Note 77 — BOOK VI SIMON MAGUS, VALENTINUS, AND THEIR FOLLOWERS

The sources of this chapter are fairly plain. There is little reason to doubt that Hippolytus had actually seen and read a book attributed to Simon Magus and called the Great Announcement from which he quotes, after his manner, inaccurately and carelessly, but still in good faith. Whether the work was by Simon himself is much more doubtful, but it was probably in use by the sect that he founded, and therefore represents with some fidelity his teaching. The style of it as appears from the extracts here given is a curious mixture of bombast and philosophical expressions, and bears a strong likeness to certain passages in the chapters in the fifth book on the Naassenes and the Peratæ. The other traceable source of the chapter is the work Against Heresies of St. Irenæus, of which the quotations here given go to establish the Greek text. But intertwined with this, especially towards the end of the chapter, is a third thread of tradition, quite different from that used in the Clementines and other patristic accounts of Simon’s career, which cannot at present be identified.