any difference between his “Father” and the “Lord-God” of Moses. For the {{Style S-Italic|Clementine Homilies,}} in which occur the greatest argumentations upon the subject, as shown in the disputations alleged to have taken place between Peter and Simon the Magician, are now also proved to have been falsely attributed to Clement the Roman. This work, if written by an Ebionite—as the author of {{Style S-Italic|Supernatural Religion}} declares in common with some other commentators^{[#fn1248 1248]}—must have been written either far later than the Pauline period, generally assigned to it, or the dispute

[#fn1245anc 1245]. Were not the views of the Phrygian Bishop Montanus, also deemed a heresy by the Church of Rome? It is quite extraordinary to see how easily the Vatican encourages the abuse of one {{Style S-Italic|heretic}} Tertullian, against another {{Style S-Italic|heretic}} Basilides, when the abuse happens to further her own object.

[#fn1246anc 1246]. Does not Paul himself speak of “{{Style S-Italic|Principalities}} and {{Style S-Italic|Powers}} in heavenly places” (Ephesians iii. 10; i. 21), and confess that there be {{Style S-Italic|gods}} many and {{Style S-Italic|Lords}} many (Kurioi)? And angels, powers (Dunameis), and {{Style S-Italic|Principalities?}} ({{Style S-Italic|See}} 1 Corinthians, viii. 5; and Epistle to Romans, viii. 38.)

[#fn1247anc 1247]. Tertullian: “Præscript.”

[#fn1248anc 1248]. Baur; Credner; Hilgenfeld; Kirchhofer; Lechler; Nicolas; Ritschl; Schwegler; Westcott, and Zeller; see “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p. 2.

190 ISIS UNVEILED.

about the identity of Jehovah with God, the “Father of Jesus,” have been distorted by later interpolations. This disputation is in its very essence antagonistic to the early doctrines of the Ebionites. The latter, as demonstrated by Epiphanius and Theodoret, were the direct followers of the Nazarene sect^{[#fn1249 1249]} (the Sabians), the “Disciples of John.” He says, unequivocally, that the Ebionites believed in the {{Style S-Italic|Æons}} (emanations), that the Nazarenes were {{Style S-Italic|their instructors,}} and that “each imparted to the other out of his own wickedness.” Therefore, holding the same beliefs as the Nazarenes did, an Ebionite would not have given even so much chance to the doctrine supported by Peter in the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies.}} The old Nazarenes, as well as the later ones, whose views are embodied in the {{Style S-Italic|Codex Nazaræus,}} never called Jehovah otherwise than {{Style S-Italic|Adonai, Iurbo,}} the God of the {{Style S-Italic|Abortive^{[#fn1250 1250]}}} (the orthodox Jews). They kept their beliefs and religious tenets so {{Style S-Italic|secret}} that even Epiphanius, writing as early as the end of the fourth century,^{[#fn1251 1251]} confesses his ignorance as to their real doctrine. “Dropping the name of Jesus,” says the Bishop of Salamis, “they neither call themselves {{Style S-Italic|Iessaens,}} nor continue to hold the name of the Jews, nor name themselves Christians, but {{Style S-Italic|Nazarenes}} . . . The resurrection of the dead is confessed by them . . . but concerning Christ, {{Style S-Italic|I cannot say}} whether they think him a {{Style S-Italic|mere man,}} or as the {{Style S-Italic|truth is}}, confess that he was born through the {{Style S-Italic|Holy Pneuma}} from the Virgin.”^{[#fn1252 1252]}

While Simon Magus argues in the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies}} from the standpoint of every Gnostic (Nazarenes and Ebionites included), Peter, as a true apostle of circumcision, holds to the old Law and, as a matter of course, seeks to blend his belief in the divinity of Christ with his old Faith in the “Lord God” and ex-protector of the “chosen people.” As the author of {{Style S-Italic|Supernatural Religion}} shows, the Epitome,^{[#fn1253 1253]} “a blending of the other two, probably intended to purge them from heretical doctrine”^{[#fn1254 1254]} and, together with a great majority of critics, assigns to the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies,}} a date not earlier than the end of the third century, we may well infer that they must differ widely with their original, if there ever was one. Simon the Magician proves throughout the whole work that

[#fn1249anc 1249]. See Epiphanius: “Contra Ebionitas.”

[#fn1250anc 1250]. The Ophites, for instance, made of Adonai the third son of Ilda-Baoth, a malignant genius, and, like his other five brothers, a constant enemy and adversary of man, whose divine and immortal spirit gave man the means of becoming the rival of these genii.

[#fn1251anc 1251]. The Bishop of Salamis died a.d. 403.

[#fn1252anc 1252]. “Epiphanius,” i., 122, 123.

[#fn1253anc 1253]. The “Clementines” are composed of three parts—to wit: the Homilies, the Recognitions, and an Epitome.

[#fn1254anc 1254]. “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p. 2.

191 PROOF THAT JESUS TAUGHT ESOTERICALLY.

the Demiurgus, the Architect of the World, is not the highest Deity; and he bases his assertions upon the words of Jesus himself, who states repeatedly that “no man knew the Father.” Peter is made in the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies}} to repudiate, with a great show of indignation, the assertion that the Patriarchs were not deemed worthy to know the Father; to which Simon objects again by quoting the words of Jesus, who thanks the “Lord of Heaven and earth that what was concealed from the wise” he has “revealed to babes,” proving very logically that according to these very words the Patriarchs could not have known the “Father.” Then Peter argues, in his turn, that the expression, “what is {{Style S-Italic|concealed}} from the wise,” etc., referred to the concealed {{Style S-Italic|mysteries}} of the creation.^{[#fn1255 1255]}

This argumentation of Peter, therefore, had it even emanated from the apostle himself, instead of being a “religious romance,” as the author of {{Style S-Italic|Supernatural Religion}} calls it, would prove nothing whatever in favor of the identity of the God of the Jews, with the “Father” of Jesus. At best it would only demonstrate that Peter had remained from first to last “an apostle of circumcision,” a Jew faithful to his old law, and a defender of the {{Style S-Italic|Old Testament.}} This conversation proves, moreover, the weakness of the cause he defends, for we see in the apostle a man who, although in most intimate relations with Jesus, can furnish us nothing in the way of direct proof that he ever thought of teaching that the all-wise and all-good Paternity he preached was the morose and revengeful thunderer of Mount Sinai. But what the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies}} do prove, is again our assertion that there was a secret doctrine preached by Jesus to the few who were deemed worthy to become its recipients and custodians. “And Peter said: ‘We remember that our Lord and teacher, as commanding, said to us, guard the mysteries for me, and the sons of my house. Wherefore also he explained to his disciples, {{Style S-Italic|privately,}} the {{Style S-Italic|mysteries of the kingdoms of the heavens.’”^{[#fn1256 1256]}}}

