INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

One must see, then, I think, in the Third Document the work of a Valentinian, but of one of late date, who had slipped back, as the whole sect probably did, into the systematised sorcery of his ancestor’s faith, and whose Christianity mainly consisted in putting the account of the semi-magical “mysteries” or secrets by which he hoped to escape the horrors of hell, into the mouth of its Founder. But there are also many other signs that this must have been later in date than the two first Documents. The author shows a much greater acquaintance with the letter of the New Testament than his predecessors, and while those quote almost entirely from Matthew, the quotations in the Third Document are taken largely from Luke. The author goes so far in one place as to quote from the Epistle to the Romans as having been written xlviiby “our brother Paul,”^[108] which some writers think did not appear until well on in the second century. The author, too, frequently refers to the persecutions and the “torments which are in the law” as something imminent and pressing on all Christians alike, and this can hardly be said of any measures taken before the reign of Septimius Severus (A.D. 193-211), when Valentinus had long been dead. The story of the woman who “came to repent” and the subsequent command to St. Peter to “perform the mystery which will cut off this soul from the Kingdom of Light,” together with the many mysteries enumerated as exercising a magical effect on the living and the dead, argue an established and regulated ritual which can hardly have been organised in the lifetime of Valentinus or of his immediate successors, Ptolemy and Heracleon.^[109]

Lastly, Dr. Schmidt, following therein Prof. Harnack, attributes the curious argument in this Third Document as to “a King of to-day” who gives gifts to a man equal to himself, clothes him with “the vestures of a King,” and pardons him for the most heinous crimes, to an episode in the reign of Philip the Arabian recounted in the Augustan History.^[110] There seems the more reason in this contention that the argument—bad though it may be ethically—comparing the Emperor’s proceeding to the pardon extended by the Highest Powers to the worst of sinners, is dragged in, as it were, by the neck and heels. But if it be this episode which is really hinted at in our Third Document, this last cannot be put earlier than A.D. 244 or 250, the dates of Philip’s accession—and death.

Passing on to the Fourth Document, there is no need to emphasise what has been already said in the preceding chapter of this Introduction as to the ever-increasing use therein of the practices of magic and astrology as shown in the galimatias with which the prayers of Jesus are prefaced and the pre-ponderating part in man’s destiny assigned in it to the stars. Dr. Schmidt and Prof. Harnack follow their predecessor Köstlin in regarding this as evidence of a more primitive form of heresy than that which is taught in the earlier documents; but the argument is really the other way. The same galimatias is found in the Græco-Egyptian Magic Papyri none of which is assigned on palæographic grounds to an earlier date than the third century, and the various “magical prayers” which can be found in the Ethiopic MSS. published by Sir Ernest Wallis Budge reproduce the same feature ad nauseam. It is found, too, in the very late so-called “Gnostic” Papyrus of Turin, xlviiiwhere the “Eli, Eli lama sabachthani” spoken on the Cross is numbered in entire ignorance of its context among “the glorious names of God”;^[111] while we know from other sources that the practice of astrology became so frequent under the Christian Emperors that its use had to be limited by law. The same assumption that words unintelligible to both writers and readers form part of a “Divine language” appears strongly marked in even orthodox Christian literature of the post-Constantinian centuries, as in the series of Coptic Apocrypha lately acquired for the British Museum which in their present form are not put earlier than the tenth century.^[112] Another proof of a late date for this Fourth Document can be found in its concluding words about the Great Name which, although the belief can be traced to the ancient Egyptian tale of the Illness of Râ, in the form here given already approaches the stories to the same effect in the Mediæval Cabala.

The Fifth Document need not detain us long, as nearly all that can be said about it has been said above. But the picture of the murderer’s soul tied by the tongue to a great demon in the shape of a horse is found again in the Coptic Life of Bishop Pisentius which mentions the invasion of the Persians in the reign of Heraclius and cannot therefore be earlier than the end of the seventh century.^[113] The descriptions of the torments of hell, without being identical, are cast in the same mould as those in the Apocalypse of Paul, which is attributed to the year 380 A.D. The doctrine that it is the nature of the sins committed by the soul which determine the bodily infirmities allotted to it in its next incarnation also first appears formally stated, so far as I am aware, in the Acta Archelai written for the refutation of the teaching of Manes, and therefore not earlier than the end of the third century. It was probably this which led Lipsius to think that he could perceive Manichaean features in our text.

To sum up, then, I believe that all the Documents in our text belong to the School of Valentinus. As to date, the First and the greatest part of the Second are probably taken from documents written by Valentinus himself, and therefore before A.D. 160, while the last part of the Second, and the whole of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth, are by the degenerate successors of his school and are arranged in date order. These last may be of any date between A.D. 245 and 388, when we last hear of the Valentinians as an organised sect, and some parts of them may not improbably be later still.

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