THE MAGICIAN AND THE HERETIC: THE CASE OF SIMON MAGUS

AvsE TuzLAK Swarthmore College

In the Clementine Homilies, a Christian pedagogical adventure-story from the third century, an ex-follower of Simon the Magician says of his former master: "he makes statues walk, ... he rolls himself on the fire, and is not burned; and sometimes he flies; and he makes loaves out of stones; he becomes a serpent; he transforms himself into a goat; he becomes two-faced ... " (2.32.2). 1 As it turns out, the last of these accusations is true, at least for the modern scholar. The figure of Simon Magus has a remarkable two-facedness about it. According to the heresiologists of the second century, he was the first heretic and the father of Gnosticism; while the authors of apocryphal gospels and acts portray him as the charlatan, trickster, and magician par excellence. This paper will examine the relationship between the two faces of Simon Magus with a view to understanding the way that some proto­ orthodox Christians understood the terms "magic" and "magician." We first meet Simon in the New Testament book of Acts (8.4-24). He is described as a man from Samaria "who had previously practiced magic in the city" (npounilpxcv £v 'tft n6A.n 11ay£ucov) and who was hailed by his followers as "that power from God which is called Great" (l] Mva!lts tou 8£ou l] KaAOUJ.lEVTJ MqaA.TJ). 2 The reader is told that Simon was baptized and converted to Christianity by Philip while he was still in Samaria. After a somewhat abrupt break in the narrative, Simon sees Peter "giving" the Holy Spirit to the people of Jerusalem through the laying on of hands, and Simon offers to pay for the secret that will allow him to do the same thing. Peter chastizes him, and Simon responds simply by asking the Christians for prayers

I avl\puivtm; 7lOtel7!Ept7!atEt v Kat E7lt 7!Up KUAUlJ.lEVO~ ou KaiEtat, evoitE 1\e Kat 7!Etatat Kat EK Ai8ov aptou~ 7lOtEt, OQlt~ yivEtat, d~ alya 7!Eta7!opQ!oiitat, Ot7!p6crro7!0~ yivEtat (Bernhard Rehm, ed., Die Pseudoklementinen L Homilien [Akademie-Verlag, Berlin: 1969], 49). Translations of early Christian writings are my own unless otherwise noted. I would like to extend my gratitude to Lisa Poirier for her help with the Greek sources. 2 I use NRSV translations for Biblical passages. THE MAGICIAN AND THE HERETIC

on his behalf. 3 The story ends suddenly, and the rest of the New Testament is silent about Simon's fate. About a generation later, Simon begins to appear in other texts: first, in Justin Martyr's two Apologies, both written around the mid­ dle of the second century, and then in lrenaeus' Against Ihe Heresies and Hippolytus' Rifutation of All Heresies between the end of the second century and the middle of the third. By this point, the character has been christened Simon Magus: Simon "the Magician." He is depicted as the father of all heresies and the inventor of labyrinthine and hopelessly misguided Gnostic theologies. The reader who only knows Simon from the New Testament might be surprised at the complexity of the "Simonian" theological systems that are described by Irenaeus and Hippolytus. After all, the role of magic is hardly primary in Acts 8, and Simon's philosophical views make no appearance there at all. Like his humble acceptance of Peter's admonishment, and like his inability to give the Holy Spirit to those whom he baptizes even at the end of the story, Simon's "shady past" as a magician appears to serve simply as a way to emphasize his inferiority to the Christian apostles. Not so in the minds of the heresiologists. Simon is portrayed as the powerful and deadly force behind every heresy at work in the au­ thors' own times. Justin writes that, during the reign of Claudius Caesar (i.e., 41-54 c.E.), Simon began to travel and preach in the company of a reformed prostitute named Helen. Curiously, Simon is said to have described Helen to his followers as his "first thought," or ennoia, which is a very prominent concept in later Gnostic writings. Justin goes on to urge his audience (which ostensibly includes the emperor Antoninus Pius) to take down a statue that has been erected on the Tiber in Simon's honour and to which his devotees pay hom­ age (First Apology, 26). 4 Irenaeus of Lyons, writing around the year 180, adds a few details to Justin's account. He writes that Helen, the "first thought" or ennoia that Justin mentioned, was described by Simon as "the Mother of all things." She was conceived by Simon (who thought of himself as

3 An informative discussion of this story can be found in Morton Smith, "The Account of Simon Magus in Acts 8," in Harry Austryn Wo!fton Jubilee Volume, vol. II (American Academy for Jewish Research, Jerusalem: 1965), 735fT. A more recent analysis can be found in Susan Garrett's The Demise qf the Devil: Magic and the Demonic in Luke's Writings (Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 1989). 4 On the statue, see Robert Casey's article on "Simon Magus" in F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, eds., The Beginnings qfChristianiry, vol. 5 (Macmillan, Lon­ don: 1933), 154-155.