4
THE WISDOM OF INSIGHT
THE FALL AND RESTORATION OF SOPHIA IN THE SECRET BOOK OF JOHN AND SETHIAN TEXTS
AMONG SETHIANS and other gnostics, wisdom came to expression not only in the disposition of the wise and the instruction of the sage, but also in personified wisdom. Wisdom, Hokhmah, and Sophia were understood as female manifestations of the divine who reveal the wisdom of God and accomplish God’s will. In gnostic traditions, Sophia is radicalized, and she becomes entangled in a cosmic drama with profound implications for both divine and human life. Her fortunes—and misfortunes—are a focal point of the gnostic story of the creation, fall, and salvation of the world as told in Sethian texts.
PERSONIFIED WISDOM IN ANTIQUITY
In the world of antiquity, everyday wisdom became the person of wisdom, Hokhmah, or Sophia, personified as a divine female figure who incorporates various features of divinity in her being. Already in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, goddesses like Maat and Ishtar disclose aspects of divine wisdom, but it is in Jewish, Greco-Roman, and Christian sources that we observe divine wisdom truly embodied.
In the book of Proverbs in the Jewish scriptures, wisdom raises her voice in revelation and explains her role in creation and history:
O people, to you I call,
and I cry out to the children of humankind.
You who are simple, learn prudence,
and you who are foolish, learn understanding.
Listen, for I have good things to say,
and from my lips will come what is right.
Choose my instruction instead of silver,
knowledge rather than choice gold.
Wisdom is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire compares with her.
I, wisdom, dwell with prudence,
and I possess knowledge and discretion.
The Lord brought me forth
as the first of his works,
before his acts of old.
Ages ago I was established,
at the beginning, before the world began.
I was at his side like a craftsman,
and every day I was filled with delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his whole world,
delighting in the children of humankind.
(8:4–6, 10–12, 22–23, 30–31)
In the writings of the Jewish scriptures and beyond, wisdom assumes her place with God, and she as mother complements God as father in the divine realm. According to 1 Enoch 42, however, she finds no place among people, and instead iniquity is with them:
Wisdom could not find a place in which she could dwell;
but a place was found for her in the heavens.
Then wisdom went out to dwell with the children of the people,
but she found no dwelling place.
So wisdom returned to her place
and she settled permanently among the angels.
Then iniquity went out of her rooms,
and found whom she did not expect.
And she dwelt with them,
like rain in a desert,
like dew on a thirsty land.1
In Greco-Roman mythological texts, wisdom also is portrayed with characteristics of the divine. Athena is often depicted as a goddess of wisdom. The daughter of Metis, who is intelligence or skill, Athena becomes the matron goddess of Athens and the guardian of Athenian civilization. Athena is associated with the owl and the olive tree, and in poetry she is praised for her wisdom and virtue. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Zeus produces Athena directly from his head, by the River or Lake Triton, in order to ensure that his first wife, Metis, would not give birth to a child who would surpass him in power, and Hera, jealous of what Zeus did, also brings forth a child by herself—Hephaistos, the smith and artisan of the gods and goddesses, whom Hera evicts from Olympus and casts down, hurt and lame, to the world below.
Hesiod writes,
Now king of the gods, Zeus made Metis his first wife,
Wiser than any other god, or any mortal man.
But when she was about to deliver the owl-eyed goddess
Athena, Zeus tricked her, gulled her with crafty words,
And stuffed her in his stomach, taking the advice
Of Earth and starry Heaven. They told him to do this
So that no one but Zeus would hold the title of King
Among the eternal gods, for it was predestined
That very wise children would be born from Metis,
First the grey-eyed girl, Tritogeneia,
Equal to her father in strength and wisdom,
But then a son with an arrogant heart
Who would one day be king of gods and men.
But Zeus stuffed the goddess into his stomach first
So she would devise with him good and evil both. (891–905)
From his own head he gave birth to owl-eyed Athena,
The awesome, battle-rousing, army-leading, untiring
Lady, whose pleasure is fighting and the metallic din of war.
And Hera, furious at her husband, bore a child
Without making love, glorious Hephaistos,
The finest artisan of all the Ouranians. (929–34)2
Elsewhere, in the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo, it is said that the child Hera bears is the monster Typhaon.
As we shall see, the Sethian story told in the Secret Book of John has many of the same features of this mythological account in Hesiod—the father’s independent procreation and mental production of divine wisdom at a site by the water, followed by the mother’s imitation and the birth of a child, a divine but malformed artisan, with the threat of a son who has an arrogant heart.
In the sayings gospel Q, as we have seen, Jesus is a teacher of wisdom, but Q also reflects the Jewish tradition of personified wisdom. In Q, personified wisdom, Sophia, is closely associated with Jesus, though the evidence is subtle. According to the Lukan version of Q 11:49 (Luke 11:49), the wisdom of God announces that she will send prophets and apostles. In the parallel Matthean version (Matt. 23:34), Jesus himself says this, and he maintains that he will do the job that Sophia claims she will do in the Lukan version of Q. Again, according to the Lukan version of Q 7:35 (Luke 7:35), Jesus states that wisdom is justified by her children—John the Baptizer and Jesus. In the parallel Matthean version (Matt. 11:19), Jesus says that wisdom is justified by her deeds. In all these texts, wisdom and Jesus are linked to each other; but the emphasis varies, and the Lukan versions of the sayings in Q stress the way wisdom speaks and acts in the ministry of Jesus and functions as mother of Jesus.
