on of the Old Testament.[328] We
might be satisfied with the observation that the manifold Gnostic
systems were produced by the increase of this tendency. In point of fact
we must admit that in the present state of our sources, we can reach no
sure knowledge beyond that. These sources, however, give certain
indications which should not be left unnoticed. If we leave out of
account the two assertions of opponents, that Gnosticism was produced by
demons[329] and--this, however, was said at a comparatively late
period--that it originated in ambition and resistance to the
ecclesiastical office, the episcopate, we find in Hegesippus, one of the
earliest writers on the subject, the statement that the whole of the
heretical schools sprang out of Judaism or the Jewish sects; in the
later writers, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus, that these schools
owe most to the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno,
etc.[330] But they all agree in this, that a definite personality, viz.,
Simon the Magician, must be regarded as the original source of the
heresy. If we try it by these statements of the Church Fathers, we must
see at once that the problem in this case is limited--certainly in a
proper way. For after Gnosticism is seen to be the acute secularising of
Christianity the only question that remains is, how are we to account
for the origin of the great Gnostic schools, that is, whether it is
possible to indicate their preliminary stages. The following may be
asserted here with some confidence: Long before the appearance of
Christianity, combinations of religion had taken place in Syria and
Palestine,[331] especially in Samaria, in so far, on the one hand, as
the Assyrian and Babylonian religious philosophy, together with its
myths, as well as the Greek popular religion, with its manifold
interpretations, had penetrated as far as the eastern shore of the
Mediterranean, and been accepted even by the Jews, and, on the other
hand, the Jewish Messianic idea had spread and called forth various
movements.[332] The result of every mixing of national religions,
however, is to break through the traditional, legal and particular
forms.[333] For the Jewish religion syncretism signified the shaking of
the authority of the Old Testament by a qualitative distinction of its
different parts, as also doubt as to the identity of the supreme God
with the national God. These ferments were once more set in motion by
Christianity. We know that i