Note 570 — Chapter VI · PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: SIMON MAGUS

Simon’s authorship of the book has been defended by Renan (Les Apôtres, Paris, 1866, p. 267 and note) and attacked by many other writers. Salmon, op. cit., Schmiedel, op. cit., and Stock in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (last edition), s.v. Simon Magus, aver that there were two Simons, one the personage of the Acts, and the other, a Gnostic leader of the IInd cent. to whom or to whose followers the Great Announcement is to be attributed. This theory, although attractive, would prove too much; for Justin Martyr, himself a Samaritan, has no doubt that Simon the heresiarch is the Simon of the Acts, and if he is wrong in this, a matter which may well have been within his own personal knowledge, Hippolytus is our best and earliest authority for Simon’s doctrines.