Compendium of Heretical Fables 1 part 2/10

and that Sabaoth is the God of the Jews;

and that the son, being wicked, does not honor him, but opposes him in everything.

And they say that Cain and Abel are children of the devil.

And they fabricate certain other myths as well, full of every impiety.

And certain others, after death, pour oil and water upon the heads of the dying.

For they say that in this way they will become both invisible, and superior to the rulers and powers in between.

The Colorbasians say that the first Ogdoad came into being from what they call the Forefather;

and as for the Savior, some say he was put forth from the thirty Aeons, wherefore he is also called "Eudocetus," because the whole Pleroma through him was well pleased to glorify the Father;

others say he came from the ten Aeons alone, while yet others say he came into being through Christ and the Spirit, for the establishment of the Pleroma, and is called "Christ" by the appellation of the Father.

And they tell many other monstrous tales as well.

Concerning the Barbelites, that is, the Borborians

From those called Naassenes, or Stratiotics, or Phemionites, this abomination sprouted.

For they posited a certain imperishable Aeon dwelling in a virginal spirit, which they name Barbeloth;

and that Barbeloth asked Foreknowledge of him.

And when this had come forth, and she asked again, Incorruption came forth, then eternal Life.

And Barbeloth, having rejoiced, became pregnant, and brought forth the Light.

This, they say, having been anointed with the perfection of the Spirit, was named Christ.

This Christ, in turn, requested Mind, and received it.

And the Father added Word as well.

Then Thought and Word were paired together, Incorruption and Christ, eternal Life and the Will, Mind and Foreknowledge.

Then again, they say, from Thought and Word the Self-Begotten was put forth, and Truth together with him, and again another pairing came into being, of Self-Begotten and Truth.

And why need I speak also of the other emanations, those from Light and Incorruption? For the myth is long, and besides its impiety it also possesses tedium.

And to these they have added Hebrew names as well, attempting to astonish the more simple.

And they say that the Self-Begotten put forth a perfect and true man, whom they also call Adamas;

and that together with him a consort, Perfect Knowledge, was also put forth.

From this, in turn, mother, father, and son were made manifest.

And from Man and Knowledge, Tree sprouted forth;

and this too they call Knowledge.

And from the first angel, they say, Holy Spirit was put forth, which they called Sophia and Prounikos.

They say that she, desiring a consort, brought forth Work, in which was Ignorance and Self-Will.

And this Work they call the First Archon, and say that he is the maker of creation.

And this one, having been conjoined to Self-Will, begot Wickedness, and her parts.

These things, then, I have related in summary, passing over the length of the fabrication.

But as for their mystic rites, who is so utterly wretched as to utter with his tongue the things performed? For the things done by them as though sacred surpass every wicked reasoning, and every foul conception.

But the name alone suffices to hint at their utterly defiled audacity.

For it is on this account that they were named Borborians.

Concerning the Sethians, or Ophians, or Ophites

The Sethians, whom some call Ophians or Ophites, call the God of all things "Man," also naming him "Light," and calling him blessed and incorruptible, and affirming that he has his dwelling in the Depth;

and they call his Thought "Son of Man," and "second Man."

After him, they say, comes the Holy Spirit;

and below these, four elements: water, darkness, abyss, chaos.

They call the Spirit female, and say it is borne upon the elements.

They say that the first man and the second man fell in love with the beauty of the Spirit, and begot Light, whom they call Christ.

And they say that the female, unable to bear the excess of the light, overflowed;

and that Christ, together with his mother, was drawn up into the incorruptible Aeon, which they also call the true Church;

and they say that the moisture which had overflowed from the light fell down below, and was called Sophia, and Prunicus, and Arsenothelys (the Male-Female).

And they say she rose up, and heaven was fashioned out of the body that had enveloped her; then afterward, having cast this off, she flew back up to her mother.

That one they call the son of Prunicus.

And he in turn put forth another son, and from that one, they say, still another was formed, and the emanations proceeded on until the number seven.

They also assigned names, in the Hebrew tongue, to the aforesaid sons — names which I have judged it altogether superfluous to record.

And they say that the one who had grown despondent — his thought sank down into the dregs of matter, and begot from it a son in the form of a serpent.

Then, they say, the father of the serpent-formed one boasted and said, 'I am God and father, and there is none above me.'

But his mother, displeased, cried out to him, 'Do not lie;

for there is one above you — the father of all, the first man, the son of man.'

