Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

"Abandoning mortal things, he 'is added to the people of God,'4 plucking the fruit of immortality, having become equal to the angels. For the angels are the host of God, incorporeal and happy souls."

1 Intelligible cosmos.

2 Ennead, V. viii. (cap. ix.), 550 A-B. ; Plot. Op. Om., ed. F. Creuzer (Oxford, 1835), ii. 1016, 1017. M. N. Bouillet— in Les Enneades de Plotin (Paris, 1861), iii. 122, 123 — gives, as usual, an excellently clear rendering, but it is not easy to recognise some of his sentences in the text.

3 De Plant. Noe, § 5 ; M. i. 332, P. 216, 217 (Ri. ii. 148).

4 A gloss on Gen. xxv. 8 : " And was added (A.V. gathered) to his people."

The angels are the " people " of God ; but there is a still higher degree of union, whereby a man becomes one of the " Race " or " Kin " of God. This " Eace " is an intimate union of all them who are " kin to Him " ; they become one. For this Eace " is one, the highest one, but ' people ' is the name of many."

" As many, then, as have advanced in discipline and instruction, and been perfected [therein], have their lot among this ' many.'

"But they who have passed beyond these introductory exercises, becoming natural Disciples of God, receiving wisdom free from all toil, migrate to this incorruptible and perfect Eace, receiving a lot superior to their former lives in genesis." *

And that the mind is immortal may be shown allegorically from the death of Moses, who, says Philo, migrated " by means of the Word (Logos) of the Cause,2 by whom the whole cosmos was created."

This is said " in order that thou mayest learn that God regards the wise man as of equal honour with the cosmos ; for it is by means of the same Eeason (Logos) that He hath made the universe, and bringeth back the perfect man from earthly things unto Himself again." s

But enough of Philo for the moment. Sufficient has been given to let the reader hear the Alexandrian speak for himself on the central idea of his cosmos. Much else could be added — indeed, volumes could be written on the subject — for it gives us one of the most important backgrounds of Christian origins, and without a thorough knowledge of Hellenistic theology it is impossible in any way to get our values of many things correctly.

» De Sam/., § 2 ; M. i. 164, P. 131 (Hi. i. 233).

2 Deut. xxxiv. 5. A.V. : " According to the word of the Lord."

* De -Sam/., § 3 ; M. i. 165, P. 131 (Ri. i. 233).

IX

PLUTAECH: CONCERNING THE MYSTERIES
OF ISIS AND OSIRIS

FOREWORD

IN the chapter on Philo we attempted to set before the reader some outlines of the central doctrine of Hellenistic theology — the sublime concept of the Logos — as envisaged by a learned Jew of the Diaspora, steeped in Hellenism, and living in the capital of Egypt and the centre of the intellectual life of Greater Greece.

In the present chapter we shall endeavour to give the reader a further insight into this master-idea from another standpoint, and shall reproduce the views of a learned Greek, who, while remaining on the ground of Hellenic traditions proper, turns his eyes to Egypt, and reads what part of its mysterious message he can decipher, in Greek modes of thought.

Plutarch, of Chseroneia in Boeotia, nourished in the second half of the first century A.D., and so follows immediately on Philo and on Paul ; like Philo, however, he knows nothing of the Christians, though like the Alexandrian he treats of precisely those problems and questions which were and are of pre-eminent interest for Christians.

Plutarch chooses as his theme the myth and mysteries of Osiris and Isis. He gives the myth in its main outlines, and introduces us into the general religious atmosphere of the Egyptian belief of what we may, perhaps, be allowed to call " Demotic " times. But he does far more than this. Initiated himself into the Osiriaca, of which there was apparently a thiasos at Delphi, though on the one hand he possesses more knowledge of formal details than he feels himself permitted to disclose, on the other hand he is aware that the " true initiate of Isis " is one who goes far beyond any formal reception of the symbolic mysteries; the true initiate must of his own initiative for ever keep searching and probing more deeply into the intimate reason of things, as adumbrated by the "things said and done " in the sacred rites (iii. 3).