that Jesus is the name of that man formed by a special dispensation, and that He was formed
after the likeness and form of that [heavenly] Anthropos, who was about to descend upon
Him. After He had received that Æon, He possessed Anthropos himself, and Logos himself,
and Pater, and Arrhetus, and Sige, and Aletheia, and Ecclesia, and Zoe.
4. Such ravings, we may now well say, go beyond Iu, Iu, Pheu, Pheu, and every kind of
tragic exclamation or utterance of misery.212 For who would not detest one who is the
wretched contriver of such audacious falsehoods, when he perceives the truth turned by
Marcus into a mere image, and that punctured all over with the letters of the alphabet? The
Greeks confess that they first received sixteen letters from Cadmus, and that but recently,
as compared with the beginning, [the vast antiquity of which is implied] in the common
proverb: “Yesterday and before;”213 and afterwards, in the course of time, they themselves
invented at one period the aspirates, and at another the double letters, while, last of all, they
say Palamedes added the long letters to the former. Was it so, then, that until these things
took place among the Greeks, truth had no existence? For, according to thee, Marcus, the
body of truth is posterior to Cadmus and those who preceded him— posterior also to those
who added the rest of the letters— posterior even to thyself! For thou alone hast formed
that which is called by thee the truth into an [outward, visible] image.
5. But who will tolerate thy nonsensical Sige, who names Him that cannot be named,
and expounds the nature of Him that is unspeakable, and searches out Him that is unsearch-
able, and declares that He whom thou maintainest to be destitute of body and form, opened
His mouth and sent forth the Word, as if He were included among organized beings; and
that His Word, while like to His Author, and bearing the image of the invisible, nevertheless
consisted of thirty elements and four syllables? It will follow, then, according to thy theory,
that the Father of all, in accordance with the likeness of the Word, consists of thirty elements
and four syllables! Or, again, who will tolerate thee in thy juggling with forms and num-
bers,—at one time thirty, at another twenty-four, and at another, again, only six,—whilst
thou shuttest up [in these] the Word of God, the Founder, and Framer, and Maker of all
things; and then, again, cutting Him up piecemeal into four syllables and thirty elements;
and bringing down the Lord of all who founded the heavens to the number eight hundred
and eighty-eight, so that He should be similar to the alphabet; and subdividing the Father,
who cannot be contained, but contains all things, into a Tetrad, and an Ogdoad, and a Decad,
and a Duodecad; and by such multiplications, setting forth the unspeakable and inconceivable
nature of the Father, as thou thyself declarest it to be? And showing thyself a very Dædalus
for evil invention, and the wicked architect of the supreme power, thou dost construct a
212 [Comp. cap. xi. 4, supra.]
213 Comp. Gen. xxxi. 2. —We here follow the punctuation of Scaliger, now generally accepted by the editors,
though entirely different from the old Latin.
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Chapter XV.—Sige relates to Marcus the generation of the twenty-four elements…