This is a hinge of Mead's dating, and it bears more weight than it can hold. Zosimus, by Mead's own reckoning a writer of about 300 A.D., names his sources only as Greek and Egyptian translations of Chaldaean, Parthian, Median and Hebrew books. From that list Mead concludes: "From all of these indications we are assured that" the doctrine of man's descent from the Man Above was already well developed "in the first centuries B.C." A late writer's list of books cannot date the books it names. The paragraph that follows, on Philo, is the real evidence for an early date; Zosimus shows only that the doctrine was current in his own time.
Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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page 89
And if the redactor or commentator in S. is to be placed somewhere in the last half of the first century B.C. (and this is, of course, taking only the minimum of liberty), then the Poemandres type of our literature, which J. quotes as scripture, must, in its original Greek form, be placed back of that — say at least in the first half of the first century B.C., as a moderate estimate.2 If those dates are not proved,
1 Wilamowitz' hesitating attribution of it to the reign of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) is, in my opinion, devoid of any objective support whatever. (See R., p. 102.) Reitzenstein himself (p. 165) would place it in the second century B.C.
2 Incidentally also it may be pointed out that this analysis gives the coup de grace to Salmon's contention (" The Cross-references in the Philosophumena," Hermathena, 1885, v. 389 if.) that the great systems of the Gnosis made known to us only by Hippolytus are all the work of a single forger who imposed
I am at anyrate fairly confident they cannot be disproved.
ZOSIMUS AND THE ANTHROPOS-DOCTRINE
That, moreover, the Anthropos-doctrine, to the spirit of which the whole commentary of our S. exegete is accommodated, was also fundamental with the adherents of the Trismegistic tradition, may be clearly seen from the interesting passage (which we give in the Fragments at the end of the third Volume) of Zosimus, a member of what Reitzenstein calls the Poemandres Community, who flourished somewhere at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century A.D.1
The sources of Zosimus for the Anthropos-doctrine, he tells us, are, in addition to the Books of Hermes, certain translations into Greek and Egyptian of books containing traditions (mystery-traditions, presumably) of the Chaldaeans, Parthians, Medes, and Hebrews on the subject. This statement is of the very first importance for the history of Gnosticism as well as for appreciating certain elements in Trismegisticism. Though the indication of this literature is vague, it nevertheless mentions four factors as involved in the Hebrew tradition ; the Gnostic Hebrews, as we should upon the credulity of the heresy-hunting Bishop of Portus. This contention, though to our mind one of the most striking instances of "the good Homer nodding," was nevertheless practically endorsed by Stahelin (Die gnostische Quellen Hippolyts in seiner Hauptschrift gegen die Haeretiken, 1890 ; in Texte u. Untersuchungen, VI.), who went over the whole ground opened up by Salmon with minute and scrupulous industry. The general weakness of this extraordinary hypothesis of forgery has, however, been well pointed out by De Faye in his Introduction a Vfitude du Gnosticisme au He et au III1 Sitcle (Paris, 1903), pp. 24 ff.; though De Faye also maintains a late date. 1 R. p. 9.
expect, were handing on elements from Chaldsean, Parthian, and Median traditions. Translations of these books were to be found scattered throughout Egypt, and especially in the great library at Alexandria.
There is, in my opinion, no necessity precisely, with Keitzenstein (p. 106, n. 6), to designate these books the " Ptolemaic Books," and so to associate them with a notice found in the apocryphal " Eighth Book of Moses," where, together with that of the Archangelic Book of Moses, there is mention of the Fifth Book of the " Ptolemaic Books," described as a book of multifarious wisdom under the title " One and All," and containing the account of the " Genesis of Fire and Darkness." !
Another source of Zosimus was the Pinax of Bitos or Bitys, of whom we shall treat in considering the information of Jambliohus.
From all of these indications we are assured that there was already in the first centuries B.C. a well-developed Hellenistic doctrine of the descent of man from the Man Above, and of his return to that heavenly state by his mastery of the powers of the cosmos.
PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA ON THE MAN-DOCTRINE
This date is further confirmed by the testimony of
Philo (c. 30 B.C.-45 A.D.).
For, quoting the verse : " We are all sons of One Man,"2 he addresses those who are "companions of wisdom and knowledge " as those who are " Sons of one and the same Father — no mortal father, but an immortal Sire, the Man of God, who being the Reason (Logos) of the Eternal, is of necessity himself eternal." 3
And again, a little further on :
1 Dieterich, Abraxas, 203 ff. 2 Gen. xlii. 11.
3 De Confus. Ling., § 11 ; M. i. 411, P. 326 (Ri. ii. 257).