Compendium of Heretical Fables 1 part 1/10

To the most magnificent and most glorious lord, and Christ-loving son, Sporacius, Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus in Augusta Euphratensis, greeting in the Lord.

Praiseworthy indeed is the aim of your magnificence.

For you desire to learn of the byways newly devised on either side of the straight road by certain men, whose end is the pit of destruction.

You have taken up this desire not that you might give ear to myths most wickedly contrived and exhaling a foul stench, but that you might teach those who are ignorant which is the royal highway, adorned with the footsteps of the apostles and the prophets and having as its end the kingdom of heaven, and which are the paths of the heretics that bring utter ruin upon those who travel on them.

The aim, then, as I have said, is excellent and admirable.

But your God-loving soul must know that most of the old heresies have, through divine grace, been extinguished, and have become, to speak in the words of the prophet, like the grass of the housetops, which withers before it is plucked up. And perhaps someone might reproach us for leading back into the light of memory those things that had been consigned to the darkness of oblivion.

Moreover, great is the nonsense of their myths, and the magnitude of the blasphemy dared against God is unspeakable for tongues trained in piety;

and as for the lechery legislated and practiced by them, not even one reared upon the stage could bear either to utter it, or to hear others speak it;

so far does it surpass even the notorious practitioners of licentiousness.

But since the exposed abomination of these utterly defiled doctrines renders both those who impiously begot them and those who foolishly believed them the more detestable, I shall gladly undertake this labor, with an eye to the profit it brings.

I shall try, as far as possible, to abridge the nonsense of the myths, to omit the gravest of the blasphemies, and to pass over in silence the abomination of their most licentious and most defiled rites.

We shall divide the work, God willing, into five books.

And the first will contain the narrative of those myths whose fathers fashioned another demiurge, and, having denied the one principle of all things, posited other principles that do not exist, and asserted that the Lord appeared to men only in semblance.

Of these doctrines the first inventor was Simon Magus the Samaritan, and the last was Mani the sorcerer, the Persian.

And the second will set forth those who held beliefs contrary to these;

who agreed that there is one principle of all things, but styled the Lord a mere man.

This heresy was begun by Ebion, and received its various developments down to Marcellus and Photinus.

And the third will make known those who sprang up between the one group and the other, and who became fathers of various doctrines.

In these four books, then, we shall lay bare the manifold error of the heresies.

let us cleanse it of its foul odor, as with some Chalastraean salt, and let us bring forward as a fragrant myrrh the truth of the evangelical doctrines, and let us show every heresy to be an adversary of the teaching of the divine oracles.

And what has been written by them in scattered fashion I shall arrange in order;

and what has been said at great length, I shall state concisely.

For I have not undertaken at present to refute them;

for against those that still exist even now I have already arrayed myself in writing;

but I have been commissioned to set forth the difference among their myths.

The title for the collection of the abominable heresies is: 'An Epitome of Heretical Fable-Mongering';

and for the teaching of the truth: 'An Epitome of Divine Doctrines';

and the title common to both: 'A Discernment of Falsehood and Truth.'

I exhort those who will read this work to compare each of the heretical doctrines with the teaching of the truth;

for indeed it was for this very purpose that I composed the fifth book as well.

For he will see that the latter follows the oracles of the divine Spirit, while the former are the inventions of a most wicked mind.

And let him who plainly discovers the mastery of truth through another's labor repay both the one who has labored and the one who requested the composition with his prayers;

because, though he wears the military cloak and belt, and has been entrusted with a generalship, and on this account is obliged to attend upon the imperial court, he prefers above all things together the knowledge of things divine and the learning of the truth, and cries out with the prophet:

How I have loved your law, O Lord!

It is my meditation all the day.

1. Concerning Simon Magus

4. Concerning Basilides and Isidore

5. Concerning Carpocrates and Epiphanes

8. Concerning Secundus and the others

9. Concerning Marcus the sorcerer

10. Concerning the Ascodrutae, or Ascodrupitae

13. Concerning the Barbelites, that is, the Borborians

14. Concerning the Sethians, or Ophians, or Ophites

20. Concerning Tatian, and the Hydroparastatae, or Encratites

22. Concerning Bardaisan and Harmonius

23. Concerning Florinus, and Blastus

24. Concerning Cerdo and Marcion

25. Concerning Apelles, Potitus, Prepon, and the others

The all-wise God of all things entrusted the cultivation of the world lying fallow to a few men — these being fishermen and tax collectors, and one tentmaker.

