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

4 The final quotation within the quotation is also from Ps Ixxxii. 6. Here, then, we have a quotation from a scripture (" what is written "), glossed by J. with his special exegesis, but already being an exegesis of an Old Testament logos. It is not only a halacha, to use a term of Talmudic Kabbinism, but it is an authoritative apocalypse of the Jewish Gnosis.

6 John iii. 6.

6 Sc. the Naassenes, according to H.

from going forth out of Egypt, or from the intercourse below —

H. — for Egypt is the body, according to them —

J. — was turned back by Jesus l and made to flow upwards.

H. Following after these and such like [follies], these most wonderful "Gnostics," discoverers of a new grammatical art, imagine that their prophet Homer showed forth these things arcanely ; and, introducing those who are not initiated into the Sacred Scriptures into such notions, they make a mock of them.

And they say that he who says that all things are from One, is in error, [but] he who says they are from Three is right, and will furnish proof of the first principles [of things].2

J. For one (H. he says) is the Blessed Nature of the Blessed Man Above, Adamas; and one is the [Nature] Below, which is subject to Death ; and one is the Eace without a king3 which is born Above — where (H. he says) is Mariam the sought-for, and Jothor the great sage, and Sepphora the seeing, and Moses whose begetting is not in Egypt — for sons were born to him in Madiam.4

S. And this (H. he says) also did not escape the notice of the poets :

1 I am persuaded that this stood originally in J., and not in C. — being LXX. for Joshua.

2 This paragraph summarises S. See next S.

3 apffi\evTos — that is, presumably, those who have learned to rule themselves, the " self-taught " race, etc., of Philo.

4 Eusebius (Prcep. Evaiig., IX. xxviii. and xxix. 5 ff. ; ed. Dind. i. 505 ff. and 508 ff.), quoting from Alexander Cornelius (Polyhistor), who nourished about 100 B.C., has preserved to us a number of verses from a tragedy (called The Leading Forth) on the subject of Moses and the Exodus story, by a certain Ezechiel, a (? Alexandrian) Hebrew poet writing in Greek. In these fragments of Ezechiel's tragedy, Mariam, Sepphora, and Jothor are all dramatis personce. These spellings and that of Madiam are, of course, all LXX. (that is, Greek Targum) forms of our A.V. Miriam, Jethro, Zipporah, and Midian.

" All things were threefold divided, and each received his share of honour." l

C. For the Greatnesses (H. he says) needs must be spoken, but so spoken by all everywhere " that hearing they may not hear, and seeing they may not see." 2

J. For unless (H. he says) the Greatnesses3 were
spoken, the cosmos would not be able to hold together.
These are the Three More-than-mighty Words (Logoi) :
Kaulakau, Saulasau, Zeesar; — Kaulakau, the [Logos]
Above, Adamas ; Saulasau, the [Logos] Below ; Zeesar,
the Jordan flowing upwards.4

(17 5) S. He (H. he says) is the male-female Man

1 II, xv. 189.

2 Cf. Luke viii. 10. Luke seems to preserve the reading of
the source more correctly than Matt. xiii. 13 or Mark iv. 12.
The Saying looks back to Is. vi. 9.

3 Cf. § 30 J.

4 These three names are based on the Hebrew text of Is. xxviii. 13, A.V. : " But the Word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept ; line upon line, line upon line ; here a little, there a little." LXX. : " «al lo-rai avrols -rb

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