Numbers and the Unknown Father

I want to explain to you as well what they teach about the way the creation itself was formed — through the mother, by the Demiurge, and, as they would have it, without his knowing — after the image of things invisible. First of all, they say, the four elements were produced after the image of the primary Tetrad above: fire, water, earth and air. Then, if you add what these do — heat, cold, dryness and wetness — you have an exact likeness of the Ogdoad. They next reckon up ten powers, in the following way. There are seven globe‑shaped bodies, which they also call heavens; then the globe that contains those seven, which they name the eighth heaven; and besides these, the sun and the moon. These come to ten, and they declare them to be types of the invisible Decad, which came out of Logos and Zoe. As for the Duodecad, it is indicated by what is called the circle of the zodiac; for they claim that the twelve signs shadow forth the Duodecad in the plainest possible way — the Duodecad being the daughter of Anthropos and Ecclesia. And since the highest heaven, pressing down on the sphere below it, has been linked to the swiftest motion of the whole system, holding that system in check and balancing it with its own weight, so that it completes its course from one sign to the next in thirty years — this, they say, is an image of Horus, who encircles their mother of the thirty names. Then again, since the moon travels her allotted stretch of heaven in thirty days, they hold that by those days she expresses the number of the thirty Aeons. The sun, who runs his course in twelve months and comes back to the same point in the circle, makes the Duodecad plain by those twelve months; and the days, being measured out by twelve hours, are a type of the invisible Duodecad. They declare further that the hour, which is a twelfth part of the day, is made up of thirty parts, so as to set out the image of the Triacontad. The circumference of the zodiac itself, again, contains three hundred and sixty degrees, since each of its signs holds thirty; and so, they say, this circle too preserves an image of the connection between the twelve and the thirty. And still further: the earth, they assert, is divided into twelve zones, and in each zone it receives power from the heavens according to how directly the sun stands above it, and brings forth produce answering to the power that sends its influence down on it. This, they maintain, is the plainest type of all of the Duodecad and its offspring. [a]

Besides all this, they declare that the Demiurge wanted to imitate the boundlessness of the Ogdoad above — its eternity, its immensity, its freedom from all measurement by time. But he was the fruit of a defect, and could not express its permanence and its eternity; so he fell back on a device. He spread its eternity out into times, and seasons, and vast numbers of years, imagining that by the sheer multitude of such times he might imitate its immensity. They declare further that the truth escaped him and he followed what was false, and that for this reason, when the times are completed, his work will perish.

And while they are saying such things about the creation, every one of them turns out something new day by day, as far as his ability runs; for among them no one counts as “perfect” unless he produces some mighty piece of fiction. So the first thing to do is to point out what they make over to their own use out of the writings of the prophets, and the next is to refute them. Moses, they declare, pointed out the mother of all things at the very start, in the way he begins his account of the creation, when he says, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” By naming these four — God, beginning, heaven and earth — he set out their Tetrad, so they maintain. He indicated its invisible and hidden nature too when he said, “And the earth was invisible and unformed.” They will have it, moreover, that he spoke of the second Tetrad, the offspring of the first, in this way: by naming an abyss and darkness, in which were water as well, and the Spirit moving on the water. Then, going on to the Decad, he names light, day, night, the firmament, the evening, the morning, dry land, sea, plants, and, in the tenth place, trees. By these ten names, they say, he indicated the ten Aeons. The power of the Duodecad, again, he shadowed forth like this: he names the sun, the moon, the stars, the seasons, the years, the whales, the fish, the reptiles, the birds, the four‑footed animals, the wild beasts, and after all these, in the twelfth place, man. So they teach that the Triacontad was spoken through Moses by the Spirit. Man, too, they say, was formed after the image of the power above, and had in himself the ability that flows out of the one source. That ability was seated in the region of the brain, and out of it four faculties proceed, after the image of the Tetrad above; these are called, first sight, second hearing, third smell, and fourth taste. And the Ogdoad, they say, is indicated in man this way: he has two ears, the same number of eyes, two nostrils as well, and a double taste, of bitter and of sweet. They teach further that the whole man contains the entire image of the Triacontad. In his hands, by means of his fingers, he carries the Decad; and in his whole body the Duodecad, since his body is divided into twelve members — the same portioning by which they divide the body of Truth, a point I have already spoken of. But the Ogdoad, being unspeakable and invisible, is understood to lie hidden in the inner organs. [g]

Again, they assert that the sun, the great light‑giver, was made on the fourth day with reference to the number of the Tetrad. In the same way, they say, the courts of the tabernacle Moses built, made of fine linen and blue and purple and scarlet, pointed to the same image. And they maintain that the priest’s long robe, which fell over his feet and was adorned with four rows of precious stones, indicates the Tetrad; and if there is anything else at all in the Scriptures that can possibly be dragged into the number four, they declare it came into being with a view to the Tetrad. The Ogdoad they showed as follows. They affirm that man was formed on the eighth day — for sometimes they will have him made on the sixth day and sometimes on the eighth, unless perhaps they mean that his earthly part was formed on the sixth day and his fleshly part on the eighth, since they keep the two apart. Some of them also hold that one man was formed after the image and likeness of God, male and female at once, and that this was the spiritual man; and that another man was formed out of the earth.

