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

4 Od., iv. 384. In the Proteus myth Egypt is the Nile— that is, the " Great Green," the Heaven Ocean. Proteus was also said to have been the messenger or servant of Poseidon, the special God, it will be remembered, of Plato's Atlantis.

[By poleitai] he does not mean " he is put on sale," 1 but "he turns about" [or comes and goes] there, — as though it were, [he spins] and goes round.

And the cities in which we live, in that we turn about and circulate in them, are called poleis.

Thus (H. he says) the Phrygians call Aipolos this [Man] who turns all things at all times all ways, and changes them into things kin.

(25) The Phrygians, moreover (H. he says), call Him
Fruitful.

J. For (H. he says) :

"Many more are the children of the desolate [woman] than of her who hath her husband."2

C. That is, the regenerated, deathless, and ever-continuing
[children] are many, although few are they [thus] generated ;
but the fleshly (H. he says) all perish, though many are they
[thus] generated.

i, a synonym of wwAtiTat, which, besides the meaning of " coming and going," or " moving about," also signifies " is sold " ; but I do not see the appositeness of the remark, unless the " ignorant" so understood it.

2 Is. liv. 1 ; quoted also in Gal. iv. 27. Cf. Philo, De Execrat., § 7 ; M. ii. 435, P. 936 (Ri. v. 254) : "For when she [the Soul] is a multitude of passions and filled with vices, her children swarming over her — pleasures, appetites, folly, intemperance, unrighteousness, injustice — she is weak and sick, and lies at death's door, dying ; but when she becomes sterile, and ceases to bring them forth, or even casts them from her, forthwith, from the change, she becometh a chaste virgin, and, receiving the Divine Seed, she fashions and engenders marvellous excellencies that Nature prizeth highly — prudence, courage, temperance, justice, holiness, piety, and the rest of the virtues and good dispositions."

There are, thus, seen to be identical ideas of a distinctly marked character in both J. and Philo. Did J., then, belong to Philo's " circle " ? Or, rather, did Philo represent a propagandist side of J.'s circle ? In other words, can we possibly have before us in J. a Therapeut allegorical exercise, based on S., by an exceedingly liberal-minded Hellenistic Jewish mystic ¥

C. For this cause (H. he says) :

" Rachel bewailed her children, and would not (H. he says) be comforted weeping over them ; for she knew (H. he says) that they are not." 1

J. And Jeremiah also laments the Jerusalem Below — not the city in Phoenicia,2 but the generation below — which is subject to destruction.

C. For Jeremiah also (H. he says) knew the perfect man, regenerated from water and spirit, not fleshly.

J. At anyrate the same Jeremiah said :
" He is man, and who shall know him ? "3

C. Thus (H. he says) the knowledge of the perfect man is deep and hard to comprehend.

J. For " The beginning of Perfection (H. he says)
is Gnosis of man, but Gnosis of God is perfect
Perfection." 4

(26) S. And the Phrygians (H. he says) call Him also " Plucked Green Wheat-ear " ; and after the Phrygians the Athenians [so designate Him], when, in the secret rites at Eleusis, they show those who receive in silence the final initiation there into the Great —

C. — and marvellous and most perfect —

S. — Epoptic Mystery, a plucked wheat-ear.5

1 Cf. Matt. ii. 18, which depends on Jer. xxxi. 15 (LXX. xxxviii. 15). In T. R., however, the reading is by no means the same as in LXX. C. favours the Gospel text rather than that of LXX.

2 This shows a very detached frame of mind on behalf of J.
Perhaps it may be an interpolation of C.

3 Jer. xvii. 9.

4 This has all the appearance of a quotation from some mystic apocryphon of the Gnosis.

5 See Cumont (F.), My stores de Mithra (Brussels, 1898). In the monuments representing the bull-slaying myth of the Mithriaca, the bull's tail is frequently terminated in " une truffe d'epis" — the number varies, being either one, three, five, or seven. In the Bundahish all things are generated from the body,

And this Wheat-ear is also with the Athenians the
Light -giver l —

0. — perfect [and] mighty —