877 Hermes Trismegistos
customs, among these the veneration of the Luwian
gods Tarchu(nt) and Ru(nt) as Zeus and his helper,
Hermes, were vivid in Lycaonia until Hellenistic
times, as evidenced by three inscriptions (Breyten-
bach: 32, with references). In Ovids tale of Phile-
mon and Baucis (Metam. 8.61429), it is stated that
Jupiter (the Lat. equivalent of Zeus) and his son
Mercury appeared in the Phrygian hills, near a
swamped lake, in human form. If the origin of this
tradition could be identified with Lake Trogitis, 30
km south of Lystra, this could be further evidence
of a local tradition (cf. Breytenbach: 34).
John Chrysostom refers to the identification of
Hermes with Paul in Acts to establish that Paul was
a great speaker and a sage (cf. On Priesthood 4.7;
Comm. Rom. Hom. 1). Justin Martyr mentions Her-
mes status as son of Zeus as analogous to Jesus
state as son of God (1 Apol. 21; see also Origin, Cels.
25), and as evidence for the Christian identification
of Christ with the Logos (1 Apol. 22). Aristides (Apol.
10.3) lists Hermes among other Greek deities, in or-
der to argue that the attitudes ascribed to them are
impossible for true gods.
In visual arts, depictions of Hermes Kriophoros
(, ram-bearer), an epithet stemming from
Tanagra in Boethia (according to Pausanias, Descr.
9.22), served as model for Christian portrayals of
Christ as good shepherd (see Good Shepherd IV.
Visual Arts).
Bibliography: Breytenbach, C., Paulus und Barnabas in der
Provinz Galatien (AGJU 38; Leiden 1996). Cornutus,
L. A., Theologiae graecae compendium (ed. C. Lang; Leipzig
1881). Runia, D. T., Logos, DDD (Leiden 21999) 525
31.
Sebastian Fuhrmann
See also /Hermes Trismegistos
Hermes (Person)
Hermes is a male Greek personal name, found in
Rom 16 : 14 in the greeting list at the end of the
Epistle to the Romans (however, the list is, accord-
ing to some scholars, not an original part of the
letter). Paul sends his personal regards to Christians
in Rome, whom he knows personally or by name.
Hence Hermes is depicted as a Christian in the city
of Rome, even as a gentile Christian due to the fact
that Paul gives no evidence for a Jewish descent (cf.
Rom 16 : 7, 11) and probably also due to his name.
There is no reference given to a personal relation-
ship with Paul, but neither can it be excluded.
Apart from the final regards by Paul in the Epistle
to the Romans, he is not mentioned in the Pauline
letters or elsewhere in the NT. Since Hermes is
mentioned in Rom 16 : 14 in combination with four
other names and with other brothers belonging to
them, it can be assumed that this is a visualization
of a group of Christians in Rome, which assembled
as a house church at the house of one of the named
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878
persons or alternating in their own homes. As slaves
could be named after gods and as Hermes is one of
the most common Roman names for slaves, the
name may imply a non-free origin, but there are
also cases in which free men are called Hermes.
The name Hermes, which is often found in the
city of Rome, is a short version of one of many
Greek personal names which start with E- (e.g.,
E), often containing the name of the God
Hermes as part of the name. In later times and for
slaves the name could be taken directly from the de-
ity.
Bibliography: Lampe, P., Die stadtrmischen Christen in den
ersten beiden Jahrhunderten (WUNT.2 18; Tbingen 21989).
Solin, H., Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom, vol. 2 (CIL
Auctarium 2; Berlin 22003).
