The Hermetic Writings, Volume 1

PROLOGUE: 1 a

He feels himself to be more completely or more intensely possessed by the deity. (This is the author's way of claiming the Asclepius is superior to all previous Hermetic treatises. See Corpus Hermeticum XVI. 1 a: "I have sent you this great discourse... like the summit and summary of all others." And Exc. Stob. VI. 1: "This would be the most authoritative and supreme discourse of all.") Hermes infers from the timing of his pupil's arrival that God wills Asclepius to hear the revelation and prompted him to come at this moment. See Hermes in Cyril c. Julian i. 556 B: "Unless it were the providence of the Lord of all that I should reveal this discourse..."

omnium . . . divinior (more divine than all). This is one of several instances where the translator rendered a Greek genitive with a Latin genitive, although Latin usage typically requires an ablative. For the genitive after a comparative, see Asclepius III. 22 b: "better than the gods... and all mortals." (The same construction appears in Apuleius, De Platone i. 9: "The soul... is older than all generating things.")

vel nobis divino numine inspiratorum (or inspired in us by divine power). Hermes corrects the phrase a nobis factorum ("made by us"); his discourses are not composed by him, but by God, who speaks through him. He is ἔνθεος (filled with God).

On the subject of inspiration, Egyptians, Hebrews, and Greeks held similar views from the earliest times. During the Roman Empire, Pagans, Jews, and Christians spoke of it in similar terms. While Hermetists used a literary artifice by attributing their compositions to the inspired Hermes, it does not mean their assertions about divine inspiration lacked sincerity. Many likely felt themselves to be ἔνθεοι and were convinced that God spoke through them in both oral teaching and writing. Philo the philosopher held a similar belief in his own inspiration.