What the Naassenes say, who call themselves Gnostics, and that they hold as dogma those very things which the philosophers of the Greeks had previously held as dogma, along with those who handed down the mystery-rites; from whom, having taken their starting-points, they constructed their heresies.
What the doctrine according to the Sethians is, and that, having pilfered their words from the sages among the Greeks — Musaeus, Linus, and Orpheus — they patched together their own doctrine.
What seems [true] to Justinus, and that his doctrine is not established from the holy Scriptures, but from the fabulous tales of Herodotus the historian. [Naassenes...]
I consider that, with very great labor, I have set forth, in the four books prior to this one, the opinions held by all the philosophers, both Greek and barbarian, concerning the divine and the creation of the cosmos; and, not even omitting the recondite matters, I have taken upon myself no ordinary labor on behalf of my readers, exhorting many toward the love of learning and toward security in the knowledge concerning the truth.
It remains, then, to set out upon the refutation of the heresies, for the sake of which we have also set forth the aforementioned matters; from which the heresiarchs, having partaken of their starting-points, and, like patchers of old garments, having stitched together the errors of the ancients according to their own mind, have set them forth as new to those capable of being led astray — as we shall show in what follows.
For the rest, time calls upon us to proceed to the treatment of the matters proposed, and to begin with those who have dared to hymn the serpent — the one who became the cause of the deception — by means of certain arguments devised with reference to its activity. The priests, then, and champions of this doctrine were, first, those who were called Naassenoi, having been so named in the Hebrew tongue; for "naas" is the word for serpent.
After this they called themselves Gnostics, claiming that they alone know the depths [of things]. From these, many having split off, made the [originally] single heresy many-branched, though it remains one, [differing only] in various names for the same things, as our discourse, proceeding, will demonstrate. These men, beyond all the others, according to their own doctrine, honor Man and the Son of Man.
And this Man is male-female, and is called Adamas among them. Many and various hymns have been made to him; and the hymns, to speak briefly, are recited among them in some such manner as this: "From you, Father, and through you, Mother, the two immortal names, parents of the aeons, citizen of heaven, O Man of great name!"
And they divide him, like Geryon, into three parts; for of him, they say, one part is noetic (of mind), another is psychic (of soul), and another is choic (of clay), and they consider the knowledge of him to be the beginning of being able to know God, saying thus: "The beginning of perfection is the knowledge of Man, and the knowledge of God is perfection made complete."
All these things, he says — the noetic, the psychic, and the choic — have contracted and come down together into one man, Jesus, who was born of Mary; and, he says, these three men spoke together, at the same time, each from his own substances to those of his own kind. For there are, according to them, three classes of all things: angelic, psychic, and choic; and three churches: angelic, psychic, and choic — and the names given to them are: the elect, the called, and the captive.
These are the chief points, out of very many discourses, which he says James the Lord's brother handed down to Mariamne. In order, then, that the impious may no longer falsely accuse Mariamne, nor James, nor their Savior, let us come to the mystery-rites, whence this myth of theirs [derives] — if it seems good — to the barbarian and Greek [rites] — and let us see how these men, gathering together the hidden and secret mysteries of all the nations at once, and falsely attributing them to Christ, deceive those who do not know these orgiastic rites of the nations.
For since their basic premise is that the Man is Adamas, and they say it is written concerning him, "His generation, who shall declare it?" — learn how, part by part, having taken from the nations the undiscoverable and incorruptible generation of Man, they falsely impute it to Christ.
"The earth," say the Greeks, "first brought forth man, bearing a noble prize, wishing to become the mother not of unfeeling plants nor of irrational beasts, but of a tame creature beloved of the gods."
"It is difficult," he says, "to discover whether Alalcomeneus rose up first of men for the Boeotians, above the Cephisian lake; or whether the Curetes were of Ida, a divine race; or the Phrygian Corybantes, whom the sun first beheld sprouting up tree-born; or whether Arcadia [bore] Pelasgus, older than the moon; or Eleusis [bore] Dysaules, dweller of Raria; or Lemnos brought forth fair-childed Cabirus by an unspeakable orgiastic rite; or Pellene [bore] Phlegraean Alcyoneus, eldest of the Giants."
"The Libyans say that Garamas, first-born, rising up from the parched plains, was the first to taste of the sweet acorn of Zeus. And the Nile," he says, "fattening the Egyptian mud, even to this day generates life, giving forth living creatures and bodies made flesh by moist heat."
The Assyrians [say] that Oannes the fish-eater arose among them; the Chaldeans, [that it was] Adam. And they say that this is the man whom the earth alone brought forth; and that he lay breathless, motionless, unmoving, like a statue, being an image of that Man above, of the celebrated Adamas, having come into being by many powers, concerning whom there is much discourse in detail.