If we now recall the fact that a portion of the Mysteries of the “Pagans” consisted of the απορῥήτα, {{Style S-Italic|aporrheta,}} or secret discourses; that the secret {{Style S-Italic|Logia}} or discourses of Jesus contained in the original {{Style S-Italic|Gospel according to Matthew,}} the meaning and interpretation of which St. Jerome confessed to be “a difficult task” for him to achieve, were of the same nature; and if we remember, further, that to some of the interior or final Mysteries only a very select few were admitted; and that finally it was from the number of the latter that were taken all the ministers of the holy “Pagan” rites, we will then clearly understand this expression of Jesus quoted by Peter: “Guard {{Style S-Italic|the Mysteries for me and the sons of my}}

[#fn1255anc 1255]. “Homilies,” xviii., 1-15.

[#fn1256anc 1256]. “Clementine Homilies;” “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii.

192 ISIS UNVEILED.

{{Style S-Italic|house,” i.e.,}} of my doctrine. And, if we understand it rightly, we cannot avoid thinking that this “secret” doctrine of Jesus, even the technical expressions of which are but so many duplications of the Gnostic and Neo-platonic mystic phraseology—that this doctrine, we say, was based on the same transcendental philosophy of Oriental {{Style S-Italic|Gnosis}} as the rest of the religions of those and earliest days. That none of the later Christian sects, despite their boasting, were the inheritors of it, is evident from the contradictions, blunders, and clumsy repatching of the mistakes of every preceding century by the discoveries of the succeeding one. These mistakes, in a number of manuscripts claimed to be authentic, are sometimes so ridiculous as to bear on their face the evidence of being pious forgeries. Thus, for instance, the utter ignorance of some patristic champions of the very gospels they claimed to defend. We have mentioned the accusation against Marcion by Tertullian and Epiphanius of mutilating the {{Style S-Italic|Gospel}} ascribed to Luke, and erasing from it that which is now proved to have never been in that Gospel at all. Finally, the method adopted by Jesus of speaking in parables, in which he only followed the example of his sect, is attributed in the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies}} to a prophecy of {{Style S-Italic|Isaiah!}} Peter is made to remark: “For Isaiah said: ‘I will open my mouth in parables, and I will utter things that have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.’” This erroneous reference to Isaiah of a sentence given in {{Style S-Italic|Psalms}} lxxviii{{Style S-Italic|.}} 2, is found not only in the apocryphal {{Style S-Italic|Homilies,}} but also in the Sinaitic {{Style S-Italic|Codex}}. Commenting on the fact in the {{Style S-Italic|Supernatural Religion,}} the author states that “Porphyry, in the third century, twitted Christians with this erroneous ascription by their inspired evangelist to Isaiah of a passage from a {{Style S-Italic|Psalm,}} and reduced the Fathers to great straits.”^{[#fn1257 1257]} Eusebius and Jerome tried to get out of the difficulty by ascribing the mistake to an “ignorant scribe;” and Jerome even went to the length of asserting that the name of Isaiah never stood after the above sentence in any of the old codices, but that the name of Asaph was found in its place, only “{{Style S-Italic|ignorant}} men had removed it.”^{[#fn1258 1258]} To this, the author again observes that “the fact is that the reading ‘Asaph’ for ‘Isaiah’ is not found in any manuscript extant; and, although ‘Isaiah’ has {{Style S-Italic|disappeared}} from all but a few obscure codices, it cannot be denied that the name anciently stood in the text. In the Sinaitic {{Style S-Italic|Codex,}} which is probably the earliest manuscript extant . . . and which is assigned to the fourth century,” he adds, “the prophet {{Style S-Italic|Isaiah}} stands in the text by the first hand, {{Style S-Italic|but is erased}} by the second.”^{[#fn1259 1259]}

[#fn1257anc 1257]. “Supernatural Religion,” p. 11.

[#fn1258anc 1258]. Hieron.: “Opp.,” vii., p. 270, ff.; “Supernatural Religion,” p. 11.

[#fn1259anc 1259]. Ibid.

193 HE NEVER CLAIMED TO BE GOD.

sacred {{Style S-Italic|Scriptures}} to show that Jesus was actually regarded as a God by his disciples. Neither before nor after his death did they pay him divine honors. Their relation to him was only that of disciples and “master;” by which name they addressed him, as the followers of Pythagoras and Plato addressed their respective masters before them. Whatever words may have been put into the mouths of Jesus, Peter, John, Paul, and others, there is not a single act of adoration recorded on their part, nor did Jesus himself ever declare his identity with {{Style S-Italic|his Father.}} He accused the Pharisees of {{Style S-Italic|stoning}} their prophets, not of deicide. He termed himself the son of God, but took care to assert repeatedly that they were all the children of God, who was the Heavenly Father of all. In preaching this, he but repeated a doctrine taught ages earlier by Hermes, Plato, and other philosophers. Strange contradiction! Jesus, whom we are asked to worship as the one living God, is found, immediately after his Resurrection, saying to Mary Magdalene: “I am not yet ascended {{Style S-Italic|to my Father;}} but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto {{Style S-Italic|my Father}} and {{Style S-Italic|your}} Father, and to {{Style S-Italic|my}} God and {{Style S-Italic|your}} God!” ({{Style S-Italic|John}} xx. 17.)

