ABSTRACT
The charismatic Samaritan Simon Magus, who appears briefly as an opponent of Peter in Acts (8:9-24), was a significant presence in Christian literature of the second century CE. This chapter looks at how narratives of Simon in works by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian and in the apocryphal Acts of Peter played a role in emergent Christian self-definition. In all of these texts, Simon is not just an opponent of the “true Christians,” but also an object of pagan worship. Using a reception-historical approach, this chapter looks at the coordination of idolatry and heresy in the second-century stories of Simon as an example for how early Christians articulated their distinctiveness in the terms of discourses on the divine that were circulating in the Roman Empire. While Simon had a long afterlife as heresiarch and as magician, Simon as pagan god disappeared in the literature of the following centuries, making this moment in his literary afterlife particularly valuable for understanding the articulation of “Christianity” in the context of the diverse religious practices and ideas of the high Roman Empire.
