Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume I — David Hume — John Shaqi
Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume I
David Hume · en
On the other hand, Photius’ description agrees fairly well with our
text, which contains thirty-one heresies all told, or thirty-two if we
include, as the author asks us to do, that imputed by him to Callistus.
Of these, that of Noetus is the twenty-eighth, and is followed by those
of the Elchesaites, Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees only. These four
last are all much earlier in date than any mentioned in the rest of the
work, and three of them appeared to the author of the tractate last
quoted as not heresies at all, while the fourth is not described by
him, and there is no reason immediately apparent why in any case they
should be put after and not before the post-Christian ones. The early
part of the summary of Jewish beliefs in Book X is torn away, and may
have contained a notice of Dositheus, whose name occurs in Eusebius and
other writers,[43] as a predecessor of Simon Magus and one who did not
believe in the inspiration of the Jewish Prophets. The natural place
in chronological order for these Jewish and Samaritan sects would,
therefore, be at the head rather than at the tail of the list, and if
we may venture to put them there and to restore to the catalogue the
name of Dositheus, we should have our thirty-two heresies, beginning
with Dositheus and ending with Noetus. We will return later to the
reason why Photius should call our text a Biblidarion or “booklet.”
Are there now any reasons for thinking that our text is founded on
such a synopsis of lectures as Photius says Hippolytus made? A fairly
cogent one is the inconvenient and awkward division of the books, which
often seem as if they had been arranged to occupy equal periods of time
in delivery. Another is the unnecessary and tedious introductions and
recapitulations with which the descriptions of particular philosophies,
charlatanic practices, and heresies begin and end, and which seem as
if they were only put in for the sake of arresting or holding the
attention of an audience addressed verbally. Thus, in the account of
Simon Magus’ heresy, our author begins with a long-winded story of
a Libyan who taught parrots to proclaim his own divinity, the only
bearing of which upon the story of Simon is that Hippolytus asserts,
like Justin Martyr, that Simon wished his followers to take him for
the Supreme Being.[44] So, too, he begins the succeeding book with the
age-worn tale of Ulysses and the Sirens[45] by way of introduction to
the tenets of Basilides, with which it has no connection whatever.
This was evidently intended to attract the attention of an audience so
as to induce them to give more heed to the somewhat intricate details
which follow. In other cases, he puts at the beginning or end of a
book a more or less detailed summary of those which preceded it, lest,
as he states in one instance, his hearers should have forgotten what
he has before said.[46] These are the usual artifices of a lecturer,
but a more salient example is perhaps those ends of chapters giving