Simon Magus

History

Acts of the Apostles

The canonical Acts of the Apostles features a short narrative about Simon Magus; this is his only appearance in the New Testament.

Josephus

Josephus mentions a magician named Atomus (Simon in Latin manuscripts) as being involved with the procurator Felix, King Agrippa II and his sister Drusilla, where Felix has Simon convince Drusilla to marry him instead of the man she was engaged to. Some scholars have considered the two to be identical, although this is not generally accepted, as the Simon of Josephus is a Jew rather than a Samaritan.

Justin Martyr and Irenaeus

Justin Martyr (in his Apologies, and in a lost work against heresies, which Irenaeus used as his main source) and Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses) record that after being cast out by the Apostles, Simon Magus came to Rome where, having joined to himself a profligate woman of the name of Helen, he gave out that it was he who appeared among the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father and among other nations as the Holy Spirit. He performed such signs by magic acts during the reign of Claudius that he was regarded as a god and honored with a statue on the island in the Tiber which the two bridges cross, with the inscription Simoni Deo Sancto, leading some scholars to conclude that Justin Martyr confused Semoni Sancus with Simon.

Myth of Simon and Helen

Justin and Irenaeus are the first to recount the myth of Simon and Helen, which became the center of Simonian doctrine. Epiphanius of Salamis also makes Simon speak in the first person in several places in his Panarion, and the implication is that he is quoting from a version of it, though perhaps not verbatim.

As described by Epiphanius, in the beginning God had his first thought, his Ennoia, which was female, and that thought was to create the angels. The First Thought then descended into the lower regions and created the angels. But the angels rebelled against her out of jealousy and created the world as her prison, imprisoning her in a female body. Thereafter, she was reincarnated many times, each time being shamed. Her many reincarnations included Helen of Troy, among others, and she finally was reincarnated as Helen, a slave and prostitute in the Phoenician city of Tyre. God then descended in the form of Simon Magus, to rescue his Ennoia, and to confer salvation upon men through knowledge of himself.

For as the angels were mismanaging the world, owing to their individual lust for rule, he had come to set things straight, and had descended under a changed form, likening himself to the Principalities and Powers through whom he passed, so that among men he appeared as a man, though he was not a man, and was thought to have suffered in Judaea, though he had not suffered.

But the prophets had delivered their prophecies under the inspiration of the world-creating angels: wherefore those who had their hope in him and in Helen minded them no more, and, as being free, did what they pleased; for men were saved according to his grace, but not according to just works. For works were not just by nature, but only by convention, in accordance with the enactments of the world-creating angels, who by precepts of this kind sought to bring men into slavery. Wherefore he promised that the world should be dissolved, and that those who were his should be freed from the dominion of the world-creators.

In this account of Simon there is a large portion common to almost all forms of Gnostic myths, together with something special to this form. They have in common the place in the work of creation assigned to the female principle, the conception of the Deity; the ignorance of the rulers of this lower world with regard to the Supreme Power; the descent of the female (Sophia) into the lower regions, and her inability to return. Special to the Simonian tale is the identification of Simon himself with the Supreme, and of his consort Helena with the female principle.

Hippolytus

In Philosophumena, Hippolytus retells the narrative on Simon written by Irenaeus (who in his turn based it on the lost Syntagma of Justin). Upon the story of "the lost sheep", Hippolytus comments as follows:

Also, Hippolytus demonstrates acquaintance with the folk tradition on Simon which depicts him rather as a magician than Gnostic, and in constant conflict with Peter (also present in the apocrypha and Pseudo-Clementine literature). Reduced to despair by the curse laid upon him by Peter in the Acts, Simon soon abjured the faith and embarked on the career of a sorcerer:

Simonians

Main article: Simonians

Hippolytus gives a much more doctrinally detailed account of Simonianism, including a system of divine emanations and interpretations of the Old Testament, with extensive quotations from the Apophasis Megale. Some believe that Hippolytus' account is of a later, more developed form of Simonianism, and that the original doctrines of the group were simpler, close to the account given by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (this account however is also included in Hippolytus' work).