But the utterly wicked demon, the avenger of mankind, seeing these men tearing up by the roots the thorns of polytheistic error, and himself being stripped of his subjects, being a contriver of devices and a craftsman of wickedness, devised other schemes of plotting.

For having chosen men worthy of his own operation, and having placed upon them, like a mask, the name of Christian, and having smeared the rim of the cup with something like honey, he offered to men the deadly drug of falsehood.

But no sooner had those men begun to till the ground and to sow the seeds of piety, than this one sowed the tares in among them.

And Simon, the Samaritan magician, was the first to appear as the minister of his evil craft.

He, setting out from Gitthae (a village of Samaria), and having carried sorcery to its utmost extreme, first persuaded many, through the wonder-working he performed, to attend upon him and to call him a certain divine power.

Then, having seen the apostles truly performing genuine and divine wonders, and bestowing upon those who came to them the grace of the Spirit, and deeming it right to receive from them equal authority, since the great Peter detected his utterly wicked purpose and bade him heal, with the remedies of repentance, the hard-to-cure wounds of his mind, he at once reverted to his former evil craft, and, abandoning Samaria as having received the seeds of salvation, ran off to those who had not yet been cultivated by the apostles, in order that, by deceiving through his sorceries those easily led astray, and binding them to his own myth-making, he might make the doctrines of the holy apostles hard to accept.

But divine grace armed the great Peter against his madness.

For he, pursuing him, dispersed his abominable teaching like some mist and darkness, and displayed the rays of the light of truth.

But nevertheless, though openly refuted, the thrice-wretched man did not cease arraying himself against the truth, until he arrived at Rome, in the reign of Claudius Caesar.

And he so astounded the Romans with his sorceries that he was even honored with a bronze statue.

But again the divine Peter, having arrived, stripped him of the wings of his deceit, and at last, having summoned him to a contest of wonder-working, and having shown the difference between divine grace and sorcery, in the sight of all the Romans cast him down from a great height through prayer, and captured alive unto salvation those who had witnessed the miracle.

This man gave birth to such a myth as follows:

He posited a certain infinite power;

and this he called the root of all things.

He said that it was fire, having a twofold operation, the one manifest, the other hidden;

and that the world was generated, having come into being out of the manifest operation of the fire;

and that first there were put forth from it three pairs, which he also called roots;

and the first he called Mind and Thought, the second, Voice and Intelligence, and the third, Reasoning and Reflection.

And he named himself the infinite power, [claiming] that he had appeared to the Jews as the Son, had come down to the Samaritans as the Father, and had visited the other nations as the Holy Spirit.

And having taken as his consort a certain other woman, standing upon a roof and called Helen, he claimed that she was his First Thought, and called her mother of all things, and [said] that through her he had made both the angels and the archangels;

and that the world was fashioned by the angels.

Then the angels, out of envy, detained her among themselves.

For, he says, they did not wish to be called her creatures.

For this reason indeed they brought her into many female bodies, and also into that Helen on whose account the Trojan War came about.

For her sake, he said, he himself had come down, so as both to free her from the bonds that lay upon her, and to provide salvation to men through the knowledge of him.

And that he had come down transformed in appearance, so as not to be recognized by the angels who administer creation.

And that he appeared in Judea as a man, though he was not a man, and suffered, though he had by no means suffered.

And that the prophets had become servants of the angels.

He commanded believers not to heed them, nor to tremble at the threats of the laws, but, as free men, to do whatever they might wish.

For, he taught, it was not through good works, but through grace, that they would obtain salvation.

For this reason indeed those of his faction dared every kind of licentiousness, and employed magic arts of every sort, contriving certain love-charms and spells to draw others, and pursuing all the other things proper to sorcery as though they were divine mysteries.

But all these men, having devised certain small variations upon the impious heresy, did not endure very long, but were consigned to complete oblivion.

A certain Menander, himself also a Samaritan, coming from a village called Chabrai, succeeded to that man's sorcery, but did not call himself the first Power.

For he said that this Power was unknown.

But, boasting that he had been sent by it, he styled himself Savior; and, like Simon, he said that the angels had been put forth by the Ennoia, and that these had fashioned the world.

And that those baptized into him were saved, and became superior even in this present life, and received power to overcome most easily the world-creating powers.

Against these men wrote Justin — who, in the guise of a philosopher, became an advocate of the truth, and who bound upon himself the crown of martyrdom — and Irenaeus, of whom we also made mention before.

And this man too was an apostolic man.

And Origen, who cultivated great learning.

