25

Gnostic

Eros and Orphic Themes

only in thatwhich we should call erotic1. In Hesiod he is the parent of the world and all its creatures, the first to spring from chaos; Orphic poets give other names to a being of similar origin with the same progenitive virtue; for the Platonists Eros is the daemonic nature, half-divine, half-mortal, who lacks his good Eros in ancient literature is not manifested but seeks it in the intellectual plenitude of the forms2. Classicists might nevertheless be surprised to find that his presence is also pervasive in the writings of the Gnostics, men
whose interests thought was not perhaps so alien to the culture has been of their Greek in modem contemporaries times. as to the of those by whom that culture studied

The following study is the first one known tome which considers the three great branches of Gnostic literature, theNaassene, the Sethian and the earliest texts relating to Sophia. It confines itself to these because they are united, and distinguished from other relics of early Christian heterodoxy, by the ancient application of theword "Gnostic" to their authors3. If
they are united by a dogma as well as a name, we may express this as the principle that

cosmogony is the psychology of the macrocosm: the present world is thought to be the dungeon of a fallen mind that yearns to be retrieved. The final section addresses itself to
those who, corollary in comparing the importance certain Gnostic texts with Orphic remains, have not, noticed in my as a view, to the Gnostics of the cosmogonie Eros, but have

escaped from false hypotheses of influence and the superfluous ingenuity that results from
taking too little of the evidence into account.

I. The According to the definition

Bisexual approved

Anthropos by many

of

the Naassenes to be a Gnostic was to be a

moderns,

dualist, to believe that theworld was brought into existence by a fall from the realm of spirit
into matter, and that these two kingdoms, the hylic and the pneumatic, remain as

irredeemably opposed as dark and light. This is only partly true of the first sect which is
known to have desired the appellation: Hippolytus, who prefers to call them Naassenes,

*For studies of Love in antiquity see A. Lesky, Vom Eros der Hellenen (G?ttingen 1976); A. Nygren, Agape and Eros, Part I,Vols HI (London 1937). 2Hesiod, Theogony 120-2; Orpheus and Plato are cited in detail in the course of this essay. On Platonic Love see L. Robin, La Th?orie Platonicienne de l'Amour (Paris 1933 and 1964) 101-189. 3See, for the definition of "Gnostic", R. P. Casey, The Study of Gnosticism, JTS 36 (1935) 45-60; the definitions of theMessina Colloquium inU. Bianchi (ed.) The Origins of Gnosticism (Leiden 1967) xxvi xxvii; andmy comments inGnostics and Valentinians in the Church Fathers, JTS 40 (1989) 26-47.

26

M.

Edwards

reports

that

the bifurcation

of

an original

"blessed

substance"

was

supposed

to have

engendered both the lower world of darkness and the higher one of light. In the upper region dwells the Saviour, in the lower dwells his image: each may be styled the Primal Man, the
Anthropos, and each projects his seed in the complementary domain4.

This theology is explained at length in theNaassene Sermon, which occupies chapters 5-9 in the fifth book of Hippolytus' Refutation of all Heresies. Chapter 10 consists largely of a psalm describing the labours of the soul and its redemption through the advent of the Saviour. The fragment of a homily ascribed toMonoimus (Hippolytus, Refutatio V. 12-15) would appear to be of a piece with both effusions; the accuracy and candour of Hippolytus in reporting them is verified by certain writings found atNag Hammadi, andwe therefore have
no reason for mistrusting his report.

The structure of the Sermon is determined by a hymn to Attis (V.9.8-9), whose authenticity has not been doubted, though its date remains obscure5. The titles of this deity, which are culled from many provinces with verbose elucidation, form the torso of the
Naassene Sermon, which occasionally sprouts a surplus limb. These, consisting chiefly of

quotations from both Testaments, have been disparaged as interpolations; but it is no more fair to speak of interpolation in such a liturgy than in the Greek Anthology, for the homily
will have grown could with have the expansion had the means of its audience, and motive and the list of names to enlarge6. Nor, was one we that any knew its neophyte unless

intended audience, would we have the right to ask that every subject which the commentator treats should have its complement in the poem: he might be, if not the author of the hymn, at least a bold contemporary, who interpolated texts from theOld Testament in order towin the
Jews.

The hymn which

celebrates stage him under in the history

supplies the text for the Naassene

a variety of aspects from and appellations, and reversion

sermon is addressed to Attis, but

each of which to himself: is apposite to some

of his procession

1.While Attis is the son of the fertile Amygdalus, his own generative faculty is destroyed
by emasculation. The author of this wound is a feminine principle styled "the Mother of the

Gods", who
Venus

is evidently

the Rhea of the hymn (V.7.13). Other female goddesses,

to copulate with mortal men by the lure of pleasure

like

and Selene,

are moved

(V.7.11

in the Philosophumena, Hermathena 5 (1885) 389 40n Monoimus see G. Salmon, The Cross-References in B. Layton (ed.) The 402; on the Naassene Psalm see M. Marcovich, The Naassene Psalm inHippolytus, see E. De Faye, of Gnosticism, Vol II (Leiden 1981) 770-9. On the sources of Hippolytus Rediscovery et Gnosticisme ff and H. Die 425 Gnostischen Staehelin, (Paris 1925) Quellen Hippolyts Gnostiques (Leipzig 1890). ^U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Lesefr?chte, Hermes 37 (1902) 329-332 (= Kleine Schriften, Vol IV, Berlin 1962, 165-8) dates the hymn to the reign of Hadrian. 6Against R. Reitzenstein on the Naassene Sermon in his Poimandres (Leiden 1904) 81-102 see J.M. Creed, The Heavenly Man, JTS 26 (1924-5) 118; also authors mentioned in n. 4.

Gnostic Eros and Orphic Themes

27

12); but theMother of the Gods intervenes to separateAttis from theworld and thus enable him to ascend to the blessed realm in which there is no distinction of the sexes, but only a
new, hermaphrodite creation (V.7.15).