Hippolytus says the free love doctrine was held by them in its purest form, and speaks in language similar to that of Irenaeus about the variety of magic arts practiced by the Simonians, and also of their having images of Simon and Helen under the forms of Zeus and Athena. But he also adds, "if any one, on seeing the images either of Simon or Helen, shall call them by those names, he is cast out, as showing ignorance of the mysteries."

Epiphanius

Epiphanius writes that there were some Simonians still in existence in his day (c. AD 367), but he speaks of them as almost extinct. Gitta, he says, had sunk from a town into a village. Epiphanius further charges Simon with having tried to wrest the words of St. Paul about the armour of God into agreement with his own identification of the grc with Athena. He tells us also that he gave barbaric names to the "principalities and powers", and that he was the beginning of the Gnostics. The Law, according to him, was not of God, but of "the sinister power". The same was the case with the prophets, and it was death to believe in the Old Testament.

Cyril of Jerusalem

Cyril of Jerusalem (346 AD) in the sixth of his Catechetical Lectures prefaces his history of the Manichaeans by a brief account of earlier heresies: Simon Magus, he says, had given out that he was going to be translated to heaven, and was actually careening through the air in a chariot drawn by demons when Peter and Paul knelt down and prayed, and their prayers brought him to earth a mangled corpse.

Apocrypha

''Acts of Peter''

The apocryphal Acts of Peter gives a more elaborate tale of Simon Magus' death. Simon is performing magic in the Forum, and, in order to prove himself to be a god, he levitates into the air above the Forum. The apostle Peter prays to God to stop his flying, and he stops mid-air and falls into a place called "the Sacra Via" (meaning "Holy Way" in Latin), breaking his legs "in three parts". The previously non-hostile crowd then stones him. Now gravely injured, he has some people carry him on a bed at night from Rome to Ariccia, and is brought from there to Terracina to a person named Castor, who has been banished from Rome, on account of accusations of sorcery levelled against him. The Acts then continue to say that he died "while being sorely cut by two physicians".

''Acts of Peter and Paul''

Another apocryphal document, the Acts of Peter and Paul gives a slightly different version of the above incident, which was shown in the context of a debate in front of the Emperor Nero. In this version, Paul the Apostle is present along with Peter, Simon levitates from a high wooden tower made upon his request, and dies "divided into four parts" due to the fall. Peter and Paul are then imprisoned by Nero, who further orders that Simon's body be kept carefully for three days, in case, Christ-like, the magician should rise again.

Pseudo-Clementine literature

The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies give an account of Simon Magus and some of his teachings in regards to the Simonians. They are of uncertain date and authorship, and seem to have been worked over by several hands in the interest of diverse forms of belief.

Simon was a Samaritan, and a native of Gitta. The name of his father was Antonius, that of his mother Rachel. He studied Greek literature in Alexandria, and, having in addition to this great power in magic, became so ambitious that he wished to be considered a highest power, higher even than the God who created the world. And sometimes he "darkly hinted" that he himself was Christ, calling himself the Standing One. Which name he used to indicate that he would stand for ever, and had no cause in him for bodily decay. He did not believe that the God who created the world was the highest, nor that the dead would rise. He denied Jerusalem, and introduced Mount Gerizim in its stead. In place of the Christ of the Christians he proclaimed himself; and the Law he allegorized in accordance with his own preconceptions. He did indeed preach righteousness and judgment to come.

There was one John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of Jesus in accordance with the law of parity; and as Jesus had twelve Apostles, bearing the number of the twelve solar months, so had he thirty leading men, making up the monthly tale of the moon. One of these thirty leading men was a woman called Helen, and the first and most esteemed by John was Simon. But on the death of John, he was away in Egypt for the practice of magic, and one Dositheus, by spreading a false report of Simon's death, succeeded in installing himself as head of the sect. Simon on coming back thought it better to dissemble, and, pretending friendship for Dositheus, accepted the second place. Soon, however, he began to hint to the thirty that Dositheus was not as well acquainted as he might be with the doctrines of the school.

