Simon Magus: An Essay on the Founder of Simonianism Based on the Ancient Sources With a Re-Evaluation of His Philosophy and TeachingsMead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Religion
Simon Magus: An Essay on the Founder of Simonianism Based on the Ancient Sources With a Re-Evaluation of His Philosophy and Teachings
Mead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Simon, Magus, active 1st century
How and in what manner, then, he asks, does God fashion man? In the
Garden (Paradise), he thinks. We must consider the womb a Garden,
he says, and that this is the "cave," the Scripture tells us when
it says: "I am he who fashioned thee in thy mother's womb,"[22] for
he would have it written in this way. In speaking of the Garden, he
says, Moses allegorically referred to the womb, if we are to
believe the Word.
And, if God fashions man in his mother's womb, that is to say in
the Garden, as I have already said, the womb must be taken for the
Garden, and Eden for the region (surrounding the womb), and the
"river going forth from Eden to water the Garden,"[23] for the
navel. This navel, he says, is divided into four channels, for on
either side of the navel two air-ducts are stretched to convey the
breath, and two veins[24] to convey blood. But when, he says, the
navel going forth from the region of Eden is attached to the foetus
in the epigastric regions, that which is commonly called by
everyone the navel[25] ... and the two veins by which the blood
flows and is carried from the Edenic region through what are called
the gates of the liver, which nourish the foetus. And the
air-ducts, which we said were channels for breath, embracing the
bladder on either side in the region of the pelvis, are united at
the great duct which is called the dorsal aorta. And thus the
breath passing through the side doors towards the heart produces
the movement of the embryo. For as long as the babe is being
fashioned in the Garden, it neither takes nourishment through the
mouth, nor breathes through the nostrils. For seeing that it is
surrounded by the waters (of the womb), death would instantly
supervene, if it took a breath; for it would draw after it the
waters and so perish. But the whole (of the foetus) is wrapped up
in an envelope, called the amnion, and is nourished through the
navel and receives the essence of the breath through the dorsal
duct, as I have said.
15. The river, therefore, he says, which goes out of Eden, is
divided into four channels, four ducts, that is to say; into four
senses of the foetus: sight, (hearing),[26] smelling, taste and
touch. For these are the only senses the child has while it is
being formed in the Garden.
This, he says, is the law which Moses laid down, and in accordance
with this very law each of his books was written, as the titles
show. The first book is _Genesis_, and the title of the book, he
says, is sufficient for a knowledge of the whole matter. For this
_Genesis_, he says, is sight, which is one division of the river.
For the world is perceived by sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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