The Good = God — say otherwise, and you are impious
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Hermes — τοσοῦτον γάρ ἐστι τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ τὸ μέγεθος, ὅσον ἐστὶν ὕπαρξις πάντων τῶν ὄντων, καὶ σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων, καὶ αἰσθητῶν καὶ νοητῶν· τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ ἀγαθόν, τοῦτό ἐστιν ὁ θεός. μὴ οὖν εἴπῃς ἄλλο τι ἀγαθόν, ἐπεὶ ἀσεβεῖς, ἢ ἄλλο τί ποτε τὸν θεὸν ἢ μόνον τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἐπεὶ πάλιν ἀσεβεῖς.
For so great is the magnitude of the Good as is the existence of all the things that are — both bodily and incorporeal, both perceptible and intelligible. This is the Good; this is God. Do not, then, call anything else good, since you would be impious; nor ever call God anything other than the Good alone, since again you would be impious.
Hermes measures the Good: its magnitude is as great as the existence of all the things that are — bodily and incorporeal, perceptible and intelligible. This is the Good; this is God. Therefore do not call anything else good — if you do, you are impious; nor call God anything other than the Good — if you do, again you are impious. The identity of God and the Good is absolute, and to blur it in either direction is sacrilege.
Hermes gives the Good a measure, and the measure is everything: 'so great is the magnitude of the Good (τοσοῦτον… τὸ μέγεθος) as is the existence of all the things that are.' The four-fold sweep — bodily and incorporeal, perceptible and intelligible (σωμάτων/ἀσωμάτων, αἰσθητῶν/νοητῶν) — is the standard Greek division of all reality, and the Good is coextensive with the whole of it. The interlinear keeps the two pairs of opposites intact because they are the point: nothing that exists, on any level, falls outside the Good's magnitude. Then the plain equation the section has been building: 'this is the Good, this is God (τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ ἀγαθόν, τοῦτό ἐστιν ὁ θεός).'
What gives the passage its force is how it ends — not with argument but with a religious prohibition, twice. Break the identity of God and the Good in either direction and you commit ἀσέβεια, impiety: call anything else 'good,' you are impious; call God by any name but 'the Good,' again impious. After a long dialogue of physics and logic, the treatise closes its central movement on worship, guarding a single equation as holy. The reveal layer earns its keep by keeping ἀσεβεῖς visible in both clauses: the English 'you are wrong' would miss that this is framed as sacrilege — a boundary of reverence, not merely of reasoning. It is the same instinct as II.14's 'two names alone': the Hermetic God is approached through exact speech, and loose talk about the Good is a profanation.
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Corpus Hermeticum CH2.15 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH2.15/