, it is difficult to understand how such a palpable
absurdity could have gained any credence among such cultured adherents
as the Simonians evidently were. In either case the Gnostic tradition is
shown to be pre-Christian. Every initiated Gnostic, however, must have
known that the mythos referred to the World-Soul in the Cosmos and the
Soul in man.

The accounts of the _Acts_ and of Justin and Irenaeus are so confusing
that it has been supposed that two Simons are referred to.[79] For if he
claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus, appearing in Jerusalem as the
Son, he could not have been contemporary with the apostles. It follows,
therefore, that either he made no such claim; or if he made the claim,
Justin and Irenaeus had such vague information that they confused him
with the Simon of the _Acts_; or that the supposition is not
well-founded, and Simon was simply inculcating the esoteric doctrine of
the various manifestations or descents of one and the same Christ
principle.

The Simon of Tertullian again is clearly taken from Irenaeus, as the
critics are agreed. "Tertullian evidently knows no more than he read in
Irenaeus," says Dr. Salmon.[80]

It is only when we come to the Simon of the _Philosophumena_ that we
feel on any safe ground. The prior part of it is especially precious on
account of the quotations from _The Great Revelation_ ([Greek: hae
megalae apophasis]) which we hear of from no other source. The author of
_Philosophumena_, whoever he was, evidently had access to some of the
writings of the Simonians, and here at last we have arrived at any thing
of real value in our rubbish heap.

It was not until the year 1842 that Minoides Mynas brought to Paris from
Mount Athos, on his return from a commission given him by the French
Government, a fourteenth-century MS. in a mutilated condition. This was
the MS. of our _Philosophumena_ which is supposed to have been the work
of Hippolytus. The authorship, however, is still uncertain, as will
appear by what will be said about the Simon of Epiphanius and Philaster.

The latter part of the section on Simon in the _Philosophumena_ is not
so important, and is undoubtedly taken from Irenaeus or from the
anti-heretical treatise of Justin, or from the source from which both
these fathers drew. The account of the death of Simon, however, shows
that the author was not Hippolytus from whose lost work Epiphanius and
Philaster are proved by Lipsius to have taken their account