Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
That this was in the course of the fourth century, however, as Eeitzenstein (p. 213) supposes, seems to me to be, so far, destitute of any sure objective confirmation ; it not only compels us to suppose that the prophecies are later interpolations (which they may possibly be), but that these interpolations are later than Lactantius; whereas there is every probability that the Church Father had the text of them before him,1 and his date is the beginning of the fourth century.
On the other hand, Zosimus, writing somewhere about the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century, breathes no word of persecution, and leads us to suppose that the community was still flourishing. We are thus still in the gravest uncertainty.
The first of our "prophecies" is in xii. 3: "For I will tell thee as though it were propheticly " — addressed to Asclepius, and, therefore, probably not due to the redactor who we have supposed added the narrative sentences.
The lament of the writer is that " the Single Love, the Love of Pure Philosophy," is fast disappearing from the world ; he can hardly have had Christianity in mind when writing these words, for he contrasts the " Pure Philosophy " with " multifarious reasoning " and " divers sciences," and the latter can hardly be said to be characteristic of General Christianity.
If, however, his words may be said to include also Gnostic Christianity, then he was clearly not in sympathy with it ; but this can hardly be the case, seeing that the resemblances between the Trismegistic and Christian Gnosis are of a very intimate nature.
THE PROSCRIPTION OF THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS
Turning next to xxiv. 2, we meet with the clear statement that the worship of the Gods will be legally proscribed by the " barbarian " masters of Egypt (also xxv. 3).
Such a general proscription in this emphatic sense took place in Egypt only with the destruction of the Serapeum by the Christians themselves in 389 A.D.
1 See xxv. 4, and note.
Of persecutions of the Christians by the Eoman authorities in Egypt prior to this we get clear indications in the writings of the Christian Gnostic Basilides, who flourished at Alexandria at the beginning of the second century, and wrote specially of martyrdom. But this will little help us for the proscription of a cult that favoured the worship of the Gods and of their images.
Can it, then, be possible that these prophetic utterances were written at a time when many of the same nature were being penned by Jew and Christian ? For our author, as for Jewish and Christian writers, the " End of the World " was at hand ; his expectation is in this precisely the same as that of the writers of the New Testament documents.
The cause of this dire event is that Egypt, the " shrine of the whole world," the " Holy Land " l par excellence, will be polluted with all iniquity and violence. The Cult of the Gods will cease, and the Gods will leave the Earth and mount to Heaven. The man's whole heart is bleeding for Egypt, even as the heart of a Jew for Jerusalem.
If there is any immediate historical references in these heartfelt utterances, we must seek them in such phrases as : " This holiest land, seat of our shrines and temples, shall be choked with tombs and corpses " (xxiv. 3) ; " the tale of tombs shall far exceed the number of the quick " (ibid., § 4) 2 ; and " Egypt shall be made the home of Scyth or Indian, or someone like to them — that is, a foreign neighbour."
It is true that the Christians were ever reproached
1 The " image of the Heaven" ; cf. K. K., 46-48.
2 This is very different language from the more moderate tone of G. H., ix. (x.) 4, where we are told about the Gnostics, "they are thought mad and laughed at ; they're hated and despised, and sometimes even put to death."
THE PERFECT SERMON 40 J
with worshipping the dead, and building churches over the bones of the dead — an act of utter pollution according to all Pagan notions ; but the words of our author, even allowing for all hyperbole, can hardly be construed in this sense.