Mary and Jesus up the Mountain

αἰσχρουργία (aischrourgia) - obscene act
αἰσχρός (aischros) + ἔργον (ergon)

• Epiphanius - Panarion
• Who is the woman by his side?
• Lucian gives some insight to aischrourgía
• More Reading

Epiphanius - Panarion

Mary and Jesus up to the mountain, drinking semen, Bacchic mystery. Takes her from his "side" (pleurās (Πλευρᾶς) from his side, not rib - just like Adam takes eve from his side in Genesis, forced to be the receptacle of the hyma (αἷμα) from Jesus. Makes sense why they called her a prostitute. As a part of salvation. (Epiphanius is criticizing heretic sects, in this case the gnostics).

Source

• Epiphanius (Ἐπιφάνιος)
• Panarion (Πανάριον)
• Against Gnostics, or Borborites (Κατὰ Γνωστικῶν τῶν καὶ Βορβοριτῶν)
• Date: c. 374–377 CE
• Author: Epiphanius of Salamis (Church Father)
• Work Name: Πανάριον ("Medicine Chest")
• Purpose: Catalog and refute heresies (80 of them!)

Here, Epiphanius is criticizing the gnostics by showing what they tell us in a lost text "Greater Questions of Mary". Epiphanius therefore is our only surviving primary witness to access that lost text (important: his attestation is via hostile quotation, not neutral transmission). Without Epiphanius, the Greater Questions of Mary as a primary source text is gone.

What helps readers understand Epiphanius of Salamis here is to see that his aim is not neutral reportage but containment: writing as a late-fourth-century bishop whose life’s work was to catalogue, delimit, and morally discredit what he regarded as deviant Christianities, he stages his polemic by ventriloquizing his opponents’ own claims, especially where they sound most scandalous to a catholic audience. In this passage he is not inventing obscenity ex nihilo; he is asserting that certain Gnostic groups themselves followed a now-lost revelatory book - usually called the Greater Questions of Mary - and that they read canonical sayings through it.

His strategy is to quote, paraphrase, and gloss these alleged teachings so that the sexualized ritual language (aporroia (ἀπόρροια), aischrourgía (Αἰσχρουργία), egkatamignusthai (ἐγκαταμίγνυσθαι)) becomes the interpretive key, thereby collapsing the highly technical Gnostic “mystery” into base “obscenity.”

That move serves a double purpose: it paints the Gnostics as morally dangerous (their practices produce aischrotes (αἰσχρότης)) and epistemically unreliable (they are “not yet established in the pleroma (πλήρωμα)”), while also warning his readers that such texts and readings - precisely because they claim secret authority from Jesus - must be excluded from the church’s scriptural economy.

In short, Epiphanius’ goal is not to preserve the Greater Questions of Mary but to neutralize its authority by reframing it as proof of the heresy’s own corruption.

Generally, as seen over countless empires and religions, the way to change the past isn't to deny the past, but to reframe the as a more accurate truth that the new empire/religion owns, which is what Epiphaneus is attempting here by quoting the lost text's technicalities, but then providing his reframed judgemental commentary. Epiphanius almost certainly quotes selectively and strategically, not exhaustively or neutrally, but the fact that he reveals these components consistent with earlier mystery practices in early christian cult and pre-christian echidnaic cult, is telling, because it's recognizable.

The reality of Greater Questions of Mary (given to us via Epiphanius) is, after ignoring his commentary, after trusting that what these groups are alleged by Epiphanius to have taught/practiced, is that the lost text gives us insight into the real technicality of the Gnostic cult following the core mystery rite teachings of Jesus, which involved pharmakon and sexual acts and substances. Clearly the Catholic cult would be very motivated to erase this, especially when seeding a new government for congtrol and power of the general people, they had to sanitize.

The early Christians that Epiphanius is quoting from "Questions about Mary", are quoting the teachings of Jesus as outlined in the Greek New Testament.

Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 26.8

• αἷμα (Hyma) - essence, which could be blood or semen. Semen was considered a form of blood. see Hyma
• ἐγκαταμίγνυσθαι (egkatamignusthai) - to mix oneself into, to intermingle with, to commingle with; here it means to do a sexual act with
• αἰσχρότητος (aischrotetos) - (αἰσχρός + -της): shamefulness, disgrace, obscenity which Names a state, quality, or condition; Moral or social assessment; shamefulness of the man as what he is / what clings to him.
  • can mean filthy conduct AND euphemism for fellatio (according to the lexicon).
• αἰσχρουργία (aischrourgía) - (αἰσχρός + ἔργον): disgraceful, shameful, obscene work which Names an act, practice, or performance; the shame-act of the man is what he does;
  • Derived from αἰσχρός (aischrós), meaning "shameful" or "dishonorable", or "obscenity", but can be a euphemism for felatio.
  • Felatio?? - αἰσχρότης (aischrotes = αἰσχρός + -της) can be a euphamism for felatio [lexicon]
    • Also, keep in mind that 1800's LSJ sexually repressed puritanical Victorians framed this term as shameful, when aischrotetos (αἰσχρότητος) can be a euphemism for fellatio.
    • If not directly fellatio - obscene act here in this scene is definitely referring to what Mary's doing by Jesus's pleura (side), "eating" his "emission" so that "they may live". You figure it out...
  • Lucian gives oral definition to this term in his comedy satire below. Depicting aischrourgia via a hired youth holding an erect-vertical-straight-hard pole / rod / lever poking a cyclops (pedarast) eye, missing it hits his mouth instead (it's comedy).
  • Lucian's aischrourgia refers specifically to the fellatio in that scene.
• ἀπόρροιαν (aporrian) - Emission, Discharge. Semen. This is a technical term used in Gnostic and mystery language for semen, life-force, or spiritual substance — often described as something to be received, reabsorbed, or sacramentally consumed. Literally: Discharge, flow. The term comes from ἀπόρροος (áporroos), meaning "flowing away" or "discharging."
• πληρώματι (plērómati) - Fullness, completion. From πλήρωμα (plēróma), meaning "fulfillment" or "fullness" in a spiritual or cosmic sense.
• Διεξόδους (diexódous) - Exits, outlets. Derived from διέξοδος (diéxodos), meaning "a way out" or "an exit."
• Ἡδονῆς (hēdonēs) - Pleasure. Derived from ἡδονή (hēdonē), meaning "pleasure" or "delight."
• Πλευρᾶς (pleurās) - Side. This word comes from πλευρά (pleurá), meaning "side" often used metaphorically in biblical and mythological contexts. We also see this "side" language in Genesis as well.
• “We eat it”: A literal statement in this polemical context, meant to expose what Epiphanius considered ritual sexual sacrament.
• ἐκβαλόντα (ekbalonta) - from ἐκβάλλω (ekballo), to cast out, cast off, produce, produce forth, expel
• μεταλαβόντα (metalabonta) - from μεταλαμβάνω (metalambano), to receive, take part of, take in exchange, transferred
• Μαρίας (María) - Mary. Refers to Mary of Magdalene. Here, a spiritual partner or recipient of secret knowledge.
• Ἰαλδαβαώθ (Ialdabaōth) - That Kurios/LordOfTheRealm in Genesis. A name associated with the demiurge, often regarded by Gnostics and Polytheists as a false god creator figure in Old Testament / Genesis.
  • The figure Ialdabaōth comes from Gnostic writings, especially found in:
    • The Apocryphon of John
    • Pistis Sophia
    • On the Origin of the World
    • Hypostasis of the Archons
  • These are non-canonical works preserved mostly in Coptic in the Nag Hammadi Library, dating to the 2nd–4th century CE.
• Σὴθ (Sēth) - Seth, referring to the biblical figure or Gnostic interpretation of Seth, often associated with knowledge or a salvific line.
• Αποκαλύψεις (apokalypsis) - Revelations, disclosures. This noun comes from ἀποκαλύπτω (apokalyptō), meaning "to reveal" or "to uncover."
• Κύριος (kúrios) - Means lord of the realm or one of the gods. A title used for Jesus the christed one in the New Testament (Greek - Nestle 1904) and Yahweh in the Old Testament (Greek - Septuagint / Swete 1930), signifying divinity and authority.