Jochen Flebbe
Hermes Trismegistos
I. Greco-Roman Antiquity
II. Christianity
I. Greco-Roman Antiquity
Hermes Trismegistos is a Hellenized version (inter-
pretatio Graeca) of the Egyptian lunar deity Thoth,
counselor and scribe of the solar god, inventor of
writing, and the all-knowing patron of priestly wis-
dom. While the rapprochements of Thoth and Her-
mes started already in classical Greek literature
(Herodotus, Hist. 2.67, 138), the composite figure of
Hermes Trismegistos is the original product of a
mixed Greco-Egyptian milieu of late Hellenistic
and Roman Egypt. Variously portrayed as a divine
being and a sage of the remote past, he was credited
with the authorship of a vast assortment of Greek
writings on subjects as diverse as magic, astrology,
occult botany, alchemy, and philosophical religion
(Hermetic literature). The Greek title Trismegis-
tus (thrice-greatest, three times very great), con-
firmed only in the Roman imperial period, derives
from the indigenous attributes of Thoth docu-
mented in Hellenistic Demotic and Greek dedica-
tory inscriptions, in which the magnitude of his
power is expressed by multiplying the adjective
great two, three, or even five times (twice-great,
the greatest and the greatest, thrice-great lord of
Khemenu/Hermopolis, the greatest and greatest
and great Hermes, etc.). The designation of Thoth
as the thrice-great (wr wr wr) is also found in the
Demotic Book of Thoth, preserved in about thirty
manuscripts mostly from the Roman period, in
which a wise mentor called He-of-Heseret, possi-
bly to be identified with Thoth, guides his student
(He-who-loves-knowledge) into the secrets of the
scribal trade. Framed in the question-and-answer
format, this priestly manual shows striking formal
affinities with Greek Hermetic writings and may be
viewed as their likely literary model and an early
879 Hermes Trismegistos
witness to the Greco-Egyptian tradition of Hermes
Trismegistos.
In Greek and Demotic magical papyri of the pe-
riod, Thoth is merged with Hermes, the god of li-
minality and communication, to become a powerful
master of magic and divination, the mediator be-
tween the supreme deity (the solar Ain) and the
cosmos, and the arbiter of human fate, both in this
life and after death. A rather divergent image of
Hermes-Thoth emerges from contemporaneous
Greco-Roman literature which tends to downplay
his divinity and, drawing upon the Euhemerist
theory of gods as deified humans, turns him into a
cultural hero of the distant past. In his dialogue On
the Nature of the Gods, Cicero provides the genealo-
gies of five different individuals of old bearing the
name Hermes and identifies the fifth as the slayer
of Argus who fled in exile to Egypt and was called
Theuth for handing down laws and letters to the
Egyptians (Nat. d. 3.56). This tension between two
conflicting representations of Hermes-Thoth is re-
flected in some Hermetic writings. In a long excerpt
from the Kor Kosmou (Pupil of the World) pre-
served in Stobaeus anthology of Hermetic philo-
sophical texts, Hermes Trismegistos is portrayed as
a divine emanation of the supreme god and a soul
possessing a bond of sympathy with the mysteries
of heaven (SH 23.34=Nock/Festugire: 4 : 12),
playing the same intermediary role in ordering and
sustaining the physical world as the Hellenized
Thoth in Greco-Egyptian magical papyri. The Latin
Asclepius, in turn, presents Hermes Trismegistus as
a human teacher of wisdom named after his divine
grandfather, Thoth-Hermes of Hermopolis, who
resides in his natal city helping and preserving all
mortal people coming from everywhere (Ascl. 37=
Nock/Festugire 2 : 348). In a similar lineage of Her-
meses, falsely attributed to the Egyptian priest and
historian Manetho of the early Ptolemaic period (ca.
28040 BC), a distinction is made between the
prediluvian Thoth, the first Hermes, who en-
graved his teachings on steles in sacred language
and holy characters, and his son (or grandson) Her-
mes Trismegistos, the second Hermes, who ren-
dered these teachings into Greek after the flood and
deposited them in temple libraries (Synkellius,
Chronogr. 7273). The subordinate status of Hermes
Trismegistus in these genealogies reflects a con-
scious effort on the part of Hermetic writers to ex-
tol the pristine wisdom of Egypt and legitimize
their own literary production in Greek as a continu-
ation of Egyptian religious traditions.
Bibliography: Aufrre, S., Le substrat nilotique de lher-
mtisme, in Alexandrie la divine, vol. 2 (ed. C. Mla/F. Mri;
Geneva 2014) 56570. Broek, R. van den, Hermes Tris-
megistus I: Antiquity, Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esoteri-
cism (ed. W. J. Hanegraaff; Leiden/Boston, Mass. 2006) 474
78. Dieleman, J./I. S. Moyer, Egyptian Literature, in A
Companion to Hellenistic Literature (ed. J. J. Clauss/M. Cuypers;
Malden, Mass./Oxford 2010) 42947. Festugire, A.-J., La
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880
rvlation dHerms Trismgiste, vol. 1: Lastrologie et les sciences
occultes (Paris 1950). Fowden, G., The Egyptian Hermes
(Cambridge 1986). Hornung, E., Das esoterische gypten
(Munich 1999). Jasnow, R./K.-T. Zauzich, The Ancient
Egyptian Book of Thoth (Wiesbaden 2005). Mah, J.-P., Her-
ms en Haute-gypte, 2 vols. (Qubec, Que. 197882).
