were at enmity with the angel Satan, gave form and substance to the universe. The angels attempted to mould the first man, but the feeble creature could only writhe in impotence on the earth. A divine spark fell, entered into the imperfect being, and Man lived and walked. Of the seven angels, the Jewish God was one, and to depose him from power was the mission of the Saviour Christ. This divine Christ never really became flesh. In appearance alone did he assume human shape. Christ wrought salvation for the good, who possessed the vital fire of God in their bosoms, and he warred against evil men and demons. Saturninus condemned marriage, and many of his followers avoided flesh foods. The seven creative angels, who contended with Satan, the angel of darkness, seem to be notions drawn from the Parsee religion.* Carpocrates dwelt in Alexandria. God he deemed to be the eternal Mould, the beginning and end of all things. Rebellious angels made the world, and even fashioned the religious ideas of Jews and Gentiles. Against the power of the Demiurge, ruler of the evil kingdom, human souls must struggle by a purifying passage through one body after another, by faith and love, by holy magic. A series of brilliant antagonists had defied the might of the Demiurge and spread the blessed Gnosis. Such were Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato. Such was Jesus, the son of Joseph. His pure soul remembered secret things which he had beheld in the ethereal circle of the gods. He was the most just man of his age; he set himself free from Judaism, and his soul, quickened by the power of God, rose to heaven. But Peter and Paul were not less holy than Jesus. The liberality of Carpocrates' teaching was picturesquely embodied in a temple which his disciples erected, and which, it was said, contained statues of Christ and the great Greek philosophers. All-too-willing tongues, with how much truth we know not, afterwards ascribed grossly sensual tenets to this Gnostic propagandist, and told of Love-feasts which ended with darkened rooms and deeds of shame.† A disciple of Menander, Basilides by name, settled in * Mansel's "Gnostics," chapter ix. + Kurtz's “Church History," vol. i., section 27; Renan's “L'Eglise," chapter x.; Mansel's "Gnostic Heresies," lecture viii. Alexandria, and became a distinguished expounder of the Gnostic faith. Of his twenty-four treatises only broken passages remain. He professed to draw his doctrines from a revelation made by Jesus to Matthias and to Glaucias, a companion of Peter. Basilides said that the seed of the world sprang from the divine Nothingness or potentiality. This seed was the mighty word, pronouncing "Let there be light," or, as it is expressed "in the Gospels" (this is the phrase used by Hippolytus), "That is the true Light which lights every man coming into the world." [Since Hippolytus gives a description of the teaching of Basilides and his school in general, it is difficult to prove, as some have sought to do, that the words just quoted are taken from the Fourth Gospel.] Otherwise, the seed is called the Panspermia. In the seed there grow three mysterious essences or Sonships. The first flies back to the Absolute source of all; the second also, but with difficulty, and only with the aid of spiritual wings, mounts up to the Divine; the third must stay in the Panspermia, clogged by things material, until the time of purification arrives. Now appears a great Ruler, who maps out the sphere of the shining stars, and, with his son at his right hand, sits enthroned as the Ogdoas. His name, ABRAXAS, signifies the grand march of the days in the solar year, for, in numerals, Abraxas is made up of a=1, ß=2, p=100, a=1, έ=60, a=1, s= 200; total, 365. Abraxas, therefore, would seem to stand for the sungod, and the name, being probably constructed from the Hebrew "Ha-Brachach," may signify the Blessing, or Blessed One. On gems of onyx, jasper, chalcedony, and on tablets of lead and bronze, the sacred name was engraved, with appropriate emblems of the Cock, Lion, Serpent, Warrior, etc. Other titles of the Supreme Lord were Iao, Adonai, and Sabaoth. The name Iao, of course, carries us back to the Yahveh of the Jews. The Gnostics wore the gems as amulets, and as symbols of their piety; and attached them to corpses, in the hope that they would secure the safety of departed souls. But how much of this talismanic system Basilides himself believed in we have no evidence to show. Next to the sphere of the Sun-god Basilides placed a second Ruler, who reigns over the Hebdomas, or region of the seven planets, including the earth. This ruler was the God who revealed himself to Abraham and Moses. The universe needed salvation, and groaned for deliverance. The Gospel emerged from the divine depths, enlightening the first Ruler, and convincing him that he was not supreme, but subordinate to the Absolute. It passed on to the Hebdomas, and bade the second Ruler prepare the way for redemption by promulgating the Law and the Prophets. And then the Gospel-power descended into Jesus, the son of Mary, and his sufferings released him from all admixture of the material and the inferior, and his spirit ascended to the celestial spheres. The creatures who do not attain purification will be endued with an obliviousness which will render them ignorant of a higher life, and they will subside into eternal contentment. A certain mildness characterises the doctrine of Basilides. He displays before us no fierce conflicts between the gods of light and darkness, of good and evil. From another account, given by Irenæus, we get a rough sketch of the Basilidian teaching, containing a system of five Intelligences (Nous, Logos, Phronesis, Sophia, Dunamis), which remind us of the five Buddhas of India. Irenæus also asserts that, in the Basilidean belief, Christ did not personally die, but Simon the Cyrenian suffered in his stead. Here, again, a later doctrine may have been confused by Irenæus with the actual utterances of Basilides, himself. The Christian fathers are very weak authorities on the opinions of teachers from whom they differed; nor need we place reliance on the dark accusations against the moral character of Basilides which gained ready currency in orthodox Christian circles.