And hearing these words, he says, the father of the serpent said:

And that serpent-formed one they name Michael and Samanna.

They also divide up the prophets, and assign them to the seven sons as they see fit.

And they say that Seth is a certain divine power;

for which reason they were also called Sethians.

They say that Jesus is one thing, and Christ another;

and that Jesus was born of the Virgin, while the Christ descended from heaven into him.

They say too that the apostles were deceived, having supposed that the flesh of the Savior rose.

Some of them say that Christ, having fashioned himself into the shape of a serpent, entered into the womb of the Virgin.

And this is how the wretches understand the apostolic saying:

"Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." And some of them say that the serpent itself consorted with Sophia, and, warring as an adversary against God the Maker, deceived Adam and gave him knowledge; and that for this reason the serpent is said to be the most prudent of all creatures, and that the coiling, many-twisted arrangement of our own intestines is patterned on the serpent's body, displaying the life-generating wisdom of the serpent.

This serpent, having charmed it with certain incantations, they keep in darkness, and at the rite of their loathsome mysteries they bring it forth to the table;

and when it has crawled upon the loaves, they partake of them as though sanctified.

There are others, whom they call Cainites, who say that Cain was redeemed by the authority from above, and likewise Esau and Korah and the men of Sodom; and they confess all such as their own kinsmen, and say that these were hated by the Maker but received no harm at all.

For Sophia snatched back from them whatever she had placed in them;

and they say that Judas the traitor alone, of all the apostles, possessed this knowledge, and for this reason accomplished the mystery of the betrayal.

They also put forward a Gospel of his, which those men themselves have composed — though he, for his part, straightway received the halter as the wages of his betrayal.

And while doing forbidden things, they add the name of some angel, as though thereby offering their debauchery to him as a gift;

and this they do for every kind of licentious act.

For they say there are certain angels equal in number to the kinds of licentiousness, who are served by the deeds performed.

There were also certain other impious men, whom they called Antitactae, who named the great unknown God, as they themselves say, their own father;

and that this one is good, and is God the Maker;

but one of those brought into being by him sowed tares;

'For this reason we too set ourselves against him, resisting his laws in vindication of the Father.'

'And since this one said, "You shall not commit adultery," let us,' he says, 'commit adultery, in order to overthrow his commandment.'

One might justly call these men inventors of evils, who join blasphemies to their debaucheries.

Ademes of Carystus, and Euphrates the Peratic — from whom those of like mind were called Peratae — say that there is one world divided in three;

and that the one part is, as it were, a great fountain, capable of being divided in reason into infinite parts;

The first division they call the Triad, and name it the perfect good, the paternal greatness.

The second, the multitude of infinite powers.

The third they call the particular (world).

The first they call unbegotten, and they name three gods, three words, three minds, three men.

And they say that from above, from the unbegotten state and the first division of the world, at the very consummation of the world, in the days of Herod, there descended a certain man of threefold nature, threefold body, and threefold power, called Christ;

and that he passed through both the unbegotten world and the self-generated world, and came into this world in which we are.

And having descended, Christ, they say, will prepare the things brought down from above to return up again, but will hand over to punishment those that plotted against them.

And they say that the unbegotten world and the self-generated world will be saved;

but this world, which they call the particular world, is to perish.

They say that Monoimus the Arab, taking his starting points from the science of arithmetic, fashioned his own sect.

Hermogenes said that God fashioned all things out of a substrate matter that was co-unbegotten with him.

For the fool supposed that it was impossible, even for the God of the universe, to create out of things that do not exist.

This man said that the Lord's body was deposited in the sun, and that the devil and the demons would be dissolved back into matter.

Against this man Theophilus, bishop of the Antiochenes, wrote, and Origen likewise.

And against Valentinus and those from him, both Irenaeus and Clement and Origen wrote.

Concerning Tatian and the Hydroparastatae, that is, the Encratites

Tatian the Syrian had at first been a sophist, and afterward became a student of the divinely-inspired Justin the Martyr.

But after his teacher's death, he desired to become the champion of a sect.

He gathered the materials for his fabrication from various sources: from Valentinus, the emanations of the Aeons; from Saturninus and Marcion, the abhorrence of marriage, and the abstention from the eating of animate creatures and the drinking of wine.

This man is held as founder by those called Hydroparastatae and Encratites.

They are called Hydroparastatae because they offer water instead of wine;

and Encratites, because they neither drink wine nor partake of animate creatures.

