Menander

a Samaritan false teacher who lived in the early part of the second century. Our knowledge of him is probably all derived, either directly or indirectly, from Justin Martyr. What he tells directly (Apol. i. 26, 56) is, that Menander was a native of the Samaritan town Capparatea; that he was a disciple of Simon, and, like him, had been instigated by the demons to deceive many by his magic arts ; that he had had success of this kind at Antioch, where he had taught, and had persuaded his followers that they should not die; and that when Justin wrote some of them survived holding this persuasion. Justin wrote a special treatise against heresies, and from this, in all probability, was derived the somewhat fuller account given by Irenaeus (i. 23, p. 100). According to this, Menander did not, like Simon, declare himself to be the chief power, but taught that that power was unknown to all. He gave the same account as Simon of the creation of the world—viz., that "it had been made by angels" who had taken their origin from the ENNOEA of the supreme power. But he put forward himself as having been sent by the invisible powers to mankind as a Saviour, enabling men, by the magica] power which he taught them, to get the better of these creative angels, He taught that through baptism in his own name his disciples received a resurrection, and should thenceforward neither die nor grow old,

but should abide in immortal youth. Irenaeus ~ evidently understood this language in its literal sense, and the history of heretical sects shews that it is not incredible such promises may have been made by Menander to his disciples; but what Justin tells of the continuance of a belief which the experience of the past must have disproved, assures us that a spiritual interpretation must have been found for this language. Cyril of Jerusalem (C. I. 18) treats the denial of a literal resurrection of the body as a specially Samaritan heresy.

Irenaeus (iii. 4, p. 179), having spoken of Valentinus and Marcion, says that the other Gnostics, as had been shewn, took their beginnings from Menander, the disciple of Simon; and there is every probability that it was from the Samaritan Justin that Irenaeus learned his pedigree of Gnosticism, viz., that it originated with the Samaritan Simon, that it was continued by his disciple Menander, who taught at Antioch, and that there Suturninus (and, apparently, Basil-ides) learned from him.