Translation of the emission sharing.

The selection of "intermingle" is to show there was some sexual activity between Mary and Jesus. The usage of the word ἐγκαταμίγνυσθαι can mean different things according to context. Here I believe it refers to oral intercourse.

Who is the woman by his side?

Some translators think there are 3 people in this scene: Mary, Jesus, and an unnamed woman from Jesus's side (pleuras).

However there are only 2

The “woman from his side (πλευρά)” is Mary herself, described through ritual-allegorical language, not the introduction of a new character.

Below is how we know—from the Greek grammar alone.
The decisive phrase:

• γυναῖκα = a woman (accusative, indefinite)
• αὐτῇ = to her (dative feminine singular)
• There is no new name, no article, no δεύτερη ἀναφορά (“another woman”)

Greek narrative requires explicit marking if a new character enters.

It does not do that here.

Also, Scandel

The polemicist wants the reader to hear:

• “He turns Mary herself into the Eve produced from his own side.” as told in the Genesis story.

That is precisely what makes the story scandalous.
Introducing a third person would weaken the attack.

And Grammar

Greek does not introduce a new acting person with only γυνή + pronouns already bound to someone else.

This would be considered bad Greek and confusing to an ancient reader.

Ancient audiences were far more sensitive to referent tracking than modern readers.

Lucian gives some insight to aischrourgía

aischrourgía (Αἰσχρουργία) is not a word used very often

Below:

• Αἰσχρουργία (aischrourgía) - (αἰσχρός + ἔργον): Disgraceful, shameful, obscene work or act.
  • Derived from αἰσχρός (aischrós), meaning "shameful" or "dishonorable" or "obscene".
  • Lucian uses this term to mean fellatio below.
• Cyclops (Κύκλωψ) - pedarast humans
• νεανίας δὲ ὑπόμισθος ὀρθὸν ἔχων τὸν μοχλὸν - hired young man holding an erect/vertical pole - euphemism for penis.
  • in Greek satirical and comic discourse, ὀρθός + μοχλός is sexual slang, intentionally. There is no neutral register available once those two words are paired.
  • Comic Greek routinely uses ὀρθός for:
    • erections
    • aroused states
  • μοχλός is a penetration instrument by definition
    • lever
    • pry-bar
    • stake
    • bar used to force open doors, gates, bodies
    • Its core function is insertion + force + leverage
    • In satire, that function becomes metaphorical immediately.
  • ὀρθὸς μοχλός (erect bar) is never neutral in satire because:
    • ὀρθός signals erection in comic Greek
    • μοχλός is inherently penetrative
• epithumesas (ἐπεθύμησας) - you lusted for; epithumia (epi=upon thumia=spirited drive)
• muron (μύρῳ) - oil as a carrier for substances like nard or myrrh; perfumed oil; ointment
• christing (χρίεσθαι) - to apply or smear or rub to the surface of the skin

In this passage, Lucian uses aischrourgía (αἰσχρουργία) to include and strongly imply fellatio, especially:

• hired fellatio
• performed as spectacle or reenactment
• involving shame, drunkenness, and parody

Here in the Greek Comic Satire:

• The stake = phallus ὀρθὸς μοχλός (erect bar)
• Cyclopean parody (Polyphemus / Odysseus = phallic violence)
• The eye / mouth / body = orifice
• The upright posture = readiness / arousal
• drunken reenactments
• Homeric allusion/parody
• Sexual innuendo
• Moral ridicule

More Reading

• Who would do such rites?
  • Bes Vase - Archeological evidence from Egypt (300BCE-300CE) showing bodily fluids were used
• Interview - Danny Jones - Ancient Language Experts CLASH - Ammon Hillman & Luke Gorton (2026-01-10) - talks about the above translation
  • Here we see Luke fumble around, like he was too unfamiliar.
  • The translation above, and LH's analysis here makes it clear:
  • LH's analysis: [link]