The Hymn of the Soul

aroused by a revelation from on high; thereupon it performs the task assigned to it and returns to the upper regions, where it is reunited to the heavenly robe, its ideal counterpart, and enters the presence of the highest celestial Powers.” But if the general Gnostic Gnosticism was a diverse collection of early religious movements that emphasized "gnosis" (secret knowledge) as the key to the soul's salvation from the physical world. character of the Poem seems evident, the precise nature of the Gnosticism, the date and the authorship are by no means so easy to determine. The difficulty of answering these questions is due mainly to the extreme meagreness of our information respecting the history of Syriac literature at the period when Gnosticism flourished, namely from the 2nd century to the beginning of the 4th. Though there is clear proof that Gnosticism exercised a powerful influence in Syria at that time, not only have the writings of the Syrian Gnostics almost entirely perished—which was merely what we might have expected—but the writings of their orthodox opponents have, with few and small exceptions, perished likewise. The ages of Justin Martyr, of Irenaeus, and of Origen Major early Christian theologians and writers from the 2nd and 3rd centuries. are practically a blank in Syriac literature; the oldest Syriac writer of whom we possess any considerable remains is Aphraates A 4th-century writer known as the "Persian Sage," whose homilies provide a window into early Syriac Christianity., in the first half of the 4th century¹. Thus the problem before us is one which does not admit of anything like a final solution. Yet there are not wanting indications which, though uncertain if considered separately, may enable us at least to form a plausible hypothesis.

Of the Gnostic sects which existed in the Syriac-speaking lands by far the most important were the Bardesanists and the Manichaeans². These two schools had, it is true, some features in

ascribed to the Naasseni and the Peratae Two early Gnostic sects described by early church writers as being obsessed with serpent symbolism and mystical cosmology.—see Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies Bk. v. chaps. 2 and 11.

¹ In the discussions which have lately taken place respecting the origin of the PĕshīṭtāThe Pĕshīṭtā is the traditional Bible of the Syriac-speaking churches. version, this important fact seems to me to have been too frequently overlooked. Where scarcely any evidence exists, it is futile to bring forward “arguments from silence.”

² On Bardesanes, see Merx, Bardesanes of Edessa original: "Bardesanes von Edessa" (Halle, 1863) and Hort, Art. “Bardaisan” in the Dictionary of Christian Biography vol. i. (1877). Perhaps the best general account of Manichaeism is that by Spiegel in his Iranian Archaeology original: "Erânische Alterthumskunde" vol. ii. (Leipsic, 1873) pp. 195—232; Kessler’s Mani (Berlin, 1889) contains much valuable material on the subject, but should be used with great caution—see the review by Nöldeke in the Journal of the German Oriental Society original: "Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft" for 1889, pp. 535—549, and the note in the same periodical for 1890, p. 399.