The Project Gutenberg EBook of Simon Magus, by George Robert Stow Mead

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Title: Simon Magus

Author: George Robert Stow Mead

Release Date: July 12, 2004 [EBook #12892]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SIMON MAGUS

AN ESSAY ON THE FOUNDER OF SIMONIANISM
BASED ON THE ANCIENT SOURCES WITH
A RE-EVALUATION OF HIS PHILOSOPHY AND TEACHINGS.

BY

G.R.S. MEAD

SIMON MAGUS.

INTRODUCTION.

Everybody in Christendom has heard of Simon, the magician, and how
Peter, the apostle, rebuked him, as told in the narrative of the _Acts
of the Apostles_. Many also have heard the legend of how at Rome this
wicked sorcerer endeavoured to fly by aid of the demons, and how Peter
caused him to fall headlong and thus miserably perish. And so most think
that there is an end of the matter, and either cast their mite of pity
or contempt at the memory of Simon, or laugh at the whole matter as the
invention of superstition or the imagination of religious fanaticism,
according as their respective beliefs may be in orthodoxy or
materialism. This for the general. Students of theology and church
history, on the other hand, have had a more difficult task set them in
comparing and arranging the materials they have at their disposal, as
found in the patristic writings and legendary records; and various
theories have been put forward, not the least astonishing being the
supposition that Simon was an alias for Paul, and that the Simon and
Peter in the accounts of the fathers and in the narrative of the legends
were simply concrete symbols to represent the two sides of the Pauline
and Petrine controversies.

The first reason why I have ventured on this present enquiry is that
Simon Magus is invariably mentioned by the heresiologists as the founder
of the first heresy of the commonly-accepted Christian era, and is
believed by them to have been the originator of those systems of
religio-philosophy and theosophy which are now somewhat inaccurately
classed together under the heading of Gnosticism. And