Gnostic Revisions of Genesis Stories and Early Jesus Traditions (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies): 58 9004145109, 9789004145108

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Gnostic Revisions of Genesis Stories and Early Jesus Traditions

Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies Editors

Stephen Emmel & Johannes van Oort Editorial Board

H.W. Attridge – R. Cameron – W.-P. Funk I. Gardner – C.W. Hedrick – S.N.C. Lieu P. Nagel – D.M. Parrott – B.A. Pearson S.G. Richter – J.M. Robinson – K. Rudolph W. Sundermann – G. Wurst

VOLUME 58

Gnostic Revisions of Genesis Stories and Early Jesus Traditions by

Gerard P. Luttikhuizen

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data LC Control Number: 2005054254

ISSN 0929-2470 ISBN 90 04 14510 9 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

In gratitude to Professor em. Dr. Dr. Martin Krause

CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................ Abbreviations ..............................................................................

xi xv

I. Introduction: Gnostic Interpreters ...................................... The Apocryphon of John .................................................... The Letter of Peter to Philip .............................................. The revisionary power of a Gnostic thought pattern .... Did the critical Gnostic approach to the Jewish Scriptures originate in a Jewish environment? ........ A dual hypothesis ............................................................ The scope of this investigation ......................................

1 1 3 4 6 10 12

PART ONE

GENESIS INTERPRETATIONS II. Polemical Context and Function (ApJohn) ........................ The frame story of ApJohn and the teaching it conveys ........................................................................ Early Christian ideas about the meaning and value of the Old Testament ................................................ Understanding the Scriptures after Christ ................ The Old Testament as a Christian book ................ Rejection of the Jewish Bible .................................... More and less valuable passages in the Scriptures ... Conclusion ......................................................................

17

20 21 22 24 25 27

III. Philosophical Thought Pattern (ApJohn) ............................ Aristotelian philosophy in post-classical antiquity ........ Aristotelian elements in Middle-Platonism .................... Theology ...................................................................... Anthropology .............................................................. The soul .................................................................. The divine element in humanity .......................... Summary ..........................................................................

29 31 32 35 37 37 39 42

17

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contents

IV. Narrative Scheme (ApJohn) .............................................. A prehistoric tragedy .................................................. A combat story ............................................................ Yaldabaoth is enticed a) to create man and b) to transmit the power of his Mother into man ....... Yaldabaoth and his powers imprison the spiritual substance in a) a physical body and b) in fate... A helper is sent from above .................................. The creation of an opposing spirit ........................ An attempt made by the demiurgical God to take the spiritual power away from Adam ........ The further dispersion of the light power ............ Covering and mixing the light substance with darkness ................................................................ Conclusions ..................................................................

44 45 50 50 51 52 54 55 55 56 57

V. The Creation of Adam and Eve (ApJohn) ...................... The creation of Adam ................................................ The creation of Adam’s psychic body (the soul) ... The reception of the divine pneuma ........................ The creation of Adam’s material body .................. Eve’s separation from Adam ......................................

59 59 59 62 65 67

VI. Paradise (ApJohn, TestTruth) .............................................. The Testimony of Truth .................................................. The creator God and the serpent .............................. Historical context .......................................................... A Gnostic midrash? ......................................................

72 73 75 78 81

VII. Eve’s Children and the Salvation of Humanity (ApJohn, HypArch) .......................................................... Introduction: A heresiological cliché .......................... The Apocryphon of John .................................................. The True Nature of the Archons ...................................... Conclusions ..................................................................

83 83 87 91 95

VIII. Noah and the Flood (ApJohn, HypArch, ApocAdam) ........ The motivation of the creator God .......................... The purpose of the Gnostic revisions ........................ ApJohn ........................................................................

97 98 100 101

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HypArch ...................................................................... ApocAdam ....................................................................

103 105

IX. The Ineffable God (ApJohn, TrimProt) ............................ The-One-who-is ............................................................ A God beyond being and comprehension ................

108 108 112

PART TWO

EARLY JESUS TRADITIONS X. The Teaching of Jesus .................................................... Introduction: The Letter of Peter to Philip .................... How were the Gnostic revelations of the exalted Christ related to his prepaschal teachings? ............ Witnesses and mediators of the teaching of Jesus .... Peter .......................................................................... John .......................................................................... James ........................................................................ Jude-Thomas ............................................................ Mary Magdalene ...................................................... Summary ......................................................................

119 119 120 123 123 124 124 126 127 128

XI. The Passion of Jesus: The Suffering Jesus and the Impassible Christ (ApocPet) .......................................... Physical and spiritual realities .................................... Jesus’ Arrest and Crucifixion ...................................... Peter’s example ............................................................ Conclusions ..................................................................

130 132 133 136 137

XII. The Passion of Jesus: The Wooden Cross and the Cosmic Cross of Light (ActsJohn) ................................ ActsJohn 94–96 .............................................................. ActsJohn 97–102 ............................................................ Conclusion: two levels of understanding ....................

140 141 145 149

XIII. Johannine Vocabulary and Gnostic thought (LetPetPhil, TrimProt) ...................................................... The Prologue of John’s Gospel .................................. The Letter of Peter to Philip 136.16–137.4 ....................

152 152 153

x

contents Trimorphic Protennoia ...................................................... Conclusion ....................................................................

157 162

XIV. Epilogue: Readers of Gnostic Texts .............................. 1a. The intended readers ............................................ 1b. Gnostic Christian readers of the fourth century .................................................................... 2a. Irenaeus .................................................................. 2b. Modern readers ....................................................

163 164 166 167 168

Appendix: The Baptists of Mani’s Youth and the Elchasaites ........................................................................ The cyclic incarnation of the True Prophet ................ Hippolytus .................................................................... Epiphanius .................................................................... A Syrian Christology? .................................................. Water rites ........................................................................ Interim conclusion ............................................................ Elchasai and Elxai-Alchasaios/al-Óasi˙/’lxs’ ................

170 172 173 176 178 179 181 182

Bibliography ................................................................................

185

Index of Ancient Texts ............................................................

199

PREFACE

The present volume discusses the critical attitude of the Apocryphon of John and related Gnostic documents towards the Jewish Scriptures, and, in a shorter second part, critical Gnostic interpretations of early Christian traditions about the teaching and the passion of Jesus. The interest of both parts of the book is focused on Gnostic writers as readers: how did they understand the biblical and early Christian traditions in question, and why did they understand them in the way they did? This study starts from the assumption that selective and critical interpretations are likely to indicate that there is a gap between the thought pattern of the reader and the text as he or she understands it. It is therefore important to find out what were the basic convictions of the Gnostic interpreters and to trace the organizing principle underlying their mythical argumentation. The book includes an appendix in which I re-examine the extant sources for the baptist community in which Mani was reared. It is my response to Reinhold Merkelbach’s “Die Täufer, bei denen Mani aufwuchs”, and to the brief discussion of this essay by Iain Gardner and Samuel N.C. Lieu, in their recent book Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire (pp. 35–36). Over the last 20 years, Gnostic hermeneutics gradually became the main subject of my research. The first two results appeared in 1988: “The Jewish Factor in the Development of the Gnostic Myth of Origins” and “The Evaluation of the Teaching of Jesus in Christian Gnostic Revelation Dialogues” (see the bibliographical information below). In the subsequent years, I published articles on various aspects of ApJohn and other Gnostic texts. When I decided to gather these essays together I felt that it was necessary to revise, complement, harmonize, and refashion them to form a coherent monographic study. I want to express here my gratitude to several persons and institutions. The administration of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen, released me from all teaching duties in the academic year 2001/2, when I started the preparation of this book. I also wish to thank the board and the

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staff of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Wassenaar where I enjoyed my sabbatical year. Earlier versions of several chapters were presented and discussed in the yearly conferences on Themes in Biblical Narrative organized by the Groningen research group “Early Jewish and Christian Traditions”, in the Gnosticism and Nag Hammadi Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, and, last but not least, in the Dutch Gnostiek Werkgroep Heerde. I owe many valuable suggestions to the colleagues who attended these meetings. Special thanks are due to dr. Ton Hilhorst who read and commented virtually all my texts. Professor emeritus Martin Krause, University of Münster, made me familiar with the Nag Hammadi writings, introduced me into the Coptic grammar, and initiated me into the ancient Gnostic thought world. I dedicate this book to him. Publication Credits 1. “The Jewish Factor in the Development of the Gnostic Myth of Origins: Some Observations”, in T. Baarda e.a. (eds), Text and Testimony. Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honour of A.F.J. Klijn, Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1988, 152–161 (cf. chaps I and IV). 2. “The Evaluation of the Teaching of Jesus in Christian Gnostic Revelation Dialogues”, Novum Testamentum 30 (1988), 158–168 (cf. nr. 16 and ch. X). 3. “Intertextual References in Readers’ Responses to the Apocryphon of John”, in: S. Draisma (ed.), Intertextuality in Biblical Writings. Essays in Honour of Bas van Iersel, Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1989, 117–126 (cf. ch. XIV). 4. “Biblical Narrative in Gnostic Revision: The Story of Noah and the Flood in Classic Gnostic Mythology”, in: F. García Martínez and G.P. Luttikhuizen (eds), Interpretations of the Flood (TBN 1), LeidenBoston: Brill, 1999, 109–123 (cf. ch. VIII). 5. “Johannine Vocabulary and the Thought Structure of Gnostic Mythological Texts”, in: H. Preissler and H. Seiwert (eds), Gnosisforschung und Religionsgeschichte. Festschrift für K. Rudolph zum 65. Geburtstag, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1994, 175–182 (cf. ch. XIII). 6. “A Gnostic Reading of the Acts of John”, in: J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of John (Studies on the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, 1), Kampen: Kok-Pharos, 1995, 119–152 (cf. ch. XI).

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7. “The Thought Pattern of Gnostic Mythologizers and Their Use of Biblical Traditions”, in: J.D. Turner and A. McGuire (eds), The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years. Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (NHMS 44), Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1997, 89–101 (cf. ch. I). 8. “A Resistant Interpretation of the Paradise Story in the Gnostic Testimony of Truth (Nag Hamm. Cod. IX.2) 45–50”, in G.P. Luttikhuizen (ed.), Paradise Interpreted. Representations of Biblical Paradise in Judaism and Christianity (TBN 2), Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1999, 140–152 (cf. ch. VI). 9. “The Creation of Man and Woman in The Secret Book of John”, in: G.P. Luttikhuizen (ed.), The Creation of Man and Woman. Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Traditions (TBN 3), LeidenBoston: Brill, 2000, 140–155 (cf. ch. V). 10. “Gnostic Hermeneutics”, in: R. Kessler and P. Vandermeersch (eds), God, Biblical Stories and Psychoanalytic Understanding, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001, 171–185 (cf. nr. 14 and chaps. I–III). 11. “Traces of Aristotelian Thought in the Apocryphon of John”, in: H.G. Bethge, S. Emmel, K.L. King, I. Schletterer (eds), For the Children. Studies in Honor of Hans-Martin Schenke on the Occasion of the Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften’s Thirtieth Year (NHMS 54), Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2002, 181–202 (cf. ch. III). 12. “The Suffering Jesus and the Invulnerable Christ in the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter”, in: J.N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter (Studies in Early Christian Apocrypha, 7), Louvain: Peeters, 2003, 187–199 (cf. ch. XI). 13. “Gnostic Ideas about Eve’s Children and the Salvation of Humanity”, in: G.P. Luttikhuizen (ed.), Eve’s Children. The Biblical Stories Retold and Interpreted in Jewish and Christian Traditions (TBN 5), Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003, 203–217 (cf. ch. VII). 14. “The Critical Rewriting of Genesis in the Gnostic Apocryphon of John”, in: F. García Martínez and G.P. Luttikhuizen (eds), Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome. Studies in Ancient Cultural Interaction in Honour of A. Hilhorst (Suppl. to JSJ 82), Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003, 187–200 (cf. chaps I–IV). 15. “The Demonic Demiurge in Gnostic Mythology”, in: Chr. Auffarth and L.T. Stuckenbruck (eds), The Fall of the Angels (TBN 6), Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004, 148–160 (cf. ch. IV). 16. “Witnesses and Mediators of Christ’s Gnostic Teachings”, in: A. Hilhorst (ed.), The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought (Suppl. to VC 70), Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004, 104–114 (cf. ch. X).

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“The Baptists of Mani’s Youth and the Elchasaites” (Appendix) is the revised English version of “Waren Mani’s Täufer Elchasaiten?”, scheduled to appear in: A. Mustafa and J. Tubach (eds), Die Inkulturation des Christentums im vorislamischen Persien, Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag. Cf. “The Book of Elchasai: A Jewish Apocalyptic Writing, not a Christian Church Order”, Society of Biblical Literature 1999 Seminar Papers, 405–425; “The Elchasaites and their Book”, in: A. Marjanen and P. Luomanen (eds), A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics” (Suppl. to VC 76), Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2005, 335–364.

