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.
Simonians
Hippolytus gives a much more doctrinally detailed account of Simonianism, including a system of divine emanations and interpretations of the Old Testament, with extensive quotations from the Apophasis Megale. Some believe that Hippolytus' account is of a later, more developed form of Simonianism and that the original doctrines of the group were more straightforward, close to the account given by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (this account, however, is also included in Hippolytus' work)
Hippolytus says the free love doctrine was held by them in its purest form and speaks in language similar to that of Irenaeus about the variety of magic arts practiced by the Simonians and their images of Simon and Helen under the forms of Zeus and Athena. However, he also adds, "if anyone, on seeing the images either of Simon or Helen, shall call them by those names, he is cast out, as showing ignorance of the mysteries."
Epiphanius
Epiphanius writes that some Simonians are still in existence in his day (c. AD 367), but he speaks of them as almost extinct. Gitta, he says, had sunk from a town into a village. Epiphanius further charges Simon with having tried to wrest the words of St. Paul about the armor of God (Ephesians 6:14–16) into an agreement with his identification of the Ennoia with Athena. He also tells us that he gave barbaric names to the "principalities and powers" and that he was the beginning of the Gnostics. The Law, according to him, was not of God but of "the sinister power." The same was the case with the prophets, and believing in the Old Testament was death
Cyril of Jerusalem
The death of Simon Magus, from the Nuremberg Chronicle
Cyril of Jerusalem (346 AD), in the sixth of his Catechetical Lectures, prefaces his history of the Manichaeans with a brief account of earlier heresies: Simon Magus, he says, had given out that he was going to be translated to heaven and was careening through the air in a chariot drawn by demons when Peter and Paul knelt and prayed, and their prayers brought him to earth a mangled corpse.
Apocrypha
Acts of Peter
The apocryphal Acts of Peter gives a more elaborate tale of Simon Magus' death. Simon is performing magic in the Forum, and to prove himself to be a god; he levitates up into the air above the Forum. The apostle Peter prays to God to stop his flying, and he stops mid-air and falls into a place called "the Sacra Via" (meaning "Holy Way" in Latin), breaking his legs "in three parts.". Now gravely injured, he had some people carry him on a bed at night from Rome to Ariccia and was brought from there to Terracina to a person named Castor, who, on accusations of sorcery, was banished from Rome. The previously non-hostile crowd then stones him. The Acts then continue to say that he died "while being sorely cut by two physicians."
Acts of Peter and Paul
Another apocryphal document, the Acts of Peter and Paul, gives a slightly different version of the above incident, which was shown in the context of a debate in front of Emperor Nero. In this version, Paul the Apostle is present along with Peter; Simon levitates from a high wooden tower made upon his request and dies "divided into four parts" due to the fall. Nero put Peter and Paul in prison while ordering Simon's body be kept carefully for three days (thinking he would rise again).
Pseudo-Clementine literature
The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies give an account of Simon Magus and some of his teachings regarding the Simonians. They are of uncertain date and authorship and seem to have been worked over by several hands in the interest of diverse forms of belief.
Simon was a Samaritan and a native of Gitta. The name of his Father was Antonius, and that of his mother, Rachel. He studied Greek literature in Alexandria and, having in addition to this great power in magic, became so ambitious that he wished to be considered the highest power, higher even than the God who created the world. Moreover, sometimes he "darkly hinted" that he was Christ, calling himself the Standing One. Which name he used to indicate that he would stand forever and had no cause in him for bodily decay. He did not believe that the God who created the world was the highest nor that the dead would rise. He denied Jerusalem and introduced Mount Gerizim in its stead. In place of the Christ of the Christians, he proclaimed himself and the Law he allegorized by his preconceptions. He did indeed preach righteousness and judgment to come.
There was one John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of Jesus by the Law of parity; and as Jesus had twelve Apostles, bearing the number of the twelve solar months, so had he thirty leading men, making up the monthly tale of the moon. One of these thirty leading men was a woman called Helen, and the first and most esteemed by John was Simon. However, on the death of John, he was away in Egypt for the practice of magic, and one Dositheus, by spreading a false report of Simon's death, succeeded in installing himself as head of the sect. Simon, on coming back, thought it better to dissemble and, pretending friendship for Dositheus, accepted the second place. Soon, however, he began to hint to the thirty that Dositheus was not as well acquainted as he might be with the school's doctrines.
Dositheus, when he perceived that Simon was depreciating him, fearing lest his reputation among men might be obscured (for he was supposed to be the Standing One), moved with rage, when they met as usual at the school, seized a rod, and began to beat Simon. However, suddenly the rod seemed to pass through his body as if it had been smoking. On which Dositheus, being astonished, says to him, 'Tell me if thou art the Standing One, that I may adore thee.' Moreover, when Simon answered that he was, then Dositheus, perceiving that he was not the Standing One, fell and worshipped him and gave up his place as chief to Simon, ordering all the rank of thirty men to obey him; himself taking the inferior place which Simon formerly occupied. Not long after this, he died.