Having had this man as their teacher, Saturninus and Basilides — the one boasting Antioch, which neighbors the river Orontes, as his homeland, and Basilides, Alexandria — fashioned myths contrary both to their teacher and to one another.

Both flourished under the emperor Hadrian.

I shall first set forth the mythology of Saturninus.

This man, like Menander, said that there is one Father, altogether unknown.

And that this one created angels, and the other powers.

And that seven of these made the world, and formed man, and that they themselves, he says, spoke the words, 'Let us make man according to image and likeness.' And since the formed creature was unable to stand upright, but crawled like a worm, the divine power, he says, took pity and sent down a spark of life, and thereby brought the imperfect man to completion.

And that this spark of life, after the dissolution of the living creature, runs back up to the power that had sent it.

And he said that the Savior and Lord was not only ingenerate, but also unbegotten, and incorporeal, and without form.

And that he was manifested to men in appearance rather than in truth.

And he said that the God of the Jews was one of the angels.

Then, forgetting his own fabrication (for he had called the Savior unbegotten), he says that the Father of Christ, wishing to destroy, together with the other angels, also the God of the Jews, sent Christ into the world for the salvation of those men who believe in him.

with them cooperating, the Savior came, he says, to aid the good.

And this man was the first to call marriage a teaching of the devil.

He also legislates abstinence from things that have life.

And of the prophecies, he said that some were spoken by the world-creating angels, and others by Satan.

And that this one too was an angel, acting in opposition, above all, to the God of the Jews.

Concerning Basilides and Isidore

But Basilides, despising these myths as worthless, fashioned other, more impious ones.

and that these created heaven.

and that from an emanation of these, other angels came into being, and made another heaven similar to the first.

then again, others being born from an emanation of these, these too constructed yet another heaven, and those born from these in turn another; and the emanation that occurred, and the creation of the heavens, continued in this manner all the way to the three hundred and sixty-fifth.

and that the angels inhabiting the last heaven, the one seen by us, created the world, and divided among themselves the dominion of the earth, and that one was allotted the administration of the Jews, and this one ruled over the others.

And when this one wished to subject all the nations to his own people, the other rulers opposed him; and the Unbegotten, beholding these things, sent his firstborn Nous, whom he also called Christ, so as to save those who chose to believe.

And he says that this one did not suffer at all, but that Simon of Cyrene, having been mistaken for Christ, underwent the suffering.

And that Christ, watching from afar, laughed at the folly of the Jews, and then afterward departed to the one who had sent him.

He said that one must believe, not in him who was crucified, but in him who seemed to have been crucified.

For thus, he says, it is possible to be freed from the dominion of the world-creating powers.

This man too denied the resurrection of the flesh; and he too said that the prophecies had come about through angels, and that the law had been established by the ruler of the Jews.

He instructed them to partake of things sacrificed to idols without fear, and to perform forbidden acts without any discrimination.

And these men too, like those descended from Menander and Simon, employ incantations, and sorceries, and magic arts of every kind.

And having also fabricated names for angels, they said that some held the first heaven, others the second, and so on in succession up to the three hundred and sixty-fifth.

And they name the Savior and Lord Caulacau.

And they call these things unspeakable, and not to be grasped or comprehended by everyone, but only by one in a thousand.

And he says that their ruler is Abrasax.

For the numerical value of the name signifies the number of the three hundred and sixty-five heavens.

Basilides also had prophets — Barcabas and Barcoph, and certain others likewise bearing barbarous names.

And he fashioned yet other myths, more abominable than these, which I have not included, on account of the harm they might do to those who encounter them.

And Isidore too, the son of Basilides, with a certain addition of his own, reinforced his father's mythology.

Contending against these men, in defense of the truth, are Agrippa, also surnamed Castor, and Irenaeus, and Clement the Stromatist, and Origen.

Concerning Carpocrates and Epiphanes

he said that creation had come into being.

and that the Lord Jesus was begotten of Joseph and Mary just like other men, but that he excelled in virtue, having had a soul that was pure, and that remembered its former conduct in the company of the Unbegotten.

And he says that those who, like him, despise the world-creating angels, likewise receive power to do the same things.

And if anyone should have an even purer soul, he says, that person will even surpass the dignity of the Son.

Into such a frenzy of conceit did these men run aground — employing sorcery, and making invocations of demons, yet not enduring to conceal their licentiousness, but rather making debauchery into a law.

But now that I have arrived at this point, I do not know how I might pass over their legislation of licentiousness.