2. The originating principles of all things are called Man and the Son of Man
The names Great Man and Perfect Man are also used (V.7.7 etc), at times

(V.6.4).
an

to denote

archetypal being of whom the earthly man is a feeble copy, held captive by the powers who rule the elements from which he is lately sprung (V.7.30 etc.). Adam himself, however - for this is the word which signifies "man" in the hymn (cf. V.6.5) - is also worthy on earth of
the designation Perfect Man. will He is the primal man from above, whose aman equally into a god. to Hermes, who is also called deliverance from earth by the resurrection 3. The statues entail his transformation Man from

of the Perfect

are covenanted

the Logos (V.7.29 etc.) and (to judge by the Hymn) Sophia7; his phallus, erect and hugely
exaggerated, (V.7.29). As is said the Logos to have Hermes "an impulsive is the author power from the parts below to those above" takes of all things made, and at the same time

his place among them as a stone idol; his wand is the sign of his function as the escort of the souls to a higher region (V.7.31), the soul which he himself regenerates by springing Adam from his rock (V.7.35). 4. In statues of Osiris the masculine member "looks down and is crowned with all its own fruits of things that aremade" (V.7.27). As the consort of Isis, Osiris is the ineffable
and formless one who imparts the regular harmony of the planetary spheres to the matter of

the world (V.7.22-5). Since he is said to be identical with water (V.7.23), it is no surprise that he is the fecund author of the rainfall (V.7.26); at the same time this emission is compared to that of light (V.7.28). We therefore find a doctrine inwhich the generated being is identical with the cause of his generation, a doctrine inwhich the same being is perpetually casting seed above him and
beneath bifurcated him, a doctrine in which the source blessed entity is the "original of all fertility is an emasculated or substance" which ?a%r[\ioGvvy\, and of the sacred god. This in the upper

world
smitten

is the "Firstborn Mind" and in the lower its "outpoured chaos" (V.10.2):
under the parted image of a serpent two courses, river Jordan, which, by Joshua, to form one below and one above (V.7.41).

it is
when

worshipped

7The hymn runs thus: a? raXo?>ai u?v 'Aoa?pioi Tpui?OrjTov "A8coviv, ?Xrj 5' Aiyomo? "Oaipiv, This is theMS reading at ?rco'?p?viov unv?c K?pa?, "EXXrtve? locp?av, Eauo?paicE? "ASauva ae?aauiov. Refutado V.9.8 (p. 99.15-17 Wendland), without the alteration to 'EMnvl? ao<pia, which is supported not but by Marcovich and other modern editors: see E. Heitsch, Die griechischen only by Wendland der r?mischen Kaiserzeit Dichterfragmente (G?ttingen 1961) Nr. XLIV, pp. 156-7; and T. Wolberg, Griechische religi?se Gedichte der ersten nachchristlichen Jahrhunderte (Meisenheim 1971) pp. 6-9. Wolberg remarks (pp. 69-70) that Sophia is not attested elsewhere as a title of Attis, but it is certainly a title of the demiurgic power in Gnostic writings, and it is not said elsewhere that the Greeks called Attis the horn of the moon. On Osiris as a lunar deity see Plutarch, De Isidie et Osiride 367 c.

28

M.

Edwards

Since he is responsible both for natural generation and for the yearning which induces
natural creatures to return

Love both in the world and in the soul. Any theologian of the period - and not the Orphies only would see that he was confirmed in the possession of this character by his fusion of
the two sexes Epiphanies the variety and also of Love (as will in pagan be shown) literature by his capacity are apt to escape to the longest for assuming the innocent elegant a host of forms. because novels, of beholder

to their originating

Good,

Primal Man

would

serve

as a symbol

of

of his natures.

In the proem

and most

of the Greek

he is depicted as a herdsman (Achilles Tatius, Clitophon and Leucippe, 1); and Longus, who visits imaginary pastures for his tale of Daphnis and Chloe, describes a number of visions in which the deity at first remains concealed8. The poet Philetas speaks of a dream inwhich the
young, winged archer proclaims himself a divinity even older than Cronus (Daphnis and

Chloe II.5); this conceit is a marriage of two speeches from the Symposium of Plato, in which one speaker (195 a 8) extols Love as the youngest, and another (178 b) as the oldest, of the gods. A third (181 c-e) distinguishes two, of which one is the son and helper of the
vulgar Aphrodite, the other of the Uranian: the elder Love is the author of all creation, as

Hesiod (Theogony 116 ff) was not the last to say.

In Christian legion. who, An like works, and works progress of the Greek that aspired through to be Christian, is typical are authors such polymorphic of certain Gnostic entities mediators, senses, are instantaneous the Hermes the ages

philosophers,

of conception

in two

revealing cosmic mysteries through the same intellectual energy that brought them into being.
Such, perhaps, in origin, was the angel who speaks to Hermas in the Shepherd9; an old man humanity12: the heavens was shaken. and the opened, I was afraid, was not a such, in

the apocryphal Acts of Peter is Christ himself10. The source of revelation in theApocryphon
of John which assumes the Logos consecutively was believed I was the shapes to have worn of a young in his man, and a servant11, sojourn with behold

Straightway, whole creation

while which

contemplating heaven

these shone,

things, and

is under

the world

And

and behold I saw in the light a youth who stood by me. While I looked at him, he became
like an old man. And he changed his form again, becoming like a servant. There

plurality before me, but there was a likeness with multiple forms in the light, and theforms appeared through each other, and the likeness had threeforms (AJII.l, 1.31-2.8).

8See further H. H. O. Chalk, Eros and the Lesbian pastorals of Longus, JHS 80 (1960) 32-51. ^Pastor, Visio 5: at 5.3 the angel calls himself a shepherd, and at 5.4 undergoes a change of form. Cf. Reitzenstein (1904) 11-13. 10Acts of Peter 21. Cf. John 20.14-15 and 21.4; cf. Luke 24.16 and the Transfiguration atMark 9.2 par. 11 On the passage of Christ through all the ages see Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses HI.22.4. On Christ as
servant see

1 translation 1984).

Philippians

2.5-12

etc.

Cf.

also

Isaiah

53.2,

where

the servant

is said

to have

no

form.

and numeration follow J.M. Robinson

(ed.) theNag Hammadi Library in English

(Leiden

Gnostic Eros and Orphic Themes

29

The first Hermeticum, written in a circle which respected, if it did not revere, the traditions of Judaism13, is often called by the name of the versatile angel who gives
instruction to the seer:

Toaho e?7iu)v [se. ? TIot|Liav?pr|?] i\XX?yeTO x?[ iS?qc, Kai euG? ? 7i?vxa |ioi tivoikto (p ? ?? Tcavxa yeYevrm^va ? Kai ?lpaa0r|v i?cov pOTcfi,ko? ?p 0?av ?opiaxov,
(Herm?tica 1.4).

