IN ADDITION TO Thomas texts and texts from the Sethian and Valentinian schools of thought, there are other gnostic and gnosticizing documents in the Nag Hammadi library. Three tractates represent the Hermetic tradition of Hermes Trismegistos (thrice-greatest Hermes), and other tractates cannot be classified or categorized with any confidence. Like the Thomas texts and Sethian and Valentinian texts, these other tractates also introduce revealers of knowledge and wisdom, and fresh names appear on the pages of the texts: Hermes, Derdekeas, Thunder, Mary. To these texts and these revealers of gnosis we turn in this chapter.
NAG HAMMADI HERMETIC TEXTS
Three texts in the Nag Hammadi library derive from Hermetic religion, one that was not known prior to the Nag Hammadi discoveries and two that were previously known in various editions. The newly discovered Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth is the sixth tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex VI; the Prayer of Thanksgiving is the seventh and the Excerpt from the Perfect Discourse the eighth tractate in the same codex. Together these texts provide a Hermetic account of the revelation of Hermes Trismegistos to a student and the ascent of the student to the higher levels of mystical spirituality.
The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth describes the teacher Hermes and an unnamed student engaging in a dialogue concerning the stages of spiritual enlightenment called the eighth and the ninth.1 The Greek god Hermes is the messenger and guide of souls, and in Hermetic texts he is linked to the Egyptian god Thoth. The designation of these stages of enlightenment as the eighth and the ninth assumes that they lie beyond the seven spheres surrounding the earth and housing the sun, moon, and planets—and they also lie within. This Hermetic initiation takes the student beyond the reaches of the solar system. In ancient astronomy the stars are commonly thought to occupy the eighth level of the universe, and beyond that, perhaps, and within, the divine dwells. In the Secret Book of John the demiurge Yaldabaoth is stationed in the eighth realm and his mother, Sophia, is above him in the ninth. In the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth the gnostic candidate has already studied the sacred books and has advanced through the preliminary stages of spiritual enlightenment, and now he or she is ready for further insight.
The dialogue between Hermes and the student includes prayers and hymns somewhat reminiscent of the Three Steles of Seth. The student utters sounds of spiritual ecstasy and prays, perhaps with the teacher:
Lord, grant us wisdom—sophia—from your power that reaches us,
that we may relate to ourselves the vision of the eighth and ninth.
Already we have advanced to the seventh,
since we are faithful
and abide in your law.
Your will we fulfill always.
….…..
Accept these spiritual offerings from us,
which we direct to you
with all our heart, soul, and strength.
Save what is within us,
and grant us immortal wisdom. (56–57)
The student sings a hymn in silence and envisions the eighth and ninth, and the souls and angels in the eighth respond in silent song, praising the mind of all that is in the ninth. Hermes himself says, “I am [mind and] I see another mind, one that [moves] the soul” (58). The student declares,
I shall offer up the praise in my heart as I invoke the end of the universe, and the beginning of the beginning, the goal of the human quest, the immortal discovery, the producer of light and truth, the sower of reason, the love of immortal life. No hidden word can speak of you, lord. My mind wants to sing a song to you every day. I am the instrument of your spirit, mind is your plectrum, and your guidance makes music with me. I see myself. I have received power from you, for your love has reached us. (60–61)
The student has found immortal wisdom and the spirit and mind within.
The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth ends with directions for preserving the text and an oath for those reading it. The Egyptian context of the Hermetic text is clear. The text is to be inscribed on turquoise steles, in hieroglyphic characters, at the Egyptian temple at Diospolis, either Diospolis Magna (Luxor) or Diospolis Parva (Heou). The Three Steles of Seth also assumes such engraved tablets. Both of the cities named Diospolis are in Upper Egypt, and Diospolis Parva is particularly close to Nag Hammadi and the very site where the Nag Hammadi codices were discovered. The steles, the text says, are to be protected with images of guardians with animal faces—faces of frogs and cats—as is typical of Egyptian art, and the installation of the steles is to be accomplished at a time that is deemed propitious. Hermes indicates to the student that a time is to be chosen with considerations of astronomy and astrology in mind: “My child, you must do this when I—Hermes, the planet Mercury—am in Virgo, and the sun is in the first half of the day, and fifteen degrees have passed by me.” The text is to be used “for wisdom and knowledge” (62), Hermes declares, and an oath must be taken to ensure that the text will be used properly, so that a gnostic candidate “progresses by stages and advances in the way of immortality, and so advances in the understanding of the eighth that reveals the ninth” (63).