In order, then, that the great Man from above might be completely held fast — he from whom, as they say, every family named on earth and in the heavens has its constitution — a soul was also given to him, so that through the soul the formed creature of the great and most beautiful and perfect Man might suffer and be chastened, [thereby] enslaving it; for indeed this is what they call him.
They ask, then, again in turn, what the soul is, and whence, and of what kind of nature, that, coming into the man and moving him, it might enslave and chasten the formed creature of the perfect Man; and they inquire not from the Scriptures, but this too from the mystery-rites. And they say the soul is very hard to find and hard to comprehend; for it does not remain always in the same shape or form, nor in one state, so that anyone might describe it either by type or grasp it by essence.
And these various transformations they have set down in the Gospel entitled According to the Egyptians. They are perplexed, then, just as all the other men of the nations are, as to whether [the soul] is ever from the pre-existent, or from... or from the poured-out chaos. And first they take refuge in the mystery-rites of the Assyrians, considering the threefold division of Man; for the Assyrians were the first to hold that the soul is threefold and yet one.
"For every nature," they say, "desires soul, though each in its own way. For soul is the cause of all things that come into being; for everything that is nourished," he says, "and grows, needs soul. For nothing," he says, "can attain either nourishment or growth if soul is not present. And indeed," he says, "[even plants] are ensouled; for they have the capacity for growth. And growth could never occur without nourishment; for things that grow, grow by addition."
"And the addition is the nourishment of that which is nourished. Every nature, then," he says, "of things heavenly, earthly, and subterranean, desires soul. The Assyrians call such a thing Adonis or Endymion; and when it is called Adonis," he says, "Aphrodite loves and desires the soul under that name; and Aphrodite, according to them, is Generation."
"And when Persephone, who is also Kore, loves Adonis, [this signifies that] the soul," he says, "is a certain mortal [element], separated from Aphrodite, apart from [ordinary] generation. And if the Moon comes into desire and erotic longing for the form of Endymion, [this signifies that] the creation of the higher [beings] too," he says, "stands in need of soul."
"And if," he says, "the Mother of the Gods castrates Attis and keeps him as her beloved, [this signifies that] the blessed nature above, of the things beyond the cosmos and eternal," he says, "calls back to itself the male power of the soul."
"For," he says, "Man is male-female." According to this doctrine of theirs, then, intercourse of a woman with a man, as it is customarily practiced, stands condemned by their teaching as altogether evil and forbidden.
"For," he says, "Attis was castrated" — that is, [cut off] from the choic parts of creation below — "and has passed over to the eternal substance above, where," he says, "there is neither female nor male, but a new creation, a new man, who is male-female." And where they mean by "above," I will show when I come to the appropriate place.
And they say that not merely Rhea alone bears witness to their doctrine, but, so to speak, the whole of creation. And they explain that this is what is meant by what is said [in Scripture]: "For his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly perceived, being understood through the things that are made — both his eternal power and divinity — so that they are without excuse; because, having known God, they did not glorify him as God, nor give thanks, but their senseless heart was made futile."
"For, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to dishonorable passions; for even their females changed the natural use into that which is against nature" —
— what the "natural use" is according to them, we shall say later — "and likewise also the males, leaving the natural use of the female, burned in their desire toward one another, males with males working out unseemliness" — and "unseemliness," according to them, is the first and blessed "shapeless" substance, which is the cause of all shapes for the things that are shaped — "and receiving in themselves the recompense that was fitting for their error."
For in these very words, which Paul spoke, they say the whole hidden and unspeakable mystery of their blessed pleasure is contained. For the promise of the bath, according to them, is nothing other than the leading, into unfading pleasure, of the one who is bathed, according to them, in living water and anointed with an unspeakable anointing.
And they say that not only do the mysteries of the Assyrians and the Phrygians bear witness to their doctrine, but also those of the Egyptians, concerning the blessed nature, at once hidden and manifest, of the things that are and are still to be — which he says is the [nature] within man, sought after in the heavens; concerning which they hand down [teaching] explicitly in the Gospel entitled According to Thomas, speaking thus: "He who seeks me will find me in children from seven years old; for there, hidden in the fourteenth aeon, I am revealed."
But this saying is not Christ's, but Hippocrates', who says: "A child of seven years is half [its] father." Whence these men, positing the primordial nature of all things in a primordial seed, having heard the Hippocratic saying that a child of seven years is half [its] father, say that at fourteen years [of age], according to Thomas, [this nature] is manifested.
