Acts of Archelaus (Latin version) 65–68

"After this they went back to their master and reported what had happened to them; and they also heard of the evils that had been brought on him. So his own people, approaching him as was fitting and telling him of the evils they were suffering in each place, urged him for the rest to turn to safety; for they were afraid, fearing lest something of the evils that were being inflicted on him should happen to them. But he, urging them to fear nothing, rose to pray. Then, while placed in prison, he ordered them to procure the books of the law of the Christians; for those who had been sent by him through the various cities were held in execration by all men, especially by those among whom the name of Christians was held in veneration. So, taking a small amount of gold, they went to the places where the books of the Christians were copied, and, pretending to be new Christians, asked to be allowed to buy books; and, not to say much, they bought all the books of our Scriptures and brought them to him in prison. When he had received them, the crafty man began to look in our books for pretexts for his duality, or rather not even his, but Scythianus's, who had put this forward a very long time before; and from our books, as he did also when disputing against me, to bring forward his assertion, accusing some things in them, changing others, adding only the name of Christ. He pretended to accept it for this reason: so that in the various cities people, hearing the holy and divine name of Christ, would not curse his disciples and drive them away. And finding also the saying about the Paraclete placed in the Scriptures, he put himself forward as being him, he who had not read carefully that the Paraclete had already come while the apostles were still on earth.

"Having put these things together so wickedly, he sent out his disciples too, to preach fearlessly his invented and feigned errors and to proclaim new and false sayings in each place. When the king of the Persians learned this, he prepared to subject him to fitting punishments. When Manes learned it, warned in a dream, he slipped out of the prison and took to flight, having bribed the guards with a great deal of gold, and he stayed in the fortress of Arabion. From there he sent a letter by Turbo to our Marcellus, in which he indicated that he would come. When he had come there, there was a contest between us such as you have seen and heard here too, in which, as far as we could, we showed plainly that he is a false prophet. The keeper of the prison who had let him go was punished; and the king ordered him to be sought and seized wherever he was found. When I learned this, it was necessary for me to tell you too that this man is being sought by the king of the Persians to this very day."

When they heard this, the crowds wanted to seize Manes and hand him over to the power of the barbarians who lived nearby beyond the river Stranga, since some had come before to look for him and had gone away without finding him; for at that time he was in flight. When Archelaus had disclosed these things, Manes at once took to flight and was able to escape, while no one pursued him, since the people were held by the account of Archelaus, whom they were glad to hear; yet some did follow him closely. But he, going back by the roads by which he had come, crossed the river and returned to the fortress of Arabion. There he was later seized and brought to the king; and the king, moved with very great indignation against him and wishing to avenge two deaths on him, one of his son and the other of the jailer, ordered him to be flayed and hung up before the gates of the city, and his skin to be steeped in drugs and inflated, and his flesh to be given to the birds. When these things were learned later, Archelaus added them to the earlier disputation, so that they might be known to all, as I, who wrote these things, have set out above. So when all the Christians had gathered, it was resolved that a sentence should be passed against him, sending it as a kind of epilogue to his death, in keeping with the other affairs of his life.

Archelaus added this too, saying: "Brothers, let none of you be unbelieving about what I have said, namely that Manes was not himself the first author of this wicked doctrine, but only that it was made known through him in some parts of the earth. For one who has carried something anywhere is not at once to be thought its author, but the one who found it. For as a helmsman who has received a ship that another built can take it to whatever places he wishes, yet is in every way a stranger to its construction, so this man too is to be understood. For he did not give this thing its origin from the beginning, but only brought to men by himself what had been found by another, as is known by sure testimonies, by which it is our purpose to show you that the origin of this evil did not flow from Manes but from another, and that, having arisen long before from a certain barbarian and been kept in silence, it was brought out by this man as his own when it was unknown and hidden, the writer's title having been deleted, as I set out above.

"There was also among the Persians a preacher, a certain Basilides, older, not long after the time of our apostles; and he too, being crafty and seeing that at that time everything had already been taken up, wanted to affirm this duality which was also in Scythianus. In short, since he had nothing of his own to assert, he put forward others' sayings to his adversaries. And all his books contain some difficult and very harsh things. Yet the thirteenth book of his treatises is extant, which begins thus: 'As we write the thirteenth book of our treatises, the saving word will supply us with the necessary and fruitful word: through the parable of the rich man and the poor man it shows from where a nature without root and without place, supervening on things, sprang up.' Does the book contain only this heading? Does it not contain another discourse too? And, as some have thought, will you not all be offended at the book itself, whose beginning was this? But returning to the subject, Basilides, after some five hundred lines more or less have intervened, says: 'Let us leave off empty and curious variety, and let us rather seek out what the barbarians too have inquired about good and evil, and what opinions they have reached about all these things. For some of them said that the beginnings of all things are two, to which they joined good and evil, saying that the beginnings themselves are without beginning and unbegotten; that is, that in the beginnings there were light and darkness, which were from themselves, not which were said to be (begotten). While these were by themselves, each of them led the life it wished and that suited it; for to all, what is its own is friendly, and nothing seems evil to itself. But after each came to know the other, and the darkness beheld the light, as if seized with desire for the better thing, it pursued it and longed to be mixed with it and to share in it. And the darkness did this; but the light received nothing at all from the darkness into itself, nor came to desire it, except that it too suffered a longing to look. And indeed it looked at it as through a mirror. So a reflection (emphasis), that is, a certain colour of light, came to the darkness alone; but the light itself only looked and withdrew, taking no part at all from the darkness. But the darkness took from the light the look, and the reflection or colour of matter, in which it had displeased it. So when the worse had taken from the better not the true light but a certain appearance of light and a reflection, … they drew off by a rapacious change of the good. Therefore there is no perfect good in this world, and what there is, is very small, because that too was small which was conceived at the beginning. Yet through this very small amount of light, or rather through a certain appearance of light, the creatures were able to beget a likeness reaching to that mixture which they had conceived from the light. And this is the creation that we see.' And he followed out the rest like these in what comes after. But I thought this enough to show his opinion on this point. For in these words he wrote about the making of the world according to what Scythianus had thought."

