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

If our encyclopaedias deign to rest their assertions on authority, they refer us to Fabricius (Harles) and Baumgarten-Crusius. We have already seen that Harles will not help us much ; will the latter authority throw any more light on the subject ? We are afraid not ; for, instead of a bulky volume, we have before us a thin academical exercise of only 19 pp.,2 in which the author puts forward the bare opinion that these books were invented by Porphyry and his school, and this mainly because he thinks that Orelli3 had proved the year before that the Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon was invented by the "Platonici." Moreover, was not Porphyry an enemy of Christ, for did he not write XV. Books against the Christians? All of which can scarcely be dignified with the name of argument, far less with that of proof.

writings, and impatiently dismisses the subject by classing Hermes with Orpheus and the Sibyls as a cloak for Christian forgery (vol. ii. p. 69, Bury's ed.).

1 How the public is catered for may be seen from any popular " knowledge "-digest. The following will serve as a specimen, taken from the article " Hermes Trismegistus," in The American Encyclopedia : a Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, edited by Eipley and Dana (New York, 1874) : " In the conflict between Neoplatonism and Christianity, the former sought to give a profounder and more spiritual meaning to the pagan philosophy, by combining the wisdom of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and representing it as a very ancient, divine revelation."

2 Delivered before the University of Jena at Pentecost, 1827, by
Lud. Frid. Otto Baumgarten-Crusius.

3 Orelli (J. C.), Sanchoniathonis Fragmenta de Cosmogonia et
Theologia Phcenicorum (Leipzig, 1826).

THE THEORY OF HILGERS

The same may be said of the short academical thesis of Hilgers,1 who first shows the weakness of Mohler's strange opinion 2 that the author was a Christian who pretended to be a Pagan and inserted "errors" on purpose. Hilgers finally ends up with the lame conclusion that Christian doctrine was known to the author of the " Pcemandres " cycle, especially the Gospel of " John " and Letters of Paul ; but how it is possible to conjecture anything besides, he does not know. Of the possibility of the priority of the " Pcemandres " to the writings of "John" and Paul, Hilgers does not seem to dream ; nevertheless this is as logical a deduction as the one he draws from the points of contact between the two groups of literature. But Hilgers has got an axe of his own to grind, and a very blunt one at that; he thinks that "The Shepherd of Men" was written at the same time as " The Shepherd of Hermas," that simple product of what is called the sub-apostolic age — a document held in great respect by the early outer communities of General Christianity, and used for purposes of edification. Our " Shepherd," Hilgers thinks, was written in opposition to the Hermas document, but he can do nothing but point to the similarity of name as a proof of his hypothesis. This topsyturvy opinion we shall seek to reverse in a subsequent chapter on " ' Hermes ' and ' Hermas.' "

As to the author of our " Shepherd," Hilgers thinks he has shown that "he was not a follower of the