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The first external testimony to our Hymn is found in its use by the Priscillianists, in Spain, in the last third of the fourth century. The great movement known under the name of Priscillianism was a powerful revival of Gnosticism and Oriental mysticism and theosophy which poured over the Peninsula.
The views of the Priscillianists on scripture were those of the rest of the Gnostics in general; their canon was catholic in the widest meaning of the term. Just as the Jewish scriptures were an imperfect revelation as compared with the general Christian books, so were the popular scriptures of Christianity imperfect in comparison with the revelations of the Gnosis.
As the Old Covenant books were considered to be replete with types and figures, images and shadows of the Gospel-teaching, so were the books of the New Testament, in their turn, held to be figurative and symbolical of the inner teachings of the Gnosis. The former were intended for those of Faith, the latter for those in Gnosis.
Against this view Augustine and Jerome waged remorseless war; for the country was flooded with an immense number of Gnostic documents. The Priscillianists were persecuted and martyred and the main care of the orthodox bishops was to seize their books and destroy them.
Ceretius, one of the bishops presumably, had sent Augustine some of the books of these Gnostics; he himself seems to have been inclined to approve them. Augustine, in his answer, picks out for detailed criticism one document only--our Hymn. Concerning this he writes:
"As for the Hymn which they say is that of our Lord Jesus Christ, and which has so greatly aroused your veneration, it is usually found in apocryphal writings, not peculiar to the Priscillianists but used by other heretics."
Augustine adds a quotation from the introduction of the Gnostic M.S. of the Hymn, which runs:
"The Hymn of the Lord which He sang in secret to the holy Apostles, His disciples, for it is said in the Gospel: 'And after singing a hymn He ascended the mount.' This Hymn is not put in the canon, because of those who think according to themselves, and not according to the Spirit and Truth of God, and that it is written: 'It is good to hide the sacrament of the King; but it is honourable to reveal the works of God.'"
The Gospel referred to cannot be either Matthew (xxvi.31) or Mark (xiv.26), both of which read: "And after singing a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives." The second quotation I am unable to trace.
An important point which will concern us later on is that Ceretius found the Hymn by itself and not in its context in the Acts ; it was in all probability extracted for liturgical purposes.
It is, moreover, evident from what Augustine writes in the first passage we have quoted that the Hymn was well-known in Gnostic circles.
It would also seem as though Augustine, who wrote in Latin, was dealing with a Latin translation, rather than that he translated the quotation himself in his answer to Ceretius.
Part only of the Greek text of this famous Hymn was known prior to 1899, when James published a hitherto unknown and very important fragment of the Acts of John, found in a fourteenth century M.S., in the Vienna Imperial Library. This contained what seems to be the full text of our Hymn, though, unfortunately, copied by a sometimes very careless scribe. Nearly the whole of this lengthy fragment consists of a monologue put into the mouth of John, and in it we have preserved to us a very remarkable tradition of the Gnostic side of the life of the Master; or, if it be preferred, of incidents in the "occult" life of Jesus.
The whole setting of the christology is what is called "docetic." Our fragment is thus a most valuable addition to our knowledge of Docetism, and at last gives us a satisfactory reason why this view was held so widely by the Gnostics. Indeed it is now the most important source we possess, and puts the whole question on a different footing. In future our fragment must always be taken first as the locus classicus in any discussion of the question.
Docetism was a theory which found its confirmation in narratives and legends of certain psychic or spiritual powers ascribed to the "perfect man."
The christological and soteriological theories of the Gnostic philosophers were not, as many would have us believe, invented altogether à priori ; they rested, I hold, on the basis of a veritable historical fact, which has for the most part been obscured out of all recognition by the flood of physical objective historicizing narratives of the origins.
After His death, I believe, as many a Gnostic tradition claims, the Christ did return and teach His disciples and true lovers in the inner circles, and this fact which was made known to their consciousness in many marvellous ways, was to a large extent the origin of the protean Gnostic tradition of an an inner instruction.
He returned in the only way He could return in this way of return--namely, in a subtle or "spiritual" mode or "body." This "body" could be made visible at will, could even be made sensible to touch, but was, compared with the normally objective physical body, an "illusory" body--hence the term "docetic."
But just as the external tradition of those who are considered the original Jewish Christians, the Ebionîm (or Poor), was gradually transmuted and sublimated, so that it, finally, exalted Jesus from the status of a simple prophet in which it originally regarded him, unto the full Power and Glory of Godhead itself; so the internal tradition extended the doubtlessly simple original docetic notion to every department of the huge soteriological structure raised by Gnostic genius.
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