The role of wisdom, Sophia, is open to debate and discussion in some early Christian texts. In 1 Corinthians Paul argues with wisdom Christians in Corinth about which wisdom is true wisdom—their wisdom, which is Sophia among the rulers, or archons, of this age, or his. As noted above, in his argument Paul quotes a text (1 Cor. 2:9) that these Christian enthusiasts themselves may have used, and the text is now known as a saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: “I shall give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart” (17).
The place of Sophia—including Sophia among the archons of this age—becomes more prominent, more tragic, and more dramatic in the gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library, particularly the Sethian texts, but these gnostic texts may possibly have been preceded by the teaching of Simon Magus and Helena. In the New Testament Acts of the Apostles 8:9–25, Simon Magus (or Simon the magician) is introduced as nothing but a cheap wonder-worker from Samaria who wants to buy the gift of the holy spirit from Peter and John in order to strengthen his own spiritual arsenal. From this account comes the term “simony,” the practice of buying an ecclesiastical position.
In the writings of the heresiologists, however, Simon is considered a much more important figure, and he is connected to the suggested beginnings of gnostic thought. (Vague hints of his importance may also be found in the New Testament Acts, where it is said that Simon is the “power of God called great.”) According to Irenaeus of Lyon, Simon was the great power of God who traveled about with his companion Helena, who, although formerly a prostitute in Tyre, became his first thought (ennoia). Helena was, says Irenaeus, mother of all; she had descended and produced powers and angels, and they fashioned the world. But they turned on her and caused her much grief, and she fell into numerous bodies, being incarnated, for example, as Helen of Troy, before being rescued from her sorry state in Tyre.
If Irenaeus is to be believed, the career of Simon’s Helena anticipates that of divine thought and personified wisdom in gnostic texts. Simon Magus is ridiculed in a particularly brutal way in the Acts of Peter, and that story has been made into the film The Silver Chalice, with Jack Palance playing the part of Simon. Although Simon and Helena do not play any overt role in Nag Hammadi texts, the Three Steles of Seth makes mention of Dositheos, the predecessor of Simon Magus, and the Concept of Our Great Power uses terminology—“great power,” “thought”—that may provide a faint echo of Simon and Helena. Kurt Rudolph also suggests, in his book Gnosis, that the Exegesis on the Soul, with its story of the fall of the soul into prostitution (the soul is thought to be female, Psyche, in ancient texts) and her restoration to heavenly love, may reflect the thinking of Simon and Helena.3
THE SECRET BOOK OF JOHN
The Secret Book of John is a Sethian text in which Sophia nearly steals the show.4 The Secret Book of John, also known as the Apocryphon of John, is a classic Sethian account of the origin of the cosmos and its ultimate destiny, and Sophia stands at the center of the text as the divine being who falls and is restored, thus bringing about the salvation and restoration of God and humankind. Like Hera in the Theogony of Hesiod, Sophia in the Secret Book of John tries to do what the father of all was able to do, to reproduce independently, and like Eve in the book of Genesis, Sophia is the mother who falls into error. In a number of respects the mythic story of mother Sophia recalls the mythic story of mother Eve, and the story of the primordial fall of Sophia in the heavenly realm of fullness resembles the account of the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. By the end of the story in the Secret Book of John, the text promises that Sophia will be vindicated and the realm of God will attain its fullness once again. The Secret Book of John thus proclaims the good news of hope and assurance that through wisdom and insight salvation will be realized for the world.
The Secret Book of John is preserved in four copies, three in the Nag Hammadi library and one in the Berlin Gnostic Codex. The text survives as the opening tractate of Nag Hammadi Codices II, III, and IV, and as the second tractate of the Berlin Gnostic Codex. In his work Against Heresies (1.29.1–4), Irenaeus of Lyon also summarizes ideas from the gnostics (the Barbelognostics—named after Barbelo, the divine mother—or the Sethians), and his summary compares well with the main points in the first part of the Secret Book of John. The four copies of the Secret Book of John represent two basic versions, a longer version and a shorter version. There are variations among all four copies of the text, but in particular the two versions differ from one another. The Secret Book of John was almost certainly composed in Greek in the second century C.E., but there may also have been an earlier version, or the work may have been based on earlier Sethian sources. The place of composition is unknown, but Syria and Egypt, especially Alexandria, are good possibilities.
In its present form the Secret Book of John is a Christian text of the Sethian school of gnostic thought. The text is framed with a story of John son of Zebedee at the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, where a Pharisee named Arimanios—the name calls to mind Ahriman, the evil Zoroastrian deity—confronts him and expresses doubt about the validity of what Jesus spoke about. Distressed, John leaves the temple and goes to a mountainous, barren place to meditate, and there he has a vision. In the vision a figure appears to John, and this figure, the savior, discloses the revelatory contents of the Secret Book of John. In the present, Christianized form of the text, the savior giving revelation is Christ, and the role of Christ is confirmed in the closing narrative of the text.
