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Monday, March 04, 2024
An Introduction to Gnosticism and The Nag Hammadi Library What is Gnosticism?
These are the Words of Jesus (Jeshewua/Jeshua/Yeshua) The Christ, said in secret to we His Apostles, including the Gospel of Mahari (Mary the Magdalene) that he instructed us to write down and record.
Introduction from « The Gnostic Gospels » by Elaine Pagels
In December 1945 an Arab peasant made an astonishing archeological discovery in Upper Egypt. Rumors obscured the circumstances of this find--perhaps because the discovery was accidental, and its sale on the black market illegal. For years even the identity of the discoverer remained unknown. One rumor held that he was a blood avenger; another, that he had made the find near the town of Naj 'Hammádì at the Jabal al-Tárif, a mountain honeycombed with more than 150 caves.
Originally natural, some of these caves were cut and painted and used as grave sites as early as the sixth dynasty, some 4,300 years ago. Thirty years later the discoverer himself, Muhammad 'Alí al-Sammán; told what happened. Shortly before he and his brothers avenged their father's murder in a blood feud, they had saddled their camels and gone out to the Jabal to dig for sabakh, a soft soil they used to fertilize their crops. Digging around a massive boulder, they hit a red earthenware jar, almost a meter high. Muhammad 'Alí hesitated to break the jar, considering that a jinn, or spirit, might live inside. But realizing that it might also contain gold, he raised his mattock, smashed the jar, and discovered inside thirteen papyrus books, bound in leather. Returning to his home in al-Qasr, Muhammad 'All dumped the books and loose papyrus leaves on the straw piled on the ground next to the oven. Muhammad's mother, 'Umm-Ahmad, admits that she burned much of the papyrus in the oven along with the straw she used to kindle the fire.
A few weeks later, as Muhammad 'Alí tells it, he and his brothers avenged their father's death by murdering Ahmed Isma'il. Their mother had warned her sons to keep their mattocks sharp: when they learned that their father's enemy was nearby, the brothers seized the opportunity, "hacked off his limbs . . . ripped out his heart, and devoured it among them, as the ultimate act of blood revenge." - 1 - Fearing that the police investigating the murder would search his house and discover the books, Muhammad 'Alí asked the priest, al-Qummus Basiliyus Abd al-Masih, to keep one or more for him. During the time that Muhammad 'Alí and his brothers were being interrogated for murder, Raghib, a local history teacher, had seen one of the books, and suspected that it had value.
Having received one from al-Qummus Basiliyus, Raghib sent it to a friend in Cairo to find out its worth. Sold on the black market through antiquities dealers in Cairo, the manuscripts soon attracted the attention of officials of the Egyptian government. Through circumstances of high drama, as we shall see, they bought one and confiscated ten and a half of the thirteen leather-bound books, called codices, and deposited them in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. But a large part of the thirteenth codex, containing five extraordinary texts, was smuggled out of Egypt and offered for sale in America. Word of this codex soon reached Professor Gilles Quispel, distinguished historian of religion at Utrecht, in the Netherlands. Excited by the discovery, Quispel urged the Jung Foundation in Zurich to buy the codex. But discovering, when he succeeded, that some pages were missing, he flew to Egypt in the spring of 1955 to try to find them in the Coptic Museum. Arriving in Cairo, he went at once to the Coptic Museum, borrowed photographs of some of the texts, and hurried back to his hotel to decipher them. Tracing out the first line, Quispel was startled, then incredulous, to read: "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down." Quispel knew that his colleague H.C. Puech, using notes from another French scholar, Jean Doresse, had identified the opening lines with fragments of a Greek Gospel of Thomas discovered in the 1890's.
But the discovery of the whole text raised new questions: Did Jesus have a twin brother, as this text implies? Could the text be an authentic record of Jesus' sayings? According to its title, it contained the Gospel According to Thomas; yet, unlike the gospels of the New Testament, this text identified itself as a secret gospel. Quispel also discovered that it contained many sayings known from the New Testament; but these sayings, placed in unfamiliar contexts, suggested other dimensions of meaning. Other passages, Quispel found, differed entirely from any known Christian tradition: the "living Jesus," for example, speaks in sayings as cryptic and compelling as Zen koans: Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
What Quispel held in his hand, the Gospel of Thomas, was only one of the fifty-two texts discovered at Nag Hammadi (the usual English transliteration of the town's name). Bound into the same volume with it is the Gospel of Philip, which attributes to Jesus acts and sayings quite different from those in the New Testament: . . . the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples, and used to kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The rest of [the disciples were offended] . . . They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you as (I love) her?"
Other sayings in this collection criticize common Christian beliefs, such as the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection, as naïve misunderstandings. Bound together with these gospels is the Apocryphon (literally, "secret book") of John, which opens with an offer to reveal "the mysteries [and the] things hidden in silence" which Jesus taught to his disciple John. Muhammad 'Alí later admitted that some of the texts were lost--burned up or thrown away. But what remains is astonishing: some fifty-two texts from the early centuries of the Christian era-- including a collection of early Christian gospels, previously unknown. Besides the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, the find included the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel to the Egyptians, which identifies itself as "the [sacred book] of the Great Invisible [Spirit]." Another group of texts consists of writings attributed to Jesus' followers, such as the Secret Book of James, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Letter of Peter to Philip, and the Apocalypse of Peter.
What Muhammad 'Alí discovered at Nag Hammadi, it soon became clear, were Coptic translations, made about 1,500 years ago, of still more ancient manuscripts. The originals themselves had been written in Greek, the language of the New Testament: as Doresse, Puech, and Quispel had recognized, part of one of them had been discovered by archeologists about fifty - 2 - years earlier, when they found a few fragments of the original Greek version of the Gospel of Thomas. About the dating of the manuscripts themselves there is little debate. Examination of the datable papyrus used to thicken the leather bindings, and of the Coptic script, place them c. A.D. 350-400. But scholars sharply disagree about the dating of the original texts.
Some of them can hardly be later than c. A.D. 120-150, since Irenaeus, the orthodox Bishop of Lyons, writing C. 180, declares that heretics "boast that they possess more gospels than there really are,'' and complains that in his time such writings already have won wide circulation--from Gaul through Rome, Greece, and Asia Minor. Quispel and his collaborators, who first published the Gospel of Thomas, suggested the date of c. A.D. 140 for the original. Some reasoned that since these gospels were heretical, they must have been written later than the gospels of the New Testament, which are dated c. 60-l l0. But recently Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University has suggested that the collection of sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, although compiled c. 140, may include some traditions even older than the gospels of the New Testament, "possibly as early as the second half of the first century" (50-100)-- as early as, or earlier, than Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Scholars investigating the Nag Hammadi find discovered that some of the texts tell the origin of the human race in terms very different from the usual reading of Genesis: the Testimony of Truth, for example, tells the story of the Garden of Eden from the viewpoint of the serpent! Here the serpent, long known to appear in Gnostic literature as the principle of divine wisdom, convinces Adam and Eve to partake of knowledge while "the Lord" threatens them with death, trying jealously to prevent them from attaining knowledge, and expelling them from Paradise when they achieve it. Another text, mysteriously entitled The Thunder, Perfect Mind, offers an extraordinary poem spoken in the voice of a feminine divine power: For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin.... I am the barren one, and many are her sons.... I am the silence that is incomprehensible.... I am the utterance of my name.
These diverse texts range, then, from secret gospels, poems, and quasi-philosophic descriptions of the origin of the universe, to myths, magic, and instructions for mystical practice. Why were these texts buried-and why have they remained virtually unknown for nearly 2,000 years? Their suppression as banned documents, and their burial on the cliff at Nag Hammadi, it turns out, were both part of a struggle critical for the formation of early Christianity. The Nag Hammadi texts, and others like them, which circulated at the beginning of the Christian era, were denounced as heresy by orthodox Christians in the middle of the second century. We have long known that many early followers of Christ were condemned by other Christians as heretics, but nearly all we knew about them came from what their opponents wrote attacking them. Bishop Irenaeus, who supervised the church in Lyons, c. 180, wrote five volumes, entitled The Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Knowledge, which begin with his promise to set forth the views of those who are now teaching heresy . . . to show how absurd and inconsistent with the truth are their statements . . . I do this so that . . . you may urge all those with whom you are connected to avoid such an abyss of madness and of blasphemy against Christ. He denounces as especially "full of blasphemy" a famous gospel called the Gospel of Truth. Is Irenaeus referring to the same Gospel of Truth discovered at Nag Hammadi' Quispel and his collaborators, who first published the Gospel of Truth, argued that he is; one of their critics maintains that the opening line (which begins "The gospel of truth") is not a title. But Irenaeus does use the same source as at least one of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi--the Apocryphon (Secret Book) of John--as ammunition for his own attack on such "heresy."
