The First Church of Rome

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NOTE ON TERMS: In the following account the terminology is non-technical, and used in a way that attempts to reflect the simple views of the Pre-Nicene Church Fathers. Those who deviated from the doctrines found in the Received Text of the Bible, Old and New Testaments, are described as "heretics"; those who adhered to those doctrines are called "Bible-believers", "Evangelicals" (believers in the Gospel as found in the Bible), "Catholics" (in the original sense of upholders of the universal, common, Bible faith) "Orthodox" (i.e. having correct opinions on Bible doctrine), and, if Hebrews, "Messianic" (the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek term "Christians"), though occasionally the word "Messianic" is used in this account in a more general way to denote Jews who believed in or looked for a Messiah other than Jesus. Through the centuries these names have become attached to particular groups and churches. The original meanings are always intended in this work, unless otherwise indicated.

The Founding of the First Church of Rome

1. The founding of The First Church of Rome happened shortly after Pentecost. There were Jews from Rome and native-born Romans who had been converted to Judaism (1) amongst the pilgrims from many lands staying at Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost in AD 33 (2). Many believed the message of the Resurrection, when they heard the preaching of Peter and witnessed the miraculous demonstrations of the Holy Spirit's power performed through the Apostles: some will have returned after the Feast to their native lands, carrying their new faith with them.

2. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (3) written around AD 58, mentions two members of the Church in Rome, Junia (traditionally a woman's name) and Andronicus, who were Christians before Paul, that is, before c. AD 37. This was several years prior to the conversion of the first Roman Gentiles or non-Jews at the house of Cornelius (c. AD 41), as related in the Acts of the Apostles (4). Therefore, Junia and Andronicus are unlikely to have heard the Gospel through Gentile intermediaries. They were Jews by birth, not proselytes (Paul calls them his kinsmen), and had come to Christ at a time when the Gospel had not spread beyond the ancient boundaries of Israel and the city of Damascus, except for the individuals from foreign lands who were present at Pentecost and occasional foreign converts such as the Ethiopian eunuch. As they had Roman names, they were perhaps Jews who had been born in Italy, or had natural ties with that country. How and where, then, did these two become Christians so early in the history of the Church? They were either converted at Pentecost or in the first few years thereafter and most probably in the near vicinity of Judaea. If they were originally Jewish residents in Rome, they may have made a pilgrimage to the festival at Jerusalem in AD 33, as Jews who lived in foreign countries commonly did, and there heard Peter preaching on the Day of Pentecost and witnessed for themselves the momentous and miraculous events of that time.

3. They were evidently more than mere spectators. Paul uses an unusual phrase to describe Junia and Andronicus: he says they were "of note among the apostles". 1) They were OF NOTE (Greek episemoi, literally marked or stamped, i.e., as we might say, they were noticeably of the same fine brand as the Apostles); 2) they were counted AMONG the Apostles; 3) they were counted among THE Apostles. These considerations suggest not only that they were closely associated with the circle of Jesus' disciples in Jerusalem (point 3) but also that they had the same remarkable, supernatural ministry and self-sacrificing energy which distinguished the Galilean Apostles (point 1): Paul uses the image of a seal, imprinting impressions, marks or signs on clay or metal to describe the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in transforming the human personality; the "signs" or "marks" of an Apostle were miraculous operations of the Holy Spirit, like healing and prophecy, that accompanied the ministry, and the patient endurance of suffering and hardship in behalf of the Gospel. Junia and Andronicus were obviously "stamped" with that Apostolic Seal. Paul refers to them as his "fellowprisoners" and this shows they had already suffered for the cause of Christ. The phrase also appears to denote that Andronicus and Junia received the Seal or Stamp of the Holy Spirit "among the Apostles", i.e. when and where the Apostles received It, confirming their presence at Pentecost. Furthermore, it implies (point 2) that they had a singular call to missionary work and that this work rivaled in importance that of the Apostles themselves. What more likely than that call was in the direction of their adopted home, to evangelize the capital of the Gentile world as the Apostles evangelized the capital of Israel? At any event, on their return to or arrival in Rome, as joyful, Spirit-filled believers in the Lord Jesus, baptized in His Name, they surely would have spread the Word amongst their Jewish compatriots, and gathered a Jewish Christian circle, as well as Gentile converts, around them. The core of the fellowship would have been what we would call today Messianic Jews, keeping the commandments of the Torah, the Law of Moses, as did the disciples in Jerusalem, but depending wholly on the Messiah Jesus for salvation of their soul.

4. We know that when Emperor Claudius (AD 41-54) enacted legislation against the Jews, first denying them the right to assemble (early AD 41) (5) and subsequently (c. AD 45-49) expelling all Jews from Rome, it was because he had become alarmed at the increasing number of foreign cults in the city and the disturbances to which they gave rise: the Jews were, according to the Roman historian, Suetonius, continually causing riots because "they were driven to do so by Chrestus" (6) (Chrestus is the common, pagan Roman, way of spelling the name Christ). This implies there were already Christians in Rome by the time of Claudius and that their preaching had upset the established Jewish community. The same decree of Claudius drove two Jews from Rome, named Aquila and Prisca (or, less formally, Priscilla), a man and his wife. They fled to Corinth, the chief city of Achaea or Southern Greece, and there met the Apostle Paul who was preaching the Gospel in that city. The Acts of the Apostles mentions nothing of their conversion and implies that Paul was immediately at home with them; in fact he set up business with them (both Aquila and Paul made tents for a living). This strongly suggests they were already Christians when Paul met them.

5. There seems, then, to have existed at Rome in the reign of Claudius a community of Christians, composed of Messianic Jews and as many Gentile converts as they had won to Christ, founded between AD 33 and 49 as a consequence of the preaching of Peter at Pentecost, and counting in its ranks the Jewish couple Aquila and Priscilla and probably also the Spirit-anointed Jewish missionaries Andronicus and Junia. The location of this community seems to have been quite close to the center of the city in the crowded Subura, since a remnant of that first church is found in the second century AD holding meetings in an extension of the Subura along the Vicus Lateranus on the Esquiline Hill, priding itself in its status as the "First Church of Rome"; also a second house-church associated with members of the fellowship of Junia and Andronicus listed in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, traditionally a "sister-church" of the one on the Vicus Lateranus, is found located in another extension of the Subura, along the Vicus Patricius on the Viminal Hill, from the latter half of the first century AD, which tends to confirm the connection of the two missionaries with that particular district. The common origin and subsequent estrangement of these twin house-churches will form the central theme of the story as it unfolds. The Subura was a bustling, noisy, red-light zone, described as dirty and wet, frequented by traders in provisions and delicacies and artisans of various sorts, and dotted with the occasional residence of some noble family, including that of Caesar himself and that of L. Arruntius Stella, consul in AD 101. There was, indeed, a Jewish colony in the Subura, as there were in several other regions of the city, including Porta Capena on the Aventine (also traditionally the site of a house-church in the latter half of the first century AD), but the largest Jewish settlement in the reigns of the early emperors was on the Janiculum Hill in Trastevere (Trans Tiberim in Latin), across the River Tiber from the Roman Forum, that being the heartland of the rabbinical Jewish community in the city. Then came the decree banishing Jews - including Christian Jews - from Rome. Emperor Claudius did not revoke his decrees during his lifetime, therefore they were still in force until his death in AD 54. During his 13 year reign only Jewish Christians who did not adhere to the Law of Moses and latterly only Christians who were not of the nation of Israel could practice their faith without hindrance in the city. The Gentile converts of that first church would suddenly have found themselves orphaned (6a): their Jewish teachers and faithful apostles, their spiritual guides, had been driven out of the city. What would become of them in the hostile, pagan, and downright corrupt, environment of first-century Rome? As their subsequent history proves, that fatal wound to the earliest church in the capital was never properly healed.

6. Some years after the death of Claudius, around AD 58, Paul wrote his Epistle to the Roman Christians. He states in that epistle that he had wanted to visit the Christians in Rome for "many years" (7): "many" must mean more than one or two, and considering that "few" means "eight" elsewhere (8) in the New Testament epistles, this confirms the existence of a Christian community in Rome at least as early as the reign of Claudius. Now, in Chapter 16 of the epistle, Paul sends greetings to Aquila and Priscilla and Junia and Andronicus. So by AD 58, when Claudius was dead and his decrees had lapsed, the Jewish Christians were back in Rome.

7. In fact Paul refers in his epistle to THREE groups of Christians in Rome at that time. One is the church in the house of Aquila and Priscilla (3). The church of Santa Prisca on the Aventine near the Circus Maximus occupies the traditional site of their house, in the Porta Capena area with its Jewish colony. The second is the group whose missionaries were Junia and Andronicus. They did not have a pastor at that time and Junia and Andronicus were in prison (3). It was to this second group mainly that Paul wrote his epistle. Paul said he longed to come to Rome himself and establish these latter Christians in the Faith, imparting to them some spiritual benefit by his presence. Paul's normal practice would have been, once he arrived there, to ordain a pastor for them whom he discerned to be capable of taking responsibility for the church’s spiritual welfare. The church leaders in those days were called "elders" (in Greek presbyteroi, from which we get the word "priests"), "shepherds" (pastor is the Latin word for "shepherd") and "supervisors" (in Greek episkopoi, "bishops"). They were servants of the laity, not overlords. One of the Christians in this second group, Rufus, is believed by some to have been the Roman senator Rufus Pudens, who later opened his house on the Vicus Patricius for Christian meetings >> under a pastor appointed by "apostles", Paul perhaps one of them, when he finally reached the capital. The church of Santa Pudenziana (Pudentiana), named after Pudens, on the Viminal Hill, marks the traditional site of this ancient house-church. Hermas, another in this second group, >> a converted slave, later received a prophetic ministry amongst the brethren of Pudens' fellowship.

8. Finally, Paul refers to a rather mysterious, THIRD group of Christians present in Rome around AD 58. The members of this group, Paul says, were the cause of DIVISIONS in the Christian body of Rome (3) (i.e. they had formed a sect or sects of their own) and they were opposed to the True Faith of the Christians Paul was writing to. Paul said their god was their belly: they were selfish, sensual Christians, interested in Christianity only for what they could get out of it. Paul told the Christians to MARK AND AVOID them. This means they were past correcting in Paul's judgment. In fact these false ones tried to deceive the simple believers by their show of higher education and oratory, by "good words" and fair speeches. They were a menace to the newly reconstituted churches of the city. No wonder Paul was concerned for that flock without a pastor.