Nock, A. D./A. J. Festugire, Corpus Hermeticum, 4 vols.
(Paris 194554). Quaegebeur, J., Thoth-Herms, le dieu
le plus grand, in Hommages Franois Daumas, vol. 2 (Mont-
pellier 1986) 52544.
Zlatko Plee
II. Christianity
Christian reception since antiquity has interpreted
Hermes Trismegistos as the name of a legendary lit-
erary poet and philosopher. As an ancient sage, the
fictional character later exerted considerable influ-
ence on Paracelsism, Rosicrucianism (Rosenkreuzer-
tum), as well as platonizing spiritual conceptions.
Hermes Trismegistos is therefore a pagan counter-
part to the biblical King Solomon, though Hermes
Trismegistos was more strongly associated with
syncretistic influences and wider pagan deities
such as Asclepius (cf. the Asclepius Apocalypse in
Augustine) than the legendary fiction of Solomon
was. In fact, the figure of Hermes Trismegistos con-
sists of two distinct divinities subsequently fused:
the Egyptian Thoth, who since the Old Kingdom
Period (37002150 BCE) was venerated as the in-
ventor of various cultural achievements like writing
and arithmetic, and the Greek Hermes, messenger
of the gods and patron of herdsmen. While the
identification of these two deities appears already
in the work of Herodotus (5th cent. BCE), such fu-
sion was originally an interpretatio graeca of the
Egyptian god, an interpretation that traces back to
the Hellenistic period. In those few references in
biblical literature the two gods are still distinct:
through the wisdom of the ibis, Job 38 : 36 al-
ludes to Thoth, and the biblical literatures prover-
bial wisdom also betrays points of contact with the
Egyptian god. In the NT, Hermes is the divinity for
which pagans mistake Paul (Acts 14 : 12; cf. the
slave name in Rom 16 : 14). Contrary to earlier as-
sumptions by Reitzenstein, however, the present
state of research sees no reception of Hermes Tris-
megistos traditions within the NT.
Only through the pseudepigraphic allocation of
the Hermetic writings in postbiblical times, did the
figure of Hermes Trismegistos receive the later sig-
nificance of the legendary sage. Hermes Trismeg-
istos is the authorial fiction for eighteen tractates
of the Corpus Hermeticum (ca. 1st4th cent. CE),
the Asclepius, and several other antique and late an-
tique fragments and writings. The earliest explicit
Christian reception of this figure appears in Athe-
nagoras (Legatio pro Christianis 28 : 6), where the epi-
thet Trismegistos (the thrice-greatest) occurs for
the first time in Christian literature. Tertullian in-
vokes him approvingly as the teacher of all natural
881 Hermon, Mount
philosophers (Val. 15 : 1), whose wisdom surpasses
even Plato, the Pythagoreans, and the Stoics. His
reception in antiquity reaches a high point in the
work of Lactantius, who interprets Hermes Tris-
megistos along with platonic philosophy as prepa-
ration for the gospel. In Lactantius, Hermes ideas
of God continue features of a negative theology,
reminiscent of early Gnostic texts. Negative onto-
logical statements are expressed through the idea
of an unnameable highest God, for whom each kind
of procreation is rejected (Epitome divinarum institu-
tionum 4.4): Hermes praises the grandeur of the
one God and names (him) Lord and Father, de-
claring that he has no name for he needs no
proper name, as he is the only one and that he
has no parents for he exists from himself and
through himself.