For having accepted the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, they did not accept the reasoning bound up with it.

For Pythagoras said that souls that had sinned were sent into bodies, so that they might both pay the penalty and be purified through diligence.

But these men say that the cause of the transmigration is, diametrically, the very opposite of the Pythagorean one.

For they say that souls are sent into bodies so that they may accomplish every kind of licentiousness.

Those, then, that have fulfilled this in a single descent have no need of a further sending.

But those that have sinned little are sent forth a second time, and a third, and many times, until they have fulfilled every form of vice.

But lest anyone suspect that I am inventing these things against them, I shall cite the testimony of Irenaeus, the apostolic man who illumined the West.

He says the following in the first book of the work he composed against the heresies:

'As to whether godless, abominable, and forbidden acts are actually practiced among them, I would not venture to believe it;

but it is so written in their own writings, and they themselves so explain it, saying that Jesus spoke these things in a mystery privately to his disciples and apostles, and that they in turn judged it right to hand them down to the worthy and to those who believed.'

But what follows I have not added;

for it exceeds the bounds of madness.

And Epiphanes, his son, who had been trained in a Platonic education, expanded his mythology.

These men too, in the reign of Hadrian, strengthened their wicked sects.

Prodicus, succeeding him, established the sect of those called Adamites.

This man openly added lechery to the doctrines of Carpocrates;

for he legislated that women should be held in common.

For this reason, not only at their common banquets, putting out the lamplight, each man would mingle with whatever woman he happened upon;

but indeed they had come to regard such licentiousness as a mystic rite.

As witness to this I shall produce the author of the Stromateis, Clement, a holy man who surpassed all others in learning.

He says the following in the third book of the Stromateis:

'There are some who call the common, promiscuous intercourse of Aphrodite "mystic communion," thereby insulting even the name itself.' Then, after saying something against their swinish licentiousness, he adds the following as well:

'For these thrice-wretched men perform, as sacred rites, carnal and copulative intercourse, and suppose that this leads them up into the kingdom of Christ.

Such fellowship as this leads into brothels, and indeed swine and goats might well be partners with them;

for such women receive all who are willing.' Having added other similar remarks, he goes on to say:

'Such things also the followers of Prodicus, who falsely style themselves Gnostics, teach as doctrine.' 7

Taking his starting points from all these sects, Valentinus composed his endless myths.

He established his sect under Antoninus the First.

He posited as first a perfect Aeon, whom he also calls Pre-Beginning, and Forefather, and Bythus (Depth);

and that a certain Thought coexists with him, called Grace and Silence.

He said that this one embraced quietude for countless ages;

but that afterward, in time, from both of them came Mind and Truth.

They call Mind the Only-begotten.

These two pairs they call the Pythagorean Tetraktys, and they name it the root of all things.

From Mind and Truth, he says, Word and Life were put forth;

and from Word and Life, Man and Church.

These four pairs [they call] the first-begotten Ogdoad, and the root and hypostasis of all things.

And they say this to be the first Aeon, and then the Word and Life follow.

After the emission of Man and Church, ten more Aeons were put forth: Profound and Mixture, Unaging and Union, Self-produced and Pleasure, Immovable and Commixture, Only-begotten and Blessed.

From Man and Church twelve other Aeons were put forth: Paraclete and Faith, Paternal and Hope, Maternal and Love, Ever-mindful and Understanding, Ecclesiastical and Blessedness, Desired and Wisdom.

They say that these thirty Aeons are unknown to all others, but known only to themselves.

Then, after fabricating a great deal of mythology in order to show the numbers eight, ten, twelve, and thirty to be honorable, he says that Bythus is unattainable to all who came from him;

though he who was begotten desired to see him and to declare him to the others, Silence restrained him and hindered the attempt.

But the last Aeon, whom they call Sophia (Wisdom), having conceived the same desire, but being unable to attain the object of her desire, brought forth, he says, a formless substance.

Grieved at such an offspring, she approached the Forefather and reported her suffering;

and the rest of the Aeons joined her in supplication, and she herself obtained a measure of forgiveness.

The formless offspring, they say, is Matter, having sprung from ignorance, grief, fear, and consternation.

But Bythus, taking care that no other Aeon should fall into a similar experience, put forth Limit, not paired with a female consort;

for each of the other Aeons is paired with a female.

This Limit they also call Cross, and they fabricate other names for it as well.

That Enthymesis, which they also named Passion, and formless offspring, and Matter — this Limit cast far away.