9. Where did this SECT come from? A clue is found in the name "Chrestus" (not "Christus") which the Roman history gives as the name of the instigator (impulsor) of the Jewish riots in Claudius' reign and who the wording of the passage implies was actually present in Rome at that time. There was a sect of heretical Christians, called Gnostics ("Knowing Ones"), who claimed to have special divine "Gnosis" ("Knowledge" or "Science" falsely so called - Paul refers to it (9) at the end of his First Epistle to Timothy); they had particular reasons to call Jesus "Chrestus" and the cult-leader who founded their movement is said to have arrived in Rome during the reign of Claudius. The origin and beliefs of this sect will be examined in more detail hereafter. "Chrestus" means the "Good One" and it was a divine title of several heathen gods. The pagans whom the heretics were eager to impress already knew of gods called "Chrestus", but Jesus' proper title "Christus" (from the Greek Christos, "Anointed One", a translation of the Hebrew Mashiach, "Anointed One, Messiah") meant nothing to them: it is not surprising, therefore, to find the name "Chrestus" for Christ and "Chrestiani" for Christians in common use thereafter amongst the pagan Romans, this being the earliest historical evidence of that usage. Furthermore, the heretics wanted to disassociate their "good" god from what they termed the "evil" god of the Jews. The latter, the Creator God of the Old Testament, was, on their blasphemous theorizing, a veritable demon, a malevolent, inferior, spirit, guilty by his own admission of the murder of innocent, Canaanite, babies, and prone to fits of bad temper, in which, as at Sinai, he thundered down in judgment and damnation on "good", sweet, loving people (like themselves and the worshippers of the Golden Calf!). He was also responsible, according to them, for all the suffering, pain and death found in the material world which he had created. Such a god, they said, could never have been the Father of their Jesus "Chrestus", the messenger of Love and Goodness. There are nominal Christians still under the influence of this heretical view of the God of the Old Testament through its appropriation by, and perpetuation in, Roman Catholic Christianity, as well as in certain Protestant movements which sprang from Rome in the Reformation. It breeds anti-Semitism in all its vile forms. Notice the "good words" (Greek CHRESTOlogia) which Paul in the Epistle to the Romans says the heretics used to deceive the faithful. Notice also how Paul begins his letter to the pastorless Roman Christians with a condemnation of certain intellectual pseudo-believers who, like these heretics, had a knowledge (epiGNOSIS) of God but who fell into idolatry and then into all kinds of moral deviation and sexual perversion (10).

Simon Magus (left)

10. Christian writers in the second century AD claimed that the earliest sect of heretics in Rome were the disciples of the Samaritan cult-leader, Simon Magus (11). Simon Magus is said to have been, originally, a disciple of the prophet, and forerunner of the Messiah, John the Baptist, the most prominent of his inner circle of thirty disciples. However, after acquiring a smattering of Greek learning in Alexandria, Simon drifted into heresy. He became the associate of a false teacher and sorcerer, called Dositheus, who was likewise, originally, one of the thirty disciples of John the Baptist. Dositheus claimed to be nothing less than the manifestation or embodiment of God on earth, the so-called "Standing One", who would never taste of death. This was his way of asserting that he was the expected "Coming One" (the Christ or Messiah) foretold by John the Baptist. For John had prophesied to those who asked him whether he was the Messiah: "I baptize with water: but there STANDETH one among you, whom ye know not; he it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose" (11a). Dositheus, like John, was the head of thirty disciples. Simon eventually ousted his master from his position of leadership. The story goes that on one occasion, when Dositheus smote Simon with a staff, because of his impudence in asserting his superior knowledge, the staff passed through him as though through smoke. Dositheus asked Simon if it was he, indeed, who was the "Standing One", and, on receiving an answer in the affirmative, bowed down to him in worship. Filling out his divine title a little, Simon now presented himself as "He Who Stood, Stands and Is To Stand"! Soon he established himself in his home territory of Samaria, bewitching the multitudes by his pretended "signs and wonders" and persuading them to believe that he was indeed the embodiment of the Supreme Power.

10a. That, for the present purposes, would have been the end of the story had not an unusual turn of events brought Simon into contact with the Apostles of Jesus shortly after Pentecost (12). Philip the Evangelist was led of the Spirit to preach the Word of God and the Resurrection of Jesus in Samaria. Simon was astounded at the miracles he saw performed in the ministry of Philip the Evangelist, which far surpassed anything he was able to produce, and which thoroughly convinced the previously bewitched Samaritans of the truth of Philip's message. Simon, too, was convinced and believed (so far as his intellectual faculties were persuaded by the outward manifestations of the Spirit) and was baptized. A little while later, however, the Apostles Peter and John came to Samaria to pray for the new believers there to receive the Holy Spirit. When Simon saw that the Holy Spirit was received by the Samaritans at the laying-on of hands by the Apostles, Simon imagined that this was some kind of magical rite, through which the supernatural powers he had witnessed in Philip's ministry could be conferred from person to person. He approached Peter and offered him money to acquire from him the power to lay on hands and transfer the Holy Spirit to others. (Both the creed and the deed thus first exemplified in Simon Magus are prevalent in denominational Christianity to this day.) Peter roundly rebuked him for his shamelessness and blasphemy. His real motivation and lack of heartfelt faith could not be concealed from the all-seeing eye of the Spirit of God in Peter. He was openly denounced as a money-loving hypocrite, thoroughly, still, in bondage to the occult.

10b. Though terrified at Peter's rebuke and the fate that might befall him as an apostate, Simon was far from being repentant, as his subsequent history proves. He realized that his exposure by the Apostles and the success of the Gospel preached by them amongst the Samaritans spelt the death-knell to his efforts in those parts. Looking for greener pastures in the West, Simon came to Rome IN THE TIME OF THE EMPEROR CLAUDIUS, between AD 41 and 54, precisely in the period when the Jews, including Christian Jews, were expelled from Rome because of rioting at the instigation of "Chrestus". Though Simon himself seems to have been Jewish on his mother's side, and Gentile Cypriot on his father's, he was a Samaritan by nationality, a native of the Samaritan village of Gitto, and also had at least one, very powerful, friend in Claudius' court (12a). Claudius’ ban did not affect him. Later Christian writers claim that Simon deluded and held under his occult sway many Christians present in Rome at that time. The reference must be mainly to Gentile Christians (13) - since faithful Jews had been forced to leave - and indeed, being Gentiles, newly brought to faith in Christ and without Jewish background in the Scriptures, they would have been easy targets for deceivers like Simon (13a). Here was the sad remnant of that first church, so cruelly orphaned by Claudius' decree. Satan had provided the orphans with a "father". These Gentile Christians were now wholly under the turbulent influence of Simon Magus and his Gnostic heresy (14). But the Samaritan magus also impressed some Romans in high position in the State, because the authorities of Rome sanctioned the erection of a statue to Simon "The Holy God" on the island in the River Tiber at Rome, the base of which with its inscription was discovered in 1574. >> This was at a point in the River just below the Jewish colony at the foot of the Janiculum Hill, and was, no doubt, a provocation to the Jews. The Roman authorities would in the circumstances have had no objection to such anti-Semitic posturing.

10c. The evidence is (12a) that in Rome Simon became acquainted with Claudius' favorite, the ex-slave and socialite, Antonius Felix. Felix influenced the legislation that Claudius introduced. As Simon's anti-Semitic sway over Felix increased, Felix encouraged Claudius to act against the Jews. Hence Claudius' law expelling Jews from Rome (c. AD 45-49). Later in Claudius' reign, Felix was granted his wish to become, of all things, procurator of Judaea. There his obligation to Simon became even greater. He asked the magus to help him woo the young and beautiful Drusilla from her royal husband, Azizus, king of Emesa. Simon agreed. Sent by Felix to Drusilla, Simon's hypnotic powers of persuasion prevailed. Drusilla abandoned her husband and married Felix. When, a few years later, the Apostle Paul was arrested in Judaea, he was brought to trial before Felix and his adulterous consort, Drusilla, in Caesarea (c. AD 59). It is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles that Felix trembled when he heard Paul talk about righteousness and the divine Judgment to come, this in spite of the fact that (probably through the magus Simon) Felix had a quite accurate knowledge of Christian doctrine. As was the case with his friend, Simon, Felix's intellectual appraisal of Christianity was utterly divorced from its practical, moral, application (14a). It does not surprise us to find Felix thereafter pursuing anti-Semitic policies in Judaea and provoking Jewish riots. Soon Simon's dreams were fulfilled. The Jewish reaction led to Roman intervention, then to the Jewish revolt against Rome, and finally to the total destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (AD 70). Nine years later, as the judgment of God on all the players in this drama unfolded, Drusilla's child, Agrippa III, the offspring of her illegitimate union, perished in the eruption of Vesuvius.

11. In the light of this evidence, we would expect there to be another early church in Roman tradition, apart from Santa Prisca (Aquila and Prisca's house-church) and Santa Pudenziana (the second house-church in Pudens' house), which would mark the site of this original Christian fellowship in Rome. To recap, the community was founded, as seems most likely, by Andronicus and Junia during their earlier mission-work in Rome before the reign of Claudius, but subsequently, when its Jewish members were banished from the city, it fell into Gnostic error under the influence of Simon Magus. Another such house-church does appear in the old records, called Santa Prassede. It was located in the Subura district on the Vicus Lateranus (the modern Via S. Martino ai Monti and Via Santa Prassede near S. Maria Maggiore) and is one of the three house-churches said to have existed within the walls of Rome before the middle of the second century AD, these three being Santa Prisca, Santa Pudenziana, and Santa Prassede (14b): in Roman tradition Santa Prassede is also referred to as a sister-church of Santa Pudenziana, i.e. originally it was closely connected with Pudens' fellowship and its missionaries Junia and Andronicus. Furthermore, the later bishops of this church insisted that it was the FIRST and ORIGINAL church in Rome, and indeed it was. What they did not say is that it was hopelessly and irremediably backslidden from its original pure Christian faith. We shall see later >> how this church came to be named after one of Pudens' faithful daughters, whilst providing an ecclesiastical home for the Gnostic heretics.