The encounter between Dositheus and Simon Magus began the sect of Simonians. The narrative goes on to say that Simon, having fallen in love with Helen, took her about with him, saying that she had come down into the world from the highest heavens and was his mistress since she was Sophia, the Mother of All. He said it was for her sake that the Greeks and Barbarians fought the Trojan War, deluding themselves with an image of truth, for the objective being was then present with the First God. By such allegories, Simon deceived many, while at the same time, he astounded them with his magic. A description of how he made a familiar spirit for himself by conjuring the soul out of a boy and keeping his image in his bedroom and many instances of his feats of magic are given.
Anti-Paulinism
The Apostles Paul and Peter confront Simon Magus before Nero.
The Pseudo-Clementine writings were used in the 4th century by members of the Ebionite sect, one characteristic of which was hostility to Paul, whom they refused to recognize as an apostle. Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), founder of the Tübingen School, drew attention to the anti-Pauline characteristic in the Pseudo-Clementines and pointed out that in the disputations between Simon and Peter, some of the claims Simon is represented as making (e.g., that of having seen the Lord, though not in his lifetime, yet subsequently in vision) were the claims of Paul; and urged that Peter's refutation of Simon was in some places intended as a polemic against Paul. The enmity between Peter and Simon is clearly shown. Simon's magical powers are juxtaposed with Peter's powers in order to express Peter's authority over Simon through the power of prayer. In the 17th Homily, the identification of Paul with Simon Magus is affected. Simon is there made to maintain that he has a better knowledge of the mind of Jesus than the disciples, who had seen and conversed with Jesus in person. His reason for this strange assertion is that visions are superior to waking reality, as the divine is superior to humans. Peter has much to say in reply to this, but the passage which mainly concerns us is as follows:
But can anyone be educated for teaching by vision? Moreover, if you say, "It is possible," why did the Teacher remain and converse with waking men for a whole year? Furthermore, how can we believe you even as to the fact that he appeared to you? Moreover, how can he appear to you seeing that your sentiments oppose his teaching? However, if you were seen and taught by him for a single hour, and so became an apostle, then preach his words, expound his meaning, love his apostles, fight not with me who had conversed with him. For it is against a solid rock, the foundation-stone of the Church, that you have opposed yourself in opposing me. If you were not an adversary, you would not be slandering me and reviling the preaching that is given through me, in order that, as I heard myself in person from the Lord, when I speak I may not be believed, as though forsooth it were I who was condemned and I who was reprobate. Alternatively, if you call me condemned, you are accusing God, who revealed the Christ to me, and are inveighing against Him, who called me blessed on the ground of the revelation. But if indeed you genuinely wish to work along with the truth, learn first from us what we learned from Him, and when you have become a disciple of truth, become our fellow workman.
The anti-Pauline context of the Pseudo-Clementines is recognized, but the association with Simon Magus is surprising, according to Jozef Verheyden, since they have little in common. However, most scholars accept Baur's identification, though others, including Lightfoot, argued extensively that the "Simon Magus" of the Pseudo-Clementines was not meant to stand for Paul. More recently, Berlin pastor Hermann Detering (1995) has made the case that the veiled anti-Pauline stance of the Pseudo-Clementines has historical roots and that the Acts 8 encounter between Simon the magician and Peter is itself based on the conflict between Peter and Paul. Detering's belief has not found general support among scholars, but Robert M. Price argues much the same in The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (2012).
Anti-Marcionism
There are other features in the portrait which are reminiscent of Marcion. The first thing mentioned in the Homilies about Simon's opinions is that he denied that God was just. By "God," he meant the creator god. However, he undertakes to prove from the Jewish scriptures that there is a higher god who possesses the perfections falsely ascribed to the lower God. On these grounds, Peter complains that, when setting out for the gentiles to convert them from their worship of many gods upon earth, Satan had sent Simon before him to make them believe that there were many gods in heaven.
Druidism
In Irish legend, Simon Magus came to be associated with Druidism. He is said to have come to the aid of the Druid Mog Ruith. Irish Druids' fierce denunciation of Christianity appears to have resulted in Simon Magus being associated with Druidism. The word Druid was sometimes translated into Latin as a magus, and Simon Magus was also known in Ireland as "Simon the Druid."
Medieval legends, later interpretations
The fantastic stories of Simon, the Sorcerer persisted into the later Middle Ages, becoming a possible inspiration for the Faustbuch and Goethe's Faust. The Church of Santa Francesca Romana, Rome, is claimed to have been built on the spot where Simon fell. Within the Church is a dented slab of marble that purports to bear the imprints of the knees of Peter and Paul during their prayer.
The opening story in Danilo Kiš's 1983 collection The Encyclopedia of the Dead, "Simon Magus," retells the confrontation between Simon and Peter, agreeing with the account in the Acts of Peter, and provides an additional alternative ending in which Simon asks to be buried alive in order to be resurrected three days later (after which his body is found putrefied).