Before the Secret Book of John was Christianized, however, the text seems to have been a Jewish gnostic text that combined innovative and revisionist interpretations of the Jewish scriptures with Greco-Roman philosophical and mythological themes in order to proclaim a gnostic view of the world and the place of God and humankind in the world. In the longer version of the Secret Book of John, Pronoia, divine forethought, is given a significant role as revealer, alongside Epinoia, insight. At the end of the revelation in the longer version there is a hymn of the savior that is attributed to forethought, and even though Christ takes the credit for the hymn in the Christianized form of the text, it is forethought who speaks in aretalogical self-predications (“I am” statements) to describe her multiple appearances in the world:
Now I, the perfect forethought of all, transformed myself into my offspring. I existed first and went down every path.
I am the abundance of light,
I am the remembrance of fullness. (II, 30)
Three times, forethought says, she has descended to this world, this underworld, until finally she awakens a sleeper from the ignorance of deep sleep to the remembrance of knowledge.
A similar threefold descent of the divine to this world is recounted, also in large part in self-predications, in another Sethian text, Three Forms of First Thought (Trimorphic Protennoia), where first thought reveals herself as voice, speech, and word. When Protennoia, or first thought, appears as logos (word), the word is said to come to expression in Christ, and the account resembles portions of the hymn to the word in John 1. In various ways Three Forms of First Thought is reminiscent of the hymn to the savior in the longer version of the Secret Book of John, which also moves toward a Christian understanding of Jesus as savior and revealer.5
The body of the revelation in the Secret Book of John opens with a description of the divine One, the Monad, the origin of all. With a sophisticated series of theological statements, the text explores the limitations of “God-talk” in the affirmation of divine transcendence. A number of very similar statements are found in another Sethian text, Allogenes the Stranger. The Secret Book of John acknowledges the finite character of language, which cannot transcend this world and embrace infinity, and the text suggests that, if we are to be precise in our language, it is inappropriate to describe the One as “God” or even to suggest that the divine “exists”:
The One is the invisible spirit. We should not think of it as a god or like a god. For it is greater than a god, because it has nothing over it and no lord above it. It does not [exist] within anything inferior [to it, since everything] exists within it, [for it established] itself. (II, 2–3)
The One is not among the things that exist, but it is much greater. Not that it is greater. Rather, as it is in itself, it is not a part of the eternal realms or time. (II, 3)
Another Sethian text, the Three Steles of Seth, also includes hymns that address the divine, paradoxically, as “nonexistent being.”
As has been said in modern philosophical and theological discussions and in the death-of-God movement, it may be impossible to assert, with any meaning, that “God exists.” For the Secret Book of John and other gnostic texts, the One indeed does not “exist,” but the One is greater than existence. Hence, the Secret Book of John resorts to the via negativa, the negative way, and offers a series of negations to suggest what the One is not:
The One is
illimitable, since there is nothing before it to limit it,
unfathomable, since there is nothing before it to fathom it,
immeasurable, since there was nothing before it to measure it,
invisible, since nothing has seen it,
eternal, since it exists eternally,
unutterable, since nothing could comprehend it to utter it,
unnameable, since there is nothing before it to give it a name. (II, 3)
The Secret Book concedes that it is not accurate to describe the One as perfect or blessed or even divine, and the text presents statements somewhat reminiscent of what is found, for instance, in the Hindu Upanishads, where it is declared that the ultimate is neti, neti, “Not this, not that.” The Secret Book of John goes beyond a simple use of the via negativa when it insists that the One is neither of two opposite categories, so that it is impossible to speak of the One in any quantitative or qualitative terms:
The One is not corporeal and it is not incorporeal.
The One is not large and it is not small.
It is impossible to say,
How much is it?
What [kind is it]?
For no one can understand it. (II, 3)
If the One, finally, cannot be understood, what can be said of it? The text maintains what other mystics have also stated: the One is silence. The revealer says of the One, “What shall I tell you about it? Its eternal realm is incorruptible, at peace, dwelling in silence, at rest, before everything” (II, 4). Because the silence of the One is ineffable, we would know nothing of it were it not for the revelation of the One. In the Secret Book of John, everything, good or bad, comes ultimately from the One.
The revelation of the Secret Book of John continues with a portrayal, in mythological terms, of how the One becomes the many, that is, how the pl
r
ma of the divine is realized. The One, called the invisible spirit or the invisible virgin spirit, is depicted as the divine mind, and with an apparent mythological allusion to Narcissus, who falls in love with his reflection in the water in Greek mythology, the One as father is described as becoming enamored of his own image in the spiritual water of light and generating a thought, forethought, called Barbelo. The overall similarity between this gnostic account and the story of Zeus producing Athena from his head is striking. There are also other accounts in ancient mythology of male deities reproducing independently, for example, in the Egyptian story of the god Atum, who mates with his hand and spits, that is, he produces the seed of life through masturbation.
In the Secret Book of John, the father, the invisible spirit, and the mother, forethought or Barbelo, unite in spiritual intercourse—in the longer version the father gazes into Barbelo, in the shorter version Barbelo gazes into the father—and as a result of this union Barbelo conceives and gives birth to a spiritual child. One divine emanation leads to another, conception follows conception, and aeon follows aeon, until the entire divine realm is filled with mental attributes and aeons of light. Heavenly Adam—Pigeradamas (“holy Adam,” “Adam the stranger,” or “old Adam”6)—and heavenly Seth are also there. This process is the unfolding of the mind of God, and the text identifies aspects of the divine mind by retaining Greek loanwords to describe expressions of the divine mind (in Greek, nous). The One meditates and has a thought (ennoia), which is a forethought (pronoia), and this leads to insight (epinoia) and wisdom (sophia), though through a lapse in wisdom there emerges mindlessness (aponoia). This mythological story, with obvious psychological overtones, relates what happens to God, but it also relates what happens to human beings.