As in the Apocryphon of John, the heavens open; as in the cosmogony of theNaassenes and the Sethians, sublimity is experienced as light. Poimandres is, like Christ and Attis, the first Anthropos; like Christ and Hermes, a source at once of knowledge and of its objects; like Christ and Eros, a shepherd, at least in Greek interpretations of his name14. Hermes too is a shepherd among theNaassenes (V.7.28), while Attis is symbolically believed to pasture
goats himself, (V.8.34). The man who sees Poimandres excites is transported by the emotion that Love according to the allegorists, by his gratuitous apparition to the soul15. Eros

is, according to one reading of a sentence by Ignatius (Romans 7.2), an appellation of Christ (Origen, inCanticum Canticorum Proem); and it is also the name conferred by a Gnostic text on the Primal Man in his brightest manifestation16:
Out of the first blood, Eros appeared, being androgynous. His masculine nature isHimeros,

because he isfire from light.His feminine nature which iswith him is a blood-soul, and is derived from the substance of Pronoia. He is very handsome in his beauty, having more
loveliness than all the creatures of Chaos. Then, when all the gods and their angels saw Eros

World they became enamoured of him (On the Creation of the

Chaos is here the matrix of creation,

109.1-10).
sermon; Eros resembles

as it is in the Naassene

Primal man in his combination of sexes, and those who see him feel the same desire that is
awakened Luminous and initiate every nation by Poimandres, in aspect, of mysteries, that other by nature incandescent emanation and ithyphallic, to have borrowed of the Mind. at once the author, expositor

androgynous appears

Primal Man

of the Mediterranean he is credited come with

world.

As Attis,

Hermes,

his properties from almost Osiris, or under no mythological

pseudonym, philosophers

the universal to Love.

had

to ascribe

and the power of transformation that fecundity to His was the Gnostics that his importance

13See C. H. Dodd, The Bible and theGreeks (London 1935). 14W. B. Scott, Herm?tica, Vol II (Oxford 1925) 14 ff discusses
but Greek readers certainly understood it to mean "shepherd of men".

possible Egyptian origins of the name;

Cf. the verb rcoiuotivei at Herm?tica

Xin.

19 and the barbarous but significant rcoiuev av5pr|v at Zosimus, treatise on the Omega 22. ^This reading of the myth of Eros and Psyche, first attested plainly in Fulgentius (Mth. III.7-8) is perhaps anticipated by Plotinus at Enneads VI.7.31. The seminal modern treatment of the tale as allegory is found inMerkelbach's Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Berlin 1962); themost recent known tome is E. J. Kenney, Psyche and her Mysterious Husband inD. A. Russell (ed.) Antonine Literature (Oxford 1990) 175-199. 16On the importance of Eros in this text see M. Tardieu, Trois Mythes Gnostiques (Paris 1974) 114 ff.

30

M.

Edwards

attributes

allowed

him

to be taken

for a symbol

of the Christian

redeemer,

who

was

at one

time the lover, the beloved and the light of the elect.

II. The Sethians

The Sethians were a Gnostic group, who,

at Phlya
their names, the images and many of

though

the dogmas of their system had originated in Jewish heterodoxy17, appear to have addressed themselves to inquirers in the Church. The characteristic answer of their enemy Hippolytus
to all such overtures is to allege that the secret teachings have been drawn from a

contaminated source, and he does little to interpretwhat his scholarship has given him the
authority to abuse.

It is therefore not Hippolytus who tells us that the Sethians also made their Demiurge a type of Eros. That is the conclusion which will be drawn from the following text, after the
necessary annotation of the readings given by Wendland18:

? yap Ttepi rn? niycpa? ocotc?v Kai to? ?cpeco?X?yoc, Kai (?) ?|mpa?,o?, ?rcep ?arlv ?v?peia, ?iappr|?r|v oik ? ?axiv ?v to?? BaK%iKo?? xov 'Opcp?co?.(a) XExeXecxai ?? Kai rcapaS?Soxai xaiha Tipo Tfj? Ke^eoi) Kai Tpt7rcoAi|LiOD Kai ?vGpamoi? ?r|(iTiTpo? Kai Kopri? Kai Aiovdcjod
'Attiktj?Tipo y?p tcov 'EXe-oaivicov

?v 'EXeuaivi
p/oaTripic?v

Tetatfjc,
?cmv ?v

?v OXio?vti
T?]i O^oio?vti

(b) Tfj?
<tti?>

tayo|Li?vr|?

Meyatai? ?pyia. ?<m ?? rcaat?? ?v a?Tfji. ?nl Se Tfj? Tcaaxa?o? ?yy?ypaTCTai |i?xpi ar||Liepov i] [ta x v] tccxvtc?v tc?v eipri^?vcov ^?ycov i??a. n?XXa (i?v o\)v ?cm ta eux Tfj? rcaataSo? ?Keivri? ?yyeypaiin?va. 7C?pl a>v UXomapxo? ?cm Se to?? nXeioai (c) koci
7cpea?i)Tr|c ti? ?yyeypapjLi?vo? tco^io? rcTepc?TO? ?vT?Ta(i?vr|v ?'x v Tr?v aia%\)vr|v.

rcoievrai Xoyo'u? ?v xa?? rcpo? 'Epjte?oK?ia ?eKa ?i?tanc-

yuva?Ka ?rco??yoDaav Sic?kcov KDVoei?fj. (d) ?Tciy?ypaTctai ?? ?rci to? npeo?vTov cpao? pi)?vTr|?, (e) ?nX ?? Tfj? yuvaiKO?- t TcepericpiKOXa. (f) ?ouce ?? e?vat Kax? tov Zr|0iavcov Myov ? cpao? pd?vtti? to cp ?, to (jkoteivov i)? p ?? t *1 cpiK?tax.to ?? ?v
jLi?a i to?tcov ?iaaTr||Lia ?p^ovia 7tve\)|LiaTo? iiexaZp TeTayjievoD. (Refutatio V.20.4-8

Orphica Fr. 243 Kern)

(a) Scholars have searched in vain for any record of Bacchic mysteries of Orpheus; the verb xexeXeazax refutes the view of Linforth that a book and not a ritual is intended by the
author19. Nevertheless, the existence of a book entitled Bacchica is as certain as the Bacchic

rites of Orpheus are a fable (Frs 236-44 Kern). The solution least injurious to the authority
170n Sethian Gnosticism see Lay ton (1981) and the articles by Lay ton, B. A. Pearson and J. D. Turner in C. W. Hedrick and R. Hodgson (eds) Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism and early Christianity (Peabody, Mass. 1986). 18The text is that of P. Wendland, Hippolytus, Werke III (Leipzig 1916). A reproduction of this appears as Fr. 243 inO. Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta (Berlin 1922), incorporating the critical apparatus. 19I.A. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus (Berkeley 1941) 200-1.

