Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
6 Or harmonised ; that is, cosmic or ordered. Cf. C. H., i. 15 : " For being above the Harmony, He became a slave enharmonised" ; also Orph. Hymn., viii. 11 ; and also Acts of John, where the Logos is spoken of as " Wisdom in harmony " (F. F. F., 436).
? Cf. John iv. 24.
8 A conflation of John iv. 21 and 23. The " mountain," when used mystically, signifies the inner " Mount of initiation." Jerusalem in the text signifies the Jerusalem Below. The true worshippers worship in the Jerusalem Above.
For the worship of the perfect [men] (H. he says) is spiritual, not fleshly.
J. And " Spirit " (H. he says) is there where both Father and Son are named, generated there from Him l and the Father.
S. He2 (H. he says) is the Many-named, Myriadeyed, Incomprehensible, whom every nature desires, some one way, some another.
J. This (H. he says) is the Word 8 of God, which is :
" The Word of Announcement of the Great Power. Wherefore It shall be sealed, and hidden, and concealed, stored in the Habitation, where the Hoot of the Universals has its foundation —
" Of Mons, Powers, Intelligences, Gods, Angels, Spirits Delegate, Existing Non-existences, Generated Ingenerables, Comprehensible Incomprehensibles, — Years, Months, Days, Hours, — of [the] Boundless Point, from which the most minute begins to increase by parts.4
" For (H. he says) the Point which is nothing and is composed of nothing, though partless, will become by means of its own Thought a Greatness l beyond our own comprehension. "
1 Sc. the Son.
2 Sc. the Piper.
3 pfjua, — used also by Philo and LXX.
4 With slight verbal omissions the opening lines down to " foundation " are identical with the beginning of The Great Apocalypse or Announcement of the " Simonian " tradition, an exceedingly interesting document from which some quotations have been preserved to us by Hippolytus elsewhere (Philos., vi. 9). The " Simonian " tradition was regarded by all the Church Fathers as the source of all " heresy " ; but modern criticism regards The Great Announcement as a late document of the Christian Gnosis. The quotation of this document by J., however, makes this opinion, in my view, entirely untenable. If my analysis stands firm, The Great Announcement is thus proved to be pre-Christian, according to the traditional date. I am also inclined to think that in this quotation itself we have already the work of a commentator and not the original form of the Apocalypse.
C. This [Point] (H. he says) is the Kingdom of the Heavens, the " grain of mustard seed," 2 the partless point, the first existing for the body ; which no one (H. he says) knows save the spiritual [men] alone.
J. This (H. he says) is what is said :
"They are neither words nor languages whereby
their 3 sounds are heard." 4
H. These things, [then,] which are said and done by all men, they thus interpret off-hand to their peculiar theory (vow), pretending that they are all done with a spiritual meaning.
For which cause also they5 say that the performers in the theatres — they, too, neither say nor do anything without Design.6
S. For example (H. he says), when the people assemble in the theatres, and a man comes on the stage, clad in a robe different from all others, with lute 7 in hand on which he plays, and thus chants the Great Mysteries, not knowing what he says : 8
" Whether blest Child of Kronos, or of Zeus, or of
Great Ehea, — Hail, Attis, thou mournful song 9 of Khea !
1 Cf. § 16 J.
2 Cf. Matt. xiii. 31 = Mark iv. 30= Luke xiii. 18.
3 Sc. the Heavens of the Psalm, that is, the JSons and the rest above.
4 Ps. xviii. 3.
6 The Naassenes, in H.'s view.
6 o.trpovo'ijTtas.
7 KiOdpav — the ancient cithara was triangular in shape and had seven strings.
8 The text of the following Ode has been reconstructed by Wilamowitz in Hermes, xxxvii. 328 ; our translation is from his reconstruction.
9 &Kovffna. — a hearing, an instruction, lesson, discourse, sermon, applied to the public lectures of Pythagoras (Jamb., V. P., 174). It means also a song or even a "singer," a "bard." "Their singers (atcoixrij.*™,) are thus called ' bards ' " (Posid. ap. Athen., vi. 49). The Hearers (ol a.no\iff^a.riKoi) were the Probationers in the