Immediately after the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth, the Hermetic Prayer of Thanksgiving presents a pious meditation, and the sequence of the texts in Nag Hammadi Codex VI would lead a reader to assume that the prayer is offered by Hermes and the student, following the events of the previous tractate.2 Those offering the prayer give praise to God, who has made them divine through knowledge. The prayer is a good example of Hermetic piety, and it includes heartfelt thanksgiving for the knowledge that transforms:
The thanksgiving of one approaching you
is this alone:
that we know you.
We have known you,
light of mind.
Life of life,
we have known you.
Womb of every creature,
we have known you.
Womb pregnant with the father’s nature,
we have known you.
Eternal constancy of the father who conceives,
so have we worshiped your goodness.
One favor we ask:
we wish to be sustained in knowledge.
One protection we desire:
that we not stumble in this life. (64–65)
After the prayer the worshipers embrace and go to share a sacred vegetarian meal.
The very next tractate, the Excerpt from the Perfect Discourse (also known as the Apocalypse of Asclepius), is the third and final Hermetic text in the Nag Hammadi library, and it presents the portion of the text (21–29) that discusses learning and knowledge and reveals an apocalypse.3 The teacher is, once more, Hermes Trismegistos, but in this text the student has a name: Asclepius. Hermes begins by comparing the mystery to be discussed with the mystery of sexual intercourse: in both instances participants in the mysteries do what they do in secret, and the participants strengthen each other. Hermes goes on to extol learning (episteme) and knowledge (gnosis), and he states that learning and knowledge have been given to humankind to restrain passions and vices and bring people to immortality. Created mortal and having become immortal, human beings surpass the gods and goddesses, since human beings are both mortal and immortal and they can create gods and goddesses. In the words of Hermes to Asclepius,
We have begun the discussion of the communion between gods and people. Asclepius, understand what people can do. For just as the father, the lord of the universe, creates gods, so too people—mortal, earthly, living things, who are also like God—create gods. (68)
Hermes then reveals the future in apocalyptic terms, and things look grim for Egypt. Egypt, the image of heaven, the temple of the world, and the school of religion—“our land” (70), says Hermes—will be abandoned, filled with corpses, and fouled by a bloody Nile River. The world itself will be despised and godlessness will reign. Yet, Hermes insists, there is reason for hope, since God will restore the universe:
This is the birth of the world. The restoration of the nature of the pious and the good will take place in a period of time without a beginning. For the will of God has no beginning, even as God’s nature, which is his will, has no beginning. God’s nature is will, and God’s will is the good. (74)
The wicked will be judged and the guilty punished, and they will be thrown to the demons. With terrifying images of the demons, called “stranglers,” rolling, whipping, drowning, burning, and torturing the souls of the wicked, the excerpted lines from the Perfect Discourse—and all of the texts of Nag Hammadi Codex VI—come to an end, and the last words of the book are threats of hell that would have satisfied even Jonathan Edwards.
THE PARAPHRASE OF SHEM
The Paraphrase of Shem, the opening tractate of Nag Hammadi Codex VII, is another apocalyptic text, but of a different sort.4 This text is not about sinners in the hands of an angry God, as with the Perfect Discourse, but rather mortals in the clutches of a lustful universe. The title of the text is related to the incipit, which describes the text as a paraphrase: “The paraphrase about the unconceived spirit—what Derdekeas revealed to me, Shem” (1). Within the text there is also a short paraphrase that explains names used in a litany or testimony or memorial addressed by the revealer Derdekeas to Shem, and among the names are Sophia, Saphaia, and Saphaina. The title of the text is similar to that of another work called the Paraphrase of Seth, described in Hippolytus of Rome as a Sethian text, but the two texts do not seem to be closely related to each other.
