We have now arrived at a period when Christianity may be said to have become established. In the history of religions it is only the earliest years during which their existence is precarious. If a creed can triumphantly pass through the severe ordeals which await every new system, its future is assured. With sounder judgment than other cotemporary sects, such as the Essenes, the Baptists, and the followers of Judas the Gaulonite, who clung to and perished with the Jewish institutions, the founders of Christianity displayed rare prevision in going forth at an early period to disseminate and root their new opinions over the broad expanse of the Gentile world. The meagreness of the allusions to Christianity which are found in Josephus, in the Talmud, and in the Greek and Latin writers, need not surprise us. Josephus is transmitted to us by Christian copyists, who have omitted everything uncomplimentary to their faith. It is possible that he wrote more at length concerning Jesus and the Christians than is preserved in the edition which has been handed down to us. The Talmud in like manner, during the Middle Age, and after its first publication, underwent much abridgment and alteration.[15.1] This resulted from the severe criticisms of the text by Christian writers, and from the burning of a number of unlucky Jews who were found in possession of a work containing what were considered blasphemous passages. As to the Greek and Latin writers, it is not surprising that they paid little attention to a movement which they could not comprehend, and which was going on within a narrow space foreign to them. Christianity was lost to their vision upon the dark background of Judaism. It was only a family quarrel amongst the subjects of a degraded nation; why trouble themselves about it? The two or three passages in which Tacitus and Suetonius mention the Christians show that the new sect, even if generally beyond the visual circle of full publicity, was, notwithstanding, a prominent fact, since we are enabled at intervals to catch a glimpse of it defining itself with considerable clearness of outline through the mist of public inattention.

The relief of Christianity above the general level of Jewish history in the first century has also been somewhat diminished, by the fact that it was not the only movement of the kind. At the epoch we have arrived at, Philo had finished his career, so wholly consecrated to the love of virtue. The sect of Judas the Gaulonite still existed. This agitator had left the perpetuation of his ideas to his sons, James, Simon, and Menahem. The two former were crucified by command of the renegade procurator Tiberius Alexander.[15.2] Menahem remained, and is destined to play an important part in the final catastrophe of the nation.[15.3] In the year 44, an enthusiast by the name of Theudas arose, announcing the speedy deliverance of the Jews, calling on the people to follow him to the desert, and promising like a second Joshua to cause them to pass dry-shod across the Jordan.[15.4] This passage was, according to him, the true baptism which should admit every believer into the kingdom of God. More than four hundred persons followed him. The procurator Cuspius Fadus sent out against him a troop of horse, which dispersed his disciples and slew him.[15.5] A few years before this Samaria had been stirred by the voice of a fanatic, who pretended to have had a revelation of the spot on Mount Gerizim where Moses had concealed the sacred instruments of worship. Pilate suppressed this movement with great severity.[15.6]

In Jerusalem, tranquillity was at an end. From the arrival of the procurator Ventidius Cumanus (A.D. 48), disturbances were incessant. The excitement reached such a point that it became almost impossible to live there; the most trifling occurrences brought about explosions.[15.7] People everywhere felt a strange fermentation, a kind of mysterious foreboding. Impostors sprang up on every side.[15.8] That fearful scourge, the society of zealots or sicarii, began to appear. Wretches armed with daggers mingled in the crowds, gave the fatal thrust to their victims, and were the first to cry murder. Hardly a day passed that some assassination of this kind was not told of. An extraordinary terror spread around. Josephus speaks of the crimes of the zealots as pure wickedness;[15.9] but it cannot be doubted that they sprang in part from fanaticism.[15.10] It was to defend the law and the testimony that these wretches drew the poniard. Whoever was wanting in their view in one of the requirements of the law, was judged and at once executed. They believed that in so doing they were rendering a service most meritorious and pleasing to God.

Dreams like those of Theudas occurred everywhere. Men calling themselves inspired, drew the people after them into the desert, under the pretext of showing them by manifest signs that God was about to deliver them. The Roman authorities exterminated the dupes of these agitators in crowds.[15.11] An Egyptian Jew who came to Jerusalem about the year 56, succeeded by his devices in drawing after him thirty thousand persons, among whom were four thousand zealots. From the desert he was going to lead them to the Mount of Olives, that they might thence behold the walls of Jerusalem crumble at his command. Felix, who was at that time procurator, marched against him, and dispersed his band. The Egyptian escaped and was seen no more.[15.12] But, as we see in a diseased body one malady succeed another, soon afterwards there appeared here and there troops of magicians and robbers, who openly excited the people to revolt, and threatened with death those who should continue to obey the Roman authorities. Under this pretext they murdered and pillaged the rich, burned villages, and filled all Judea with the marks of their outrages.[15.13] A terrible war seemed impending. A spirit of madness reigned everywhere, and the imagination of the people was kept in a state bordering on lunacy.