* 22. The Fourth Gospel. We now approach a perplexing problem, which has for many years agitated the critical world. Orthodox zeal maintained that the Fourth Gospel was the work of the Apostle John. Cogent objections from the Rationalist side seemed to establish the fact that the Gospel did not see the light until about the year 150 C.E. Did the " Apostle John "-that is to say, an early Christian leader named John-compose this striking essay on the life and work of Jesus? We recall Paul's bitter relations * Mansel's "Gnostic Heresies;" Renan's "L'Eglise," chapter x.; King's "Gnostics;" Mosheim's "Commentaries," vol. ii.; Supernatural Religion," vol. ii.; Kurtz's "Church History," section 27. with Peter, James, and John, his sarcastic allusions to these estimable "pillars," his refusal to fall in with their cringing obeisance towards the Mosaic Law. We turn to the Fourth Gospel, and find a representation of Jesus which conspicuously avoids any recommendation to observe circumcision or festivals, and which makes Jesus say to the Jews: "It is written in your law "—as if he regarded it as out of his own sphere. Again, the apostles are described in the book of Acts as unlearned and ignorant, and this testimony gains support from the information gleaned from the Synoptic gospels. But the Fourth Gospel shows us comparatively good Greek (though somewhat Hebraic in sentence-construction), and a familiarity with Alexandrian philosophy and speculation which a Galilean fisherman would be very unlikely to possess. What witness do we discover as to the early existence of the document ? After about 170 it was looked upon as the production of the Apostle. Irenæus (Bishop of Lyons, about 180-190) speaks of it as such; and, according to Eusebius, the Church historian, Irenæus once wrote: "I can still tell the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and talk, his going-out and coming-in, and his manner of life; the look of him and his addresses which he gave to the people; and how he narrated his intercourse with John and the others who had seen the Lord, and what he thought of their words," etc. From this reminiscence we cannot extract proof that the Apostle John wrote the Fourth Gospel. We have no record that Papias made any reference to the gospel of "John." Justin Martyr may, or may not, have seen the gospel; the citations he is alleged to have made from it are by no means indisputable. He scarcely touches on any historical feature which is found only in "John." And when he says of Jesus, "Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by him, for he was no Sophist,' we dubiously call to mind the long discourses in the Fourth Gospel. Justin's disciple, Tatian, wrote the Diatessaron, which combined the four gospels, "Matthew," Mark," "Luke," and "John;" and it opened with the Fourth-gospel declaration, "In the beginning was the word." We are left to conjecture why Tatian selected these four gospelswhether from personal approval, or because these biographies were popular. Then we come back to Basilides. A passage in Hippolytus (" Refutation of all Heresies," vii. 10), already referred to, runs thus :-"This, he [Basilides] says, is that which has been stated in the gospels: He was the true light which lights every man that comes into the world." Certainly the passage instantly reminds us of the Fourth Gospel. Unfortunately we cannot turn to the original writings of Basilides to ascertain the exact source he drew from. We must content ourselves with the provisional hypothesis that the Fourth Gospel may have appeared towards the close of Hadrian's reign (Hadrian died 138).* : We turn to the gospel itself. One pregnant part immediately meets us. The writer has naught to say of visions of angels, of a Virgin birth, of Shepherds or Magi, of the circumcision and presentation in the temple, of a flight into Egypt, of boyish conversations with professors. Jesus as God, flashing with a divine aureole, descends upon the humble earth :—" In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him there was not anything made that has been made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not." So far from the doctrine of the Logos (Word) having been directly suggested by the life of Jesus, it had been mooted by Philo in the earlier half of the first Christian century. To him the Logos was the fruit of the first creative act of God, eternal, supreme over all things in the world, God's first-begotten son, the image of God, the instrument by which the universe was formed, the heavenly bread of the soul, the fount of wisdom to drink of which secures endless life, man's guide to God, the great Highpriest, an ambassador, a mediator, a suppliant on man's behalf, God's royal power, an angel, the eldest angel, the Archangel bearing many names, the light, the East. The 66 * Article on the Fourth Gospel by E. Schürer in the Contemporary Review, September, 1891; Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. See also Salmon's "Introduction," chapter vi., for conservative view. Davidson dates the gospel "about 150;" the author of "Supernatural Religion finds no trace of the gospel for "some century and a half" after the events it records. Supernatural Religion," vol. ii., section on the Fourth Gospel. The author's references may be checked by the English translation of Philo's works by C. D. Yonge. |