INTRODUCTION
MARVIN MEYER
I n the beginning was wisdom, Hokhmah, Sophia.
One of the earliest forms of exalted expression in the world of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern antiquity was wisdom. Wisdom can be both the product of experience and the gift of the gods. Wisdom is what the father teaches the son, the parent the child, the sage the student. Through wisdom and knowledge, people learn how to speak and act among family and friends and foes, in social encounters, in the political arena, on the street. Through wisdom and knowledge, people learn about the world and the ways of the world, and how to cope with it. Through wisdom and knowledge, people address the ultimate questions: Why do the wicked prosper? Why do the good suffer? What is the end of human life? Is this all there is?
ANCIENT SAGES AND WISDOM LITERATURE
From the times of the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, wisdom and knowledge have been seen as keys to a good and successful life. So in Egypt an old sage, under the name of Ptahhotep, offers advice to his “son” with everyday observations and clever turns of speech: “Do not let your heart be puffed up because of your knowledge. Do not be confident because you are wise. Take counsel with the ignorant as well as the wise. The full limits of skill cannot be attained, and there is no skilled person equipped to full advantage. Good speech is hidden more than the emerald, but it may be found with young women at the grindstones.” Again: “If you are a leader commanding the affairs of the multitude, seek out for yourself every beneficial deed, until it may be that your own affairs are without wrong. Justice is great, and its appropriateness is lasting; it has not been disturbed since the time of the one who made it, whereas there is punishment for one who passes over its laws. . . . The strength of justice is that it lasts.” 1
In ancient Mesopotamia, wisdom is also praised, often as a gift of the gods. In one text an unnamed sage praises wisdom and the divine lord of wisdom, here understood to be Marduk, god of Babylon, whose way is both terrible and gentle: “I will praise . . . Marduk, the lord of wisdom, the deliberate god, who lays hold of the night but frees the day, whose fury surrounds him like a storm wind, but whose breeze is as pleasant as a morning zephyr, whose anger is irresistible, whose rage is a devastating flood, but whose heart is merciful, whose mind forgiving . . . whose hands the heavens cannot hold back, but whose gentle hand sustains the dying.” 2
In the ancient Greco-Roman world, wisdom was the domain of the philosopher, the lover of wisdom and knowledge, who dispenses wisdom and knowledge. Those philosophers with Cynic proclivities, so named for their rough, doglike lifestyles, employ witty sayings with a Cynic bite in order to teach the good and noble life. Thus: “Marcus Porcius Cato, when asked why he was studying Greek literature after his eightieth year, said, ‘Not that I may die learned but that I may not die unlearned.’” And: “The Pythagorean philosopher Theano, when asked by someone how long it takes after having sex with a man for a woman to be pure to go to the Thesmophoria, said, ‘If it is with her own husband, at once, but if with someone else’s, never.’” And again: “When Diogenes the Cynic philosopher saw a country boy scooping up water in his hand in order to drink, he threw away the cup that he was carrying in his bag and said, ‘Now I can be this much lighter.’” 3
In the world of early Judaism, sages are revered for their insight into the human condition before god, and sometimes the wisdom they proclaim is personified as Hokhmah (in Hebrew) or Sophia (in Greek), terms of feminine gender used to indicate wisdom as the female expression of the divine. The figure of wisdom in Judaism echoes the earlier goddesses of wisdom in other traditions—Maat in Egypt, Ishtar in Mesopotamia—and wisdom’s career continues through the gnostic texts published in the present volume. In Proverbs wisdom herself is said to raise her voice :
O people, to you I call out
and raise my voice to all the living.
You the simple, learn prudence;
acquire intelligence, you the foolish.
Listen, for I have noble 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 live with prudence
and possess knowledge and discretion.
The lord brought me forth
as the first of his works,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the beginning before the world began.
I was at his side like a master worker
and was filled with delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in his people.