ABBREVIATIONS

Ancient Texts Acad ActsJohn ActsThom AdMarc AH Allog An ApGen Apion ApJohn ApocAdam I ApocJames II ApocJames ApocPetr AuthTeach BG Cael CD Cels Cohort Cons ContJac Dial Disc 8–9 EpBarn EpClem EthEud EthNic Eud Eugn ExTheod GenAn GenCor

Academica Acts of John Acts of Thomas Adversus Marcionem Adversus haereses Allogenes De anima Genesis apocryphon Contra Apionem Apocryphon of John Apocalypse of Adam First Apocalypse of James Second Apocalypse of James Apocalypse of Peter Authentic Teaching Berlin Codex De caelo Damascus Document Contra Celsum Cohortatio ad Graecos Consolatio ad Apollonium Contestatio Jacobi Dialogus cum Tryphone Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth Epistle of Barnabas Epistle of Clement Ethica Eudemia Ethica Nicomachea Eudemus Eugnostos Excerpta ex Theodoto De generatione animalium De generatione et corruptione

xvi GosEg GosMary GosPet GosPhil GosThom GosTruth GreatPow HE Hen Her Hom HypArch Is Jub JulPel LetPetPhil LXX Mars Metaph. MotAn Mut NatDeor Opif Or OrigWorld Pan Phil Phld Phys PistSoph Post. Caini Praep. Evang Princ Protr ps.-Clem Rec Ref RemPubl RSV SapSal

abbreviations Gospel of the Egyptians Gospel of Mary Gospel of Peter Gospel of Philip Gospel of Thomas Gospel of Truth The Concept of Our Great Power Historia ecclesiastica Henoch Quis rerum divin. heres sit Homilies Hypostasis of the Archons De Iside et Osiride Jubilees Contra Julianum Pelagianum Letter of Peter to Philip Septuagint Marsanes Metaphysica De motu animalium De mutatione nominum De natura deorum De opificio mundi Oratio ad Graecos On the Origin of the World Panarion De philosophia Letter to the Philadelphians Physica Pistis Sophia De posteritate Caini Praeparatio evangelica De principiis Protrepticus pseudo-Clementines Recognitions Refutatio omnium haeresium In Platonis rem publicam Revised Standard Version Sapientia Salomonis

abbreviations SibOr Silv Somn SophJChr StelesSeth Strom Suppl Test Reub TestTruth Theaet Thund Tim TracTrip TreatSeth TrimProt Tusc Zostr

xvii

Sibylline Oracles Silvanus de Somniis Sophia of Jesus Christ The Three Steles of Seth Stromateis Supplicatio Testament of Reuben Testimony of Truth Theaetetus Thunder, Perfect Mind Timaeus Tractatus Tripartitus Treatise of Seth Trimorphic Protennoia Tusculanae disputationes Zostrianos Journals, Serials, Reference Books

ABD ACPhQ ANRW BCNH BETL CC CH CRINT EncJud EPRO HSCP HTR IllinClSt JAC JECS JHPh JJS

The Anchor Bible Dictionary American Catholic Philosophy Quarterly Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt Bibliothèque Copte de Nag Hammadi Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Corpus Christianorum Corpus Hermeticum Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Encyclopaedia Judaica Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’empire Romain Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Harvard Theological Review Illinois Classical Studies Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of the History of Philosophy Journal of Jewish Studies

xviii JSJ JSNT NHC NHMS NHS NovTest NTA NTS NTT PGM PRW PTS RGG SBL SC TBN ThR ThZ TLZ TU VC VetTest WMANT WUNT ZNW ZPE ZThK

abbreviations Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of the New Testament Nag Hammadi Codex Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies Nag Hammadi Studies Novum Testamentum Schneemelcher-Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha New Testament Studies Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift Papyri Graecae Magicae Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft Patristische Texte und Studien Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart Society of Biblical Literature Sources Chrétiennes Themes in Biblical Narrative Theologische Rundschau Theologische Zeitschrift Theologische Literaturzeitung Texte und Untersuchungen Vigiliae Christianae Vetus Testamentum Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION: GNOSTIC INTERPRETERS

The APOCRYPHON OF JOHN In the Apocryphon (or Secret Book) of John1 we more than once come across the phrase, “It is not as Moses said (. . . .) but (thereupon a Gnostic explanation of the primordial event in question is given)”.2 This formula is characteristic of the approach to biblical traditions in ApJohn and in related Gnostic texts. In ApJohn, the corrections of the words of Moses are put into the mouth of Jesus Christ. The book claims to report an appearance of the exalted Christ to his disciple John on the Mount of Olives and to reveal Christ’s secret teachings. The first part of the revelation speaks of the eternal reality of the highest God3 and his hypostasized thoughts or qualities (the aeons). Thereupon—in a transition to the second part of the revelation— the Christ of ApJohn relates the tragic story of Sophia (“Wisdom”), one of God’s aeons, whose faulty behaviour led to the coming into existence of an inferior godhead.4 This godhead, Yaldabaoth, turns out to be the creator and chief ruler of the physical world. As such he is identified with the biblical creator God. From his position outside the divine world of light he generated several cosmic powers and angels. Christ concludes this section of his teaching with the following ironical statement:

1 M. Waldstein and F. Wisse, The Apocryphon of John. Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II,1; III,1; and IV,1 with BG 8502,2. 2 II 13.20; BG 45.9 (God’s Spirit moving upon the waters); II 22.22; BG 58.17; III 29.5 (Adam’s sleep); II 23.3; BG 59.17; III 29.22 (Adam’s rib); II 29.6; BG 73.4; III 37.23 (the redemption of Noah). 3 The expression “the highest God” (“the supreme God”) should not be misunderstood. It does not refer to the apex in a pantheon of divine beings but to a completely transcendent God who is categorically different from all other beings called “god”. Cf. M. Frede, “Monotheism and Pagan Philosophy”, and below, Ch. IX. 4 Cf. B.J. Lietaert Peerbolte, “The Wisdom of Solomon and the Gnostic Sophia”.

2

chapter one And he (the creator God) saw the creation and the numerous angels around him, who had sprung from him. And he said to them: “I am a jealous God (cf. Exod. 20:5; 34:14; Deut. 4:24; 5:9); there is no other God apart from me” (cf. Isa. 43:11; 44:6,8; etc.). But by stating this he indicated to the angels who attended him that another God does exist. For if there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous?5

Note that ego proclamations of the biblical God are quoted by the Gnostic Christ to expose the inferior qualities ( jealousy, ignorance, arrogance) of the creator or demiurge. The interest of the present study centres on the next segment of the revelation. To a certain extent, this segment, the last part of Christ’s teaching in ApJohn, can be viewed as a rewriting of the first chapters of Genesis. Here, Christ reveals to John, among other things, the truth about the creation of Adam and Eve, Paradise, Eve’s children, Noah and the Flood, and the descent of male angels to the daughters of men. As a rule, the biblical version of what happened in primordial times, or a literal understanding of the story in question, is criticized and retold. ApJohn, “the Gnostic Bible” as it is sometimes called in scholarly literature,6 survives in four Coptic manuscripts.7 Three of the fourthcentury Nag Hammadi codices open with this text. The fourth copy is part of another Coptic manuscript, probably dating from the fifth century, the so-called Berlin Codex.8 In addition, Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons summarizes a Greek text of the first main part of ApJohn in his work Adversus Haereses composed in about 180.9 Because of ApJohn’s distinction between a transcendent true God and an inferior demiurgical God—a distinction that indeed had farreaching consequences for its interpretations of Jewish Scripture and

5 II 13.5–13; BG 44.9–19. Biblical quotations are italicized. Cf. HypArch 94.19–21; OrigWorld 103.11–14; GosEg III 58.24–59.1; TestTruth 48.4f (cf. ch. VI); TreatSeth 64.19–26; TrimProt 43.35–44.2; ExcTheod 28; Irenaeus, AH I 5.4 (Valentinians); 29.4; 30.6 (Ophites); Hippolytus, Ref VII 25.3 (Basilides). 6 M. Tardieu, Écrits gnostiques: “la bible des antibiblistes”; 26: ‘la Bible gnostique par excellence’; cf. M.A. Williams, Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’, 8 and 198. 7 Cf. the synoptic text edition mentioned above, n. 1. 8 Abbreviated as BG (Berolinensis Gnosticus). 9 AH I 29. This part of Irenaeus’ work is preserved in a Latin translation. A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleau, Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hérésies, I. Irenaeus’ report provides us with a terminus ante quem for an early Greek version of the text.

introduction

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tradition—I propose the appellation “demiurgical-Gnostic” for this type of Gnostic literature.10 The LETTER OF PETER TO PHILIP The Letter of Peter to Philip is preserved in Nag Hammadi Codex VIII.11 The text includes a short sermon by Peter addressed to “his disciples”. The apostle begins by citing early kerygmatic formulae relating to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The traditional profession of faith is followed by a Gnostic interpretation: And he (Peter) was filled with holy spirit and spoke in this way: “Our illuminator, Jesus, [came] down And he was crucified. And he wore a crown of thorns And he put on a purple robe And he was [crucified] upon a cross And he was buried in a tomb And he rose from the dead. My brothers, Jesus is a stranger to this suffering. But we are the ones who have suffered through the transgression of the Mother (Sophia)”, etc.12

An early Christian tradition is cited and, thereupon, radically reinterpreted. Jesus is not a victim of the transgression of Sophia. As we are told elsewhere in this text, he came down into the world voluntarily in order to illuminate “the fallen seed”, “his own”.13 During

10 I prefer this appellation to “Sethianism” (H.-M. Schenke; it is not clear why ApJohn should be classed with the “Sethian” texts, see below, n. 34 and chap. VII, pp. 90f ), “classic-Gnostic literature” (B. Layton), and also to the designation “demiurgical-biblical” introduced by M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 265. Williams’ designation suggests that the Gnostics in question regarded the Jewish or Christian Bible as their scripture. “Demiurgical-Gnostic literature” is an outsider’s designation for it associates the Gnostics in question with the demiurgical God, a being which they detested. This designation makes sense even if the Greek term dhmiourgÒw does not occur in ApJohn and related Gnostic texts. Cf. F. Siegert, NagHammadi-Register, 232, and E. Thomassen, “The Platonic and the Gnostic ‘Demiurge’”. Otherwise, the current scholarly classifications of Gnostic texts are still highly tentative. 11 VIII,2 pp. 132–140. M.W. Meyer, The Letter of Peter to Philip; H.G. Bethge, Der Brief des Petrus an Philippus. The Greek original of the Coptic text was written during the last decades of the second century or the first half of the third century. 12 139.14–23. 13 Cf. 136.17f and 22f.

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his descent he had put on a mortal body, a product of the demiurgical God and his powers, so as not to be recognizable to these cosmic rulers.14 Although the Saviour descended into the lower world and, therefore, suffered, his suffering is not comparable to that of the Gnostics. Therefore Peter says in the same text that they, the apostles, as representatives of the Gnostics, have to suffer more than Jesus: “lf he, our Lord, suffered, how much (more) must we (suffer)?”15 What we find here is that the contents of an early orthodox tradition testifying to the suffering of Jesus are subsumed entirely into a Gnostic mythical thought pattern. In this mythical transformation, Christ is the illuminator from the transcendent world. The idea that he could suffer as a physical being is rejected explicitly. He is a stranger to this suffering. Although the main subject of the present study is the revisionary use of Genesis traditions in ApJohn and related texts, some attention will be paid to Gnostic reinterpretations and corrections of early Christian traditions, particularly traditions relating to the suffering and death of Jesus (see esp. chapters XI–XII). We will see basically the same hermeneutical strategy at work in both the Gnostic rewriting of Genesis stories and the revisionary interpretation of early Christian accounts of Jesus’ suffering and death. The Revisionary Power of a Gnostic Thought Pattern The authors of ApJohn and LetPetPhil read biblical and early Christian texts through the lens of their own Gnostic thought system. In itself this is not something unusual or illegitimate. Readers of religious and philosophical texts always face the task of integrating the information of the text with their own systems of values and with their own philosophies of life.16 The German literary theorist Hans Robert Jauß used the concept of “horizon of expectation” to elucidate the reception of texts by readers.17 He makes it clear that the horizon of expectation operates

14

136.20–22. 138.15–16. 16 N.A. Dahl, “The Arrogant Archon”, 698. 17 Literaturgeschichte als Provokation, 144–208; “The identity of the poetic text in the changing horizon of understanding”. Cf. D.W. Fokkema and E. Kunne-Ibsch, Theories 15

introduction

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as a frame of reference, without which the text is bound to remain meaningless. An important component of the horizon of expectation is one’s familiarity with other (oral and written) texts: readers and hearers assign meaning to a given text and evaluate this text in the light of what they know from other texts, especially those texts that have normative value to them or otherwise are held in high esteem.18 Indeed, the response of Gnostics to biblical and early Christian texts was greatly determined by the relationship of these texts to their own favourite traditions. The intertextual tension between the biblical texts and their Gnostic interpretations betrays that on essential points the thought structure of the interpreters differed from what they found in the texts. In many cases—not only in the event of Gnostics encountering a biblical or early-orthodox Christian text—the reader’s frame of reference has revisionary power. This could be illustrated with many interesting examples. I shall confine myself to just mentioning the free and highly creative use of Scripture by the apostle Paul,19 to Martin Luther’s understanding of what in his view are key passages in Paul’s epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans,20 and to feminist and other liberationist approaches to biblical texts.21 In all these cases we are dealing with readers interpreting their own religious texts. It remains to be seen to what extent the Gnostics in question regarded biblical and early-orthodox texts as their sacred literature. The biblical stories about the creation and the first generations of humanity and early accounts of Jesus’s passion and death acquired new symbolic meanings when they were connected with a Gnostic mythical thought pattern: the creator God of Genesis was transmuted into an incompetent and ignorant demiurge, and the suffering and

of Literature in the Twentieth Century, ch. 5 “The Reception of Literature: Theory and Practise of ‘Rezeptionsästhetik’”. 18 See also below, chap. XIV. 19 Cf. R.B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, esp. 105–121, 110: “the promise in the Genesis narrative—the land and numerous descendants—is supplanted altogether by a new reading of the promise, a reading that has no discernible warrant in the text”. 20 See esp. the seminal essay by Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”. 21 It is significant that E. Schüßler Fiorenza should call her emancipatory reading of the New Testament a “hermeneutics of suspicion”, In Memory of Her, xxiii and 56. Cf. A.C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, 411–62.