Does this look like identifying himself with his Father? “{{Style S-Italic|My}} Father and {{Style S-Italic|your}} Father, {{Style S-Italic|my}} God and {{Style S-Italic|your}} God,” implies, on his part, a desire to be considered on a perfect equality with his brethren—nothing more. Theodoret writes: “The hæretics agree with us respecting the beginning of all things. . . . But they say there is not one Christ (God), but one above, and the other below. And this last {{Style S-Italic|formerly dwelt in many;}} but {{Style S-Italic|the Jesus}}, they at one time say is {{Style S-Italic|from}} God, at another they call him a Spirit.”^{[#fn1260 1260]} This spirit is the Christos, the {{Style S-Italic|messenger}} of life, who is sometimes called the Angel {{Style S-Italic|Gabriel}} (in Hebrew, the mighty one of God), and who took with the Gnostics the place of the Logos, while the Holy Spirit was considered {{Style S-Italic|Life.^{[#fn1261 1261]}}} With the sect of the Nazarenes, though, the Spiritus, or Holy Ghost, had less honor. While nearly every Gnostic sect considered it a Female Power, whether they called it {{Style S-Italic|Binah}}, בינה, {{Style S-Italic|Sophia}}, the Divine Intellect, with the Nazarene sect it was the {{Style S-Italic|Female Spiritus}}, the astral light, the genetrix of all things of {{Style S-Italic|matter}}, the chaos in its evil aspect, made {{Style S-Italic|turbido}} by the Demiurge. At the creation of man, “it was light on the side of the Father, and it was light (material light) on the side of the mother. And this is the ‘{{Style S-Italic|two-fold}} man,’”^{[#fn1262 1262]} says the {{Style S-Italic|Sohar}}. “That day (the last one) will perish the seven badly-disposed stellars, also the sons of man, who have confessed the {{Style S-Italic|Spiritus}}, the Messias (false), the Deus, and the Mother of the Spiritus shall perish.”^{[#fn1263 1263]}

[#fn1260anc 1260]. {{Style S-Italic|Theodoret: “Hæret. Fab.,” ii., vii.}}

[#fn1261anc 1261]. {{Style S-Italic|See “Irenæus,” I., xii., p. 86.}}

[#fn1262anc 1262]. “Auszuge aus dem Sohar,” p. 12.

[#fn1263anc 1263]. “Cod. Naz.,” vol. ii., p. 149.

194 ISIS UNVEILED.

Jesus enforced and illustrated his doctrines with signs and wonders; and if we lay aside the claims advanced on his behalf by his deifiers, he did but what other kabalists did; and only {{Style S-Italic|they}} at that epoch, when, for two centuries the sources of prophecy had been completely dried up, and from this stagnation of public “miracles” had originated the skepticism of the unbelieving sect of the Sadducees. Describing the “heresies” of those days, Theodoret, who has no idea of the hidden meaning of the word Christos, the {{Style S-Italic|anointed}} messenger, complains that they (the Gnostics) assert {{Style S-Italic|that this Messenger or Delegatus changes his body from time to time,}} “{{Style S-Italic|and goes into other bodies, and at each time is differently Manifested.}} And these (the overshadowed prophets) use incantations and invocations of various demons and baptisms in the confession of their principles. . . . They embrace astrology and magic, and the mathematical error,” (?) he says.^{[#fn1264 1264]}

Neither in the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies}} nor any other early work of the apostles, is there anything to show that either of his friends and followers regarded Jesus as anything more than a prophet. The idea is as clearly established in the {{Style S-Italic|Clementines.}} Except that too much room is afforded to Peter to establish the identity of the Mosaic God with the Father of Jesus, the whole work is devoted to Monotheism. The author seems as bitter against Polytheism as against the claim to the divinity of Christ.^{[#fn1265 1265]} He seems

[#fn1264anc 1264]. Theodoret: “Hæret. Fab.,” ii., vii.

[#fn1265anc 1265]. “Homilies,” xvi., 15 ff.; ii., 12; iii., 57-59; x., 19. Schliemann: “Die Clementinem,” p. 134 ff; “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p. 349.

195 THE SOURCE OF CHRIST’S INSPIRATION.

to be utterly ignorant of the Logos, and his speculation is confined to Sophia, the Gnostic wisdom. There is no trace in it of a hypostatic trinity, but the same overshadowing of the Gnostic “wisdom (Christos and Sophia) is attributed in the case of Jesus as it is in those of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.^{[#fn1266 1266]} These personages are all placed on one level, and called ‘true prophets,’ and the seven pillars of the world.” More than that, Peter vehemently denies the fall of Adam, and with him, the doctrine of atonement, as taught by Christian theology, utterly falls to the ground, {{Style S-Italic|for he combats it as a blasphemy.^{[#fn1267 1267]}}} Peter’s theory of sin is that of the Jewish kabalists, and even, in a certain way, Platonic. Adam not only never sinned, but, “as a true prophet, possessed of the Spirit of God, which afterwards was in Jesus, {{Style S-Italic|could not}} sin.”^{[#fn1268 1268]} In short, the whole of the work exhibits the belief of the author in the kabalistic doctrine of permutation. The {{Style S-Italic|Kabala}} teaches the doctrine of transmigration of the spirit.^{[#fn1269 1269]} “Mosah is the {{Style S-Italic|revolutio}} of Seth and Hebel.”^{[#fn1270 1270]}

“Tell me who it is who brings about the {{Style S-Italic|re-birth}} (the revolutio)?” is asked of the wise Hermes. “God’s Son, the {{Style S-Italic|only man,}} through the will of God,” is the answer of the “heathen.”^{[#fn1271 1271]}

“God’s son” is the immortal spirit assigned to every human being. It is this divine entity which is the “{{Style S-Italic|only man,”}} for the casket which contains our soul, and the soul itself, are but half-entities, and without its overshadowing both body and astral soul, the two are but an animal {{Style S-Italic|duad}}. It requires a trinity to form the complete “man,” and allow him to remain immortal at every “re-birth,” or {{Style S-Italic|revolutio}}, throughout the subsequent and ascending spheres, every one of which brings him nearer to the refulgent realm of eternal and {{Style S-Italic|absolute}} light{{Style S-Italic|.}}

“God’s First-born, who is the ‘holy Veil,’ the ‘Light of Lights,’ it is he who sends the revolutio of the Delegatus, for he is the {{Style S-Italic|First Power,”}} says the kabalist.^{[#fn1272 1272]}

“The pneuma (spirit) and the dunamis (power), which is from the God, it is right to consider nothing else than the {{Style S-Italic|Logos,}} who is {{Style S-Italic|also}} (?) First-begotten to the God,” argues a Christian.^{[#fn1273 1273]}

[#fn1266anc 1266]. “Homilies,” iii., 20 f; ii., 16-18, etc.

[#fn1267anc 1267]. Ibid., iii., 20 ff.

[#fn1268anc 1268]. Schliemann: “Die Clementinem,” pp. 130-176; quoted also in “Supernatural Religion,” p. 342.

[#fn1269anc 1269]. We will speak of this doctrine further on.