Gnostic Eros and Orphic Themes

31

of this passage as a document in the history of religions is thatHippolytus has misconstrued the title of a writing: the reading of the previous words, inwhich he states the content of the
rites, remains obscure20.

(b) The MS readings, Otano?vTi tt?? 'Attikti? and Otano?vTi might denote mysteries either at Phlya or at Phlious inAchaea. Since only the first is anAttic deme, and only there
were the mysteries said to antedate those of Eleusis, we have reason to follow Tannery in

supposing that the greater fame of Phlious tempted someone (whether Hippolytus,
Sethians or a semi-learned scribe) into an error of transcription21.1 should therefore prefer

the
to

follow Tannery and Marcovich OA/ufi22.

against Wendland

in writing ?Xvr\

tti?

'Attikti? and

(c)Most editors agree that theMS nXeioci requires correction. Kern's apparatus offers also KE?oai (Maass) and nvXe&ai (Miller)23. (d)Whether
not, perhaps,

the woman

is ?covoei?ii ("dog-faced") or KDOcvoei?fj ("coloured blue") is

In one case she has the colour of the shades, and

a question

of any moment24.

in the other the canine physiognomy of Anubis, but in either she bears the insignia of an infernal being charged with the care of souls.
(e) Since what who follows, names cpao? makes some grammatical would sense, and a sense that is in no way inconsistent with to defend be required the emendation an Phanes25. Students of Orphic literature of Marcovich, will raise the

argument

the lecherous

deity

further objection that he has endowed the god with attributes which he does not possess in
any other source. Phanes, newly-sprung from his egg, does not bear any marks of seniority,

he is never guilty of lust (though he must engage in sexual unions) and, where he is depicted with a phallus, it projects behind his body, not before (Fr. 80 Kern). Marcovich has also allowed himself a strong presumption concerning the antiquity of the name Phanes26. The written source of Hippolytus (who died c. 235 A. D.) can hardly be later than the second
earlier of such date. Before the deity, an Orphic to be transcribing and professes words of a very much century, second century we have abundant evidence for the representation

20P. Tannery, Orphica, Fr. 3 Abel, Revue de Philologie 24 (1900) 97-98 rebuts the emendation of to apuovia; another possibility would be amp ?oViv ?v?peia ?vope?a (i. e. the feminine organs are masculine). This would be a fair allusion to the confusion of gender in the pronouns of such documents as the paraphrase of Shem (sic: Nag Hammadi Codices VII. 1), and would gratify the scorn of the apologist. 21This question is discussed at length by Tannery (1900) 99-100. 22See M. Marcovich, Phanes, Phicola and the Sethians, JTS 25 (1974) 447-451. The text appears on p. 447 and in own edition of Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium (Berlin 1986). Marcovich's 23That is, E. Maass, Orpheus (Berlin 1895) 302. See Kern (1922) 254 andWendland (1916) 122. 24Marcovich (1974) 450 prefers KDvoeiSft to the emendation of Schneidewin. For Anubis as an infernal god see Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 368 e; he is conflated with Hermes at 375 e. 25Marcovich (1974) 450; cf. Brink in Mnemosyne 2 (1853). 26For this question seeW. K. C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion (London 1935) 95-102.

32

M.

Edwards

but Phanes

is not attested

among

his numerous

appellations27.

It seems most

reasonable

to

retain the reading Oao?, which would enable us to recognise in this ithyphallic satyr an heir
to the Naassene Primal Man28.

is clearly insupportable, andMarcovich rightly infers, (f) The MS reading Tceperiqwcotax

from the occurrence of of the name must Phicola formed in the next at least sentence, two words29. that His this implausible yep ocia concatenation OiK?tax cannot syllables have reading

be refuted

or corroborated:

presuming

on the acquaintance

of the Sethians

with some form of Greek theosophy, we might prefer instead to subtract two letters and
produce etymology, the composite the allegorical 'P?ri OiK?Xa, properties a name which serves imposed to adumbrate, upon that the Sethians by a common this scene of a woman

in flight30. That the running figure is charged with

Naassenes strengthened is already enough to indicate observations: by two further

lust and resembles

the Anthropos
This inference

of the
can be

that he too is a type of Love.

1.An order of priests at Phlya, the Lycomidae, had the custody of their own ritual, which
consisted in, or was who with xov augmented was famous by, the chanting times of an Orphic for his salacity hymn to Love31. is invested 2. Priapus, in one account to ayoc>4ioc in ancient and for little else,

all the predicates ripi?rco-o xov

of Phicola's "f?po-o

pursuer: KeKXrujivoa) auTo? ?vGpcoTcoei??? ...m Se evxexajievov

Ttoio?aiv Trcep? thv Since Greeks

... ?v 8? t?] ?\)G)v\)|icp TaximJTa Tfj? Kivriaeco? conventional

Trap' AiyoTmoi? to aiSo?ov icpatouv ... (Suda s. v. Priapus).

wings

are not the name

in his native

representations, antecedently For a Gnostic

we may known author

guess in Egypt, of

that the which

applied him resembled closely

to some image of Priapus a perpetual in maintaining erection. akin to the Sethians in doctrine

the second One,

century,

as in time, Priapus

is the Benevolent

27Attestations begin with Athenagoras, Legatio 18, 20, 32 = Frs 57-9 Kern, and possibly with Apion, if the use of the name Appion in the Clementina (Frs. 55-6 Kern) represents an informed and honest use of this Hellenistic apologist for the Gentiles. On this question see the arguments of J. van Amersfoot, Traces of an Alexandrian Orphic Cosmogony in the Pseudo-Clementines, in M. J. Vermaseren (ed.) Studies inGnosticism and Hellenistic Religions (Leiden 1981) 13-30. But even if themyth itself is early, many details might have
been imported in later recensions of the novels.

with Marcovich or p\)?vTr|? with Wendland we are at a loss for parallels; but 28Whether we read fn>?Tn? we need not expect theGreek to be either good or idiomatic. See furtherMarcovich (1974) 450. To substitute the participle pvei? (genitive p-o?vxo?) is to deviate strongly from themanuscript, which consistently repeats the term p-o?vxri?, and, unless <Mo? is deemed to be without case or gender, will require further emendation as proposed by Brink. of this word to ?Mvrjc and <&<xvt|to<;, 29Marcovich (1974) 450. His speculation that the name is of Semitic origin is not implausible. 30For Rhea in (e. g.) Orphic literature see Frs 29.506, 31.8 Kern etc. For Rhea ("the flowing one") as material nature see Damascius, De Principiis 284 = Fr. 133 Kern. 31Pausanias DC.27.2 and DC.30.12 = Frs 304-5 Kern.

