There was therefore great joy in that city. Now there was a certain man named Simon who before had been a magician in that city, seducing the people of Samaria, giving out that he was some great one:
ανηρ δε τις ονοματι σιμων προυπηρχεν εν τη πολει μαγευων και εξιστων το εθνος της σαμαρειας λεγων ειναι τινα εαυτον μεγαν
8 Church Fathers comment on this verse
Look also at another attempt made by Simon. Luke says that he was regarded as a great power. Thus there were people then deceived by sorceries, until Philip came and led them out of error. Simon used to say to the Jews, “I am the Father,” and to the Samaritans, “I am Christ.”
Simon the Samaritan is that magician of whom Luke, the disciple and companion of the apostles, speaks.
Since the magician did not believe in God, he entered into strong rivalry with the apostles, in order that he too might appear glorious.
He gave himself with greater zeal to the study of the whole art of magic, so that he brought many people into amazement.
He lived under Claudius Caesar, who, it is said, even honored him with a statue for his magical art.
He was also honored by many as God. He taught that he himself was the one who appeared among the Jews as the Son, descended in Samaria as the Father, and came to the other nations as the Holy Spirit.
He is the highest of all powers, that is, the Father exalted above all. He allowed himself to be called by every title with which people addressed him.
This Simon the Samaritan, from whom all heresies arose, formed his own sect.
Simon the magician was the first to present himself as the Most High God and said that the world was created by his angels.
Then his followers, as I showed in the first book, spread impious and godless doctrines against the Creator through various opinions.
Their disciples make those who agree with them worse than pagans.
After Christ’s ascension into heaven, the demons put forward certain men who said that they were gods. These men were not only not persecuted by you, that is, by the Roman authorities addressed by Justin, but were even deemed worthy of honors.
For example, there was a certain Simon, a Samaritan from the village of Githon. During the reign of Claudius Caesar, he performed magical acts by the help of demons in your imperial city of Rome.
He was considered a god, and a statue was erected to him as to a god on the Tiber River, between the two bridges.
On the statue there was a Latin inscription: “To Simon, the holy god.”
Almost all the Samaritans, and some representatives of other nations, regard him as the first god and worship him.
They also say that a certain Helena, who accompanied him at that time and had formerly been a prostitute, first gave them an example in this.
This Simon was a deceiver and came from Gitta, a city, now a village, in Samaria. He assumed various forms, deceiving and ensnaring the Samaritan people by sorceries. He said of himself that he was the great power of God and had descended from above. To the Samaritans he called himself the Father, while to the Jews he said that he was the Son. He also claimed that he suffered, not in reality, but only in appearance.
Here the baptism of the Samaritans by the deacon Philip is narrated (Acts 6:5). He, however, did not impart the Holy Spirit to them.
Therefore the apostles Peter and John were sent to Samaria to impart the Spirit to them. They “came and prayed for them,” the Samaritans, “laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.”
In the same chapter, verses 36-39, the baptism of the Ethiopian man is recounted. The baptism was performed by the same Philip.
It followed the preaching of Christ (Acts 8:35), which produced in the hearer a sincere faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God (Acts 8:37).
After this, Philip and the Ethiopian both went down into the water, and Philip baptized the Ethiopian.
From this it is evident that in the Church of apostolic times there was both baptism in water and the imparting of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands (Acts 8:17-18).
These mysteries are performed to this day in the holy Orthodox Church. Only the imparting of the gift of the Holy Spirit is performed not through the laying on of hands, but through chrismation.
There, among other things, the preacher of Christianity encountered the famous sorcerer of his time, Simon. Presenting himself as the Messiah, he deceived the simple people with his enchantments.
"Now there was," that is, before Philip the evangelist arrived in this city with his preaching.
"A man named Simon": he is known in the history of the early Christian Church as Simon the Magician. The writer of Acts says nothing about either his origin or his later fate.
Josephus, Ant. XX, 7, 2, mentions a certain Simon, a Jew from Cyprus and a magician, whom the Roman procurator Felix used in his dealings with Drusilla, wife of Azizus, king of Emesa; see the note on Acts 24:24.
But in all probability this is not the Simon the Magician of whom the present passage speaks.