[#fn1270anc 1270]. “Kabbala Denudata,” vol. ii., p. 155; “Vallis Regia.”

[#fn1271anc 1271]. “Hermes,” X., iv., 21-23.

[#fn1272anc 1272]. Idra Magna: “Kabbala Denudata.”

[#fn1273anc 1273]. Justin Martyr: “Apol.,” vol. ii., p. 74.

196 ISIS UNVEILED.

{{Style S-Italic|Sohar}} and the heretical sects, and if Jesus mentioned them, it was not in the official synagogues that he learned the theory, but directly in the kabalistic teachings. In the Mosaic books, very little mention is made of them, and Moses, who holds direct communications with the “Lord God,” troubles himself very little about them. The doctrine was a secret one, and deemed by the orthodox synagogue heretical. Josephus calls the Essenes heretics, saying: “Those admitted among the Essenes must swear to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise {{Style S-Italic|than as he received them himself,}} and equally to preserve the books {{Style S-Italic|belonging to their sect,}} and the {{Style S-Italic|names of the angels.^{[#fn1274 1274]}}} The Sadducees did not believe in angels, neither did the uninitiated Gentiles, who limited their Olympus to gods and demi-gods, or “spirits.” Alone, the kabalists and theurgists hold to that doctrine from time immemorial, and, as a consequence, Plato, and Philo Judæus after him, followed first by the Gnostics, and then by the Christians.

Thus, if Josephus never wrote the famous interpolation forged by Eusebius, concerning Jesus, on the other hand, he has described in the Essenes all the principal features that we find prominent in the Nazarene. When praying, they sought solitude.^{[#fn1275 1275]} “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet . . . and pray to thy Father which is in secret” ({{Style S-Italic|Matthew}} vi. 6). “Everything spoken by them (Essenes) is stronger than an oath. Swearing is shunned by them” ({{Style S-Italic|Josephus}} II., viii., 6). “But I say unto you, swear not at all . . . but let your communication be yea, yea; nay, nay” ({{Style S-Italic|Matthew}} v. 34-37).

Epiphanius, who places the Ebionite “heresy” on one level with that of the Nazarenes, also remarks that the Nazaraioi come next to the Cerinthians,^{[#fn1276 1276]} so much vituperated against by Irenæus.^{[#fn1277 1277]}

[#fn1274anc 1274]. Josephus: “Wars,” II., chap. 8, sec. 7.

[#fn1275anc 1275]. See Josephus; Philo; Munk (35). Eusebius mentions their semneion, where they perform the mysteries of a retired life (“Ecclesiastic History,” lib. ii., ch. 17).

[#fn1276anc 1276]. “Epiphanius,” ed. Petau, i., p. 117.

[#fn1277anc 1277]. Cerinthus is the same Gnostic—a contemporary of John the Evangelist—of whom Irenæus invented the following anecdote: “There are those who heard him (Polycarp) say that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed forth from the bath-house . . . crying out, ‘Let us fly, lest the bath-house fall down, Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, being within it’” (Irenæus: “Adv. Hœr.,” iii. 3, § 4).

197 THE ANCIENT AND MODERN NABATHEANS.

Munk, in his work on Palestine, affirms that there were 4,000 Essenes living in the desert; that they had their mystical books, and predicted the future.^{[#fn1278 1278]} The Nabatheans, with very little difference indeed, adhered to the same belief as the Nazarenes and the Sabeans, and all of them honored John the Baptist more than his successor Jesus. The Persian Iezidi say that they originally came to Syria from Busrah. They use baptism, and believe in seven archangels, though paying at the same time reverence to Satan. Their prophet Iezed, who flourished long prior to Mahomet,^{[#fn1279 1279]} taught that God will send a messenger, and that the latter would reveal to him a book which is already written in heaven from the eternity.^{[#fn1280 1280]} The Nabathæns inhabited the Lebanon, as their descendants do to the present day, and their religion was from its origin purely kabalistic. Maimonides speaks of them as if he identified them with the Sabeans. “I will mention to thee the writings . . . respecting the belief and institutions of the {{Style S-Italic|Sabeans}},” he says. “The most famous is the book {{Style S-Italic|The Agriculture of the Nabathæans}}, which has been translated by Ibn Waho-hijah. This book is full of heathenish foolishness. . . . It speaks of the preparations of Talismans, the drawing down of the powers of the Spirits, Magic, Demons, and ghouls, which make their abode in the desert.”^{[#fn1281 1281]}

[#fn1278anc 1278]. Munk: “Palestine,” p. 525; “Sod, the Son of the Man.”

[#fn1279anc 1279]. “Haxthausen,” p. 229.

[#fn1280anc 1280]. “Shahrastani;” Dr. D. Chwolsohn: “Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus,” ii., p. 625.

[#fn1281anc 1281]. Maimonides, quoted in Dr. D. Chwolsohn: “Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus,” ii., p. 458.

198 ISIS UNVEILED.

they were Ebionites, Nazarenes, Gnostics, or others. They had no Christian dogmas in those days, and their Christianity consisted in believing Jesus to be a prophet, this belief varying from seeing in him simply a “just man,”^{[#fn1282 1282]} or a holy, inspired prophet, a vehicle used by Christos and Sophia to manifest themselves through. These all united together in opposition to the synagogue and the tyrannical technicalities of the Pharisees, until the primitive group separated in two distinct branches—which, we may correctly term the Christian kabalists of the Jewish Tanaim school, and the Christian kabalists of the Platonic Gnosis.^{[#fn1283 1283]} The former were represented by the party composed of the followers of Peter, and John, the author of the {{Style S-Italic|Apocalypse;}} the latter ranged with the Pauline Christianity, blending itself, at the end of the second century, with the Platonic philosophy, and engulfing, still later, the Gnostic sects, whose symbols and misunderstood mysticism overflowed the Church of Rome.

Amid this jumble of contradictions, what Christian is secure in confessing himself such? In the old Syriac {{Style S-Italic|Gospel according to Luke}} (iii. 22), the Holy Spirit is said to have descended in the likeness of a dove. “Jesua, full of the sacred Spirit, returned from Jordan, and the Spirit led him into the desert” (old Syriac, {{Style S-Italic|Luke}} iv. 1{{Style S-Italic|, Tremellius}}){{Style S-Italic|.}} “The difficulty,” says Dunlap, “was that the Gospels declared that John the Baptist saw the Spirit (the Power of God) descend upon Jesus after he had reached manhood, and if the Spirit then first descended upon him, there was some ground for the opinion of the Ebionites and Nazarenes who denied his {{Style S-Italic|preceding}} existence, and refused him the attributes of the Logos. The Gnostics, on the other hand, objected to the flesh, but conceded the Logos.”^{[#fn1284 1284]}

[#fn1282anc 1282]. “Ye have condemned and killed the just,” says James in his epistle to the twelve tribes.