Fifty years later Hippolytus, a teacher in Rome, wrote another massive Refutation of All Heresies to "expose and refute the wicked blasphemy of the heretics." - 3 - This campaign against heresy involved an involuntary admission of its persuasive power; yet the bishops prevailed. By the time of the Emperor Constantine's conversion, when Christianity became an officially approved religion in the fourth century, Christian bishops, previously victimized by the police, now commanded them. Possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and destroyed. But in Upper Egypt, someone; possibly a monk from a nearby monastery of St. Pachomius, took the banned books and hid them from destruction--in the jar where they remained buried for almost 1,600 years. But those who wrote and circulated these texts did not regard themselves as "heretics. Most of the writings use Christian terminology, unmistakable related to a Jewish heritage. Many claim to offer traditions about Jesus that are secret, hidden from "the many" who constitute what, in the second century, came to be called the "catholic church."
These Christians are now called gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, usually translated as "knowledge." For as those who claim to know nothing about ultimate reality are called agnostic (literally, "not knowing"), the person who does claim to know such things is called gnostic ("knowing"). But gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge. The Greek language distinguishes between scientific or reflective knowledge ("He knows mathematics") and knowing through observation or experience ("He knows me"), which is gnosis. As the gnostics use the term, we could translate it as "insight," for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human nature and human destiny. According to the gnostic teacher Theodotus, writing in Asia Minor (c. 140-160), the gnostic is one has come to understand who we were, and what we have become; where we were... whither we are hastening; from what we are being released; what birth is, and what is rebirth. Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis. Another gnostic teacher, Monoimus, says: Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, "
My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body." Learn the sources of sorrow:, joy, love, hate . . . If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself. What Muhammad 'All discovered at Nag Hammadi is, apparently, a library of writings, almost all of them gnostic. Although they claim to offer secret teaching, many of these texts refer to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and others to the letters of Paul and the New Testament gospels. Many of them include the same dramatic personae as the New Testament--Jesus and his disciples. Yet the differences are striking. Orthodox Jews and Christians insist that a chasm separates humanity from Its creator: God is wholly other. But some of the gnostics who wrote these gospels contradict this: self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical. Second, the "living Jesus" of these texts speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentance, like the Jesus of the New Testament. Instead of coming to save us from sin, he comes as a guide who opens access to spiritual understanding. But when the disciple attains enlightenment, Jesus no longer serves as his spiritual master: the two have become equal--even identical. Third, orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is Lord and Son of God in a unique way: he remains forever distinct from the rest of humanity whom he came to save. Yet the gnostic Gospel of Thomas relates that as soon as Thomas recognizes him, Jesus says to Thomas that they have both received their being from the same source: Jesus said, "I am not your master.
Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out.... He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him." Does not such teaching--the identity of the divine and human. the concern with illusion and enlightenment, the founder who is presented not as Lord, but as spiritual guide sound more Eastern than Western? Some scholars have suggested that if the names were changed, the "living - 4 - Buddha" appropriately could say what the Gospel of Thomas attributes to the living Jesus. Could Hindu or Buddhist tradition have influenced gnosticism? The British scholar of Buddhism, Edward Conze, suggests that it had. He points out that "Buddhists were in contact with the Thomas Christians (that is, Christians who knew and used such writings as the Gospel of Thomas) in South India." Trade routes between the Greco-Roman world and the Far East were opening up at the time when gnosticism flourished (A.D. 80-200); for generations, Buddhist missionaries had been proselytizing in Alexandria. We note, too, that Hippolytus, who was a Greek speaking Christian in Rome (c. 225), knows of the Indian Brahmins--and includes their tradition among the sources of heresy: There is . . . among the Indians a heresy of those who philosophize among the Brahmins, who live a self-sufficient life, abstaining from (eating) living creatures and all cooked food . . . They say that God is light, not like the light one sees, nor like the sun nor fire, but to them God is discourse, not that which finds expression in articulate sounds, but that of knowledge (gnosis) through which the secret mysteries of nature are perceived by the wise.
Could the title of the Gospel of Thomas--named for the disciple who, tradition tells us, went to India--suggest the influence of Indian tradition? These hints indicate the possibility, yet our evidence is not conclusive. Since parallel traditions may emerge in different cultures at different times, such ideas could have developed in both places independently. What we call Eastern and Western religions, and tend to regard as separate streams, were not clearly differentiated 2,000 years ago. Research on the Nag Hammadi texts is only beginning: we look forward to the work of scholars who can study these traditions comparatively to discover whether they can, in fact, be traced to Indian sources. Even so, ideas that we associate with Eastern religions emerged in the first century through the gnostic movement in the West, but they were suppressed and condemned by polemicists like Irenaeus. Yet those who called gnosticism heresy were adopting--consciously or not--the viewpoint of that group of Christians who called themselves orthodox Christians.
A heretic may be anyone whose outlook someone else dislikes or denounces. According to tradition, a heretic is one who deviates from the true faith. But what defines that "true faith"? Who calls it that, and for what reasons? We find this problem familiar in our own experience. The term "Christianity," especially since the Reformation, has covered an astonishing range of groups. Those claiming to represent "true Christianity" in the twentieth century can range from a Catholic cardinal in the Vatican to an African Methodist Episcopal preacher initiating revival in Detroit, a Mormon missionary in Thailand, or the member of a village church on the coast of Greece. Yet Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox agree that such diversity is a recent--and deplorable--development. According to Christian legend, the early church was different. Christians of every persuasion look back to the primitive church to find a simpler, purer form of Christian faith. In the apostles' time, all members of the Christian community shared their money and property; all believed the same teaching, and worshipped together; all revered the authority of the apostles. It was only after that golden age that conflict, then heresy emerged: so says the author of the Acts of the Apostles, who identifies himself as the first historian of Christianity. But the discoveries at Nag Hammadi have upset this picture. If we admit that some of these fiftytwo texts represents early forms of Christian teaching, we may have to recognize that early Christianity is far more diverse than nearly anyone expected before the Nag Hammadi discoveries.
Contemporary Christianity, diverse and complex as we find it, actually may show more unanimity than the Christian churches of the first and second centuries. For nearly all Christians since that time, Catholics, Protestants, or Orthodox, have shared three basic premises. First, they accept the canon of the New Testament; second, they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specific forms of church institution. But every one of these-the canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure--emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century. Before that time, as Irenaeus and others attest, numerous gospels circulated among - 5 - various Christian groups, ranging from those of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to such writings as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth, as well as many other secret teachings, myths, and poems attributed to Jesus or his disciples. Some of these, apparently, were discovered at Nag Hammadi; many others are lost to us. Those who identified themselves as Christians entertained many--and radically differing-religious beliefs and practices. And the communities scattered throughout the known world organized themselves in ways that differed widely from one group to another. Yet by A. D. 200, the situation had changed. Christianity had become an institution headed by a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons, who understood themselves to be the guardians of the only "true faith." The majority of churches, among which the church of Rome took a leading role, rejected all other viewpoints as heresy.
Deploring the diversity of the earlier movement, Bishop Irenaeus and his followers insisted that there could be only one church, and outside of that church, he declared, "there is no salvation." Members of this church alone are orthodox (literally, "straight-thinking") Christians. And, he claimed, this church must be catholic-- that is, universal. Whoever challenged that consensus, arguing instead for other forms of Christian teaching, was declared to be a heretic, and expelled. When the orthodox gained military support, sometime after the Emperor Constantine became Christian in the fourth century, the penalty for heresy escalated. The Nag Hammadi discovery of manuscripts In December 1945, two peasants, Muhammed and Khalifah 'Ali of the al-Samman clan were digging for fertiliser at the base of the Jabal al-Tarif cliff, using the saddle-bags of their camels to carry the earth back. The cliff is about 11km north-east of Nag Hammadi. They tethered their camels to a boulder, and came upon a buried jar as they were digging around the base of the boulder. Muhammed 'Ali told J.M.Robinson that at first he was afraid to break the jar -- the lid may have been sealed with bitumen, as a blackish substance is present on the lid -- for fear a jinn might be inside, but the thought that gold might be contained instead, he broke it with his mattock. Out flew particles of papyrus. The jar was of red slip ware, with four small handles near the opening. It was large, approximately 60cm or more in height, with an opening of some 15- 20cm widening to 30cm in the side. The jar had been closed by fitting a bowl into its mouth. The bowl survives, and is Coptic red slip ware of the 4-5th century, with a rim decorated with four fields of stripes. The diameter at the outer edge is 23.3-24.0 cm, with inside diameter of 18.2- 18.7cm. The books were divided among the 7 camel-drivers present. According to 'Ali there were 13 (our 'codex XIII' was not included in this number, as it was inside codex VI). Thus a codex was lost more or less at the site. Seven lots were drawn up. Covers were removed and each consisted of a complete codex plus part of another.
