The Number of the Name

“Know, then, that these letters, which you reckon at twenty-four, are emanations of the three powers, and are images of the powers that take in the whole number of the elements. Take it that some of the letters are mute — nine of them — belonging to Pater and Aletheia, because these two are mute, that is, unspeakable and not to be uttered. And take it that others are half-sounding — eight of them — belonging to Logos and Zoe, because they stand midway between the consonants and the vowels, receiving what flows down from the letters above them and what flows back from those below them. And take it that others are vowels — seven of these — belonging to Anthropos and Ecclesia, since it was the voice of Anthropos that went out and gave shape to everything in the universe; for the sound of the voice produced their figure and clothed them in it. [a]

So Logos and Zoe have the eight half-sounding letters, Anthropos and Ecclesia the seven vowels, and Pater and Aletheia the nine mutes. But because the count fell one short, the one who was in the Father was removed from his place and came down; and he was sent out to the one from whom he had been parted, to set right what had been done wrong. He came down so that the unity of the Pleromas, which is in the Good, might bear as its fruit in all of them the single power that comes from them all. And so the one who belongs to the seven took on the power of the eight, and three places were produced answering to the three numbers, and these places were Ogdoads; and the three, added one to another, showed the number twenty-four.”

And of course he holds that the three elements — which he says are joined by pairing with the three powers, so that they become six, and out of which the twenty-four elements have come — when they are made fourfold by the Tetrad’s unspeakable word, produce this same number, twenty-four. These, he says, belong to Anonomastus. And these, he says, are carried by the six powers into a likeness with Aoratus. And he says there are six double letters among these elements, images of images, which, reckoned along with the twenty-four letters, produce by a proportional power the number thirty.

And he says that from this reckoning and this proportion it follows that the one who appeared in the likeness of an image is the one who after six days went up the mountain as a fourth person and became the sixth. He asserts that this same one came down and was held fast by the Hebdomad, and so became a remarkable Ogdoad. And he holds within himself the whole number of the elements, which he made plain when he came to his baptism; the sign of that showing was the descent of the dove, which is Omega and Alpha, and which by its number is eight hundred and one. [f]

This is why, he says, Moses says that man was made on the sixth day; and the suffering that belonged to the plan took place on the sixth day, the day of preparation, so that on that day the last man appeared for the rebirth of the first man. And the beginning and the end of this plan is the sixth hour, at which he was nailed to the tree. For perfect Nous, he says, knowing that the number six holds the power of bringing to birth and of bringing to birth again, showed the sons of light the rebirth that had been brought into that number by the remarkable one who had appeared. And so, he says, the double letters carry the remarkable number; for the remarkable number, mixed in with the twenty-four elements, produced the name that has thirty letters.

But he has used the whole set of the seven numbers, so that what he had thought out for himself might be made plain. Understand for the present, he says, that the remarkable number is the one who was formed by the remarkable one, and who was, so to speak, divided and stayed outside. And through his own power and wisdom, by putting himself forth, he gave life to this world in imitation of the seven powers, so that it is made up of seven powers, and he made it the soul of the visible universe. And so he has taken up this whole work as something undertaken of his own accord; and these powers serve the mind of the Mother, since they are copies of things that cannot be copied. [k]

And the first heaven sounds Alpha, the one after it Epsilon, the third Eta, the fourth — the one in the middle of the seven — the power of Iota, the fifth Omicron, the sixth Upsilon, and the seventh, fourth from the middle one, Omega. And all the powers, when they are joined together into one, give out a sound and glorify the one from whom they were sent out; and the glory of that sound is carried upward to the Forefather. Moreover, he says, the sound of this ascription of glory, carried down to the earth, became the maker and begetter of the things on earth.

And the proof of this, he holds, can be drawn from newborn infants, whose soul, at the moment it comes out of the womb, cries out this same sound of each one of the elements. So then, he says, as the seven powers glorify the Logos, the grieving soul in babies magnifies him too. And this is why, he says, David also declared, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing children you have made praise complete,” and again, “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” But when the soul is in hardship it utters no cry but Omega, since it is being afflicted, so that the soul above, becoming aware of what is akin to itself below, may send down someone to help this soul on earth.