[#fn1283anc 1283]. Porphyry makes a distinction between what he calls “the {{Style S-Italic|Antique}} or {{Style S-Italic|Oriental philosophy,”}} and the properly Grecian system, that of the Neo-platonists. King says that all these religions and systems are branches of one antique and common religion, the Asiatic or Buddhistic (“Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 1).

[#fn1284anc 1284]. “Sod, the Son of the Man.”

199 REAL MEANING OF HEROD’S “INFANT-MASSACRE.”

nothing better than to be deceived. . . . As regards myself, therefore, {{Style S-Italic|I will always be a philosopher with myself,}} but {{Style S-Italic|I must be priest}} with the people.”

“Holy is God the Father of all being, holy is God, whose wisdom is carried out into execution by his own Powers! . . . Holy art Thou, who through the Word had created all! Therefore, I believe in Thee, and bear testimony, and go into the life and light.”^{[#fn1285 1285]} Thus speaks Hermes Trismegistus, the heathen divine. What Christian bishop could have said better than that?

[#fn1285anc 1285]. “Hermes Trismegistus,” pp. 86, 87, 90.

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ble absurdity. But in 1 {{Style S-Italic|Samuel}} x., his anointing by Samuel and initiation are described; and at verse 6th, Samuel uses this significant language: “. . . the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee and thou shalt prophesy with them, {{Style S-Italic|and shalt be turned into another man.”}} The phrase above quoted is thus made plain—he had received one degree of initiation and was symbolically described as “a child one year old.” The Catholic {{Style S-Italic|Bible}}, from which the text is quoted, with charming candor says in a foot-note: “It is extremely difficult to explain” (meaning that Saul was a child of one year). But undaunted by any difficulty the Editor, nevertheless, does take upon himself to explain it, and adds: “{{Style S-Italic|A child of one year.}} That is, {{Style S-Italic|he was good and like an innocent child.”}} An interpretation as ingenious as it is pious; and which if it does no good can certainly do no harm.^{[#fn1286 1286]}

[#fn1286anc 1286]. It is the correct interpretation of the Bible allegories that makes the Catholic clergy so wrathful with the Protestants who freely scrutinize the Bible. How bitter this feeling has become, we can judge by the following words of the Reverend Father Parker of Hyde Park, New York, who, lecturing in St. Teresa’s Catholic Church, on the 10th of December, 1876, said: “To whom does the Protestant Church owe its possession of the Bible, {{Style S-Italic|which they wish to place in the hands of every ignorant person and child?}} To monkish hands, that laboriously transcribed it before the age of printing. Protestantism has produced dissension in Church, rebellions and outbreaks in State, unsoundness in social life, and will never be satisfied short of the downfall of the Bible! Protestants must admit that the Roman Church has done more to scatter Christianity and extirpate idolatry than all their sects. From one pulpit it is said that there is no hell, and from another that there is immediate and unmitigated damnation. One says that Jesus Christ was only a man; another that you must be plunged bodily into water to be baptized, and refuses the rites to infants. Most of them have no prescribed form of worship, no sacred vestments, and their doctrines are as undefined as their service is informal. The founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, was the worst man in Europe. The advent of the Reformation was the signal for civil war, and from that time to this the world has been in a restless state, uneasy in regard to Governments, and every day becoming more skeptical. The ultimate tendency of Protestantism is clearly nothing less than the destruction of all respect for the Bible, and the disruption of government and society.” Very plain talk this. The Protestants might easily return the compliment.

201 THE HEBREW TRADITIONS ABOUT JESUS.

official complaints of the Synagogue abundant evidence of the persecution of the initiates. The {{Style S-Italic|Talmud}} also corroborates it.

While in Alexandria, continues the story, they were received in the house of a rich and learned lady (personified Egypt). Young Jesus found her beautiful, notwithstanding “{{Style S-Italic|a defect in her eyes,”}} and declared so to his master. Upon hearing this, the latter became so angry that his pupil should find in the land of bondage anything good, that “he cursed him and drove the young man from his presence.” Then follow a series of adventures told in allegorical language, which show that Jesus supplemented his initiation in the Jewish {{Style S-Italic|Kabala}} with an additional acquisition of the secret wisdom of Egypt. When the persecution ceased, they both returned to Judea.^{[#fn1287 1287]}

The real grievances against Jesus are stated by the learned author of {{Style S-Italic|Tela Ignea Satanæ}} (the fiery darts of Satan) to be two in number: 1st, that he had discovered the great Mysteries of their Temple, by having been initiated in Egypt; and 2d, that he had profaned them by exposing them to the vulgar, who misunderstood and disfigured them. This is what they say:^{[#fn1288 1288]}

“There exists, in the sanctuary of the living God, a cubical stone, on which are sculptured the holy characters, the combination of which gives the explanation of the attributes and powers of the incommunicable name. This explanation is the secret key of all the occult sciences and forces in nature. It is what the Hebrews call the {{Style S-Italic|Scham hamphorash.}} This stone is watched by two lions of gold, who roar as soon as it is approached.^{[#fn1289 1289]} The gates of the temple were never lost sight of, and the

[#fn1287anc 1287]. Eliphas Levi ascribes this narrative to the Talmudist authors of “Sota” and “Sanhedrin,” p. 19, book of “Jechiel.”

[#fn1288anc 1288]. This fragment is translated from the original Hebrew by Eliphas Levi in his “La Science des Esprits.”

[#fn1289anc 1289]. Those who know anything of the rites of the Hebrews must recognize in these lions the gigantic figures of the Cherubim, whose symbolical monstrosity was well calculated to frighten and put to flight the profane.