The other drivers, ignorant of the value and afraid of sorcery and Muhammed 'Ali, disclaimed any share, whereon he piled them all back together. 'Ali wrapped his books in his tunic and took them home, to his hovel in the hamlet of al-Qasr, built on the site of ancient Chenoboskion. The books, loose covers and loose pages were dumped in the straw, next to the oven. A blood-feud was in progress, for which reason Muhammed 'Ali was very careful not to venture back later to the area. Muhammed deposited the books with a local coptic priest, Basiliyus 'Abd al-Masih, as the police were searching his house almost nightly for weapons. The priest's wife had a brother, Raghib Andrawus, who went from village to village teaching English and history in the local coptic church schools. He came to visit, and, on seeing one of the books, recognised it might be valuable and took it to Cairo. There he showed it to a Coptic physician interested in the Coptic language, George Sobhi, who called in the authorities from the Department of Antiquities.
They seized the book, agreeing to pay Raghib £E 300. After endless haggling, he got £E 250, on condition he donated the remaining £E 50 to the Coptic Museum. The book was deposited in the museum, according to the register, on 4th October 1946. Thinking the books were worthless, or maybe even unlucky to have, 'Ali's widowed mother 'Umm Ahmad had burned part of those lying in the straw in the oven (probably the covers and most of - 6 - the pages of codex XII, of which only a few leaves remain, but also the cover of X, and loose leaves: 1 in codex II, 9 in III, 1 in VI, 3 in VIII and 2 in IX, and large and small fragments from otherwise intact sequences of fragments), as she conceded to Robinson. Illiterate Muslim neighbours bartered or purchased them for next to nothing. Nashid Bisadah had one and entrusted it to a gold merchant of Nag Hammadi to sell in Cairo, dividing the profit between them. A grain merchant supposedly acquired another and sold it for such a price that he ws able to set up his shop in Cairo. Bahij 'Ali, a one-eyed outlaw of al-Qasr, got a number of the books. Escorted by a well-known antiquities dealer of the region, Dhaki Basta, he went to Cairo. They first offered the books to Mansoor's shop at Shepheard's hotel, and then to the shop of Phokion J. Tano, a Cypriot dealer, who bought the lot and then went to Nag Hammadi to get whatever was left. Once the news of the value of the books reached al-Qasr, the 'Ali brothers tried to lay hands on the remainder. Most of Codex I was exported from Egypt by a Belgian antiques dealer, Albert Eid. He offered it for sale in New York and Ann Arbor in 1949, and then his widow sold it on 10th May 1952 to the Jung Institute of Zurich.
It was returned to Cairo bit by bit after publication. Meanwhile Tano's collection was seized by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities to prevent it being exported; when Nasser came to power, it was 'nationalised', a paltry £E 4,000 being paid as compensation. Today all the Nag Hammadi codices are in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Publication was obstructed by the desire of various scholars to publish works first, with a full (and so lengthy to prepare) commentary. US scholar James Robinson became interested in the 1960's, and using contacts at UNESCO was able eventually to bypass this exhibition of obscurantism. The full collection was published in facsimile by Brill between 1972-1984 as the Facsimile edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices. There is a 17-volume English edition, entitled The Coptic Gnostic Library, and full English translations in the Nag Hammadi Library in English. Robinson also visited Nag Hammadi in the 1960's and 1970's, and tracked down those who found them and wormed out them the story of the find. All the codices are fourth century papyrus. The find consists of 12 codices, plus 8 leaves from a 13th, and contains 52 texts. Duplications mean the number of unique works is 45.
The Berlin Papyrus 8502 is grouped with them, although found separately, because of its related contents. The texts were originally written in Greek, and later translated into Coptic, not always very well (e.g. the passage of Plato). The passage of Plato in fact has been reworked also. The largest leaves -- in codex VII -- are 17.5cm tall. All of the codices are single-quire, apart from codex I. Bibliography J.M.ROBINSON (Ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Translated and introduced by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library project.... Brill, 3rd ed. (1988). J.M.ROBINSON et al, Various articles, Biblical Archaeologist 42.4 (Fall 1979). Includes plates. Checked. A very valuable account of how the texts came to found. Robinson relates the story of the discovery, as obtained by himself from those involved in what was plainly a wearisome and lengthy process of cross-examination. He makes a plea for free access to material of public interest -- ironically, now buried in this copyrighted journal and accessible to almost no-one! The publishers ignored a letter I wrote suggesting they make the material available online.
Gnosis and gnosticism are still rather arcane terms, though in the last two decades the words have been increasingly encountered in the vocabulary of contemporary society. Gnosis derives from Greek, and connotes "knowledge" or the "act of knowing". (On first hearing, it is sometimes confused with another more common term of the same root but opposite sense: agnostic, literally "not knowing", a knower of nothing.) The Greek language differentiates between rational, propositional knowledge, and the distinct form of knowing obtained not by reason, but by personal experience or perception. It is this latter knowledge, gained from experience, from an interior spark of comprehension, that constitutes gnosis. 1 In the first century of the Christian era this term, Gnostic, began to be used to denote a prominent, even if somewhat heterodox, segment of the diverse new Christian community. Among these early followers of Christ, it appears that an elite group delineated themselves from the greater household of the Church by claiming not simply a belief in Christ and his message, but a "special witness" or revelatory experience of the divine. It was this experience, this gnosis, which--so these Gnostics claimed--set the true follower of Christ apart from his fellows.
Stephan Hoeller explains that these Gnostic Christians held a "conviction that direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life." 2 What the "authentic truths of existence" affirmed by the Gnostics were will be briefly reviewed below. But a historical overview of the early Church might first be useful. In the initial decades of the Christian church--the period when we find first mention of "Gnostic" Christians--no orthodoxy, or single acceptable format of Christian thought, had yet been defined. During this first century of Christianity modern scholarship suggests Gnosticism was one of many currents sweeping the deep waters of the new religion. The ultimate course Christianity, and Western culture with it, would take was undecided at that early moment; Gnosticism was one of forces forming that destiny. That Gnosticism was, at least briefly, in the mainstream of Christianity is witnessed by the fact that one of the most prominent and influential early Gnostic teachers, Valentinus, may have been in consideration during the mid-second century for election as the Bishop of Rome. 3 Valentinus serves well as a model of the Gnostic teacher. Born in Alexandria around A.D. 100, in his early years Valentinus had distinguished himself as an extraordinary teacher and leader in the highly educated and diverse Alexandrian Christian community. In the middle of his life, around A.D. 140, he migrated from Alexandria to the Church's evolving capital, Rome, where he played an active role in the public life of the Church. A prime characteristic of the Gnostics was their propensity for claiming to be keepers of secret teachings, gospels, traditions, rituals, and successions within the Church -- sacred matters for which many Christians were (in Gnostic opinion) simply either not prepared or not properly inclined. Valentinus, true to this Gnostic penchant, professed a special apostolic sanction.
He maintained he had been personally initiated by one Theudas, a disciple and initiate of the Apostle Paul, and that he possessed knowledge of teachings and perhaps rituals which were being forgotten by the developing opposition that became Christian orthodoxy. 4 Though an influential member of the Roman church in the mid1 1 Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (New York, 1987), p.9. Hereafter cited as GS. 2 Stephan A. Hoeller, The Gnostic Jung (Wheaton, Ill., 1982), p.11. 3 Layton, p. 220. 4 Layton, pp. 217-221. - 8 - second century, by the end of his life some twenty years later he had been forced from the public eye and branded a heretic. While the historical and theological details are far too complex for proper explication here, the tide of history can be said to have turned against Gnosticism in the middle of the second century. No Gnostic after Valentinus would ever come so near prominence in the greater Church. Gnosticism's secret knowledge, its continuing revelations and production of new scripture, its ascetheticism and paradoxically contrasting libertine postures, were met with increasing suspicion.
By A.D. 180, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, was publishing his attacks on Gnosticism as heresy, a work to be continued with increasing vehemence by the orthodox church Fathers throughout the next century. The orthodox catholic church was deeply and profoundly influenced by the struggle against Gnosticism in the second and third centuries. Formulations of many central traditions in orthodox theology came as reflections and shadows of this confrontation with the Gnosis. 5 But by the end of the fourth century the struggle with the classical Gnosticism represented in the Nag Hammadi texts was essentially over; the evolving orthodox ecclesia had added the force of political correctness to dogmatic denunciation, and with this sword so-called "heresy" was painfully cut from the Christian body. Gnosticism, which had perhaps already passed its prime, was eradicated, its remaining teachers murdered or driven into exile, and its sacred books destroyed.