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vulnerable Jesus of the early passion accounts into the purely spiritual and therefore impassible revealer of the true God. Did the Critical Gnostic Approach to the Jewish Scriptures Originate in a Jewish Environment? The first part of the present volume (chapters II–VIII) focuses on the critical Gnostic interpretations of Genesis stories particularly in ApJohn. It seeks to explain why Gnostic myth-makers felt the need to disqualify the God of Genesis as an inferior demiurge and why they corrected and retold Moses’ accounts of his words and deeds the way they did. The answer sometimes given to these questions is that we are dealing with expressions of frustration and despair on the side of Jews who, faced with some crisis in history, felt abandoned by their God and finally turned away from their own tradition.22 This view is often combined with the assumption that the critical Gnostic approach to Jewish Scripture and tradition developed in “heterodox” or “peripheral” Jewish groups in Palestinian or trans-Jordan regions, or in schools of Hellenized Jews in the Diaspora, particularly in Alexandria.23 The theory of a Jewish background for the Gnostic myth-makers of ApJohn and related Gnostic texts is based on the following assumptions: a. The surviving Coptic versions represent relatively late stages in the literary history of these documents.24 This creates room for the supposition that, for instance, the frame story of ApJohn, speaking of an appearance of the Christian Saviour to his disciple John, was added at a later stage of the transmission of the text.25

22 B.A. Pearson, “Biblical Exegesis in Gnostic Literature”, Gnosticism, Judaism, 38: “it is apparent that the Gnostic phenomenon itself originates in a Jewish environment as an expression of alienation from (‘orthodox’) Judaism”. Cf. his article “Jewish Elements in Gnosticism”, Gnosticism, Judaism, 124–35 (discussed below). 23 G.A.G. Stroumsa, Another Seed, 9: “Gnosticism must have first appeared and developed—at least in its earlier phase—on the outskirts or fringes of Judaism”. Cf. the discussion of the thesis of Jewish origins in K.L. King, What is Gnosticism?, 175–90. 24 Cf. M. Krause, “The Christianization of Gnostic Texts”; H.M. Schenke, “The Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism”, 607; Dahl, “The Arrogant Archon”, 699; J.D. Turner, “Sethian Gnosticism: A Literary History”. 25 In like manner, some commentators consider the quotation of Eph. 6:12 in

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b. The parts of the texts that concern us here, the discussions and rewritings of biblical traditions, belong to the earlier versions or sources. c. These early versions or sources did not yet include distinctly Christian features.26 Scholars claim that the apparent familiarity of the Gnostic interpreters and their intended readers with biblical and Jewish traditions, combined with the supposed absence of specifically Christian features, suggests that the hypothetical early versions and sources originated in a Jewish environment.27 This view of the Jewish antecedents of the Gnostic myth is elaborated in a number of recent studies. I shall confine myself here to briefly discussing Birger A. Pearson’s article “Jewish Elements in Gnosticism and the Development of Gnostic Self-Definition”.28 This study has the great merit that it does not dwell upon isolated motifs or narrative ingredients but focuses on basic convictions (“the essential characteristics of the Gnostic self-understanding”). Pearson points out that one of the characteristic notions of the Gnostics behind ApJohn, HypArch, ApocAdam, and a few other documents, is their selfdefinition as the “seed,” “race” or “children of Seth”.29 He proposes that these ideas concerning Seth and his Gnostic posterity are ultimately based on a sophisticated exegesis of Gen. 4:25.

the opening section of HypArch (NHC II, 4 p. 86.23–25) and the frame story of SophJChr (NHC III, 4 and BG 3) as Christian additions. Cf. M. Krause, “Das literarische Verhältnis des Eugnostosbriefes zur Sophia Jesu Christi”; B. Barc, L’Hypostase des archontes, 45–7. 26 But B. Layton rightly observes that early Christians were able to read and write texts without clear references to Jesus Christ or to other distinctive marks of their own religion, The Gnostic Scriptures, 21. Otherwise, I will argue below, ch. II, that precisely the critical Gnostic interpretation of Jewish Scripture is a Christian feature. 27 Cf. K. King’s counter-argument: “Given that by the second century there is strong evidence that Jewish literature and hermeneutical traditions were well known among certain groups of non-Jews—for example, in certain philosophical-religious circles in Alexandria, by Marcion in Rome, and by Gentile Christians in Asia Minor, all of whom were engaged in anti-Jewish polemics—the thesis of Jewish origins of Gnosticism is not required to account for the central place of Jewish materials in Gnostic myth-making”, What is Gnosticism?, 188. 28 Gnosticism, Judaism, 124–35. 29 Cf. G.W. MacRae, “Seth in Gnostic Texts and Traditions”, 21. Note that in ApJohn the expression “the seed of Seth” is used only once, to wit in II 9.15 and in the parallel passages in BG 36.3–4 and III 13.21.

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But then Pearson makes the quite pertinent comment that the Gnostic use of the term “seed” and “race” includes other ideas, “by which it is possible to arrive at a deeper understanding of the Gnostic self-definition”.30 For, Pearson continues, the Gnostics saw themselves ultimately as nothing less than the “seed,” “race,” or “generation” of the highest God himself. He argues that with these and similar expressions “we are confronted with the heart and core of the Gnostic religion, the idea of the consubstantiality of the self with God”.31 I basically agree with these observations. But what Pearson does not consider is that the self-definition “the race of Seth” might be a secondary and contingent translation of what he calls “the heart and core of the Gnostic religion”, or, in my terminology, one of the basic elements of the thought pattern of Gnostic mythologizers. This is not unimportant, for Pearson connects the self-definition of Gnostics as the seed of Seth with the earliest stages of Gnostic history.32 If it is correct to draw a distinction between basic convictions and their expression in mythical language, this conclusion is not a matter of evidence.33 While it is clear that the self-definition “the race of Seth” has a biblical or Jewish connection,34 it is hard to see why this should also apply to the more basic idea of the divine origin and nature of the highest part of the human soul.35 We are able to trace the thought world of Gnostic mythopoets— the frame of reference within which they interpreted biblical and other non-Gnostic traditions—by analysing their texts. Actually, Pearson’s article is a good example of such an analysis, but I doubt that his observations lead to the conclusion that any of the basic convictions expressed in Gnostic literature developed from Jewish roots.

30

Ibid. 131. Ibid. 132. 32 Ibid. 133: “The dominant impulse of the early stages of Gnostic history was its attitude toward Judaism”; “it seems most plausible to conclude that the earliest Gnostics were Jewish intellectuals eager to redefine their own religious self-understanding (. . .)”; 134: “The essential feature of Gnosticism in its earliest history is its revolutionary attitude toward Judaism and Jewish traditions.” 33 For the contingent character of mythical language and the common thought structure underlying various narrations of a myth cf. C. Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, I, esp. 31–54, 206–31 (“The Structural Study of Myth”), and 277–323. 34 But note that Seth does not play a significant role in Jewish traditions. Cf. A.F.J. Klijn, Seth in Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Literature. 35 Cf. my discussion of G.W. MacRae’s article, “The Jewish Background”; below, ch. IV, and B.J. Lietaert Peerbolte, “The Wisdom of Solomon and the Gnostic Sophia”. 31

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Although I have strong doubts about the Jewish antecedents of the demiurgical-Gnostic myth, I do not go as far as Hans Jonas, one of the founding fathers of the modern study of the Gnostic thought world, who in fact makes a plea for the opposite view. In his opinion, the Gnostic myth-makers who incorporated biblical material to expose the incompetence and the wickedness of the creator and ruler of the world were motivated by anti-Jewish sentiments, or, in Jonas’s biting terminology, by a “spirit of vilification, of parody and caricature, of conscious perversion of meaning, wholesale reversal of value-signs, savage degrading of the sacred—of gleefully shocking blasphemy”.36 Jonas even uses the term “(metaphysical) anti-Semitism” to characterize the Gnostic treatment of biblical and Jewish traditions.37 While I share Jonas’s skepticism about the Jewish origin or background of the Gnostic myth, I wonder whether he is right in emphasizing the anti-Jewish character of the texts. Perversion of meaning is not an intrinsic quality of the relevant passages. Texts criticizing Moses’ accounts of the deeds and words of the creator-God are burdened with anti-Jewish—and anti-Christian!—connotations if they are connected with a horizon of expectation in which the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament, is a dominant factor. This must be presupposed in Jewish readers (and Gentile sympathizers with the Jewish tradition) in the ancient world as well as in any modern reader who is brought up in Western civilization, but the frame of reference of Gnostics may have been quite different. It was not determined by the Jewish Bible but by their own traditions. The myth of origins, including the rewritings of Genesis stories, confirmed Gnostic readers and hearers in their understanding of the demiurgical God and his devices, and it helped them to realize that they had basically nothing to fear from him.38

36 “Response to G. Quispel’s ‘Gnosticism and the New Testament’”, 287. See also id., Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, I, 216–23; The Gnostic Religion, 91–5. 37 Ibid., 288 with reference to R.McL. Wilson, The Gnostic Problem, 172–255, p. 184: “anti-Semitism may also have contributed to the depreciation of the God of the Jews”; 188: “the fact that the Demiurge is frequently equated with the God of the Old Testament suggests the influence of anti-Semitism.” Jonas surmises that the confrontations with Judaism took place very early, “perhaps even right from the beginning of the (Gnostic) movement” (289); cf. Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, 227–33; “Delimitation of the Gnostic Phenomenon”, 101f.; Dahl, “Arrogant Archon”, 706; N. Brox, Offenbarung, Gnosis, 52. 38 Dahl, 692: “paraphrase and reinterpretation of the early chapters of Genesis

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Although the polemical undertones of the Gnostic Genesis interpretations are evident (see chapter II), were these polemics directed against Jewish monotheists? For the time being, I would like to recall that we find the most violent attacks against the Jewish Bible, its God and its heroes in texts that were purportedly addressed to other groups of Christians39—Christian believers, that is, who held the Old Testament in high esteem.40 A Dual Hypothesis The present study does not start from the familiarity of Gnostic authors with biblical traditions but from the other side of the same picture, their critical treatment of these traditions. Critical, revisionary and resistant interpretation is likely to indicate that there is a gap between the thought pattern of the interpreter and the text as he or she understands it. If we bear this in mind we have no reason to connect the critical rewritings of biblical texts with any form of Judaism. It is more plausible that we are dealing with non-Jewish intellectuals with a background in Hellenistic schools of thought41 who evaluated biblical and other non-Gnostic traditions in the light of their own religio-philosophical world view. Where the information of the books of Moses was supposed to deviate from their favourite theological and anthropological ideas they apparently did not hesitate to correct or to reject the biblical accounts: “Is is not as Moses said (. . .)”. This hypothesis may give rise to some objections. Why would Gnostic authors with such a background have referred to biblical traditions? Why did they bother to correct Moses and not just ignore

made it possible to argue that they (the Gnostics) possessed a higher wisdom than did the creator of the world and that their inner self was of a higher nature than he”. See below, ch. XIV. 39 Notably TreatSeth (NHC VII,2) and TestTruth (NHC IX,3). 40 P. Nagel, “Die Auslegung der Paradieserzählung in der Gnosis”, in K.W. Tröger (ed.), Altes Testament-Frühjudentum-Gnosis, 49–70; H.G. Bethge, “Die Ambivalenz alttestamentlicher Geschichtstraditionen in der Gnosis”, esp. 104–7; B. Pearson, “Use, Authority and Exegesis of Mikra in Gnostic Literature”, 639–41 (= Pearson, The Emergence of the Christian Religion, 104–7). 41 Cf. A.D. Nock’s well-known statement, “Gnosticism is Platonism run wild”, “Gnosticism”, HTR 57 (1964), 266; H.J. Krämer, Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik, 223–64; H.J.W. Drijvers, “The origins of gnosticism”, 340–6; K. Rudolph, “Griechischhellenistische Ableitungsversuche”, 33–48.

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him?42 How can we explain that non-Jewish authors had detailed knowledge of biblical traditions? I will consider the possibility that the critical approach to biblical traditions originated in basically the same historical context as the Gnostic reactions to early orthodox accounts of Jesus’s suffering and death: while the latter texts developed from controversies among early Christians about the person and the mission of Jesus Christ, the critical approach to Genesis stories and other biblical texts and concepts may have originated from intra-Christian debates about the proper understanding of the Jewish Scriptures, the Old Testament.43 This would mean that the intellectuals behind demiurgical-Gnostic texts discussing biblical traditions were Christians. These Christians used biblical stories and concepts with a view to exposing the inferiority of the demiurgical God and the ignorance of those fellow Christians who continued to worship this God and to attach value to the texts testifying to his greatness and holiness. In his The Gnostic Scriptures, Bentley Layton likewise points to the Greek-philosophical undercurrent of what he calls classic Gnostic literature and to the Christian character of the surviving texts.44 While the double hypothesis of the present study is in substantial agreement with Layton’s position, it differs from the position held by Simone Pétrement in her monographic study Le Dieu séparé: les origines du gnosticisme.45 My main problem with her approach is that she does not sufficiently account for the wide variety of early Christian beliefs in the period before the end of the second century.46 I agree

42

I. Gruenwald, “Aspects of the Jewish-Gnostic Controversy”, 717. Gnostic as well as Patristic sources bear testimony to serious disagreements between Christian groups about these issues. More often than not, the criticism of the beliefs of the other party was put in polemical and accusatory language. Cf. K. Koschorke, Die Polemik der Gnostiker gegen das kirchliche Christentum, and below, chap. II. 44 Pp. 5 and 8: “The formulation of the Gnostic myth ultimately drew on Platonist interpretations of the myth of creation in Plato’s Timaeus, as combined with the book of Genesis.” But note that in demiurgical-Gnostic texts, the Genesis traditions are treated differently from interpretations of Plato’s creation myth. For the Christian character see p. 20: “the Gnostics were a sect or movement of Christianity”, and passim. 45 Engl. transl.: A Separate God. The Origins and Teachings of Gnosticism. 46 Her approach can be compared to that of the ancient heresiologists who maintained that the Gnostic doctrines deviated from the allegedly one and only Christian truth and therefore must be qualified as secondary aberrations. Cf. K. King, What is Gnosticism?, 136, n. 115. 43

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with Pétrement that the authors and the intended readers of the relevant texts were Christians, but I do not see reasons to assume that their beliefs evolved from Pauline or Johannine ideas or from other ideas expressed in texts that were later canonized.47 Rather it is part of my hypothesis that the Gnostics authors under discussion were guided by Greek-Hellenistic ways of thinking before and after they came to believe in Jesus (as a messenger of the fully transcendent God of their philosophical tradition).48 They came from a different background and drew from different sources than other early Christians. The Scope of this Investigation The syncretistic character of ApJohn and other demiurgical-Gnostic writings cannot be denied. But qualifying them as syncretistic does not relieve us of the task of finding out what motivated the authors in their adoption and adaptation of heterogeneous materials. The greater part of the present book is a search for the basic convictions of the Gnostics behind the texts and for the organizing principle in their mythical argumentation. Chapters II–VIII will concentrate on ApJohn, more precisely on those parts of the book in which the Gnostic Christ refers to biblical traditions.49 I hope that this study will shed some more light on the ideological background of the intellectuals who composed and read ApJohn and comparable demiurgical-Gnostic texts, on the historical context and function of their critical Bible interpretations, and

47 A Separate God, 10: the attribution of creation to an inferior and blind Demiurge “was brought about within and by Christianity, the crucifixion of Christ, the Pauline theology of the cross”; 24: “the Gnostics of the first half of the second century wished to be faithful to Paul and John, and (. . .) in certain ways they were more faithful to them than their orthodox contemporaries.” 48 It is attractive to see in the “pneumatics” addressed by Paul in his first Letter to the Corinthians remote predecessors of second-century Gnostic intellectuals. 49 This examination belongs to what W.C. van Unnik defines as the first phase of scholarly research after the publication of the documents, “Gnosis und Judentum”, 69: “Fest steht jedenfalls, dass man jede Schrift für sich zu betrachten hat und nicht alles unter einen Generalnenner ‘gnostisch’ bringen kann. Was hier als erste Phase der Erforschung nach der an sich schon schwierigen Veröffentlichungen geschehen muss, ist die genaue Exegese und Auswertung jeder einzelnen Schrift.” Cf. more recently the remark by E. Pagels, “After fifty years of Nag Hammadi study we are finally learning (. . .) to drop generalizations (. . .) and speak instead about specific texts” (“Ritual in the Gospel of Philip”, 280).

