Note 248 — BOOK V THE OPHITE HERESIES

This chapter on the Peratæ is evidently drawn from more sources than one. The author’s first statement of their doctrines, which occupies pp. 146-149 supra, represents probably his first impression of them and contains at least one glaring contradiction, duly noted in its place. Then comes a long extract from Sextus Empiricus which is to all appearance a repetition of the earliest part of Book IV, only pardonable if it be allowed that the present Book was delivered in lecture form. There follows a quotation longer and more sustained than any other in the whole work from a Peratic book which he says was called Proastii, with a bombastic prelude much resembling the language of Simon Magus’ Great Announcement in Book VI, followed by a catalogue of starry “influences” which reads much as if it were taken from some astrological manual. There follows in its turn a dissertation on the Ophite Serpent showing how this object of their adoration, identified with the Brazen Serpent of Exodus, was made to prefigure or typify in the most incongruous manner many personages in the Old and New Testaments, including Christ Himself. After this he announces an “epitome” of the Peratic doctrine which turns out to be perfectly different from anything before said, divides the universe, which he has previously said the Peratics divided into unbegotten, self-begotten and begotten, into a new triad of Father, Son (i. e. Serpent), and Matter, and gives a fairly consistent statement of the Peratic scheme of salvation based on this hypothesis. One can only suppose here that this last is an afterthought added when revising the book and inspired by some fresh evidence of Peratic beliefs probably coloured by Stoic or Marcionite doctrine. In those parts of the chapter which appear to have been taken from genuinely Peratic sources, the reference to some Western Asiatic tradition concerning cosmogony and the protoplasts and differing considerably from the narrative of Genesis, is plainly apparent.