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door of the sanctuary opened but once a year, to admit the High Priest alone. But Jesus, who had learned in Egypt the ‘great secrets’ at the initiation, forged for himself invisible keys, and thus was enabled to penetrate into the sanctuary unseen. . . . He copied the characters on the cubical stone, and hid them in his thigh;^{[#fn1290 1290]} after which, emerging from the temple, he went abroad and began astounding people with his miracles. The dead were raised at his command, the leprous and the obsessed were healed. He forced the stones which lay buried for ages at the bottom of the sea to rise to the surface until they formed a mountain, from the top of which he preached.” The {{Style S-Italic|Sepher Toldos}} states further that, {{Style S-Italic|unable to displace}} the cubical stone of the sanctuary, Jesus fabricated one of clay, which he showed to the nations and passed it off for the true cubical stone of Israel.

This allegory, like the rest of them in such books, is written “{{Style S-Italic|inside and outside”}}—it has its secret meaning, and ought to be read two ways. The kabalistic books explain its mystical meaning. Further, the same Talmudist says, in substance, the following: Jesus was thrown in prison,^{[#fn1291 1291]} and kept there forty days; then flogged as a seditious rebel; then stoned as a blasphemer in a place called Lud, and finally allowed to expire upon a cross. “All this,” explains Levi, “because he revealed to the people the truths which they (the Pharisees) wished to bury for their own use. He had divined the occult theology of Israel, had compared it with the wisdom of Egypt, and found thereby the reason for a universal religious synthesis.”^{[#fn1292 1292]}

[#fn1290anc 1290]. Arnobius tells the same story of Jesus, and narrates how he was accused of having robbed the sanctuary of the secret names of the Holy One, by means of which knowledge he performed all the miracles.

[#fn1291anc 1291]. This is a translation of Eliphas Levi.

[#fn1292anc 1292]. “La Science des Esprits,” p. 37.

203 WHAT JESUS’ BROTHER SAYS OF HIM.

says James in his epistle (ii. 1), presumably addressing Christ as God. “Peace to thee, my {{Style S-Italic|Lord,}} John Abo Sabo, Lord of Glory!” says the {{Style S-Italic|Codex Nazaræus}} (ii., 19), known to address but a prophet. “Ye have condemned and killed the {{Style S-Italic|Just,”}} says James (v. 6). “Iohanan (John) is the {{Style S-Italic|Just}} one, he comes in the way of {{Style S-Italic|justice,”}} says Matthew (xxi. 32, Syriac text).

James does not even call Jesus {{Style S-Italic|Messiah,}} in the sense given to the title by the Christians, but alludes to the kabalistic “King Messiah,” who is Lord of Sabaoth^{[#fn1293 1293]} (v. 4), and repeats several times that the “Lord” will come, but identifies the latter nowhere with Jesus. “Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord . . . be patient, for the coming of the Lord {{Style S-Italic|draweth nigh”}} (v. 7, 8). And he adds: “Take, my brethren, the prophet (Jesus) {{Style S-Italic|who has spoken in the name of the Lord}} for an example of suffering, affliction, and of patience.” Though in the present version the word “prophet” stands in the plural, yet this is a deliberate falsification of the original, the purpose of which is too evident. James, immediately after having cited the “prophets” as an example, adds: “Behold . . . ye have {{Style S-Italic|heard}} of the patience of Job, and {{Style S-Italic|have seen the end}} of the Lord”—thus combining the examples of these two admirable characters, and placing them on a perfect equality. But we have more to adduce in support of our argument. Did not Jesus himself glorify the prophet of the Jordan? “What went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. . . . Verily, I say unto you, among them that are born {{Style S-Italic|of women}} there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.”

[#fn1293anc 1293]. “Israelite Indeed,” vol. iii., p. 61.

204 ISIS UNVEILED.

and my Baptism shall be joined to my association; he shall share with me the seat which is the abode of life, of the supreme Mano, and of living fire’” ({{Style S-Italic|Codex Nazaræus,}} ii., p. 115). Origen remarks “there are some who said of John (the Baptist) that he was the {{Style S-Italic|anointed”}} (Christus).^{[#fn1294 1294]} The Angel Rasiel of the kabalists is the Angel {{Style S-Italic|Gabriel}} of the Nazarenes, and it is the latter who is chosen of all the celestial hierarchy by the Christians to become the messenger of the ‘annunciation.’ The genius sent by the ‘Lord of Celsitude’ is Æbel Zivo, whose name is also called Gabriel Legatus.”^{[#fn1295 1295]} Paul must have had the sect of the Nazarenes in mind when he said: “And last of all he (Jesus) was seen of me also, as {{Style S-Italic|of one born out of due time”}} (1 {{Style S-Italic|Corinth.,}} xv. 8), thus reminding his listeners of the expression usual to the Nazarenes, who termed the Jews “the abortions, or born out of time.” Paul prides himself of belonging to a hæresy.^{[#fn1296 1296]}

When the metaphysical conceptions of the Gnostics, who saw in Jesus the Logos and the anointed, began to gain ground, the earliest Christians separated from the Nazarenes, who accused Jesus of perverting the doctrines of John, and changing the baptism of the Jordan.^{[#fn1297 1297]} “Directly,” says Milman, “as it (the Gospel) got {{Style S-Italic|beyond}} the borders of Palestine, and the name of ‘Christ’ had acquired sanctity and veneration in the Eastern cities, he became a kind of {{Style S-Italic|metaphysical impersonation,}} while the religion lost its purely moral cast and assumed the character of a {{Style S-Italic|speculative theogony.”^{[#fn1298 1298]}}} The only half-original document that has reached us from the primitive apostolic days, is the {{Style S-Italic|Logia}} of Matthew. The real, genuine doctrine has remained in the hands of the Nazarenes, in this {{Style S-Italic|Gospel of Matthew}} containing the “secret doctrine,” the “Sayings of Jesus,” mentioned by Papias. These sayings were, no doubt, of the same nature as the small manuscripts placed in the hands of the neophytes, who were candidates for the Initiations into the Mysteries, and which contained the {{Style S-Italic|Aporrheta,}} the revelations of some important rites and symbols. For why should Matthew take such precautions to make them “{{Style S-Italic|secret”}} were it otherwise?

Primitive Christianity had its grip, pass-words, and degrees of initiation. The innumerable Gnostic gems and amulets are weighty proofs of it. It is a whole symbolical science. The kabalists were the first to embellish the universal Logos,^{[#fn1299 1299]} with such terms as “Light of Light,” the

[#fn1294anc 1294]. “Origen,” vol. ii., p. 150.

[#fn1295anc 1295]. “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. i., p. 23{{Style S-Italic|.}}

[#fn1296anc 1296]. “In the way these call heresy I worship” (Acts xxiv. 14).