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on their relations to emerging mainstream Christianity. The interest will not only be focused on the Gnostics behind the texts as authors but also and first and foremost as readers: how did they understand biblical texts or, for that matter, second-hand interpretations of biblical texts? Chapter II deals with the historical context and the polemical function of the critical Genesis interpretations in ApJohn, chap. III with the philosophical undercurrent of ApJohn’s mythical arguments, chap. IV with the narrative scheme of the Gnostic myth as it is presented in this document. Chapters V–VIII examine interpretations and rewritings of individual Genesis stories. Chapter IX discusses Gnostic theology, starting from the question of whether Gnostic authors also referred to Old Testament texts and concepts when they spoke about their fully transcendent true God. Chapters X–XII deal with Gnostic interpretations of early Christian texts and traditions about the teaching of Jesus, and about his suffering and crucifixion. Chapter XIII discusses the use of Johannine language in some Gnostic texts. An epilogue (XIV) is devoted to a discussion of the ways in which Gnostic texts were understood—and are understood—by various categories of readers. I add an appendix about the baptists of Mani’s youth.

PART ONE

GENESIS INTERPRETATIONS

CHAPTER TWO

POLEMICAL CONTEXT AND FUNCTION (APJOHN )

What prompted the Gnostic intellectuals behind ApJohn to use and reinterpret biblical concepts and narrative materials? A closer examination of the possible function and the historical context of ApJohn’s Genesis interpretation might help us to answer this question. The Frame Story of APJOHN and the Teaching it Conveys I shall begin with a literary-critical issue.1 It is usual in scholarly literature to distinguish the actual mythical teaching of our text from its narrative frame story speaking about a revelation of the exalted Christ to his disciple John.2 I have no doubt that this distinction makes sense, although in some cases it might be difficult to determine where the earlier teaching ends and where the secondary frame story begins.3 My doubts, however, begin when scholars argue that while the frame story is obviously Christian, the actual teaching of the myth is pre-Christian Jewish.4 This argument is based on the questionable assumption that we do not find Christian features in

1

Cf. above, ch. I, pp. 6f. The frame story consists of the opening and concluding parts of the text and, furthermore, of those passages where questions posed by John seem to interrupt the discourse: II 13.17–21; BG 45.5–11 (question and answer about Gen. 1:2, the moving of the Spirit/Sophia); II 22.9–15; BG 58.1–7 (question and answer about Gen. 3, the role of the serpent in Paradise); II 22.21–25; BG 58.14–20 (question and answer about Gen. 2:21, Adam’s sleep/oblivion); II 25.16–35, II 27.31–35; BG 64.13–71.2, 71.2–5 (dialogue about the redemption of the souls and John’s question about the origin of the adversary spirit); II 29.6–8; BG 73.4–7 (question and answer about Gen. 6–8, the redemption of Noah). Irenaeus, who summarized the first part of ApJohn (above, p. 2) apparently did not yet know the opening frame story. 3 This applies, for example, to the formula “It is not as Moses said (. . .)”. Do all four occurrences (cf. above n. 2) belong to the frame story? 4 For the challenged view see in particular B.A. Pearson, “Jewish Elements in Gnosticism”, discussed above, ch. I, pp. 7f; id., “Apocryphon Johannis Revisited”. Cf. also M. Waldstein’s recent introduction to his German translation of ApJohn, in H.M. Schenke, H.G. Bethge, U. Kaiser, Nag Hammadi Deutsch, vol. I, 96–101. 2

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the body of the text.5 I would like to suggest that this reasoning ignores the very function and the Sitz im Leben of the critical Genesis interpretations of ApJohn. Let us examine the function and the purpose of the frame story before turning to the teaching it conveys. The long monologue of ApJohn turns into a revelation dialogue when the mythical teaching begins to run parallel with the story of the first book of Moses.6 Here, the teaching is interrupted by questions posed by John about the meaning of words of Moses. In his answers, Christ typically defends Gnostic views of the primeval events in question, either by correcting Moses’ words or by interpreting them freely and allegorically. From these passages we not only learn how the Gnostics of ApJohn evaluated the Old Testament but also how they judged other Genesis interpretations. This may be illustrated by the first question and answer. Christ tells how Sophia, after the coming into being of her son Yaldabaoth, began “to move about” because she became aware of her misconduct. Thereupon John, the narrator, interrupts Christ’s mythical teaching: But and No, and

I said, “Lord, what does ‘moving about’ mean?” And he smiled said, “Do you think it is as Moses said, ‘above the waters’ (Gen. 1:2)? but when she saw the wickedness that had come into existence, the theft which her son had committed, she repented.”7

Moses’ account is rejected as a superficial, if not erroneous, understanding of the event in question. Thereupon Christ gives an elaborate explanation of what really happened. The explicit appeal to the Christian Saviour leads one to suspect that the Gnostics behind this part of the text carried on a controversy with other Christians about the truthfulness and the correct interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis.8

5 B.A. Pearson, “Jewish Sources”, p. 461: when one removes the framework, “one is left with material in which nothing ‘Christian’ remains”; “the basic material is a product of Jewish Gnosticism”; Ph. Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue, New York etc. 1980, p. 93: ApJohn “is not yet involved in debating specific points of Christian teaching”; H.M. Schenke, “The Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism”, in B. Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, 611: “no specifically Christian traits” in the interior of the writing; Waldstein, Nag Hammadi Deutsch, 98: the organizing principle is Hellenistic-Jewish, not specifically Christian. 6 See further ch. IV, pp. 48–57. 7 II 13.17–23; BG 45.5–13. Biblical quotations are italicized. 8 ApJohn presents itself as an esoteric writing; it does not directly address non-

polemical context and function

(APJOHN )

19

I shall now proceed to the actual teaching. It is my contention that the frame story and the teaching it conveys have basically the same background. Not only the frame story’s reference to Christ but also the criticism of Genesis and other biblical texts and concepts in the body of the text have their Sitz im Leben in intra-Christian debates – disagreements, that is, about the value of the Old Testament as a source of divine revelation and about the identity of the biblical creator God. This means that ApJohn’s critical use of the books of Moses is a Christian feature. Two passages outside the frame story are particularly revealing in this respect. The first is the exposure of the arrogance of the Demiurge to which I referred on the first pages of this book. The ego proclamations of the biblical God (“I am a jealous God”; “there is no other God apart from me”) are commented on in the following way: by stating this he indicated to the angels who attended him that another God does exist. For if there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous?9

Apparently the ironical remark about God’s jealousy was meant to defy, if not to ridicule, the monotheistic belief in the biblical creator and ruler of the world. Was this polemical comment originally worded by Jews ( Jews who had dissociated themselves from their traditional faith) or are dealing with an attack articulated by Gnostic Christians against other Christians who believed that the God revealed by Jesus was none other than the biblical creator of heaven and earth? The second instance is a passage in ApJohn’s story of the creation of Eve. Moses’ account of this story is rejected as too simple an interpretation of what really happened. The creator God did not just cause a physical sleep to fall over Adam. He allegedly did something more serious: he laid a veil over his “perception”—apparently the spiritual power in Adam—so that he could not see and understand what happened to him. Thereupon Isa. 6:10 is quoted: For indeed he (the creator God) said through the prophet, “I will make their hearts heavy that they may not understand and may not see”.10

Gnostic Christians. This does not preclude that the polemical Genesis interpretations originated in controversies with non-Gnostics. Cf. the discussion of earlier versions and sources of ApJohn in ch. I, pp. 6f. 9 II 13.9–13; BG 44.15–19. 10 II 22.25–28; BG 59.1–6.

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The obvious suggestion is that such treatment of Adam was to be expected from this God. The reference to a proof text from Scripture could make sense as an argument ad hominem in a debate with opponents who attached value to the testimony of the biblical prophet.11 The opponents are blamed because they neglected the warning of the prophet (for the sake of the argument his words are taken seriously), and continued to worship the demiurgical God and thus to live in ignorance. The authors did not confine themselves to presenting their own Gnostic story. They contrasted their view of what happened explicitly with—and defended it against—a literal understanding of the biblical text. Why should we disconnect the polemics of this passage from the controversy expressed in the frame story and attribute it to an early Jewish exegete?12 Various early sources inform us about uncertainties, differences of opinion and quite fundamental discussions in secondcentury Christianity concerning the meaning and value of the ancient Scriptures.13 Apparently the main problem was how to relate the Old Testament to the new Christian revelation. I propose that we explain ApJohn’s polemical attitude towards the books of Moses and the prophets from debates among second century Christians about the status of the Old Testament and the identity of the biblical creator God, and, consequently, that the frame story did not turn a preChristian Jewish text into a revelation by the Christian Saviour but that it merely added the authority of Christ to a Gnostic-Christian text. Early Christian Ideas About the Meaning and Value of the Old Testament It is not my intention to discuss all the relevant sources in detail. A brief comparison with some of them will be sufficient to show that the critical approach of our text to the Old Testament is not an iso-

11

O. Wintermute, “A Study of Gnostic Exegesis of the Old Testament”, 250f. G.A. Stroumsa, Another Seed, explains the emergence of Gnosticism from Jewish exegetical problem solving, especially problems in the first chapters of Genesis. Cf. also M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 64–79. 13 Von Campenhausen calls the relevant chapter of his Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel: “Die Krise des alttestamentlichen Kanons im zweiten Jahrhundert” (The Formation of the Christian Bible: “The Crisis of the Old Testament Canon in the Second Century”). 12

polemical context and function

(APJOHN )

21

lated case. This comparison will also bring to light the distinct features of ApJohn’s demiurgical-Gnostic hermeneutics. Understanding the Scriptures after Christ The conviction that the Christian experience alone is the clue to understanding the true meaning of the Jewish Scriptures is expressed in many Christian texts of the first centuries, even in the earliest documents, the Pauline Epistles. In 2 Cor. 3:14, for instance, the Apostle writes that it is only in Christ that the full truth of the Scriptures is unveiled: “to this very day, when they (the people of Israel) hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil14 is still there, since only in Christ it is set aside.”15 Paul’s interpretation of the Sarah and Hagar story (Gen. 16 and 21) in Gal. 4:21–31 is particularly daring. He uses this Genesis story to prove that the Torah, correctly understood, rejects lawkeeping! Paul achieves this counterreading, in which Isaac and Ishmael are presented as prefigurations of Christians and Jews respectively, by small adaptations of the biblical text (Gen. 21:10 LXX) and by highlighting a minor feature of the story, the free/slave polarity of the mothers, at the expense of the circumcised/uncircumcised status of the sons.16 The New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews claims that the meaning of the Jewish Scriptures consists of their foreboding and foreshadowing the definitive redemption which was brought by Christ. The author quotes the words of the prophet Jeremiah about God’s promise of a new covenant ( Jer. 31:31–34) in order to demonstrate that the old covenant was inadequate and imperfect.17 Paul and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews draw a distinction between the periods before and after Christ.18 They argue

14 The veil that Moses put on to prevent the people from seeing God’s glory on his face. 15 Cf. 3:6: “the letter kills, but the Spirit (of Christ) gives life”. 16 C.K. Barrett, “The Allegory of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar in the Argument of Galatians”; R.B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, 111–8. Paul’s counterreading is a very interesting example of the revisionary power of a “horizon of expectation”. Cf. above, ch. I, pp. 5f. For more examples of Paul’s creative use of scriptural evidence see R.W. Greer, “The Christian Bible and Its Interpretation”, 134f, and Hays, passim. 17 Hebr. 8:8–13; cf. 10:15–18. 18 Von Campenhausen, Entstehung, 120f (Formation, 101f.); J. Carleton Paget, The Epistle of Barnabas, 258.

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that in the light of the Christ event, the temporary and unsatisfactory nature of the laws and institutions of the old covenant became manifest. A similar chronological distinction is drawn by the Christian apologist Justin Martyr, who was active in Rome in the middle of the second century, although he is much more critical about the Jewish people than the New Testament authors. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin claims that the old covenant was made with the Jews not because they were a special people but because they were sinners whom God wished to punish for their idolatrous behaviour.19 He states that the ancient laws and commandments had a remedial value, and that with the coming of Christ, their function came to an end. Through Christ, Christians have the grace to understand the Jewish Scriptures.20 The Old Testament as a Christian book The author of the Epistle of pseudo-Barnabas21 goes one step further in his insistent claim that the Jewish people never possessed the covenant because it misunderstood God’s promises and commandments from the very beginning. He bases this opinion, among other things, on a literal interpretation of the story of the tablets of the covenant (Exod. 32:19), arguing that when Moses received the tablets, he immediately threw them away so that they were broken to pieces, “in order that the covenant of the beloved Jesus might be sealed in our hearts”.22 So the Jews lost their covenant before it was made with them. Contrary to his habit, “Barnabas” takes this story literally. As a rule he uses an allegorical method to explain Old Testament passages.