Santa Prassede

12. Simon was a devotee of the religion of the Magi (15). The form of Magism practiced at Rome in that period was Mithraism, the worship of the god Mithras, >> and Mithras was one of the deities who was titled "Chrestos" (in Latin, "Chrestus"), the "Good One". Simon claimed to be the very embodiment of that "Good One" the Gnostics preached about (16), so the "Chrestus" or "Good" Christ that drove the Jews to riot in Rome and who the words of the Roman history imply was actually present in Rome at that time as a mover of sedition could well have been Simon Magus himself (12a). There had been bitter blood for centuries between Samaritans and Jews: it would not be at all surprising if in the time of Claudius Jews had been offended to the point of rioting by this Samaritan heretical form of Christianity. One obvious, public provocation, noted by later Christian historians, was the statue of the "god" Simon on the island in the Tiber, which was within sight of the main Jewish colony in Trastevere and stood like a malignant sentinel between the Jews and the city of Rome. Certainly Simon seems to have had quite an impact in the cities where he was active. The whole of Samaria, according to the Acts of the Apostles, was stirred by his phenomenal demonstrations. Similar results were achieved in Rome, if we accept the account of Simon's fellow Samaritan (and learned heresy-hunter), Justin Martyr, who was well placed to know the facts, and other Christian writers who followed and amplified it (13). There is, in fact, evidence that a revival or, rather, a recreation of Mithraism occurred about this time: a "religious genius" (17) who lived no later than around AD 100 seems to have combined the ancient Mithraic cult with the popular, syncretic paganism of the early Empire, with Platonism and with themes apparently derived from Christianity in such a way that by the second century AD the new cult of Mithraism was widely accepted throughout the Roman world. Simon was a magus who fitted the bill precisely, operating in the very heart of the empire and combining the Magian cult with elements of Graeco-Roman paganism, philosophy and Christianity, exactly as this reconstruction requires. Mithraism was thereafter the deadly rival of Christianity. If the Roman Empire had not turned officially "Christian" in the time of Constantine, it almost certainly would have turned Mithraic.

13. The secondary effect of Simon's cultic activity was to cast in a false light the Christian faith preached by the original Jewish Christians. The followers of Simon were not correctable in Paul's judgment, so Aquila and Priscilla, on their return to Rome, set up their new house-church, in a different location from Simon's group, on a spur of the Aventine Hill near the Circus Maximus (Santa Prisca). The other group of Christians are found later conducting meetings likewise, at a separate location from the Simonians, in senator Pudens' house on the Viminal Hill >> on the Vicus Patricius (now the church of Santa Pudenziana on the Via Urbana). This house-church was, however, much nearer the heretical school than Aquila and Priscilla's gathering, in the same district of the Subura. Later this proved a liability as some of the elders from the church in Pudens' house defected to the Gnostics; the geographical proximity perhaps facilitated fellowship between the two groups.

Map of Ancient Rome with location of the early churches of Rome: A = First church of Jewish Christians, later a Gnostic school (Santa Prassede); B = House-church of Bible-believers (Santa Pudenziana); C = House-church of Aquila and Priscilla (Santa Prisca)

CLICK ON THE LETTERS A, B, or C above to go to a modern street-map of Rome showing the church's exact location

14. The heretics aped the Gentile, pagan, religions and combined Christianity with pagan cults. They were popular with their heathen neighbors and with the authorities of the city. They suffered no persecution (18). Popularity and acclaim was what they coveted. All the trappings of paganism, image-worship, multiplicity of gods and goddesses, rituals and sacrifices, they introduced into their "New Age" form of Christianity, retaining only the titles of the original faith and dispensing with the substance. Also they formed themselves into a philosophical "school" like the heathen philosophers. Schools of this kind were common throughout the Roman Empire. The Apostle Paul had taught in the school of one Tyrannus in Ephesus on the coast of Turkey, but he used it only as a place to preach and teach. The Church in Ephesus founded by Saint Paul was different altogether. Schools were academic institutions, the Church was led by the supernatural presence of the Holy Spirit.

15. Simon Magus was succeeded as head of the Gnostic movement in Rome by another leader, or "Father" as they called him (a blasphemous assumption of God's paternal title) (19), who developed and modified the Gnostic teaching according to his own "inner light". With a head start from Simon and his immediate circle of disciples, a Syrian called Cerdon launched out on the Gnostic path and took up his residence in Rome (20). He taught that the Supreme God was higher than the Creator-god of the Old Testament, and was the ideal Ultimate Good to which the pagan philosophers aspired - if the aim was to seduce intellectuals - or otherwise was the Supreme Deity, the Beneficent or Good Being, of the idolatrous heathen. Spirit was good and was the essence of the Superior God. Matter was evil and was the creation of the inferior god. This doctrine was derived from the dualistic theories of the Zoroastrian Magians (15). He looked down on the Jewish Law and the Scriptures of the Old Testament, believing them to be inspired by the inferior Creator-god. Jesus was the Son of the Superior God, on his theory, and was consequently a pure Spirit-being, having no real, fleshly, body. He was not born in a literal sense from the Virgin and did not really suffer on the Cross (for how could a pure Spirit be born or die?). The kind of Gnostic theories to which Cerdon subscribed held that whilst the Supreme God appeared in an apparitional body as Jesus, his proper, material, body was BREAD (!), the bread of the eucharist, and Gnostics of this stamp refused to hold communion with Bible-believing Christians who held otherwise (20b). A literal Resurrection of the body Cerdon denied outright. At death, the human soul entered into eternal life, that being the "Resurrection" referred to in those Scriptures which he accepted as inspired by the Superior God. Being wholly averse to the Jewish Law, and imagining that the Apostle Paul sympathized with that viewpoint, (20a) Cerdon accepted only the Gospel of Luke (Paul's Gospel) as authentic. However, all the passages in that Gospel which contradicted his Gnostic theory he excised from the text. He treated the Epistles of Paul likewise. The Acts of the Apostles and the Revelation of John he rejected altogether. In the course of a long and prosperous career as head of the Roman school he managed to corrupt some eminent members of the rival, Bible-believing, fellowship and latterly, in a master stroke, cunningly retransformed his school into (the outward semblance of) a Christian Church. >> His group was known at first as the Cerdonian "sect" by the Bible-believing Christians and only after its alleged transformation was it referred to as a "church". However, it was not long before the Bible teachers exposed Cerdon's ecclesiastical charade. Cerdon, in turn, was succeeded by the infamous archheretic, Marcion, in the first half of the second century AD. The modifications introduced by each successor resulted in further degradation of the original, Pentecostal, Christian, faith. Also splinter-groups broke away from Simon’s school and formed schools of their own, aping once again the pagan philosophies. By AD 62 there were already seven sects of heretics (21), of which Simon's was the first (22). By the middle of the second century AD, a whole swarm of Gnostic heresies (23) had spread over the Roman Empire from the breeding-ground in the capital, and principally from the school of Cerdon and Marcion. The demonic inspiration for these movements came from the East, and usually the founding gurus made their way from the East to Rome, from Alexandria in Egypt or from Antioch in Syria, but the whole movement began to center around Rome itself. These cult-leaders wanted to become famous in the capital city of the Empire. They hoped to rise up the social ladder by peddling their "Gnosis", or theological "Science", amongst the rich and idle upper classes of Rome. Lust for influence and wealth was what motivated them.

16. When Paul arrived in Rome around AD 61, he was a "house-prisoner" awaiting trial by Caesar. The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem hoped he would be found guilty of causing public disturbances and punished (preferably executed) by the Roman authorities. The Jews in Rome had heard nothing from the religious authorities in Jerusalem about Paul and he was able to preach the Word amongst them for at least two years, according to Luke's account in the Acts of the Apostles. He used his hired accommodation in Rome as a meeting-house. At some point following that period he was transferred to the Praetorium, or Praetorian Camp, which was the military garrison and barracks of the Praetorian Guard which policed the city. His presence in Rome must have been a great encouragement to the Christians there. The modest gatherings of disciples mentioned in Paul's Epistle to the Romans swelled to a "huge multitude" (24) (implying hundreds, if not thousands) >> while Paul was in the city, though their days were destined to be few in the "vale of tears".

The Great Apostle Paul

17. Whilst under arrest, Paul also wrote letters to the churches he had helped to set up in Europe and Asia. In these letters we find Paul mentioning the heretical Christian sect. They were clearly still active in the city. In his letter from Rome to the Christian Church in Philippi in Macedonia (Northern Greece), around AD 63, Paul mentions a group of so-called Christians in Rome (25) who preached Christ, but with wrong motives. They were envious of the true believers and argued and disputed with them.

Ruins of the Colisseum, Rome, where many Christians were martyred

Of false brethren like these Paul says in his letter, their god is their belly, they are proud of what they ought to be ashamed of, they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, they are concerned with worldly affairs, and their end is destruction; he refers to "dogs" (religiously-motivated sodomites) and "evil-workers" and to the "concision" (meaning circumcised professors of Christianity - both Samaritans and Jews were circumcised and there were Gnostics who were also circumcised Jews); by contrast, true Christians, he says, belong to a heavenly Kingdom, waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus, and the transformation of the body He will effect at that time, and have nothing to do with secular politics. "Belly-worship" is the identical phrase Paul used to describe the Roman heretics in his earlier Epistle to the Romans. The phrase is not mere metaphor as some actually worshipped the phallic god Priapus under the title the "Good God" (16). These false brethren wanted to make Paul's situation worse, hoping that the authorities would punish him with something more than imprisonment. Indeed, it is in this very letter, and immediately before his mention of the heretics' agitation against him, that Paul refers for the first time to his imprisonment in the Praetorian military garrison. Paul's penal conditions had deteriorated since the days of his house-arrest. The provocateurs were not Jews by religion, they were - nominally - Christians. Also they were active, spreading their propaganda around the city by public preaching. They were OF the world, not merely IN it. They wanted to obtain their objectives by USING THE SECULAR AUTHORITIES AGAINST THE TRUE CHRISTIANS. This was the technique of Simon and his Gnostic disciples.

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1. Acts, 2. 1-13: ¶ And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. 5 ¶ And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. 6 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. 7 And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? 8 And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? 9 Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, 10 Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. 12 And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? 13 Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.

2. On the date AD 33 rather than AD 30 and for other details about the events at the Crucifixion, see Appendix 1.

3. In the following passage of Romans, we find Paul addressing a group of Christian believers, listed by name, amongst them Andronicus and Junia (v. 7) , but no pastor or bishop is designated amongst that group. There is no indication that this group was divided into different fellowships. Paul also mentions (v. 3) a separate church (ekklesia) in the house of Aquila and Priscilla. Here, then, in AD 58 we find two fellowships in Rome, one a church (ekklesia) so called under Paul's steadfast adherents, Aquila and Priscilla, and a second group, apparently forming a looser fellowship, who included the missionaries Andronicus and Junia, but were without a pastor. Finally, vv. 17-18, is mentioned a group of schismatics and heretics, who were a danger to the simple-hearted believers. Romans, 16. 1-20: "¶ I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea: 2 That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also. 3 Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus: 4 Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. 5 Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my wellbeloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ. 6 Greet Mary, who bestowed much labor on us. 7 Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellowprisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. 8 Greet Amplias my beloved in the Lord. 9 Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ, and Stachys my beloved. 10 Salute Apelles approved in Christ. Salute them which are of Aristobulus' household. 11 Salute Herodion my kinsman. Greet them that be of the household of Narcissus, which are in the Lord. 12 Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord. Salute the beloved Persis, which labored much in the Lord. 13 Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine. 14 Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and the brethren which are with them. 15 Salute Philologus, and Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints which are with them. 16 Salute one another with an holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you. 17 ¶ Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. 18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words [chrestologia] and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. 19 For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil. 20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen."

