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The story of abbot Olympius. A final word. Footnotes
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THE STORY OF ABBOT OLYMPIUS
The story runs as follows:
“Abbot Olympius 1 said that one day a priest of the [Heathen] Greeks came down to Scetis; 2 he came to my cell and passed the night there.
“Seeing the manner of life of the monks, he saith to me: ‘Living in this way, do ye not enjoy visions from your God? ’ ‘Nay! ’ I answer.
“Then saith the priest to me: ‘So long as we duly serve our God with holy deeds, he hideth nought from us, but revealeth unto us his mysteries. And ye, in spite of all your great labours—watchings, keeping silence, disciplines—sayest thou, ye see nought? Assuredly, then, if ye see nought, ye have let evil reasonings come into your hearts which shut you from your God; and ’tis for this cause his mysteries are not revealed to you. ’
“And I went and told the elder [brethren] the words of the priest; and they were astonished and agreed that so it was. For impure reasonings do shut off God from man. ”
I do not exactly understand what is the precise meaning of λ ο γ ι σ μ ο ύ ς, which usually means
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“reasonings, ” and seems on the face of it to suggest that the monks’ intellectual grasp of the matter was at fault. It may, however, mean simply that their “thoughts” were impure. But this is not any more satisfactory, for the monks must have known already that impure thoughts were to be driven out.
What is clear is that the “priest of the Greeks” had personal experience of these pious exercises, and came from a circle where such things were normally practised; he, moreover, knew what was the reason for the monks’ non-success in contemplation. He knew that it all depended on thought, and that, too, on “good thought, ” so that the “Good” might descend on the “good, ” as the Hermes-Prayer (i. 9, 13) says. But he knew more than this; he knew that there was also need of “right thought, ” of Gnosis as well as of faith, of the proper use of the intelligence and the driving out of erroneous ideas with regard to the nature of God.
A FINAL WORD
But for a final word on “Hermas. ” This early document was written at Rome; so all are agreed. It would, then, seem necessary to allow of sufficient time for a wide circulation of the older form of the “Pœ mandres, ” before it could reach Rome from Egypt. This time could not have been short, for it must be reckoned not by geographical considerations, which are hardly of any consequence in this connection, but by the fact that the “Pœ mandres” was the gospel of a school that laid the greatest possible stress on secrecy. How, then, could a Christian writer have got possession of a copy? Had the pledge of secrecy already by this time been removed? This is not credible, for later Trismegistic documents still lay the greatest stress upon it.
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Were, then, the early Christian mystical writers in intimate relationship with such circles as the Pœ mandres-community? Some Gnostics undoubtedly were; was the writer of “Hermas”? Was there once friendship where subsequently was bitter strife?
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Such and many other most interesting questions arise, but there is little hope that any satisfactory answer will be given them until the work on the mystical religious environment of the time has been pushed forward to such a point, that men may gradually become accustomed to the view that much of the secret of the Origins lies concealed in that very environment.
In any case, the way is cleared for pushing back the earlier “Pœ mandres” document well into the first century, and for ranking it, therefore, as at least contemporary with the earliest of the New Testament writings.
Footnotes
369: 1 Did Jesus Live 100 B. C.? —An Enquiry into the Talmud Jesus Stories, the Toldoth Jeschu, and Some Curious Statements of Epiphanius (London, 1903), pp. 365 ff.
369: 2 See Hilgers (J. ), De Hermetis Trismegisti Poimandro Commentatio (Bonn, 1855).
370: 1 See The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 302, 303 (June 1899).
370: 2 Hilgenfeld (A. ), Hermæ Pastor (2nd ed.: Leipzig, 1881).
370: 3 Ἀ π ο κ ά λ υ ψ ι ς έ, the fifth revelation or vision of our composite document, which for all we know may have stood first in some earlier “source. ”
371: 1 Presumably a sheep’s skin of white wool.