According to the Secret Book of John, Sophia, who is the wisdom of insight and who inhabits the suburbs of the divine fullness some metaphysical distance away from the One, also has a thought, but an inappropriate and unwise thought. The text narrates the indiscretion of Sophia in a vivid manner:
Now Sophia, who is the wisdom of insight and who constitutes an eternal realm, conceived of a thought from herself, with the conception of the invisible spirit and foreknowledge. She wanted to bring forth something like herself, without the consent of the spirit, who had not given approval, without her partner and without his consideration. The male did not give approval. She did not find her partner, and she considered this without the spirit’s consent and without the knowledge of her partner. Nonetheless, she gave birth. And because of the invincible power within her, her thought was not an idle thought. Something came out of her that was imperfect and different in appearance from her, for she had produced it without her partner. It did not resemble its mother, and was misshapen. (II, 9–10)
This imperfectly formed child of Sophia may recall Hephaistos and Typhaon. It also seems to reflect ancient gynecological theories about gender and sexual reproduction, according to which human conception without heterosexual intercourse and male semen can produce a malformed product. Virgin birth and independent procreation can bring unfortunate results. In the case of Sophia’s child, he looks like a serpent with the face of a lion; there are carved gems and magical amulets from antiquity with figures that look rather like this.7 Sophia is ashamed at what she has produced, and she removes her child away from the divine realm of fullness:
She cast it away from her, outside that realm so that none of the immortals would see it. She had produced it ignorantly. She surrounded it with a bright cloud and put a throne in the middle of the cloud so that no one would see it except the holy spirit, who is called the mother of the living. She named her offspring Yaldabaoth. (II, 10)
The account of the fall of Sophia in the Secret Book of John, like the account of the fall of Eve (and Adam) in Genesis, addresses the question of the origin of evil. If God is all goodness, how do we account for evil in the world and in our lives? This is the question of theodicy, and it remains one of the most profound questions in religion and human life. In the Sethian account of the Secret Book of John, the evil that is experienced in life can somehow be traced back to the failure and folly of the divine. Sophia errs, God errs, and for that reason there is error in the world.
A Valentinian text that we shall examine in the next chapter, the Gospel of Truth, addresses the same issue of theodicy. In this sermon the preacher, probably Valentinus himself, describes how error in the world has come from ignorance of the father:
Ignorance of the father brought terror and fear, and terror grew dense like a fog, so that no one could see. Thus error grew powerful. She worked on her material substance in vain. Since she did not know the truth, she assumed a fashioned figure and prepared, with power and in beauty, a substitute for truth. (17)
The Gospel of Truth points out that the appearance of error was not an embarrassment for God, since error and all that accompanies error “were as nothing, whereas established truth is unchanging, unperturbed, and beyond beauty” (17). So error may be despised, as well as the forgetfulness of error, for in the end the knowledge of God will be triumphant: “Forgetfulness came into being because the father was not known, so as soon as the father comes to be known, forgetfulness will cease to be” (18).
The Secret Book of John indicates that divine Sophia has erred, yet the innocence of Sophia is also maintained in this text and other texts. A tension remains between the indiscretion of Sophia and her innocence, which may also be affirmed, and her conception takes place, it is said, “with the conception of the invisible spirit and foreknowledge.” In the Second Discourse of Great Seth, Jesus also speaks of “our sister Sophia, whose indiscretion was without guile” (50), and in the Sethian Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit Sophia is termed “incorruptible Sophia” (III, 69). The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit also refers to “Sophia of matter” (III, 57), and this may introduce a distinction between two Sophias, including one that may remain “incorruptible.” Such Valentinian texts as the Gospel of Philip and the accounts about Valentinians also discuss two wisdoms, a higher wisdom and a lower wisdom. Later in the Secret Book of John Sophia can be described in glowing terms, and she is related to Eve and the divine expressions of forethought and insight:
Our sister Sophia is the one who descended in an innocent manner to restore what she lacked. For this reason she was called life (Zoe, Greek for Eve)—that is, the mother of the living—by the forethought of the sovereignty of heaven and by [the insight that appeared] to Adam. Through her have the living tasted perfect knowledge. (II, 23)
Sophia in the Secret Book of John repents of her indiscretion, and the divine realm of fullness hears her prayer of repentance and offers praise on her behalf. Her partner joins her, at last, as she awaits the restoration of the divine spirit she lost—and God lost—through the birth of her child.
