SIMON MAGUS. One of the most ancient and interesting rivals of early Gentile Christianity was the sect of the Simonians. Its founder was a skilful magician who had established himself in the city of Samaria just prior to its evangelization and had captivated the populace by his sorcery, so that he was generally known as "the power of God which is called great." His ascen dancy was broken by the arrival in Samaria of Philip (Acts 8.5 the interpretation of this story depends somewhat on the view taken of the sources of Acts), whose novel cures and teaching attracted many converts to Christianity and ultimately won over Simon himself who was baptized with the rest. It is pi4obable that Simon's conversion was due less to a change of heart than to a misunderstanding that baptism and the apostle's cures were evidence of a magic superior to his own, the art of which he might hope to acquire as Philip's disciple. Proof that he had carried over the mentality of his old profession into his new religion was not slow in forthcoming. When Philip was reinforced by Peter and John who supplemented baptism by the gift of the Spirit through the laying on of hands, Simon asked that he might be taught to perform this rite and to obtain power to dispense the Holy Spirit and he offered the Apostles a fee for their instruc tion. Peter, perceiving how slight an impression Christianity had made upon the magician's mind, rebuked him severely and pointed out that, as he had no right understanding of Christianity, he could not share in its benefits. Simon accepted the reproof and begged Peter to pray for his forgiveness.
We hear no more of Simon in Acts and might have assumed that his repentance was enduring and that he had been absorbed into the mass of Samarian Christians, if we did not have later references to him and fragments of a sectarian literature in which he figures as a god and which show that he must have withdrawn from Christianity and initiated a movement of his own in which Christian and Pagan elements were freely and curiously combined. From these later sources (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Epiphanius and Hippolytus), it appears that Simon's birthplace was Gitta, that he journeyed to Rome where he had some success in gaining fol lowers under Claudius, that he was generally accompanied by a Phoenician woman named Helen, who had formerly been a prosti tute but whom he associated with his own claims for divine honours, that he had a number of disciples of whom the most important were Menander and Saturninus and that he met his end through a foolish attempt to reproduce the resurrection of Jesus by allowing himself to be buried alive in the mistaken sup position that he would be able to rise again on the third day.
Justin has a story that a statue was set up in Simon's honour on the Tiber with the inscription, Simoni Deo Sancto, but this is probably an error, as a statue answering to Justin's description and inscribed, Semoni Sancto Deo Fidio Sacrum Sex Pompeius, S.P. F. Col. Mussianus Quinqennalis Decur Bidentalis Donum Dedit, was unearthed on the Tiber in modern times. Semo was a local, perhaps Sabine, deity and had nothing to do with Simon, but the mistake was not an impossible one for Justin or his source to have made.
On the development of Simonian theology we are better in formed than on the external history of the sect. Just what was implied in the view, current in Samaria in Simon's pre-Christian days, that he was "the power of God which is called great" is obscure and it is only a possibility that the god whose power he was thought to be was Jehovah. Evidence that he was influenced. by Judaism apart from Christianity is wholly lacking. The re currence of the phrase, "power of God," or its equivalent, in all the later accounts suggests a certain continuity and it seems prob able that even before his conversion, he advanced a theology simi lar to that described by Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 1.16.1 Harvey) but lacking the elements borrowed later from Christianity and that after his withdrawal from the church he revised this system into a parallel and rival of Christianity.