[#fn1297anc 1297]. “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. ii., p. 109.

[#fn1298anc 1298]. “Milman,” p. 200.

[#fn1299anc 1299]. Dunlap says in “Sod, the Son of the Man”: “Mr. Hall, of India, informs us that he has seen Sanscrit philosophical treatises in which the {{Style S-Italic|Logos}} continually occurs,” p. 39, foot-note.

205 VAST ANTIQUITY OF BORROWED CHRISTIAN TERMS.

Messenger of Life and Light,^{[#fn1300 1300]} and we find these expressions adopted {{Style S-Italic|in toto}} by the Christians, with the addition of nearly all the Gnostic terms such as Pleroma (fulness), Archons, Æons, etc. As to the “First-Born,” the First, and the “Only-Begotten,” these are as old as the world. Origen shows the word “Logos” as existing among the Brachmanes. “The {{Style S-Italic|Brachmanes}} say that the God is {{Style S-Italic|Light,}} not such as one sees, nor such as the sun and fire; but they have the {{Style S-Italic|God}} Logos, not the articulate, the Logos of the Gnosis, through whom the highest mysteries of the Gnosis are seen by the wise.”^{[#fn1301 1301]} The {{Style S-Italic|Acts}} and the fourth {{Style S-Italic|Gospel}} teem with Gnostic expressions. The kabalistic: “God’s first-born emanated from the Most High,” together with {{Style S-Italic|that which is the}} “{{Style S-Italic|Spirit of the Anointing;”}} and again “they called him the anointed of the Highest,”^{[#fn1302 1302]} are reproduced in Spirit and substance by the author of the {{Style S-Italic|Gospel according to John.}} “That was {{Style S-Italic|the true light,”}} and “the light shineth in darkness.” “And the word {{Style S-Italic|was made flesh.”}} “And his {{Style S-Italic|fulness}} (pleroma) have all we received,” etc. ({{Style S-Italic|John}} i. et seq.).

The “Christ,” then, and the “Logos” existed ages before Christianity; the Oriental Gnosis was studied long before the days of Moses, and we have to seek for the origin of all these in the archaic periods of the primeval Asiatic philosophy. Peter’s second {{Style S-Italic|Epistle}} and Jude’s fragment, preserved in the {{Style S-Italic|New Testament,}} show by their phraseology that they belong to the kabalistic Oriental Gnosis, for they use the same expressions as did the Christian Gnostics who built a part of their system from the Oriental {{Style S-Italic|Kabala}}. “Presumptuous are they (the Ophites), self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of Dignities,” says Peter (2d Epistle ii. 10), the original model for the later abusive Tertullian and Irenæus.^{[#fn1303 1303]} “Likewise (even as Sodom and Gomorrah) also these {{Style S-Italic|filthy}} dreamers defile the flesh, despise Dominion and speak evil of Dignities,” says Jude, repeating the very words of Peter, and thereby expressions consecrated in the {{Style S-Italic|Kabala. Dominion}} is the “Empire,” the {{Style S-Italic|tenth}} of the kabalistic sephiroth.^{[#fn1304 1304]} The {{Style S-Italic|Powers}} and Dignities are the subordinate

[#fn1300anc 1300]. See John i.

[#fn1301anc 1301]. Origen: “Philosophumena,” xxiv.

[#fn1302anc 1302]. Kleuker: “Natur und Ursprung der Emanationslehre bei den Kabbalisten,” pp. 10, 11; see “Libri Mysterii.”

[#fn1303anc 1303]. “These as natural {{Style S-Italic|brute beasts.”}} “The dog has turned to its own vomit again; and {{Style S-Italic|the sow}} that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (22).

[#fn1304anc 1304]. The types of the creation, or the attributes of the Supreme Being, are through the emanations of Adam Kadmon; these are: “The {{Style S-Italic|Crown, Wisdom, Prudence, Magnificence, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Foundation, Empire.}} Wisdom is called {{Style S-Italic|Jeh;}} Prudence, {{Style S-Italic|Jehovah;}} Severity, {{Style S-Italic|Elohim;}} Magnificence, {{Style S-Italic|El;}} Victory and Glory, Sabaoth; Empire or Dominion, Adonai.” Thus when the Nazarenes and other Gnostics of the more Platonic tendency twitted the Jews as “abortions who worship their god Iurbo, {{Style S-Italic|Adunai,”}} we need not wonder at the wrath of those who had accepted the old Mosaic system, but at that of Peter and Jude who claim to be followers of Jesus and dissent from the views of him who was also a Nazarene.

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genii of the Archangels and Angels of the {{Style S-Italic|Sohar.^{[#fn1305 1305]}}} These emanations are the very life and soul of the {{Style S-Italic|Kabala}} and Zoroastrianism; and the {{Style S-Italic|Talmud}} itself, in its present state, is all borrowed from the {{Style S-Italic|Zendavesta.}} Therefore, by adopting the views of Peter, Jude, and other Jewish apostles, the Christians have become but a dissenting sect of the Persians, for they do not even interpret the meaning of all such {{Style S-Italic|Powers}} as the true kabalists do. Paul’s warning his converts against the worshipping of angels, shows how well he appreciated, even so early as his period, the dangers of borrowing from a metaphysical doctrine the philosophy of which could be rightly interpreted but by its well-learned adherents, the Magi and the Jewish Tanaim. “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and {{Style S-Italic|worshipping of angels,}} intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,”^{[#fn1306 1306]} is a sentence laid right at the door of Peter and his champions. In the {{Style S-Italic|Talmud,}} Michael is Prince of Water, who has {{Style S-Italic|seven}} inferior spirits subordinate to him. He is the patron, the guardian angel of the Jews, as Daniel informs us (v. 21), and the Greek Ophites, who identified him with their Ophiomorphos, the personified creation of the envy and malice of Ilda-Baoth, the Demiurgus (Creator of the {{Style S-Italic|material}} world), and undertook to prove that he was also Samuel, the Hebrew prince of the evil spirits, or Persian devs, were naturally regarded by the Jews as blasphemers. But did Jesus ever sanction this belief in angels except in so far as hinting that they were the messengers and subordinates of God? And here the origin of the later splits between Christian beliefs is directly traceable to these two early contradictory views.