Medieval Christian reception of Hermes Tris-
megistos wavers between disapproval because of
syncretistic suspicions (already in Augustine) and
attraction because of his supposedly pre-Christian
philosophy (as with Albertus Magnus, who cites his
teaching on humanity as the link between god and
world; cf. Ebeling: 83). In Renaissance humanism
as already the case with the Dominican Berthold of
Moosburg and, later, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio
Ficino the writings of Hermes Trismegistos
gained a growing influence, since their pseudepi-
graphic nature remained consistently unrecog-
nized. While Marsilio Ficino still considered Her-
mes Trismegistos the founder of all philosophy,
Isaac Casaubon proved in 1614 that the Corpus
Hermeticum was no pre-platonic wisdom from
Egypt but rather a conglomeration of platonic and
Christian ideas from the period after Christ, thereby
preparing the way for modern scholarly inquiry
into the Hermetic writings.
Bibliography: Ebeling, F., Das Geheimnis des Hermes Tris-
megistos (Munich 2005). Festugire, A.-J., La Rvlation
dHerms Trismgiste (Paris 194454). Lw, A., Hermes Tris-
megistos als Zeuge der Wahrheit (Theoph. 36; Bonn 2002).
Reitzenstein, R., Poimandres (Leipzig 1904). Stadler, M.
A., Weiser und Wesir (ORA 1; Tbingen 2009).
Ansgar Wucherpfennig
See also /Corpus Hermeticum
Hermetic Writings
/Corpus Hermeticum
Hermit
/Ascetics, Asceticism
Hermogenes
882
phoric name (begotten by Hermes) is common in
the Greco-Roman world and may suggest a pagan
background. Although Hermogenes is not men-
tioned in relation to false teaching, the Greek term
 implies some disappointment about
Hermogenes and Phygelos as examples of all, who
have left Paul in Asia. This complaint corresponds
to the behavior of others who also turned away
from Paul for various reasons (2 Tim 4 : 10). Hermo-
genes is contrasted to Onesiphoros, who belongs to
Asia (namely Ephesus) as well but was faithful to
Paul, searching for him and supporting him in his
Roman imprisonment (2 Tim 1 : 1618).
(2) In the apocryphal Acts of Paul (3 : 115), the
Hermogenes of 2 Tim 1 : 15 is mentioned as a de-
ceptive companion of Paul and counterpart to the
faithful Onesiphoros. Together with Demas, who
according 2 Tim 4 : 10 left Paul because of his love
for the world, the Acts of Paul connects Hermogenes
with the heresy known from 2 Tim 2 : 1718 that
the resurrection has already taken place in the chil-
dren which we have (Acts Paul 3 : 15). The author
also mentions the occupation of Hermogenes as
coppersmith, which is taken from 2 Tim 4 : 14,
where it is attributed to Alexander as an enemy of
Paul, probably alluding to the threatening Ephe-
sian conflict described in Acts 19 : 2340.
(3) Eusebius of Caesarea refers to a writing of
the Antiochian bishop Theophilus (late 2nd cent.)
Against the Heresy of Hermogenes (Hist. eccl.
4.24.1), which may relate to the same Hermogenes
of Antioch who in the treatise known from Ter-
tullians Against Hermogenes is portrayed as a Chris-
tian heretic influenced by Stoic ideas. Although he
is not identical with the biblical figure, Tertullian
compares him explicitly with the Hermogenes of
2 Timothy.
Jens Herzer
Hermon, Mount
Mount Hermon (Arab. Jabal ash-Shaykh) is a large
mountain range (ca. 50x30 km, 2814m high at its
peak) situated in the northern part of the Golan
heights. During winter times its upper range is cov-
ered with snow, alluded to in its other Arabic name,
Jabal al-Thalj (the Snow Mountain). The Barada
brook separates it from the Anti-Lebanon Range
further to the north while the Golan Heights
stretch to its south. To the east it borders with the
Damascus highland, and the valley of Senir or Has-
bani (Arab.) defines its western limit.
Mount Hermon marks the northern limits of
the territory conquered by Joshua, east of the Jor-
dan River (Josh 11 : 17; 12 : 1, 45) and the northern
border of half the Menasseh tribe (1 Chr 5 : 23). Yet,
(1) In the NT, Hermogenes (Gk. E) appears Og the king of Bashan was ruling the mountain and
only in 2 Tim 1 : 15, in reference to a person who shared borders with the people of Geshur to the
among others abandoned Paul in Asia. The theo- south of the Hermon, and those from Maacah, to

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