T
he Foreigner (or Allogenes) is another Sethian text of gnostic wisdom, of which the Vision is a part. In this text Allogenes the foreigner has a visionary experience of the divine, and at the end of the text (not included here) it is said that he writes it down in the document for his child Messos. The neoplatonist author Porphyry maintains that Plotinos opposed gnostics who used revelations by Allogenes and Messos, among others, and the present text may be one of the works referred to by Porphyry. The role of Allogenes as foreigner or one from another race suggests that the visionary protagonist of this text may be Seth—described in Genesis as “another seed” in place of the dead Abel—or a follower of Seth, or every person, every gnostic who follows the enlightened way of Sethian knowledge.
In the section of the text translated here, the foreigner has a vision of the divine that recalls the Secret Book of John and other Sethian literature. Earlier in the text the foreigner has been instructed in the proper method of meditation, and now the foreigner employs this method in the visionary experience. The visionary experience is understood not as an ascent upward through stages of enlightenment but rather as an inner experience of deeper and deeper insight. The foreigner thus envisions within self aspects of the divine, in silence, as a part of the inner journey.
But the revelatory vision of god within is hardly the end of the experience. The nature of the divine is explained, in more philosophical terms, by the
powers of the luminaries, who use language closely connected to that of the opening portion of the Secret Book of John to explain the unexplainable and communicate what cannot be put into words. Whatever the divine is, it is not this, it is not that. “It is not something that exists, which people can understand, but something greater, which no one can understand.”
The Foreigner is a Coptic text in the Nag Hammadi library, and like other texts in the Nag Hammadi library, it was most likely composed in Greek. Karen L. King suggests a date of composition in the first quarter of the third century to correspond with the likelihood that Plotinos knew of the text. She also suggests, more tentatively, that the text may have been written in Egypt, possibly in Alexandria.
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Through a primary revelation of the first one,
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which is unknown to all, I saw the god that is greater than perfection, and the triple power
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that exists in all. I was seeking the ineffable, unknowable god, of which people are ignorant even if they understand it at all, the mediation of the triple power, which is located in stillness and silence and is unknowable.
When I was empowered by these things, the powers of the luminaries
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said to me, You have done enough to hinder the inactivity that is in you by seeking what is incomprehensible. Rather, hear about it, as is possible, through a primary revelation and a revelation.
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Does it
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exist through its own being, or does it exist and will it come further into being? Does it act? Does it know? Is it alive? For it has no mind, no life, nothing real—and nothing unreal, incomprehensibly. Does it come from what it has? No, there is nothing at all left over, as if it causes something to be undertaken, or it purifies something, or it receives or gives something. Nor is
it limited by its own desire or by giving or by receiving from another. Its desire is not from itself, nor does desire come to it from anything else, yet it does not give anything of itself, or it would be limited. Thus it has no need of mind or life or anything, for it is greater than all in its ultimacy and incomprehensibility, in nonexistent reality. It has silence and stillness not to be limited by the unlimited.
It is not divinity or blessedness or perfection; rather, it is something unknowable. Not that it has this, but it is greater than blessedness and divinity and perfection. It is not perfect, but greater. It is not infinite or limited by another, but greater. It is not corporeal and is not incorporeal. It is not large and it is not small. It is not quantifiable, not a created thing. It is not something that exists, which people can understand, but something greater, which no one can understand. It is a first revelation and knowledge of itself, since it alone understands itself. For it is not among the things that exist, but is greater among what is greater. And it is like what it has and unlike what it has. It is not part of an eternal realm nor time, and it receives nothing from anyone. It is not limited, nor does it limit, nor is it illimitable.
It is self-knowledge, since it is unknowable, and it is greater than what is good in its unknowability, having blessedness and perfection and silence—not blessedness or perfection or stillness, but something that is, that no one can understand, being at rest.