Simon Magus part 1

by John Thomas Lowe
(Woodruff, S.C.)

Simon Magnus
Simon and Peter were intense rivals until Simon challenged Peter's authority and fell out of the sky.
Simon magus, also known as Simon the Sorcerer or the Magician, was a religious figure whose confrontation with Peter is recorded in Acts 8:9–24. The act of simony, or paying for the position, is named after Simon, who tried to buy his way into the power of the Apostles.
According to Acts, Simon was a Samaritan magus or religious figure of the 1st century A.D. and a convert to Christianity, baptized by Philip the Evangelist. Simon later clashed with Peter. Accounts of Simon by writers of the second century exist but are not considered verifiable. Surviving traditions about Simon appear in orthodox texts, such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius. He is often described as the founder of Gnosticism which some modern scholars have accepted. In contrast, others reject that he was a Gnostic, just designated as one by the Church Fathers.
Justin, a 2nd-century native of Samaria, wrote that nearly all the Samaritans in his time were adherents of a certain Simon of Gitta, a village not far from Flavia Neapolis. Irenaeus held him as the founder of the sect of the Simonians. Hippolytus quotes from work he attributes to Simon or his followers, the Simonians, Apophasis Megale, or the Great Declaration. According to the early church heresiologists, Simon is also supposed to have written several lost treatises, two of which bear the titles The Four Quarters of the World and The Sermons of the Refuter.
In apocryphal works, including the Acts of Peter, Pseudo-Clementines, and the Epistle of the Apostles, Simon also appears as a formidable sorcerer with the ability to levitate and fly at will. He is sometimes referred to as - the Bad Samaritan" due to his malevolent character. The Apostolic Constitutions also accuse him of "lawlessness" (antinomianism).


Simon Magus

Religion Gnosticism

Nationality Samaritan

Known for Simony

Founder of Gnosticism

Acts of the Apostles
The canonical Acts of the Apostles features a short narrative about Simon Magus; this is his only appearance in the New Testament.
However, there was a confident man called Simon, which before time in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, "This man is a great power Gr. Dynamis Megale of God." Moreover, they regarded him because he had bewitched them with sorceries for a long time. 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. Then Simon believed also: when he was baptized, he continued with Philip and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs. Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who, when they came down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (for as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then they laid their hands on them and received the Holy Ghost. Moreover, when Simon saw that the Holy Ghost was given by laying on the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost." But Peter said unto him, "Thy money perish with thee because thou hast thought that the gift of God might be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Therefore, repent of this wickedness, and pray to God if perhaps the thought Gr. Epinoia, of thine heart, may be forgiven thee, for I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and the bond of iniquity." Then Simon answered, "Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me."
— Acts 8:9–24
Josephus
Josephus mentions a magician named Atomus (Simon in Latin manuscripts) as being involved with the procurator Felix, King Agrippa II, and his sister Drusilla, where Felix has Simon convince Drusilla to marry him instead of the man she was engaged to. Some scholars have considered the two identical, although this is not generally accepted, as the Simon of Josephus is a Jew rather than a Samaritan.
Justin Martyr and Irenaeus
Justin Martyr (in his Apologies and in a lost work against heresies, which Irenaeus used as his primary source) and Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses) record that after being cast out by the Apostles, Simon Magus came to Rome where, having joined to himself a profligate woman of the name of Helen, he gave out that it was he who appeared among the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father and among other nations as the Holy Spirit. He performed such signs by magic acts during the reign of Claudius that he was regarded as a god and honored with a statue on the island in the Tiber, which the two bridges cross, with the inscription Simoni Deo Sancto "To Simon the Holy God" (First Apology, XXVI). However, in the 16th century, a statue was unearthed on the island in question, inscribed to Semo Sancus, a Sabine deity, leading some scholars to believe that Justin Martyr confused Semoni Sancus with Simon.
The myth of Simon and Helen
Justin and Irenaeus are the first to recount the myth of Simon and Helen, which became the center of Simonian doctrine. Epiphanius of Salamis also makes Simon speak in the first person in several places in his Panarion. The implication is that he is quoting from a version of it, though perhaps not verbatim.
As described by Epiphanius, in the beginning, God had his first thought, his Ennoia, which was female, and that thought was to create the angels. The First Thought then descended into the lower regions and created the angels. However, the angels rebelled against her out of jealousy and created the world as her prison, imprisoning her in a female body. After that, she was reincarnated many times, each time being shamed. Her many reincarnations included Helen of Troy, among others, and she finally was reincarnated as Helen, an enslaved person, and prostitute in the Phoenician city of Tyre. God then descended in the form of Simon Magus to rescue his Ennoia and to confer salvation upon men through knowledge of himself.
"And on her account," he says, "did I come down; for this is written in the Gospel 'the lost sheep.
— Epiphanius, Panarion, 21.3.5
As the angels were mismanaging the world, owing to their lust for the rule, he had come to set things straight. He had descended under a changed form, likening himself to the Principalities and Powers through whom he passed so that among men, he appeared as a man, though he was not a man, and was thought to have suffered in Judaea, though he had not suffered.
"But in each heaven, I changed my form," says he, "by the form of those who were in each heaven, that I might escape the notice of my angelic powers and come down to the Thought, who is none other than her who is also called Prunikos and Holy Ghost, through whom I created the angels, while the angels created the world and men."
— Epiphanius, Panarion, 21.2.4
He promised that the world should be dissolved and that those who were his should be freed from the dominion of the world-creators. However, the prophets had delivered their prophecies under the inspiration of the world-creating angels: wherefore those who had their hope in him and Helen minded them no more and, as being free, did what they pleased; for men were saved according to his grace, but not according to just works. For works were not just by nature, but only by convention, by the enactments of the world-creating angels, who sought to bring men into slavery by precepts of this kind.
In this account of Simon, there is a significant portion common to almost all forms of Gnostic myths, together with something unique to this form. They have in common the place in the work of creation assigned to the female principle, the conception of the Deity; the ignorance of the rulers of this lower world about the Supreme Power; the descent of the female (Sophia) into the lower regions, and her inability to return. Singular to the Simonian tale is the identification of Simon himself with the Supreme and his consort Helena with the female principle.
Hippolytus
In Philosophumena, Hippolytus retells the narrative on Simon written by Irenaeus (who, in turn, based it on the lost Syntagma of Justin). In the story of "the lost sheep," Hippolytus comments.
But the liar was enamored of this wench, whose name was Helen, and had bought her and had her to wife, and it was out of respect for his disciples that he invented this fairy-tale.
Also, Hippolytus demonstrates acquaintance with Simon's folk tradition, which depicts him as a magician than a Gnostic, and in constant conflict with Peter (also present in the Apocrypha and Pseudo-Clementine literature). Reduced to despair by the curse laid upon him by Peter in the Acts, Simon soon rejected the faith and embarked on the career of a sorcerer.
Peter withstood him many times until he came to Rome and fell foul of the Apostles. At last, he came ... and began to teach sitting under a plane tree. When he was on the point of being shown up, he said, in order to gain time, that if he were buried alive, he would rise again on the third day. So he bade that his disciples should dig a tomb and that he should be buried in it. They did what they were ordered, but he remained there until now: for he was not the Christ.