The encounter between Dositheus and Simon Magus was the beginnings of the sect of Simonians. The narrative goes on to say that Simon, having fallen in love with Helen, took her about with him, saying that she had come down into the world from the highest heavens, and was his mistress, inasmuch as she was Sophia, the Mother of All. It was for her sake, he said, that the Greeks and Barbarians fought the Trojan War, deluding themselves with an image of truth, for the real being was then present with the First God. By such allegories Simon deceived many, while at the same time he astounded them by his magic. A description is given of how he made a familiar spirit for himself by conjuring the soul out of a boy and keeping his image in his bedroom, and many instances of his feats of magic are given.

Anti-Paulinism

The Pseudo-Clementine writings were used in the 4th century by members of the Ebionite sect, one characteristic of which was hostility to Paul, whom they refused to recognize as an apostle. The enmity between Peter and Simon is clearly shown. Simon's magical powers are juxtaposed with Peter's powers in order to express Peter's authority over Simon through the power of prayer, and in the 17th Homily, the identification of Paul with Simon Magus is effected. Simon is there made to maintain that he has a better knowledge of the mind of Jesus than the disciples, who had seen and conversed with Jesus in person. His reason for this strange assertion is that visions are superior to waking reality, as divine is superior to human. Peter has much to say in reply to this, but the passage which mainly concerns us is as follows:

The anti-Pauline context of the Pseudo-Clementines is recognised, but the association with Simon Magus is surprising, according to Jozef Verheyden, since they have little in common. However the majority of scholars accept Baur's identification, though others, including Lightfoot, argued extensively that the "Simon Magus" of the Pseudo-Clementines was not meant to stand for Paul. More recently, Berlin pastor Hermann Detering (1995) has made the case that the veiled anti-Pauline stance of the Pseudo-Clementines has historical roots, that the Acts 8 encounter between Simon the magician and Peter is itself based on the conflict between Peter and Paul. Detering's belief has not found general support among scholars, but Robert M. Price argues much the same case in The Amazing Colossal Apostle:The Search for the Historical Paul (2012).

Identification of Simon as the Apostle Paul

Since Ferdinand Christian Baur in the 19th century, scholars including Hermann Detering and Margaret Barket have concluded that the attacks on "Simon Magus" in the 4th-century Pseudo-Clementines may be attacks on Paul. Detering takes the attacks of the Pseudo-Clementines as literal and historical, and suggests that the attacks of the Pseudo-Clementines are correct in identifying "Simon Magus" as a proxy for Paul of Tarsus, with Simon-Paul originally having been detested by the church, and the name changed to Paul when he was rehabilitated by virtue of forged Epistles correcting the genuine ones. Robert Price has stated his agreement with this assertion.

Anti-Marcionism

There are other features in the portrait which are reminiscent of Marcion. The first thing mentioned in the Homilies about Simon's opinions is that he denied that God was just. By "God" he meant the creator god. But he undertakes to prove from the Jewish scriptures that there is a higher god, who really possesses the perfections which are falsely ascribed to the lower god. On these grounds Peter complains that, when he was setting out for the gentiles to convert them from their worship of many gods upon earth, Satan had sent Simon before him to make them believe that there were many gods in heaven.

Druidism

In Irish legend, Simon Magus came to be associated with Druidism. He is said to have come to the aid of the Druid Mog Ruith. The fierce denunciation of Christianity by Irish Druids appears to have resulted in Simon Magus being associated with Druidism. The word Druid was sometimes translated into Latin as magus, and Simon Magus was also known in Ireland as "Simon the Druid".

Medieval legends, later interpretations

The church of Santa Francesca Romana, Rome, is claimed to have been built on the spot where Simon fell. Within the Church is a dented slab of marble that purports to bear the imprints of the knees of Peter and Paul during their prayer. The fantastic stories of Simon the Sorcerer persisted into the later Middle Ages, becoming a possible inspiration for the Faustbuch and Goethe's Faust.