4. The beginning of the Gentile Church was held to have been the conversion of Cornelius and his friends: Acts of the Apostles, Ch. 10 (passim) and 15. 7: Acts 10. 45-48: "And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then prayed they him to tarry certain days." Acts 15. 7: "And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe."

5. Dion Cassius, LX. vi: "The Jews had by this time increased in numbers again and it would have been difficult to remove them from the city without a disturbance of their own people; so, he [Claudius] did not expel them, but brought in legislation forbidding them to assemble, whilst they continued to order their daily lives by their ancestral Law. The associations reintroduced by Gaius [Caligula], he dissolved.". On the dating to AD 41 compare Dion Cassius LX. viii. 1-4: [A series of intervening acts] "Next [my emphasis, the decree of Claudius relating to the Jews being mentioned earlier in Dion's account] he [Claudius] restored Commagene to Antiochus, since Gaius, though he had himself given him the district, had taken it away again; and Mithridates the Iberian, whom Gaius had summoned and imprisoned, was sent home again to resume his throne. To another Mithridates, a lineal descendant of Mithridates the Great, he granted Bosporus, giving to Polemon some land in Cilicia in place of it. He enlarged the domain of Agrippa [I] of Palestine, who, happening to be in Rome, had helped him to become emperor, and bestowed on him the rank of consul; and to his brother Herod he gave the rank of praetor and a principality. And he permitted them to enter the senate and to express their thanks to him in Greek.The acts I have named, now, were the acts of Claudius himself, and they were praised by everybody; but certain other things were done at this time of quite a different nature by his freedmen and by his wife Valeria Messalina ...." The decree of Claudius on the Jews preceded ["next" viii. 1] these acts but was effected at the same period ["at this time" viii. 4], according to the simple reading of Dion Cassius, and according to Josephus, Wars, II. xi. 5, the donation of Claudius to Agrippa happened "immediately" after and as a consequence of the help Agrippa gave to Claudius when he was raised to the imperial purple. This dates the decree to AD 41, as Claudius was made emperor at the very beginning of AD 41 on Jan 24th of that year.

6. Suetonius, Life of Claudius, XXV. 4: Suetonius writes " Iudaeos impulsore Chresto adsidue tumultantis Roma expulsit." "The Jews, who were persistently causing public disturbances because they were driven to do so by Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled from Rome."

6a. This word is used by the Apostle Paul regarding the new, Gentile, converts of Thessalonica in Macedonia (I Thess. 2. 7: Gk. ‘êmeis de adelphoi aporphanisthentes aph’ ‘umôn ...., i.e. "We, brethren, having been separated from you like (parents from) orphans ...." When Paul wrote I Thessalonians from Athens, he, Silvanus and Timothy had been compelled by circumstance to leave the new converts without spiritual guidance at a time when they were under persecution from the local authorities and Jewish radicals. A similar situation is envisaged here.

7. Romans, 15. 22-24: 22 For which cause also I have been much hindered from coming to you. 23 But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come unto you; 24 Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company.

8. I Peter, 3. 20: "... Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water."

9. I Timothy, 6. 20f.: 20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science [Greek: gnosis] falsely so called: 21 Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.

10. Romans, 1: 18-32: 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; 19 ¶ Because that which may be known [Greek: to gnoston] of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew [Greek: gnontes] God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge [Greek: epignosei], God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing [Greek: epignontes] the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

11. Justin, First Apology, 26: ".... After Christ’s ascension into heaven the devils put forward certain men who said that they themselves were gods; and they were not only not persecuted by you, but even deemed worthy of honors. There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto, who in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic, by virtue of the art of the devils operating in him. He was considered a God, and as a God was honored by you with a statue, which statue was erected on the river Tiber, between the two bridges, and bore this inscription, in the language of Rome: — “Simoni Deo Sancto,” “To Simon the holy God.” And almost all the Samaritans, and a few even of other nations, worship him, and acknowledge him as the first God; and a woman, Helena, who went about with him at that time, and had formerly been a prostitute, they say is the first idea generated by him. And a man, Menander, also a Samaritan, of the town Capparetaea, a disciple of Simon, and inspired by devils, we know to have deceived many while he was in Antioch by his magical art. He persuaded those who adhered to him that they should never die, and even now there are some living who hold this opinion of his. And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other God greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds — the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh — we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you." Also Dial.Tryph. cxx: "For I gave no thought to any of my people, that is, the Samaritans, when I had a communication in writing with Caesar, but stated that they were wrong in trusting to the magician Simon of their own nation, who, they say, is God above all power, and authority, and might.”

11a. John 1. 26-27

12. Acts, 8. 9-25: 9 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: 10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God. 11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries. 12 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13 Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done. 14 ¶ Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: 15 Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: 16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) 17 Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. 18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, 19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. 20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. 21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. 22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. 23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. 24 Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me. 25 And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