This is their secret and mystical doctrine. They say, then, that the Egyptians, being, of all men, the most ancient after the Phrygians, and having, by common consent of all other men, first proclaimed the initiation-rites and orgiastic mysteries of all the gods together, along with their forms and activities — [these Egyptians] have sacred and revered [rites], and, for those not yet initiated, the mysteries of Isis.
And these are nothing other than the [thing] snatched away and sought after by the seven-robed and black-garbed [goddess] — the shame of Osiris. And they call Osiris water. And nature, seven-robed, having about itself and clothed with seven ethereal robes (for so they call the wandering stars, speaking allegorically and calling them "ethereal," according to...) — the changeable generation, transformed by the ineffable, unrepresentable, inconceivable, and formless [principle], is displayed as creation.
And this, he says, is what is said in Scripture: "Seven times shall the righteous man fall, and rise up again." For these "falls," he says, are the changes of the stars, being moved by that which moves all things.
They say, then, concerning the substance of the seed, which is the cause of all things that come into being, that it is none of these [existing] things, yet it begets and makes all the things that come into being, speaking thus: "I become what I will, and I am what I am." For this reason, he says, that which moves all things is itself unmoved; for it remains what it is, making all things, and none of the things that come into being becomes itself.
He says that this alone is good, and that concerning this was spoken what was said by the Savior: "Why do you call me good? There is One who is good — my Father who is in the heavens, who makes his sun to rise on the just and the unjust, and sends rain on the holy and on sinners." But who the holy are, on whom he sends rain, and who the sinners are, on whom the same [God] sends rain, this too, along with the other matters, we shall discuss later.
And this, [they say,] is the great and hidden, unknown mystery among the Egyptians — [at once] veiled and unveiled. For there is no temple, he says, before whose entrance the hidden [thing] does not stand exposed, looking from below upward, and crowned with all its fruits of the things that come into being.
And they say that such a thing stands not only in the most sacred temples, before the images, but also for the recognition of all people, being set up like a light, not under the bushel but placed upon the lampstand — a proclamation proclaimed upon the housetops, on all roads and in every street and beside the houses themselves, a certain boundary-marker and limit set up before the house — and that this is what is called by all "the Good"; for they call it "the bringer of good," a name which they use without knowing [its true meaning]; and this the Greeks, having received it as a mystical thing from the Egyptians, preserve down to the present day.
"We observe, then," he says, "the Hermae among them honored with just such a form. And the Cyllenians, honoring [Hermes] pre-eminently... the Word. For he says: Hermes is the Word, who, being the interpreter and craftsman of the things that are coming to be and are to be, together, is honored among them, standing marked with just such a form — namely, the shame of man — having its impulse from below upward."
And that this [Hermes], that is, Hermes of such a kind, is, he says, the leader of souls, the escort of souls, and the cause of souls, does not escape the poets either, who speak thus: "And Hermes the Cyllenian summoned forth the souls of the suitor-men" — not, he says, the suitors of Penelope, O wretched ones, but of those who have been awakened and reminded, "from what honor and how great a store of bliss" — that is, from the blessed Man above, or Arch-Man, or Adamas, as it seems to them — they have been brought down here into the fleshly formation, that they might serve the demiurge of this creation, Esaldaios, a fiery god, fourth in number.
For thus they call the demiurge, father of the particular cosmos. [Homeric verses:] "And in his hands he held a beautiful golden wand, with which he charms the eyes of men, of whomever he wishes, and again awakens others even from sleep."
"This [Hermes]," he says, "is the one who alone has power over life and death. Concerning him," he says, "it is written: 'You shall shepherd them with a rod of iron.' But the poet," he says, "wishing to adorn the inconceivable [nature] of the blessed nature of the Word, put around him not an iron, but a golden rod. And he charms the eyes of the dead," as [Homer] says, "and again awakens those who sleep" — that is, those who have been awakened and have become suitors.
"Concerning these," he says, "Scripture speaks: 'Awake, O sleeper, and arise, and Christ shall shine upon you.' This is the Christ, who," he says, "in all begotten things, [is] the Son of Man, given form from the unformed Word."
"This," he says, "is the great and ineffable mystery of the Eleusinians: 'Hye, Kye' [Rain, Conceive]. And that," he says, "all things have been made subject to him, and this is what is said: 'Their voice has gone out into all the earth.' Just as, when Hermes moves and leads with his wand, the souls follow squeaking continuously, just as the poet has shown by means of the image, saying: 'As when bats in the depth of some awesome cave fly about squeaking, when one falls off from the chain from the rock, and they cling to one another' — 'the rock,' he says, means Adamas.