19 Dial 18: The ritual laws and observances were imposed on the Jews because of their transgressions and their hardness of heart; cf. 19; 27. B.D. Ehrman, After the New Testament, 106–15. 20 Dial 29: “they (quotations of Moses, David, Zechariah) are contained in your Scriptures, or rather not yours, but ours. For we believe them, but you, though you read them, do not grasp the spirit which is in them.” See the discussion of Justin’s Dial in R.A. Greer, “The Christian Bible and its Interpretation”, 142–5, and M. Mach, “Justin Martyr’s Dialogus cum Tryphone Iudaeo and the Development of Christian Anti-Judaism”, in O. Limor and G.G. Stroumsa, Contra Iudaeos. Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews, 27–47. 21 The most probable date for this writing is 130–32 C.E. See R. Hvalvik, The Struggle for Scripture, 23; J. Loman, “The Letter of Barnabas in early second-century Egypt”. 22 Barn 4.7–8.

polemical context and function

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For instance, he suggests that circumcision, Sabbath, sacrifices, etc., have no “fleshly” meaning but rather point beyond themselves to eternally valid moral attitudes. This point of view distinguishes the author of EpBarn from the authors discussed above, for it means that the ancient commandments and institutions made—and still make— perfect sense provided that they are understood in the right (Christian) way, whereas according to the Apostle Paul, the author of Hebrews, and Justin Martyr, the Old Testament laws lost their original meaning and function with the coming of Christ. Because the author of EpBarn considers the Old Testament an essentially Christian book, his interest in these texts is greater than that of several other early Christian authors.23 In the above-mentioned sources, Old Testament passages are used and reinterpreted with a view to demonstrating the superiority of Christianity over Judaism.24 These sources certainly do not challenge the monotheistic worship of the biblical God. Rather, they attempt to show that the worship of this God is better warranted in Christianity than in Judaism, hence their critical interest in biblical texts speaking about Israel’s election and about the means of salvation offered by the Jewish religion.25 ApJohn’s choice of biblical texts is different. This Gnostic document has no special interest in the religious institutions of Judaism. Its central issue is the nature of the biblical creator God – the God, that is, who is worshipped by Jews and (non-Gnostic) Christians alike. As we shall see in more detail in ch. IV, ApJohn teaches that the biblical texts, correctly read, expose the jealousy, the arrogance, and

23 The author of The Letter to Diognetus dismisses the Jewish laws and observances as irrational and ridiculous (see esp. 3–4) without making any attempt to interpret their Old Testament textual base. In the letters of Bishop Ignatius of Antiochia (early second century) we only find five or six references to the Old Testament altogether. In Phld 8,2 the bishop takes offence at members of the Christian community in Philadelphia who argued that for them the oral message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not enough, and that they only accepted what was written in the ancient Scriptures. See H.A. Bakker, Exemplar Domini, 51–55. For other early Christian instances of silence and relative lack of interest in the Jewish Scriptures see Von Campenhausen, Entstehung, 76, n. 2, and 86–88 (Formation, 62, n. 2, and 71–73), and Simonetti, Biblical Interpretation, 12f. 24 In I Clement, the Old Testament is also treated as an exclusively Christian book. In this text there are no traces of anti-Jewish polemics. 25 It is possible that the authors had reason to fear that members of their community were tending to convert, or to return, to Judaism. See esp. R. Hvalvik, The Struggle for Scripture, 319–21.

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the ignorance of the creator God, and that they reveal how this God and his cosmic allies repeatedly tried to detain spiritual humanity in their dark regions. On the other hand, however critical ApJohn may be, it does refer to the Old Testament. Actually, ApJohn applies basically the same allegorical method of interpretation to the biblical texts as the other early Christian writings quoted above. Rejection of the Jewish Bible It is interesting to compare Marcion’s attitude towards the Jewish Scriptures. Unlike the authors of ApJohn and related Gnostic texts, this Christian teacher, who was active in Rome shortly before the time of Justin,26 did not resort to allegorical exegesis in his approach to the Scriptures. In effect, Marcion’s judgement was even more negative than that of the Gnostics, for he denied any religious authority to the biblical texts, which he considered as literal testimonies to the blindness and the cruelty of the creator and ruler of the present world.27 Marcion’s lack of interest in the Jewish Scriptures is not a consequence of his theological views, which were not essentially different from the dual theology of the demiurgical Gnostics behind ApJohn, but must rather be explained from his anthropological and soteriological ideas.28 As we have seen, the authors of ApJohn were convinced that the innermost core of the human soul is of divine origin and nature, and that this divine substance is destined to return to its home in the hypercosmic realm of the highest God. But according to Marcion, there is nothing truly divine in human beings. In his opinion, Gen. 1:26 means that man was created in the image and likeness of the demiurgical God, and he explained Gen. 2:7 as the breathing of the substantia of this God into man.29 It is arguable that the transcendent God of the Gnostics had an interest in saving

26

Marcion was banished from the church in 144. Cf. Tertullianus, AdvMarc I

19.2. 27 With reference to Isa. 45:7, Marcion stated that the biblical God also created evil things; Tertullian, AdvMarc I 2.2. See Harnack, Marcion, 271f.; E.P. Meijering, Tertullian contra Marcion, 11f. 28 B. Aland, “Marcion”, 433f. For the different attitude towards the Old Testament of Marcion’s former pupil Apelles see Von Harnack, Marcion, 177–96 and 404*–20*; É. Junod, “Les attitudes d’Apelles”. 29 Cf. Tertullian, AdvMarc II 5.1.

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spiritual humanity, for he was saving a lost portion of his own light substance. Marcion, on the other hand, could maintain that the saving action of his true God was mere grace as there was no reason at all for this God to concern himself with the fate of humanity. According to Marcion, the Saviour God revealed himself totally unexpectedly in Christ.30 Indeed, the Gnostic mythopoets were facing a more difficult task. Unlike Marcion, they were greatly interested in some of the issues dealt with in the Jewish writings, particularly in the stories about the origin of humanity. But their beliefs deviated from what they found in these writings and from the understanding of the relevant biblical accounts by other Christians. For this reason they felt obliged to compare, to revise, and, if need be, to reject biblical texts and their ordinary Christian interpretations.31 More and less valuable passages in the Scriptures We find yet another approach to the meaning and value of the Old Testament in The Letter to Flora, a brief treatise written by the Valentinian teacher Ptolemy to a Christian woman who was apparently willing to be initiated into the Valentinian doctrine.32 Like the majority of early Christian authors—but differently from the mythopoets of ApJohn—Ptolemy is primarily concerned with the Old Testament laws. His point of departure is the disparity of this legislation. Ptolemy rejects the ordinary Christian belief that the whole complex of biblical laws originated with the perfect God because he regards some of the laws as unjust. It would seem that he is even more opposed to the belief that all the Old Testament laws were inspired by God’s

30 The Gnostics used to trace their special knowledge back to secret traditions, while Marcion rejected oral tradition altogether; he relied solely on writings associated with the name of Paul. See G. May, “Marcion in Contemporary Views”, 146. 31 To the first Christians, who were Jews, the belief in one God who is the creator of heaven and earth must have been self-evident. In the course of the second century this belief was for the first time given explicit expression because it was challenged by philosophers as well as by Gnostic Christians and Marcionites. Cf. e.g. Irenaeus, AH III 1.2. 32 The text is preserved in Epiphanius, Pan 33.3–7. Edition with commentary: G. Quispel, Ptolemée, Lettre à Flora, 2nd ed. 1966. Ptolemy was active in Rome shortly after the middle of the second century. For the chronology of his teaching in relation to that of Marcion and Justin see G. Lüdemann, “Zur Geschichte des ältesten Christentums in Rom”.

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adversary, the devil,33 for, Ptolemy argues, a wicked being could not inspire laws that abolish injustice.34 The first part of his solution is that there must be an intermediate God, who is neither perfect nor entirely evil. Ptolemy identifies this God with the biblical creator God. But the acceptance of this intermediate God can still not explain the disparity of the laws. In a second step, Ptolemy argues that apart from the laws inspired by the demiurgical God, the Old Testament contains laws introduced by Moses, and laws that were added by the Elders after Moses.35 Furthermore, within the category of laws inspired by the biblical God he distinguishes three subcategories: laws that are pure but imperfect (they were not abolished but fulfilled by Christ),36 laws that Christ abolished,37 and, finally, the ritual laws that Christ gave a new spiritual meaning.38 Ptolemy’s text deserves more detailed attention than can be given to it here. His hermeneutical reasoning is very transparent and for all the steps in his argument he refers explicitly to teachings of Jesus and the apostles, particularly Paul. In this connection mention should also be made of a hermeneutical approach to Old Testament texts that was not specifically connected with the apparent tension between Old Testament and Christian revelation. Already in the centuries before the Christian era, Jewish as well as pagan authors had tried to account for problem passages in their venerated literature, notably passages that seem to attribute human properties and ways of conduct to divine beings.39 The more current solution was to argue that the texts in question should not be taken literally but understood allegorically in some moral or spiritual sense. Another solution was to assume that the challenged passages did not belong to the original text but were falsely interpolated. Ptolemy’s hermeneutical teaching can be regarded as a subtle and complex variant of the latter idea.

33 Von Campenhausen, Entstehung, 99 and 104, n. 138 (Formation, 83 and 87, n. 138); Lüdemann, “Zur Geschichte des ältesten Christentums”, 107. Differently B. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, 307f. 34 3.4–5. 35 4.2, elaborated in some detail in 4.4–14. 36 5.3: the ten commandments. 37 5.4–7: the lex talionis. 38 5.8–13. 39 For a discussion see W. Horbury, “Old Testament Interpretation in the Writings of the Church Fathers”, and M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 64–79. Cf. also below, ch. VI, pp. 79f.

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According to the pseudo-Clementine writings,40 it is thanks to Christ that true scriptural passages can be distinguished from forged insertions.41 But note that in this literature, Christ is regarded as the last manifestation of the True Prophet who previously was present in—or appeared to—Adam, the Patriarchs, and Moses.42 There is no tendency to uprate the Christian message to the detriment of the Old Testament revelation. It is even possible that the theory of the false pericopes was originally meant to defend the Old Testament against attacks by Gnostics, Marcionites, and pagans.43 Conclusion Just like other early Christians, ApJohn’s mythopoets were convinced that the true significance of the Jewish Scriptures was disclosed when they were read in the light of the Christian revelation. The agreement is, however, purely formal because early Christians had very divergent ideas about the actual content and meaning of the revelation brought by Christ.44 A basic element in the demiurgical-Gnostic, the Marcionite, and Ptolemy’s Valentinian understanding of the Christian message was the conviction that Christ revealed another God than the Old Testament creator and ruler of the world. Obviously this conviction, which led to very critical evaluations of the Old Testament,45 was not shared by the authors of the other writings discussed above. Yet these authors, too, took great liberties in interpreting Old Testament texts. The intention was to contrast their Christian interpretation with the traditional Jewish understanding. This induced

40 The surviving versions of the ps.-Clem. Homilies and Recognitions date from the fourth century but they use sources that are likely to go back to the second and third centuries. See J. Wehnert, “Abriss der Entstehungsgeschichte des pseudoklementinischen Romans”, 230f; F. Stanley Jones, “Pseudo-Clementines”, 1061f. 41 Hom III 49.2. See G. Strecker, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen, 166–87, there 167, and id., “Kerygmata Petrou” in W. Schneemelcher (ET: R.McL. Wilson), NTA, 533–5. Rec X 29 seems to reject allegorical methods of interpretation. 42 Hom III 17.1 and 20.1–2. Strecker, Judenchristentum, 145–53. 43 Strecker, 167–71. 44 See Luttikhuizen, De veelvormigheid van het vroegste christendom. 45 Ptolemy’s attitude towards the Old Testament and its God is less negative because he did not regard the Old Testament God as an demonic figure but as an intermediate God. A similar distinction of three Gods occurs in HypArch, a text which in other respects is closely related to ApJohn, cf. H.M. Schenke, “The Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism”; B. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 5–214 (“Classic Gnostic Literature”).

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these authors to focus on those parts of the Scriptures on which Jews used to base their distinct traditions. The concentration on Genesis is a characteristic Gnostic feature. It must first of all be explained from the Gnostic interest in protological issues. But we noticed that the mythopoets of ApJohn did not use Genesis traditions for the sole purpose of completing and embellishing their stories. They accompanied their references to Moses’ accounts and to other biblical traditions with ironical and polemical comments apparently directed to monotheistic worshippers of the biblical God. The appeal to the authority of Christ in the (secondary) frame story proves that at least in the present versions, the polemical passages were levelled by Christians at other Christians. It is not difficult to connect this controversy with a specific situation in second-century Christianity. The rare surviving sources show that in that early period, there was much divergence of opinion among Christians about the meaning and value of the Old Testament. For this reason it is unnecessary, if not far-fetched, to hypothesize a fully different background for the critical references to biblical traditions in the body of the text. In discussions with other Christians, Gnostic Christians quoted, corrected, and rejected biblical texts with a view to demonstrating the superiority of their ideas and the superficiality of a Christian belief based on a literal understanding of the Old Testament. Apparently Gnostic Christians were able to discern some truth in the Old Testament, but in their opinion, this truth manifests itself only if the texts are understood in a special Gnostic way.46 If we are able to explain the critical revision of Old Testament concepts and narrative items in ApJohn from a situation in early Christianity, there is no need to trace this phenomenon back to a development within Judaism. Rather these texts were worded when conflicts arose between Gnostics with a background in Hellenistic schools of philosophy who had accepted Jesus Christ as a messenger of their supreme God, and other Christian groups about the revelatory value of the Old Testament and about the relation of the biblical God to the God revealed by Jesus Christ.

46

Cf. P. Nagel, “Die Auslegung der Paradieserzählung”, 50.

