Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1. WHAT IS THE DOCTRINE OF SIMON, THE SAMARITAN MAGICIAN. 1. Simon the Samaritan was that sorcerer of whom Luke, companion and disciple of the apostles, tells, recording: "Now a certain man by the name of Simon had, prior to this, been resident in the city, working sorcery and throwing the Samaritan populace into amazement, claiming to be someone of great importance; and everyone paid him attention, humble and prominent alike, declaring, This fellow is the power of God, the one styled Great. To him they paid attention, since for a considerable time his sorceries had left them spellbound." This Simon, accordingly, put on a show of belief, imagining that the apostles effected their healings through sorcery rather than through God's power, and that their bestowal of the Holy Spirit by laying on of hands was likewise some superior form of magical craft. Holding this suspicion, and proffering the apostles payment so that he too might obtain the ability to grant the Holy Spirit to anyone he chose, he was answered by Peter: "May your silver go to ruin along with you, since you supposed God's gift could be bought with money. You hold no share, no portion, in this affair, for your heart stands crooked before God. I perceive that bitter venom fills you and that you are bound in wickedness's chains." Since even then he would not put his trust in God, and, driven by greed, sought to rival the apostles in order that he too might win renown, he pursued the craft of sorcery still further, to a degree that left crowds bewildered—this during the reign of the emperor Claudius, under whom, it is even reported, he was honored with a statue for his magical feats. Many accordingly hailed him as divine, and he claimed that it was he himself who had shown himself to the Jews in the character of the Son, had come down among the Samaritans as the Father, and had arrived among the remaining nations under the character of the Holy Spirit. He proclaimed himself the loftiest of powers, namely the Father set above everything, and permitted men to address him by any title at all that they pleased.
Concerning Simon the Samaritan, from whom all the heresies took their rise, and concerning the period at which he flourished, the earliest historians bear him out; compare, word for word, Justin in the passage cited (though whether Flavius Josephus, Antiquities XX, is also to be joined to this witness is not certain). As for his having been honored with a statue, many scholars in fact deny this, and suppose it a mistake of Justin's, who misread an inscription reading "To Semo Sancus, the god Fidius," a god dedicated among the Sabines—an inscription which nevertheless furnishes ample material for a sect of this kind. This man traveled about accompanied by a certain Helen, a woman he had ransomed from prostitution in the Phoenician city of Tyre, declaring that she was Ennoia, the initial thought his intellect had produced, mother of the universe, the one by means of whom, at the outset, it had entered his intellect to fashion angels and archangels; and that she, willingly obeying her father, went down into the regions below and there generated angels and powers, the makers, he claimed, of this present world. After she had begotten them, she was held captive by them out of envy, because they did not wish to be thought the offspring of anyone else—for he himself was wholly unknown to them. This Thought of hers was kept prisoner by the very powers and angels she had brought forth, and endured at their hands abuse of every description, unable to make her way back up to her father—so much so that she was confined even within a mortal frame, passing, age after age, from body to body, as though shifted from container to container, entering one female form after another. Among these she had dwelt too in the person of that Helen for whose sake the war at Troy was waged; on which account Stesichorus, having reviled her in verse, was blinded, and later, relenting and composing the poems called the Palinodes, in which he praised her instead, regained his sight. Passing thus from one body into the next, and bearing continual disgrace throughout, she came at last to stand for hire in a house of prostitution; this, so they claim, was 'the sheep that had strayed.'
Wherefore he himself had come to take up this first conception and free her from her bonds, and to grant salvation to mankind through the knowledge of himself. For since the angels governed the world badly, each of them coveting the first place, he had come to set matters right. [The apparatus at this point cites Plato's Republic on the tradition that the Greeks did not truly fight over the real Helen, since—so a badly damaged fragment of Greek asserts—it was not she herself but her image (eidolon) that the combatants contended for, a notion that suits Simon's system well; it further cites Stesichorus (or Tisias) of Himera in Sicily and his poems against Helen as the 'torch' of the Trojan War, referring for the fragments to Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci; and it notes that Socrates the church historian and Eustathius, in his commentary on Homer's Odyssey IV, relate the same tale.] He came, then, descending transformed, and made like to the virtues, powers, and angels, so that he himself appeared as a man among men, though he was not a man, and was thought to have suffered in Judea, though he did not suffer. As for the prophets, no further heed need be paid to them by those who place their hope in him and in his Helen, and such people may act freely, doing whatever they wish; for men are saved by his grace, and not according to righteous deeds. Righteous actions, he taught, are not so by nature but only by convention, just as the angels who made the world laid down, by such precepts leading men into servitude. Wherefore he also promised that the world would be dissolved, and that those who are his would be freed from the dominion of those who made it. 2. The mystic priests of this sect, accordingly, live licentiously and practice magic, each according to his own ability. They make use of exorcisms and incantations; of love-charms too and spells for compelling, and of those called familiar spirits and dream-senders, and whatever images are fashioned after the likeness of Minerva; these they worship. They also bear a name taken from Simon, the founder of this most impious teaching, being called after him—it being from them that 'knowledge falsely so called' takes its beginning, as one may learn from their own assertions. 2. WHAT IS THE TEACHING OF MENANDER, AND WHAT ARE THEIR PRACTICES. Simon's successor was Menander, a Samaritan by birth, who himself likewise attained the summit of the magic art. He said that the first power is unknown to all, but that he himself was the one sent by the invisible powers as Savior for the salvation of mankind. The world, he taught, was made by angels, whom he too, like Simon, said were sent forth from Ennoia. He further taught that through the magical knowledge imparted by him one could overcome even the angels who made the world; for his disciples, he said, receive resurrection through the baptism administered by him, and can no longer die, but remain, without growing old, immortal.