So much for those points. But about the generation of the twenty-four elements he speaks like this: that Henotes exists together with Monotes, and that out of these come two projections, Monas and Hen; and that these added together become four, for twice two is four. And again, the two and the four added together showed the number six; and these six, made fourfold, produce the twenty-four forms. [o]

And these are the names of the first Tetrad, and they are understood as a Holy of Holies, and cannot be spoken, and are known by the Son alone; the Father knows which they are. Those names that are pronounced in his presence in silence and with faith are Arrhetus and Sige, Pater and Aletheia. And the whole number of this Tetrad is the twenty-four letters. For Arrhetus has seven elements, Sige five, Pater five, and Aletheia seven. And it is the same with the second Tetrad: Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia show the same number of elements.

And he says that the spoken name of the Savior — that is, Jesus — consists of six letters, but that his unspeakable name, counted letter by letter, consists of twenty-four elements, and “Son Christ” of twelve. And he says that the unspeakable name in Christ consists of thirty letters, counted by the letters in it one by one. For the name Christ consists of eight elements: Chi is three, Rho two, EI two, Iota four, Sigma five, Tau three, OU two, and San three. So the unspeakable name in Christ consists, they claim, of thirty letters. And they say this is why he speaks the words, “I am Alpha and Omega” — displaying the dove, which has this number, eight hundred and one.

Now Jesus has this unspeakable generation. From the mother of the universe — I mean the first Tetrad — the second Tetrad came out in the manner of a daughter, and it became an Ogdoad, out of which came the Decade; and so ten was produced, and after that eighteen. So the Decade, coming in alongside the Ogdoad and making it tenfold, produced the number eighty; and again, making eighty tenfold, generated the number eight hundred. And so the whole number of letters that came out from Ogdoad into Decade is eight hundred and eighty-eight, which is Jesus; for the name Jesus, by the number in its letters, is eight hundred and eighty-eight. And in the same way the Greek alphabet has eight units and eight tens and eight hundreds, and these show the reckoned sum of eight hundred and eighty-eight, that is, Jesus, who is made up of all numbers. And this, he says, is why he is called Alpha and Omega, pointing to his generation out of all. [s]

But about the making of this Jesus he speaks as follows: that powers coming out of the second Tetrad fashioned the Jesus who appeared on earth; and that the angel Gabriel filled the place of Logos, the Holy Spirit that of Zoe, the “Power of the Highest” that of Anthropos, and the Virgin that of Ecclesia. And so it was, in Marcus’s system, that the man who came according to the plan was born through Mary. And when he came to the water, he says, the one who had gone up above and filled the twelfth number came down on him like a dove. And in him is the seed of these, that is, of those who are sown along with him, and who come down with him and go up with him. [u]

And this power that came down on him, he says, is the seed of the Pleroma, which holds in itself both the Father and the Son and the unnameable power of Sige that is recognized through these, and all the Aeons. And this seed is the spirit that is in him and spoke in him through the mouth of the Son — the confession of himself as Son of man, and that he is the one who would make the Father known; and when this spirit came down on Jesus, it was united with him. The Savior who belonged to the plan, he says, destroyed death, while it was Christ who made the Father known.

He says, then, that Jesus is the name of the man of the plan, and that it was set down for the likening and shaping of Anthropos, who was going to come down on him; and that when he had received him into himself he kept possession of him. And he says that he was Anthropos, that he was Logos, that he was Pater, and Arrhetus, and Sige, and Aletheia, and Ecclesia, and Zoe.

I trust, then, that as far as these doctrines go it is plain to everyone in his right mind that they carry no authority, that they are far removed from the knowledge that goes with reverence for God, and that they are only scraps of astrological discovery and of the arithmetic of the Pythagoreans. Those of you who want to learn will find this out by turning back to the earlier books, where, among the other opinions we have explained, we set out these as well. But to make the statement clearer — that these people are disciples not of Christ but of Pythagoras — I will go on to explain, in an epitome as far as I can, the opinions they have taken over from Pythagoras about the heavenly phenomena of the stars. [x]

Now the Pythagoreans make the following statements: that the universe consists of a Monad and a Duad, and that by reckoning from a monad as far as four they generate a decade. And again, a duad going out as far as the remarkable letter — for instance, two and four and six — showed the number twelve. And again, if we reckon from the duad to the decade, thirty is produced; and in this are contained the Ogdoad, the Decade, and the Dodecade. And so, because it has the remarkable letter along with it, the Dodecade has a remarkable suffering along with it.