The Secret Book of John, like other gnostic texts, takes evil very seriously—too seriously, some critics have said. In his essay Against the Gnostics, Plotinus faults the gnostics for being too hard on the world and the demiurge, or creator of the world.8 In his Confessions, Augustine reflects upon his background as a Manichaean and offers a similar complaint, adding that the Manichaeans were overly concerned about the origin of evil.9 Kurt Rudolph quotes a scholarly evaluation of the gnostic view of evil and the reaction of Augustine and others: “It was the principal concern, from Augustine to high scholasticism, to rehabilitate the world as creation from the negative position of its demiurgical origin and to save the cosmos-dignity of antiquity for the Christian system.”10
To be sure, the position of Augustine, informed by Platonizing Christianity, carried the day. Nonetheless, the urgent concern in gnostic thought to be aware of the place of evil in the world and the spiritual means by which gnostic texts suggest evil is to be opposed and defeated—through self-examination, insight, and knowledge—provides a thoughtful response to the problem of evil in the world.
The child of Sophia in the Secret Book of John is assigned names that define his nature: Yaldabaoth (probably “child of chaos”), Sakla (“fool”), and Samael (“blind god”). And he grows up to become the demiurge, or creator of this world. (Birger Pearson points out that Samael is known as the chief accusing angel, the devil, and the angel of death in other Jewish sources.11) Yaldabaoth is an arrogant megalomaniac, and he has within him some of the divine spirit he inherited from his mother. He also has mindlessness, and he mates with that part of himself—perhaps he masturbates—and produces a world order with a host of archons, authorities, rulers, powers, and angels in spheres and realms of the sky. The divine power within him from his mother prompts him to make a world in imitation of the divine world above, but he is mindless and does not know what he is doing. Consequently Yaldabaoth brags, “I am God and there is no other god beside me” (II, 11), as in Isaiah 45:5–6 and 46:9. Ignorant of where he came from, he does not know about the divine fullness, and he has no idea that the plrma of God above is filled with divine entities. He only knows his mother.
According to the Secret Book of John, a divine voice, outraged at the arrogant claim of Yaldabaoth, responds to answer and refute him. The voice calls out from above, “Humankind exists, and the child of humankind” (II, 14). Both humankind and the child of humankind are from the divine realm, and precisely who they are appears to vary in the gnostic texts. These may be the father of all and his child, divine forethought and her child, or heavenly Adam—Pigeradamas—and Seth. The most appropriate option is probably heavenly Adam and Seth. The divine announcer also peeks out from heaven and appears in human form. Yaldabaoth and his fellow archons look up to see whose voice it was that called out, and they see the reflection of the divine in human form—the image of God—on the water of the firmament. Yaldabaoth says to those with him, “Come, let us create a human being after the image of God and with a likeness to ourselves, so that this human image may give us light” (II, 15; cf. Gen. 1:26), and they create the first earthly human and name it Adam. This is psychical Adam, a soul man, made after the image of God and with a likeness to Yaldabaoth and his authorities and powers. The psychical body of Adam is created by a committee of archons, and each of them contributes a body part to shape Adam, but when they are finished, Adam is immobile, lying on the ground and unable to stand.
According to the Secret Book of John, a plan is formulated to trick Yaldabaoth and retrieve the divine light Sophia lost—or Yaldabaoth stole—when Yaldabaoth was born. Emissaries from above tell Yaldabaoth, “Breathe some of your spirit into the face of Adam, and the body will arise” (II, 19). Naively, Yaldabaoth agrees, but when he breathes into Adam (cf. Gen. 2:7), he sends the divine spirit he got from his mother into Adam. Adam inhales the spirit of God, arises, and becomes enlightened. From now on Adam and the descendants of Adam—human beings—will have the divine spirit within, and they will be more enlightened and intelligent than the rulers of this world, who are spiritless. The Secret Book of John explains, “The human being Adam was revealed through the bright shadow within. And Adam’s ability to think was greater than that of all the creators” (II, 20).
In desperation Yaldabaoth and the archons do all they can do distract and confine Adam, and details from the Genesis account are interpreted in such a way as to show how the powers of the world get their job done: they forge physical bodies, entice humankind with food, separate humankind into male and female, tease people with sexual desire, and try to make the human mind forgetful of the gnosis and the enlightenment that have been given. Yaldabaoth tries to seize divine insight, which is within Adam, but, in the words of the text, “enlightened insight cannot be apprehended” (II, 22).
In the Nature of the Rulers and On the Origin of the World a story is told that is hinted at here in the Secret Book of John. The powers of the world attempt to seize and rape the divine female force within Adam, it is said, but, like Daphne in Greek mythology, she turns into a tree, in the case of Daphne, a laurel tree, and in the case of the divine female force (identified as insight in the Secret Book of John), the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The world powers, the Nature of the Rulers reports, then defile the tree sexually. In the Secret Book of John, Yaldabaoth defiles Eve and she bears two sons, who are given the names Cain and Abel but actually are Elohim and Yahweh. Before Eve was violated, however, insight escaped. The world of Yaldabaoth and the powers is harsh and cruel, and human history offers ample confirmation of the rapacious ways of this world and its rulers.
Divine forethought and the heavenly realm of fullness respond to the plots and ploys of Yaldabaoth by sending enlightened insight to assist Adam. The Secret Book of John states,
So with its benevolent and most merciful spirit the mother-father sent a helper to Adam—enlightened insight, who is from the mother-father and who was called life. She helped the whole creature, laboring with it, restoring it to its fullness, teaching it about the descent of the seed, teaching it about the way of ascent, which is the way of descent. (II, 20)
Here insight is referred to as life, Zoe, the name of Eve in the Greek version of Genesis. Insight is in Adam, in his mind, rejuvenating and teaching and enlightening. She also takes the form of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she constitutes its gnosis. Yaldabaoth sees that insight within humankind is a threat to his authority, and he tries, in vain, to eradicate insight from Adam, but insight continues to work with Adam and Eve and all human beings to awaken human minds.