(Proverbs 8:4–6, 10–12, 22–23, 30–31)
This ancient wisdom, which provided ideas of how people might live with insight, virtue, and happiness, proved to be compelling, and wisdom sayings were communicated both by word of mouth and in written form. In the ancient world, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greco-Roman, and Jewish books of wisdom were compiled and circulated widely. The wisdom literature of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia dates back to the second and third millennia BCE with collections of wisdom sayings by sages such as Amenemhat, Amenemope, Ptahhotep, Shuruppak, and Ahikar. The Cynic sayings from Greco-Roman times were collected in textbooks called Progymnasmata . These sayings were called chreiai, “useful sayings,” and they were judged useful for rhetorical instruction and for the conduct of life. The Progymnasmata were used within educational systems into the Byzantine period and far beyond, even into the modern world, in educational systems in Europe and the American colonies. Jewish wisdom literature is included within the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere. Some of the prominent books of Jewish wisdom are Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach, as well as the tractate Pirke aboth (Sayings of the Fathers), which is included in the Talmud.
JESUS THE JEWISH SAGE
Within this dynamic world of ancient wisdom, Hokhmah, Sophia, Jesus of Nazareth (or Yeshua, using his Semitic name) was born to humble beginnings in Galilee, in Israel. In later christology Jesus would attain the stature of divinity, but his actual life may have been closer to that of a wisdom teacher—that is, a rabbi. The Christian gospels and other theological statements describe Jesus as the Christ, the messiah, the anointed, the son of god and son of man (or earthly son, human son, human child—several translations are used in this collection). According to the Gospel of John, Jesus is the word of god, god in human flesh. The Apostles’ Creed proclaims that he was born of the virgin Mary, raised from the dead on the third day, and taken up into heaven, and the Nicene Creed acclaims him as “true god of true god, begotten not made, of one substance (homoousios ) with the father.” 4 Thus Jesus was promoted to be a full member of the godhead, the second person of the divine trinity, composed of god the father, Christ the son, and the holy spirit. Several texts comment on the possibility of the holy spirit as the mother—the true mother—of Jesus, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Secret Book of James in this collection.
But the dogmatic Christ of the Nicene Creed and the other Christian creeds is hardly the same person as Jesus of Nazareth. Precisely who Jesus was as a historical person continues to be debated among scholars, and there is no consensus. During much of the twentieth century it was assumed, following Albert Schweitzer, that Jesus was an apocalyptic visionary who foresaw—mistakenly—the end of the world and the dawning of the kingdom of god. Schweitzer’s paragraph in his Quest of the Historical Jesus presents a powerful image of the apocalyptic Jesus:
There is silence all around. The baptizer appears, and cries, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that he is the coming son of man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and he throws himself upon it. Then it does turn, and crushes him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, he has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great man, who was strong enough to think of himself as the spiritual ruler of humankind and to bend history to his purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is his victory and his reign. 5
That is his victory, that is his reign, that is the kingdom. Jesus was convinced that the kingdom of god would come soon, but he was wrong, Schweitzer claimed—heroically wrong, yet dead wrong.
Today many scholars are questioning whether Schweitzer and others were right in proposing that Jesus was first and foremost an apocalyptic figure. Schweitzer himself seems to have had second thoughts about Jesus as an apocalypticist. During much of his life Schweitzer focused his attention upon the sayings of Jesus—sayings of the Jewish sage—and in a later version of the preface to The Quest of the Historical Jesus Schweitzer suggests that Jesus’ ethical teachings may be more central to his message than the apocalyptic vision. As scholars increasingly are reasoning, if the apocalyptic vision actually comes from believers in the early church, then the supposed apocalyptic preoccupations of Jesus may have been placed upon him by his biographers. Jesus may not have been a preacher of the apocalypse after all; he may have been a Jewish teacher of wisdom, a teller of stories, a sage.