According to the Paraphrase of Shem, another prominent figure in the book of Genesis, Shem, son of Noah and father of the Semitic people, receives a revelation from the savior and revealer Derdekeas, whose name may derive from the Aramaic for “male child,”5 and afterward Shem sets it all down in writing. Shem states that his thoughts ascended to the summit of creation, where all was light, and there he heard a revelatory voice—the voice of Derdekeas—speaking about the origin of the world. In the beginning, Derdekeas says, there were three primal powers, the light above, darkness below, and the spirit in between, and somehow the darkness had control of mind: “Light was thought full of hearing and word united in one form. Darkness was wind in the waters, and darkness had a mind wrapped in restless fire. Between them was spirit, a quiet, humble light” (1–2). There is no indication of whether mind fell into darkness, and, if so, how. In the beginning there was peace and harmony, as long as no one moved. The original peace was an uneasy peace. The darkness, like the gnostic demiurge in Sethian texts and elsewhere, was unaware that there were powers above him. He lurked in the watery abyss, and, it is said, “as long as he was able to deal with his evil, he remained covered with water” (2).
Then, the Paraphrase of Shem continues, the darkness stirs, the spirit is surprised by the noise, and the original peace is over. The light was aware of darkness all along, but now the spirit finds out about the evil below. The spirit’s light shines upon the darkness—as in the Secret Book of John—and the darkness discovers that there is a spirit above him. The darkness sees that the spirit is enlightened and he, in his darkness, is gloomy, and so he lifts up his mind, and his mind assumes some of the spirit’s light. Like Sophia in other gnostic texts, the darkness tries to imitate the spirit and become equal to the spirit, but he fails, yet he takes control of a portion of the light. As the text puts it,
Darkness made his mind take shape partly from the members of the spirit, thinking that by staring at his evil he would be able to equal the spirit. He could not do it; he wanted to do something impossible, and it did not happen. But in order that the mind of darkness, which is the eye of the bitterness of evil, might not remain inactive, since he had been made partially similar to the spirit, he arose and shone with a fiery light upon all of Hades, and in this way the purity of the faultless light was revealed. For the spirit made use of every form of darkness, because he had appeared in his greatness. (3)
In much of the balance of the text Derdekeas narrates the story of how the mind of darkness and the light of the spirit are liberated from the bondage of darkness. The story is wonderfully convoluted, and it is told as a war of the worlds waged with sexual weapons. Themes from ancient philosophy and reflections upon biology and sexuality coalesce as the plot unfolds. Initially, Derdekeas says, he appears as the son of the light in the likeness of the spirit, and this is the first act that will lead, eventually, to the salvation of mind and light. This provokes the creation of the world, which emerges from the water of chaos (cf. Gen. 1:1–2), and part of the water turns into nature, which is a sexual organ, a cosmic womb. Darkness has sex with nature and ejaculates his mind into nature, and nature herself comes to expression with the features of the hymen and placenta. Through it all, mind, with the light of the spirit, is within nature, and while the spirit produces the power of astonishment, Derdekeas actively intervenes to bring about the freedom of mind and light. Derdekeas explains to Shem what he, as savior, is like:
Shem, I have told you these things so that you might understand that my likeness, the son of majesty, is from my infinite thought, since I am for the majesty a universal likeness that does not lie, and I am over every truth and the principle of the word. His appearance is in my beautiful garment of light, which is the voice of immeasurable thought. We are the unique light that came into being alone. This light appeared in another root in order that the power of the spirit might be raised from feeble nature. (11–12)
Derdekeas the savior is light, but he must confront all the sexuality of the darkness, and for this reason he takes off his own garment of light, puts on a garment of fire, and goes down to have sex with nature. Derdekeas prostitutes himself for the salvation of the mind and the light, and he and nature have intercourse. Nature has an orgasm and expels mind, in the form of a fish—reminiscent, perhaps, of the role of the fish in the worship of the Syrian goddess, who sometimes takes the form of a mermaid, or of Aphrodite, who is connected to the sea. Nature then weeps at her loss of mind, and she loses the spirit as well. Derdekeas describes his sexual experience with nature and the outcome of the sexual experience in graphic terms:
My garment of fire, in accordance with the will of the majesty, went down to the strong one, to the unclean part of nature the dark power was covering. My garment massaged nature with its material, and her unclean femaleness grew strong. The passionate womb came up and dried mind up, in the form of a fish with a spark of fire and the power of fire. But when nature expelled mind from herself, she was troubled, and she wept. When she felt hurt and was in tears, she expelled from herself the power of the spirit. She remained as quiet as I. I put on the light of the spirit, and I rested with my garment at the sight of the fish. (18–19)
Nature gives birth to beasts—the zodiac—and Derdekeas puts on the disguise of a beast so that mother nature would think that Derdekeas is her offspring. The forces of nature are preoccupied with tongue rubbing, copulating, masturbating, and all sorts of sexual activity, and, at one point, through an act of coitus interruptus, the forces of nature ejaculate mind onto the earth. The world of nature is a world of sex, and Derdekeas beats the forces of nature at their own game.
