{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th3/th334.htm","path":"gno/th3/th334.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th3/th334.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\ni. Contra Valentinianos, xv.; \u0152hler (F.), ii. 402 (Leipzig, 1844).\n(Writing sarcastically of the Gnostic Sophia-myth, Tertullian exclaims:)\nWell, then, let the Pythagoreans learn, the Stoics know, [yea,] Plato even, whence matter\u2014which they [sc. the Pythagoreans and the rest] would have to be ingenerable\u2014derived its source and substance to [form] this pile of a world,\u2014[a mystery] which not even the famous Thrice-greatest Hermes, the master of all physics, has thought out.\nThe doctrine of Hermes, and of Hellenistic theology in general, however, is that matter comes from the One God. It is remarkable that Tertullian keeps his final taunt for that school which was evidently thought the foremost of all\u2014that of the \u201cfamous Thrice-greatest Hermes.\u201d\nii. De Anima, ii.; \u0152hler, ii. 558.\n(Inveighing against the wisdom of the philosophers, Tertullian says:)\nShe [philosophy] has also been under the impression that she too has drawn from what they [the philosophers] consider \u201csacred\u201d scriptures; because antiquity thought that most authors were gods (deos), and not merely inspired by them (divos),\u2014as, for instance, Egyptian Hermes, with whom especially Plato had intercourse, 1 . . . [and others] . . . .\nHere again, as with Justin, Hermes heads the list; moreover, in Tertullian\u2019s mind, Hermes belongs to antiquity, to a more ancient stratum than Pythagoras and Plato, as the context shows; Plato, of course, depends on Hermes, not Hermes on Plato; of this Tertullian has no doubt. There were also \u201csacred scriptures\u201d of Hermes, and Hermes was regarded as a god.\niii. Ibid., xxviii.; \u0152hler, ii. 601.\nWhat then is the value nowadays of that ancient doctrine mentioned by Plato, 2 about the reciprocal migration of souls; how they remove hence and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and then again depart from this life, made quick again from the dead? Some will have it that this is a doctrine of Pythagoras; while Albinus 3 will have it to\nbe a divine pronouncement, perhaps of Egyptian Hermes.\niv. Ibid., xxxiii.; \u0152hler, ii. 610.\n(Arguing ironically against the belief in metempsychosis, Tertullian writes:)\nEven if they [souls] should continue [unchanged] until judgment [is pronounced upon them] . . . a point which was known to Egyptian Hermes, when he says that the soul on leaving the body is not poured back into the soul of the universe, but remains individualized 1:\nThat it may give account unto the Father of those things which it hath done in body.\nThis exact quotation 2 is to be found nowhere in the existing remains of the Trismegistic literature, but it has every appearance of being genuine.\n\u0152hler (note c) refers to C. H., x. (xi.) 7, but this passage of \u201cThe Key\u201d is only a general statement of the main idea of metempsychosis.\nA more appropriate parallel is to be found in P. S. A., xxviii. 1: \u201cWhen, [then,] the soul\u2019s departure from the body shall take place,\u2014then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon\u2019s power\u201d\u2014a passage, however, which retains far stronger traces of the Egyptian prototype of the idea than does that quoted by Tertullian.\n226:1 Fl., c. 200-216 A.D.\n227:1 Adsuevit.\n227:2 Cf. Ph\u00e6do, p. 70.\n227:3 A Platonic philosopher, and contemporary of Galen (130-?200 A.D.).\n228:1 Determinatam.\n228:2 Tertullian marks it by an \u201cinquit.\u201d","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3: II. References and Fragments in the Fathers: IV. Tertullian","type":"page"}