Elaine Pagels, in her book Beyond Belief, discusses the role of insight, epinoia, in the Secret Book of John and other texts, and she emphasizes the centrality of this concept in gnostic thought. She notes that “the Secret Book says that human beings have an innate capacity to know God but one that offers only hints and glimpses of divine reality.” Commenting on the identification of insight with Eve, she observes, “Eve symbolizes the gift of spiritual understanding, which enables us to reflect—however imperfectly—upon divine reality.” Pagels alludes to the story about enlightened insight as life being sent to Adam, and she concludes, “The Secret Book intends this story to show that we have a latent capacity within our hearts and minds that links us to the divine—not in our ordinary state of mind but when this hidden capacity awakens.”12
This is the message of hope in the Secret Book of John. In spite of all the evil, error, and ignorance in this world, people may still come to salvation through insight and awaken to creative thought. It is this human—and divine—capacity for thought that allows human beings to realize the wholeness of enlightened life and to embrace the knowledge and wisdom of God.
The remarkable and revolutionary story of the salvation of God and humankind in the Secret Book of John seems to have had a considerable influence upon Valentinus and his followers, and Valentinian thought is also interested in pleromatic speculation, but the influence of the Secret Book of John extends further. A textual fragment from Deir al-Bala’izah in Upper Egypt, published by Walter E. Crum and Paul E. Kahle and dated to the fourth century, also resembles parts of the Secret Book of John;13 and Theodore bar Konai, writing in the eighth century, states that a certain Audius refers to a Revelation (or Apocalypse) of John that shows how various powers create the human body, part by part, as in the Secret Book of John.14
Even in an Islamic text, the Umm al-kitab, the Mother of Books, a text of the ghulat (“exaggerators” or “extremists”) from the party (Shi‘a) of Ali, there are motifs that recall the Secret Book of John.15 The numbers seven and twelve occur frequently, as in the Secret Book of John and other gnostic texts, and the description of a primal sea of a thousand colors and another of godliness is reminiscent of the luminous spring of living water near the beginning of the Secret Book of John. As in the Secret Book, a realm of five is depicted in the Umm al-kitab, but in the Islamic text the five are the members of the family of prophet Muhammad: Muhammad, his son-in-law Ali, his daughter Fatima, and his grandsons Hasan and Husayn. The arrogant creator Azazi’il (developed from Azazel, chief of the fallen angels in Jewish lore) fashions the world with the same bad attitude that Yaldabaoth has in Sethian texts. Near the end of the Umm al-kitab, the text considers what secret knowledge is and where it comes from, and the words of the teacher Baqir, though envisioning the colorful qualities of the divine realm, remind us of what is said about divine insight in the Secret Book of John:
Then the almighty’s spirit descends from
the emerald green curtain and enters thought.
The student’s heart floats overhead, and in
his limbs he clearly sees the holy realm.
These words are clear but are not from the curtain
until the will of one who knows the light
of spirit and of wisdom descends from
the agate-colored realm and joins the spirit
of the high lord. This spirit is gifted with language,
and light of knowledge speaks before the one
who knows. It is not perfect yet, and one
who knows has not approved it. Then intellect
comes down from the realm, the color of fire,
and enters knowledge. Finally the student
understands clearly, and hears the words
of one who knows. He cannot yet transcend
his sensual soul, the spirit of desire, and the rebuked Adam,
until the holy spirit appears from the dome
of red ruby and enters his spirit.16
THE HOLY BOOK OF THE GREAT INVISIBLE SPIRIT AND THE THREE STELES OF SETH
Two other Sethian texts from the Nag Hammadi library, the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit and the Three Steles of Seth, provide more insights into Sethian spirituality. Both are texts that have a ritual function. The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit is a Christian Sethian text that offers ritual elements for a gnostic baptismal ceremony. With its reference to Poimael, which recalls Hermetic Poimandres, the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit may also incorporate Hermetic notions, as Régine Charron suggests.17 The Three Steles of Seth is a Platonizing Sethian text, with no Christian elements at all, composed of hymns or prayers for a service in which gnostics may ascend to a mystical vision of the divine.
The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, also entitled the Egyptian Gospel, is preserved as the second tractate of Nag Hammadi Codex III and the second tractate of Nag Hammadi Codex IV.18 The Holy Book is a Sethian baptismal handbook that includes liturgical materials for a baptismal ceremony, and the presentation of the ceremony is prefaced with an account of the origin of the cosmos and the history of the world given in Sethian cosmological and historical terms. According to the conclusion of the text, the handbook was composed by great Seth, heavenly Seth, and left in high mountains. Similar scenarios of texts and steles preserved in the mountains are provided in two other Nag Hammadi texts, the Three Steles of Seth and the Hermetic Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth. The same sort of story is told by the Jewish historian Josephus, who recounts how the descendants of Seth kept the wisdom of Adam, Eve, and Seth on two steles of brick and stone, so that the steles would survive, come hell or high water.19 In the note of a copyist at the very end of the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, the name of the scribe is given—Gongessos, Concessus in Latin—and his spiritual nickname is Eugnostos, “well versed in knowledge.” The same spiritual name is in the title of another text from the Nag Hammadi library, Eugnostos the Blessed.
