{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th206.htm","path":"gno/th2/th206.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th206.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nThis treatise has no precise title, for, as we have already seen in treating of the make-up of the Corpus, the traditional title, \u201cOf Hermes to Tat, the General Sermon,\u201d found in all the MSS., cannot apply to our\ntractate, which is addressed to Asclepius, and from which Stob\u00e6us quotes under the general title, \u201cOf Hermes, from the [Sermons] to Asclepius.\u201d\nThe supposition, however, that Sermon (II.) has dropped out from the parent copy of our Corpus, owing to the loss of one or more quires or quaternions, explains those phenomena so admirably, that it has only to be brought forward, as it has been by Reitzenstein, to carry conviction.\nIt is a curious fact, however, that Stob\u00e6us starts his quotations from this treatise precisely with the same words with which our text begins; nevertheless these words plunge us so immediately into a secondary subject, that Reitzenstein thinks there may have been a more general introduction which Johannes may very well have omitted.\nThat, however, the lost pages of our Corpus should have contained such an introduction, broken at precisely the very same point to a word, would seem to be a coincidence the reverse of probable; nevertheless the treatise itself purports to be a very formal one, for we learn from the concluding words (\u00a7 17) that it was intended to be \u201cAn Introduction to the Gnosis (\u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03af\u03b1) of the Nature of All Things.\u201d\nWe are, therefore, driven to conclude that, in spite of a most improbable coincidence, the beginning may have been lost, and that we have therefore to regret the loss not only of the whole of the \u201cGeneral Sermon\u201d to Tat, but also of the introduction to the \u201cIntroduction to the Gnosis\u201d addressed to Asclepius, and therewith, in all probability, some precious indications of how \u201cTat\u201d and \u201cAsclepius\u201d are to be precisely defined.\nParthey\u2019s conflated title (p. 19) from the MSS., and Stob\u00e6us, \u201cOf Hermes the Thrice-greatest, the General Sermon to Asclepius,\u201d must therefore be definitely\nabandoned, and, in lieu of the lost general title, we must be content with the simple heading, \u201cTo Asclepius.\u201d\nThe subject is that of the Fullness of Being or the Plenum of things. Space is a Plenum,\u2014the fundamental concept of modern scientific speculation.\nAsclepius, however, must guard himself against the confusion of Space with God; for God is not Space, but Cause thereof,\u2014the True Transcendency of \u201cthat which can contain all things\u201d (\u00a7 6).\n\u201cIn Him we move.\u201d \u201cAll that is moved is moved in what is stable,\u201d or \u201cin Him who stands\u201d (\u1f10\u03bd \u1f11\u03c3\u03c4\u1ff6\u03c4\u03b9); where it is to be noticed that the term, \u201cHe who stands,\u201d is found in Philo, and is made much of in Gnostic tradition, especially in the so-called Simonian Gnosis, for in The Great Announcement, from which Hippolytus has preserved some passages, the Logos is called \u201cHe who stands\u201d or \u201cHe who has stood, stands and will stand.\u201d 1 This is the aspect of the Reason of things that holds and compacts all together, the Stock or Pillar of Immobility, the opposite aspect being that of the Separator or Divider; the two together forming the Cross of Manifestation, the resolution of the Sphere of Sameness.\nThe World-Soul is in perpetual motion; this perpetual motion is ordered and reduced to a cosmos and harmony of motion by the introduction into it, by means of the Reason, of the root-forms of motion (mentioned in the Tim\u00e6us and elsewhere);\u2014up, down; right, left; front, back; in, out; round,\u2014and no-motion.\nAll bodies are essentially inert; it is the soul that moves them, either immediately or mediately (\u00a7 9).\nWhat the precise meaning of \u00a7 10 may be I cannot say; the tradition of the original text was variable, showing that the copyists had difficulty with it. As, however, the doctrine throughout is that of a Plenum (as, indeed, it is elsewhere in the Trismegistic writings), I can only suppose that the instructor of \u201cAsclepius\u201d was endeavouring to clinch his point by arguing that the only Void was the \u201cis-not\u201d or non-being; now as nonbeing cannot possibly \u201cexist,\u201d there can be no such thing as Void.\nThat, then, in which \u201cthe All doth move,\u201d in which all things \u201clive and move and have their being,\u201d is the Bodiless; in other words, the Mind or Reason of God, the Logos,\u2014who, as Philo tells us, is the Place of God,\u2014that is, Infinite Space itself, the Container of all things, the very Spouse of Deity. Spouse or Son, it matters not; that in which all moves and lives and breathes is Wisdom, Good and Truth, the \u00c6on of \u00e6ons, Light of light, Life of life, the Archetype of Soul itself (\u00a7 12).