Further, they declare that the arrangement made about the ark at the Flood, by which eight people were saved, indicates most clearly the Ogdoad that brings salvation. David shows the same thing, they say, since he held the eighth place in age among his brothers. And the circumcision that took place on the eighth day represented the circumcision of the Ogdoad above. In short, whatever they find in the Scriptures that can be referred to the number eight, they declare fulfils the mystery of the Ogdoad. With the Decad, again, they maintain that it is indicated by the ten nations God promised Abraham for a possession. The arrangement Sarah made, when after ten years she gave him her slave Hagar so that he might have a son by her, showed the same thing. So did Abraham’s servant, who was sent to Rebekah and presented her at the well with ten gold bracelets, and her brothers, who kept her for ten days; and Jeroboam, who received the ten sceptres — that is, the ten tribes; and the ten courts of the tabernacle; and the columns ten cubits high; and the ten sons of Jacob who were sent into Egypt the first time to buy grain; and the ten apostles to whom the Lord appeared after his resurrection, Thomas being absent. All of these, according to them, represented the invisible Decad.

As for the Duodecad — the number in connection with which the suffering of the defect occurred, the suffering out of which they maintain everything visible was framed — they assert that it is to be found everywhere in Scripture, strikingly and unmistakably. They declare that the twelve sons of Jacob, from whom the twelve tribes also sprang; the high priest’s breastpiece, which carried twelve precious stones and twelve little bells; the twelve stones Moses set at the foot of the mountain; the same number that Joshua placed in the river, and again, on the far bank, the men who carried the ark of the covenant; the stones Elijah set up when the heifer was offered as a burnt offering; the number of the apostles, too; and, in a word, every event that has the number twelve in it — all these set out their Duodecad. And then the union of all these, which they call the Triacontad, they work hard to demonstrate: by Noah’s ark, whose height was thirty cubits; by Samuel, who gave Saul the chief place among thirty guests; by David, who hid himself in the field for thirty days, and by the men who went into the cave with him; and also by the fact that the length of the holy tabernacle was thirty cubits. And if they come across any other numbers like these, they apply them to their Triacontad just the same.

I judge it necessary to add to all this what they try to persuade us of about their Propator — the one who was unknown to everyone before the coming of Christ — by garbling passages of Scripture. Their object is to show that our Lord announced a Father other than the Maker of this universe, whom, as I said before, they have the impiety to declare the fruit of a defect. So when the prophet Isaiah says, “But Israel has not known me, and my people have not understood me,” they twist his words to mean ignorance of the invisible Bythus. What Hosea says — “There is no truth in them, nor the knowledge of God” — they strain to make refer to the same thing. And “There is no one who understands, or who seeks after God; they have all gone out of the way, they have together become useless” they maintain was said about ignorance of Bythus. What Moses says, too — “No man shall see God and live” — has, as they would persuade us, the same reference. [s]

For they falsely hold that the Creator was seen by the prophets. That passage, “No man shall see God and live,” they would interpret as spoken of the greatness of their Father, unseen and unknown by everyone. Now that the words “No man shall see God” are spoken about the invisible Father, the Maker of the universe, is plain to all of us; but that they are not used about that Bythus whom they conjure into existence, and are used about the Creator — and he is the invisible God — I will show as I go on. They maintain that Daniel set out the same thing when he begged the angels for explanations of the parables, being ignorant of them himself. But the angel, hiding the great mystery of Bythus from him, said to him, “Go your way quickly, Daniel, for these sayings are shut up until those who have understanding understand them, and those who are white are made white.” And they boast that they themselves are the white and the men of good understanding.

Besides all this, they bring forward an untold number of apocryphal and spurious writings that they themselves have forged, to bewilder the minds of foolish people and of those who do not know the Scriptures of truth. Among other things, they produce that false and wicked story which says that our Lord, when he was a boy learning his letters, was told by his teacher, as teachers do, “Say Alpha.” And he answered, as he was told, “Alpha.” But when the teacher told him next to say Beta, the Lord answered, “You tell me first what Alpha is, and then I will tell you what Beta is.” They expound this to mean that he alone knew the Unknown, which he revealed under its type, Alpha. [v]

Some passages that occur in the Gospels get the same coloring from them. There is the answer he gave his mother when he was twelve years old: “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” By this, they say, he announced to them the Father they knew nothing of. It was for this reason too, they say, that he sent the disciples out to the twelve tribes, so that they might proclaim the unknown God to them. And to the man who said to him, “Good Teacher,” he acknowledged the God who is truly good, saying, “Why do you call me good? There is One who is good, the Father in the heavens” — and they assert that in this passage the Aeons are being given the name of heavens. Again, when he did not answer those who said to him, “By what power are you doing this?” but instead threw them into utter confusion with a question of his own, by that refusal to answer, on their interpretation, he was showing that the Father cannot be uttered. And when he said, “I have often longed to hear one of these words, and I had no one who could speak it,” they maintain that by the word “one” he set out the one true God, whom they did not know. Further, when he drew near to Jerusalem and wept over it and said, “If you had known, even you, in this your day, the things that belong to your peace — but they are hidden from you,” by that word “hidden” he showed how far out of reach Bythus is. And when he said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are loaded down, and I will give you rest, and learn from me,” he was announcing the Father of truth. For what they did not know, these men say, is what he promised to teach them.

But the passage they bring forward as the highest testimony of all, and as the very crown of their system, is this: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the clever, and have revealed them to infants. Yes, my Father, for so it seemed good in your sight. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Father but the Son, or the Son but the Father, and the one to whom the Son will reveal him.” In these words, they affirm, he showed clearly that the Father of truth — the one they conjure into existence — was known to no one before he came. And they want to construe the passage as though it taught that the Maker and Framer of the world was always known to everyone, while the Lord spoke these words about the Father who was unknown to all, the one they now proclaim.