All that remained for scholars seeking to understand Gnosticism in later centuries were the denunciations and fragments preserved in the patristic heresiologies -- or so it seem, until until a day in 1945.... Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library It was on a December day in the year of 1945, near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, that the course of Gnostic studies was radically renewed and forever changed. An Arab peasant, digging around a boulder in search of fertilizer for his fields, happened upon an old, rather large red earthenware jar. Hoping to have found buried treasure, and with due hesitation and apprehension about the jinn, the genie or spirit who might attend such an hoard, he smashed the jar open with his pick. Inside he discovered no treasure and no genie, but books: more than a dozen old papyrus books, bound in golden brown leather. 6 Little did he realize that he had found an extraordinary collection of ancient texts, manuscripts hidden up a millennium and a half before (probably deposited in the jar around the year 390 by monks from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius) to escape destruction under order of the emerging orthodox Church in its violent expunging of all heterodoxy and heresy.
How the Nag Hammadi manuscripts eventually passed into scholarly hands is a fascinating even if too lengthy story to here relate. But today, now over fifty years since being unearthed and more than two decades after final translation and publication in English as The Nag Hammadi Library7 , their importance has become astoundingly clear: These thirteen beautiful papyrus codices containing fifty-two sacred texts are the long lost "Gnostic Gospels", a last extant testament of what orthodox Christianity perceived to be its most dangerous and insidious challenge, the feared opponent that the Patristic heresiologists had reviled under many different names, but most commonly as Gnosticism. The discovery of these documents has radically revised our understanding of Gnosticism and the early Christian church. Overview of Gnostic Teachings With that abbreviated historical interlude completed, we might again ask, "What was it that these "knowers" knew?" What made them such dangerous heretics? The complexities of Gnosticism are legion, making any generalizations wisely suspect. While several systems for defining and categorizing Gnosticism have been proposed over the years, none has yet gained any general 5 Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism (Oxford, 1990), p. 5. 6
We should here note, given recent extensive discussions about the Dead Sea Scrolls, that the Nag Hammadi find is entirely separate and different from that much publicized discovery of ancient Jewish texts. Discovered beginning in 1947, two years after the Nag Hammadi texts were found, these records now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls were apparently the possessions of Essene communities residing near Qumran in Palestine at a time around the beginning of the Christian era. 7 J. M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (New York, 1st ed., 1977; 3rd ed., 1988). Hereafter cited as NHL. - 9 - acceptance. 8 So with advance warning that this is most certainly not a definitive summary of Gnosticism and its many permutations, we will outline just four elements generally agreed to be characteristic of Gnostic thought.
The first essential characteristic of Gnosticism was introduced above: Gnosticism asserts that "direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings," and that the attainment of such knowledge is the supreme achievement of human life. Gnosis, remember, is not a rational, propositional, logical understanding, but a knowing acquired by experience. The Gnostics were not much interested in dogma or coherent, rational theology--a fact which makes the study of Gnosticism particularly difficult for individuals with "bookkeeper mentalities". (Perhaps for this very same reason, consideration of the Gnostic vision is often a most gratifying undertaking for persons gifted with a poetic ear.) One simply cannot cipher up Gnosticism into syllogistic dogmatic affirmations. The Gnostics cherished the ongoing force of divine revelation--Gnosis was the creative experience of revelation, a rushing progression of understanding, and not a static creed. Carl Gustav Jung, the great Swiss psychologist and a lifelong student of Gnosticism in its various historical permutations, affirms, we find in Gnosticism what was lacking in the centuries that followed: a belief in the efficacy of individual revelation and individual knowledge.
This belief was rooted in the proud feeling of man's affinity with the gods... In his recent popular study, The American Religion, Harold Bloom suggests a second characteristic of Gnosticism that might help us conceptually circumscribe its mysterious heart. Gnosticism, says Bloom, "is a knowing, by and of an uncreated self, or self-within-the self, and [this] knowledge leads to freedom...." 9 Primary among all the revelatory perceptions a Gnostic might reach was the profound awakening that came with knowledge that something within him was uncreated. The Gnostics called this "uncreated self" the divine seed, the pearl, the spark of knowing: consciousness, intelligence, light. And this seed of intellect was the self-same substance of God, it was man's authentic reality; it was the glory of humankind and the divine alike. If woman or man truly came to gnosis of this spark, she understood that she was truly free: Not contingent, not a conception of sin, not a flawed crust of flesh, but the stuff of God, and the conduit of God's immanent realization. There was always a paradoxical cognizance of duality in experiencing this "self-within-a-self".
How could it not be paradoxical: By all rational perception, man clearly was not God, and yet in essential truth, was Godly. This conundrum was a Gnostic mystery, and its knowing was their greatest treasure. The creator god, the one who claimed in evolving orthodox dogma to have made man, and to own him, the god who would have man contingent upon him, born ex nihilo by his will, was a lying demon and not God at all. Gnostics called him by many names -- many of them deprecatory -- names like "Saklas", the blind one; "Samael", god of the blind; or "the Demiurge", the lesser power. Theodotus, a Gnostic teacher writing in Asia Minor between A.D. 140 and 160, explained that the sacred strength of gnosis reveals "who we were, what we have become, where we have been cast out of, where we are bound for, what we have been purified of, what generation and regeneration are." 10 " Yet", the eminent scholar of Gnosticism, Elaine Pagels, comments in exegesis, "to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God: this is the secret of gnosis.... Selfknowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical." 11 The Gospel of Thomas, one of the Gnostic texts found preserved in the Nag Hammadi Library, gives these words of the living Jesus: Jesus said, `I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out... 12 8 An excellent summary of these appears in: Stephan Hoeller, "What is a Gnostic?" Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions 23 (Spring, 1992), pp. 24-27. 9 Bloom, p. 49. 10 Clemens Alexandrinus, Exerpta ex theodoto 78.2. 11 Pagels, pp. xix-xx. 12 Gospel of Thomas, 35.4-7, NHL. - 1 0 - He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.’ 13 He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: What a remarkably heretical image!
The Gospel of Thomas, from which we take that text, is an extraordinary scripture. Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University notes that though ultimately this Gospel was condemned and destroyed by the evolving orthodox church, it may be as old or older than the four canonical gospels preserved, and even have served as a source document to them. 14 This brings us to the third prominent element in our brief summary of Gnosticism: its reverence for texts and scriptures unaccepted by the orthodox fold. The Gnostic experience was mythopoetic -- in story and allegory, and perhaps also in ritual enactments, Gnosticism sought expression of subtle, visionary insights inexpressible by rational proposition or dogmatic affirmation. For the Gnostics, revelation was the nature of Gnosis: and for all the visions vouchsafed them, they affirmed a certainty that God would yet reveal many great and wonderful things. Irritated by their profusion of "inspired texts" and myths--most particularly their penchant for amplifying the story of Adam and Eve, and of the spiritual creation which they viewed as preceding the material realization of creation 15 - Ireneaus complains in his classic second century refutation of Gnosticism, that every one of them generates something new, day by day, according to his ability; for no one is deemed perfect [or, mature], who does not develop...some mighty fiction. 16 The fourth characteristic that we might delineate to understand classical Gnosticism is the most difficult of the four to succinctly untangle, and also one of the most disturbing to subsequent orthodox theology.
