The different sources for information on Simon contain quite different pictures of him, so much so that it has been questioned whether they all refer to the same person. Peter's conflict with Simon Magus by Avanzino Nucci, 1620. Some scholars have considered the two to be identical, although this is not generally accepted, as the Simon of Josephus is a Jew rather than a Samaritan.
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Josephus mentions a magician named Simon in his writings as being involved with the procurator Felix, King Agrippa II and his sister Drusilla, where Felix has Simon convince Drusilla to marry him instead of the man she was engaged to. He is also supposed to have written several treatises, two of which bear the titles The Four Quarters of the World and The Sermons of the Refuter, but these are lost to us. There are small fragments of a work written by him (or by one of his later followers), the Apophasis Megale, or Great Declaration.
![simon the sorcerer bible simon the sorcerer bible](https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/189200/189264/189264-peter-rejects-the-money-of-simon_lg.gif)
![simon the sorcerer bible simon the sorcerer bible](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5b/ee/47/5bee478a51c60dd443ee19c8420185ef.jpg)
Almost all of the surviving sources for the life and thought of Simon Magus are contained in works from ancient Christian writers: in the Acts of the Apostles, in patristic works ( Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus of Rome, Epiphanius of Salamis), and in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, early Clementine literature, and the Epistle of the Apostles.