12a. §1. On Felix: Ancient sources: Acts 23. 24-26, 24, 25.14; Josephus, Antiquities 20.7.1-2, 20.8.5-7, 20.8.9; War 2.12.8, 2.13.2, 2.13.4-5, 2.13.7; Tacitus, Histories 5.9; Annals 12.54; Suetonius, Claudius 28.
The earliest account in Acts (note 12) locates Simon in Samaria but says nothing of his family or origin. The next account in Josephus (below) tells us of a magus by the name of Simon who was an intimate associate of Antonius Felix the procurator of Judaea before whom Paul appeared in Caesarea c. AD 59. This Simon the magus was already a friend of Felix in the early years of his procuratorship during the latter part of the reign of Claudius. At the prompting of Felix, Simon won over the young and beautiful Drusilla, daughter of Herod Agrippa I and wife of Azizus, king of Emesa, and persuaded her to commit adultery and marry Felix (c. AD 54). Josephus says Simon was a Jew and by birth a Cypriot. (A scribal slip seems to have produced the impossible "Atomos" as the name of this magus in a couple of MSS., probably through the insertion and corruption of the name Antonius [Felix], and perhaps also through Simon's adoption of this, his Roman patron's, name; cf. Simon's "father" is called Antonius in the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, and in the same work Simon is represented as denying that this Antonius was his real father - though admittedly only to claim a virgin birth for himself! [below].) Felix was one of the chief favorites of the Emperor Claudius (r. AD 41-54) amongst his freedmen, second only, if not equal, in Claudius' esteem, to the freedman Posides. Claudius granted the procuratorship of Judaea to Felix (c. AD 52-53) as an imperial favor. The close relationship between Felix and Claudius, on the one hand, and between Simon the magus and Felix, on the other, would have given Simon considerable influence in imperial circles in Rome.
§2. The next account in Justin Martyr tells us that a magus called Simon, the one mentioned in Acts, came from Samaria to Rome in the days of Claudius and received great honors there. He was worshipped as a god and a statue of Simon, identifying him with the Roman deity Semo Sancus, was erected on the Isle in the Tiber. Simon Magus was the founder of a sect of heretics in Rome and founded a school which gave birth to a swarm of other Gnostic heresies. (The setting of the Dialogue with Trypho is Ephesus at some period near the end of the Bar-Kocheba revolt c. AD 135, and the First Apology dates from around the third quarter of the second century AD.) Justin's account is corroborated by Irenaeus (c. AD 180), Adv. Haer. I. xxiii. 1. The likelihood is, as has frequently been observed, that Acts, Josephus and Justin are talking about the same magus. It would be highly improbable that there were two magi of the name Simon, both connected with the area of Judaea and Samaria in the days of Claudius, and, at the same time, having access to, and great influence with, the inner circles of the imperial court in Rome. (Scholars of both the conservative and the critical schools have accepted the identity of the two Simons; Waitz says the identification is "not improbable" in the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. X, col. 420a, s.v. Simon Magus.) We find that when Felix was made procurator of Judaea, towards the end of the reign of Claudius, he embarked on a policy of wicked aggravation of his Jewish subjects. His period in office marked, according to Tacitus and Josephus, a milestone in the deterioration of the relationship between the Jews and the Romans, which finally culminated in the disastrous Jewish revolt and the sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70. And the fault, Tacitus tells us, was on the part of Felix. Is it a coincidence that the Gnostic teaching of Simon Magus, Felix's close friend and spiritual advocate, was markedly anti-Semitic?
§3. But even before Felix arrived in Judaea, we find anti-Semitic policies being put into effect by Claudius, viz. the expulsion of Jews from Rome (c. AD 45-49). (Dion Cassius tells us that the earlier decree of AD 41, forbidding Jews to assemble, was Claudius' own.) According to Suetonius, the reason for the expulsion was that the Jews were continually causing riots, "because they were driven to do so by Chrestus" (impulsore Chresto). "Chrestus" is a common, pagan, Roman way of spelling the name Christ (the Messiah), but was also a heathen divine name, meaning the "Good One". Seemingly there was someone in Rome stirring up Jewish riots who called himself the "Good One" or "Christ". Claudius' legislation, however, did not expel the alleged troublemaker, "Chrestus", but rather the Jews whom he provoked to riot. Suetonius also informs us (Claudius 25) that the inspiration for these and other legal pronouncements did not originate with Claudius himself but with his favorites. And we know that one of his chief favorites was Felix, with his anti-Semitic spiritual advocate, Simon Magus. Again, can it be coincidence that Simon Magus, according to the later Christian and apocryphal writers, called himself "Christ" (Christus or Chrestus) and also identified himself as the pagan supreme deity, the "Good One"? It would appear that these Jewish riots in Rome in the days of Claudius were stirred up by Felix's friend Simon Magus, who blasphemously assumed the titles of godhead and Messiahship, and used his influence with Felix to attack the Jews, first in Rome, then in Judaea, when Felix became procurator there. Simon's Gnostic followers are known to have adopted an identical policy of anti-Semitic provocation and aggravation in the reigns of the Emperors Domitian and Trajan. >>
§4. The contradiction some have seen in the different accounts of Simon's background is illusory. Josephus says by BIRTH Simon was of Cypriot origin and that he was a Jew. The apocryphal Vercelli Acts of Peter (going back to a source c. AD 200), ch. vi., likewise call Simon a Jew. According to Justin, Simon was from the Samaritan village of Gitto. Samaria was a region populated by a rich mix of races. Because Simon's home was Gitto in Samaria, that need not mean that his parents were Samaritan. The "Samaritan" tag is linked with the village and is an indication of Simon's geographical origin, whilst Josephus is talking about his genetic origin. The next account in Irenaeus (c. AD 180) repeats and corroborates the account of Justin. The next account in the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions adds a few details about Simon's family, stating that the name of his father, or alleged father, was Antonius, and his mother's name, Rachel, and confirming that his home town was Gitto (called Gitthae in the Apostolic Constitutions, and the village of the Gettones or Gitthae or Gitthi in the pseudo-Clementines). Rachel could be either a Jewish or a Samaritan name (hence Simon could have been Jewish on his mother's side), whilst Antonius is non-Jewish, Roman in form, and is, perhaps, derived from Simon's Roman patron, Antonius Felix. When a foreigner became a Roman citizen, he adopted a new name which was formed like that of the freedman. He chose his own praenomen (Roman personal name); he received the nomen (Roman family or gens name) of his citizen sponsor; and he adopted his original name as cognomen. For example, when the Greek poet Archias became a citizen, his name changed to Aulus Licinius Archias. He'd been attached to the Luculli family so he adopted the nomen of his patron, L. Licinius Lucullus. In this case the nomen would be Antonius, taken from Antonius Felix, and the cognomen Simon. We can presume that Simon was the recipient of Roman citizenship, considering he was the recipient of Roman divinity!
§5. Jos. Ant XX vii. 2: But for the marriage of Drusilla with Azizus, it was in no long time afterward dissolved upon the following occasion: While Felix was procurator of Judea, he saw this Drusilla, and fell in love with her; for she did indeed exceed all other women in beauty; and he sent to her a person whose name was Simon, one of his friends; a Jew he was, and by birth [note] a Cypriot, and one who pretended to be a magician, and endeavored to persuade her to forsake her present husband, and marry him; and promised, that if she would not refuse him, he would make her a happy woman. Accordingly she acted ill, and because she was desirous to avoid her sister Bernice’s envy, for she was very ill treated by her on account of her beauty, was prevailed upon to transgress the laws of her forefathers, and to marry Felix; and when he had had a son by her, he named him Agrippa. But after what manner that young man, with his wife, perished at the conflagration of the mountain Vesuvius, in the days of Titus Caesar, shall be related hereafter.
§6. For Justin Martyr's account, see note 11
§7. Apost Const. VI. 7: . Now the original of the new heresies began thus: the devil entered into one Simon, of a village [note] called Gitthae, a Samaritan, by profession a magician, and made him the minister of his wicked design.
§8. Rec. Clem II. 7: This Simon’s father was Antonius, and his mother Rachel. By nation [note] he is a Samaritan, from a village [note] of the Gettones; by profession a magician yet exceedingly well trained in the Greek literature; desirous of glory, and boasting above all the human race, so that he wishes himself to be believed to be an exalted power, which is above God the Creator, and to be thought to be the Christ, and to be called the Standing One. And he uses this name as implying that he can never be dissolved, asserting that his flesh is so compacted by the power of his divinity, that it can endure to eternity. Hence, therefore, he is called the Standing One, as though he cannot fall by any corruption.
§9. Rec. Clem II. 14: “At those sayings of his Simon grew pale; but after a little, recollecting himself, he thus answered: ‘Do not think that I am a man of your race. I am neither magician, nor lover of Luna ["Moon" = Helena], nor son of Antonius. For before my mother Rachel and he came together, she, still a virgin, conceived me, while it was in my power to be either small or great, and to appear as a man among men. Therefore I have chosen you first as my friends, for the purpose of trying you, that I may place you first in my heavenly and unspeakable places when I shall have proved you.
§10. For Claudius and his favorites: see Suetonius: Lives of the Caesars, Claudius, 25 ... The Jews, who were persistently causing public disturbances because they were driven to do so by Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled from Rome .... But in these and other things, and indeed the greater part of his administration, he was directed not so much by his own judgment, as by the influence of his wives and freedmen; for the most part acting in conformity to what their interests or fancies dictated. ... 28. Amongst his freedmen, the greatest favorite was the eunuch Posides, whom, in his British triumph he presented with the headless spear, classing him among the military men. Next to him, if not equal, in favor was Felix, whom he not only preferred to commands both of cohorts and troops, but to the government of the province of Judea; and he became, in consequence of his elevation, the husband of three queens.
§11. On Felix as a vexatious procurator who had a hand in stirring up the Jewish Revolt, cf. Tacitus Annals 12. 54: "Not equally moderate was his [Pallas'] brother, surnamed Felix, who had for some time been governor of Judaea, and thought that he could do any evil act with impunity, backed up as he was by such power. It is true that the Jews had shown symptoms of commotion in a seditious outbreak, and when they had heard of the assassination of Caius [Caligula], there was no hearty submission, as a fear still lingered that any of the emperors might impose the same orders. Felix meanwhile, by ill-timed remedies, stimulated disloyal acts; while he had, as a rival in the worst wickedness, Ventidius Cumanus, who held a part of the province, which was so divided that Galilea was governed by Cumanus, Samaria by Felix. The two peoples had long been at feud, and now less than ever restrained their enmity, from contempt of their rulers. And accordingly they plundered each other, letting loose bands of robbers, forming ambuscades, and occasionally fighting battles, and carrying the spoil and booty to the two procurators, who at first rejoiced at all this, but, as the mischief grew, they interposed with an armed force, which was cut to pieces. The flame of war would have spread through the province, but it was saved by Quadratus, governor of Syria. In dealing with the Jews, who had been daring enough to slay our soldiers, there was little hesitation about their being capitally punished. Some delay indeed was occasioned by Cumanus and Felix; for Claudius on hearing the causes of the rebellion had given authority for deciding also the case of these procurators. Quadratus, however, exhibited Felix as one of the judges, admitting him to the bench with the view of cowing the ardor of the prosecutors. And so Cumanus was condemned for the crimes which the two had committed, and tranquillity was restored to the province."
§12. Histories 5. 9: "Under Tiberius all was quiet. But when the Jews were ordered by Caligula to set up his statue in the temple, they preferred the alternative of war. The death of the Emperor put an end to the disturbance. The kings were either dead, or reduced to insignificance, when Claudius entrusted the province of Judaea to the Roman Knights or to his own freedmen, one of whom, Antonius Felix, indulging in every kind of barbarity and lust, exercised the power of a king in the spirit of a slave. He had married Drusilla, the granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra, and so was the grandson-in-law, as Claudius was the grandson, of Antony. Yet the endurance of the Jews lasted till Gessius Florus was procurator. In his time the war broke out."
§13. Josephus, Ant. XX. viii. 5: "Felix also bore an ill-will to Jonathan, the high priest, because he frequently gave him admonitions about governing the Jewish affairs better than he did, lest he should himself have complaints made of him by the multitude, since he it was who had desired Caesar to send him as procurator of Judea. So Felix contrived a method whereby he might get rid of him, now he was become so continually troublesome to him; for such continual admonitions are grievous to those who are disposed to act unjustly. Wherefore Felix persuaded one of Jonathan’s most faithful friends, a citizen of Jerusalem, whose name was Doras, to bring the robbers [the so-called sicarii] upon Jonathan, in order to kill him; and this he did by promising to give him a great deal of money for so doing. Doras complied with the proposal, and contrived matters so, that the robbers might murder him after the following manner: Certain of those robbers went up to the city, as if they were going to worship God, while they had daggers under their garments, and by thus mingling themselves among the multitude they slew Jonathan and as this murder was never avenged, the robbers went up with the greatest security at the festivals after this time; and having weapons concealed in like manner as before, and mingling themselves among the multitude, they slew certain of their own enemies, and were subservient to other men for money; and slew others, not only in remote parts of the city, but in the temple itself also; for they had the boldness to murder men there, without thinking of the impiety of which they were guilty. And this seems to me to have been the reason why God, out of his hatred of these men’s wickedness, rejected our city; and as for the temple, he no longer esteemed it sufficiently pure for him to inhabit therein, but brought the Romans upon us, and threw a fire upon the city to purge it; and brought upon us, our wives, and children, slavery, as desirous to make us wiser by our calamities."
§14. According to a passage of Josephus preserved in Eusebius Hist. Ecc. (see note 52) the War was divine punishment for the Jews' murder of James the brother of Jesus, which murder was induced by heretics spawned by the school of Simon Magus. In this case, too, impulsore Chresto, Simon was the instigator of the Jews' misfortune.
§15. The role of the heretics in fomenting disturbances, war and captivity in Judaea is probably alluded to also in I Clement 3. 2, see note 48.

13. See Appendix 2.

13a. The apocryphal Vercelli Acts of Peter, which go back to a Docetic heretical source c. AD 200, and draw on ancient ecclesiastical traditions, mixed with myth and legend, describe just such a situation in Rome (op. cit. chs. iv, v, vi and vii): "[IV.] .... And the brethren were not a little offended among themselves, seeing, moreover, that Paul was not at Rome, neither Timotheus nor Barnabas, for they had been sent into Macedonia by Paul [this dates the terminus a quo to the latter part of the reign of Claudius, as Timothy does not appear till then, in Acts 16], and that there was no man to comfort us, to speak nothing of them that had but just become catechumens. And as Simon exalted himself yet more by the works which he did, and many of them daily called Paul a sorcerer, and others a deceiver, of so great a multitude that had been stablished in the faith all fell away save Narcissus the presbyter and two women in the lodging of the Bithynians, and four that could no longer go out of their house, but were shut up (day and night): these gave themselves unto prayer (by day and night), beseeching the Lord that Paul might return [sic in these Acts] quickly, or some other that should visit his servants, because the devil had made them fall by his wickedness. [V.] And as they prayed and fasted, God was already teaching Peter at Jerusalem of that which should come to pass. For whereas the twelve years which the Lord Christ had enjoined upon him were fulfilled, he showed him a vision after this manner, saying unto him: Peter, that Simon the sorcerer whom thou didst cast out of Judaea, convicting him, hath again come before thee (prevented thee) at Rome. And that shalt thou know shortly (or, and that thou mayest know in few words): for all that did believe in me hath Satan made to fall by his craft and working: whose Power Simon approveth himself to be .... [VI] ... a certain Jew had broken into the city, named Simon, and with his charms of sorcery and his wickedness hath he made all the brotherhood fall away this way .... [VII.] .... if he [Satan] overthrew me [Peter] and persuaded me to flee as if I had put my trust in a man, what think ye will he do unto you [Roman believers deceived by Simon] which are but young in the faith?

