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The Perates or Peratae ((ギリシア語:Περατής), "to pass through"; πέρας, "to penetrate") were a Gnostic sect from the 2nd century AD. The ''Philosophumena'' of Hippolytus is our only real source of information on their origin and beliefs. The founders of the school were a certain Euphrates (whom Origen calls the founder of those Ophites to whom Celsus referred about 175 AD) and Celbes, elsewhere called Acembes and Ademes. It had been known from Clement of Alexandria that there was a sect of that name, though he tells nothing as to its tenets. Hippolytus was acquainted with more books of the sect than one. One called ''Oi Proasteioi'' appears to have been of an astrological character, treating of the influence of the stars upon the human race, and connecting various mythologies with the planetary powers. There was besides a treatise which resembles the doctrine of the Naassenes. ==Beliefs== According to the Peratics, the cosmos is one, but also consists of a threefold division; this rendering of the cosmos they symbolized by a circle circumscribing a triangle. The circle denoted the unity and oneness of the cosmos, while the triangle represented the "Three Worlds" of ''Patēr, Huios, Hulē'' (πατηρ, ὕιος, ὕλη ). These "three Minds" or "three Gods," as they were called, each possessed certain characteristics:〔Mead, p. 208.〕 # Patēr (Father)—the unbegotten perfect-goodness; ''megethos patrikon'' (Greatness ) # Huios (Son)—''agathon autogenes'' (goodness/perfection ) # Hulē —basic matter or unformed substance, ''gennēton'' () In this conception of the cosmos, the Son sits as an intermediary between the immovable source of all existence (the Father) and the formless chaos of Matter. The Son, as the Word () and represented by an ever-turning Serpent, first faces the Father, collecting the outflow of divine powers (or Ideas, Forms), then turns to face Hulē, pouring the powers upon the Matter. It is in this way that formless Hulē is transformed into material reality, the sensible cosmos that mirrors the divine, noetic one from which it receives its existence. This process is akin to several other cosmogonic conceptions of the ancient world (especially those found in Stoicism (see also Stoic Physics), Platonism (see also Plato's Theory of Forms), Neoplatonism, Hermetism, and Aristotelian hylomorphism).〔Mead, p. 211.〕 The Peratic conception of the cosmos was used to explain certain biblical verse. For example, when, Jesus says, "Your Father which is in heaven," they understood him to mean Patēr, the heavenly father, the first principle, from which the forms have been derived. But when he says "your father was a murderer from the beginning," he means the ruler and framer of Hulē, who, taking the forms transmitted by the Son, works generation in the material cosmos, a work which is destruction and death (because of the transitory nature of the world of becoming). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Perates」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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