part0014

T he sacred literature of gnostic wisdom offers some of the most beautiful, enlightening, and disturbing mystical poetry and prose in all religious literature. The selection presented here consists of twenty-nine texts, some considered classics of gnostic spirituality, that represent varieties of gnostic religions in the Mediterranean region during the early centuries of the common era. Of the many texts that might have been included in this part of the volume, we have selected texts that are not only representative of major options in gnostic spirituality but also well preserved and attractive as literature. These texts illustrate early gnostic, Sethian, Valentinian, Syrian, and other varieties of gnostic religions, yet there are points of similarity and connection among them. All of the texts are concerned with wisdom and knowledge; many of them trace the fortunes (and misfortunes) of wisdom—personified as Hokhmah or Sophia—in the context of gnostic themes. Here, as in the wisdom literature discussed above, the figure of wisdom remains a focal point of attention, but now wisdom is radicalized, and reflects the very nature of gnosticism by embracing the tragedy and hope of the human experience. In these texts wisdom creates and reveals, falls and is restored, saves and is saved. And with divine wisdom, these texts proclaim, fallen human beings too are saved and restored.

The church fathers and heresiologists describe, in polemical terms, a number of figures whom they consider to be early gnostic teachers: Simon Magus, a first-century teacher from Samaria; Dositheos and Menander, also from Samaria; Cerinthos, Carpocrates, Saturnilus, Marcellina, and a few others. About these figures we know only what the heresiologists choose to tell us, and they choose to tell us little more than that these teachers proclaimed error and impiety .

About the writings of the gnostic teacher Justin, however, we know somewhat more, thanks to Hippolytus of Rome. In his Refutation of All Heresies, Hippolytus cites and paraphrases a gnostic text composed by Justin, the Book of Baruch, although Hippolytus says it is the most abominable book he has read. From Hippolytus’s citations we learn enough to reconstruct large fragments of Justin and his book. Kurt Rudolph describes the Book of Baruch as “one of the most original and probably also the oldest testimonies of Gnosis.” 1 Strongly Jewish in its perspective, the book seems to propose a gnostic system that is one of the earliest representations of gnosis. Robert Grant calls it “an example of a gnosis that is almost purely Jewish,” 2 though in its present form, the book also incorporates references to Greco-Roman deities, as well as to Jesus.

The Book of Baruch presents a gnostic system with three principles, two that are male and one that is female. The most exalted manifestation of the divine is called the Good, a male power; he is also called Priapos, the Greco-Roman ithyphallic fertility god. The other powers take their names from Hebrew tradition, the male Elohim from the Hebrew word for “god” and the female Edem from the Hebrew for “earth.” 3 The female principle Edem is reminiscent of wisdom, Sophia, and she has many characteristics in the Book of Baruch: she is earth; garden; Israel; creator of humans, beasts, and the soul; and a symbol of Eve, who is her creation and double.

The story of Baruch is a tale of the love of Elohim and Edem, heaven and earth, love that is expressed and is lost, with the author, Justin, employing themes from Genesis to tell his gnostic story of the fate of humanity and the emergence of evil in the world. Elohim, the heavenly father god and the creator of the world, is the lover of Edem, the earthly mother goddess. From their impassioned sexual union come twenty-four angelic children, and the angels in turn create humankind and paradise. These twenty-four angels seem to anticipate the more developed portrayals of the realm of the divine fullness, or pleroma, in Sethian and Valentinian gnostic systems. Elohim breathes spirit (Greek pneuma ) into Adam, and Edem breathes soul (Greek psyche ). Baruch (Hebrew for “blessed”) is the good tree of life and the chief paternal angel, and Naas (from nahash, Hebrew for “serpent”) 4 is the evil tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the chief maternal angel .

Elohim ascends to the Good in “the highest part of heaven” and becomes aware of “what eye has not seen or ear heard or what has not entered the human heart.” 5 With this awareness of the grandeur of the divine, Elohim proposes that he destroy the world he made and take back his spirit imprisoned among people there, but the Good does not allow it. Instead, Elohim stays above, on high, and Edem, abandoned down below, brings all sorts of evil upon the spirit of Elohim within people.

