Chapter 14: Carpocratus, Epiphanius and the Tradition of Simon of Samaria

In the encounter with the generally ascetic Christian current, which was propagated in the Second Century by gnostic esotericism and by the pistis of the New Prophecy, the teachings of Carpocratus and his son Epiphanius inscribed themselves in a line of life that only Simon of Samaria knew how to trace in thin strokes on the tormented grays of the era.

Carpocratus’ biography remains obscure. Origen confused him with Harpocratus, son of Isis and Osiris, a solar god under Greco-Roman domination, often represented in the magic papyrus seated on a lotus, the male principle penetrating the feminine principle so as to impregnate her with his light. Carpocratus taught at Alexandria and wed Alexandreia. Their son, Epiphanius, who died at the age of 17 in 138, was interred on his island of birth, Cephalonia. Around 155 or 156, a philospher named Marcellina taught the doctrines of the father and the son in Rome.

Clement of Alexandria had the merit of retranscribing a short extract by Epiphanius on justice:

Justice consists in a community of equality. A single heaven deploys itself and embraces the entire earth within its circumference, the night shows all of the stars equally; as for the sun, author of the day and father of the night, God makes it shine on the earth from on high, equally for all the beings who can see. They see it all in common, because he makes no exception for the rich, the beggar or the sovereign, dumb or wise, female or male, free man or slave. The brute animals themselves have no difficulty in seeing the sun, because God has poured the light of the sun on all creatures from on high, as a communal good, and he proves his justice to the good as well as to the wicked; thus no one possesses more, nor steals from the next so as to double his own share of light. The sun makes the pastures grow for the communal enjoyment of all the animals and his justice is distributed among all, in common and in equality. It is for such a life that the species of the cow was made, as well as each individual cow, that of the pigs as well as each individual pig, that of the sheep as well as each sheep, and so on. Because justice manifests itself in them under the form of a community.

Moreover, all is spread out in equality for the species following the principle of community; nourishment is spread out for the beasts that graze, for all equally, and without being ruled by law; on the contrary, nourishment is provided by the liberality of the Master for all in conformity with his justice. Even concerning generation, there are no written laws; because these would be false laws. The animals procreate and engender in the same fashion, and practice a community that was inculcated in them through justice. The Creator and Father of All gives sight to them all in common, and his legislation consists exclusively in the justice issued from him. He does not make a distinction between men and women, reasonable and without reason, one being and another. With equality and communally he shares sight and he gives it equally to all, through a single and self-same commandment. As far as the laws, which do not punish men who are ignorant of them, there are those who have learned them so as to act against the law. Because particular laws fragment and destroy communion with divine law. Do you not understand the word of the Apostle: ‘I have only known sin through the law’? By this, the Apostle meant that mine and yours only entered the world through the laws and that this was the end of all community. Because what remains in common for those who neither enjoy property nor goods, not even marriage? And yet God created for all, communally, the vineyards do hunt the sparrows nor the thieves, and likewise the cereals and other fruits. But it was from that day that the community was no longer composed in the sense of equality and was deformed by the Law, which produces the thief who steals animals and fruit. God created all for the communal pleasure of mankind, he united man and woman for a communal intercourse [commerce], and he likewise coupled all the living beings to manifest his justice as community in equality. But those who were born thanks to this have denied their own origin from the community that reconciles mankind. They say: ‘He who marries her must guard her,’ whereas all can share her, as the example of all the other living beings shows.

[And yet] Epiphanius still teaches in proper terms that “God placed in male beings a powerful and impetuous desire to propagate the species, and no law, no custom, can exclude it from the world, because it is the institution of God. Thus the words of the legislator: ‘You must not covet’ (Exodus, 20, 17, and Deuteronomy, 5, 21) are ridiculous and still more ridiculous is what follows: ‘the goods of your neighbor,’ because the same God who gave to man the desire destined to couple beings with a view towards generation [also] ordained the destruction of desire, although he did not take it from any living being. But the most laughable of all is ‘the woman of your neighbor,’ because this reduces the force of community to separation.”[235]

Epiphanius’ text, which is of an astonishing modernity, participated in a thought and a behavior that was radically hostile to Stoic, Epicurean and Christian morality.