The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit gives an account, in glorious detail, of the heavenly realm and the history of the gnostic descendants of Seth, after which it presents the Sethian baptismal ceremony. The account of Sethian history states that the followers of Seth come in the spirit of Seth, but gnostic life in this world is a difficult business. The world is not a congenial place for the descendants of Seth, as the Secret Book of John also shows, but the seed of Seth endures through the hostile acts of the world rulers—flood, conflagration, judgment—and great Seth acts on behalf of his people. The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit gives considerable attention to the career of Seth, and as it turns to the baptismal ceremony established by Seth, the text proclaims that Seth has been clothed with or has become incarnate in Jesus, “the living Jesus,” as he is also called in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus, then, is the manifestation of Seth.
Sethian texts are replete with references to gnostic baptism, but the precise nature of such baptism is unclear and the extent to which it was spiritualized remains uncertain. The Secret Book of John, for example, concludes with Jesus raising and sealing a person “in luminous water with five seals” (II, 31). John Turner, in his book Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition, examines the baptismal language in Sethian texts and lists some of the ritual elements that may play a role in the baptismal liturgy, according to the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit and Three Forms of First Thought:
In both these treatises, there are a series of references to certain gestures and verbal performances capable of ritual enactment: renunciation, stripping, invocation and naming of holy powers, doxological prayer to the living water, anointing, enthronement, investiture, baptismal immersion, and certain other manual gestures, such as extending the arms in a circle. Whether any of these acts, and if so, which ones, comprise the Five Seals is difficult to tell; certainly all these were frequently part of the baptismal rite in the wider church as well.20
The Sethian ritual of baptism may derive from the lustrations and immersions of Jewish groups during the centuries just before and during the common era; and the practices of the covenanters of Qumran, John the Baptizer, and others may have given rise to the baptismal ceremony presented in the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit. Other gnostic and gnosticizing groups also claimed to have developed from these Jewish baptizing traditions. The Mandaeans announce the good news of John the Baptizer and celebrate their baptisms in the living water of what they refer to as “Jordans.” Mani, founder of Manichaeism, claims that his father belonged to an Elkesaite community of Jewish-Christian baptizers, and Mani himself joined the baptismal group at an early age but left to preach a new universal message of light and darkness, with its ritual and dietary implications.21
In the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, the Sethian baptismal ceremony is enacted in the company of heavenly beings and exalted entities, and the baptismal hymn that is presented incorporates their names and epithets as well as chanted vowels, glossolalia, and other ecstatic words of praise and power. The one being baptized sings a hymn in which he or she has a vision of Jesus, assumes the name of Jesus, and unites mystically with him:
Yesseus
OU 
UA
in truth truly
Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus
living water
child of the child
glorious name
in truth truly
eternal being
I I I I
EEEE
YYYY
AAAA
in truth truly
I AAAA
being who sees the eternal realms
in truth truly
A
EE
IIII
YYYYYY
being who exists forever
in truth truly
IA AI
in the heart
being who exists
U
forever and ever
you are what you are
you are who you are.
This great name of yours is upon me,
you who lack nothing
you self-conceived one,
who are close to me.
I see you,
you who are invisible to all.
Who can comprehend you? (III, 66)
The hymn closes with an affirmation that through the baptismal celebration life has been realized and oneness with the divine achieved:
So the sweet smell of life is within me.
I have mixed it with water as a model for all the rulers,
that I may live with you in the peace of the saints,
you who exist forever,
in truth truly. (III, 67)
In the Three Steles of Seth, the fifth tractate of Nag Hammadi Codex VII, the incipit mentions the name of Dositheos, who sometimes is described, like Jesus, as a disciple of John the Baptizer, and also as the teacher who appears prior to Simon Magus.22 In the incipit the Three Steles of Seth refers to itself as the revelation of Dositheos:
Dositheos’s revelation of the three steles of Seth, father of the living and unshakable generation. Dositheos remembered what he saw, understood, and read, and gave it to the chosen, just as it was written there. (118).
The remaining three sections, or steles, of the text present hymns or prayers for a ritual of spiritual ascent to a vision of the divine. The text is one of the Platonizing Sethian documents, and throughout the text the divine is addressed as existence, life, and mind. At the conclusion of the three hymns, instructions for the proper use of the liturgy are appended to the hymns, and the instructions explain how to praise, when to sing, and when to be silent. The hymns seem to allow for a soloist and a chorus. Apparently the service involves both an ascent to the divine and a return to the mundane world:
Whoever remembers these things and always glorifies will be perfect among the perfect and free of suffering beyond all things. They all praise these, individually and collectively, and afterward they will be silent.
As it has been ordained for them, they ascend. After silence, they descend from the third. They praise the second, and afterward the first. The way of ascent is the way of descent.
So understand as those who are alive that you have succeeded. You have taught yourselves about things infinite. Marvel at the truth within them, and at the revelation. (127)
The hymns of the Three Steles of Seth employ Sethian terminology nuanced with Platonic themes in the ritual of ascent. Three stages of ascent are indicated by the three hymns. In the first hymn, a Sethian worshiper identifies with Seth and offers praise to the father, Pigeradamas, heavenly Adam. In the second hymn, the chorus joins in and utters a hymn to Barbelo, divine forethought. In the third hymn, the worshipers glorify the supreme One with words and names of power and cries of thanksgiving:
Truly we are saved.