They abstain from these things, abhorring them as evil.

They also pursue a life of celibacy, calling marriage fornication, and naming lawful union diabolical.

Not only those of his own faction made use of this book, but also those who followed the apostolic teachings, not being aware of the malicious craft of its composition, but using it in simple good faith as a concise book.

I myself also found more than two hundred such books held in honor in the churches under my care, and I gathered them all together and put them away, and introduced in their place the Gospels of the four evangelists.

Severus, succeeding to this man's teaching, named those deceived by him after his own name.

Hence some call the Encratites Severians.

These reject both the Epistles of the divine Paul and the narrative of the Acts.

Against these Musanus, the advocate of the truth, wrote, and Clement the Stromatist, and Apolinarius, who was bishop of the holy city in Phrygia, and Origen.

Concerning Bardesanes and Harmonius.

Bardesanes the Syrian, hailing from Edessa, flourished in the times of Caesar Marcus Verus.

They say that he cut away much of the mythology of Valentinus.

He wrote much also in the tongue of the Syrians, and some translated these into the Greek language.

I myself have also come upon his discourses, both those written against fate, and against the heresy of Marcion, and not a few others.

They say also that Harmonius, having become his son, was educated in the Greek language at Athens.

He too wrote much, employing the tongue of the Syrians.

The error of them both, Ephraim the Syrian, the all-renowned, nobly refuted.

Concerning Florinus and Blastus.

Both Florinus and Blastus, belonging to the roll of the presbyters at Rome, inclined toward the corruption of Valentinus.

They say that the thrice-blessed Irenaeus, lamenting their disease, composed his treatise against Valentinus.

All these, then, beginning from Simon, brought forth doctrines akin to one another, naming certain Aeons, and emissions of Aeons, and other emissions of emissions.

Concerning Cerdo and Marcion.

Marcion, and Cerdo his teacher, themselves too took the occasions of their blasphemy from the deceit of Simon, but they devised a different path of impiety.

For Cerdo lived under Antoninus the first, and said that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ was one God, unknown to the prophets, and another was the maker of the universe and the lawgiver of the Mosaic law;

and that the one was just, the other good.

For the one, he says, in the law commands to put out eye for eye and tooth for tooth;

but the good one in the Gospels commands that to him who strikes the right cheek one should turn also the other, and to him who wishes to take the tunic one should give also the cloak.

And the one in the law commanded to love one's friend and hate one's enemy;

but the other commanded to love even one's enemies —

to bring back an enemy's stray ox, and to help raise up his fallen beast, and not to overlook an enemy in need of help;

and how he who alone is called by him "good" threatened Gehenna to him who calls his brother a fool;

and, showing himself to be just, he said:

"With what measure you measure, it will be measured back to you." But to refute these things is not the business of the present occasion;

besides, to those who have read the divine Scriptures the blasphemy is very easily detected.

Marcion of Pontus, having been taught these things by Cerdo, was not content with the teaching handed down, but increased the impiety.

For he fashioned in his teaching four unbegotten substances:

one he called good and unknown, whom he also named the Father of the Lord;

another the demiurge and just, whom he also called evil;

and besides these, matter, which is evil and is subject to another evil being.

And he taught that the demiurge, having overcome the evil being, took the matter and out of it fashioned the universe:

out of the purest part, heaven; out of the rest, the four elements; and out of the sediment, Hades and Tartarus.

Again, having filtered out the purest part of the earth, he says, he constructed paradise;

and taking from this one clod of earth, he formed Adam, giving him the soul out of his own substance.

For the one forbade him to partake of the tree of knowledge, while the other earnestly urged him to it.

And the impious did not perceive that the counsel of the serpent brought forth death.

Accordingly, some of them even honor the serpent.

And I myself found among them a bronze serpent lying in a certain chest along with their abominable mysteries.

This man accepted from the Gospels only that according to Luke, and, having cut away the genealogy, most of the rest as well;

and the law, and the prophets, and the whole Old [Testament] he rejected, as having been given by an alien god.

He taught that Christ seemed to be a man, having nothing human, and seemed to suffer, though he suffered not at all.

He rejected also the resurrection of bodies, supposing it to be impossible.

He said that Cain, and the Sodomites, and all the other impious ones enjoyed salvation, having come to the Savior Christ in Hades, and were taken up into the kingdom;

but Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and the patriarchs and the rest of the prophets, and the righteous, did not share in the freedom given to those others, since they were unwilling to run to him.