The opening story in Danilo Kiš's 1983 collection The Encyclopedia of the Dead, "Simon Magus", retells the confrontation between Simon and Peter agreeing with the account in the Acts of Peter, and provides an additional alternative ending in which Simon asks to be buried alive in order to be resurrected three days later (after which his body is found putrefied).

Citations

General and cited references

References

1. {{Bibleverse. Acts. 8:9–8:24. 1000. 8:9–24
2. (2012). "Simon Magus". Catholic Encyclopedia.
3. "Simon Magus {{!}} Samarian magician". Encyclopædia Britannica.
4. "CHURCH FATHERS: Against Heresies, I.23 (St. Irenaeus)".
5. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea. (5 May 1894). "The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius Pamphilus, Bishop of Caesarea, in Palestine". George Bell & Sons.
6. Hippolytus: Refutation of All Heresies can be found in Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers (1919; reprint ed., Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1971), 5:74–81, for the part we need about Simon.
7. Ferreiro, Alberto. (5 May 2018). "Simon Magus in Patristic, Medieval And Early Modern Traditions". Brill.
8. Antonia Tripolitis ''Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age'' Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2002 {{ISBN. 9780802849137 p. 125
9. Alberto Ferreiro ''Simon Magus in Patristic, Medieval And Early Modern Traditions'' BRILL, 2005 p. 53
10. "Catholic Encyclopedia: Simon Magus".
11. "Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Justin Martyr".
12. ''Dictionary of Christian Biography'', Vol. 4, p. 682.
13. ''Hastings' Dictionary of the Apostolic Church'', Vol. 2, p. 496.
14. Mark J. Edwards "Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire" Clarendon Press, Oxford (1997) page 69
15. [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VII/Constitutions of the Holy Apostles/Book VI/Sec. IV. ''Constitutions of the Holy Apostles'', vi. § 4, 16]].
16. "[[Geburah]], or ''[[wikt:δύναμις. Dynamis]]'', was an appellative or metonym of "The Divine Glory" among the apocalypticists, and with this very meaning entered the Gospels in the famous passage: 'You shall see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Dynamis [Matthew 26:64; Mark 14:62].' Although in rabbinic sources of the first and second centuries the name ''Dynamis'' was widely used as a synonym for God Himself, the esoteric use continued in the circles of the [[Merkabah mysticism. Merkabah mystics]]. ... This term must have had wide usage, since according to the Acts of the Apostles 8:10 even the Samaritan Simon Magus claimed to be the Great Dynamis: ἡ δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ καλουμένη μεγάλη." Scholem, p. 67.
17. "LÜDEMANN (1989: 96-98) has raised the question whether, on the basis of Luke's own knowledge of the tradition, Luke had made some ironic allusion to Helen as Simon's ἐπίνοια in his reference to the state of Simon's heart: ἡ ἐπίνοια τῆς καρδίας (8:22). If so, as LÜDEMANN argued, the two essential elements of Gnostic Simonian religion are already found in Acts: 'the god Simon and his syzygos, ἐπίνοια.'" Haar 2003, p. 82.
18. {{Bibleverse. Acts. 8:9–24. 1000
19. Josephus, ''[[Antiquities of the Jews]]'', 20:7, §2.
20. Hilgenfeld, ''Ketzergeschichte'', p. 170; Albert, ''Die Ersten Fünfzehn Jahre der Christlichen Kirche'', p. 114, Münster, 1900; Waitz, in ''Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft'', v. 128; Price 2012.
21. "To Simon the Holy God" ([[s:Ante-Nicene Christian Library/The First Apology of Justin Martyr#29
22. [http://www.gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/grsm_simon_magus.htm#FNanchor_48 Epiphanius, ''Panarion'', 21.3.5]
23. Williams, vol. 1, p. 60.
24. [http://www.gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/grsm_simon_magus.htm#FNanchor_45 Epiphanius, ''Panarion'', 21.2.4]
25. Williams, vol. 1, p. 58.
26. [http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050106.htm Hippolytus], ''[[Refutation of all Heresies]]'', 6, 19.
27. [http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050106.htm Hippolytus], ''[[Refutation of all Heresies]]'', 6, 15.
28. ({{Bibleverse. Ephesians. 6:14–16)