This is the image of God as a diad or duality. While affirming the ultimate unity and integrity of the Divine, Gnosticism noted in its experiential encounter with the numinous, dualistic, contrasting manifestations and qualities. Consider the Gnostic affirmation that man, in some essential reality, is also God. This is a statement tinged with duality: Man, though not God, is. Another idea, offered by the Manichaean gnostic Faustus, that both matter (hyle) and the divine spirit are uncreated and coeternal was violently attacked by Augustine in his essay Contra Faustum as heretical, dualistic thinking. 17 In many of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts God is imaged not just as a duality, or diad, but as a unity of masculine and feminine elements. Though their language is specifically Christian and unmistakably related to the Jewish tradition, Gnostic sources continually use sexual symbolism to describe God. Prof. Pagels explains, One group of gnostic sources claims to have received a secret tradition from Jesus through James and through Mary Magdalene [who the Gnostics revered as consort to Jesus]. Members of this group prayed to both the divine Father and Mother: `From Thee, Father, and through Thee, Mother, the two immortal names, Parents of the divine being, and thou, dweller in heaven, humanity, of the mighty name...’ 18 Several trends within Gnosticism saw in God a union of two disparate natures, a union well imaged with sexual symbolism. Gnostics honored the feminine nature and, in reflection, Prof. Elaine Pagels has argued that Christian Gnostic women enjoyed a far greater degree of social and ecclesiastical equality than their orthodox sisters. Jesus himself, taught some Gnostics, had prefigured this mystic relationship:
His most beloved disciple had been a woman, Mary Magdalene, his consort. The Gospel of Philip relates 13 Gospel of Thomas, 50.28-30, NHL. 14 Helmut Koester, "Introduction to The Gospel of Thomas", in NHL, p. 124 f.. 15 Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 1.17.1 16 ibid., 1.18.1 17 Augustine, Contra Faustum, XXI, 1. Translation from: Willis Barnstone, ed., The Other Bible: Jewish Pseudepigrapha, Christian Apocrypha, Gnostic Scripture (San Francisco, 1987), p. 680. 18 Pagels, p. 49. - 1 1 - "...the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended... They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us? the Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you as I love her?" 19 The most mysterious and sacred of all Gnostic rituals may have played upon this perception of God as "duality seeking unity." The Gospel of Philip (which in its entirety might be read as a commentary on Gnostic ritual) relates that the Lord established five great sacraments or mysteries: "a baptism and a chrism, and a eucharist, and a redemption, and a bridal chamber." 20
Whether this ultimate sacrament of the bridal chamber was a ritual enacted by a man and women, an allegorical term for a mystical experience, or a union of both, we do not know. Only hints are given in Gnostic texts about what this sacrament might be: Christ came to rectify the separation... and join the two components; and to give life unto those who had died by separation and join them together. Now a woman joins with her husband in the bridal [chamber], and those who have joined in the bridal [chamber] will not reseparate. 21 We are left with our poetic imaginations to consider what this might mean. Orthodox polemicists frequently accused Gnostics of unorthodox sexual behavior. But exactly how these ideas and images played out in human affairs remains historically uncertain. Classical Christian Gnosticism vanished from the Western world during the fourth and fifth centuries. But the Gnostic world view -- with its affirmation of individual revelation granting certain knowledge; comprehension of humankind's true uncreated nature and inherent affinity or even identity with God; and its perception of duality, or even in an extreme statement, of masculine and feminine elements seeking union within the divine--was not so easily extinguished. Such perceptions continued in various forms to course through Western culture, though, perforce, often in very occult ways. Gnosticism was, and remains today, a living tradition, a tradition eternally reborn in the gnosis kardia of humankind. -- Lance S. Owens 1
Note that the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians is not related to the apocryphal text of that name referred to by the fathers. The Sentences of Sextus was already known in Latin, Syriac, Armenian an Georgian translations, plus two Mss. in the original Greek. The Coptic text stands closer to the modern critical text than any other version. The opening section of the Gospel of Mary relies on an exegesis of Romans 7. The original Greek was written some time in the second century. The earliest text is a single leaf from the early 3rd century (P. Rylands III 463) containing 22:16,1-19,4. The longer text in BG contains only 8 pages of the original 18. The text of the Greek fragment varies considerably from the Coptic text, which includes the same passage. Several of the major texts in the Nag Hammadi collection have more than one English translation; where more than one translation is available, we have listed the translators' names in parenthesis below the name of the text. Texts marked with the {*} had more than one version extant within the Nag Hammadi codices; often these several versions were used conjointly by the translators to provide the single translation presented here. - 1 3 -
On the Origin of the World The Untitled Text CODEX XIII
Seeing that everybody, gods of the world and mankind, says that nothing existed prior to chaos, I, in distinction to them, shall demonstrate that they are all mistaken, because they are not acquainted with the origin of chaos, nor with its root. Here is the demonstration. How well it suits all men, on the subject of chaos, to say that it is a kind of darkness! But in fact it comes from a shadow, which has been called by the name 'darkness'. And the shadow comes from a product that has existed since the beginning. It is, moreover, clear that it existed before chaos came into being, and that the latter is posterior to the first product. Let us therefore concern ourselves with the facts of the matter; and furthermore, with the first product, from which chaos was projected. And in this way the truth will be clearly demonstrated. After the natural structure of the immortal beings had completely developed out of the infinite, a likeness then emanated from Pistis (Faith); it is called Sophia (Wisdom).
It exercised volition and became a product resembling the primeval light. And immediately her will manifested itself as a likeness of heaven, having an unimaginable magnitude; it was between the immortal beings and those things that came into being after them, like [...]: she (Sophia) functioned as a veil dividing mankind from the things above. Now the eternal realm (aeon) of truth has no shadow outside it, for the limitless light is everywhere within it. But its exterior is shadow, which has been called by the name 'darkness'. From it, there appeared a force, presiding over the darkness. And the forces that came into being subsequent to them called the shadow 'the limitless chaos'. From it, every kind of divinity sprouted up [...] together with the entire place, so that also, shadow is posterior to the first product.
It was the abyss that it (shadow) appeared, deriving from the aforementioned Pistis. Then shadow perceived there was something mightier than it, and felt envy; and when it had become pregnant of its own accord, suddenly it engendered jealousy. Since that day, the principle of jealousy amongst all the eternal realms and their worlds has been apparent. Now as for that jealousy, it was found to be an abortion without any spirit in it. Like a shadow, it came into existence in a vast watery substance. Then the bile that had come into being out of the shadow was thrown into a part of chaos. Since that day, a watery substance has been apparent. And what sank within it flowed away, being visible in chaos: as with a woman giving birth to a child - all her superfluities flow out; just so, matter came into being out of shadow, and was projected apart. And it did not depart from chaos; rather, matter was in chaos, being in a part of it.
And when these things had come to pass, then Pistis came and appeared over the matter of chaos, which had been expelled like an aborted fetus - since there was no spirit in it. For all of it (chaos) was limitless darkness and bottomless water. Now when Pistis saw what had resulted from her defect, she became disturbed. And the disturbance appeared, as a fearful product; it rushed to her in the chaos. She turned to it and blew into its face in the abyss, which is below all the heavens. And when Pistis Sophia desired to cause the thing that had no spirit to be formed into a likeness and to rule over matter and over all her forces, there appeared for the first time a ruler, out of the waters, lion-like in appearance, androgynous, having great authority within him, and ignorant of whence he had come into being.
Now when Pistis Sophia saw him moving about in the depth of the waters, she said to him, "Child, pass through to here," whose equivalent is 'yalda baoth'. Since that day, there appeared the principle of verbal expression, which reached the gods and the angels and mankind. And what came into being as a result of verbal expression, the gods and the - 2 8 4 - angels and mankind finished. Now as for the ruler Yaltabaoth, he is ignorant of the force of Pistis: he did not see her face, rather he saw in the water the likeness that spoke with him. And because of that voice, he called himself 'Yaldabaoth'. But 'Ariael' is what the perfect call him, for he was like a lion. Now when he had come to have authority over matter, Pistis Sophia withdrew up to her light.
When the ruler saw his magnitude - and it was only himself that he saw: he saw nothing else, except for water and darkness - then he supposed that it was he alone who existed. His [...] was completed by verbal expression: it appeared as a spirit moving to and fro upon the waters. And when that spirit appeared, the ruler set apart the watery substance. And what was dry was divided into another place. And from matter, he made for himself an abode, and he called it 'heaven'. And from matter, the ruler made a footstool, and he called it 'earth'. Next, the ruler had a thought - consistent with his nature - and by means of verbal expression he created an androgyne. He opened his mouth and cooed to him. When his eyes had been opened, he looked at his father, and he said to him, "Eee!" Then his father called him Eee-a-o ('Yao'). Next he created the second son. He cooed to him. And he opened his eyes and said to his father, "Eh!"
His father called him 'Eloai'. Next, he created the third son. He cooed to him. And he opened his eyes and said to his father, "Asss!" His father called him 'Astaphaios'. These are the three sons of their father. Seven appeared in chaos, androgynous. They have their masculine names and their feminine names. The feminine name is Pronoia (Forethought) Sambathas, which is 'week'. And his son is called Yao: his feminine name is Lordship. Sabaoth: his feminine name is Deity. Adonaios: his feminine name is Kingship. Elaios: his feminine name is Jealousy. Oraios: his feminine name is Wealth. And Astaphaios: his feminine name is Sophia (Wisdom). These are the seven forces of the seven heavens of chaos. And they were born androgynous, consistent with the immortal pattern that existed before them, according to the wish of Pistis: so that the likeness of what had existed since the beginning might reign to the end. You will find the effect of these names and the force of the male entities in the Archangelic (Book) of the Prophet Moses, and the names of the female entities in the first Book of Noraia.
Now the prime parent Yaldabaoth, since he possessed great authorities, created heavens for each of his offspring through verbal expression - created them beautiful, as dwelling places - and in each heaven he created great glories, seven times excellent. Thrones and mansions and temples, and also chariots and virgin spirits up to an invisible one and their glories, each one has these in his heaven; mighty armies of gods and lords and angels and archangels - countless myriads - so that they might serve. The account of these matters you will find in a precise manner in the first Account of Oraia. And they were completed from this heaven to as far up as the sixth heaven, namely that of Sophia. The heaven and his earth were destroyed by the troublemaker that was below them all. And the six heavens shook violently; for the forces of chaos knew who it was that had destroyed the heaven that was below them. And when Pistis knew about the breakage resulting from the disturbance, she sent forth her breath and bound him and cast him down into Tartaros. Since that day, the heaven, along with its earth, has consolidated itself through Sophia the daughter of Yaldabaoth, she who is below them all.