The lovers’ quarrel between Elohim and Edem continues through human history. Elohim sends the angel Baruch to “comfort the spirit living in all people.” Baruch tries to solicit the aid of Moses, the Hebrew prophets, and even the prophet Herakles (Hercules), all in vain. Finally Elohim sends Baruch to Nazareth, and he “found Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, feeding sheep, a boy of twelve, and he told him everything that had happened from the beginning, from Edem and Elohim and all that will be. He said, ‘All the prophets before you were seduced, but Jesus, earthly son, try not to be seduced, and preach the word to people and tell them about the father and the Good, and ascend to the Good and sit with Elohim, father of us all.’” The story of the Book of Baruch concludes, according to the account in Hippolytus, with allegorical interpretations that connect portions of the gnostic story with Greco-Roman mythology.

The name Sethian denotes a body of gnostic texts and myths that give prominence to Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. Because a second divine entity, often named Barbelo, the divine forethought and revealer, also figures in these texts and myths, heresiologists nicknamed the gnostics who produced them Barbeloites and Barbelognostics, designations still used by modern scholars. Bentley Layton, as we noted in the general introduction to this volume, emphasizes that these religious figures called themselves gnostics, and he refers to their writings as “classic gnostic scriptures.” In the sacred texts included here, the ancient authors refer to spiritually enlightened people like themselves as “the unshakable race of perfect humankind” or “the offspring (or seed) of Seth.” Hence, for the sake of convenience we shall call these gnostics Sethians.

The Sethians understood themselves to be children of Adam and Eve, through Seth. Adam and Eve were the first parents, through whom the divine light is communicated to enlightened gnostics. Genesis hints that Seth marked a new beginning for humanity after the violence that plagued the relationship of the brothers Cain and Abel. In Genesis 4, Cain is described as killing his brother Abel and being banished for his act of murder; in the Secret Book of John, Cain and Abel are said to have been fathered by the seductive first ruler Yaldabaoth, who defiled Eve sexually to get her pregnant. In Genesis 4:25, in the Septuagint, Seth is said to be sperma heteron, “another seed,” in place of the dead Abel. The gnostics, in turn, described themselves as “another race,” the offspring or seed of Seth, or simply, as in the Gospel of Judas, “that generation.” Another gnostic text, part of which is presented below, is mentioned by Porphyry as a gnostic text known to his teacher Plotinos, and is entitled Allogenes, “Foreigner,” literally “One from Another Race.”

The sacred literature of the Sethians features a mythological narrative that provides a reinterpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis. Several of the Sethian texts included here reflect features of this mythological narrative, but one of the most compelling of the presentations of the myth is to be found in the Secret Book of John. Although in its present form, in the versions of the Secret Book of John that have been preserved in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex 8502, the myth is recounted in a Christianized form, the literary evidence (more obvious in the Coptic) suggests that the myth derives from a hellenistic Jewish gnostic tradition that was in dialogue with Greek mythological and philosophical traditions, particularly Greek philosophical traditions going back to Plato. 6 This Hellenistic Jewish telling of the gnostic creation myth describes the origin, fall, and restoration of the light, the light within gnostics and the light within god. The cast of characters in the myth, some of whom are known from Genesis, appear within the Sethian texts given here. The original divine entity is the infinite One, the invisible spirit (revealed as the transcendent One in the Secret Book of John and the Vision of the Foreigner). From the One emanates the divine forethought Barbelo, and together the One and Barbelo produce a divine child, to form an exalted triad or trinity. With the divine in the fullness or pleroma of divinity are four luminaries, Harmozel, Oroiael, Daveithai, and Eleleth, along with Geradamas (Adam the stranger) and his son Seth. Mother Sophia—herself an eternal realm connected with Eleleth—miscalculates (her motives are described in different ways), and from her mistake comes her arrogant son, the demiurge and creator of the world named Yaldabaoth, Sakla, or Samael. In the Gospel of Judas the demiurge is named Nebro. At this point in the myth humans enter into the plot, especially Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth, and Seth’s offspring, the gnostics themselves.