14. See Appendix 3.

14a. There was little to choose morally between Drusilla and her sister Bernice. The latter was living in incestuous marriage with her brother Agrippa II when Festus had Paul testify before Agrippa II after two years' confinement in Caesarea! "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian" said Agrippa II to Paul, but almost was not enough. (Acts 24. 24 - 26. 32).

14b. The traditional connection of these three, earliest, house-churches in Rome with the family of Pudens, with the earliest of the Roman Catacombs, and with the Christians greeted by Paul in Romans 16, is brought out in the online Catholic Encyclopedia's article "Early Roman Christian Cemeteries" at www.newadvent.org/cathen (Section "C"): "Cemetery of Priscilla. This is the oldest general cemetery of Early Christian Rome (Kaufmann) and in several respects the most important. It takes its name from Priscilla, the mother of the Senator Pudens in whose house St. Peter, according to ancient tradition, found refuge. The sepulchral plot (area) of Pudens on the New Salarian Way became the burial-place of Aquila and Prisca (Rom., xvi, 3), and of Sts. Pudentiana and Praxedes, daughters of Pudens. In this manner the history of the very ancient Roman churches of Santa Pudentiana and Santa Prassede, also that of Santa Prisca on the Aventine, being originally the meeting-places (domesticæ ecclesiæ, Rom., xvi, 5), of the little Christian community, became intimately connected with the burial-site of the family to which they originally belonged."

15. See Appendix 4.

16. §1. Observation 1.: Simon's doctrine was built on earlier theories mixing paganism and Judaism like those of the Naassenes, the Peratae, the Sethians, and heretics like Justinus. The supreme "Good One" in the Naassene system was (in one of his principal manifestations) the Egyptian grain-god Osiris, whilst in the system of Justinus he was actually the pagan phallic deity Priapus (!) who, in turn, was identified with the Egyptian Osiris. Osiris was commonly titled "The Good or Beneficent Being" (wnn nfr). Simon Magus was educated in Egypt, in Alexandria, and so were many of the Gnostics who succeeded him. The High God, worshipped, under whatever name, by heathen idolaters and allegorized by heathen philosophers, retained his supremacy in Gnosticism and the God of the Jews was demoted to an inferior position under him: by this expedient paganism replaced Judaism. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, V. 21: "[Hippolytus is in the middle of an account of the "pseudo-Gnostic" system of Justinus, having summarized before this the doctrines of the Naassenes, the astrological Peratae and the Sethians] .... 'Finally, however, in the days of Herod the king, Baruch is dispatched, being sent down once more by Elohim; and coming to Nazareth, he found Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, a child of twelve years, feeding sheep. And he announces to him all things from the beginning, whatsoever had been done by Eden and Elohim, and whatsoever would be likely to take place hereafter, and spoke the following words: "All the prophets anterior to you have been enticed. Put forth an effort, therefore, Jesus, Son of man, not to be allured, but preach this word unto men, and carry back tidings to them of things pertaining to the Father, and things pertaining to the Good One, and ascend to the Good One, and sit there with Elohim, Father of us all." And Jesus was obedient unto the angel, saying that, "I shall do all things, Lord," and proceeded to preach. Naas therefore wished to entice this one also. (Jesus, however, was not disposed to listen to his overtures), for he remained faithful to Baruch. Therefore Naas, being inflamed with anger because he was not able to seduce him, caused him to be crucified. He, however, leaving the body of Eden on the (accursed) tree, ascended to the Good One; saying, however, to Eden, "Woman, thou retainest thy son," that is, the natural and the earthly man. But (Jesus) himself commending his spirit into the hands of the Father, ascended to the Good One. Now the Good One is Priapus [the phallic god], (and) he it is who antecedently caused the production of everything that exists. On this account he is styled Priapus, because he previously fashioned all things (according to his own design). For this reason, he says, in every temple is placed his statue, which is revered by every creature; and (there are images of him) in the highways, carrying over his head ripened fruits, that is, the produce of the creation, of which he is the cause, having in the first instance formed, (according to His own design), the creation, when as yet it had no existence' [end of explanation of system of Justinus] .... Since, then, we have explained the attempts (at a system) of the pseudo-gnostic Justinus, it appears likewise expedient in the following books to elucidate the opinions put forward in heresies following [in the way of consequence on the systems already described], and to leave not a single one of these (speculators) unrefuted. Our refutation will be accomplished by adducing the assertions made by them; such (at least of their statements) as are sufficient for making a public example (of these heretics). (And we shall attain our purpose), even though there should only be condemned the secret and ineffable (mysteries) practiced amongst them, into which, silly mortals that they are, scarcely (even) with considerable labor are they initiated. Let us then see what also Simon [Magus] affirms...."
§2. Observation 2.: Simon Magus identified himself with the so-called Supreme God (the Good One): Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I. xxiii. 1: "This man [Simon Magus], then, was glorified by many as if he were a God; and he taught that it was himself who appeared among the Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit. He represented himself, in a word, as being the loftiest of all powers, that is, the Being who is the Father over all, and he allowed himself to be called by whatsoever title men were pleased to address him." and op. cit., II. ix. 1: "This God, then, being acknowledged, as I have said, and receiving testimony from all to the fact of His existence, that Father whom they conjure into existence is beyond doubt untenable, and has no witnesses [to his existence]. Simon Magus was the first who said that he himself was God over all, and that the world was formed by his angels. Then those who succeeded him, as I have shown in the first book, by their several opinions, still further depraved [his teaching] through their impious and irreligious doctrines against the Creator. These [heretics now referred to], being the disciples of those mentioned, render such as assent to them worse than the heathen. For the former "serve the creature rather than the Creator," and "those which are not gods," notwithstanding that they ascribe the first place in Deity to that God who was the Maker of this universe. But the latter maintain that He, [i.e., the Creator of this world,] is the fruit of a defect, and describe Him as being of an animal nature, and as not knowing that Power which is above Him, while He also exclaims, "I am God, and besides Me there is no other God." Affirming that He lies, they are themselves liars, attributing all sorts of wickedness to Him; and conceiving of one who is not above this Being as really having an existence, they are thus convicted by their own views of blasphemy against that God who really exists, while they conjure into existence a God who has no existence, to their own condemnation. And thus those who declare themselves "perfect," and as being possessed of the knowledge of all things, are found to be worse than the heathen, and to entertain more blasphemous opinions even against their own Creator."
§3. Observation 3.: Simon Magus' doctrine represented the Apostles as under the influence of Judaism and its so-called inferior Creator-god. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. xii. 12: "For all those who are of a perverse mind, having been set against the Mosaic legislation, judging it to be dissimilar and contrary to the doctrine of the Gospel, have not applied themselves to investigate the causes of the difference of each covenant. Since, therefore, they have been deserted by the paternal love, and puffed up by Satan, being brought over to the doctrine of Simon Magus, they have apostatized in their opinions from Him who is God, and imagined that they have themselves discovered more than the apostles, by finding out another God; and [maintained] that the apostles preached the Gospel still somewhat under the influence of Jewish opinions, but that they themselves are purer [in doctrine], and more intelligent, than the apostles. Wherefore also Marcion and his followers have betaken themselves to mutilating the Scriptures, not acknowledging some books at all; and, curtailing the Gospel according to Luke and the Epistles of Paul, they assert that these are alone authentic, which they have themselves thus shortened. In another work, however, I shall, God granting [me strength], refute them out of these which they still retain. But all the rest, inflated with the false name of "knowledge," do certainly recognize the Scriptures; but they pervert the interpretations, as I have shown in the first book. And, indeed, the followers of Marcion do directly blaspheme the Creator, alleging him to be the creator of evils, [but] holding a more tolerable theory as to his origin, [and] maintaining that there are two beings, gods by nature, differing from each other, - the one being good, but the other evil. Those from Valentinus, however, while they employ names of a more honorable kind, and set forth that He who is Creator is both Father, and Lord, and God, do [nevertheless] render their theory or sect more blasphemous, by maintaining that He was not produced from any one of those Aeons within the Pleroma, but from that defect which had been expelled beyond the Pleroma. Ignorance of the Scriptures and of the dispensation of God has brought all these things upon them. And in the course of this work I shall touch upon the cause of the difference of the covenants on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of their unity and harmony."

17. Britannica.com (1999-2000), s.v. Mithraism: "There is little notice of the Persian god in the Roman world until the beginning of the 2nd century, but, from the year AD 136 onward, there are hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions to Mithra. This renewal of interest is not easily explained. The most plausible hypothesis seems to be that Roman Mithraism was practically a new creation, wrought by a religious genius who may have lived as late as c. AD 100 and who gave the old traditional Persian ceremonies a new Platonic interpretation that enabled Mithraism to become acceptable to the Roman world."

18. Justin, First Apology, 26: "All who take their opinions from these men [Simon, Menander, Marcion and the Gnostics], are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds — the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh — we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you." Also, e.g., pseudo-Tertullian, Against All Heresies, 1: "Afterwards broke out the heretic Basilides. ..Martyrdoms, he says, are not to be endured. The resurrection of the flesh he strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to bodies."

19. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. iv. 3: "But the rest, who are called Gnostics, take rise from Menander, Simon’s disciple, as I have shown; and each one of them appeared as both the father and the high priest of that doctrine into which he has been initiated." Op. cit., I.xxiii.1: "This man [Simon Magus], then, was glorified by many as if he were a God; and he taught that it was himself who appeared among the Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit. He represented himself, in a word, as being the loftiest of all powers, that is, the Being who is the Father over all, and he allowed himself to be called by whatsoever title men were pleased to address him." (On the last assertion, compare Simon's teaching in the so-called "Great Announcement" apud Hippolytus, Refutation, VI. 14: "And so [it was that Jesus] appeared as man, when in reality he was not a man. And [so it was] that likewise he suffered - though not actually undergoing suffering, but appearing to the Jews to do so - in Judea as 'Son,' and in Samaria as 'Father,' and among the rest of the Gentiles as 'Holy Spirit.'" And [Simon alleges] that Jesus tolerated being styled by whichever name [of the three just mentioned] men might wish to call him. " This shows that, according to Irenaeus' account, Simon assumed any and all the titles of divinity that belonged to Jesus.)