It is not impossible that Theudas may have had an idea of imitating the acts of Jesus and John the Baptist. At any rate such an imitation is evident in the accounts of Simon of Gitto, if we may credit the Christian traditions.[15.14] We have already encountered him in communication with the apostles on the first mission of Philip to Samaria. He attained his celebrity during the reign of the Emperor Claudius.[15.15] His miracles were unquestioned, and all Samaria regarded him as a supernatural being.[15.16]

Miracles were not, however, the only basis of his renown. He taught a doctrine, it seems, of which it is difficult for us to acquire a definite knowledge, in a treatise entitled “The Great Exposition,” which is ascribed to him, and a few extracts from which have come down to us, being probably only a modified expression of his ideas.[15.17] During his sojourn at Alexandria, where he studied the Grecian philosophy, he appears to have framed a system of syncretic theology and allegorical exegesis, in many respects analogous to that of Philo.[15.18] His system is not without sublimity. Sometimes it reminds us of the Jewish Kabala, sometimes of the pantheistic theories of Indian philosophy; and in other respects it resembles that of the Buddhists and the Parsees.[15.19] The primal being is, “He who is, has been, and shall be,”[15.20] i.e. the Jah-veh of the Samaritans, understood according to the etymological force of the name, as the eternal and only Being, self-begotten, self-augmenting, self-seeking, and self-finding—the father, mother, sister, spouse, and son of himself.[15.21] In this infinite being, all things exist potentially to all eternity; and pass into action and reality through human conscience, reason, language, and science.[15.22] The universe is explained either upon the basis of a hierarchy of abstract principles like the Æons of Gnosticism and the Sephirotic tree of the Kabala, or upon that of an order of angels apparently borrowed from the Persian doctrine. Sometimes these abstractions are presented as representations of physical and physiological facts. Elsewhere, the “divine powers,” considered as distinct substances, are realized in successive incarnations, either in the male or female form, whose end is the emancipation of those beings which are enslaved in the bonds of material existence. The highest of these “Powers” is called “the Great,” which is the universal Providence, the intelligent soul of this world.[15.23] It is masculine. Simon passed for an incarnation of this spirit. In connexion with it is its feminine counterpart, “the Great Thought.” Accustomed to clothe his theories in a strange symbolism, and to devise allegorical interpretations for the ancient writings both sacred and profane, Simon, or whoever was the author of “The Great Exposition,” ascribed to this Divine existence the name of “Helena,” thereby signifying that she was the object of universal pursuit, the eternal cause of dispute among men, and that she avenged herself on her enemies by depriving them of sight until the moment they consented to recant;[15.24]—a strange theory, and one which, imperfectly understood or designedly travestied, gave rise among the early Fathers of the Church to the most puerile legends.[15.25] The acquaintance with Greek literature possessed by the author of “The Great Exposition” is at all events very remarkable. He contended that, rightly understood, the heathen writings sufficed for the knowledge of all things.[15.26] His broad eclecticism embraced all revelations, and sought to combine them into one sole and universal system of accepted truths.His plan was essentially quite similar to that of Valentinus, and to the doctrines in regard to the Divine Persons which are found in the fourth Gospel, in Philo, and in the Targums.[15.27] The “Metatronos,”[15.28] which the Jews placed at the side of the Deity, and almost in his bosom, strongly resembles “The Great Power.” In Samaritan theology we find a Great Angel, who presides over other angels, and we find also a variety of manifestations or “Divine Virtues,” analogous to those of the Kabala.[15.29] It appears certain, then, that Simon of Gitto was a theosophist of the type of Philo and the Kabalists. Perhaps he may have come near to Christianity, but certainly he did not attach himself to it in any defined way.

Whether he actually borrowed anything from the disciples of Jesus, is difficult to decide. If “The Great Exposition” is the expression of his ideas in any degree, it must be admitted that upon several points he is in advance of the Christian ideas, and that upon others he adopts them with much fulness.[15.30] He seems to have attempted an eclecticism similar to that which Mahomet afterwards adopted, and to have based his religious action upon the preliminary belief in the divine mission of John and of Jesus.[15.31] He professed to bear a mystic relation to them. He asserted, it is said, that it was he himself who appeared to the Samaritans as the Father, to the Jews by the visible crucifixion of the Son, and to the Gentiles by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.[15.32] He also, it would seem, prepared the way for the doctrine of the “DocetÆ.” He claimed to have suffered in Judea in the person of Jesus, but that his suffering was only apparent.[15.33] These pretensions to Divinity and claims of adoration have probably been exaggerated by the Christians, who have in every way sought to cover him with odium.

