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

The fragments of the Trismegistic literature which have reached us are the sole surviving remains of that " Egyptian philosophy " which arose from the congress of the religious doctrines of Egypt with the philosophical doctrines of Greece. In other words, what the works of Philo were to the sacred literature of the Jews, the Hermaica were to the Egyptian sacred writings. Legend and myth were allegorised and philosophised and replaced by vision and instruction. But who were the authors of this theosophic method ? This question is of the greatest interest to us, for it is one of the factors in the solution of the problem of the literary evolution of Christianity, seeing that there are intimate points of contact of ideas between several of the Hermetic documents and certain Jewish and Christian writings, especially the opening verses of Genesis, the treatises of Philo, the fourth Gospel

1 Pierret, Melanges cCArcheologie egyptienne et assyrienne, i. (1873), p. 112; R 1, n. 1.

2 Op. sup. cit., 1866.

(especially the Prologue), and beyond all the writings of the great Gnostic doctors Basilides and Valentinus.

Such and similar considerations lead Mdnard to glance at the environment of infant Christianity and the various phenomena connected with its growth, and this he does from the point of view of an enlightened independent historical scholar.

" Christianity," he writes, " did not fall like a thunderbolt into the midst of a surprised and startled world. It had its period of incubation, and while it was engaged in evolving the positive form of its dogmas, the problems of which it was seeking the solution were the subject of thought in Greece, Asia, and Egypt. Similar ideas were in the air and shaped themselves into all sorts of propositions.

" The multiplicity of sects which have arisen in our own times under the name of socialism, can give but a faint idea of the marvellous intellectual chemistry which had established its principal laboratory at Alexandria. Humanity had set in the arena mighty philosophical and moral problems : the origin of evil, the destiny of the soul, its fall and redemption ; the prize to be given was the government of the conscience. The Christian solution l won, and caused the rest to be forgotten, sunk for the most part in the shipwreck of the past. Let us then, when we come across a scrap of the flotsam and jetsam, recognise in it the work of a beaten competitor and not of a plagiarist. Indeed, the triumph of Christianity was prepared by those very men who thought themselves its rivals, but who were only its forerunners. The title suits them, though many were contemporaries of the Christian era, while others were a little later ; for the succession of a religion only dates from the day when it is accepted by the

1 The popular Christian solution, M^nard should have said.

nations, just as the reign of a claimant to the throne dates from his victory " (pp. ix., x.).

Me"nard distinguishes three principal groups in the Trismegistic treatises, which he assigns to Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian influences. In them also he finds a link between Philo and the Gnostics.

"Between the first Gnostic sects and the Hellenic Jews represented by Philo, a link is missing ; this can be found in several of the Hermetic works, especially 'The Shepherd of Men' and 'The Sermon on the Mountain.' In them also will perhaps be found the reason of the differences, so often remarked upon, between the first three Gospels and the fourth" (p. xliv.).

Next, the direction in which that " link " is to be looked for is more clearly shown, though here Me"nard is, I think, too precise when writing:

"It seems certain that 'The Shepherd' came from that school of Therapeuts of Egypt, who have been often erroneously confounded with the Essenians of Syria and Palestine " (p. Ivi).

But "instead of the physical discipline of the Essenians, who, according to Philo, practised manual labour, put the product of their toil into the common fund, and reduced philosophy to ethics, and ethics to charity, the 'monasteries' of the Therapeuts contributed to Christian propaganda a far more Hellenised population, trained in abstract speculations and mystic allegories. From these tendencies, combined with the dogma of the incarnation, arose the Gnostic sects. ' The Shepherd ' should be earlier than these schools " (p. Iviii.).