There is considerable evidence to support the interpretation of Jesus as a Jewish sage. The New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all contain a substantial amount of material reflecting Jesus’ teachings and sayings. Among the first three gospels (usually termed the synoptic gospels), Matthew and Luke have more sayings and stories than Mark, and most scholars think this is due to an additional written source, besides Mark, that Matthew and Luke both used. In order to make the strong, relatively silent Jesus of Mark’s gospel more loquacious, most scholars deduce, Matthew and Luke must have added a collection of Jesus’ sayings, now called Q (from Quelle, German for “source”), to the story of Jesus. 6 If this is so, then Q must antedate the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as a gospel of the wisdom of Jesus, and thus it may have originated in the middle of the first century, only a couple of decades after Jesus’ death. A good case can be made that a version of another early wisdom gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, was also composed in the middle of the first century, around the time of Q, or maybe a little later. This evidence leads to the conclusion that some of the earliest Christian gospels were gospels of wisdom, presenting Jesus as a teacher of wisdom. The sayings gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas present Jesus of Nazareth as a Jewish sage, and they may well have gotten it, in large part, historically right.
As a Jewish teacher, Jesus announces the presence of the reign or kingdom of god, and he does so with aphorisms and stories (usually termed parables). Q 6:20–31 (from Luke’s sermon on the plain and Matthew’s sermon on the mount) illustrates how Jesus speaks in this sayings gospel:
Blessings on you the poor,
for the kingdom of god is yours.
Blessings on you who are hungry,
for you will eat well.
Blessings on you who grieve,
for you will be comforted.
Blessings on you
when they insult you
and oppress you
and tell all kinds of evil about you
because of the human child.
Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward is great in heaven .
For this is how they oppressed the prophets
who came before you.
Love your enemies,
and pray for those who oppress you,
that you may be children of your father,
for he makes the sun rise on the evil and the good,
and makes it rain on the just and the unjust.
If someone slaps you on one cheek,
offer the other also.
If someone wants to sue you and take your shirt,
let the person have your coat also.
And if someone compels you to go one mile,
go with the person a second mile.
Give to one who begs from you,
and if someone borrows from you,
do not ask for it back.
And treat people the way you want people to treat you.
The texts that follow in this volume, especially the Gospel of Thomas, give more examples of aphorisms of Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas also presents a number of his stories, or parables, as do other texts in this volume, especially the Secret Book of James and the Book of Thomas.
Thus the sayings attributed to Jesus in Q reflect the Jewish wisdom tradition. But Q also reflects the Jewish tradition of personified wisdom, Sophia, who comes to expression through the sagacity of Jesus. According to the Lukan version of Q 11:49, the wisdom (Sophia) of god utters a saying about those who are sent forth; in the Matthean version it is Jesus who says this. The two texts seem to agree that divine wisdom speaks through Jesus, but this idea is expressed in two different ways. Again, according to the Lukan version of Q 7:35, Jesus refers to wisdom (personified) being vindicated by her children (John the baptizer and Jesus), but in the Matthean version, by her deeds. Once more Jesus and wisdom, Sophia, are closely connected to one another. This relationship between Jesus and wisdom continues in gnostic traditions, as can be seen in other texts within the present collection, for example, the Valentinian texts. John the baptizer likewise continues to play a significant role in other works included here (for example, Gospel of Thomas 46), and his place is particularly prominent in Mandaean texts.
THE GOSPELS OF THOMAS AND JOHN
In this first part of the present book, two early gospels with wisdom orientations are included: the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John. Both present Jesus as a proclaimer of wisdom and knowledge. The Gospel of Thomas (like Q) has pithy sayings of Jesus, the Gospel of John (like many gnostic sources) offers mystical discourses of Jesus, but both stress the role of Jesus as one who discloses insight and knowledge. Although the Gospels of Thomas and John cannot be described as specifically gnostic without some qualification, both of these gospels employ themes that bring to mind gnostic motifs that are more fully developed elsewhere, and the Gospel of John was the favored canonical gospel for gnostic exegesis. The Gospels of Thomas and John may thus be described as representing incipient gnostic perspectives—but they do so in very different ways.
Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas utters life-giving words, promising that those who follow him, respond to his words, and find their true meaning will not taste death. Yet Thomas’s Jesus is “just Jesus,” as Stephen Patterson puts it. 7 Thomas’s Jesus does not pull rank. He does not refer to himself (and he is not referred to by others) as the Christ or the messiah, he is not acclaimed master or lord, he is not announced as the incarnate and unique son of god, and when he refers to himself as the son of man (the human child) once in the gospel (saying 86), he does so in the generic sense of referring to any person or simply to himself. Further, if Thomas’s Jesus is a human child, so are other people called human children in the Gospel of Thomas.
Jesus in Thomas is just Jesus, but his words are not just words. They are hidden words of wisdom from a living Jesus who lives on in his sayings—hidden sayings, secret sayings, with hidden meanings. According to the Gospel of Thomas, the interpretation of these wise but hidden sayings will bring knowledge and life. Saying 2 states, “Whoever discovers what these sayings mean will not taste death”; saying 3 goes on to declare, “When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living father”; sayings 5 and 6 affirm, “There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.” In its concern for hidden wisdom that is revealed and understood, the Gospel of Thomas displays an interest found in other traditions, especially other gnostic traditions. In the Book of Thomas and the Secret Book of James, for example, reference is also made to hidden sayings of Jesus and the interpretation of the sayings. In the Secret (or Hidden) Book of John, as elsewhere, the revealer indicates that questions will be answered and secrets will be revealed to the inquirers. In the Secret Book of John the secrets of wisdom in the world are said to be revealed, but this is personified wisdom, Sophia, whose story is told in mythical narrative and drama. The Secret Book of John ends with the revealer uttering a curse against anyone who betrays the mystery. The savior says, “I have finished everything for you in your hearing. I have told you everything, for you to record and communicate secretly to your spiritual friends. For this is the mystery of the unshakable race.” In such ways is wisdom hidden and revealed in the Gospel of Thomas and the Secret Book of John.
Gospel of Thomas 50 is one of the most perplexing and perhaps one of the most gnostic of the hidden sayings of Jesus. It reflects early traditions about wisdom and the life of the soul (psyche ), which must go through transitions and passages of life in order to attain its proper destiny. In the present volume, the Song of the Pearl and the Exegesis on the Soul provide versions of such a myth of the soul. In gnostic texts like the Secret Book of John, some of the same motifs are used to present a gnostic account of the story of the light and enlightened people, whose origin is in the divine light, who are created in the image of the divine, and who are given movement and destined for rest in the light. The format of Gospel of Thomas 50, with questions asked and answers given, brings to mind accounts, in other sources and especially gnostic sources, of heavenly powers interrogating the soul as it passes through the spheres of heaven. Of course, many of these ideas are also reminiscent of the creation story in the opening chapters of Genesis, in this case particularly the first creation story in Genesis 1:1–2:3. And these ideas are paralleled in the poem to the divine logos at the opening of the Gospel of John.
In the Gospel of John, in stark contrast to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is hardly “just Jesus.” In John, Jesus is the Christ, the messiah, the son of god and son of man. He is addressed as rabbi and is called master or lord. Here Jesus is an exalted being, one with god the father, who walks around the world, incognito, as god in the flesh, and who speaks in a way that sounds like the divine talking, in “I am” utterances. There are many of these “I am” declarations throughout ancient religious literature, as well as in the gnostic texts published in the present volume—see Thunder, for example. In the Gospel of John, John the baptizer, in contrast to Jesus, is nobody: he admits that he is neither the messiah nor Elijah (the prophet of the end time) nor another prophet. The author of the Gospel of John is clearly painting a polemical portrait of John the baptizer, in order to play down the significance of a figure whose role elsewhere, as we have seen, rivals that of Jesus. Among the Mandaeans, John the baptizer is said to be the guarantor of the true ways of manda, or gnosis, and Jesus is depicted as one who perverts the law and encourages sorcery and error by departing from John and his ways. The author of the Gospel of John also appears to paint a polemical portrait of another character in his gospel account, namely, Thomas, who becomes in John’s gospel the quintessential skeptic, “doubting Thomas.” That may be John’s way of casting doubt upon the hero of the Gospel of Thomas and other texts, the twin who was responsible for safeguarding the wisdom and knowledge of Jesus.