We have seen you through mind.
You are all these
and save them all,
you who will not be saved
nor have been saved by them.
You have commanded us.
You are One,
you are One,
let it be declared,
you are One.
You are a single, living spirit.
How shall we give you a name?
We have none.
You are the existence of all these,
you are their life,
you are their mind.
In you they all rejoice. (125)
After this, the text says, there is silence, for those joining in the liturgy of worship and ascent have seen and have been enlightened in mind. Their mind, now awakened, is one with the mind of God, and their insight and understanding are restored. Now they truly know.
INSIGHT IN THE SECRET BOOK OF JOHN AND OTHER TEXTS
If for the Gospel of Thomas those who find the meaning of sayings of wisdom—who gain insight into the interpretation of words—will not taste death, then for the Secret Book of John and other Sethian texts the role of insight is formally established and confirmed. In the Secret Book of John, Epinoia, insight, becomes a mythic character in a divine story of salvation. Insight functions as a manifestation of God and contributes to human thought and understanding; she helps to dispel ignorance and bring clarity of thought and restoration of wisdom.
In the Secret Book of John and throughout gnostic literature, sin is not the fundamental problem in human life that needs to be addressed. An original sin of human parents in the garden of Eden is not what causes our problems. If anyone fell, gnostic texts state, divine Sophia fell, and her indiscretion brought about a world of problems, but human sin is not really the issue. In the Gospel of Mary from the Berlin Gnostic Codex, Jesus declares bluntly, “There is no such thing as sin; rather you yourselves produce sin when you mingle as in adultery, which is called sin” (7). In gnostic texts God is not angry at the unrighteousness of people, so that God needs to be pacified by means of sacrifice and the shedding of blood. In Christian gnostic texts, we noted in the previous chapter, Jesus does not need to die as a sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, and people do not need to believe, through faith, in the efficacy of the cross of Christ to be saved. In Valentinian practice, ordinary baptism is for the forgiveness of sins, but the spiritual baptismal observance is for the gnostic transformation to the fullness of the divine. The place of faith in the traditional Christian sense is limited in gnostic texts, and more often than not pistis, faith, is personified as a spiritual entity, sometimes as an exalted form of wisdom, Pistis Sophia.
The Secret Book of John and other gnostic texts are more interested in knowledge than faith. Gnostic religion is, we reiterate, a religion of knowledge, mystical knowledge. In the Secret Book of John and throughout gnostic literature, the fundamental problem in human life is ignorance, forgetfulness, lack of insight. Countless forces oppose us, distract us, and beguile us, gnostic texts suggest, so that we lose track of who we are and where we have come from. For people who are rooted in the divine and have the light of God within, we can be surprisingly ignorant and dim-witted. We need insight.
The Secret Book of John provides an impressive and startling gnostic vision of how insight and knowledge may be restored, and the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit and the Three Steles of Seth provide glimpses of gnostic rituals that may bring about the transcendent experience of insight, understanding, and oneness with God. The call to insight and knowledge is often alluded to in gnostic texts, and in the hymn of the savior in the Secret Book of John it is given by divine forethought—or Jesus—to anyone who will hear. The call is a summons to wake up and come to knowledge, and the words are memorable:
I am the forethought of pure light,
I am the thought of the virgin spirit,
who raises you to a place of honor.
Arise, remember that you have heard
and trace your root,
which is I, the compassionate.
Guard yourself against the angels of misery,
the demons of chaos, and all who entrap you,
and beware of deep sleep
and the trap in the bowels of the underworld. (II, 31)
The final words on insight and the restoration of wisdom may be provided by another Sethian text, Zostrianos. Like other Sethian texts, Zostrianos offers a vision of the divine world above, although in this case the text is badly damaged, and at the end of the text Zostrianos delivers a sermon to rouse an erring multitude. With fervor and conviction Zostrianos urges people to awaken the divine within them, save themselves, and become enlightened. The gnostic call has been given, Zostrianos says, and, making use of a number of the themes we have been exploring, Zostrianos emphasizes that now is the time to listen, respond, and live:
You who are alive, holy offspring of Seth,
understand this. Do not turn a deaf ear to me.
Awaken your divinity to divinity,
and strengthen your undefiled chosen souls.
Observe the constant change that is here
and seek the unchanging state of being unborn.
The father of all these beings invites you.
When you are being rebuked and maltreated,
he will not forsake you.
Do not baptize yourselves with death,
nor rely on those who are inferior
as if they were superior.
Flee from the madness and the fetter of femaleness
and choose the salvation of maleness.
You have not come to suffer,
but to break your fetters.
Break free, and what has bound you will be broken.
Save yourselves so that part may be saved.
The good father has sent you the savior
and has strengthened you.
Why are you waiting? Seek when you are sought.
When you are invited, listen, for the time is short.
Do not be led astray.
Great is the eternal realm of the eternal realms
of the living,
but great also is the punishment of those unconvinced.
Many fetters and punishers surround you.
Get away quickly before destruction overtakes you.
Look to the light, fly from the darkness.
Do not be led astray to destruction. (130–32)