Gnostic Eros and Orphic Themes

33

the Father

of Elohim,

whose

intellect

imparts

design

and harmony

to a world

that was

precipitately engendered by the folly of lesser beings (Hippolytus, Refutatio V.26.32-3)32 In late antiquity Priapus was the subject of lascivious epigrams, speaks as a knowing, if impotent, preceptor to the elegist (Tibullus 1.4), and intervenes maliciously in the Satyricon of Petronius tomar the scatological calculations of the hero. Phicola's pursuer is one of the many playful epiphanies of Love33.

III. The Demiurge,

To judge by the number literature, between of copies

Sophia

and the Anthropos

of allusion to its contents, a wider no work circulation

and the frequency century

of Gnostic

the second

and the fourth,

enjoyed

than the Apocryphon of John34. The following passage, taken from the longer of the two Coptic texts which survive to represent the Greek original, describe the fall of Sophia. This androgynous figure is the latest of the aeons which were engendered by the Father, and for
that reason the most inclined to sin35:

She wanted to bring forth a likeness out of herself, without the consent of the Spirit - he had
not approved and without her consort and without his consideration... a thing came out of

her which was different from her appearance, because she had created itwithout her consort And when she saw (the consequence of) her desire it had changed into theform of a lion faced serpent. And its eyes were like lightning fires which flash. And she cast it away from her, outside thatplace, that no one of the immortal ones might see it, for she had created it in ignorance (Nag Hammadi Codices H 1.9.28-10.14). Ignorant of all beings but his mother, the demiurge surrounds himself with a garrison of angels, and, exulting in the illusion of supremacy, proclaims in thewords of theDecalogue that he is the only God (AJ 11.20). His mother meanwhile is weeping with contrition
(13.35-14.2), and when the angels fashion the anatomy of Adam, it is she who inspires the

lifeless flesh with intellect and life (19.25 ff.). Nonetheless

she yields to the adulterous

32See M. Marcovich, Justin's Baruch: A Showcase of Gnostic Syncretism, in his Studies in Greco Roman Religion and Gnosticism (Leiden 1988) 93-119, esp. 114-7. 33Cf. M. D'Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love (London 1945), following J. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge 1903) 644-5. 34An epitome can be found in Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.29, and a Coptic text appears in P. Berol. 8502.2. This was edited by C. Schmidt, Ein voreiren?isches gnostisches Originalwerk in koptischer Sprache (Berlin 1896) andW. Till, Die Gnostischen Schriften des Koptischen Papyrus Berolensis 8502 (Berlin 1954 and 1972). The Nag Hammadi Codices contain two versions of the long recension (II. 1, IV. 1) and one of the short recension (III.l). See further the edition and Ioannis commentary by S. Giversen, Apocryphon (Copenhagen 1964). 35Translation by F. Wisse from J.M. Robinson (ed.) The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Leiden 1984).

34

M.

Edwards

conspiracy of the ardions, who beget through her the "bitter fate" which the Gnostics style "the last of the terrible bonds" (28.12-32). The procreative role of the Anthropos is now played by Sophia, though her impulses in
this case are precipitate and the outcome unforeseen. In the Zostrianus (as in the Enneads of

Plotinus: n.9.10) she is said to have looked down and given rise to the "reflection of a reflection" in the shifting mass below her: she is said indeed to have produced the darkness itself, while the reflection became a demiurge who set to work upon it in his own fashion
(Zostrianus VIII.9.15 ff.)36. Within Sophia herself, we are told, there was "no prior

reflection, pure in itself beforehand" (10.10-11). The folly of Sophia (who, unlike her child, is luminous and bisexual37) is thus akin to that of theAnthropos in the Poimandres: ? ?? ?8cov TTiv ?|ioiav oc?xcp ^opcp?iv ?v oc?rr} ovaav ?v tc? v?octi, ?q>iX/r|ae ko? ti?oi)^r|0Ti o?too) oiice?v. a\ia Se if] ?oi)^ ?y?veTO ?v?pyeia, Kai qfcriae rnv aXoyov |iop(pr|v. ti 6? cpuai?Xa?ouaa t?v ?pca^evov nepienX?ycr] (Herm?tica 1.14). In such amanner, Philo tells us, Adam was beguiled by the simple treachery of Eve (De Opificio Mundi 152). This, as Diotima says in the Symposium, is to partake of the Lesser Mysteries (209 e 5), to misconstrue that yearning for immortality which is at the root of sexual desire. Being only the female principle of a masculofeminine deity, Sophia is incapable of the ascent to the higher vision; when this is attempted, in the Valentinian treatment of her fall, the language of the Phaedrus is employed to describe her striving for
the supernatural surrender invitation The power region, her bucking and straining will against outruns the leash of reason, and her an to the sweetness and a snare38. Sophia indicates one who is feminine rather than female, and who lacks the which, for a soul whose its capabilities, is at once

name

or create with knowledge. to rein her passions where the Anthropos of the Culpable was without Naassenes have sin, she lacks the genital organ, since her procreative capacities not yet been made an the is also who fashions her child effeminate, abortion, perfect: simulacrum of a world39.

360n the Book of Zoroaster, which may have inspired both this work and the Apocryphon of John, see How my many Zoroasters? Arnobius, Adversus Gentes 1.52, VigChr. 42 (1988) 282-9. 37See Irenaeus 1.29.4 and AJ passim. At Irenaeus 1.29.3 the emission of Sophia is preceded by that of the luminous and bisexual Anthropos. 38I compare the relevant passages of Irenaeus, AH 1.2.2 and Phaedrus 249-54 in my Gnostics and Valentinians in the Church Fathers. JTS 40 (1989) 42. The usage of t?A,ua also carries erotic connotations: see Achilles Tatius II.5-6. of John passim. 1.29 and Apocryphon 39For both characteristics see Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses Ialdabaoth is always accorded themale pronoun, but on his feminine characteristics cf. E. A. Fisher-Mueller, Yaldabaoth: The Gnostic Female Principle in its Fullness, Novum Testamentum 31 (1989) 79-95. On the feminine principle in Gnostic thought see M. W. Meyer, Making Mary Male, New Testament Studies 31 (1985) 554-70.

