Note 45 — BOOK VII BASILIDES, SATURNILUS, AND OTHERS

ὁμοούσιος. The first occurrence, so far as it can be traced, of this too-famous word. If I am right, the interpretation of οὐσία by “substance” came later. The nature of the Sonhood (Υἱότης, Lat., filietas, which I translate “Sonhood” by analogy with paternitas = Fatherhood) is peculiar to Basilides, the idea being apparently that within the Panspermia was concealed a germ which was more closely related to its Divine Parent than the rest. The same idea mutatis mutandis reappears in Weissmann’s theory of the germ-plasm.