"This," he says, "is the adamant, the cornerstone, which has become the head of the corner" — "for in the head," he says, "is the brain that gives characteristic form, the substance from which every family receives its characteristic form" — "whom," he says, [Scripture says], "I set as an adamant into the foundations of Zion." Speaking allegorically, he says, [Scripture] refers to the formed creature of man.
And the adamant that is set in place is the inner man, and the foundations of Zion are the teeth — as Homer says, "the fence of the teeth," that is, also a rampart, in which is the inner man, who has fallen down from there, from the Arch-Man above, Adamas — cut off without cutting hands, and brought down into the fleshly formation of forgetfulness, the choic, the earthen [vessel].
And he says that the souls followed him, the Word, squeaking, [as Homer says:] "And these [souls] went squeaking together, and Hermes the guileless led them" — that is, he says, led them — "along the moldy paths" — that is, he says, into the eternal regions freed from all evil. For where, he says, did they come? "They passed by the streams of Ocean, and the White Rock, and by the Gates of the Sun and the district [of dreams]" — this, he says, is Ocean, and the generation of the gods.
...and generation, ever turning by the tide, now upward, now downward. But, he says, whenever Ocean flows downward, it is the birth of men; but whenever upward, toward the wall and the rampart and the White Rock, it is the birth of gods.
This, he says, is what is written: 'I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High' — if you hasten to flee from Egypt and come to be beyond the Red Sea, into the wilderness, that is, from the lower mixture to the upper Jerusalem, which is the mother of the living; but if you turn back again to Egypt, that is, to the lower mixture, you die as men.
For, he says, all generation below is mortal, but that born above is immortal; for the spiritual man is born of water alone and spirit, not fleshly; but the one below is fleshly. This, he says, is what is written: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.' This, according to them, is the spiritual generation.
This, he says, is the great Jordan, which flows downward and hinders the sons of Israel from going out of the land of Egypt — that is, from the lower mixture, for Egypt, according to them, is the body — but Jesus (Joshua) turned it back and made it flow upward.
Following these and such things, the most wondrous Gnostics, inventors of a new art of grammar, glorify their own prophet Homer as ineffably declaring these things beforehand, and by drawing together the holy scriptures into such notions they insult the uninitiated. They say: 'He who says that all things consist of one is in error; he who says they consist of three speaks the truth and will give the demonstration concerning the universe.'
For, he says, one is the blessed nature of the blessed man above, of Adamas; one is the mortal nature below; and one is the kingless generation that has come to be above, where, he says, is Miriam who is sought, and Jethro the great sage, and Zipporah who sees, and Moses, whose generation is not in Egypt — for children were born to him in Midian.
And this, he says, has not escaped even the poets: 'All things are divided into three, and each has obtained his portion of honor.' For, he says, the greatnesses must be spoken, and must be spoken thus by all, everywhere, so that hearing they may not hear, and seeing they may not see. For if the greatnesses were not spoken, he says, the world could not have come to consist.
These are the three enormous words: Kaulakau, Saulasau, Zeesar — Kaulakau of the one above, of Adamas; Saulasau of the one below, the mortal; Zeesar of the Jordan that flowed upward. This, he says, is the man who is male-female in all things, whom those who do not know call Geryon, the three-bodied, as flowing from the earth, Geryon; but commonly the Greeks call him the heavenly horn of the moon, because he has mingled and blended all things with all.
For, he says, all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be. What has come to be in him is life. This, he says, is the life, the ineffable generation of the perfect men, which was not known to the former generations; and the 'nothing' that came to be without him is the particular world; for it came to be without him, by a third and a fourth.
This, he says, is the cup, the kondy, from which the king drinks and divines. This, he says, was found hidden among the fine grain of Benjamin. And the Greeks too, he says, speak of it thus, with a frenzied mouth: 'Bring water, bring wine, O boy, make me drunk and lull me to sleep. The cup tells me what manner of man I must become,' speaking this with a speechless tongue, he says.
It would have sufficed, if only understood, for men, that the cup of Anacreon, speaking speechlessly, tells an ineffable mystery. For, he says, the cup of Anacreon is speechless, which, Anacreon says, speaks to him with a speechless utterance what manner of man he must become — that is, spiritual, not fleshly — if he hears the hidden mystery in silence; and this is the water at those fine wedding-feasts, which Jesus turned and made wine. This, he says, is the great and true beginning of the signs which Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee, and thereby manifested the kingdom of heaven.