The generation of Shem is produced, according to the Paraphrase of Shem, with a portion of the enlightened thought and mind of the divine within. They are the gnostics, the spiritual people, and nature and darkness conspire to destroy them by means of the great flood, the destruction of Sodom—the people of Sodom are thought to be people of insight and knowledge—and attacks on the savior. Derdekeas reveals, in cryptic language, how he as savior is baptized and later is attacked by nature, and he follows this disclosure with an allegorical account of the beheading of a woman named Rebouel. In the story of nature’s attack, Derdekeas describes the death of a certain Soldas:
That is why I have appeared, without deficiency, because the clouds are not of uniform character, and in order that the wickedness of nature might be brought to completion. For at that time nature wished to seize me. She will nail Soldas, who is a dark flame, who will stand on the [height]…of error, that he might seize me. She took care of her faith, being vain. (39–40)
Michel Roberge, the leading scholar on the Paraphrase of Shem, understands this revelation about Soldas and Rebouel as referring to Jesus and the Christian church:
After his baptism, the savior foretells his ascent at the end of his mission on earth. In its anger, nature will try to seize him, but will only manage to crucify Soldas (that is, the terrestrial Jesus). The following allegory which narrates the beheading of Rebouel is intended to explain to the noetics—people of thought and mind—the meaning of the crucifixion: it does not have the effect of purifying the water of baptism, but rather brings out the division between light and darkness. Just as Rebouel is declared blessed in her beheading, so the noetics should not hesitate to separate from the great church, which practices baptism, and enter the community of those who possess gnosis.6
The final word for Shem, however, is a word of hope and comfort. Life with nature is difficult, to be sure, but he and the people of his generation—the people of gnosis—will be safe, and they will be able to remember and to know who they are. Derdekeas promises,
You are blessed, Shem, for your generation has been protected from the dark wind with many faces. They will bear witness to the universal testimony and the unclean sexuality of <nature>, and they will be uplifted through the memorial of light. O Shem, none of those who wear the body will be able to complete these things, but by remembering they will be able to grasp them, so that when their thought separates from the body, then these things may be revealed to them. These things have been revealed to your generation. (34)
THUNDER
Thunder, entitled Thunder: Perfect Mind in the manuscript, is the self-revelation of a female figure in poetic and frequently paradoxical “I am” statements.7 The second tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex VI, Thunder is an aretalogical text similar to other aretalogies, especially Isis aretalogies, in which the Egyptian goddess Isis offers disclosures of herself and her acts in “I am” statements.8 Here another goddess or female figure is the revealer, but precisely who she is remains uncertain. She identifies herself as wisdom, or Sophia, in phrases like those uttered by the Hebrew Hokhmah, and as life, or Zoe, Greek Eve, and even as insight, or Epinoia, one of the heroines of the Secret Book of John. She also identifies herself with knowledge. Several features of Thunder, including her identification with wisdom and knowledge, the apparent concern for divine transcendence articulated through revelatory statements, and the specific reference to insight, may suggest a connection with Sethian thought. In The Gnostic Scriptures, Bentley Layton supports such a connection by also pointing to other features of the text: (1) Thunder, like Barbelo in Sethian texts, is sent from the power and comes to be with those who know her; (2) Thunder, like forethought and insight in Sethian texts, continues to call out to all who will hear; and (3) those who respond to Thunder, like gnostics in Sethian texts, will be set free from this world and will ascend to the divine realm, where Thunder is.9 Layton also notes similarities between Thunder and the Gospel of Eve, which Epiphanius of Salamis says was read among gnostics, that is, Sethians. Epiphanius cites a passage from the Gospel of Eve:
I stood on a high mountain.
I saw one person who was tall
and another who was short.
I heard what sounded like the voice of thunder,
and I came closer to listen.
It spoke to me and said,
I am you and you are I.
Wherever you are, I am there.
I am sown in all,
and you gather me from wherever you wish.