\n\u201cGod, then, is not Spirit,\u201d 1 much less \u201ca spirit,\u201d 2 \u201cbut Cause that Spirit is\u201d; for God is \u201cGood alone.\u201d Therefore: \u201cCall not thou aught else Good.\u201d\nAnd now let us turn to F. C. Conybeare\u2019s important criticism of Matt. xix. 17 = Mk. x. 18 = Lk. xviii. 19, in the first number of The Hibbert Journal, 3 where he\nbrings forward very strong evidence that the original reading was: \u201cCall thou me not Good; One only is Good, God the Father,\u201d\u2014a reading known to Marcion, the Clementine Homilies, Athanasius, Didymus, Tatian, and Origen (the two last inferentially).\nIf we compare this with our text, \u201cCall not thou, therefore, aught else Good, for thou would\u2019st impious be; nor any thing at all at any time call Good but God alone,\u201d and \u201cHe is Good alone and nothing else,\u201d\u2014we cannot fail to be struck with the precise similarity of the phrasing and blend of ideas.\nIf, further, we take this in connection with the still more striking contrast, \u201cGod is not Spirit,\u201d with the Johannine \u201cGod is Spirit,\u201d we might at first sight almost persuade ourselves that our treatise had these Christian declarations immediately in mind. But the general phenomena of similarity of diction and idea of the Trismegistic literature with those of the New Testament documents is so much more satisfactorily explained by the fact that both literatures use mainly the common Hellenistic theological phrases of the time, that we need not distress ourselves with any suggestions either of plagiarism or of direct controversy.\nDoubtless the declaration, \u201cGod is Spirit,\u201d was a commonplace among the religio-philosophical circles of the time, and Hermes is here simply refining on a common idea. The reading, \u201cCall thou not me Good,\u201d which appears to have been preserved mainly in Gnostic tradition, may also as easily have come from a similar general idea that the One and Only One was Good alone.\nIt is, moreover, of special interest to notice that the second clause of the Marcionite reading runs: \u201cThere is one [only] Good, God the Father,\u201d while in our\ntreatise the two names of God are given as Good and Father; and so we read (\u00a7 16): \u201cGod, then, is Good, and Good is God\u201d; and immediately after (\u00a7 17): \u201cThe other name of God is Father.\u201d 1\nStriking however, as are those coincidences, we are nevertheless wholly unpersuaded that there was any immediate literary contact between those two sets of Scripture. All that can be said is that their literary similarities are due to a common theological language and their many points of contact in ideas to a generally common atmosphere of theological conceptions.\nAgain, the doctrine of the duty to beget children (\u00a7 17) seems at first sight to be an interpolation by a Jewish editor, the Jews holding that \u201che who is without a wife is half a man.\u201d We must, however, remember that the Egyptian priests were married, and that the rule with them, as with the Pythagoreans, was that a man should first of all discharge his duty to society and live the \u201cpractical,\u201d \u201cpolitical\u201d or \u201csocial\u201d life, before retiring into the life of contemplation. He must first beget children, not only that the race might be continued, but also that bodies might be supplied by parents devoted to the ideal of the religious or philosophic life, so that advanced souls might find birth in favourable conditions, and so the Order be continued.\nThis also is the ancient rule laid down by the Manu of the \u0100ryan Hindus in the M\u0101nava Dharma Sh\u0101stra. The duties of the householder station of life (G\u1e5bihastha \u0101shrama) must first be performed, before the parents can retire to the contemplative life (V\u0101naprastha\n\u0101shrama). In special cases, however, exceptions could be made.\nIt may then be that Asclepius stands for those pupils who were still living the married life.\nThe scribe of the thirteenth century, Codex B. (Parisinus, 1220), has laconically written on the margin of this paragraph the single word \u201cnonsense\u201d (\u03c6\u03bb\u03c5\u03b1\u03c1\u03af\u03b1); he was presumably a monk.\n70:1 R., p. 305, also makes a brief reference to this.\n71:1 Cf. Joh. iv. 24: \u201c\u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1 \u1f41 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2.\u201d\n71:2 As the A.V. has it erroneously.\n71:3 See his article, \u201cThree Early Doctrinal Modifications of the Text of the Gospels,\u201d in The Hibbert Journal (Oct. 1902), pp. 98-113. J. R. Wilkinson\u2019s few remarks (H. J., Ap. 1903, pp. 575, 576) on Conybeare\u2019s criticism of this synoptic passage do not seem to me to be of any weight.\n73:1 Cf. the expression, \u201cGod, Father and the Good,\u201d C. H., x. (xi.) 1.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: I. Corpus Hermeticum: Commentary","type":"page"}