After this, he says, the Only-begotten, by the will of the Father, put forth, for the security and stability of the Aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit;

for they say that Christ taught the Aeons that the Father is incomprehensible;

and that the Holy Spirit, according to them, bestowed upon the Aeons a better equality.

Having obtained these things, the Aeons hymned the Forefather, and, jointly contributing the most beautiful things each of them possessed, put forth by means of these Jesus, whom they also call Savior, and Christ the Word.

Together with him they also put forth other angels, to be his bodyguard.

All these things they call within the Pleroma (Fullness).

Outside the Pleroma, the following is what is said:

The Enthymesis of that Sophia, which they also called the formless offspring, they call Achamoth;

having come into being, she dwells in a certain shadow and void;

and that the one called Christ, taking pity on her, extended himself through the Limit — also called the Cross — and gave her a form corresponding to substance;

but left her destitute of knowledge, and after this withdrew his power back into himself;

and that she, perceiving the light that had shone upon her, ran in search of it, but was hindered by Limit from advancing, who said, 'Iao';

for from this, they say, this name also arose;

then, grieved at being hindered from advancing, she received grief and fear and perplexity;

and afterward a desire for return also came upon her.

From these passions, they say, this world came into being;

and from the other passions, the rest [of things].

from her tears came the moist substance, from her laughter, light, and from the rest, the other things.

For I think it is not free of reproach to recount everything that they narrate as myths.

but that he accepted her supplication, yet did not go to her himself, but sent Jesus, so that in him both the visible and the invisible things might be created, and thrones and dominions and deities, as they themselves say.

He came, then, together with the angels who had been put forth, and separated her from the passions that had come upon her, and having separated these, he consolidated them;

And she, having been separated from the passions, received desire for the angels, and brought forth a spiritual offspring resembling the angels, and this ran back up above.

From this return, they say, the psychic substance came into being, and from this was formed the God and Father and King of those souls which have the same nature as himself, which they call the right-hand ones, and of those of matter, which they name the left-hand ones.

For they say that he appropriated to himself all things that are seen.

But why must I recount all the nonsense of their myth-making? For their whole fabrication resembles what has already been said.

They say that he assumed nothing material whatsoever;

for nothing that comes from matter admits of salvation.

They say that they themselves are saved by knowledge alone;

but that we are saved by faith and good conduct;

and that they themselves have no need of works, since knowledge suffices for salvation.

For this reason, the most perfect among them do without fear whatever is forbidden by the divine laws.

For indeed they used to celebrate Greek festivals, and partook of things sacrificed to idols, and are enslaved to their pleasures, and dare to do absolutely any wicked thing without discrimination.

and he has added Light and Darkness.

And countless other heresiarchs also sprang up from this source—Cossianus, Theodotus, Heracleon, Ptolemaeus, Marcus—devising various doctrines of their own.

Marcus, for his part, practiced sorcery, and by performing certain wonders through magical tricks, deceived many of the credulous.

He, having fabricated a certain lengthy myth, claimed that Silence had spoken this to him;

and he is not ashamed to have represented Silence as a babbler.

and some he called semivowels, others vowels.

These men, having composed a multitude of falsely-attributed and spurious books, attempt through them to astonish the foolish.

And when baptizing those who are being deceived, they customarily add the following words:

"Into the name of the unknown Father of all, into Truth the mother of all, into him who descended into Jesus, into union, and redemption, and communion of the powers."

And they also mix in Hebrew names, to frighten those being initiated—names which I have judged it superfluous to mention.

From these, like the shoot of couch-grass, a vast multitude of heresies sprang up;

they say that a branch of these are also those called by some Ascodrutae, and by others Ascodrupitae.

Concerning those called Ascodrutae or Ascodrupitae

These say that the divine mysteries, being symbols of invisible things, ought not to be performed by means of visible things, nor the incorporeal by means of sensible and corporeal things.

and that perfect redemption is the true knowledge of that which truly is.

For all visible things, having come into being through ignorance and passion, are dissolved through knowledge.

Redemption, therefore, must also be spiritual.

For they call the knowledge of all things "redemption."

And from these, some called Archontics, having fabricated certain books, name them "Revelations of the Prophets."

One of these they called "Symphony," in which they wrote of seven heavens, each of them having one archon, and a certain mother called "Luminous" being highest of all.

And they anathematize baptism, and the partaking of the mysteries, as being performed in the name of Sabaoth;

for they say that he tyrannizes in the seventh heaven.

And they say that souls are the food of the archons, and that without this they cannot live.

And that the devil is the son of Sabaoth;