But when you gather me,
you gather yourself.10
Thunder opens her revelation by defining her origin, and then she discloses who she is and what she does. Thunder is, she declares, from the divine:
I was sent from the power
and have come to those who contemplate me
and am found among those who seek me. (13)
In striking poetic lines, Thunder employs metaphor and paradox to describe her being:
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored and the scorned.
I am the whore and the holy.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am <the mother> and the daughter.
I am the limbs of my mother.
I am a barren woman
who has many children.
I have had many weddings
and have taken no husband.
I am a midwife
and a woman who does not give birth.
I am the solace of my own birth pains.
I am bride and groom,
and my husband conceived me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband,
and he is my offspring.
I am the servant of him who fashioned me,
I am the ruler of my offspring.
He [produced me] with a premature birth,
and he is my offspring born on time,
and my strength is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age,
and whatever he wishes happens to me.
I am silence that is incomprehensible
and insight whose memory is great.
I am the voice whose sounds are many
and the word whose appearances are many.
I am the utterance of my own name. (13–14)
Thunder is, she insists, both knowledge and ignorance, both toughness and terror, both war and peace. She says,
I am the wisdom—sophia—[of the] Greeks
and the knowledge of the barbarians. (16)
She is thrown down on a dung heap, but she is also honored and praised. She cries out to those who will listen, and she offers them liberation, life, and rest in her presence:
Pay attention, you listeners,
and you also, you angels,
and you who have been sent,
and you spirits who have risen from the dead.
I alone exist,
and I have no one to judge me.
For there are many sorts of seductive sins
and deeds without restraint
and disgraceful desires
and fleeting pleasures that people embrace,
until they become sober
and rise up to their place of rest.
They will find me there,
and they will live and not die again. (21)
THE GOSPEL OF MARY
The Gospel of Mary is the fragmentary first tractate of the Berlin Gnostic Codex, and it also survives in Greek fragments as Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3525 and Papyrus Rylands 463.11 In the Coptic version, which is by far the most complete, six pages are missing at the beginning and four in the middle of the text. In spite of its damaged state, the Gospel of Mary retains a substantial portion of its message, and what is retained is illuminating. The Gospel of Mary is a gnosticizing dialogue between Jesus and his disciples, particularly Mary of Magdala, or Mary Magdalene, and after Jesus leaves the scene Mary and the other disciples continue the conversation. The text seems to display gnostic tendencies, but whether it merits being called a gnostic document is debated by scholars. One of the strongest voices against a gnostic classification of the text is that of Esther A. de Boer, who writes in her book The Gospel of Mary that the Gospel of Mary is more Stoic than gnostic. Referring especially to the extant opening section of the text, in which Jesus speaks about matter and nature, de Boer writes,
The particular language of the Gospel of Mary…belongs to a more specifically Stoic context, in which matter is a thought construct and matter and nature are intertwined. This means that the material world as such is not to be avoided, as would be the case in a gnostic dualistic view, but that one should be careful not to be ruled by the power contrary to nature.12
When the surviving pages of the Gospel of Mary open, Jesus is in the middle of a dialogue with the disciples, including Mary. A question is asked, presumably by one of the disciples, “Will matter be utterly destroyed or not?” Jesus answers that matter will be dissolved into the root of its nature, since every nature is to be restored to its root.
The chief problem in human life is not sin, since, Jesus insists, “There is no such thing as sin.” Rather, it is people who create sin by mingling inappropriately with the world—and that is what is referred to as sin (7). In other words, Jesus says, people should not get mixed up in passion, which is contrary to nature, because that is the main source of grief in the lives of people.
Jesus goes on to greet the disciples and utter his last words to them. His final message stresses that the child of humankind, or the son of man, is within, and the disciples should follow it—or him—and not lay down rules and regulations:
Peace be with you. Acquire my peace within yourselves. Be on your guard so that no one deceives you by saying, “Look over here” or “Look over there.” For the child of humankind exists within you. Follow it. Those who search for it will find it. Go then, preach the good news about the kingdom. [Do] not lay down any rule beyond what I determined for you, nor promulgate law like the lawgiver, or else you might be dominated by it. (8–9)
The child of humankind that is within may be the presence of Jesus within a person, or it may be the true humanity that Jesus inspires and Mary recalls in her comments to her fellow disciples.
