Note 23 — THE MYTH OF SIMON MAGUS

We know from their version of the Pentateuch that the later Samaritans, being strong “monotheists” in one of the senses of that elastic and misleading term, sought always to substitute angels for Elohim in the old narratives of divine action (e. g. Gen. iii, 5; v, 1; v, 24; xvii, 22), “lest a corporeal existence should be attributed to the Deity.”23 And it is instructive to note how their theological drift exhibits itself in early Christism. The doctrine of the “Logos” is not merely Alexandrian-Christian, it is Judaic. Some of the Aramaic paraphrasts of the Old Testament at times wrote “the Word of Jehovah” instead of the angel of Jehovah, sometimes the “She-kin-ah,” which means “the abode of the Word of Jehovah.”24 On the other hand, we know from the Gospel of Peter that one of the early Christian sects regarded Jesus as having received his dynamis, his power, at baptism, and yielded it up at crucifixion. Here we are close to Samaritanism, in which the angels were regarded25 as “uncreated influences proceeding from God (dynameis, powers),” pretty much as Simon is described in the Acts. Thus “Simon” for the Samaritans would just be “Êl,” which the Samaritan Justin, like the writer of “Peter,” held to mean “Power.” And at the same time, be it observed, Simon was “the Word.”