{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th208.htm","path":"gno/th2/th208.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th208.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nThe text seems to be very corrupt, and at one time I thought it incomplete; but it may very well end with the reference to the mighty deeds of the men of old.\nThe title \u201cSacred Sermon\u201d would lead us to expect something of a special nature, something that would constitute a basis of doctrine. For we hear of the \u201cSacred Sermon\u201d of Orpheus, and of the \u201cSacred Sermon\u201d of Pythagoras, and are told that they formed the most sacred deposits of these two mystic schools respectively, and were regarded with special reverence; they thus seem to have been looked upon in some fashion as containing the groundwork of these systems.\nAnd this is precisely what we find with our treatise; it is to a large extent a summary of the general ideas of the \u201cShepherd\u201d cosmogony adapted to the needs of a simpler formularization.\nWhen, however, Reitzenstein (p. 193) refers to this treatise cursorily as the preaching of some prophet or other which has been transferred to Hermes by the Redactor of our Corpus, he suggests that we are dealing with a doctrine foreign to the cosmogonical ideas of the \u201cShepherd.\u201d It is, indeed, true that if we compare the data of the two treatises together, detail by detail, we shall find strong contradictions; but the general \u201cfeel\u201d of both is the same, the general atmosphere is identical.\nPrefixed to the cosmogenesis is a formal theological pro\u0153m, the precise meaning of which escapes me because of its almost mnemonic nature; it is, indeed\nquite in s\u016btra style. There appears, however, to be a distinct trinitarian 1 idea lurking in the first sentence, the trinity consisting of God (\u1f41 \u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2) and Godhead (\u03c4\u1f78 \u03b8\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd) and Nature (\u1f21 \u03c6\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2). The Glory or Power of all things is this Divine Trinity. The Source (or Beginning), the End and the Ever-renewing of all things are owing to this Triad. All three seem to be almost interchangeable terms. The Godhead is the Mind of God, Godly Nature is the Wisdom of God. Again, at the end of the sermon (\u00a7 4) we are told that the Godhead (or that which is Divine) is \u201cNature\u2019s ever-making-new-again the cosmic mixture.\u201d Godhead in operation is Nature, while at the same time Nature is co-established in Godhead, and both are one in God, the Source of all.\nThe cosmogenesis begins with the grandiose image: \u201cDarkness that knew no bounds was in Abyss.\u201d\nWe have already, in commenting on \u201cDarkness\u201d in the \u201cP\u0153mandres\u201d treatise, referred, in explanation, to a Gnostic tradition in which the Primal Elements appear as Water, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos, and have given some reason for ascribing the form of this tradition to Egypt\u2014that is, Archaic Egypt, a parallel tradition to the Sumerian, both derived from a still more Archaic source.\nIf, now, we turn to Epiphanius (remembering that he picked up what he knew or thought he knew about the Gnostics in Egypt), we shall find that he has preserved from another Gnostic system an even more striking parallel with our text.\nThe Bishop of Salamis is denouncing the Nicola\u00eftans, 2 who for him were the earliest Christian Gnostics, there\nbeing very numerous and various sects of them, all deriving from a certain Nicolaus, whom Epiphanius would have us believe to have been one of the first seven deacons of the Church.\nIf, in reality, however, the Nicola\u00eftans = the Balaamites of early Talmudic Rabbinism, 1 then the original Nicola\u00eftans were the earliest Christians, for \u201cBalaamites\u201d was the Rabbinical by-name of the followers of Balaam (Bileam) = Jeschu, and Balaam = Nicolaos, in Hebrew and Greek respectively.\nCuriously enough, moreover, in the paragraph (\u00a7 4) before the one from which we are going to quote, Epiphanius ascribes the use of the mystic words, \u201cKaulakau Kaulakau,\u201d to the Nicola\u00eftans, words which we have, with high probability, shown in the chapter \u201cMyth of Man in the Mysteries\u201d (\u00a7 16 J., end) to have been used by a Jewish Gnostic of the time of Philo, writing in an Egyptian environment, and dealing with the Man-tradition, which is one of the main elements of the \u201cP\u0153mandres\u201d doctrine. All of which carries us back to the dawn of Christianity.\nSpeaking, then, of these Nicola\u00eftans, Epiphanius writes (xxv. 5):\n\u201cOthers of them, again, plaster together empty names, saying: There was Darkness and Abyss (\u03b2\u03c5\u03b8\u03cc\u03c2) and Water; and Spirit in the midst of them made separation of them.\u201d 2\nHere we have precisely the same elements as in our text for the foundation of a cosmogonical representation. What precise relationship these various traditions may have had to one another we cannot say with any certainty; but what we can say is that the writer or\nwriters of our treatise are dealing with a material common to themselves, to pre-Christian Jewish Gnosticism and the earliest forms of the Christian Gnosis.\nThe sentence (in \u00a7 2), \u201cAll things being undefined and yet unwrought (\u1f00\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03c5\u03ac\u03c3\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd)\u201d is also to be noticed, and, together with the opening sentence of the cosmogony, compared with the LXX. version of Gen. i. 2:\n\u201cAnd the earth was invisible and as yet unwrought (\u1f00\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03cd\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2), and Darkness was upon the Abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne upon the Water.