After Jesus leaves the disciples, in the Gospel of Mary, Mary consoles the disciples and offers words of life. She says, “Do not weep and be distressed nor let your hearts be irresolute. For his grace will be with you all and will shelter you. Rather we should praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us human beings” (9). She also recalls a vision of Jesus, and she explains that Jesus told her a person does not see a vision with the soul, as a purely emotional experience, or with the spirit, as a purely spiritual experience from outside, but with the mind, between soul and spirit. A person thinks a vision. Although a large part of Mary’s account of the vision is lost, the portion that remains makes it clear that Mary’s vision is of the soul’s ascent through cosmic powers to liberation and rest. The cosmic powers encountered by the soul in Mary’s vision, however, are psychological forces that may imprison the soul—darkness, desire, ignorance, and wrath—so that Mary’s vision is actually a reflection upon the inner journey of the soul beyond the passions and powers that may oppress and enslave it. Freed at last, the soul exclaims,
What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been destroyed, and my desire has been brought to an end, and ignorance has died. In a world I was set loose from a world and in a type from a type which is above. The chain of forgetfulness is temporary. From this hour on, for the time of the due season of the age, I will receive rest in silence. (16–17)
As a group, the disciples in the Gospel of Mary admit that Jesus loved Mary more than any other woman and more than the other disciples. In the Gospel of Mary, Mary of Magdala is a beloved disciple, perhaps the beloved disciple, and Andrew does not like any of this. Neither does Peter, and he complains bitterly, with sexist sentiments about Mary’s role and her closeness with Jesus, just as he complains at the very end of the Gospel of Thomas. In the Nag Hammadi library and elsewhere—for example, in the Gospel of Philip, the Dialogue of the Savior, Pistis Sophia, and a song from the Psalms of Heracleides in the Manichaean Psalmbook—Mary of Magdala receives similar high praise, but in the New Testament gospels her role is limited and praise of her is muted. Esther de Boer suggests that Mary of Magdala may be the Johannine beloved disciple, but her identity is obscured in the Gospel of John.13 Elsewhere in the New Testament gospels Mary may be similarly portrayed, through a careful editing of the story of Jesus and his disciples, as a woman whose job is to offer support to Jesus, while the twelve disciples are presented as twelve guys truly involved with Jesus and his work. In the sixth century Pope Gregory the Great completed the work of marginalizing Mary Magdalene by equating Mary with the prostitute of Luke 7, and Mary became the paradigmatic repentant whore thereafter.14 Mary Magdalene as repentant whore makes a great story and a great subject for works of art, but a whore, even a repentant one, may not be judged an ideal candidate to be a disciple and an apostle of Jesus.
As the years passed, Karen King reminds us in The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Christianity increasingly embraced patriarchal and hierarchical authority, and male bishops founded their authority on apostolic succession going back to the twelve male disciples and Jesus, but this development, she notes, runs counter to the message of the Gospel of Mary:
The Gospel of Mary directly challenges the validity of such claims, and offers instead a vision of Christian community in which authority is based not solely or even primarily upon a succession of past witnesses, but upon understanding and appropriating the gospel. Authority is vested not in a male hierarchy, but in the leadership of men and women who have attained strength of character and spiritual maturity. Prophetic speech and visions are given a place of primacy as the manifestation of spiritual understanding and the source of sound teaching. Christian community constituted a new humanity, in the image of the true human within, in which the superficial distinctions of the flesh lacked any spiritual significance. Women as well as men could assume leadership roles on the basis of their spiritual development. The Gospel of Mary rejects any view of God as divine ruler and judge and, hence, repudiates those as proper roles for Christian leadership. The true model for leadership is the savior, the teacher and mediator of divine wisdom and salvation who cautions his disciples against laying down fixed laws and rules that will come to enslave them.15
The Gospel of Mary may help to correct a false understanding of the Christian church, and this gospel and other similar texts may help to reclaim the image of Mary and restore her to her rightful place within the history of Judaism and Christianity.