This, he says, is the great and ineffable mystery of the Samothracians, which it is lawful only for the perfect, he says, for us, to know; for the Samothracians expressly hand down that Adam, in the mysteries celebrated among them, as the Archman [the first Man].
There stand two statues in the sanctuary of the Samothracians, of naked men, both having their hands stretched upward toward heaven, and their private parts turned upward, just as the statue of Hermes at Cyllene. These aforementioned statues are images of the Archman and of the regenerated spiritual man, who is in every respect consubstantial with that Man.
This, he says, is what was said by the Savior: 'Unless you drink my blood and eat my flesh, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.' 'But even if you drink,' he says, 'the cup that I drink, where I go, there you cannot enter.'
For he knew, he says, of what nature each of his disciples was, and that it was necessary for each of them to come to his own proper nature. For from the twelve tribes, he says, he chose twelve disciples, and through them he spoke to every tribe; for this reason, he says, not all have heard the preachings of the twelve disciples, nor, even if they hear, are they able to receive them; for what is not according to their nature is contrary to nature for them.
This one, he says, the Thracians who live around Haemus call Corybas, and the Phrygians similarly to the Thracians, because, taking the beginning of his descent from the summit above and from the uncharacterized brain, and passing through all the underlying principles, how and in what manner he descends, we do not comprehend.
This, he says, is what was said: 'We have heard his voice, but we have not seen his form.' For [the text here is corrupt], he says, a voice is heard of him who has been formed and given shape, but no one has seen what sort the form is that descended from above, from the uncharacterized. It exists in the earthy formation, but no one knows it.
This, he says, is the God who dwells amid the flood, according to the Psalter, and who speaks and cries out from many waters. 'Many waters,' he says, is the manifold and much-divided generation of mortal men, from which he cries out, cries out, shouts to the uncharacterized man, saying, 'Deliver my only-begotten from the lions.'
To this one, he says, it has been said: 'You are my child, Israel, fear not; if you pass through rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; if you pass through fire, it shall not burn you.' 'Rivers,' he says, means the moist substance of generation, and 'fire' the impulse and desire toward generation: 'You are mine, fear not.'
And again, he says: 'If a mother should forget her children, so as not to have compassion or give the breast, then I too will forget you' — Adamas, he says, speaks thus to his own people: 'But even if a woman should forget these things, yet I will not forget you; upon my hands I have engraved you.'
Concerning his own regeneration, that is, concerning the regeneration, that he might become spiritual, not fleshly, the scripture says, he says: 'Lift up the gates, O you rulers of yours, and be lifted up, you everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall come in.' This is a wonder of wonders. For who, he says, is this King of glory? 'A worm, and not a man; a reproach of men and despised of the people.' He is the King of glory, mighty in battle.
He speaks of war as that which is in the body, because the formation has been fashioned out of warring elements, just as it is written, he says, 'Remember the war that takes place in the body.' This entrance, he says, and this gate, Jacob saw when journeying to Mesopotamia, which is the passage from being a boy already becoming a youth and a man, that is, it was made known to him who journeyed to Mesopotamia; and Mesopotamia, he says...
...is the flowing stream of the great Ocean, flowing from the midst of the perfect Man. And he marveled at the heavenly gate, saying: 'How fearful is this place! This is nothing else but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' For this reason, he says, Jesus says: 'I am the true gate.'
And he who says these things, he says, is the perfect man who has been given form from above, from the uncharacterized. The perfect man, therefore, he says, cannot be saved unless he is regenerated by entering through this gate.
This same one, he says, the Phrygians also call Papas, because he stopped all things that had been moved in disorder and error before his own manifestation. For the name 'Papas,' he says, is the cry of all together — of the heavenly, earthly, and subterranean — saying: 'Stop, stop the discord of the world, and make peace for those who are far off,' that is, for the material and earthy, 'and peace for those who are near,' that is, for the spiritual and intelligent, perfect men. And the Phrygians also call this same one 'Corpse,' as it were buried in a tomb and grave within the body.
This, he says, is what was said: 'You are whitewashed tombs, full,' he says, 'within of dead men's bones,' because there is not in you the living man. And again, he says, 'the dead shall leap forth from their tombs,' that is, from the earthy bodies, having been regenerated as spiritual, not fleshly.
This, he says, is the resurrection that comes about through the gate of heaven, and those who do not enter through it, he says, all remain dead. And these same Phrygians, he says, again by a change call this same one 'God'; for he becomes God, he says, when, having risen from the dead, he enters through such a gate into heaven.
This gate, he says, Paul the apostle knew, having opened it slightly in a mystery, and saying that he was caught up by an angel, and had come to the second and third heaven into paradise itself, and had seen what he saw, and had heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.