Gnostic Eros and Orphic Themes

35

The human demiurge in Plato's dialogues is aman who brings to birth inferior children (Rep. 603 b): he impresses on matter the copy of an original which his mind has not conceived in its perfect form. The things of matter are apprehended only by bastard reasoning (Timaeus 52 b), and to be devoted to them is to follow bastard pleasures (Rep. 587 b). Two kinds of love are distinguished in the Symposium: if a soul inspired by the Uranian Aphrodite seeks a "begetting in the beautiful" (Symposium 206 c), the offspring of the Pandemic Aphrodite will be entirely devoid of beauty, being conceived without any knowledge or suspicion of the ideal (cf. Xenophon, Symposium VDI.9-10). The demiurge of the Nag Hammadi documents lacks a father, and, at least in the Zostrianus, his mother is seduced by matter into bringing forth. He is a parody of the
Anthropos, shadowy many aspiring to make what he cannot Eros like his beget, and insubstantial of beauty, copy. While and the Anthropos artefacts, not an original, and producing, can endow themselves has none. but a with

forms

the Demiurge,

IV. Orphic
In feature as in function, the protogonic agents

and Gnostic
god some resemblance of Orphic poetry evinces we meet in Gnostic records. Luminous and

to the demiurgic

or procreative

whom

bisexual like the Anthropos

Sethians, theriomorphic them all? In answering

or Sophia, winged

and ithyphallic like the old man of the

like Sophia's abortive progeny, is he not the parent of this question we must look in each case, not for traits which Gnostic

in aspect

and Orphic
intermittent exercised

systems share with a multitude

of others, nor even for valid indices of

but for proof that Orphic or the substance of a text. thought has

transmission borrowing, a ruling influence on the history

or imitation, of a dogma

1. The Gnostic
compared neutral with

figure of Love who appears in a tract from Nag Hammadi has been
the Orphic Phanes40, and it is easy to show that Gnostic sects were

acquainted with Orphic lore. Orphic poetry speaks of the emergence of a demiurge from a
stuff, or Chaos; Gnostics revere a single "blessed substance" which, being formless, -

can convert itself at once into nether Chaos and supernalmind41. The Gnostic belief that the
human race is divided into three classes the carnal, the psychic and the heavenly and that

they themselves are the third class, is comparable to the Orphic tenet that,while all men are the brood of earth and heaven, the initiate is the child of heaven alone42. For the
commentators on Orphic poems at least, the masculine genitalia became an important symbol

40G. Quispel, The Origins of the Demiurge in the Apocryphon of John in R. Mel. Wilson (ed.) Nag Hammadi and Gnosis (Leiden 1978) 1-33. 41For Chaos see Frs 1, 24, 28, 29, 54 etc. and the conclusion of Quispel (1978). 42See Frs. 29 and 63.1 Kern andHippolytus, Refutatio V.6.6-7. A threefold division (rather than twofold, as in the Orphies) is suggested by Plato at Republic 414 e and Symposium 190 b: in the latter, the three classes (only one of which is androgynous) are apportioned respectively to the sun, themoon and the earth.

36

M.

Edwards

in the early classical period; commentator treats Uranus, irradiated Yet period, by the sun43.

is a man of light, the Derveni and, just as the Gnostic Anthropos one of the offspring as a symbol of Protogonos, of the aether

the teaching when images

of the Naassenes of Hermes guarded

need

acknowledge door

no

single

origin.

In the Classical met the scandal

every

in Athens,

philosophers

of the phallus by explaining it as a symbol of the generative faculty both in nature and in the mind44. Osiris was in Egypt always the author of fertility; and, though neither of these was
that attribute was androgynous by custom, was in Greece from archaic cult known easily times, transferred and whose from the Phrygian Attis, whose was castration interpreted by

philosophers as signifying themind's restraint of its seminal capacities when they had yoked
themselves unequally with the world of sense and change45.

2. What
before parodists

of the Gnostic Priapus at Phlya? Even if the name Phanes is an anachronism

century, genre, Protogonos is as old can already as Orphic speak poetry, and one of the earliest investing Aristophanes, of the demiurge as Eros,

the second ofthat

him and his kin with a superfluity of wings (Birds 696 - Fr. 1Kern)46. Priapus is also a designation of Phanes in an Orphic hymn47. The exiguous length and quality of the song of the Lycomidae may be a proof that itwas ancient; the ascription of it to Orpheus might be
taken to imply Tannery cognates its Orphic provenance, or at least an early casting that the extant have a central of it in the Orphic Orphic place poems in Sethian style. supplied no at the turn of the century, or the navel, both of which

observed, for the womb

but this is only and something

to Hippolytus to say that the exposition owed something known source was invented to invention, and is no proof that the Orphic grist the Orphies in an Orphic brought to the Sethian mill, they were

allegory48; to authority or misread. not the ones

For all that, whatever to set it working:

they found

text a new manifesto not have discovered

of the creed

that they had

learned from already name of Phanes, (the

the Naassenes, for example)

and may

that they had any need

in these texts anything one to learn. In this sect, respect,

which quotes
Naassenes, who

the Orphies,
do not. The

stands further from the heart of their philosophy

light illuminates a retreating darkness in their reading

than the
of the

portico at Phlya; in the Paraphrase of Seth the darkness storms the upper regions (VE. 1.2 ff); but in no case do we hear that the radiant deity has issued from the darkness, or that a
43See Derveni Papyrus DC.4 = *6 in the version printed ZPE 47 (1982) *1-*12. I have argued in my forthcoming Notes on theDerveni Commentator in ZPE that the application of the word in the Commentary, though tendentious, is not inept. 44Cornutus, Theologia Graeca c.16, p. 23.16-22 Lang; Plotinus, Enneads 111.6,19. 4^See Julian, Hymn to theMother of the Gods; Sallustius, De Mundo et Divis 4. at Fr. 54 Kern. 46For the egg cf. n. 61 and Hellanicus/Hieronymus where the addressee is V.9, initially styled Protogonos. This composition in its present 470rphic Hymns form is likely to be of later date than the second century. 48Tannery (1900) 101-2.

Gnostic Eros and Orphic Themes

37

single matter

essence

penetrates him:

the realm the Sethians

above

and the wilderness

below.