Now when the heavens had consolidated themselves along with their forces and all their administration, the prime parent became insolent. And he was honored by all the army of angels. And all the gods and their angels gave blessing and honor to him. And for his part, he was delighted and continually boasted, saying to them, "I have no need of anyone." He said, "It is I - 2 8 5 - who am God, and there is no other one that exists apart from me." And when he said this, he sinned against all the immortal beings who give answer. And they laid it to his charge. Then when Pistis saw the impiety of the chief ruler, she was filled with anger. She was invisible. She said, "You are mistaken, Samael," (that is, "blind god"). "There is an immortal man of light who has been in existence before you, and who will appear among your modelled forms; he will trample you to scorn, just as potter's clay is pounded. And you will descend to your mother, the abyss, along with those that belong to you. For at the consummation of your (pl.) works, the entire defect that has become visible out of the truth will be abolished, and it will cease to be, and will be like what has never been." Saying this, Pistis revealed her likeness of her greatness in the waters.
And so doing, she withdrew up to her light. Now when Sabaoth, the son of Yaldabaoth, heard the voice of Pistis, he sang praises to her, and he condemned the father [...] at the word of Pistis; and he praised her because she had instructed them about the immortal man and his light. Then Pistis Sophia stretched out her finger and poured upon him some light from her light, to be a condemnation of his father. Then when Sabaoth was illumined, he received great authority against all the forces of chaos. Since that day he has been called "Lord of the Forces". He hated his father, the darkness, and his mother, the abyss, and loathed his sister, the thought of the prime parent, which moved to and fro upon the waters. And because of his light, all the authorities of chaos were jealous of him. And when they had become disturbed, they made a great war in the seven heavens. Then when Pistis Sophia had seen the war, she dispatched seven archangels to Sabaoth from her light.
They snatched him up to the seventh heaven. They stood before him as attendants. Furthermore, she sent him three more archangels, and established the kingdom for him over everyone, so that he might dwell above the twelve gods of chaos. Now when Sabaoth had taken up the place of repose in return for his repentance, Pistis also gave him her daughter Zoe (Life), together with great authority, so that she might instruct him about all things that exist in the eighth heaven. And as he had authority, he made himself first of all a mansion. It is huge, magnificent, seven times as great as all those that exist in the seven heavens. And before his mansion he created a throne, which was huge and was upon a four-faced chariot called "Cherubin". Now the Cherubin has eight shapes per each of the four corners, lion forms and calf forms and human forms and eagle forms, so that all the forms amount to sixty-four forms - and seven archangels that stand before it; he is the eighth, and has authority. All the forms amount to seventy-two.
Furthermore, from this chariot the seventy-two gods took shape; they took shape so that they might rule over the seventy-two languages of the peoples. And by that throne he created other, serpent-like angels, called "Seraphin", which praise him at all times. Thereafter he created a congregation of angels, thousands and myriads, numberless, which resembled the congregation in the eighth heaven; and a firstborn called Israel - which is, "the man that sees God"; and another being, called Jesus Christ, who resembles the savior above in the eighth heaven, and who sits at his right upon a revered throne. And at his left, there sits the virgin of the holy spirit, upon a throne and glorifying him. And the seven virgins stand before her, [...] possessing thirty harps, and psalteries and trumpets, glorifying him. And all the armies of the angels glorify him, and they bless him. Now where he sits is upon a throne of light great cloud that covers him. And there was no one with him in the cloud except Sophia Pistis, instructing him about all the things that exist in the eighth heaven, so that the likenesses of those things might be created, in order that his reign might endure until the consummation of the heavens of chaos and their forces.
Now Pistis Sophia set him apart from the darkness and summoned him to her right, and the prime parent she put at her left. Since that day, right has been called justice, and left called wickedness. Now because of this, they all received a realm in the congregation of justice and wickedness, [...] stand [...] upon a creature [...] all. Thus, when the prime parent of chaos saw his son Sabaoth and the glory that he was in, and perceived that he was greatest of all the authorities of chaos, he envied him. And having become wrathful, he engendered Death out of his death: and he (viz., Death) was established over the - 2 8 6 - sixth heaven, Sabaoth had been snatched up from there. And thus the number of the six authorities of chaos was achieved. Then Death, being androgynous, mingled with his (own) nature and begot seven androgynous offspring. These are the names of the male ones: Jealousy, Wrath, Tears, Sighing, Suffering, Lamentation, Bitter Weeping. And these are the names of the female ones: Wrath, Pain, Lust, Sighing, Curse, Bitterness, Quarrelsomeness.
They had intercourse with one another, and each one begot seven, so that they amount to forty-nine androgynous demons. Their names and their effects you will find in the Book of Solomon. And in the presence of these, Zoe, who was with Sabaoth, created seven good androgynous forces. These are the names of the male ones: the Unenvious, the Blessed, the Joyful, the True, the Unbegrudging, the Beloved, the Trustworthy. Also, as regards the female ones, these are their names: Peace, Gladness, Rejoicing, Blessedness, Truth, Love, Faith (Pistis). And from these are many good and innocent spirits. Their influences and their effects you will find in the Configurations of the Fate of Heaven That Is Beneath the Twelve. And having seen the likeness of Pistis in the waters, the prime parent grieved very much, especially when he heard her voice, like the first voice that had called to him out of the waters. And when he knew that it was she who had given a name to him, he sighed. He was ashamed on account of his transgression.
And when he had come to know in truth that an immortal man of light had been existing before him, he was greatly disturbed; for he had previously said to all the gods and their angels, "It is I who am god. No other one exists apart from me." For he had been afraid they might know that another had been in existence before him, and might condemn him. But he, being devoid of understanding, scoffed at the condemnation and acted recklessly. He said, "If anything has existed before me, let it appear, so that we may see its light." And immediately, behold! Light came out of the eighth heaven above and passed through all of the heavens of the earth. When the prime parent saw that the light was beautiful as it radiated, he was amazed. And he was greatly ashamed. As that light appeared, a human likeness appeared within it, very wonderful. And no one saw it except for the prime parent and Pronoia, who was with him. Yet its light appeared to all the forces of the heavens. Because of this they were all troubled by it. Then when Pronoia saw that emissary, she became enamored of him. But he hated her because she was on the darkness. But she desired to embrace him, and she was not able to. When she was unable to assuage her love, she poured out her light upon the earth. Since that day, that emissary has been called "Adam of Light," whose rendering is "the luminous man of blood," and the earth spread over him, holy Adaman, whose rendering is "the Holy Land of Adamantine." Since that day, all the authorities have honored the blood of the virgin. And the earth was purified on account of the blood of the virgin. But most of all, the water was purified through the likeness of Pistis Sophia, who had appeared to the prime parent in the waters. Justly, then, it has been said: "through the waters." The holy water, since it vivifies the all, purifies it. Out of that first blood Eros appeared, being androgynous. His masculinity is Himireris, being fire from the light. His femininity that is with him - a soul of blood - is from the stuff of Pronoia.
He is very lovely in his beauty, having a charm beyond all the creatures of chaos. Then all the gods and their angels, when they beheld Eros, became enamored of him. And appearing in all of them, he set them afire: just as from a single lamp many lamps are lit, and one and the same light is there, but the lamp is not diminished. And in this way, Eros became dispersed in all the created beings of chaos, and was not diminished. Just as from the midpoint of light and darkness Eros appeared and at the midpoint of the angels and mankind the sexual union of Eros was consummated, so out of the earth the primal pleasure blossomed. The woman followed earth. And marriage followed woman. Birth followed marriage. Dissolution followed birth. After that Eros, the grapevine sprouted up out of that blood, which had been shed over the earth. Because of this, those who drink of it conceive the desire of sexual union. After the grapevine, a fig tree and a pomegranate tree sprouted up from the earth, together with the rest of the trees, all species, having with them their seed from the seed of the authorities and their angels.
Then Justice created Paradise, being beautiful and being outside the orbit of the moon and the orbit of the sun in the Land of Wantonness, in the East in the midst of the stones. And desire is in the midst of the beautiful, appetizing trees. And the tree of eternal life is as it appeared by God's will, to the north of Paradise, so that it might make eternal the souls of the pure, who shall come forth from the modelled forms of poverty at the consummation of the age. Now the color of the tree of life is like the sun. And its branches are beautiful. Its leaves are like those of the cypress. Its fruit is like a bunch of grapes when it is white. Its height goes as far as heaven. And next to it (is) the tree of knowledge (gnosis), having the strength of God. Its glory is like the moon when fully radiant. And its branches are beautiful. Its leaves are like fig leaves. Its fruit is like a good appetizing date. And this tree is to the north of Paradise, so that it might arouse the souls from the torpor of the demons, in order that they might approach the tree of life and eat of its fruit, and so condemn the authorities and their angels. The effect of this tree is described in the Sacred Book, to wit: "It is you who are the tree of knowledge, which is in Paradise, from which the first man ate and which opened his mind; and he loved his female counterpart and condemned the other, alien likenesses and loathed them."