Of the gnostic texts included in this volume, 7 most of the texts designated as Sethian exhibit clear Sethian affinities. Thunder is less obviously Sethian (or gnostic, for that matter), but we classify it, tentatively, as a Sethian gnostic text (with Bentley Layton), for several reasons. First is its concern for wisdom and knowledge, and its resemblance to portions of the statement of divine transcendence at the beginning of the Secret Book of John. In Thunder, the “I am” self-declarations, with their paradoxical formulations, reveal a female deity who comes from above to the human realm. She is called life (as Eve is called “the mother of all living” in Genesis 3:20), and she is wisdom and knowledge, and thus she resembles the female deities who appear in a number of roles and accomplish a number of tasks in the Secret Book of John and other Sethian texts: forethought, wisdom, life (Eve), and especially afterthought (epinoia ), which is specifically mentioned in Thunder.

The Letter of Peter to Philip incorporates various traditions into a text that resembles the New Testament or apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, but the revelation about the deficiency of divine light brought about by the fall of Sophia, though tersely presented, contains elements that bring to mind the Sophia myth of the Secret Book of John. In the Letter of Peter to Philip, like the Secret Book of John, the problem in the eternal realms stems from the mother, whose disobedience leads her to act independently of the father. She produces a child, an arrogant one, who steals power from his mother, establishes a bureaucracy of ignorant cosmic administrators, and collaborates in the creation of mortal human beings. This human creation is based, however, upon a misrepresentation of the image of the divine that had appeared. For, in words that closely parallel Gospel of Thomas 72, the creator wished to make “an image in place of an image and a form in place of a form” (see also Genesis 1:26).

One of the two great gnostic teachers of the second century whom we know by name is Valentinos. The other is Basilides, who was a contemporary of Valentinos but who is given little attention in this volume because he is known only through fragments preserved in and discussions included in the heresiologists. Suffice it to say that Basilides was a successful early second-century gnostic teacher in the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria, Egypt, and Valentinos must have known of his teachings while he was there. Another well-known teacher of the second century is Marcion, whom we discussed briefly in the general introduction to this volume. On account of his theological dualism, with its critical stance toward the Jewish god, the Hebrew Bible, and the world in general, Marcion sometimes is called a gnostic, though we do not understand him to be an advocate of a religion of gnosis, as we noted above.

Valentinos was an Egyptian born in the Nile delta around the beginning of the second century. A convert to Christianity, Valentinos was educated in Alexandria, and he learned about Greek philosophy, Christian thinking (most likely including that of Basilides), and hellenistic Jewish methods of reading and interpreting the scriptures. He also seems to have been influenced by the Sethian gnostics of his time. Bentley Layton supports this by citing Irenaeus’s observation: “Valentinos adapted the fundamental principles of the so-called gnostic school of thought [Layton’s classic gnostics] to his own kind of system.” 8 Valentinos went on to Rome, where he was caught up in theological and ecclesiastical affairs in the Christian community there. The heresiologist Tertullian maintained that Valentinos hoped to become bishop of Rome—or, we might say, his century’s equivalent of the pope. Valentinos proved to be a brilliant teacher, and among his followers several continued his gnostic thought in their own literary works. This volume contains the best of their efforts. Of Valentinos’s own writings little survives. Among the Valentinian texts presented here only the mystical meditation entitled the Gospel of Truth may have been composed by Valentinos himself. 9 Of the other literary works of Valentinos, a fragment of a poem, “Summer Harvest,” survives in the writings of the heresiologist Hippolytus:

Valentinian thought, as intimated in the poetic fragment from Valentinos, is based upon bythos or bathos, divine depth. In the words of the Gospel of Truth, the person of knowledge, the gnostic revealer, “has turned many from error. He went before them to their own places, from which they departed when they erred because of the depth of him who surrounds every place, whereas there is nothing which surrounds him.” Again, later in the Gospel of Truth, “This is the perfection in the thought of the father and these are the words of his reflection. Each one of his words is the work of his will alone, in the revelation of his word. Since they were in the depth of his mind, the word, who was the first to come forth, caused them to appear, along with an intellect which speaks the unique word by means of a silent grace.”

