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The latter part of the section on Simon in the Philosophumena is not so important, and is undoubtedly taken from Irenaeus or from the anti-heretical treatise of Justin, or from the source from which both these fathers drew.
This was the MS. of our Philosophumena which is supposed to have been the work of Hippolytus. The authorship, however, is still uncertain, as will appear by what will be said about the Simon of Epiphanius and Philaster.
This is also confirmed by the statements in Epiphanius and the Apostolic Constitutions that the Simonians gave "barbarous" or "foreign names" to their Aeons. That is to say, names that were neither Greek nor Hebrew. None of these names are mentioned by the Fathers, and probably the Greek terms given by the author of the Philosophumena and Theodoret are exoteric equivalents of the mystery names.
I must now say a few words on Simonian literature of which the only geniune specimens we can in any way be certain are the quotations from the Apophasis of Simon in the text of the Philosophumena.
The Simon of Tertullian again is clearly taken from Irenaeus, as the critics are agreed. "Tertullian evidently knows no more than he read in Irenaeus," says Dr. Salmon. It is only when we come to the Simon of the Philosophumena that we feel on any safe ground.
The Philosophumena say nothing on this point, except that Epinoia "throws all the Powers in the World into confusion through her unsurpassable Beauty." Theodoret briefly follows Irenaeus. In these contradictory accounts we have a great confusion between the rôles played by Nous and Epinoia, the Father and Thought, the Spirit and Spiritual Soul.
The author of the Philosophumena professes to give us some additional information on this philosopher who "bewailed all things, condemning the ignorance of all that lives, and of all men, in pity for the life of mortals," but the obscure philosopher does not lend himself very easily to the controversial purposes of the patristic writer.
Then again how did the Lower Regions come into existence, for Epinoia to descend to them? This lacuna is filled by the fuller information of the Philosophumena which shows us the scheme of self-emanation out or down into matter by similitude, thus confining the problem of "evil" to space and time, and not raising it into an eternal principle.
The first three of these are sufficiently explained in the fragment of Simon's Great Revelation, preserved in the Philosophumena, and become entirely comprehensible to the student of the Kabalah who is learned in the emanations of the Sephirothal Tree.
He compiled a voluminous treatise, entitled Philosophumena, or The Refutation of all Heresies, of which only one MS. and that of the fourteenth century, has descended to us. Incidentally this would seem to suggest that the worthy bishop was not making an empty boast when he claimed to be a revealer of secrets.
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