CHAPTER THREE

PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT PATTERN (APJOHN )

In the introductory chapter, I made the general suggestion that the critical Gnostic revision of biblical traditions is a consequence of the integration of these traditions within a Hellenistic-Greek philosophical thought pattern. In this chapter, I will try to be more specific. Once again my exploration is focused on ApJohn.1 I propose that in the theological and anthropological views expressed in this text we find features of a form of Platonism that was influenced by distinctly Aristotelian ideas. I begin with a brief overview of the most relevant views. In ApJohn a strict distinction is made between the supreme or true God (and his hypostasized thoughts or qualities) and the demiurgical God Yaldabaoth. The true God, the Invisible Spirit, is conceptualized as a fully transcendent meta-cosmic entity. He is not the creator and ruler of the lower world. In sharp contrast, the demiurgical God and the archontic powers engendered by him are imagined as cosmic beings; their nature is not spiritual but “psychic”. These archontic powers are the rulers of the lower world. ApJohn suggests an antagonistic rather than a hierarchical type of relationship between the Invisible Spirit and the cosmic rulers.2 As we will see in the next chapter, the coming into being of Yaldabaoth was not caused or intended by the true God; rather this was the result of a trespass or an error on a lower level within the divine realm. The anthropology of ApJohn runs parallel with this dual theology. The text reports that the seven planetary rulers moulded the psychic component of humanity out of their own substance. Therefore, the human soul is consubstantial with the cosmic Gods, which enables

1

I have borne in mind the possibility that Gnostic writings have different intellectual backgrounds. Cf. E. Thomassen’s recent argument for a Neo-Pythagorean connection of a central aspect of Valentinian Gnosticism, “The derivation of matter in monistic Gnosticism”. See also S. Emmel, “The Gnostic Tradition in Relation to Philosophy”. 2 G.A.G. Stroumsa, Another Seed, 172.

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them to control the passions of the soul. The shared substance is defined as “psychic” but somehow it is also imagined as somatic, for it is reported that each of the cosmic gods contributed to the psychic body (one of them moulded psychic bone, another psychic flesh, etc.)3 When Adam’s soul-body was created, this psychic creature received a portion of divine light power. It is important to note that the pneumatic element in humanity was not created; rather it originated from the meta-cosmic realm.4 Consequently, human beings are consubstantial with the fully spiritual transcendent God in the innermost centre of their souls. Although the divine light substance is present in all human beings,5 this does not imply that all human beings belong to the “immovable race” of the Gnostics. Quite likely, the idea is that human beings received the divine “power” as a potential that needs to be awakened and has to develop. As a result of being imprisoned in darkness, the divine power in human beings is in a condition of sleep and ignorance until it is awakened by a saving call from the metacosmic world of light. The stories of the creation of the psychic body and the reception of the divine light power are followed by the story of the creation of the hylic body. This body, too, was moulded by the cosmic rulers. However, they did not compose it from their own “psychic” substance but from the four sublunary elements. The text does not discuss the origin of the four elements. The idea of a meta-cosmic God who has no dealings with the creation and does not rule over the lower world might reflect Aristotelian teaching. The same applies to the idea that there is something divine in humanity that was not created but received directly from the transcendent God, and to the idea that this divine element is a human potential that needs awakening and development. The idea of a human soul-body of the same substance as that of the cosmic rulers also suggests an Aristotelian background.6

3 Cf. II 19.5–6 where mention is made of the completion of “the psychic and the hylic body”; II 19.12: “the psychic body”. 4 Yaldabaoth was just its temporary vehicle; he certainly is not the creator of this component of the human being. 5 Cf. II 26.12–15; BG 67. 4–7: “the power enters into every human being, for without it no one can stand”. 6 Needless to say, Aristotelian ideas were merged with several heterogeneous traditions. Suffice it to mention the idea that the supreme Deity and its aeons have

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A few preliminary observations are in order before I highlight some aspects of Aristotelian philosophy that may shed light on the above ideas. These observations relate to the reception of Aristotle’s philosophy in Late Antiquity and to the adoption of Aristotelian ideas by Platonic philosophers. Aristotelian Philosophy in Post-Classical Antiquity We are not concerned here with the teachings of the historical Aristotle, however fascinating they may be as an object of scholarly investigation, but rather with Aristotelian ideas as they were transmitted and interpreted in philosophical schools in post-classical antiquity, particularly in the early imperial period. We have to bear in mind that authors of this period were likely to have perceived Aristotle’s philosophy differently than later generations. These authors were still familiar, directly or indirectly, with the contents of the books (mostly dialogues) that Aristotle had published during his lifetime. By the end of the third century c.e., however, these works had been lost.7 As a consequence, later generations only knew these books, the exoterica,8 from scattered quotations and doxographical references, while the unpublished school treatises, the esoterica, which had been rediscovered in the first century b.c.e. (almost three centuries after the death of the philosopher!), and collected in the socalled Corpus Aristotelicum, progressively became the main source for Aristotelian scholarship.9 Around the turn of the second to the third a pneumatic nature (in Aristotelian philosophy, pneuma is the fine-corporeal substance that is present in the blood of higher living beings, see below, pp. 38f ). From an Aristotelian point of view, it also seems strange that the cosmic God Yaldabaoth should not have any knowledge of the highest God. But this idea is even less understandable within a Platonic or a biblical-Jewish context. 7 As terminus ante quem of the final disappearance of the published works, O. Gigon (Aristotelis Opera III, 223) mentions the second half of the third century when Platonism was renewed by Plotinus and when Porphyry strived for a definite synthesis between Plato and Aristotle. If at that time the dialogues had still been available, the NeoPlatonists would certainly have made use of them. 8 Aristotle seems to refer to his own published books as his “exoteric” works: Phys. IV 10, 217b30; Metaph. XIII 1,1076a28; Ethic. Nicom. I 3, 1102a26–28; VI 4, 1140a1–3; Ethic. Eud. I 8, 1217b22; II 1,1218b34, etc. Cf. O. Gigon, Aristotelis Opera III, 232ff. 9 The Corpus of Aristotle’s treatises, as we possess it, probably does not differ greatly from the edition by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century B.C.E. See J. Barnes, “Roman Aristotle”.

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century c.e., Alexander of Aphrodisias, an influential interpreter of Aristotle’s teachings, no longer treated the exoteric writings as witnesses to Aristotle’s own philosophy.10 Following Alexander, some modern scholars are inclined to see fundamental differences between the surviving contents of the exoterica and ideas expressed in the Corpus. Because they recognize the influence of Plato’s philosophy in the fragments of the exoterica, these scholars relegate the published books to an early, supposedly Platonizing, phase in Aristotle’s career.11 It should be pointed out that there are no indications of a similar evaluation of the exoterica in the centuries before Alexander of Aphrodisias. Since we are focusing on Aristotle’s philosophy as it was transmitted and understood before the third century, we have no reason to disregard the surviving information of the lost books. I shall start from the assumption that the published books contained basically the same philosophy as the school tractates.12 Aristotelian Elements in Middle-Platonism All Platonists referred to Plato and claimed to transmit his philosophy. Yet over the course of time, Platonic philosophers not only moved far away from the teachings of their founder (particularly in their attempts to draw up a coherent philosophical system) but they did so, too, in quite diverse directions. As Philip Merlan affirms, at the end of the second century c.e. we can distinguish “a variety of Platonisms”.13

10 Alexander considered the dialogues as atypical for Aristotle’s philosophy. Cf. Eudemus fr. 3 in Ross, Aristotelis fragmenta; fr. 61 Gigon, Aristotelis Opera III. 11 In his monograph, Aristoteles. Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, 35, the influential German scholar W. Jaeger claimed that the contents of the lost dialogues are “unaristotelisch”. He proposed distinguishing at least three phases in the development of Aristotle’s philosophy. This idea was adopted in a number of studies and handbooks. Significantly, I. Düring, who was one of the first scholars to reject Jaeger’s theory, argues for the opposite view: it was in his later years that Aristotle developed a special affinity with the philosophy of his teacher, particularly in metaphysical questions, Aristoteles, viif; see further C.J. de Vogel, “The legend of a Platonizing Aristotle”; C. Witt, “The evolution of developmental interpretations of Aristotle”; A.P. Bos, The Soul and its Instrumental Body, 13–17. 12 For a discussion of the relationship between the lost books and the school treatises see esp. O. Gigon’s “Prolegomena” in his Aristotelis Opera III, p. 231. 13 “Greek philosophy from Plato to Plotinus”, 82.

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One difference concerned the relevance of Aristotle’s doctrines in relation to Plato.14 On the one hand, there is the case of the Middle Platonic philosopher Atticus (2nd half of the 2nd century c.e.) who sharply contrasted the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. He wrote a treatise “against those (Platonic philosophers?) who think it possible to interpret Plato through Aristotle”.15 At the end of the first century c.e., Plutarch freely and sympathetically used both Plato and Aristotle without any attempt to reconcile their teachings systematically.16 In the second century, Alcinous and Apuleius presented an almost complete synthesis of Plato and Aristotle.17 We have to bear in mind that Aristotle was Plato’s disciple and associate for twenty years and, up to the death of the founder, he was a regular member of the Old Academy.18 His first-hand knowledge of Plato’s teachings, notably of the unwritten teachings delivered by Plato during the last stage of his life, induced followers of Plato to consider Aristotle an authoritative interpreter.19 His criticisms of Plato were discussed and adopted by several leading Platonists.20

14 Cf. P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen II, 429–582; J. Whittaker, “Platonic philosophy in the early centuries of the Empire”, esp. section III: “The Aristotelian component in Middle Platonism (10–14)”; H.B. Gottschalk, “Aristotelian philosophy in the Roman world”, esp. 1143–51. 15 Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XV 9,1–14. Merlan, “Greek philosophy”, 73: “as Atticus sees it, Aristotle’s doctrines are both opposed to those of Plato and false”. For Atticus’ anti-Aristotelian polemics see also Moraux, Der Aristotelismus II, esp. 580–2; Gottschalk, “Aristotelian philosophy in the Roman World”, 1149f.; J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 247–58. Dillon argues that Atticus’ polemics were directed not at Platonic philosophers but at contemporary Peripatetics. 16 For Plutarch’s familiarity, directly or indirectly, with Aristotle’s works see Merlan, “Greek philosophy”, 59; F.H. Sandbach, “Plutarch and Aristotle”; P. Donini, “Science and metaphysics”, 144. 17 For Alcinous and Apuleius see Merlan, “Greek philosophy”, 64–73; Dillon, Middle Platonists, 267–338; Gottschalk, “Aristotelian philosophy in the Roman world”, 1147–9. Whittaker: Platonic dogmata were welded together by the Middle Platonists “within a terminological and conceptual framework which, while this may not impair the Platonic character of the whole, is frequently of Aristotelian origin” (“Platonic philosophy”, 114). Cf. Cicero’s statements in Acad. I 17 and 22. 18 Platonic philosophers were conscious of this special relationship and of the problems it raised, cf. Gottschalk, “Aristotelian philosophy in the Roman world”, 1143. 19 H.J. Krämer, Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik, points to the importance of interpretations of Plato’s oral teachings by members of the Old Academy, notably Aristotle, for later developments in Platonism. Cf. also Dillon, Middle Platonists, 1–11. 20 Platonists reconciled Plato with Aristotle even as far as idea theory is concerned, see Merlan, “Greek philosophy”, 66. Plato’s ideas or forms were regarded as the thoughts of the divine Nous. Cf. e.g. Alcinous, Didaskalikos IX 3: “Whether

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Aristotle’s influence on the way Plato was understood in Late Antiquity is particularly discernable in the interpretation of the Timaeus, during a time when philosophers were preoccupied with cosmological questions. In his treatise De caelo, Aristotle shows no sensitivity to the poetic and symbolic character of Plato’s myth of the formation of the world.21 Rather he treats the Timaeus as if it were a scientific text.22 In Aristotle’s interpretation, Plato would have taught that at a given moment in time the visible world was formed by a divine demiurge. Aristotle rejected this view; he was convinced of the eternity and the imperishability of the physical world and he could not reconcile a decision made at a given moment in time with God’s autarchy and immutability. But this does not alter the fact that his literal interpretation had a strong influence on later receptions of Plato’s Timaeus, notably among Gnostic and mainstream Christians.23 If we assume that Plato’s myth inspired speculations about the origin of the world and humanity, both inside and outside philosophical schools, we must bear in mind that it was Plato’s myth in the interpretation given to it by Aristotle. Anticipating the discussion below of aspects of Aristotle’s theology, I would like to draw attention to an interesting observation made by Heinrich Dörrie in an article from 1975.24 Dörrie distinguishes two different general attitudes or trends in pre-Plotinian Platonism.25 In the first trend, God is not seen as a self-contained entity but rather as a God who, through several intermediate stages, is active and therefore cognizable in the world. He is the good creator of the world (as in Plato’s Timaeus), and his care for the world reveals itself in his providence, among other things. The main method

God is an intellect or is possessed of intellect, he has thoughts, and these are eternal and unchanging, and if this is the case, forms exist” (transl.: J. Dillon, Alcinous, 16). The divine aeons of Gnostic theology can be traced back to this AristotelianPlatonic concept. See Krämer, Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik, 170, n. 39, and 223–64, esp. 242. 21 Cael I 279b–283b; cf. Phys. VIII 1, 251b17–28, and Aristotle’s exoteric book Phil. fr. 18–20 in Ross, Aristotelis Fragmenta; fr. 829 and 916 in Gigon, Aristotelis Opera. For the literary character of Plato’s myth see esp. F.M. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 31f. 22 M. Baltes, Die Weltentstehung des platonischen Timaios, 10 with n. 22. Cf. J. Mansfeld, “Bad World and Demiurge”, 299. 23 Baltes, Weltentstehung, 208. 24 “Logos-Religion?”, 115–36. Cf. id., “Die Frage nach dem Transzendenten”, esp. 204f (also in id., Platonica Minora, 217f.). 25 “Logos-Religion?”, 123. Both aspects can be traced back to Plato, ibid., 129.

