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| Simon's Interpretation of the Mosaic Hexaëmeron; His Allegorical Representation of Paradise.
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Chapter IX.—Simon’s Interpretation of the Mosaic
Hexaëmeron; His Allegorical Representation of Paradise.
When, therefore, Moses has spoken of “the
six days in which God made heaven and earth, and rested on the seventh
from all His works,”624
Simon, in a manner already specified, giving (these and other passages
of Scripture) a different application (from the one intended by the
holy writers), deifies himself. When, therefore, (the followers
of Simon) affirm that there are three days begotten before sun and
moon, they speak enigmatically of Mind and Intelligence, that is,
Heaven and Earth, and of the seventh power, (I mean) the indefinite
one. For these three powers are produced antecedent to all the
rest. But when they say, “He begot me prior to all the
Ages,”625
such statements, he
says, are alleged to hold good concerning the seventh power. Now
this seventh power, which was a power existing in the indefinite power,
which was produced prior to all the Ages, this is, he says, the seventh
power, respecting which Moses utters the following words:
“And the Spirit of God was wafted over626
the water;” that is, says (the
Simonian), the Spirit which contains all things in itself, and is an
image of the indefinite power about which Simon speaks,—“an
image from an incorruptible form, that alone reduces all things into
order.” For this power that is wafted over the water, being
begotten, he says, from an incorruptible form alone, reduces all things
into order. When, therefore, according to these (heretics), there
ensued some such arrangement, and (one) similar (to it) of the world,
the Deity, he says, proceeded to form man, taking clay from the
earth. And He formed him not uncompounded, but twofold, according
to (His own) image and likeness.627
Now the image is the Spirit that is
wafted over the water; and whosoever is not fashioned into a figure of
this, will perish with the world, inasmuch as he continues only
potentially, and does exist actually. This, he says, is what has
been spoken, “that we should not be condemned with the
world.”628
If one,
however, be made into the figure of (the Spirit), and be generated from
an indivisible point, as it has been written in the
Announcement, (such a one, albeit) small, will become
great. But what is great will continue unto infinite and
unalterable duration, as being that which no longer is subject to the
conditions of a generated entity.
How then, he says, and in what manner, does God
form man? In Paradise; for so it seems to him. Grant
Paradise, he says, to be the womb; and that this is a true (assumption)
the Scripture will teach, when it utters the words, “I am He who
forms thee in thy mother’s womb.”629
For this also he wishes to have been
written so. Moses, he says, resorting to allegory, has declared
Paradise to be the womb, if we ought to rely on his statement.
If, however, God forms man in his mother’s womb—that is, in
Paradise—as I have affirmed, let Paradise be the womb, and Edem
the after-birth,630
| 630
χωρίον (i.e., locality) is
the reading in Miller, which Cruice ingeniously alters into χόριον, the caul
in which the fœtus is enclosed, which is called the
“after-birth.” | “a river
flowing forth from Edem, for the purpose of irrigating
Paradise,”631
(meaning by
this) the navel. This navel, he says, is separated into four
principles; for on either side of the navel are situated two arteries,
channels of spirit, and two veins, channels of blood. But when,
he says, the umbilical vessels632
| 632 This
rendering follows Cruice, who has succeeded in clearing away the
obscurity of the passage as given in Miller. |
proceed forth from Edem, that is, the caul in which the fœtus is
enveloped grows into the (fœtus) that is being formed in the
vicinity of the epigastrium,—(now) all in common denominate this
a navel,—these two veins through which the blood flows, and is
conveyed from Edem, the after-birth, to what are styled the gates of
the liver; (these veins, I say,) nourish the fœtus. But the
arteries which we have spoken of as being channels of spirit, embrace
the bladder on both sides, around the pelvis, and connect it with the
great artery, called the aorta, in the vicinity of the dorsal
ridge. And in this way the spirit, making its way through the
ventricles to the heart, produces a movement of the fœtus.
For the infant that was formed in Paradise neither receives nourishment
through the mouth, nor breathes through the nostrils: for as it
lay in the midst of moisture, at its feet was death, if it attempted to
breathe; for it would (thus) have been drawn away from moisture, and
perished (accordingly). But (one may go further than this); for
the entire (fœtus) is bound tightly round by a covering styled the
caul, and is nourished by a navel, and it receives through the (aorta),
in the vicinity of the dorsal ridge, as I have stated, the substance of
the spirit.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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