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

But for a final word on "Hennas." This early document was written at Rome ; so all are agreed. It would, then, seem necessary to allow of sufficient time for a wide circulation of the older form of the " Pcemandres," before it could reach Rome from Egypt. This time could not have been short, for it must be reckoned not by geographical considerations, which are hardly of any consequence in this connection, but by the fact that the " Pcemandres " was the gospel of a school that laid the greatest possible stress on secrecy. How, then, could a Christian writer have got possession of a copy ? Had the pledge of secrecy already by this time been removed ? This is not credible, for later Trismegistic documents still lay the greatest stress upon it.

VOL. i. 25

Were, then, the early Christian mystical writers in intimate relationship with such circles as the Pcemandres-community ? Some Gnostics undoubtedly were ; was the writer of " Hermas " ? Was there once friendship where subsequently was bitter strife ?

Such and many other most interesting questions arise, but there is little hope that any satisfactory answer will be given them until the work on the mystical religious environment of the time has been pushed forward to such a point, that men may gradually become accustomed to the view that much of the secret of the Origins lies concealed in that very environment.

In any case, the way is cleared for pushing back the earlier " Poemandres " document well into the first century, and for ranking it, therefore, as at least contemporary with the earliest of the New Testament writings.

XI

CONCERNING THE ^ON-DOCTRINE

" HEA.R then, my son, how standeth God and All. God ;
Mon ; Cosmos ; Time ; Becoming." — 0. H., xi. (xii.) 1.

THE SCOPE OF OUR ESSAY

While rigidly excluding any consideration of the amazing elaboration of Christo-Gnostic seonology, it may not be unserviceable to offer a "few notes in connection with the simpler idea of the ^Eon. The subject really requires a treatise in itself, but that would, of course, be too lengthy an undertaking for these Prolegomena.1

Let us, then, first turn to a striking passage which purports to give us the Orphic tradition of the Genesis of the World-Egg, and of the relation of its Glorious Progeny to the ^Eon.

The passage is of great interest for us in our present enquiry, for if it is not a direct quotation from Apion, the Alexandrian savant, and bitter opponent of the Jews and of Philo, during the first half of the first century A.D., it at anyrate represents the view of the Hellenistic theology of that period.

1 From Prof. Montet's report (Asiatic Qr. Rev., Oct. 1904) of the " Proceedings of the Second International Congress of the History of Religions " (Bale), Aug. 20-Sept. 2, 1904, I see that Reitzenstein presented a monograph on the "Aion" to the Congress. I do not, however, know whether this has yet been published.

The passage is found in one of the sources of the composite and overworked document known -as the Clementine Homilies} and runs as follows :

THE ORPHIC TRADITION OF THE GENESIS OF THE
WORLD-EGG

III. " There was when naught was but Chaos and an indistinguishable mixture of unordered elements still jumbled all together ; both Nature herself being witness to it, and great men having thought it must be so.

" And as witness, I will bring forward for you the greatest of the great in wisdom, Homer himself, speaking about the original con-fusion:

" But may you all become water and earth 2 —

— meaning that thence all things have had their genesis, and that after the dissolution of their moist and earthy essence they are all restored again to their first nature — which is Chaos.

" And Hesiod, in his Theogony, says :

" In truth Chaos came into being the very first.3

2fe"
" And by ' came into being ' he evidently means that

1 Clement. Horn., VI. iii. ff. ; ed. A. Schwegler (Stuttgart, 1847), pp. 168 ff. ; ed. P. de Lagarde (Leipzig, 1865), pp. 74 ff. See also Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 475, 478 ; and my Orpheus, pp. 156 and 162, 163. For the latest critical view on the Apionspeeches, see Waitz (H.), Die Pseudoklementinen Homilien und Rekognitionen (Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, Bd. X. Hft. IV.), pp. 251-256, " Der Dialog des Klemens mit Appion uber die heidnische Mythologie."

2 II., vii. 99. Cf. the Earth-and- Water of CO-ff., i. 5.

3 Theog., 116.