Now after it, the olive tree sprouted up, which was to purify the kings and the high priests of righteousness, who were to appear in the last days, since the olive tree appeared out of the light of the first Adam for the sake of the unguent that they were to receive. And the first soul (psyche) loved Eros, who was with her, and poured her blood upon him and upon the earth. And out of that blood the rose first sprouted up, out of the earth, out of the thorn bush, to be a source of joy for the light that was to appear in the bush. Moreover, after this the beautiful, good-smelling flowers sprouted up from the earth, different kinds, from every single virgin of the daughters of Pronoia. And they, when they had become enamored of Eros, poured out their blood upon him and upon the earth. After these, every plant sprouted up from the earth, different kinds, containing the seed of the authorities and their angels. After these, the authorities created out of the waters all species of beast, and the reptiles and birds - different kinds - containing the seed of the authorities and their angels. But before all these, when he had appeared on the first the first day, he remained upon the earth, something like two days, and left the lower Pronoia in heaven, and ascended towards his light.
And immediately darkness covered all the universe. Now when she wished, the Sophia who was in the lower heaven received authority from Pistis, and fashioned great luminous bodies and all the stars. And she put them in the sky to shine upon the earth and to render temporal signs and seasons and years and months and days and nights and moments and so forth. And in this way the entire region upon the sky was adorned. Now when Adam of Light conceived the wish to enter his light - i.e., the eighth heaven - he was unable to do so because of the poverty that had mingled with his light. Then he created for himself a vast eternal realm. And within that eternal realm he created six eternal realms and their adornments, six in number, that were seven times better than the heavens of chaos and their adornments. Now all these eternal realms and their adornments exist within the infinity that is between the eighth heaven and the chaos below it, being counted with the universe that belongs to poverty. If you want to know the arrangement of these, you will find it written in the Seventh Universe of the Prophet Hieralias.
And before Adam of Light had withdrawn in the chaos, the authorities saw him and laughed at the prime parent because he had lied when he said, "It is I who am God. No one exists before me." When they came to him, they said, "Is this not the god who ruined our work?" He answered and said, "Yes. If you do not want him to be able to ruin our work, come let us create a man out of earth, according to the image of our body and according to the likeness of this being, to serve us; so that when he sees his likeness, he might become enamored of it. No longer will he ruin our work; rather,we shall make those who are born out of the light our servants for all the duration of this eternal realm." Now all of this came to pass according to the forethought of Pistis, in order that man should appear after his likeness, and should condemn them because of their modelled form. And their modelled form became an enclosure of the light. - 2 8 8 - Then the authorities received the knowledge (gnosis) necessary to create man. Sophia Zoe - she who is with Sabaoth - had anticipated them. And she laughed at their decision. For they are blind: against their own interests they ignorantly created him. And they do not realize what they are about to do.
The reason she anticipated them and made her own man first, was in order that he might instruct their modelled form how to despise them, and thus to escape from them. Now the production of the instructor came about as follows. When Sophia let fall a droplet of light, it flowed onto the water, and immediately a human being appeared, being androgynous. That droplet she molded first as a female body. Afterwards, using the body she molded it in the likeness of the mother, which had appeared. And he finished it in twelve months. An androgynous human being was produced, whom the Greeks call Hermaphrodites; and whose mother the Hebrews call Eve of Life (Zoe), namely, the female instructor of life. Her offspring is the creature that is lord. Afterwards, the authorities called it "Beast", so that it might lead astray their modelled creatures. The interpretation of "the beast" is "the instructor". For it was found to be the wisest of all beings. Now, Eve is the first virgin, the one who without a husband bore her first offspring.
It is she who served as her own midwife. For this reason she is held to have said: It is I who am the part of my mother; and it is I who am the mother. It is I who am the wife; it is I who am the virgin. It is I who am pregnant; it is I who am the midwife. It is I who am the one that comforts pains of travail. It is my husband who bore me; and it is I who am his mother. And it is he who is my father and my lord. It is he who is my force; What he desires, he says with reason. I am in the process of becoming; yet I have borne a man as lord. Now these through the will <...> The souls that were going to enter the modelled forms of the authorities were manifested to Sabaoth and his Christ. And regarding these, the holy voice said, "Multiply and improve! Be lord over all creatures." And it is they who were taken captive, according to their destinies, by the prime parent. And thus they were shut into the prisons of the modelled forms until the consummation of the age. And at that time, the prime parent then rendered an opinion concerning man to those who were with him. Then each of them cast his sperm into the midst of the navel of the earth.
Since that day, the seven rulers have fashioned man with his body resembling their body, but his likeness resembling the man that had appeared to them. His modelling took place by parts, one at a time. And their leader fashioned the brain and the nervous system. Afterwards, he appeared as prior to him. He became a soul-endowed man. And he was called Adam, that is, "father", according to the name of the one that existed before him. And when they had finished Adam, he abandoned him as an inanimate vessel, since he had taken form like an abortion, in that no spirit was in him. Regarding this thing, when the chief ruler remembered the saying of Pistis, he was afraid lest the true man enter his modelled form and become its lord. For this reason he left his modelled form forty days without soul, and he withdrew and abandoned it. Now on the fortieth day, Sophia Zoe sent her breath into Adam, who had no soul. He began to move upon the ground. And he could not stand up. Then, when the seven rulers came, they saw him and were greatly disturbed. They went up to him and seized him. And he (viz., the chief ruler) said to the breath within him, "Who are you? And whence did you come hither?" It answered and said, "I have come from the force of the man for the destruction of your work." When they heard, they glorified him, since he gave them respite from the fear and the anxiety in which they found themselves.
Then they called that day "Rest", in as much as they had rested from toil. And when they saw that Adam could stand up, they were glad, and they took him and put him in Paradise. And they withdrew up to their heavens. - 2 8 9 - After the day of rest, Sophia sent her daughter Zoe, being called Eve, as an instructor, in order that she might make Adam, who had no soul, arise, so that those whom he should engender might become containers of light. When Eve saw her male counterpart prostrate, she had pity upon him, and she said, "Adam! Become alive! Arise upon the earth!" Immediately her word became accomplished fact. For Adam, having arisen, suddenly opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said, "You shall be called 'Mother of the Living'. For it is you who have given me life." Then the authorities were informed that their modelled form was alive and had arisen, and they were greatly troubled. They sent seven archangels to see what had happened. They came to Adam. When they saw Eve talking to him, they said to one another, "What sort of thing is this luminous woman? For she resembles that likeness which appeared to us in the light. Now come, let us lay hold of her and cast her seed into her, so that when she becomes soiled she may not be able to ascend into her light. Rather, those whom she bears will be under our charge.
But let us not tell Adam, for he is not one of us. Rather let us bring a deep sleep over him. And let us instruct him in his sleep to the effect that she came from his rib, in order that his wife may obey, and he may be lord over her." Then Eve, being a force, laughed at their decision. She put mist into their eyes and secretly left her likeness with Adam. She entered the tree of knowledge and remained there. And they pursued her, and she revealed to them that she had gone into the tree and become a tree. Then, entering a great state of fear, the blind creatures fled. Afterwards, when they had recovered from the daze, they came to Adam; and seeing the likeness of this woman with him, they were greatly disturbed, thinking it was she that was the true Eve. And they acted rashly; they came up to her and seized her and cast their seed upon her. They did so wickedly, defiling not only in natural ways but also in foul ways, defiling first the seal of her voice - that had spoken with them, saying, "What is it that exists before you?" - intending to defile those who might say at the consummation (of the age) that they had been born of the true man through verbal expression. And they erred, not knowing that it was their own body that they had defiled: it was the likeness that the authorities and their angels defiled in every way. First she was pregnant with Abel, by the first ruler. And it was by the seven authorities and their angels that she bore the other offspring.
And all this came to pass according to the forethought of the prime parent, so that the first mother might bear within her every seed, being mixed and being fitted to the fate of the universe and its configurations, and to Justice. A prearranged plan came into effect regarding Eve, so that the modelled forms of the authorities might become enclosures of the light, whereupon it would condemn them through their modelled forms. Now the first Adam, (Adam) of Light, is spirit-endowed and appeared on the first day. The second Adam is soul-endowed and appeared on the sixth day, which is called Aphrodite. The third Adam is a creature of the earth, that is, the man of the law, and he appeared on the eighth day [...] the tranquility of poverty, which is called "The Day of the Sun" (Sunday). And the progeny of the earthly Adam became numerous and was completed, and produced within itself every kind of scientific information of the soul-endowed Adam. But all were in ignorance. Next, let me say that once the rulers had seen him and the female creature who was with him erring ignorantly like beasts, they were very glad.