THE MANY REVEALERS IN GNOSTIC TEXTS
In this chapter and the preceding chapters, we have seen that the message of gnosis is announced by a wide variety of revealers from a wide variety of religious contexts. There are many different gnostic saviors who may awaken people to insight and knowledge. For Christian gnostics such as Valentinians, Jesus Christ is the savior and revealer, and for Christian Sethians Jesus is the incarnation of heavenly Seth. But within gnostic religious traditions Jesus is not the only savior. For Jewish gnostics great Seth can be the savior and revealer, or the savior can be Derdekeas, the “male child” who speaks to Shem, son of Noah, in the Paraphrase of Shem. In Hermetic literature thrice-greatest Hermes, the Greek counterpart to the Egyptian god Thoth, is the mystagogue who leads a student to understanding. Beyond the texts of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex, Manichaean sources emphasize the role of Mani, the messenger of light, a Mesopotamian teacher of Iranian descent, and Mani and his followers claim to build on the religious contributions of the prophets Buddha, Jesus, and Zoroaster. Teachers of Islamic gnosis maintain that wisdom may be known through Allah and the Qur’an, and that revealers of truth include the members of the family of Muhammad and Salman, the being of light and word of God.
The gnostics were advocates of religion with a global perspective. Their conviction that religious insight and knowledge may be found in all sorts of religions leads to a multiplicity of saviors and revealers from many different traditions. For gnostics, true gnosis is the wisdom of the world, and universal wisdom may be discovered in the religions of the world.
As portrayed in gnostic texts, the divine figures, saviors, revealers, and teachers of knowledge may be male or female. In gnostic literature there is no thought of a father in heaven who is the great bachelor in the sky. Rather, the divine, and those who represent the divine, may be male or female—or sometimes neither, or sometimes both. In the early Christian movement there are hints of the same concern for gender balance in other sources, and some of the earliest speculation about a divine trinity seems to have suggested that God could be understood through the metaphor of the nuclear family, with God as father, the spirit as mother, and Christ as son of God. (We may recall the repudiation of the traditional story of the virgin birth in the Gospel of Philip on the grounds of the gender of the holy spirit.) The famous Egyptian divine family of father Osiris, mother Isis, and son Horus may have helped to inspire Christian speculation about the trinity as family, and in Semitic sources the gender of the word for “spirit,” ruah in Hebrew, is feminine, and the divine spirit may be considered, like wisdom, to be female in gender. But the holy spirit became the neuter pneuma hagion in Greek and the masculine spiritus sanctus in Latin, and masculine images grew dominant. So did the power of men and patriarchal authority, and Christian leaders like Tertullian insisted that only men should provide leadership in the church:
It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer the eucharist, nor to claim for herself a share in any masculine function—not to mention any priestly office.16
Meanwhile, among gnostics and in gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex, the divine is said to come to manifestation as Sophia and a host of other personified beings, many of whom are female, such as forethought, Pronoia, and insight, Epinoia, and Thunder; and the revelation of the divine is communicated by female leaders like Mary of Magdala and the gnostic teacher Marcellina as well as male teachers. Such gnostic texts reflect gnostic practice, which frequently provides equal roles for men and women and allows both men and women to function as prophets, teachers, priests, and possibly even bishops. Tertullian cannot tolerate such gnostic behavior, and he attacks gnostic women: “These heretical women—how audacious they are! They have no modesty; they are bold enough to teach, to engage in argument, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, and, it may be, even to baptize!”17 Gnostic texts often affirm the status of women; the Gospel of Mary maintains that the true understanding of the person and proclamation of Jesus is not found in Peter—the rock upon which Jesus built his church, according to the Gospel of Matthew and the inscription upon the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome—but in Mary of Magdala, beloved disciple and apostle of Jesus.
The revealer of knowledge in Nag Hammadi texts and other gnostic documents is also considered in more abstract terms. As we have seen in Sethian texts, the gnostic revealer is the insight and wisdom of God that calls out to people. In the “Hymn of the Pearl” in the Acts of Thomas, the call to remember is described as a letter from the king of the east to remember the pearl, and in the hymn the letter becomes voice. In Mandaean literature the revealer is Manda dHayye, “knowledge of life” and in the Islamic Umm al-Kitab the spirit endowed with language and the light of knowledge speaks to one who knows. The call of the insight, wisdom, and knowledge of the gnostic revealer may be understood as coming from outside, but the call of revelation also speaks from within.
Finally, the insight that awakens us is within us, the wisdom that is with God is the wisdom in us, and the knowledge that saves us is self-knowledge. In order to be saved we need to remember, understand, and know our true selves. Zostrianos proclaims in his gnostic sermon, already quoted at length, that those who hearken to the call are to awaken what is divine within them and save themselves, their true selves, so that what is within—the light and life of God—may be saved. That is the gospel of gnosis.