he Montanists worship their prophet and Alexander the
Confessor as divine. The opponents of the Roman Adoptians (Euseb. H. E.
V. 28) reproach them with praying to Galen. There are many passages in
which the Gnostics are reproached with paying Divine honours to the
heads of their schools, and for many Gnostic schools (the Carpocratians,
for example) the reproach seems to have been just. All this is extremely
instructive. The genius, the hero, the founder of a new school who
promises to shew the certain way to the _vita beata_, the emperor, the
philosopher (numerous Stoic passages might be noted here) finally, man,
in so far as he is inhabited by [Greek: nous]--could all somehow be
considered as [Greek: theoi], so elastic was this concept. All these
instances of Apotheosis in no way endangered the Monotheism which had
been developed from the mixture of Gods and from philosophy; for the one
supreme Godhead can unfold his inexhaustible essence in a variety of
existences, which, while his creatures as to their origin, are parts of
his essence as to their contents. This Monotheism does not yet exactly
disclaim its Polytheistic origin. The Christian, Hermas, says to his
Mistress (Vis. I 1. 7) [Greek: ou pantote se hos thean hegesamen], and
the author of the Epistle of Diognetus writes (X. 6), [Greek: tauta tois
epideomenois choregon], (i.e., the rich man) [Greek: theos ginetai ton
lambanonton]. That the concept [Greek: theos] was again used only of one
God, was due to the fact that one now started from the definition "qui
vitam aeternam habet," and again from the definition "qui est super omnia
et originem nescit." From the latter followed the absolute unity of God,
from the former a plurality of Gods. Both could be so harmonised (see
Tertull. adv. Prax. and Novat. de Trinit.) that one could assume that
the God, _qui est super omnia_, might allow his monarchy to be
administered by several persons, and might dispense the gift of
immortality and with it a relative divinity.]

[Footnote 128: See the so-called Neopythagorean philosophers and the
so-called forerunners of Neoplatonism (Cf. Bigg, The Platonists of
Alexandria, p. 250, as to Numenius). Unfortunately, we have as yet no
sufficient investigation of the question what influence, if any, the
Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy of religion had on the development of
Greek philosophy in the second and third centuries. The answering of the
question would be of the greatest importance.