For this reason, he says, they were condemned to dwell in Hades.

Such things did Marcion rage against the Maker, or rather things much harsher even than these;

for I have consigned the greater blasphemies to silence.

And when those present had said:

"How then do you eat, and drink, and clothe yourself, and sleep, and perform the customary mysteries?" — taking up the question, he said he did this out of necessity, because otherwise he could neither live nor perform the mysteries.

But I, having left aside most things, will pass on to the continuation of the narrative.

For this assembly too was again divided into many sections. 25.

Concerning Apelles, Potitus, Prepon, and the others.

For Apelles added to Marcion's unbegotten [principles] yet another, the Fiery one.

This man, having also composed another book, called it "The Prophecy of Philumene."

And he attributed to Christ a body, not a human one, but of the substance of the cosmos.

Potitus, and Blastus, and Syneros, and Prepon, and Pithon presided over different teachings;

but all these took the occasions of their teaching from the blasphemy of Marcion.

Very many, however, wrote against this impiety.

For Justin the philosopher and martyr, and Theophilus bishop of the Antiochenes, and Philip bishop of Gortyna, and Irenaeus, whom we mentioned before, bishop of Lyons, and Modestus, and Origen, and Rhodon, and Adamantius, and Hippolytus, and Eusebius of Emesa, all most excellently and most wisely refuted the frenzy of this blasphemy.

Mani was, as they say, Persian by race, and for a very long time he dragged the yoke of slavery, being called, while a slave, Scythianus;

who, having become heir of his mistress, was not content though he had grown rich beyond hope, nor did he hymn the giver of good things, but moved his tongue to blasphemy and impious mythology, becoming a most perfect instrument of the enemy of truth.

This man said that there were two unbegotten and eternal [principles], God and Matter, and he called God Light, and Matter Darkness;

and the Light he called Good, and the Darkness Evil, and he applied also other names.

For the Light he named a good tree, filled with good fruits;

and Matter, an evil tree, bearing fruits corresponding to its root.

He said that God stood apart from Matter, and that each was wholly ignorant of the other — he of Matter, and Matter of him;

and that God possessed the northern parts, and the eastern, and the western, while Matter possessed the southern.

But many ages later, Matter rose up in strife against itself, and its offspring against one another;

And when war arose, some pursuing and others being pursued, they came to the borders of the Light; then, having beheld the Light, they were delighted with it and marveled, and resolved to march against it with their whole host, to seize it, and to mix their own darkness with the Light.

So, as this incoherent, babbling, and senseless myth relates, Matter rushed forth together with the demons, the idols, fire, and water, against the Light that had appeared.

But God, dreading the massed onslaught—

for he had no fire, he says, to use as thunderbolts and lightning-strokes, nor water to bring on a flood, nor iron, nor any other weapon;

Taking a certain portion of the Light, he sent it to Matter as a kind of bait and hook;

and Matter, falling upon it and spreading itself over it, swallowed what was sent, and was bound fast, and was impaled as if on some snare.

Hence, they say, God was compelled to create the world.

The parts of the world, they say, are not his works, but the products of Matter.

He created it, wishing to dissolve its cohesion and to bring the warring elements to peace, so that little by little he might also set free the Light that had been mingled with Matter.

And man, they say, was not formed by God, but by the ruler of Matter;

and this one they call Saklas;

and that Eve likewise was made by Saklas and Nebrod;

and that Adam was created in the form of a beast, and Eve without soul and motionless;

and that Eve delivered Adam from his bestial state, and afterward was herself stripped of the light;

and that Saklas, having first had intercourse with her, had by her a child in the form of a beast.

Then, they say, he had intercourse with her again.

But perhaps someone might reasonably reproach even me for enduring to write these things down.

For this reason, leaving aside the other myths and follies, I shall briefly state the main points of this impious heresy.

These call the sun and the moon gods, at times calling the sun Christ, and they offer as sufficient proof of this the fact that the sun undergoes eclipse;

and at other times saying that they are ships, carrying the souls of the dead from Matter across to the Light.

For thus, he says, it is gradually released from the evil mixture.

And they say that the moon becomes crescent-shaped and half-shaped because it is being emptied;

and that it receives the light-formed souls from Matter, and deposits them into the Light;

and thus, little by little, the Light is delivered from the evil mixture.

And when the whole nature of the Light has been separated from Matter, then, they say, God will hand Matter over to fire, and make it into a single mass;

and together with it also the souls that did not believe in Mani.