\u201d\nAre we, then, to suppose that our Trismegistic writer based himself directly upon this famous \u201coracle\u201d of Jewish Scripture?\nThe Jewish Gnostics would doubtless do so in their commentaries; but the phenomena of the Christianized Jewish Gnostic systems persuade us rather that these Gnostic Jews did not derive their ideas directly from the text of their national Scripture, but from what we may call parallel traditions of an esoteric nature. We shall see later on, when treating of Zosimus, that there were translations of the Chald\u00e6an sacred books in the Alexandrian Library, and we cannot but believe that the general ideas of Chald\u00e6an cosmogony were familiar to all the learned of the time. For Chald\u00e6a and Egypt were regarded as the two most wisdom-loving nations of antiquity, the two most sacred lands. What wonder, then, that Chald\u00e6an and Egyptian ideas should be blended together, and turned out into a \u201cscientific\u201d whole, by the spirit of Greek \u201cphilosophizing,\u201d in our treatises?\nI would therefore conclude that both here, and in\nthe repetition of the formula, \u201cincrease in increasing and multiply in multitude\u201d (\u00a7 3), from the \u201cP\u0153mandres\u201d treatise (\u00a7 18), the similarities are not due to direct plagiarism, but to the fact that such logoi were \u201cin the air.\u201d I would also suggest that the somewhat peculiar term \u1f00\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03cd\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 was not original with the Greek Targum of Genesis, first made at Alexandria some 250 years B.C., but that it was rather taken from the theological and philosophical language of the day and used by the Hebrew translators; that, in brief, in the LXX. translation already we have to take into account the strong influence of the technology of Hellenistic theology.\nWith regard to the whole of our treatise, I would suggest that we have the heads of topics which were to be subsequently explained and commented upon, rather than a didactic treatise setting forth a clear teaching. Like the proem, the cosmogenesis itself is straitly condensed, so condensed that the indications are too vague for us to form any clear mental picture of the process that is suggested. We have nothing but a series of headings that may have meant something very definite to the writer\u2014may, in fact, have summed up for him a whole body of doctrine\u2014but which for us, in our ignorance of detail, can have but little precise meaning.\nTo add to our difficulties, the text, as we have already said, appears to be very faulty. It is very probable that owing to its original brevity, copyists and readers would be tempted to gloss it in the interests of what would appear to them greater clearness; these glosses creeping into the text later on would, since the gloss-makers did not know the original scheme, blurr rather than elucidate the mother-text\u2014and hence our tears.\nThe most striking doctrine in the exposition is that of Renewal or Making-new-again (\u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03bd\u03ad\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2). All animal and vegetable forms contain in themselves \u201cthe seed of again-becoming\u201d (\u03c4\u1f78 \u03c3\u03c0\u03ad\u03c1\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c0\u03b1\u03bb\u03b9\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03b5\u03c3\u03af\u03b1\u03c2). I do not think that this is intended simply to mean that the individual is continued in the species; for we read that \u201cevery birth of flesh ensouled . . . shall of necessity renew itself (\u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03bd\u03b5\u03c9\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9).\u201d The doctrine that is preached is, therefore, that of palingenesis or \u201cre-incarnation\u201d; the renewal on the k\u0101rmic wheel of birth-and-death (\u03c6\u03cd\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2 \u03ba\u03cd\u03ba\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5 \u1f10\u03bd\u03b1\u03c1\u03b9\u03b8\u03bc\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u03b4\u03c1\u03cc\u03bc\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1).\nThe last point to which we need call the reader\u2019s attention is the sentence: \u201cAnd there shall be memorials mighty of their handiworks upon the earth, leaving dim trace behind when cycles are renewed.\u201d\nThe thought of the writer is evidently turned back towards the past, to a time when a mighty race, devoted to growth in wisdom, lived on earth and left great monuments of their wisdom in the work of their hands, dim traces of which were to be seen \u201cin the renewal of the times.\u201d This seems to me to be a clear reference to the general belief of the time (commonly, though erroneously, called Stoic) that there were alternate periods of destruction, by fire and water, and of renewal. In Egypt the common belief, as we have pointed out elsewhere, was that the last destruction had been by water and flood. Before this Flood our author believed there had been a mighty race of Egyptians, the race of the First Hermes, and that some dim traces of the mighty works of this bygone wisdom-loving civilization were still to be seen.\nI am, myself, strongly inclined to believe in this tradition; and I have sometimes speculated as to the possibility of there being buried beneath one or more of the pyramids the remains of some prehistoric buildings (perhaps also of pyramid-shape) that have survived the \u201cFlood.\u201d\n79:1 Not, of course, in a technical Christian sense.\n79:2 Adv. H\u00e6r., xxv. 1-5.\n80:1 See D. J. L., p. 188, where this identification is worked out with some probability.\n80:2 Ed. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1859), ii. 35, 36.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: I. Corpus Hermeticum: Commentary","type":"page"}