The Gospel of John, unlike the Gospel of Thomas (and the sayings gospel Q), is a narrative gospel, with a narration of the life of Jesus. John begins his gospel story with the poem to the divine logos:
In the beginning was the word
and the word was with god,
and god was the word.
The word in the beginning was with god.
Through god everything was born
and without the word nothing was born.
What was born through the word was life
and the life was the light of all people
and the light in the darkness shone
and the darkness could not apprehend the light. (1:1-5)
All this echoes what is said of divine wisdom in Proverbs 8 and other texts (see above), but here the Johannine poem serves as a preamble to the story of Jesus. That story proceeds with miracles, called “signs” (Greek, semeia ) in John, such as Jesus’ changing water to wine at Cana. 8 The signs, like the sayings, have hidden meanings: Jesus explains this and other signs to Nikodemos (Nicodemus) in a long, rambling discourse that is characteristic of the Gospel of John—and some other gnostic texts. In his discourse Jesus distinguishes between what is of flesh—like the water and the wine—and what is of spirit, what is earthly and what is heavenly:
If I tell you of earthly things and you do not believe,
how if I tell you of heavenly things will you believe? (3:12)
The real meaning of the signs, then, must be on the side of the spiritual and the heavenly. Later Jesus clarifies the meaning of water being changed into wine. The person of Jesus himself is the real, spiritual point of the sign, and Jesus says, with divine nuances,
I am the true vine and my father is the gardener.
I am the vine, you the branches.
You who dwell in me as I in you
bear much fruit,
but without me you can do nothing. (15:1, 5)
According to John, then, Jesus the divine word in flesh discloses god:
The word became flesh and lived among us.
And we gazed on his glory,
the glory of the only son of the father,
who is filled with grace and truth. (1:14)
Jesus in John is a revealer who reveals what god’s presence and glory mean:
No one has ever seen god.
Only the one born of god,
who is in the heart of the father,
has made him known. (1:18)
The story of Jesus in the Gospel of John culminates with the account of the crucifixion and the resurrection appearances of Jesus. This conclusion to the story of Jesus is somewhat like that of the synoptic gospels, which focus special attention on the death and resurrection of Jesus. This sort of conclusion is also similar to the proclamation of the messenger (or apostle) Paul, who maintains that the message of the cross and resurrection is central to the Christian gospel. In 1 Corinthians Paul argues this point with vigor, and he does so in opposition to the Corinthian Christians, who champion wisdom and a gospel of wisdom; these wisdom Christians may even have used something like Gospel of Thomas 17 (see below, with the note). The Gospel of John, then, like the synoptic gospels and Paul, is quite unlike the sayings gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas, which show little or no interest in the crucifixion of Jesus. 9
John’s account of the crucifixion of Jesus puts his own theological spin on the story. In the high priestly prayer in John 17 (which is neither high priestly nor a prayer, but instead a commentary on the crucifixion story), Jesus announces that the hour or time has come—the hour or time of his death. The hour of death, however, is not to be an hour of darkness, as in the synoptics, where darkness overshadows the crucifixion of Jesus. Rather, it is an hour of glory and of light. As Jesus says to god,
Father, the hour has come.
Glorify your son so that your son may glorify you.
I glorified you on earth
by completing the work you gave me to do.
And now glorify me, father, with yourself,
with the glory I had with you before the world was. (17:1, 4-5)
The scandal and the sting of the crucifixion are nearly gone in the Gospel of John. Jesus’ death is glory, a homecoming, a return to god’s heavenly presence above. The light that had fallen, like a shooting star, into the world of darkness, may now return back to god and the fullness (Greek pleroma, as in John 1:16) of light above. It is a story reminiscent of the personified wisdom, Hokhmah, Sophia. We shall see this story told about a variety of gnostic revealers and saviors, including Jesus, in the gnostic sacred literature included in this volume.