Hermetic writings are post-Christian borrowings, not ancient Egyptian prophecy.
Evidence
His main claim to fame was his demonstration, in De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI ad Baronii annales, that the Hermetic writings had not been written in Egyptian by an ancient sage called Hermes Trismegistus, that those writings were not nearly as old as had been supposed and that, since they did not predate the life of Christ, they could not be read as prophesying His coming or, more generally, as confirming the truths of Christianity (as Pico della Mirandola had supposed). Instead, the Hermetic writings could be shown to have borrowed from both the Bible and Plato. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 144
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the broader theme of Renaissance chronology debates and how textual philology dismantled claims of ancient wisdom — parallels later orientalist debunking of Arabic pseudepigrapha.