It is Love

who

acts and the

that resists

opposed

them as the Platonists

of the time opposed

wicked soul to the intellect of God.

3. The strongest claims for a borrowing from the Orphies have been made with regard to

the iconography of the Gnostic Demiurge as he appears in theApocryphon of John49. There is certainly proof of kinship between this Demiurge and Phanes in their functions and then
possession of bestial properties; but kinship may be explained by a common ancestor, and

theDemiurge is a composite of many forms, not all of which were Greek. There is, in fact, no scarcity of passages inGreek literature, not Orphic, which tell of a birthwithout the impregnation of awomb:
oji?la ?? ToUToi? a\)Tnv Kai naiba Kai Tcepi Tfj? "Hpa? yevvnaai irupirnv t?v kt?,. was ?c?odcjiv, "Hcpaiaxov, (Lucian, to emulate De aveu ov xf|? rcpo? \iaXa tov avSpa b\iiXiaq ?XX?

hnr[v?\iiov ?ava-uaov Hera's

e\)Ti)%fi to?tov, 6). from

Kai %a>jc?a motive, we

Sacrificiis

learn elsewhere,

the birth of Athena

the head

of

Zeus50. Lucian, following Homer, ascribes the lameness of Hephaestus to his having been thrownfrom heaven to earth by Zeus; but in theHomeric hymn toApollo, Hera says: awr?p o y9 rirce?avo? y?yovev jnei? rcaai Geo?ai
Tia?? ?|i6? "Hcpaiato?, piKvo? rcoSa?, ov tekov a\mi...

pi\|/' ?v? %epGiv kXovca Kai eja?ocXov e-up??rcovxep (316-7; possible lacuna).
Hera's parturition is unassisted and competitive, the child unsightly, the consequent

revulsion and ejection a further cause of his deformity. The neglect of Hephaistos in studies of Gnostic origins is all themore surprising since he evinces such a likeness to theDemiurge in origins and nature that he must have done some service as a model. These profitable
corollaries Greek he owes, not to the Orphies or the Egyptians, but to the cardinal traditions of thought.

Not the least important is his function, for as the smith of the gods he holds a place of
honour allusions among Greek craftsmen, and would thus incur the force (44.12 of the dishonourable ff etc.), which are to the craftsman in such prophecies as Isaiah's ff, 46.6

frequently adduced in Gnostic writings. The manufacture of idols is the greatest insult to God and themost insidious temptation to his people; it is theKing of Babylon, the home of idols, who falsely proclaims "I am and there is none beside" (Isaiah 47.8,47.10; cf. Exodus
3.14, 20.2).

49Quispel (1978) passim. 50Cf. Hesiod, Theogony 927-9 with the commentary of M. L. West to Isabelle Clark for helping to draw my attention to this analogy.

(Oxford 1964) ad loc. I am indebted

38

M.

Edwards

Once fashioned anew by allegory, Hephaestus might be taken for the Demiurge in disguise. Homeric song relates that he sprang a trap for his consort Aphrodite as she lay in the arms of her warlike paramour (Odyssey VIH.266-366); the allegorists detected in those fetters a symbol of Fate, which holds in a Empedoclean harmony the two dynamic forces of
the cosmos (Heraclitus, Homeric Allegories 69.7-11). Fate and chains are the staple of

Gnostic imagery, since those who professed a loathing for the universe described themselves
as prisoners of necessity, and the Demiurge as a universal tyrant who detains the human soul

in bonds of flesh. The demiurge is a fiery god, and fire is the principal instrument of Hephaestus51, so that he himself was often held to personify its nature. Writing in the first century, Cornutus
makes him a rarefied variety of that element, with his seat in that upper region where the

Demiurge was believed to have pitched his throne (Theologia Graeca c. 19 p. 33.12-14 Lang). A greater measure of learning is affected when the Clementine Homilies state that Ptah, whom the Greeks know as Hephaestus, embodies the Egyptian name of fire (IX.6). Porphyry makes Hephaestus, not a material being, but one who owes his nourishment to
matter middle between (De Statuis p. 14.8-10 Bidez; cf. Cornutus, just c. 19 p. 33.18-22 allots earth and heaven, place between matter and spirit to the soul. as the Gnostic the Lang), holding an intermediate place

Hephaestus has his role, though aminor one, in Orphic literature: he is the forger ofthat mirror which distracted Dionysos while the Titans plotted to rend him limb from limb (Fr. 209 Kern). A Platonist, to whom the sensible universe was amirror of Dionysus (Plotinus Enneads, IV.3) would understand that theWorld-Soul,
this mirror, Anthropos lived a fragmentary existence in the souls the prisoner of the Herm?tica, the soul becomes

being dismembered by its fall into

of individuals52. of the world. Seduced like the

What of the physiognomy of the Demiurge, which he did not take from Hephaestus? He has been compared with Ptah53, with Aion54 and with the figure of Cerberus who
accompanies Serapis55. All three are Egyptian types, and Egypt is the source of all our

manuscripts

of the Apocryphon

of John. The proximity of Christian, Jew and Greek in

of John and Paraphrase of Shem is too frequent to require or allow

51The image of fire in the Apocryphon

citation.

52See for full discussion A. H. Armstrong, Platonic Mirrors, ?ranos Jahrbuch 55 (1988) 147-81. 53See Quispel (1978) 13-15 and R. Pettazzoni, Studies in theHistory of Religion (Leiden 1954) 182-94. Tardieu (1974) 215-78 is devoted to an "Egyptian bestiary". The fullest discussion of the lion in Gnostic iconography isH. M. Jackson, The Lion became Man (Atlanta 1985). in Egypt, and A. J. Festugiere, Les cinq 540n Aion see Pettazzoni (1954) 171-9: Aion-(Chronos)Kronos sceaux de l'Aion alexandrin, Revue de l'Egyptologie 8 (1951) 63-70. Quispel (1978) argues justly that the but the Orphic figure of Aion may be of great antiquity even in Greece (cf. Orpheus, Pherecydes), representation of Chronos (Fr. 54) is not identical with that of the Gnostic Ialdabaoth. 550n the Cerberus of Serapis seeMacrobius, Saturnalia 1.20.13 and Pettazzoni (1954) 164-70. Pettazzoni argues that Cerberus is a symbol of divisible time, but in his discussion of the origins of Mithras (180-192) he assumes too readily that the functions of deities who appear together must be identical.

