Note 135 — Chapter VIII · POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE OPHITES

Philo explains that there is a vast difference between man as now made and the first man who was made according to the image of God, De opificio mundi, c. 46. This idea of an archetypal man was widely spread over Eastern Europe and Asia, and Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Göttingen, 1907, Kap. IV., “Der Urmensch,” has collected all or nearly all the references to it in the literature of the period that could be produced up to that date. As to its origin, the issue is still very doubtful. While we should naturally expect to find it in the Babylonian legends, the Tablets of Creation contain no certain allusion to it, while it is certainly to be traced in the Zend Avesta and its related books. Until we are able to compare the dates of these two sources it seems idle to speculate as to which is the original one and which the derived. But see Introduction (pp. lxi-lxiii and note on last page quoted) supra.