"This man, taking up his writings, added also names of demons, and restless movements, and courses of the elements, not according to the order written by the ancients, but so as to gather a bundle of many useless words and produce immense mixtures and confusions for his readers. That his whole doctrine and ignorance, written with that Basilides before him, hangs on duality, no one doubts. If anyone, then, can overturn the unbegotten duality that he asserts, I say, he will cut down the whole forest of his words at once. For as one who cuts off a dragon's head leaves the rest of the body useless and empty, so we too, if we show that the creation and the mixture of the two unbegotten ones, light and darkness, as Basilides presumes, has not been rightly arranged, will without doubt mark all the rest that he writes as empty, and what we have written as true. And this I ask of those who wish to use these examples: that they look more closely at each saying, since Basilides spoke shrewdly and briefly the things he had found defined in Scythianus; which this man, having taken them over, fortified more subtly with more violent arguments too, so that by the novelty of the words they might be thought his own. These things have been said by us as we could. But those who surpass us in loftier sense will be able to bring forward and write more and better things than these against the books that were published by him."

So when this disputation was finished, Archelaus dismissed the crowds home in peace. And they, blessing him with the voice he deserved, departed with all joy.

I, Hegemonius, wrote this disputation, taken down to be copied for those who wish it.

Almost all the ancient heretics feigned a double divinity, so as to invent that one god is good and the other just, and to say that the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of the good god, the helper and the better, came into this world to bring back to their former seats the souls from the just god, whom they think only a severe lord, souls which had been bound to bodies by the creator's command. Among them are Cerdon and Marcion and the others who follow their error. Valentinus too feigned a double divinity; at the same time he seemed to bring in a new number of aeons, since he seemed to speak of thirty aeons. Basilides also comes down from this impiety, who feigns that there are as many gods as there are days in the year, and out of these, as small coins, he makes one sum of divinity and calls it Mithras, since according to the reckoning of Greek letters Mithras has the number of the year. These are not far from paganism and are imbued with almost the same mysteries into which one is initiated by the pagans. After his death many other different heresies bubbled up again, which deny the divinity of Christ and confess only his humanity from Mary. Among them are Cerinthus, Ebion, and now Fotinus, who has renewed their heresy. Another heresy also broke out, which is called the Cataphrygians, from the promise of the Holy Spirit which our Lord and Saviour promised, saying, 'I will go and send you another Paraclete,' asserting that it was not in the apostles, but in Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla. After these broke out Manichaeus, after the falling asleep of the holy martyr Cyprian, a little before Diocletian, whose followers declare one god good and another evil, and say that everything that comes from the body belongs to Satan. This heresy is drawn from the spring of Pythagoras, and, mixed with magic arts, they also use astrology, just as Pythagoras himself takes his beginning from these things.

And to pass over countless others, now the new heresies must be briefly rebuked. At the funeral of Constantine the Arian heresy broke out at Alexandria, which says that God the Father is one, but that his Son our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are sons by adoption, not by nature, and that as far as the Son stands apart from the Father, so far again the Spirit is separated from the Son. This is split into three. For Eunomius, from whom the Eunomians are named, proclaims boldly and freely that those whose nature is different cannot be like, and so that the Son and the Father, since they are of different substance, are unlike. Macedonius, from whom the Macedonians are named, who are also called Arians, seem to bring in piety under impiety, saying that the Son is like the Father; and they differ from the Arians in that the Arians say the Son is like the Father, while the Macedonians, to seem to give him more, say he is like in all things. But deceit and a fallen, as it were, piety exposes them too, since man also was made in the image and likeness of God. Last is the heresy of Apollinaris, which has almost as many opinions as it has men. For it has not yet been decided among them on what they will blaspheme as if certain and settled. Some say that our Lord Jesus Christ had neither human sense nor soul. Those who are bolder confess even his body to be from Mary in such a way that they nonetheless claim it too as from heaven. Some, professing only soul and body, deny sense, that is, mind. But if you examine these, they begin to deny both soul and body, and say that in place of the soul the indweller was God the Word; and while they want to deny the humanity in Christ, that is, that he was not subject to human thoughts, they refer all his passions to the deity, if he had no soul or mind. But he wept and was grieved and suffered the other affections. For these the body cannot suffer by itself. It remains that the deity suffered these things in him. Between the Novatians and the Montenses there is this difference: the Novatians do not accept the repentance of the greater sins, that is, of denial, adultery, murder, sexual immorality, and the rest like them; the Montenses say that we handed over the holy Scriptures to be burned, pretending that their own bishops governed the church; and what the Luciferians do when the priests admonish them, they do in all churches, saying that those who handed over the Scriptures cannot be priests; and on top of this they add that they defame as belonging to the church of traditors whoever they find from among us.