Gnostic Eros and Orphic Themes

39

Alexandria

yielded

many

opportunities

of acquaintance,

which

the Gnostics

were

not

reluctant to exhibit. The author of thismyth would appear to have been a Jew or Christian living inAlexandria, who had read some of itsmany books and embraced its Platonism: he brought together the procreative deity of the Gnostics with the demiurge of Greek myth as
the exponents Phanes of a false Platonic the Gnostic Demiurge love. resembles neither more nor less than Ptah, who had no

lion's head, or Cerberus, who had three.An Orphic myth recorded in theHellenistic period the only one that is relevant and likely to be older than theApocryphon of John56 - offers us
an embarrassment of models for the Demiurge, since Phanes has a serpent's head and

sprouts bulls from his flanks, while Cronus, one of his ancestors, is crowned with the heads of a lion, a bull and a god (Damascius, De Principiis 123 = Fr. 54 Kern). Neither likeness is, however, so perfect as to yield clear proof of influence: for one thing, both Cronus and Protogonos,
possession

unlike
of wings.

the Gnostic

demiruge,

reveal their derivation

from Eros by their

The very circumstances which would facilitate direct borrowing from the Orphies would
render such a borrowing pedantry superfluous. and fraud Orphism was only one of many creeds transmuted was by the the speculative of Alexandria57, and the notion that Hephaestus

god whom the Egyptians knew as Ptah is one that does not appear to have needed the mediation of Orphic writings. The De Mysteriis of Iamblichus, a work which bears comparison inmany points of thought and exegesis with the doctrines of the Gnostics as we know them from Plotinus and Hippolytus58, maintains the ancient practice (which can be traced at least toHerodotus) of receiving Egyptian deities under Greek names: ? yap orunoDpYiKOc vo?? ... 'A|iio?v Kocx? ir[v tc?v AvyuTt/cicov yX&caav X?yetoci, awceXxov Se a\|/e\)8oc eicocaxa Kai Te%vncc??jxet' ?Xr|0eia?, O0? - "EM,r|ve? 8? ei? ... "H?aicrcov Tq>Te%viKcp ji?vcp npocfiaXXovzec, \iE%aXa\i$?vox>oi t?v O0?,
(Iamblichus, De Mysteriis VDI 3 p. 263.7-264.2).

The identity of Ptah and Hephaestus is also affirmed by Porphyry, in a work which, like
the De Mysteriis, made no profession of novelty59:

560n the likelihood of a Hellenistic date for Hellanicus and Hieronymus see M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford 1983) 176-8. 57Many Orphic remains are of Jewish origin. Thus Moses is alluded to under the name i>Xoyey/r\c,("bom of water") at Fr. 247.36 Kern. 58The fullest commentary on the "Egyptian" portions of the De Mysteriis remains W. B. Scott, Herm?tica (Oxford 1925) 28-102. See especially p. 63 on the Ogdoad and pp. 75-7 on the doctrine of two souls. For the latter as a Gnostic tenet see Porphyry, De Abstinentia 140 p. 116.11 ff Nauck and Plotinus, Enneads H9.5.16. is the only Greek doxography to treat Iamblichus, whose De Anima (p. 375 Wachsmuth) as philosophers, the Gnostics also provides the closest parallels to Enneads II.9.6.2, where the word avTiTOTC?asignifies a perverse affection of the soul (cf. De Mysteriis in 28 p. 167). 59Text of J. Bidez, Vie de Porphyre (Ghent 1913) Appendix 1.

40

M.

Edwards

t?v

OruiiODpyov,

ov

Kvriq)

oi

Aly?rcTioi

Tcpoaayopeuo-uaiv

... ?ic xo\>

ax?fiaxoc

Ttpo?eaGai cpocaiv cp?v, ?? oh yevvaaGai 6eov,

"EXX?\ve? "Hcpouaiov. (Porphyry, De Statuis

ov cc?toi Tcpoaayope^o-uai 00a,

Bidez).

oi Se

p.*18.10-19

Thus Ptah becomes the guest of another culture through the offices of Hephaestus, not the Orphies. Ptah is one of many Egyptian gods who have been adduced as antecedents of the Alexandrian Aion and theMithraic image of time60, and these in turn resemble the Gnostic Demiurge as closely as any being who appears in the deposit of Orphic literature. That is to
say, they too are leontocephalic, a common and typically spectacle have serpents while in attendance travelled on their bodies: only through the their statues were in Alexandria, Phanes

mediation

of books. And must not the domain of the Gnostic Demiurge be coeval and coterminous with time? This is but another way of stating that the Gnostics owed their
to everyone and Christian and no-one: heterodoxy if we say that he was Alexandria, almost an inevitable in pagan the conclusion of development is one that Quispel,

Demiurge Jewish

who believes that the Orphies derived theirmyths of Phanes and the egg from the Egyptians,
would have little cause to impugn61.

Undoubtedly
in the Naassene detention

theDemiurge of this lateGnosticism has a pedigree. He appears at one point

sermon souls as the fiery Esaldaios, (V.7.30-31). This who desires, contrives may and perpetuates be only the demiurge, however, the carnal

of human

element of Hermes, the description of whose attributes is immediately resumed (V.7.32 ff).
The human race being the psychic threefold, and it requires (V.6.6 a threefold etc.): no Saviour, redemption who embraces is possible at once without the the spiritual, participation The the carnal

of the redeemed. once sundered from the higher, a carnal or psychic Demiurge can only his own Ptah in

lower world

be an exile from the Kingdom. Being himself the result of a miscarriage

weakest luminary low eminence, Egypt with his of propagation, he is incapable and can certainly effect no birth in heaven. among the Greeks; precedent deities, the account nor Orphic of whom in a chain

by the last and

even upon of begetting, In nature he resembles

and Hephaestus

the latter, has neither lion's head he resembles

Gnostic many

of his nativity, which he also shares In his body and ophidian parallel. is but one, and, being sterile,

Phanes

lacks not only the generative organ, but thewings which are inseparable from theOrphic god
of Love.

New College, Oxford

M.

J. Edwards

60See Pettazzoni (1954) 182-94. 61 Quispel (1978) 11 ff. A similar conclusion is to be found in the study by S. Morenz, entitled "?gypten in: S. Morenz und die altorphische Kosmogonie" (ed.), Aus Antike und Orient, Festschrift W. Schubart on pp. 71 (Leipzig 1950) 64-111. The "wind-egg" of Aristophanes is plausibly traced to Egyptian sources 102.