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

Nay, they make out that this is [even] what was said by the
Word (Logos) : 2

C. "For the invisible3 things of Him [God] — namely, His Eternal 4 Power and Godhead — are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by His things that are made ; so that they [men] are without excuse. Because that, though knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, nor did they give [Him] thanks, but their non-understanding heart was made foolish.5

1 Compare the so-called Second Epistle of Clement (an early homily incorporating extra-canonical Gospel-materials), xii. 2 : " For the Lord Himself being asked by some one when his Kingdom should come, said : When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female " ; and also the well-known logoi, from The Gospel according to the Egyptians, quoted several times by Clement of Alexandria : " When Salome asked how long Death should prevail, the Lord said : So long as ye women bear children ; for I am come to destroy the work of the Female. And Salome said to Him : Did I therefore well in bearing no children ? The Lord answered and said : Eat every Herb, but eat not that which hath bitterness. When Salome asked when these things about which she questioned should be made known, the Lord said : When ye trample upon the Garment of Shame ; when the Two become One, and Hale with Female neither male nor female." And with the last logos of the above compare the new-found fragment of a lost Gospel : " His disciples say unto Him : When wilt thou be manifest to us, and when shall we see Thee ? He saith : When ye shall be stripped and not be ashamed." — Grenfell and Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus (London, 1904), p. 40. The environment is Egyptian and ascetic ; it is a saying addressed to a community, as may be seen from one of the previous logoi : " Having one garment what do ye [lack] 1 " 2 See Rom. i. 20-23, 25-27.

4 atSios — evidently a word-play.

6 The received Pauline text is slightly shortened here.

" Professing themselves to be wise, they convicted themselves of folly, and changed the Glory of the Incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and creeping things.1 . . .2

" Wherefore also God gave them up to passions of dishonour ; for both their females did change their natural use to that which is against nature —

H. And what the natural use is, according to them, we will say later on.

C. — "and likewise also their males, leaving the natural use of the female, burned in their lust for one another, males with males working unseemliness 3 —

H. And "unseemliness," according to them, is the First and Blessed Formless Essence, the Cause of all forms for things enformed.4

C. — " and receiving in themselves the recompense of their
Error which was meet."

H. For in these words which Paul spake is contained, they say, the whole of their hidden and ineffable Mystery of the Blessed Bliss.

For what is promised by the [rite of the] bath 5 is nothing else, according to them, than the introduction into Unfading Bliss of him who, according to them, is washed with Living Water, and anointed with the Chrism that no tongue can declare.6