From depth emanates the pleroma of divinity, organized as (at least) fifteen pairs of beings, or couples, for a total of (at least) thirty eternal realms (aeons). All are suspended, all are held in the fullness of the divine, as the poem of Valentinos shows. While different names are assigned to the eternal realms in the different versions of the Valentinian scheme of things, the first two groups of four (tetrads) are most prominent. The resultant realm of eight (ogdoad), according to Irenaeus, looks like this:

A number of these eternal realms resemble the eternal realms in the Secret Book of John and other Sethian texts, as does Sophia, the last of the Valentinian eternal realms. Through ignorance or error Sophia falls from grace and disturbs the divine order, and two other eternal realms, Christ and holy spirit, are brought forth to deal with the disturbance. Christ helps restore Sophia to the pleroma, but her desire is expelled outside the pleroma, and it becomes another Sophia, a lower wisdom called Achamoth (a name that resembles Hokhmah, the Hebrew word for “wisdom”—see the Gospel of Philip). Jesus the savior in turn is brought forth to heal Achamoth through knowledge, but her passions are also set aside, destined to be elements used for the creation of the cosmos. In Valentinian thought the mythic drama thus takes place at two levels, above and below, and the integrity of the divine fullness itself is protected by means of a limit or boundary (horos )—hence the need for Sophia above and Achamoth below, and Christ above and Jesus below. A mythic drama that takes place above and below also may be observed in the Secret Book of John and other Sethian texts, with forethought above and afterthought below, Geradamas above and Adam below, and heavenly Seth above and earthly Seth, and the Sethian gnostics, below. From these experiences of wisdom in Valentinian thought come three sorts of elemental stuff that characterize life, including human life, in the world: the material, the psychical, and the spiritual. Human beings, then, are divided into three groups in Valentinian thought: hylics—material people of flesh and blood who are unbelievers; psychics—psychical people, people with soul, who are ordinary Christians; and pneumatics—truly spiritual people, people with divine spirit, who are gnostics. These last are the Valentinians themselves.

All in all, Valentinian thought shows a complexity in its gnostic scheme that builds upon previous gnostic reflections, especially Sethian reflections, and incorporates Greek philosophical observations, especially platonic observations. There is variety in Valentinian expression—for example, scholars sometimes distinguish between a Western or Italic branch and an eastern branch—and there is subtlety and insight in the theological and exegetical formulations of Valentinian teachers.

In addition to the Gospel of Thomas, which is included in Part One of this volume, three additional texts representing the tradition of Syrian spirituality in general and (in two instances, at least) Judas Thomas in particular are included in this part of the volume: the Songs of Solomon, the Song of the Pearl, and the Book of Thomas. None of these texts is unequivocally gnostic, but all proclaim a mystical wisdom and knowledge that illustrate the religious milieu of Syria and northern Mesopotamia during the early centuries of the common era. These texts also are documents that had a considerable influence on the development of religions, including gnostic religions. The great New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann used the Songs (or Odes) of Solomon to show what he considered to be the background of another document from Syria, the Gospel of John. Likewise, Thomas literature was known throughout the region and also in Egypt, and Thomas literature, particularly the Gospel of Thomas, appears to have shaped the thinking of Valentinian and Manichaean gnostics.

The Songs of Solomon comprise a hymnbook of poetic and mystical beauty. Scholars disagree about whether these songs originally functioned as a Jewish, Christian (or Jewish Christian), or gnostic hymnbook, but whatever might be the case, these poems are permeated with a profound concern for mystical wisdom and knowledge. Portions of the songs are excerpted in the gnostic text Pistis Sophia. Selections from Song 8 may show the mystical concerns of the Songs of Solomon:

The similarities of some of these expressions to the Gospel of Thomas are noteworthy (see, for instance, Gospel of Thomas 108).