Justin Martyr, Apol. 1, 26, states positively that this Simon came from the Samaritan village of Gitta, or Gitton. There are no firm grounds for distrusting Justin here, especially since he himself was a Samaritan by birth, from Sychem.
It is probable that Samaritan national pride was not the least stimulus in considering their kinsman something extraordinary, "the great power of God."
He was a magician; the word "practiced magic" occurs among all the New Testament books only here.
But he was not a magician in the good sense in which the Persian magi came to worship the newborn Lord (Mt 2:1). He was a sorcerer, an enchanter.
At that time, according to Roman and Greek witnesses, many people appeared in various lands of the Greco-Roman world under the names of magi, Chaldeans, mathematicians, and goetes.
They possessed some knowledge of mysterious powers in nature, which was then still little explained. They presented themselves as extraordinary people.
By healing certain diseases, incantations, divination, prophecy, sorceries, charlatan mystery, and various devices, they so worked upon the ignorant masses that they drew many after themselves and were reputed to be something extraordinary.
For the most part they had no systematic doctrines. Yet the ordinary teaching about higher powers was rather strong among them in one form or another.
They imagined that they stood in special relations with these powers. Or at least they claimed that they did, or that they themselves belonged to such higher powers.
Simon presented himself as someone great, some extraordinary person. The people said of him that he was the power of God, the so-called (καλεμένη) great power.
The writer of Acts distinguishes the magician's own opinion of himself from the people's opinion of him.
The latter is more definite and, of course, was based on one or another of his own sayings about himself.
The expression "the great power of God" recalls the language of what later developed as so-called Gnosticism. It imagined aeons as powers flowing from the fullness, or pleroma, of the Godhead.
The people considered their Simon to be one of these powers, and indeed a great or higher power, appearing in human form.
Perhaps Simon did not express himself about himself so definitely. He preferred a certain mysteriousness in his words about himself.
In this way, on the one hand, he stirred the people's imagination more. On the other, he arrogantly enjoyed the lofty opinion that the people had formed of him, as though it were not his own.
Probably Alexandrian philosophical and Eastern theosophical ideas were already sufficiently widespread at that time. Later they entered as one element into the speculative ravings of the Gnostics (cf. Col 2:8ff.; Col 2:20ff.).
This explains the expression "the great power of God."
However it may have been, by his magic Simon so astonished the Samaritan people that all were amazed at him, which is the highest degree of wonder.
As a result all gave heed to his teaching, as in verse 6, from the least to the greatest, what is called both old and young. So strong was the people's fascination with this man, and it continued for no little time.
Simon the magician is presented by the writer of Acts as active at that time, and also as the representative of entirely different principles.
Yet these principles were not foreign to a certain greatness and wonder-working, such as generally belong to magic. In magic everything is built on seductive deception for the sake of various evil ends, and above all for glory.
This glory was especially attained by those who combined the manifestation of great and unusual natural powers with the influence of evil spirits.
Such influence was quite common in the pagan world, where the holy fathers of the Church considered nearly all idol worship to be service to demons, or demonolatry.
Having broken away from true service to God, many Samaritans were evidently then inclined toward idol worship. This was especially so in its more attractive forms, proclaimed by philosophers of that time.
They asserted that God first created certain great powers, through which further creation and governance of the world had been and still were carried out (cf. Col 2:8, 20).
One of the famous Jews of that time, Philo, a learned man who lived chiefly in Alexandria, wrote among other things about such powers of God.
It is not surprising that Simon, acting in the more ignorant circle of the Samaritans, even presented himself as one of these great powers, in order thereby to exalt himself most greatly.
Yet at the same time he did not believe this, since he knew himself to be an ordinary man, as is clear from what follows.
But this did not prevent everyone from being carried away by him, just as people today are carried away by hypnotizers and even by magicians and sorcerers.
In that half-ignorant age there were incomparably more such men, among whom Apollonius of Tyana became especially famous.
Concerning Simon, Saint Justin the Philosopher reports that he was a Samaritan from the city of Gitta, or Gitton.
This should be believed, for Saint Justin himself was also a Samaritan from the city of Shechem.
The writer of Acts does not say precisely whom Simon claimed to be. Probably this is because Simon himself did not state it definitely, so as to strike the gullible with greater mystery.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 21 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS