Bible commentary on simon the sorcerer
BIBLE COMMENTARY ON SIMON THE SORCERER HOW TO
13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. 12 But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God ( D) and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, ( E) both men and women. He boasted that he was someone great, ( B) 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” ( C) 11 They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. His consort Helen was regarded by his followers as the earthly manifestation of Athena.9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery ( A) in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. In the 2nd century a Simonian sect arose that viewed Simon Magus as the first God, or Father, and he was sometimes worshipped as the incarnation of the Greek god Zeus. The mythic form of these documents raises doubts as to whether the biblical Simon Magus and the Simon of later apocryphal sources are the same. Simon’s quasi-Trinitarian Gnostic teaching, wherein he, with the title “the Great Power of God,” appeared to the Jews as a mediating, suffering “Son of God,” to the Samaritans as “Father,” and to the pagan world as “Holy Spirit,” is contained in the early Christian writings known as the Clementine literature. Still other sources portray him as the individual responsible for the eclectic fusion of Stoicism and Gnosticism, known as “The Great Pronouncement.” According to legend, on challenging the Apostle before the emperor Nero (54–68), Simon fell to his destruction from atop the Roman Forum in an attempt to demonstrate his occult ability to fly. Other Christian documents of the 3rd century state that Simon Magus, in the role of false Messiah, had further confrontations with St. Archaeological finds reputed to have confirmed Simon’s divinization have not proved genuine. The 2nd-century theologian Justin Martyr relates that Simon visited Rome at the time of the emperor Claudius (41–54) and was there deified by followers fascinated with his miracle working. The biblical account concludes with Simon’s repentance and apparent reconciliation with Christianity after his condemnation by St. Having been revered by the people of northern Palestine as possessing vast preternatural powers, Simon Magus manifested his own admiration for the power of Christian evangelization when, in the New Testament story, he requested Baptism from Philip the Deacon. Later references in certain early Christian writings identify him as the founder of post-Christian Gnosticism, a dualist religious sect advocating salvation through secret knowledge, and as the archetypal heretic of the Christian Church. Simon, according to the New Testament account in Acts of the Apostles 8:9–24, after becoming a Christian, offered to purchase from the Apostles Peter and John the supernatural power of transmitting the Holy Spirit, thus giving rise to the term simony ( q.v.) as the buying or selling of sacred things or ecclesiastical office. Simon Magus, (Latin), English Simon the Magician, or The Sorcerer, (flourished 1st century ad), practitioner of magical arts who probably came from Gitta, a village in biblical Samaria.
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BIBLE COMMENTARY ON SIMON THE SORCERER HOW TO
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