The doctrine of “the Great Exposition” is that of nearly all the Gnostic writings; and if Simon really professed that doctrine, it is with good reason that the Fathers charged him with being the founder of Gnosticism.[15.34] It is our belief that the “Exposition” has only a relative authenticity; that it is to the doctrine of Simon very nearly what the fourth Gospel is to the ideas of Jesus; and that it dates from the earlier years of the second century, the epoch when the theosophic notions of the Logos acquired a definite ascendency. These notions, of which we shall find the germ in the Christian Church about the year 60,[15.35] may, however, have been known to Simon, whose career was probably prolonged until the close of the century.

The notion then that we obtain of this enigmatic personage is, that he was a kind of plagiarist of Christianity. Imitation seems to have been a constant habit of the Samaritans.[15.36] In the same manner as they had always been imitators of the Jewish ceremonies of Jerusalem, so these sectaries had also their copy of Christianity, their Gnosis, their theosophic speculations, and their Kabala. But we shall probably remain for ever ignorant whether Simon was a respectable imitator, who just fell short of success, or only an immoral and insincere juggler, who was working for his own profit and celebrity a doctrine stitched together out of the rags of other systems.[15.37] He thus assumes in history a most difficult position; he walks on a tight-rope, where no hesitation is permitted; in such a case there is no midway path between ridiculous failure and triumphant success.We have yet to examine whether the legends relative to Simon’s sojourn at Rome comprise any truth. It is at least certain that the Simonian sect continued as far down as the third century;[15.38] that it possessed churches as far as Antioch—perhaps even at Rome; and that Menander of Capharetes and Cleobius[15.39] sustained the same doctrine, or at least imitated Simon’s performance as theurgist with more or less recurrence in type to the acts of Jesus and the apostles. Simon and his followers were in great esteem among their co-religionists. Sects of the same kind, parallel with Christianity,[15.40] and more or less tinctured with Gnosticism, continued to spring up among the Samaritans, until their almost total destruction by Justinian. It was the lot of this little religious community to receive an impression from everything that happened in its vicinity, without producing anything altogether original.

As to Christians, the memory of Simon was amongst them an abomination. Those illusions of his which so closely resembled their own, were irritating to them. To have competed with the success of the apostles was the most unpardonable of crimes. They pretended that the wonders performed by Simon and his disciples were works of the devil, and they branded the Samaritan theosophist with the title of “Sorcerer,”[15.41] which his believers took in high dudgeon. The entire Christian account of Simon bears the imprint of concentrated hatred. The maxims of quietism were ascribed to him, with the excesses which are generally supposed to be their consequence.{15.42} He was considered the father of all error, the primitive heresiarch. They delighted in recounting his ludicrous adventures, and his defeats by the apostle Peter,[15.43] and attributed to the vilest motives his apparent tendency towards Christianity. They were so preoccupied with his name that they read it at random upon columns where it did not exist.[15.44] The symbolism in which he had clothed his ideas was interpreted in the most grotesque way. The “Helena,” whom he identified with “The First Intelligence,” became a girl of the town purchased by him in the streets of Tyre.[15.45] His very name, hated nearly as much as that of Judas, and used as a synonym of Anti-apostle,[15.46] became the grossest word of abuse and a proverbial expression to designate a professional impostor or adversary of truth whom it was desired to refer to under a disguise.[15.47] He was the first enemy of Christianity, or rather the first personage whom Christianity treated as such. It is sufficient to say that neither pious frauds nor calumny were spared in defaming him.[15.48] Criticism in such a case need not attempt a rehabilitation; it has no documents on the other side. All it can do is to show the physiognomy of the traditions and the set purpose of abuse which they display.

At least it should prevent the loading of the memory of the Samaritan theurgist with a resemblance which may be only accidental. In a story related by Josephus, a Jewish sorcerer named Simon, a native of Cyprus, plays for the procurator Felix the part of a Pandarus.{15.49} The circumstances of this story do not accord well enough with what is known of Simon of Gitto, to make him responsible for the acts of a person who may have had nothing in common with him but a name borne by thousands, and a pretension to supernatural powers, which was unfortunately shared by a crowd of his cotemporaries.