> the long praise of the place of life and the king of light opening the mandaean most important holy script, the ginza, is a late development of the new song sung by the temple choir and the whole recreated earth to the praise of yahweh. the pitha and mambuha, the sacred meal taken as the second act of the baptismal ritual, is the tasting of heavenly food, bread of life and water of life. the key to the mandaean texts is the sadducee temple-theology > conclusion > adolf hilgenfeld, die ketzergeschichte des urchristentums, 1884, stresses that simon and his pupil, menander, were the first gnostics acc. to both justin martyr and irenaeus. he has also shown how the teaching of satornil from antioch could be seen as further developing some of the ideas of simon. satornil taught that after the creation of the visible world by 7 angels, an image of light appeared from above, but the 7 angels were not able to grasp and keep it, because it quickly hurried back to the upper regions. but they said to each other: let us make a man acc. to the image. gen 1,26. so they fashioned a creature, but it was not able to stand erect, but crawled along like a worm. out of pity, the power above sent it a spark of life. this picture of something divine descending from above seems to be inspired by the simonian nnoia descending and by the angelic makers of the world imprisoned in a human body. christ came because the primordial father wanted to destroy the angelic principes (greek: rchontas), irenaeus, i,24,1f. satornil was the first one to turn the original gnostic libertinism into asceticism. it seems to me that hilgenfeld, justin and irenaeus are right in seeing simon as the first gnostic
Brazil