According to Christian traditions, Judas Thomas the twin was the brother of Jesus, and in Syrian tradition he was thought to be the twin brother of Jesus. This concept of the twin also functions importantly in Manichaean sacred literature. The New Testament book of Jude is apparently attributed to this Judas, and in the Acts of Thomas, Judas Thomas is the apostolic missionary to northern Mesopotamia and India—hence the presence of the church of Saint Thomas in India to the present day. As the twin brother of Jesus, Judas Thomas was credited with special knowledge and insight, although not all Christians agreed with this positive assessment. In the Gospel of John, presented above, this evaluation of Judas Thomas as a person of knowledge, Thomas the “gnostic,” is directly contradicted, and Thomas is portrayed as “doubting Thomas,” Thomas the “agnostic.”

In the Song of the Pearl and, less directly, in the Gospel of Thomas and the Book of Thomas, the story of the soul is depicted in mythic narrative. The mythic story of the soul was recounted throughout the literature of antiquity and late antiquity. It was told by storytellers, interpreted by philosophers, and incorporated into texts of gnostic wisdom. It is the story of Eros (or, Cupid, love) and Psyche (soul), told by Apuleius of Madaura in his romance entitled Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass ). The word psyche is feminine in gender in Greek, and the soul is often considered female in stories of the soul. In the Exegesis on the Soul, included here, the story of the soul is recounted in graphic form as the fall and restoration of the soul, who succumbs to bodily and sexual defilement and is restored to her former condition by her heavenly lover.

Simon Magus, the first-century teacher from Samaria claimed by the heresiologists to be the founder of the gnostic religions, seems to have acted out a myth of the soul not unlike that described in Exegesis on the Soul. 12 Simon himself apparently was called “the great power of god,” an expression found in Acts 8:10, 13 and associated with a woman named Helena, whom he found working as a prostitute in Tyre and subsequently redeemed. He is said to have called her “first thought” (ennoia ) and imagined her incarnating and reincarnating as thought or soul in one human body after another—Helen of Troy, for example—until he found and delivered her. Simon Magus is parodied as nothing but a cheap magician in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles 8 as well as the apocryphal Acts of Peter, which is the basis for the film The Silver Chalice .

So ends, in enlightened discovery, the quest of the traveler, the quest of the soul. The traveler and the soul have sought and have found.

Several additional texts, which seem to represent gnostic religious options but which cannot be classified along with Sethian, Valentinian, or Thomas and Syrian literature with any confidence, are included in this part of the volume. The Exegesis on the Soul, like the Song of the Pearl, narrates the story of the career of the soul, but the Exegesis on the Soul stresses the seductive nature of the body and sexuality in its account of the fall of the soul, and the liberation of the soul from the filthiness of bodily corruption in its account of the restoration of the soul. The gnostic text On the Origin of the World resembles the Reality of the Rulers in a number of ways, and it contains themes that recall Sethian, Valentinian, Manichaean, and other religious traditions. The Paraphrase of Shem brings to mind, in its title, the text that Hippolytus of Rome in his account of the Sethians calls the Paraphrase of Seth, but its contents do not square well with his description of that text. Rather, the Paraphrase of Shem is a gnostic account of the creation of the world, with strongly sexual characteristics, in which Shem is the hero. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth appears to be Sethian only in title. This text is a gnostic meditation on the meaning of the life and death of Jesus and the relationship between gnostic and emerging orthodox Christians. The Gospel of Mary, a fragmentary gospel attributed to Mary (that is, Mary of Magdala), is a gnostic dialogue of Jesus with his students. The Naassene Sermon describes “serpentine” gnostics, who studied the mystery religions and drew gnostic conclusions. The sermon contains passages reminiscent of the Gospel of Thomas, including a provocative statement that proclaims the remarkable transformation of those who are spiritual and embrace knowledge: “This is the gate of heaven and the house of god, where the good god dwells alone, where no impure person enters, none psychical, none carnal. It is reserved for the spiritual alone, and those who come there must put on the wedding garments and all become bridegrooms, made masculine by the virgin spirit.”