Paul, believing in all such occult powers in the world “unseen,” but ever “present,” says: “Ye walked according to the Æon of this world, according to the {{Style S-Italic|Archon}} (Ilda-Baoth, the {{Style S-Italic|Demiurge}}) that has the domination of the air,” and “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the {{Style S-Italic|dominations,}} the {{Style S-Italic|powers;}} the lords of darkness, the mischievousness of spirits in the upper regions.” This sentence, “Ye were dead in sin and error,” for “ye walked according to the {{Style S-Italic|Archon,”}} or Ilda-Baoth, the God and creator of matter of the Ophites, shows unequivocally that: 1st, Paul, notwithstanding some dissensions with the more important doctrines of the Gnostics, shared more or less their cosmogonical views on the emanations; and 2d, that he was fully aware that this Demi-

[#fn1305anc 1305]. According to the “Kabala,” {{Style S-Italic|Empire}} or {{Style S-Italic|Dominion}} is “the consuming fire, and his wife is the Temple or the Church.”

[#fn1306anc 1306]. Colossians ii. 18.

207 “DIGNITIES,” “POWERS,” “DOMINIONS,” ETC., EXPLAINED.

urge, whose Jewish name was Jehovah, was {{Style S-Italic|not}} the God preached by Jesus. And now, if we compare the doctrine of Paul with the religious views of Peter and Jude, we find that, not only did they worship Michael, the Archangel, but that also they {{Style S-Italic|reverenced}} Satan, because the latter was also, before his fall, an angel! This they do quite openly, and abuse the Gnostics^{[#fn1307 1307]} for speaking “evil” of him. No one can deny the following: Peter, when denouncing those who are not afraid to speak evil of “{{Style S-Italic|dignities,”}} adds immediately, “Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, {{Style S-Italic|bring not railing accusations}} against them (the dignities) before the Lord” (ii. 11). Who are the dignities? Jude, in his general epistle, makes the word as clear as day. The {{Style S-Italic|dignities}} are the devils!! Complaining of the disrespect shown by the Gnostics to the {{Style S-Italic|powers}} and {{Style S-Italic|dominions,}} Jude argues in the very words of Peter: “And yet, Michael, the Archangel, when contending {{Style S-Italic|with the devil,}} he disputed about the body of Moses, {{Style S-Italic|durst not bring against him a railing accusation,}} but said, The Lord rebuke thee” (i. 9). Is this plain enough? If not, then we have the {{Style S-Italic|Kabala}} to prove who were the {{Style S-Italic|dignities.}}

[#fn1307anc 1307]. It is more likely that both abused Paul, who preached against this belief; and that the Gnostics were only a pretext. (See Peter’s second Epistle.)

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Memro, and not the Lord Himself; and that he whom the Hebrews of the {{Style S-Italic|Old Testament}} mistook for {{Style S-Italic|Iahoh}} was but His messenger, one of His sons, or emanations. All this establishes but one logical conclusion—namely, that the Gnostics were by far the superiors of the disciples, in point of education and general information; even in a knowledge of the religious tenets of the Jews themselves. While they were perfectly well-versed in the Chaldean wisdom, the well-meaning, pious, but fanatical as well as ignorant disciples, unable to fully understand or grasp the religious spirit of their own system, were driven in their disputations to such convincing logic as the use of “brute beasts,” “sows,” “dogs,” and other epithets so freely bestowed by Peter.

The same spirit of incomplete inquiry and ignorance has led the Christian Church to bestow on its most holy apostles, titles assumed by their most desperate opponents, the “Hæretics” and Gnostics. So we find, for instance, Paul termed the vase of election “{{Style S-Italic|Vas Electionis,”}} a title chosen by {{Style S-Italic|Manes,^{[#fn1308 1308]}}} the greatest heretic of his day in the eyes of the Church, Manes meaning, in the Babylonian language, the chosen vessel or receptacle.^{[#fn1309 1309]}

[#fn1308anc 1308]. The true name of Manes—who was a Persian by birth—was {{Style S-Italic|Cubricus.}} (See Epiph. “Life of Manes,” Hæret. lxv.) He was flayed alive at the instance of the Magi, by the Persian King Varanes I. Plutarch says that Manes or Manis means Masses or anointed. The vessel, or vase of election, is, therefore, the vessel full of that light of God, which he pours on one he has selected for his interpreter.

[#fn1309anc 1309]. See King’s “Gnostics,” p. 38.

209 APOSTROPHES TO THREE VIRGIN-MOTHERS COMPARED.

apostrophes to their respective Virgin-mothers. The juxtaposition of a few examples will make this clear.

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In the religious metaphysics of the Hebrews, the Highest One is an abstraction; he is “without form or being,” “with no likeness with anything else.”^{[#fn1310 1310]} And even Philo calls the Creator, the {{Style S-Italic|Logos}} who stands next God, “the second God.” “The {{Style S-Italic|second}} God who is his wisdom.”^{[#fn1311 1311]} God is nothing, he is nameless, and therefore called {{Style S-Italic|Ain-Soph—}}the word {{Style S-Italic|Ain}} meaning {{Style S-Italic|nothing.^{[#fn1312 1312]}}} But if, according to the older Jews, Jehovah is {{Style S-Italic|the}} God, and He manifested Himself several times to Moses and the

[#fn1310anc 1310]. Franck: “Die Kabbala,” p. 126.

[#fn1311anc 1311]. Philo: “Quæst. et Solut.”

[#fn1312anc 1312]. See Franck: “Die Kabbala,” p. 153 ff.

211 THE FOURTH GOSPEL NOT WRITTEN BY JOHN.

prophets, and the Christian Church anathematized the Gnostics who denied the fact—how comes it, then, that we read in the fourth gospel that “{{Style S-Italic|No man hath seen God}} at any time, but the {{Style S-Italic|only-begotten}} Son . . . he hath declared him”? The very words of the Gnostics, in spirit and substance. This sentence of St. John—or rather whoever wrote the gospel now bearing his name—floors all the Petrine arguments against Simon Magus, without appeal. The words are repeated and emphasized in chapter vi.: “{{Style S-Italic|Not that any man hath seen the Father,}} save he which is of God, he (Jesus) hath seen the Father” (46)—the very objection brought forward by Simon in the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies.}} These words prove that either the author of the fourth evangel had no idea of the existence of the {{Style S-Italic|Homilies,}} or that he was {{Style S-Italic|not}} John, the friend and companion of Peter, whom he contradicts point-blank with this emphatic assertion. Be it as it may, this sentence, like many more that might be profitably cited, blends Christianity completely with the Oriental Gnosis, and hence with the kabala.