PREFACE — CHAPTER III. / ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE BOOK OF STEPS — II. ON CREATURES.

...wishing to bring about on earth the ruin of those deceived protoparents Adam and Eve. For by the tenor of the axiom, "visible things are an image of invisible things," the rebellion which Satan stirred up in heaven against God by deceiving many angels to his side is considered an exemplar of the sedition he stirred up on earth against God¹. For, as he had drawn some angels to his side in heaven, he did the same on earth when he wished to render human beings his disciples and servants². Indeed, Adam fell by the same lapse as Satan, in that he wished to become God. But since Satan, having been overthrown, corrupted others also, the right hand of Jesus did not spare him, but, just as he had lost, he would be liable to perdition himself, and for every soul he had lost, he would give "his own soul for a soul," and as the torments of all the wicked failed, his torture would last forever and ever³. God, indeed, gave the merciful space for repentance even to Satan himself, as it is written⁴: You shall serve the Lord your God, yet Satan resists God and does not wish to serve Him⁵.

The doctrine just outlined occurs only sporadically before the fourth century. The ancient Fathers and writers of the Church, relying on the reading of older Greek codices, in which they read in Gen. 6:2 that the Angels of God had carnal intercourse with the daughters of Seth, were accustomed to refer the fall of the angels to their lust⁶. Parallel to this doctrine, the one professed by the Author is found, although much more rarely. You have its first traces in the Book of Enoch, where, besides the opinion cited above, which referred the fall of the angels to their lust⁷, some traces of the same doctrine are detected, which the Book of Steps also teaches and which later became common in the Church: namely, that the angels, with Satan as their leader, rebelled against God. For in the Book of Enoch there is mention of the torments with which Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Phanuel are to deliver the angels who subjected themselves to Satan and deceived the inhabitants of the earth⁸; their fall is therefore presupposed to be prior to the condition of human creation. In the Slavonic Book of Enoch, the rebellion of the egrēgorōn Watchers against God is briefly recounted⁹, arising under the leadership of Satan, who wished to set his throne above the clouds¹⁰. Similar things are read in a certain Armenian history of Adam, which Preuschen published in German¹¹, where it likewise treats of Sada'el and Beliar, angels who were rebels against God and princes of Satan's army, who strove to exalt their throne to be like God’s. Among the older Fathers and writers of the Church, this very doctrine is quite rare; mention of the rebellion of the angels is made by Athenagoras¹, Saint Irenaeus², Lactantius³, and Gregory of Nazianzus⁴; in the East, that doctrine became common through the authorship of Saint John Chrysostom⁵; and in the West, finally, after Saint Augustine⁶. I confess that I do not have the doctrine of the Syrians on this matter sufficiently explored. Saint Ephrem, in his Commentary on Genesis ch. III, thinks that the Devil was indeed good until the sixth day of creation, but that before the transgression of the first command imposed upon Adam, he had secretly become Satan and was condemned by the secret judgment of God⁷. In the Cave of Treasures⁸ the matter is narrated differently. Namely, the prince of the spiritual hosts ought to have worshipped Adam together with the angels, but he claimed that worship was due to himself, since he himself is spirit and fire, while Adam is but dust. Therefore, he was cast down from heaven together with his followers and the name of Satan was imposed upon him⁹. This narrative of the Cave of Treasures seems to be of Jewish origin, for it is also recounted in the Talmud that the angels roasted meat for Adam and cooled wine for him, which the Serpent, seeing, began to envy him¹⁰.

When the doctrine concerning the primordial fall of the angels was developed in the church of the Syrians, cannot be determined due to the lack of documents; however, it seems probable that the other doctrine, which referred the fall of the angels to their lust, was never as common among them as it was among the Greeks¹¹. I think the reason for this is that the Syrians, using the Peshitta, had a literal, and therefore correct, interpretation of Gen. 6:1 at hand.

The things the Author offers concerning the space for repentance granted to Satan himself are similar to the doctrine of apokatastaseōs restoration of all things championed by Origen and his followers; however, the foundation of Origen's tenets, as will be shown more fully below, differs so greatly from the ideas of our Author that no connection between these doctrines can be demonstrated by solid arguments.

8. On the operation of demons and their influence on humans he teaches singular things in Sermon VII. Namely, that Satan and the demons cannot harm anyone by themselves (otherwise, upon seeing someone who wished to do penance, they would kill him), but...

¹ Sermon XXIII, 8. — ² Sermon XXI, 19. — ³ Sermon XXI, 18 ff.
⁴ Matthew 4:10. — ⁵ Sermon XXIII, 4-6.
⁶ On this matter cf. Petavius's work On the Angels, Bk. III, ch. 1-3 (ed. Migne in the work Complete Course of Theology, vol. VII, cols. 808-830). Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin, Cambridge, 1903, p. 278 ff.
⁷ Ch. VI. (Cf. Kautzsch, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Tübingen 1900, p. 238 ff.).
⁸ Ch. LIV. (Cf. Kautzsch, o. c. p. 266).
⁹ Ch. XVIII, 3. (Cf. Bonwetsch, The Slavonic Book of Enoch, Berlin, 1903, p. 19).
¹⁰ Ch. XXIX, 4. (Cf. Bonwetsch, o. c. p. 28).
¹¹ In the work: The Apocryphal Gnostic Adamschriften, Giessen, 1900, p. 27₁₋₁₄.

...by means of a magician or a sorcerer, who uses the demons like a sword and through their help inflicts damage upon men¹. The Author thinks that magicians strike a bargain with demons, and this under the condition that the magician will return "a soul for a soul," which the demons, when God demands it from them on the day of judgment, will offer in place of that which they lost². By this pact, magicians accomplish certain wondrous things: they heal diseases³, control the possessed, or even kill them outright⁴, kill a rabid person/dog with sprinkled water⁵, find a lost object⁶, and other things of this kind. Hence the Author warns that physicians are to be adjured not to wish to cure a patient by the help of sorceries, but to invoke only the name of the Lord⁷. As is evident from the text of the Sermon itself—the Author is speaking not of Gentiles, but of Christians—at that time, without a doubt, many of the Christians were given to necromancy, divination, fortune-telling, and other superstitions of this kind, which, incidentally, Saint Ephrem also reproves⁸. The whole Sermon shows the Author's mind, which was prone to combat superstitions, his contemporaries were cruel, unbridled, in sad, agitated, and insecure times, in which it seems that no one was very concerned about what was right and what was wrong.

¹ Embassy for the Christians, no. XXIV. — ² Against Heresies IV, LXVII (Harvey II, 304).
³ On the Origin of Error, II, 9, 15.
⁴ On Principles, Poem VI. On Intelligent Substances, st. 55 ff.
⁵ Homily XXII on Genesis. — ⁶ On Genesis literally, bk. XI, ch. 14.
⁷ Works of Saint Ephrem, ed. Rom. Syr. Lat., vol. I, p. 37 C.
⁸ Ed. Bezold p. 1Γ, transl. p. 3 ff. Cf. Civil and Ecclesiastical Chronicle, ed. Ignatius Ephraem II Rahmani, 1904, p. ז ff.
⁹ Cf. Grünbaum, New Contributions to Semitic Legendry, Leiden, 1893, p. 57 ff.
¹⁰ Sanhedrin, fol. 59b.
¹¹ Bardesanes says in the Book of the Laws of the Countries (P. S. II, col. 549) and in the Acts of Thomas, probably drafted by the school of the Bardesanites, that angels had intercourse with women (Bedjan, Acts of the Martyrs and Saints, vol. III, p. 33. Cf. Acts of Thomas, ed. Bonnet, Leipzig, 1883, p. 24).