20. §1. Quotation 1.: Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. iv. 3 (Greek in Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. IV. xi. 1): "For, prior to Valentinus [another notorious Gnostic heretic], those who follow Valentinus had no existence; nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion; nor, in short, had any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have above enumerated, any being previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity. For Valentinus came to Rome in the time of Hyginus, flourished under Pius, and remained until Anicetus. Cerdon, too, himself, Marcion’s predecessor, having come [Gk. elthôn] into the church and (now) professing true faith [Gk. exomologoumenos], continued on in this fashion in the time of Hyginus, who was the ninth bishop, being at one time [Gk. pote men] a secret teacher [viz. of heresy, Gk. lathrodidaskalôn], then again [Gk. pote de palin] a professor of the true faith [Gk. exomologoumenos], and then [Gk. pote de] denounced for corrupt teaching and separatedfrom communion with [Gk. aphistamenos] the assembly [Gk. synodia] of the brethren. Now, Marcion, succeeding him, flourished under Anicetus, who held the tenth place of the episcopate. But the rest, who are called Gnostics, take rise from Menander, Simon’s disciple, as I have shown; and each one of them appeared as both the father and the high priest of that doctrine into which he has been initiated. But all these [the Marcosians, another group of heretics] broke out into their apostasy much later, even during the intermediate period of the Church [i.e. the period between Anicetus and Eleutherus, the bishop when Irenaeus was writing this account]."
§2. Quotation 2: Ibid. I. xxvii. 1 (Greek in Eusebius Hist. Ecc. IV. x. 2): A certain Cerdon received from Simon and his immediate circle the wherewithal to launch out, and came to live at Rome. In the time of Hyginus, who held the ninth place in the episcopal succession from the apostles downwards, he taught that the God proclaimed by the law and the prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the former was known, but the latter unknown; while the one also was righteous, but the other benevolent. 2. Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and increased the school, blaspheming unblushingly. [The following concerns Marcion but illustrates the common ground between him and Cerdon, whose particular theories are outlined in the next quotation from pseudo-Tertullian] In so doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world, and coming into Judaea in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Caesar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judaea, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most clearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord. 3. Salvation will be the attainment only of those souls which had learned his doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from the earth, is incapable of sharing in salvation. In addition to his blasphemy against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct opposition to the truth, — that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and that they welcomed Him into their kingdom. But the serpent which was in Marcion declared that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men who sprang from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For since these men, he says, knew that their God was constantly tempting them, so now they suspected that He was tempting them, and did not run to Jesus, or believe His announcement: and for this reason he declared that their souls remained in Hades. 4. But since this man is the only one who has dared openly to mutilate the Scriptures, and unblushingly above all others to inveigh against God, I purpose specially to refute him, convicting him out of his own writings; and, with the help of God, I shall overthrow him out of those discourses of the Lord and the apostles, which are of authority with him, and of which he makes use. At present, however, I have simply been led to mention him, that thou mightest know that all those who in any way corrupt the truth, and injuriously affect the preaching of the Church, are the disciples and successors of Simon Magus of Samaria. Although they do not confess the name of their master, in order all the more to seduce others, yet they do teach his doctrines. They set forth, indeed, the name of Christ Jesus as a sort of lure, but in various ways they introduce the impieties of Simon; and thus they destroy multitudes, wickedly disseminating their own doctrines by the use of a good name, and, through means of its sweetness and beauty, extending to their hearers the bitter and malignant poison of the serpent, the great author of apostasy.
§3. Observations: The second quotation from Irenaeus has been interpreted in the sense that Cerdon arrived in Rome in the time of Hyginus. That this is a mistake is shown 1) by the fact that it was "Simon and his immediate circle" (this is the proper meaning of the Greek idiom tôn peri ton Simôna) who provided Cerdon with the "wherewithal to launch out" (Gk. aphormas) - the former phrase asserting, and the word aphormas suggesting, immediate succession from Simon, and Simon is not known to have been alive later than the reign of Nero in the 60s of the first century - and also 2) by the first quotation from Irenaeus which states that Cerdon continued as a professing Christian in the days of Hyginus (whose episcopate was short, from c. AD 136 - 140), which means he already professed orthodox Christianity before the episcopate of Hyginus at least as early as the days of Telesphorus (c. AD 125 - 136), and prior to that he is stated to have been a secret teacher of heresy. (On secret teaching see para. 19 >>) Some time between the late 60s of the first century AD and the episcopate of Telesphorus, c. AD 125 - 136, Cerdon switched from being a Simonian Gnostic to a professing Christian. The evidence cited in note 67 >> indicates the time of Telesphorus' predecessor, Sixtus (c. AD 115 - 125), as the point when Cerdon "joined the Church". (Simon's follower Cerdon could have lived on well on into the second century AD, even as late the second half of that century, on the analogy of John the Apostle's disciple, Polycarp, John himself being a contemporary of Simon Magus. Polycarp was martyred as late as AD 177 on one possible chronology, or in AD 156 on the usual, modern, dating. For example, if Cerdon was a young man of 20 towards the end of the career of Simon Magus c. AD 65, he would have been an old man of 99 when Marcion succeeded him c. AD 144 (note 75 §2 >>). For comparison, Symeon son of Clopas, the natural cousin of Jesus, was 120 years old, Polycarp a minimum of 86 years, and Pothinus over 90 years, at the time they were martyred, Eusebius Hist. Ecc. III. xxxii. 6, IV. xv. 20, V. i. 29).
§4. Quotation 3: As regards Cerdon's teaching, and his pre-Marcionite attack on the Canon of Scripture, the following quotation is illuminating. Pseudo-Tertullian, Against All Heresies, Ch. 6. 1-2: "To this is added one Cerdo. He introduces two first causes, that is, two Gods — one good, the other cruel: the good being the superior; the latter, the cruel one, being the creator of the world. He repudiates the prophecies and the Law; renounces God the Creator; maintains that Christ who came was the Son of the superior God; affirms that He was not in the substance of flesh; states Him to have been only in a phantasmal shape, to have not really suffered, but undergone a quasipassion, and not to have been born of a virgin, nay, really not to have been born at all. A resurrection of the soul merely does he approve, denying that of the body. The Gospel of Luke alone, and that not entire, does he receive. Of the Apostle Paul he takes neither all the epistles, nor in their integrity. The Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse he rejects as false. After him emerged a disciple of his, one Marcion by name, a native of Pontus, son of a bishop, excommunicated because of a rape committed on a certain virgin. He, starting from the fact that it is said, “Every good tree beareth good fruit, but an evil evil,” attempted to approve the heresy of Cerdo; so that his assertions are identical with those of the former heretic before him." Latin: "VI. [1] Accedit his Cerdon quidam. Hic introducit initia duo, id est duos deos, unum bonum, et alterum saevum, bonum superiorem, saevum hunc mundi creatorem. Hic prophetias et legem repudiat, deo creatori renuntiat, superioris dei filium Christum venisse tractat, hunc in substantia carnis negat, in phantasmate solo fuisse pronuntiat, nec omnino passum, sed quasi passum, nec ex virgine natum, sed omnino nec natum. Resurrectionem animae tantummodo probat, corporis negat. Solum evangelium Lucae, nec tamen totum recipit. Apostoli Pauli neque omnes neque totas epistolas sumit. Acta Apostolorum et Apocalypsim quasi falsa reicit. [2] Post hunc discipulus ipsius emersit Marcion quidam nomine, Ponticus genere, episcopi filius, propter stuprum cuiusdam virginis ab ecclesiae communicatione abiectus. Hic ex occasione qua dictum sit, Omnis arbor bona bonos fructus facit, mala autem malos, haeresim Cerdonis approbare conatus est, ut eadem diceret quae ille superior haereticus ante dixerat."
§5. Quotation 4: According to Hippolytus, Refutation VII. xxiv-xxv, Cerdon followed in the footsteps of the Nicolaitans and Simon, the Nicolaitans encouraging the spread of the Gnostic movement by advocating indifference as regards the eating of meat sacrificed to idols and participation in forbidden sexual relationships: "There are, however, among the Gnostics diversities of opinion; but we have decided that it would not be worth while to enumerate the silly doctrines of these (heretics), inasmuch as they are (too) numerous and devoid of reason, and full of blasphemy. Now, even those (of the heretics) who are of a more serious turn in regard of the Divinity, and have derived their systems of speculation from the Greeks, must stand convicted (of these charges). But Nicolaus has been a cause of the widespread combination of these wicked men. He, as one of the seven (that were chosen) for the diaconate, was appointed by the Apostles. (But Nicolaus) departed from correct doctrine, and was in the habit of inculcating indifference of both life and food. And when the disciples (of Nicolaus) continued to offer insult to the Holy Spirit, John reproved them in the Apocalypse as fornicators and eaters of things offered unto idols. CHAPTER 25 THE HERESY OF CERDON But one Cerdon himself also, receiving occasion in like manner from these (heretics) and Simon, affirms that the God preached by Moses and the prophets was not Father of Jesus Christ. For (he contends) that this (Father) had been known, whereas that the Father of Christ was unknown, and that the former was just, but the latter good. And Marcion corroborated the tenet of this (heretic) in the work which he attempted to write, and which he styled Antitheses. And he was in the habit, (in this book,) of uttering whatever slanders suggested themselves to his mind against the Creator of the universe. In a similar manner likewise (acted) Lucian, the disciple of this (heretic)."
§6. Observations: This notice takes us back to the early Apostolic era (another indicator of Cerdon's early date), when the problem of meat sacrificed to idols and fornication was addressed by the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem. This issue was a point of debate between those Christians who adhered overenthusiastically to the Jewish Law and those who advocated leniency in an attempt to more easily absorb Gentile converts. Nicolaus seems to have tended in the latter direction (he had a Gentile name and was involved in the distribution of food to the Hellenist or Greek-speaking members of the Church in Jerusalem shortly after Pentecost), but according to Clement of Alexandria (Eusebius Hist. Ecc. III. xxix) he himself and his children were orthodox in faith and morally blameless. His followers or avowed followers, the "Nicolaitans", evidently took an extreme position and thus encouraged the development of Gentile Gnosticism which pandered to Gentile idolatry and the sexual immorality associated with it. It is not surprising to find that Cerdon rejected utterly the Apocalypse of the Apostle John which rebuked the Nicolaitans by name.

