Note 471 — Chapter X · THE SYSTEM OF THE PISTIS SOPHIA AND ITS RELATED TEXTS[459]

Barbelo is a name very frequently met with in the earlier heresiologists. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 26, §§ 1, 2, pp. 221-226, Harvey, declares that there was a sect of Simonians called Barbeliotae “or Naassenes” who suppose “a certain indestructible (the Latin version says ‘never-ageing’) Aeon in a living virgin spirit whom they call Barbelo (masc.),” and gives an account of a string of other aeons issuing not from, but at the prayer of, this Barbelo, which is far from clear in the present state of the text. The sect appears, from what can be made out of his description, to have resembled the Ophites, of which it may have been a branch. Hippolytus, however, says nothing of them, and the account of Epiphanius (Haer. XXV. and XXVI., Vol. II, pt 1, pp. 160, 184), Oehler, is untrustworthy, inasmuch as he assigns the worship of Barbelo to two sects, one of which he calls Nicolaitans and the other Gnostics simply. To both of them he attributes after his manner unimaginably filthy rites, and it is plain from his making Barbelo the mother of Jaldabaoth and giving her a seat in the eighth heaven that he confuses her wilfully or otherwise with the Sophia of the Ophites. Her place in the system of the Pistis Sophia will be described in the text. The name is said by Harvey to be derived from the Syriac Barba elo, the Deity in Four or God in Tetrad, and the derivation is approved by Hort (Dict. of Christian Biog. s.h.n.). It appears more likely, however, that it is to be referred to the Hebrew root בבל “Babel” or confusion, a derivation which Hort also mentions. In Irenaeus’ Greek text the name is spelt βαρβηλὼ, in the Latin “Barbelo” with an accusative “Barbelon,” and in Epiphanius βαρβηλὼ and βαρβήρω. If we might alter this last into βαρβαριωθ, we might see it in a great: number of magic spells of the period. Cf. Wessely, Ephesia Grammata, Wien, 1886, pp. 26, 28, 33, 34.