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is the via analogiae: from the experience of lower manifestations of the divine, philosophers tried to ascend to higher wisdom. According to Dörrie, a more or less pantheistic religious mentality was characteristic of this philosophical attitude. The second approach starts from Plato’s epistemological dualism. Just as “being” is radically different from “becoming”, so knowledge is fundamentally different from doxa.26 Therefore, the via analogiae cannot serve as a bridge between them.27 True knowledge is possible only per abstractionem, by ignoring everything to do with this world. In this reasoning Dörrie finds the roots of what he calls “eine (. . .) in abstracto konstruierte negative Theologie”.28 Dörrie claims that Platonic philosophers who argued along these lines were influenced by Aristotelian ideas.29 Interestingly, he makes the additional observation that these philosophers felt that they could escape the bonds of the physical world and reach the unreachable by supra-rational means, to wit through mystical experiences.30 It is, however, doubtful whether Dörrie is right in associating Gnostic theological speculation with his first trend.31 Below I will make a plea for the alternative view: Gnostic theology as it is expressed in ApJohn shows close affinities with Dörrie’s second trend in Platonism—the one which in his view was indebted to Aristotle. Theology In the Old Academy and in later Platonism, Plato’s philosophy was interpreted as a system of derivations: the lower realms of being were supposedly derived from or generated by the higher.32 Aristotle

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Cf. Tim 51d–e and Theaet 187a–210b. “Logos-Religion?”, 126. 28 “Logos-Religion?”, 127. 29 “Logos-Religion?”, 126; id., “Die Frage nach dem Transzendenten”, 204 (Platonica Minora, 217) Krämer, Geistmetaphysik, 104. 30 “Logos-Religion?”, 126: “Nur soviel steht fest, dass die via abstractionis in eine solche Spannung, ja Gespanntheit führen kann, dass der menschliche Verstand, ohnehin dem Diesseits verhaftet, nicht zur Lösung führen kann; diese muss von dem paradoxalen Erlebnis der unio mystica erwartet werden”. Cf. Ph. Merlan, Monopsychism, 30–35, about supra-empirical interpretations of Aristotle and references in Plutarch and Alexander of Aphrodisias to Aristoteles mysticus. See also A.H. Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, 151. 31 “Logos-Religion?”, 124f and 130f. 32 Cf. e.g. Ph. Merlan, From Platonism to Neoplatonism, 197ff. 27

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endorsed this system but he made much sharper distinctions between the various levels of being. He blamed Plato for not leaving room in his system for what Aristotle called efficient cause. Aristotle insisted that immaterial entities (Plato’s ideas or an immaterial soul) could not cause motion or changes; in Aristotle’s opinion, only concrete things in space and time could move or alter other concrete things.33 As a completely immaterial and meta-cosmic entity, Aristotle’s supreme God, the divine Nous (mind, reason, intellect) is not engaged in any practical activity, and he is not causa efficiens of changes in the physical world. It is rather as an object of attraction that the “Unmoved Mover” causes the motion (of the supralunar part of the cosmos).34 On this point, Aristotle clearly deviates from Plato, who taught that the highest divine principle itself initiated the process leading to the coming into existence of the phenomenal world.35 It is not surprising that Christian as well as pagan authors in Late Antiquity ascribed to Aristotle the doctrine of “limited divine providence”.36 The idea that the effect of God’s providence is only indirectly present in the lower parts of the cosmos37 seems to be entirely consistent with Aristotle’s idea of the supreme Godhead. It is my contention that Aristotle’s disconnection of the supramundane God from the rule over the world provided the condition under which Gnostic myth-makers (or their pre-Gnostic forerunners in Hellenistic schools of philosophy) could contrast God with the cosmic rulers; this alteration of Plato’s cosmology enabled them to speak highly of their true God, the Invisible Spirit, while at the same time uttering negative thoughts about the demiurgical God and his powers.

33

Cf. Metaph. I 9, 991a9–13, 20–24; 991b3–9; cf. Merlan, Platonism, 202. In Aristotle’s terminology, the meta-cosmic God is causa finalis of this motion (he moves as an object of desire or a magnet does); Metaph. XII 7, 1072b1–7. 35 In the Tim, Plato is likely to have presented the demiurge as an aspect or function of the supreme divine principle. 36 Pagan authors: Plutarch, Is 67, 377f; Ps-Plutarch, Placita II 3, Diogenes Laertius V 32 (Aristotle held that “God’s providence extended to the heavenly bodies”); Christian authors: Tatianus Or 2; Athenagoras, Leg 25; Hippolytus, Ref VII 19,2; Clement of Alex., Strom 5,14; Protr 5,66,4; Origen, Cels I 21; III 75; Eusebius, Praep. Ev. XV 5,1, etc. Cf. A.P. Bos, The Sould and its Instrumental Body, 265–8. 37 See Hippolytus, Ref VII 19,2, about Aristotle’s doctrine: “the part of the cosmos which extends from the earth to the moon is without providence, guideless, and is only ruled by its own nature (. . .).” According to Aristotle the motions and changes in the sublunary world are caused by the circular movements of the sun and the higher celestial bodies, GenCor II 10, 336a31; Metaph XII 5,1071a15. 34

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Anthropology Aristotle and philosophers influenced by his doctrines did not think less negatively about the human existence in a physical body than Plato and other Greek and Hellenistic philosophers.38 On one essential point, however, Aristotle’s dualism differed from that of Plato.39 The dividing line in his anthropology is not between the (physical) body and the (incorporeal) soul but rather between the soul and the nous.40 His distinction of soul and nous recurs in Plutarch. In De facie lunae 943a Plutarch writes: “the nous is so much more excellent and divine than the soul as the soul is more excellent and divine than the body”.41 The soul According to Aristotle, the soul is the incorporeal moving and lifegiving principle in plants, animals, and human beings. This incorporeal 38 See Plutarch’s introduction of a quotation from Aristotle’s lost dialogue Eud: “Many wise men (. . .), not just of today but of long ago, have lamented the human lot, convinced that life is a punishment and that to be born a human being is the greatest disaster.” Thereupon Plutarch reports that Aristotle put the following words into the mouth of the daimon Silenus (in an address to the legendary King Midas): “not to be born is best of all things, and death is better than life (. . .) And second best (. . .) is to die as soon as possible after birth”, Plutarch, Cons 115b–e (= Eud fr. 6 Ross; fr. 65 Gigon); cf. Proclus, RemPubl 2.349.13–26 (= Eud fr. 5 Ross; fr. 923 Gigon). According to Iamblichus and Augustine, Aristotle went so far as to compare the soul’s being tied to a body with the cruel torture of Etruscan robbers, who fixed their captives, while they were still alive, onto human corpses, face to face and limb to limb; Iamblichus, Protr. 8; Augustine, JulPel IV 15.78 (Augustine knew Aristotle’s text through Cicero’s Hortensius); cf. Clement of Alex., Protr I 7.4 (= Aristotle Protr fr. 10b Ross; fr. 73 Gigon). Even in the Orphic tradition and in Plato’s Phaedo we do not find such a pessimistic picture of human existence. In recent literature, the reference to the Etruscan robbers is restored to Eud. Cf. J. Brunschwig, “Aristote et les pirates tyrrhéniens”; Bos, The Soul, 246–53, and “Aristotle on the Etruscan robbers”. 39 Hippolytus, Ref I 20,3–4: “On almost every point he (Aristotle) agrees with Plato, apart from his doctrine of the soul. For Plato teaches that the soul is immortal, Aristotle that it continues to exist and that it later disappears by dissolving into the fifth element, which he assumes to exist besides the other four—fire, earth, water, and air -, but more subtle, like pneuma”; cf. Bos, “The distinction between ‘Platonic’ and ‘Aristotelian’ dualism”; The Soul, 274–6. 40 E. Barbotin, La théorie aristotélicienne de l’Intellect d’après Théophraste, 200: “Dans la hiérarchie des principes constitutifs de l’homme, le dualisme s’est déplacé de bas en haut”, quoted by Bos, The Soul, 341, n. 130. Bos also refers to Atticus fr. 7 (= Eusebius, Praep. evang XV 9.14): “whereas Plato says that the nous cannot exist without soul, Aristotle separates the nous from the soul”; see also Merlan, “Greek Philosophy”, 74. 41 Bos, The Soul, 290f.

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principle is inseparably associated with a physical body that serves it as its instrument.42 The crucial question is whether we should identify the instrumental body (s«ma ÙrganikÒn) of the soul with the visible body or rather with a special “fine-material” body.43 Aristotle’s biological treatises suggest the latter alternative. He proposes that the substance of the instrument by which the soul-principle causes nutrition, sensation, motion, reproduction is “innate pneuma”.44 This pneumatic substance, which he characterizes as “hot air”, is different from and more divine than the well-known elements. He adds that it is “analogous” to the element of the celestial bodies, i.e. ether, which he designates elsewhere as the first element;45 in later traditions it became better known as Aristotle’s fifth element or quinta essentia. It will be clear from the above observations that Aristotle distinguished the incorporeal soul-principle from the body with which it is inextricably connected, and furthermore that he does not consider the nature of the soul’s instrumental body to be identical to the ethereal nature of the celestial bodies. But in later philosophical speculation these two distinctions were neglected. As a result, pneuma was no longer viewed as the substance of the bodily instrument of the soul but as that of the soul itself and it became customary to designate this special soul-substance as ether (the ‘fifth element’).46 Philo of Alexandria, Cicero, and Plutarch are among the many ancient witnesses to this reinterpretation of Aristotle’s psychology.47 Incidentally, the Aristotelian idea that the fifth element constitutes the substance of the bodies of the supralunar gods also contributed to speculations

42

This is expounded in An II 1. An II 412b4–6. A.P. Bos rejects the current translation of ÙrganikÒw in this passage as “possessed with organs”, cf. esp. “Aristotle’s psychology: diagnosis of the need for a fundamental reinterpretation”; “Why the soul needs an instrumental body according to Aristotle”; The Soul, 69–122. Cf. S. Everson, Aristotle on Perception, 64f. 44 See esp. MotAn 10, 703a4–27. Cf. A.L. Peck’s introduction to his edition of GenAn (Loeb Class. Libr. 1963), p. liii, and 576–93; I. Düring, Aristoteles, 345; P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus II, 418f; Bos, The Soul, 31–46. 45 GenAn II 3, 736a1f and 736b29–737a7. Cf. also Cael I 269a30ff. 46 Cf. P. Moraux, “Quinta essentia”, 1231ff; Merlan, “Greek Philosophy”, 40f. 47 D.T. Runia, Philo of Alex. and the Timaeus of Plato, 259, argues that in Philo’s exegesis of Gen. 15:5 “the body is equated with the four elements, the soul with the Aristotelian quintessence” (Her 281–3). For Cicero, Tusc I 10,22; 26, 65–66 (66: “If there is a kind of fifth nature, first introduced by Aristotle, this is the nature of both gods and souls”); Acad I 7,26; NatDeor I 13,33; II 15,42–44, see Moraux, “Quinta essentia” 1219–24. For Plutarch see Merlan, “Greek philosophy”, n. 3 and 4. 43

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about the demiurgical God. In ps.-Clementine Recognitions VIII 15, it is reported that with his fifth element Aristotle referred to “the one who made the world by bringing together the four elements”.48 In the centuries before and after the beginning of this era, traditional Aristotelian ideas were combined, or confused, with Platonic, neo-Pythagorean, Stoic, biblical-Jewish, and other traditions. This is the case in the above ps.-Clementine passage and also in the anthropological views expressed in ApJohn.49 Yet we can still recognize distinctly Aristotelian ideas. The story of the creation of man in ApJohn begins with the composition of a soul-body by the archontic rulers.50 There is no explicit mention of ether or the fifth element, but ApJohn does report that the soul was made by these cosmic powers out of their own substance, and consequently that it shared their nature. The following narrative confirms that the somatic substance of the soul differs from that of the four elements and that its natural place is in the higher spheres of the cosmic world: after the archontic powers had created the soul-body, they transferred it to the lower regions of the cosmos, where they moulded “another form” by fusing fire and earth with water and air.51 The divine element in humanity We now pass from the soul to the nous. Aristotle distinguished an active, theoretical or productive part of the mind from a passive or receptive part.52 He argued that whereas the other parts of the soul need a somatic instrument to achieve their functions (sensation, locomotion, nutrition, etc.), the theoretical mind can do its work without

48 See Rehm, Die Pseudoklementinen II. Rekognitionen, 226; cf. Moraux, “Quinta essentia”, 1228. For other testimonies about the demiurgical activity of ether see J. Pépin, Théologie cosmique et théologie chrétienne, Paris 1964, 484ff. 49 R. van den Broek (“The creation of Adam’s psychic body”, 38–57) shows that the account of the melothesia of Adam’s psychic body by the planetary rulers draws on the story of the creation of the seven components of the carnal body by the young gods in Tim 73b–76e. 50 Below, ch. IV, pp. 50f. 51 The “other form” can be explained from Aristotelian anthropology just as well as from Gen 2:7. 52 The active nous (designated by later philosophers as nous poietikos) is “that part by which the soul thinks and understands” (An 429a23f.). The distinction of passive and active nous is made explicitly in An III 5, 430a10ff. For later theories about the active nous see P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus II, 413–25; I. Düring, Aristoteles, 581f.