20a. Paul addressed this problem himself in his Epistle to the Romans 3. 5-8, where he denounced the teaching that was circulating at that time that God was unjust to punish sin if he predestinated all things, and which led, as he pointed out, to an antinomian perversion of his own Gospel of Grace. That was c. AD 58. Similarly, Peter, a few years thereafter (in II Peter 3. 16), rebuked the unstable ones (asteriktoi) who twisted the writings of Paul, and also referred to such (in v. 17) as lawless ones (athesmoi). Both of these words are used in the preceding chapter (vv. 7 and 14) of the type of people involved in the heresies of the false teachers and false prophets operating at that time within the nominal Church. Cerdon is the only heretic known to have abused Paul's writings in this way who could be dated that early, viz. within the first generation of heretics contemporary with Simon Magus. He is likewise, most probably, the main target of Ignatius' attacks on Docetism (the belief that Jesus' body was not real flesh and blood) in his Epistles (Trallians ix-xi, Smyrnaeans i-vii), and his followers the target of his condemnation of heretics who disputed what was and what was not in the true Scriptures (Philadelphians viii. 2) . Cerdon, like Ignatius, originated from Syria, and no doubt Ignatius was familiar with other and similar forms of Syrian Gnosticism. Compare also Polycarp's denunciation (Philippians 7. 1) of any such teacher as "the firstborn of Satan" - a phrase which Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. III. iii. 4) states he used later to describe Marcion, Cerdon's successor.

20b. Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, VII. 1: "They abstain from Thanksgiving [Gk. eucharistia, eucharist] and prayer, because of a failure to agree that the Thanksgiving [eucharist] is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins, which the Father raised up by His goodness." A common misinterpretation of this passage is that the Docetists abstained from the eucharist because they did not agree that the bread was the body of Jesus (period). This interpretation can be shown to be erroneous. Cerdon (see the previous note), and Gnostics like Cerdon, are probably the Docetists Ignatius is referring to in this passage. Yet Marcion, the Docetist par excellence, who adopted the Gnostic theories of Cerdon wholesale, we know had a eucharist with literal bread. (Wine was excluded because of his otherworldly, pseudo-ascetic, principles.) Furthermore, he considered the bread to be the proper body of the Supreme Good God who manifested himself as Jesus, whilst Jesus' human body was a mere apparition (see the quotations from Tertullian below). This suggests that the statement of Ignatius should be interpreted otherwise, and with proper emphasis given to all the phrases in the statement: that the Docetists abstained from eucharist because they did not agree that the bread was that body of Jesus which the orthodox held had suffered and was then raised up by God (as the Docetists did not believe in a physical, human, body of Jesus that had so suffered and been resurrected). Similarly, in the disputes over transubstantiation between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the Protestants affirmed that the eucharist could not be the literal body of Jesus because that had been raised up by God and was now seated in glory. Docetists of the earliest period believed that Jesus' human body was a mere apparition, that it was a phantasmic manifestation of the highest God, and yet also believed that that same supreme Deity did have a proper material body by which he was exhibited to the world - and that was the bread of the eucharist! This inevitably led to a separation between the bread-body of Jesus and the human body of Jesus, which the doctrine of transubstantiation in later Roman Catholicism was concocted to address. The thought suggests itself: why should the Docetists have held so dogmatically to the idea that the proper material body of the supreme God was BREAD if it was not because their supreme God, the "Good One", was , in fact, as in the system of the Naassenes, just the fertility-god of the pagan mysteries, the GRAIN-GOD OSIRIS (identified with SERAPIS and PRIAPUS etc.), THE "GOOD GOD" OF EGYPTIAN PAGANISM? The following quotations are from Tertullian's Five Books Against Marcion (Adv. Marc.) and refer to Marcion's eucharistic beliefs and practices: Tertullian Adv. Marc. I. xiv. 3: "Indeed, up to the present time, he [Marcion's highest or Good God] has not disdained the water which the Creator [Marcion's inferior god] made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body [lit. presents in manifest form his own very body, ipsum corpus suum repraesentat], thus requiring in his very sacraments the “beggarly elements” of the Creator." (Sed ille quidem usque nunc nec aquam reprobavit creatoris qua suos abluit, nec oleum quo suos unguit, nec mellis et lactis societatem qua suos infantat, nec panem quo ipsum corpus suum repraesentat, etiam in sacramentis propriis egens mendicitatibus creatoris. At tu super magistrum discipulus, et servus super dominum, sublimius illo sapis, destruens quae ille desiderat.) Ibid. III. xix. 3-4: "This tree [the Cross] it is which Jeremiah likewise gives you intimation of, when he prophesies to the Jews, who should say, 'Come, let us destroy the tree with the fruit, (the bread) thereof,' that is, His body. For so did God in your[Marcion's] own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given to His body the figure [note Tertullian emphatically states the figurative interpretation] of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively [note] turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an interpretation of the mystery." (Hoc lignum et Hieremias tibi insinuat, dicturis praedicans Iudaeis, Venite, iniciamus lignum in panem eius, utique in corpus. [4] Sic enim deus in evangelio quoque vestro revelavit, panem corpus suum appellans, ut et hinc iam eum intellegas corporis sui figuram panis dedisse, cuius retro corpus in panem prophetes figuravit, ipso domino hoc sacramentum postea interpretaturo.) Ibid. IV. xxxiv. 5: [Marcion had a eucharist and strict admission rules to it] "If, however, you [Marcion] deny that divorce is in any way permitted by Christ, how is it that you on your side destroy marriage, not uniting man and woman, nor admitting to the sacrament of baptism and of the eucharist those who have been united in marriage anywhere else, unless they should agree together to repudiate the fruit of their marriage, and so the very Creator Himself?" (Aut si omnino negas permitti divortium a Christo, quomodo tu nuptias dirimis, nec coniungens marem et feminam, nec alibi coniunctos ad sacramentum baptismatis et eucharistiae admittens nisi inter se coniuraverint adversus fructum nuptiarum, ut adversus ipsum creatorem?) ( Ibid. IV. xl. Tertullian offers arguments from the eucharist against Marcion's theory of an apparitional body of Christ, implying throughout Marcion's literal eucharist.)

21. Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. II. xxiii. 8-9, quoting Hegesippus, in a passage describing how members of the seven Gnosticizing sects acted as agents-provocateurs to bring about the death of James the brother of the Lord in Jerusalem in AD 62: "Now some of the seven [Gnostic] sects [see next note], which existed among the people and which have been mentioned by me in the Memoirs, asked him [James], 'What is the gate of Jesus? and he replied that he was the Savior. On account of these words some believed that Jesus is the Christ. But the sects mentioned above did not believe either in a resurrection or in one who is coming to give to every man according to his works."

22. Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. IV. xxii. 4-6, quoting Hegesippus: "HEGESIPPUS in the five books of Memoirs ....: "And after James the Just had suffered martyrdom [AD 62], as the Lord had also on the same account, Symeon, the son of the Lord's uncle, Clopas, was appointed the next bishop. All proposed him as second bishop because he was a cousin of the Lord. Therefore, they called the Church a virgin, for it was not yet corrupted by vain discourses. But Thebuthis, because he was not made bishop, began to corrupt it from the seven sects among the people, amongst whose numbers he was included, (namely) from those who included Simon, from whom came Simonians, and Cleobius, from whom came Cleobians, and Dositheus, from whom came Dositheans, and Gorthaeus, from whom came Goratheni, and Masbothaeans {five sects are named here out of the seven that existed in the time of James and were the source of errors introduced by Thebuthis into the virgin Church}. From these sprang the Menandrianists, and Marcionists, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians. Each introduced privately and separately his own peculiar opinion. From them came false Christs, false prophets, false apostles, who divided the unity of the Church by corrupt doctrines uttered against God and against his Christ." The earlier generation of Gnostics (which did not include Marcion) often claimed to be following the teaching of the Apostles as transmitted to them through certain ones who were personal hearers of the Apostolic preaching: Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VII. xvii: "For the teaching of our Lord at His advent, beginning with Augustus and Tiberius, was completed in the middle of the times of Tiberius. And that of the apostles, embracing the ministry of Paul, ends with Nero. It was later, in the times of Hadrian the king, that those who invented the heresies arose; and they extended to the age of Antoninus the elder, as, for instance, Basilides, though he claims (as they boast) for his master, Glaucias, the interpreter of Peter. Likewise they allege that Valentinus was a hearer of Theudas. And he was the pupil of Paul. (For Marcion, who arose in the same age with them, lived as an old man with the younger [heretics].) And after him [viz., presumably, Theudas] Simon heard for a little the preaching of Peter." The Theudas who heard Paul must have done so before Simon Magus went to Rome (c. AD 45), as Simon is said here to have heard Peter after Theudas heard Paul and there is no reliable evidence that Simon met Peter outside of Samaria and Caesarea. This would probably date Theudas' meeting with Paul in the early years of Paul's conversion, before Paul left for Tarsus, where he remained c. AD 37-43 (Acts 9. 30 and 11. 25). It was during Paul's absence that Cornelius was converted in Caesarea through the ministry of Peter (Acts 10) and an early sub-Apostolic tradition represents Peter as disputing with Simon Magus in Caesarea at that period. Theudas, therefore, seems to have heard Paul around AD 35-37 either in Damascus (Acts 9. 20-22) or in Jerusalem (Acts 9. 28), and Simon Magus seems to have heard Peter in Caesarea some time between AD 41 and AD 45. Like the elders in Ephesus, Theudas himself may have drifted into heresy, or Valentinus distorted Theudas' teaching. (On the Ephesian elders see Acts 20. 29: "For I [Paul] know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.") Since nothing is known of Theudas elsewhere in the literature of Gnosticism, the latter is the more probable hypothesis, particularly as Valentinus is said to have originally been orthodox, falling into heresy because he did not receive the bishopric in some orthodox church (Tertullian Adv. Val. I. 4). Cerdon, according to Irenaeus (a reliable witness) received the wherewithal to launch out on the Gnostic path from Simon and his immediate circle, whilst, according to Epiphanius (Panarion, Anacephalaeosis 41. 1 [41]), a less reliable witness, but one who preserved much circumstantial detail about the heretics from earlier sources, "Cerdon received his share of the imposture in succession from Heracleon, but added to the deceit. He migrated from Syria to Rome, and did his preaching during the episcopate of Hyginus." Now, Heracleon's ideas were similar to those of Valentinus. Heracleon is usually dated some time in the second century AD. The details of his life are, however, quite obscure and it is possible that he flourished in the first century AD and was one of those counted in the immediate circle of Simon Magus, from whom Cerdon received his inspiration.

23. See Appendix 5.

24. This is the "great multitude" martyred under Nero, I Clement, 6 and Tacitus, Annals, XV. 44 >>.

25. Philippians, 1. 12-18: "12 But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel; 13 So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places; 14 And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. 15 Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: 16 The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds: 17 But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. 18 What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." Ibid., 3. 2-3, 17-21: "2 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. 3 For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. 17 Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. 18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) 20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." Compare Romans, 16. 18: "For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words (CHRESTOlogia) and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple."