Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

When, however, Reitzenstein (p. 193) refers to this treatise cursorily as the preaching of some prophet or other which has been transferred to Hermes by the Redactor of our Corpus, he suggests that we are dealing with a doctrine foreign to the cosmogonical ideas of the " Shepherd." It is, indeed, true that if we compare the data of the two treatises together, detail by detail, we shall find strong contradictions ; but the general " feel " of both is the same, the general atmosphere is identical.

THE TRINITY

Prefixed to the cosmogenesis is a formal theological prooem, the precise meaning of which escapes me because of its almost mnemonic nature ; it is, indeed quite in sutra style. There appears, however, to be a distinct trinitarian x idea lurking in the first sentence, the trinity consisting of God (o 6eo?) and Godhead (TO Qelov) and Nature (fj </>vo-is). The Glory or Power of all things is this Divine Trinity. The Source (or Beginning), the End and the Ever-renewing of all things are owing to this Triad. All three seem to be almost interchangeable terms. The Godhead is the Mind of God, Godly Nature is the Wisdom of God. Again, at the end of the sermon (§ 4) we are told that the Godhead (or that which is Divine) is " Nature's ever-makingnew-again the cosmic mixture." Godhead in operation is Nature, while at the same time Nature is co-established in Godhead, and both are one in God, the Source of all.

The cosmogenesis begins with the grandiose image :
" Darkness that knew no bounds was in Abyss."

We have already, in commenting on " Darkness " in the " Poemandres " treatise, referred, in explanation, to a Gnostic tradition in which the Primal Elements appear as Water, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos, and have given some reason for ascribing the form of this tradition to Egypt — that is, Archaic Egypt, a parallel tradition to the Sumerian, both derived from a still more Archaic source.

FROM THE SYSTEM OF THE NICOLAITANS

If, now, we turn to Epiphanius (remembering that he picked up what he knew or thought he knew about the Gnostics in Egypt), we shall find that he has preserved from another Gnostic system an even more striking parallel with our text.

The Bishop of Salamis is denouncing the Nicolaitans,2 who for him were the earliest Christian Gnostics, there being very numerous and various sects of them, all deriving from a certain Nicolaus, whom Epiphanius would have us believe to have been one of the first seven deacons of the Church.

1 Not, of course, in a technical Christian sense.

2 Adv. Har., xxv. 1-5.

If, in reality, however, the Nicolaitans = the Balaamites of early Talmudic Rabbinism,1 then the original Nicolaitans were the earliest Christians, for "Balaamites" was the Rabbinical by-name of the followers of Balaam (Bileam) = Jeschu, and Balaam = Nicolaos, in Hebrew and Greek respectively.

Curiously enough, moreover, in the paragraph (§ 4) before the one from which we are going to quote, Epiphanius ascribes the use of the mystic words, "Kaulakau Kaulakau," to the Nicolaitans, words which we have, with high probability, shown in the chapter " Myth of Man in the Mysteries " (§ 16 J., end) to have been used by a Jewish Gnostic of the time of Philo, writing in an Egyptian environment, and dealing with the Man- tradition, which is one of the main elements of the " Poemandres " doctrine. All of which carries us back to the dawn of Christianity.

Speaking, then, of these Nicolaitans, Epiphanius writes (xxv. 5):

" Others of them, again, plaster together empty names, saying: There was Darkness and Abyss (fivQos) and Water ; and Spirit in the midst of them made separation of them." 2

Here we have precisely the same elements as in our text for the foundation of a eosmogonical representation. What precise relationship these various traditions may have had to one another we cannot say with any certainty ; but what we can say is that the writer or

1 See D. J. L.y p. 188, where this identification is worked out with some probability.

2 Ed. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1859), ii. 35, 36.

writers of our treatise are dealing with a material common to themselves, to pre - Christian Jewish •Gnosticism and the earliest forms of the Christian Gnosis.

THE "BOOKS OF THE CHALDEANS"