And this is why, they hold, when an error had arisen about the twelfth number, the sheep jumped away from the flock and wandered off; for the falling away happened, they say, in the same manner from the decade. And with a similar reference to the Dodecade they speak of the coin which a woman lost, and lit a lamp, and searched for diligently; and they make a like use of the loss of the one sheep out of the ninety-nine. And adding these one to the other, they tell a fable about numbers. In this way they affirm that when eleven is multiplied by nine it produces the number ninety-nine, and that on this account the word Amen is said to embrace the number ninety-nine.

And about another number they express themselves in this manner: that the letter Eta, along with the remarkable one, makes an Ogdoad, since it stands in the eighth place from Alpha. Then again, computing the number of these elements without the remarkable letter, and adding them up to Eta, they exhibit the number thirty; for anyone beginning from Alpha and going to Eta will, after subtracting the remarkable letter, find the number of the elements to be thirty. Since, then, the number thirty is unified out of the three powers, when taken three times it produced ninety, for three times thirty is ninety. In this way the Ogdoad brought forth the number ninety-nine out of the first Ogdoad, and Decade, and Dodecade. And at one time they collect the number of this trio into an entire sum and produce a triacontad; at another they subtract twelve and reckon it at eleven, and in the same way subtract ten and make it nine; and connecting these one to the other and multiplying them tenfold, they complete the number ninety-nine.

But since the twelfth Aeon, having left the eleven above and departed downward, withdrew, they allege that even this corresponds to the letters. For the shape of the letters teaches as much. L is placed eleventh among the letters, and this L is the number thirty; and this, they say, is set there according to an image of the plan above, since from Alpha, leaving out the remarkable letter, the number of the letters themselves added together up to L, according to the increase of the letters together with the L itself, produces the number ninety-nine. But that the L, standing eleventh, came down to search after the number like itself, so that it might fill up the twelfth number, and that when it was discovered it was filled up, is plain from the very shape of the letter. For Lambda, when it arrived at what was, as it were, the search for what is like itself, and when it found such a one and snatched it away, filled up the place of the twelfth, the letter M, which is composed of two Lambdas. And for this reason these followers of Marcus, through their knowledge, avoid the place of the ninety-nine, that is, the Hysterema, a type of the left hand, and go after the one which, added to ninety-nine, they say was transferred to his own right hand.

And by the Mother, they allege, the four elements were created first, which they say are fire, water, earth, and air; and these have been put forth as an image of the Tetrad above. And reckoning the energies of these as well — hot, cold, moist, dry — they assert that they accurately portray the Ogdoad. And next they compute ten powers, this way. There are, they say, seven round bodies, which they also call heavens. There is next a circle containing these within its compass, and this also they name an eighth heaven; and besides these they affirm the existence of both a sun and a moon. And these being ten in number, they say, are images of the invisible Decade that came from Logos and Zoe. [ad]

The Dodecade, however, they say is indicated by what is called the zodiac circle. For these twelve signs of the zodiac, they say, most plainly sketched out the daughter of Anthropos and Ecclesia, namely the Dodecade. And since, he says, the upper heaven has been set from the opposite direction against the revolving motion of the whole set of signs, which is the most rapid of motions, and since within its hollow it retards them and by its slowness counterbalances their speed, so that in thirty years it accomplishes its circuit from sign to sign, they therefore assert that this heaven is an image of Horos, who encircles the mother of these, the one who has thirty names.

And again they say that the moon, which traverses the heaven in thirty days, portrays by those days the number of the Aeons; and that the sun, performing its circuit and terminating its exact return to its first position in its orbit in twelve months, manifests the Dodecade. And also that the days themselves, involving the measure of twelve hours, are a type of the empty Dodecade; and that the circumference of the zodiac circle itself consists of three hundred and sixty degrees, and that each sign of the zodiac has thirty divisions. In this way, therefore, they maintain that even by means of the circle the image is preserved of the connection of the twelve with the thirty. And moreover, alleging that the earth was divided into twelve regions, and that according to each particular region it receives one power sent down to it from the heavens, and that it produces children corresponding in likeness to the power that transmitted the likeness by emanation, they assert that the earth too is a type of the Dodecade above.

And in addition to these points they lay it down that the Demiurge wanted to imitate the Ogdoad above — its limitlessness, its everlastingness, its boundlessness, its freedom from time; and that, not being able to represent its stability and eternity, because he is himself the fruit of the Hysterema, he appointed to this end times, and seasons, and numbers, measuring out many years against that eternity, and thinking by the multitude of times to imitate its invisibility. And here they say that when Truth eluded his pursuit, Falsehood followed close upon him, and that on account of this his work fell apart when the times were fulfilled. [ag]