He calls the devil at times Matter, and at times the ruler of Matter.

He calls marriage a legislation of the devil.

They slander the charity shown to the poor, calling it a service rendered to Matter.

They say that the Lord assumed neither a soul nor a body, but appeared as a man while having nothing human;

and that the cross, the passion, and the death occurred only in appearance.

The resurrection of bodies they reject as a myth.

For they suppose that no part of Matter is worthy of salvation.

They say that transmigrations of souls occur, some being sent down into the bodies of birds, others into the bodies of cattle, wild beasts, and reptiles.

They consider all things ensouled—fire, water, air, plants, and seeds.

For this reason those among them called the "perfect" neither break bread nor cut vegetables, but openly rise up against those who do these things as against manifest murderers;

yet they nonetheless eat what has been cut and what has been broken.

They make particular use of sorceries as well, in performing their unholy mysteries;

for this reason too their teaching is hard to wash away, and it is exceedingly difficult to turn one who has partaken of their abominable rites away from the working of soul-destroying demons, since the incantations of those performing the rites bind fast the souls of those initiated.

This Mani had at the outset three disciples: Addas, Thomas, and Hermas.

Addas he sent as herald to the Syrians, and Thomas to the Indians.

But when these returned, saying that they had endured all manner of terrible things, since no one would consent to receive Mani as teacher, this utterly wicked man dared to call himself Christ as well, and to name himself the Holy Spirit, and he claimed to have been sent according to the promise of the Savior.

For the Lord had promised to send another Paraclete.

This man, having made twelve disciples after the pattern of the Lord, arrived at the land between the rivers, fleeing from the king of the Persians.

For having rashly boasted that he would heal the king's son, who had fallen ill with some malady, he brought him into greater evils.

And when from there too he was driven out as a manifest enemy of God, and returned to Persia, he was seized by the king, and underwent the Persian punishment: he was stripped of his skin, and thrown to the dogs.

Such was the end of Mani; such are the main points of this impious heresy.

For if one wished to go through all the nonsensical babble of these myths, he would need a great many books.

Such are the doctrines that the utterly wicked demon has instilled into the minds of unholy men; such captains and commanders has he employed, in arraying himself against the truth.

he wove, to speak in the prophet's words, a spider's web.

George of Laodicea also wrote, a man who championed the heresy of Arius, but who had been trained in philosophical studies.

In addition to these, Eusebius the Phoenician also wrote, whom we have mentioned before.

But I shall now pass on to the next battle-line.

Concerning Paul of Samosata

Concerning the heretics who flourished contemporaneously with the apostles

What branches the most bitter root of Simon put forth, and what ruinous fruits these bore, we have clearly shown in the first book, curtailing as far as possible the length of the myths, shrinking from stating the greatest of the blasphemies, and consigning to silence the more unholy and abominable of their most defiled rites.

For we supposed it would be a fault, if we should teach these things to those who did not know them;

for not even those who are wholly enslaved to sensual pleasures have conceived of the things dared by those men.

These things the utterly wicked demon instilled into their souls, having taken up war against the heralds of the truth, and striving through them to pour out an evil reputation upon those who proclaim the things of God;

for he supposed that the common use of the name would bring reproach upon all.

For both the teachers of abominable doctrines and the heralds of the gospel were called Christians, and everyone ignorant of the difference supposed that all who shared the one name were equally accursed.

And these things the inventor and artificer of wickedness dared to do as soon as the light of truth had risen, and had sent forth the divine apostles into the inhabited world like rays.

For while they were still living, Simon appeared, and Menander, and the other disciples of Simon, whom we have also mentioned before.

And they say that Cerinthus too, while the all-renowned John, who wrote the divine Gospel, was still living, sowed alongside it the tares of his own heresy.

And the divinely inspired Paul, in his Epistles to Timothy, accused others as well.

He speaks thus: "But shun profane and empty talk;

for they will proceed further in ungodliness, and their word will spread like gangrene."

"Among whom are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place," and they overturn the faith of some. Then he shows the firmness and stability of the truth:

"For the Lord knows those who are his," he says. Then he exhorts them to flee the fellowship of the wicked:

"And let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." Then by means of an example he heals those who are troubled that the wicked live together with the good.

"If anyone cleanses himself from these, he will be a vessel sanctified for honor, and useful, prepared for every good work." He wrote similar things also in the former Epistle.