29. [[s:Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VII/S. Cyril/Lecture 6. Cyril of Jerusalem, ''Catechetical Lectures'', vi. 15]].
30. "The Acts of Peter".
31. ''[[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/Acts of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul/Acts of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. Acts of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul]]''.
32. ''Recognitions'', Book 2.
33. [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily II/Chapter 23. Clementine ''Homilies'', ii. 23]].
34. [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Recognitions of Clement/Book II/Chapter 11. Clementine ''Recognitions'', ii. 11]].
35. Cf. [[s:Enneads/Against the Gnostics; or, Against Those that Affirm the Creator of the Cosmos and the Cosmos Itself to be Evil. Plotinus, ''Ennead'' II, 9, 10]]: "They first maintain that the Soul and a certain 'Wisdom' [Sophia] declined and entered this lower sphere ... Yet in the same breath, that very Soul which was the occasion of descent to the others is declared not to have descended. 'It knew no decline,' but merely illuminated the darkness in such a way that an image of it was formed upon the Matter. Then, they shape an image of that image somewhere below — through the medium of Matter or of Materiality ... and so they bring into being what they call the Creator or Demiurge, then this lower is severed from his Mother [Sophia] and becomes the author of the Cosmos down to the latest of the succession of images constituting it." MacKenna trans., p. 230.
36. As the ''Peregrinations of Peter''. Epiphanius, ''Panarion'', 30.15.1. Williams, vol. 1, p. 131.
37. George. Salmon
38. [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily XVII/Chapter 5. Clementine ''Homilies'', xvii. 5]]; [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily XVII/Chapter 14. 14]].
39. "The decision [in the Pseudo-Clementines] to associate Paul with Simon Magus is surprising since they have little in common. It is generally accepted that this association represents a later stage in the development of Ps.-Clem. and was an attempt to do away with or adapt some of the criticisms that had been aimed at Paul." Verheyden, p. 333.
40. "Baur's view that Simon is Paul has occasionally been questioned ..." Bockmuehl, p. 102.
41. "... letters (beginning of the second century AD, which give no evidence of strife between Peter and Paul) were spurious and late ... The idea of a revival of Baur's thesis appears to be quite self-conscious and explicit". Pate, p. 439.
42. [http://depts.drew.edu/jhc/detering.html Hermann Detering], The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles
43. [http://depts.drew.edu/jhc/detering.html Hermann Detering, The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles]
44. See also: [[Ferdinand Christian Baur. F C Baur]]; A. Hilgenfeld; Hermann Detering, "The Falsified Paul: Early Christianity in the Twilight" – 1995 (translated [http://www.egodeath.com/TheFabricatedPaul.htm into English in 2003]); and J.R.Porter, ''The Lost Bible'', pg 230.
45. [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily II/Chapter 14. Clementine ''Homilies'', ii. 14]].
46. [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily III/Chapter 10. Clementine ''Homilies'', iii. 10]]; [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily III/Chapter 38. 38]].
47. E.g. [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily III/Chapter 3. Clementine ''Homilies'', iii. 3]]; [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily III/Chapter 9. 9]]; [[s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily III/Chapter 59. 59]].
48. {{EB1911
49. Spence, Lewis. (1999). "The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain". Courier Corporation.
50. Sometimes with [[Mug Ruith]]. MacKillop, p. 337.
51. "Surely few admirers of Marlowe's and Goethe's plays have an inkling that their hero is the descendant of a gnostic sectary, and that the beautiful Helen called up by his art was once the fallen Thought of God through whose raising mankind was to be saved." Jonas, p. 111.
52. Power, Chris. (2 August 2012). "A brief survey of the short story part 42: Danilo Kiš". [[The Guardian]].
53. Taylor, Benjamin. (1995). "Into the Open: Reflections on Genius and Modernity". NYU Press.