{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th3/th306.htm","path":"gno/th3/th306.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th3/th306.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n(I have added the title, it being the same as that of the main section of Stob\u00e6us, Patrizzi (p. 51) giving only the simple heading \u201cFrom the [Sermons] to Tat.\u201d\nText: Stob\u00e6us, Phys., xi. 2, under the heading: \u201cOf Hermes from the [Sermons] to Tat\u201d; G. p. 121; M. i. 84, 85; W. i. 131.\nM\u00e9nard, Livre IV., No. viii. of \u201cFragments from the Books of Hermes to his son Tat,\u201d p. 250.)\nHer. Matter both has been born, O son, and it has been [before it came into existence]; for Matter is the vase of genesis, 1 and genesis, the mode of energy of God, who\u2019s free from all necessity of genesis, and pre-exists.\n[Matter], accordingly, by its reception of the seed of genesis, did come [herself] to birth, and [so] became subject to change, and, being shaped,\ntook forms; for she, contriving the forms of her [own] changing, presided over her own changing self.\nThe unborn state 1 of Matter, then, was formlessness 2; its genesis is its being brought into activity.\n26:1 Or receptacle or field of genesis, or birth (\u1f00\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd \u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03ad\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2). The idea of a vessel or vase of birth was a familiar symbol with the Pythagoreans; \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b3\u03b3\u03b9\u03c3\u03bc\u03cc\u03c2 (from the simile of pouring water out of one vessel into another) being one of their synonyms for metempsychosis.\n27:1 \u1f00\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03af\u03b1\n27:2 \u1f00\u03bc\u03bf\u03c1\u03c6\u03af\u03b1. Compare this with the Christian Gnostic commentator of the Naassene Document, quoted by Hippolytus (Philos. v. 7), and the comment of Hippolytus on him: \u201cTheir first and Blessed Formless Essence (\u1f00\u03c3\u03c7\u03b7\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u03bf\u1f50\u03c3\u03af\u03b1), the cause of all forms\u201d (\u201cMyth of Man,\u201d \u00a7 7).","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3: I. Excerpts by Stob\u00e6us: Excerpt V. Of Matter","type":"page"}