When they learned that the immortal man was not going to neglect them, rather that they would even have to fear the female creature that had turned into a tree, they were disturbed, and said, "Perhaps this is the true man - this being who has brought a fog upon us and has taught us that she who was soiled is like him - and so we shall be conquered!" Then the seven of them together laid plans. They came up to Adam and Eve timidly: they said to him, "The fruit of all the trees created for you in Paradise shall be eaten; but as for the tree of knowledge, control yourselves and do not eat from it. If you eat, you will die." Having imparted great fear to them, they withdrew up to their authorities. Then came the wisest of all creatures, who was called Beast. And when he saw the likeness of their mother Eve he said to her, "What did God say to you? Was it 'Do not eat from the tree of knowledge'?" She said, "He said not only, 'Do not eat from it', but, 'Do not touch it, lest you die.'" - 2 9 0 - He said to her, "Do not be afraid. In death you shall not die.
For he knows that when you eat from it, your intellect will become sober and you will come to be like gods, recognizing the difference that obtains between evil men and good ones. Indeed, it was in jealousy that he said this to you, so that you would not eat from it." Now Eve had confidence in the words of the instructor. She gazed at the tree and saw that it was beautiful and appetizing, and liked it; she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she gave some also to her husband, and he too ate it. Then their intellect became open. For when they had eaten, the light of knowledge had shone upon them. When they clothed themselves with shame, they knew that they were naked of knowledge. When they became sober, they saw that they were naked and became enamored of one another. When they saw that the ones who had modelled them had the form of beasts, they loathed them: they were very aware. Then when the rulers knew that they had broken their commandments, they entered Paradise and came to Adam and Eve with earthquake and great threatening, to see the effect of the aid. Then Adam and Eve trembled greatly and hid under the trees in Paradise. Then the rulers did not know where they were and said, "Adam, where are you?" He said, "I am here, for through fear of you I hid, being ashamed." And they said to him ignorantly, "Who told you about the shame with which you clothed yourself? - unless you have eaten from that tree!" He said, "The woman whom you gave me - it is she that gave to me and I ate."
Then they said to the latter, "What is this that you have done?" She answered and said, "It is the instructor who urged me on, and I ate." Then the rulers came up to the instructor. Their eyes became misty because of him, and they could not do anything to him. They cursed him, since they were powerless. Afterwards, they came up to the woman and cursed her and her offspring. After the woman, they cursed Adam, and the land because of him, and the crops; and all things they had created, they cursed. They have no blessing. Good cannot result from evil. From that day, the authorities knew that truly there was something mightier than they: they recognized only that their commandments had not been kept. Great jealousy was brought into the world solely because of the immortal man. Now when the rulers saw that their Adam had entered into an alien state of knowledge, they desired to test him, and they gathered together all the domestic animals and the wild beasts of the earth and the birds of heaven and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. When he saw them, he gave names to their creatures.
They became troubled because Adam had recovered from all the trials. They assembled and laid plans, and they said, "Behold Adam! He has come to be like one of us, so that he knows the difference between the light and the darkness. Now perhaps he will be deceived, as in the case of the Tree of Knowledge, and also will come to the Tree of Life and eat from it, and become immortal, and become lord, and despise us and disdain us and all our glory! Then he will denounce us along with our universe. Come, let us expel him from Paradise, down to the land from which he was taken, so that henceforth he might not be able to recognize anything better than we can." And so they expelled Adam from Paradise, along with his wife. And this deed that they had done was not enough for them. Rather, they were afraid. They went in to the Tree of Life and surrounded it with great fearful things, fiery living creatures called "Cheroubin", and they put a flaming sword in their midst, fearfully twirling at all times, so that no earthly being might ever enter that place. Thereupon, since the rulers were envious of Adam they wanted to diminish their (viz., Adam's and Eve's) lifespans.
They could not (, however,) because of fate, which had been fixed since the beginning. For to each had been allotted a lifespan of 1,000 years, according to the course of the luminous bodies. But although the rulers could not do this, each of the evildoers took away ten years. And all this lifespan (which remained) amounted to 930 years: and these are in pain and weakness and evil distraction. And so life has turned out to be, from that day until the consummation of the age. Thus when Sophia Zoe saw that the rulers of the darkness had laid a curse upon her counterparts, she was indignant. And coming out of the first heaven with full power, she chased those rulers - 2 9 1 - out of their heavens, and cast them down into the sinful world, so that there they should dwell, in the form of evil spirits (demons) upon the earth. [...], so that in their world it might pass the thousand years in Paradise - a soul-endowed living creature called "phoenix". It kills itself and brings itself to life as a witness to the judgment against them, for they did wrong to Adam and his generation, unto the consummation of the age. There are [...] three men, and also his posterities, unto the consummation of the world: the spiritendowed of eternity, and the soul-endowed, and the earthly.
Likewise, the three phoenixes Paradise - the first is immortal; the second lives 1,000 years; as for the third, it is written in the Sacred Book that it is consumed. So, too, there are three baptisms - the first is the spiritual, the second is by fire, the third is by water. Just as the phoenix appears as a witness concerning the angels, so the case of the water hydri in Egypt, which has been a witness to those going down into the baptism of a true man. The two bulls in Egypt possess a mystery, the sun and the moon, being a witness to Sabaoth: namely, that over them Sophia received the universe; from the day that she made the sun and the moon, she put a seal upon her heaven, unto eternity. And the worm that has been born out of the phoenix is a human being as well. It is written (Ps 91:13 LXX) concerning it, "the just man will blossom like a phoenix".
And the phoenix first appears in a living state, and dies, and rises again, being a sign of what has become apparent at the consummation of the age. It was only in Egypt that these great signs appeared - nowhere else - as an indication that it is like God's Paradise. Let us return to the aforementioned rulers, so that we may offer some explanation of them. Now, when the seven rulers were cast down from their heavens onto the earth, they made for themselves angels, numerous, demonic, to serve them. And the latter instructed mankind in many kinds of error and magic and potions and worship of idols and spilling of blood and altars and temples and sacrifices and libations to all the spirits of the earth, having their coworker fate, who came into existence by the concord between the gods of injustice and justice. And thus when the world had come into being, it distractedly erred at all times. For all men upon earth worshiped the spirits (demons) from the creation to the consummation - both the angels of righteousness and the men of unrighteousness.
Thus did the world come to exist in distraction, in ignorance, and in a stupor. They all erred, until the appearance of the true man. Let this suffice so far as the matter goes. Now we shall proceed to consideration of our world, so that we may accurately finish the description of its structure and management. Then it will become obvious how belief in the unseen realm, which has been apparent from creation down to the consummation of the age, was discovered. I come, therefore, to the main points regarding the immortal man: I shall speak of all the beings that belong to him, explaining how they happen to be here.
When a multitude of human beings had come into existence, through the parentage of the Adam who had been fashioned, and out of matter, and when the world had already become full, the rulers were master over it - that is, they kept it restrained by ignorance. For what reason? For the following: since the immortal father knows that a deficiency of truth came into being amongst the eternal realms and their universe, when he wished to bring to naught the rulers of perdition through the creatures they had modelled, he sent your likenesses down into the world of perdition, namely, the blessed little innocent spirits. They are not alien to knowledge. For all knowledge is vested in one angel who appeared before them; he is not without power in the company of the father.
And gave them knowledge. Whenever they appear in the world of perdition, immediately and first of all they reveal the pattern of imperishability as a condemnation of the rulers and their forces. Thus when the blessed beings appeared in forms modelled by authorities, they were envied. And out of envy the authorities mixed their seed with them, in hopes of polluting them. They could not. Then when the blessed beings appeared in luminous form, they appeared in various ways. And each one of them, starting out in his land, revealed his (kind of) knowledge to the visible church constituted of the modelled forms of perdition. It (viz., the church) was found to contain all kinds of seed, because of the seed of the authorities that had mixed with it. - 2 9 2
On the Origin of the World The Untitled Text CODEX II
Wise men of old gave the soul a feminine name. Indeed she is female in her nature as well. She even has her womb. As long as she was alone with the father, she was virgin and in form androgynous. But when she fell down into a body and came to this life, then she fell into the hands of many robbers. And the wanton creatures passed her from one to another and [...] her. Some made use of her by force, while others did so by seducing her with a gift. In short, they defiled her, and she [...] her virginity. And in her body she prostituted herself and gave herself to one and all, considering each one she was about to embrace to be her husband. When she had given herself to wanton, unfaithful adulterers, so that they might make use of her, then she sighed deeply and repented.
The Expository Treatise on the Soul - 1 2 2 - The Book of Thomas the Contender CODEX II