Carpocratus and Epiphanius both belonged to a Greek milieu that rejected Judaism. In the same way that Simon of Samaria restored the spirit of the Pentateuch and Genesis, in particular, to the body, Epiphanius mocked the biblical commandments, the notions of sin and guilt. The Law of Moses fomented crime for the same reason that prohibition engenders transgression.

Thereafter, either quotations from Paul were recovered from the ordinary revisions made by the heresiologues, who added canonical extracts to them so as to blunt the dissent of doctrines that had nothing to do with Christianity, but who nevertheless annexed the Messiah Joshua, as well as Serapis, Seth, Abrasax and Harpocrates into their own syncretism; or these quotations referred back to a Paul who was completely different from the image that Marcion and his successive manipulators presented, that is, a Saul/Paul whose teachings would [in turn] justify the use of the name of Simon [of Samaria], whose doctrines had been travestied by the Elchasaites living under the rule of Trajan.

Written when Epiphanius was 15 or 16 years old, the work of the young man whom Jacques Lacarriere has called the Gnostic Rimbaud links social equality to the free exercise of desire. His critique of property goes beyond the Rousseauist conception, and one had to wait until [Charles] Fourier and the radicality of individual anarchy, with its principle “We only group ourselves according to affinities,” for there to be an echo of the precocious genius of Epiphanius of Cephalonia.

I do not see why Marcellina, a disciple of Carpocratus and Epiphanius who taught in Rome around 160, would have decorated his school, in the words of Irenaeus, “with painted icons enhanced with gold, representing Jesus, Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle,”[236] unless it wasn’t simply an occasion for the Bishop of Lyon to condemn the Christians who preferred Greek philosophy to the Bible.

On the other hand, it is probable that the community founded on the liberty of desire drew the idea that “the soul must be tested before death” from Pythagorean theory, because, “for Epiphanius, desire is the expression of the first will of God and nature.”[237] And according to Simon, desire is to be identified with fire, the principle of creation and the principle of passion; there is nothing that can limit it in the unity of the macrocosm and the microcosm.

Epiphanius applied his conception of justice to mankind, the animals and the plants. The living perpetuates itself by changing form. Irenaeus interpreted this theory, which seemed strange and odious to him, in terms of magic and metempsychosis:

They also practice magic, incantations, amorous love potions and love feasts, the invocation of the spirits of the dead and the spirits from dreams, and other forms of necromancy, claiming that they have power over the princes and creators of this world and over the market in all creatures of this world. At this point, they have so loosened the bridle on aberration that they claim to have complete freedom to commit any act that pleases them, impious or atheist; although it is human opinion that makes all the difference between a good act and a bad one. The soul, they say, must — through a migration of one body into another — exhaust all forms of life and possible action, if it did not do so in its first life. We do not dare to say, nor hear, nor even think about nor believe that such things take place in our towns; but their writings teach that, before death, the soul must be completely tested until the final rest.[238]

A line by Irenaeus stands out: “It is faith and love that saves; the rest is indifferent and only human opinion distinguishes between good and evil.”

According to Simon’s Megale Apophasis, faith in oneself and love lead to the Great Power, which resides in each person and moves the world. What is astonishing is the fact that, in a letter by Paul, the theme of faith and love gives birth to an enthusiastic development that explodes with misogyny and ascetic harshness, which is attested to everywhere in the epistolary works of the man who, successor to Moses, stole the title of Apostle from him: “When I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, if I lack love, I am merely resonating metal, a resounding cymbal. When I have the gift of prophecy, the science of all mysteries and all knowledge (gnosis), when I have the most complete faith, that which moves mountains, if I lack love, then I am nothing. When I give all my belongings (to those who are starving), when I surrender my body (like a slave, so as to have pride), if I lack love, then I have gained nothing. Love takes patience, love renders service, it is not jealous, it is not breast-plated, it does not inflate with pride, it makes nothing of ugliness, it does not seek its own interest, it does not become irritated, it does not rejoice in injustice, but finds its own joy in truth. It protects all, it believes all, it endures all. Love will never disappear [...]” (Epistle to the Corinthians, I, 13).[239] Which anti-Marcionite, capable of penetrating into the labyrinths [ces auberges espagnoles] of Paul’s epistles, brough forth this fragment of Carpocratic doctrine and inserted it into a Christian perspective?