371: 2 Compare the Story of the Spirit Double who came down unto Jesus when a boy, as told by Mary the Mother, in the Pistis Sophia, 121: “He embraced thee and kissed thee, and thou also didst kiss him; ye became one. ” Compare this with the common mystic belief of the time in the possibility of union with such a spiritual presence; and also the possession by a daimon (λ ῆ ψ ι ς δ α ί μ ο ν ο ς ), which is treated of at length by Reitzenstein, and particularly referred to this pasage in Hermas (R. 230).
371: 3 Compare Pistis Sophia, 120: “I was in doubt and thought it was a phantom tempting me. ”
371: 4 On this Gebhardt and Harnack, in their edition (Leipzig, 1877), can only comment: “In visionibus angelicus pastor nusquam memoratur. ”
372: 1 Compare the interesting inscription from Sakkā ra quoted from Erman (note, below).
373: 1 R. 11, n. 3.
373: 2 Compare Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), 103, 2359 ff.
373: 3 Ibid., 104, 2373.
373: 4 Erman (Ä gypten, 515) refers to an inscription from Sakkā ra, in which a mystical shepherd says to his flock: “Your Shepherd is in the West with the fishes, ”—an interesting conjunction of ideas for students of archaic Christian symbolism. The idea is also Babylonian, the Star-flocks of the Gods being fed beyond the Ocean in the West.
373: 5 Compare the dress of the Essenes, and the account of the sending forth of the disciples, Matt. x. 9 = Mark vi. 8 = Luke ix. 3. The direct contradiction of the account in Mark to the statements in Matthew and Luke, makes it exceedingly probable that not only the one robe, and staff, but also the wallet, were the typical signs of those who went forth to “raise the dead. ”
373: 6 He is clad in the π ε ρ ί ζ ω μ α, the working dress (or apron), in which men were said to work “naked” (nudus, γ υ μ ν ό ς )—that is, clad in one robe. See also note on the sentence: “And naked I sought the Naked, ” in treating of the Gymnosophists (or Naked Philosophers), in my Apollonius of Tyana (London, 1901), p. 100.
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375: 1 See “The Popular Theurgic Hermes Cult in the Greek Magic Papyri. ”
375: 2 Compare Hermas, Vis. v. 2: “I am sent. . . that I may dwell with thee for the rest of the days of thy life, ” with Prayer i. 10: “for all the length of my life’s days”; and v. 3: “I know into whose charge I have been given, ” with Prayer ii. 7: “I know thee, Hermes. ”
375: 3 ἐ ν τ ο ῖ ς γ ε ν ε κ ο ῖ ς.
376: 1 A term used by Philo as a synonym of Therapeut.
376: 2 Div. Institt., i. 6—as cited among Evidences from the Fathers, where see my note on Phenë us.
376: 3 Op. sup. cit., p. 365.
377: 1 The very treatise to which we have previously referred in connection with the “mountain. ”
378: 1 See Gebhardt and Harnack, op. cit., Prolegg. xi. n. 2.
380: 1 The texts are given by Berthelot (M. P. S. ), Les Alchimistes grecs.
380: 2 See The Book of the Dead, cxliv., cxlvii.
380: 3 Griffith (F. Ll. ), Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford, 1900), pp. 45 ff.
381: 1 Berthelot (M. P. S. ), La Chimie au Moyen  ge, iii. 44 ff., 268, n. 1; R. 361.
381: 2 According to the Ethiopic translation. See The Apostolic Fathers, p. 325, n. 4, in the “Ante-Nicene Christian Library, ” vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1867).
381: 3 Kenyon (F. G. ), Greek Pap. Cat., p. 65; R. 280, n. 3.
383: 1 R. 34—from Apophthegmata Patrum, in Cotelerius’ Ecclesiæ Græ cæ Monumenta, i. 582.
384: 1 I do not know who this Olympius was, unless, perchance, he may have been the monk referred to by Nilus (ii. 77), the famous ascetic of Sinai, who flourished in the first quarter of the fifth century.
384: 2 Again, I can find no information about this place; it was, however, presumably in the Nitriote nome south of the Delta—for the priest “ came down. ’’
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