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any physical support.53 It acts freely and constructively. Aristotle compares this higher part of the nous with light: it makes intelligibles actual by illuminating them, as light turns potential into actual colours.54 He answered the question of how something that is “without body” can be communicated from parents to offspring by arguing that the nous alone is a divine element that comes into man additionally “from outside”.55 In ApJohn basically the same idea occurs, but here it is expressed in biblical vocabulary (Yaldabaoth “blew” the divine power into Adam, cf. Gen 2:7).56 The biblical motif is used and adapted to explain how the divine element came into the soul-body of the first human being. As I argued in chapter I, it is helpful to draw a distinction between the basic framework of thought and its expressions in biblical language. In this case, although the narrative material is obviously biblical-Jewish, I doubt that the underlying idea—the idea that the innermost core of the composite human being was not created but is of divine descent and nature—is also biblical and Jewish. Aristotle did not hold individual parents responsible for the communication of mind into their offspring. Apparently he believed that a single divine intellect is common to humanity.57 This brings us to

The active nous is xvristÒw, separable, from corporality (An III 5, 429b5f.; cf. II 2, 413b27–29; III 5, 430a23–25). In An III 4, 429a23–27, Aristotle states that it “does not actually exist until it thinks”. Cf. also GenAn II 3, 736b28f: the nous is independent of somatic activity. 54 An III 5, 430a16–18. 55 GenAn II 3, 736b27–29: tÚn noËn mÒnon yÊrayen §peisi°nai ka‹ ye›on e›nai monon. P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus II, 407: “in der späteren Diskussion nahm dieser Satz einen wichtigen Platz ein. Schon sehr früh wurde das Adverb thurathen zur Bezeichnung derjenigen Theorien verwendet, nach denen der Intellekt sich nicht einfach aus der organisch-psychischen Entwicklung des Menschen ergibt, sondern himmlischer bzw. göttlicher Herkunft ist und von aussen her in den Menschen eingeht.” The Aristotelian idea of the divine origin and nature of the nous was also discussed outside Peripatetic schools. Cf. P. Huby, “Stages in the development of language about Aristotle’s nous”, esp. 137. Moraux refers e.g. to Philo, Opif 67 (408, n. 33); in Alcinous’ Didaskalikos, the Aristotelian idea is combined with Platonic themes (ibid, 410ff ). Note that Aristotle applies the qualification “divine” to the celestial gods as well as to the meta-cosmic God. But whereas the supreme God is incorporeal, the celestial gods have an ethereal body. Aristotle’s statement that the active nous is without body therefore means that it is divine in the more superior sense of this term. 56 BG 51.17–20; III 24.9–12; II 19.25–30: the power went into “the psychic body”. 57 J.M. Rist, The Mind of Aristotle, 181. 53

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another aspect that might be relevant to the study of ApJohn, viz. the well-known Aristotelian doctrine of potential and actual existence, especially its application to the presence of divine nous in human beings. According to Aristotle, the nous is even present in human sperm and in the foetus but it is here “potentially”. It needs to be “actualized”. This means that although intelligence is a common property of human beings, it does not manifest itself in everybody to the same degree.58 This Aristotelian doctrine may shed light on what at first sight seems to be an inconsistency in the anthropology of ApJohn. We are told that the divine power is present in all human beings:59 in Adam and Eve,60 and in their son Seth,61 and, through him, in all human beings. So on the one hand, all human beings are “Sethians”. But on the other hand, not all humans belong to the “immovable race” of the Gnostics. As has already been proposed in earlier studies, the idea quite likely is that the light power is in all humans as a potential, a capacity for salvation.62 In ApJohn, the Christian Saviour tells how time and again Yaldabaoth and his cronies attempted to cover the light power in humanity with darkness. The people of the immovable race are presented as those who were rescued by a call or a revelation from the transcendent world and who responded to this call, while other people remained in the darkness of ignorance. Gnostics—at least the Gnostics of ApJohn—did not claim that they were saved “by nature” but because they had received the grace of divine revelation and, in response to this grace, had developed their light power. Aristotle and philosophers who were influenced by his nousmetaphysics held that the nous-potential in man is “actualized” through

58

See An. I 2, 404b6ff. II 26.12–15; BG 67.4–7. 60 BG 60.3f: Adam recognized in Eve his “essence (oÈs¤a)”. 61 According to ApJohn, Cain and Abel were begotten by Yaldabaoth and therefore demonic figures; see below, ch. VII. 62 Cf. A.H. Logan, Gnostic Truth, 266: “The Mother’s light-power represents (. . .) the capacity for salvation”; M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 195: “the potential to belong to the spiritual race is imagined as having been present at birth for all humans”, p. 196: “not all will actualize this potential or eventually achieve salvation”; see also G. Schenke, Die dreigestaltige Protennoia, 21: “Der Ruf des Erlösers (. . .) bedarf der Reaktion von Seiten des Menschen, das Erlösungsangebot bedarf der Realisierung”. See further below, ch. V. 59

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contact with the always actual divine Nous.63 It is possible to see a mythological expression of this idea in the soteriology of ApJohn.64 In his esoteric treatises Aristotle is silent about the post mortem existence of the nous. We can only guess from these texts that in his opinion it was destined to devote itself to the divine Nous.65 It is possible that Aristotle was more explicit about this issue in his lost dialogues, in particular in the Eudemus.66 A.P. Bos argues that in this dialogue, Aristotle spoke of the “return home” of Eudemus’ soul, and that he described this return “as a journey in various stages”, in which the soul together with its “instrumental body” leaves the visible body and embarks on its journey to the celestial spheres. Bos concludes: “Aristotle may have assumed that, at the end of this ascent, the soul-body or the soul-vehicle is abandoned and the soulcovering cast off, so that the pure, incorporeal intellect shares in true immortality.”67 Summary In the theological and anthropological ideas expressed in ApJohn’s narration of the Gnostic myth we find features of a form of Platonism that was influenced by Aristotelian thought. First of all, I drew attention to the idea of a meta-cosmic God who has no dealings at all with the creation and the rule over the world. Whereas Plato, in his Timaeus, presented the Demiurge as an aspect or function of the divine principle itself, Aristotle insisted that the supreme God is not

63 Metaph XII 1072b19–21; Eud fr. 10 Ross, fr. 1012 Gigon. L. Elders, Aristotle’s Theology, 189. Plutarch and other philosophers interpreted the relevant idea of Aristotle as a “touching” of the divinity, cf. Is 77, 382d–e; Merlan, “Greek philosophy”, 59; id., Monopsychism, 33; Platonism, 186; according to Alexander of Aphrodisias, our minds can only act through contact with the divine Nous. Cf. P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus II, 410: “der göttliche Nus kann in den menschlichen von aussen her eingehen, seine Vervollkommnung bewirken, ihm die Unsterblichkeit verleihen”; F.L. Roig Lanzillotta, “Devolution and Recollection, Deficiency and Perfection”, esp. 455f. 64 II 25.23–26; BG 65.3–8: Those on whom the spirit of life descends and joins itself with the power will be saved and be perfect and worthy to enter the great light. 65 I. Düring, Aristoteles, 582: “erst nach dem Tode besitzt der so gefasste nous sein eigenes Wesen und kann sich ewig der noêsis noêseôs hingeben”. 66 Cf. fr. 1–3 Ross; fr. 56, 58, 61 Gigon, discussed by Bos, The Soul, 238–44 67 The Soul, 242; cf. J.M. Rist, The Mind of Aristotle, 46–8.

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engaged in any practical activity and can not be causa efficiens of motions and changes in the physical world. The discharge of the transcendent God from any responsibility for the rule over the lower world enabled Gnostic intellectuals to combine their high esteem of the true God with an utterly negative view of the demiurgical God and his powers. The anthropological ideas of the authors of ApJohn become apparent in their revision of the stories of the creation of Adam and Eve. It tells how the cosmic powers, the archons, moulded Adam’s “psychic body” out of their own substance. According to a widespread tradition in Late Antiquity, Aristotle would have taught that the human soul shares the fine-material (“ethereal”) substance of the celestial gods. ApJohn’s idea of a human soul-body composed by the archontic rulers out of themselves may be understood against this background. In addition, the pivotal Gnostic conviction that the spiritual centre of the soul is of divine origin and nature and, accordingly, that it was not created but received from above, may reflect Aristotelian teaching. The same holds true of the belief that this divine element is given to human beings as a potential that needs awakening and development. While it is obvious that many vocabulary and narrative items of the Gnostic myth as it is told in ApJohn can be traced back to the first book of Moses and to other biblical and possibly also extra-biblical Jewish traditions, this does not apply to the underlying radical type of theological dualism nor to the idea of the human individual as a compositum of matter, fine-material soul, and divine “power”. To a considerable extent, the critical interpretation of Genesis traditions can be explained as the result of an adaptation of these traditions to the heterogeneous thought system outlined above.

CHAPTER FOUR

NARRATIVE SCHEME (APJOHN )

In the Gnostic myth, the demiurgical God Yaldabaoth is blamed for having appropriated a portion of divine “power” from his mother Sophia and for keeping this light substance in his dark regions outside the meta-cosmic world of light. This caused conflict between the true God, the Invisible Spirit, and Yaldabaoth. Although the myth does not report a direct confrontation between the two Gods,1 it makes sense to understand this story as a combat myth, a mythical narrative about a primaeval conflict between two Gods. This type of myth was current in a great variety of forms in antiquity, in the Near East and Egypt as well as in the classical world.2 According to Adela Yarbro Collins, its common pattern “depicts a struggle between two divine beings and their allies for universal kingship. One of the combatants is usually a monster, very often a dragon. This monster represents chaos and sterility, while his opponent is associated with order and fertility. Thus their conflict is a cosmic battle whose outcome will constitute or abolish order in society and fertility in nature.”3 What is at stake in the Gnostic myth is the spiritual substance which Yaldabaoth had annexed. The forces of good attempt to regain it and to restore it to the meta-cosmic world, and the forces of evil try to keep it in their sphere of influence. In ApJohn, the successive events of the creation and the earliest history of humanity are presented as the effects of actions and reactions alternately undertaken by these powers. The Gnostics of ApJohn are likely to have experienced their present situation as the outcome of the primaeval combat described in their book. 1 According to ApJohn, the demiurgical God is not even aware of the existence of the true God, while the Invisible Spirit has no dealings with the physical cosmos. 2 J. Fontenrose, Python; N. Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth, esp. 318–332. 3 A. Yarbro Collins, Combat Myth, 57. Yarbro Collins does not refer to Gnostic variants of the myth. But see S. Giversen, “The Apocryphon of John and Genesis”, 74: “(. . .) there is a tendency to make it all a battle fought between spiritual forces”.

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A Prehistoric Tragedy In the Gnostic thought system everything springs from the highest and true God. Apart from its being a story about a primaeval combat over the lost divine light power, the myth of origins aims to answer the question of how the imperfect and perishable world in which the Gnostics lived was related to the eternal spiritual perfection of the Invisible Spirit. Obviously this was not an easy task. In order to explain the emergence of imperfection from perfection, darkness from light, matter from spirit, and evil from goodness, Gnostic myth-tellers composed a complicated narrative about a process of decline that started somewhere in the environment of the Invisible Spirit and ended up in the demonically ruled sublunary world. Gnostics did not believe that this process occurred in a natural way. Rather they explained its downward trend as the effect of faulty decisions made by mythical persons. The demiurgical God Yaldabaoth figures prominently in this negative development but he is not the only one and not even the primary one. According to several versions of the myth, notably the detailed narration of ApJohn, the fatal process was initiated by his mother Sophia (“Wisdom”). ApJohn suggests that in spite of her spiritual nature as one of God’s eternal aeons, Sophia was deluded by psychic impulses.4 This suggests a development from spiritual to psychic existence. Sophia conceived a thought (a reflection of herself ) and wished to exteriorize this thought,5 but she did so without the consent of the highest God. So, above all, it was an act of hybris and insubordination. But she also acted without the co-operation of her male consort (syzygos). This means that her “son” was conceived by a female being alone. Without God’s blessing and without a male parent, he was doomed to be a deficient and imperfect figure: And an imperfect product came forth from her that was different from her appearance, because she had made him without her consort. He was not like his Mother, for he has another form (. . .)6 4 According to BG 37.11 (cf. 51.4), Sophia was driven by ‘the prounikon which is in her’. For the meaning of the Greek term prounikos (impetuous, lustful, lascivious?) see the discussion by A. Pasquier and M.W. Meyer in: K.L. King, Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism, Philadelphia 1988, 47–70, and A.H.B. Logan, Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy, Edinburgh 1996, 123. 5 BG 36.16–37.11. II 9.25–35. 6 II 10.2–7; BG 37.13–18.

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The idea that the creator and ruler of the world is an abortive son of Sophia is one of the most striking features of the demiurgicalGnostic myth. It will be clear that this idea cannot possibly be traced to a Jewish tradition. Admittedly, in Jewish as well as in Gnostic traditions, Wisdom-Sophia is closely related to the creator God, and in one way or another both traditions speak of a descent of WisdomSophia into the lower world. But the part played by Gnostic Sophia is fundamentally different from the role of the personified female figure of Wisdom in Jewish texts. Whereas in Jewish texts Wisdom can be imagined as a subordinate helper of the Creator God,7 in the Gnostic myth she is his mother and in more than one sense a being of higher rank and position.8 And whereas the Jewish Wisdom figure descends into the world of men, i.e. into the created world, the Gnostic myth speaks of a pre-cosmic error committed by Sophia. In scholarly literature this trespass is sometimes referred to as her “fall”. George MacRae proposes that Sophia’s fall is a projection onto the pleromatic world of the “fall” of Eve.9 This enables him to explain Sophia’s motivation to emanate another being “alone”, i.e. without the collaboration of her male consort,10 from Eve’s wish to “be like God” (Gen. 3:5). The problem with this hypothesis is that the demiurgical-Gnostic myth denies the idea of a fall of Eve. Instead, the eating from the tree of knowledge is allegorically explained as an act by which the first humans received insight into their truly divine origin and nature.11 MacRae therefore concedes that “no single form of Jewish tradition can account for the pre-cosmic fall”, and he acknowledges that his study of Jewish parallels bears on the materials out of which the myth was made rather than on “the basic anti-cosmic spirit that inspired the making of it”.12

7 Sap.Sal. 7:21; 8:4; Prov. 3:19; 8:27–30. Cf. B.J. Lietaert Peerbolte, The Wisdom of Solomon and the Gnostic Sophia”. 8 G.W. MacRae, “The Jewish Background ”, 88: “it is not he (the demiurgical God) who brings Sophia into being, but she him”. MacRae explains this from “the Gnostic effort to demean the creator God”. 9 “The Jewish Background”, 99f. 10 In Gnostic mythology this is considered a divine prerogative. 11 The Gnostic Christ of ApJohn assures John that he himself was the one who prompted Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. See below, chap. VI. 12 Pp. 98 and 101; cf. the distinction of basic assumptions and actual narrative language, made in ch. I, and Van Unnik’s comment, “Gnosis und Judentum”, 83f.

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In ApJohn, Sophia is portrayed as an ambivalent and tragic character.13 After her faulty conduct she repented and wished to make good her failure.14 In structuralist terminology she is a mediating figure.15 Interestingly, ApJohn reports how, after her mistake, she moved to and fro between the two worlds.16 Whereas Sophia has a spiritual nature but was yet driven by psychic impulses when she wished to bring forth her own thought alone, Yaldabaoth, her hideous son, turns out to be entirely psychic. The subsequent sections of the mythical story will make this increasingly clear.17 ApJohn’s combat myth is introduced in the scene which describes the appearance of the demiurgical God. The above-quoted first lines of this description report that he came forth imperfect, and that he was not like his Mother Sophia. The text continues: And when she saw (the result of her) wish, he changed into the form of a lion-faced serpent. And his eyes were shining with fire. She cast him away from her, outside those places, that none of the immortal ones might see him, because she had given birth to him in ignorance. And she surrounded him with a luminous cloud, and she placed a throne in the middle of the cloud that no one might see him (. . . .) And she called his name Yaldabaoth. This is the chief ruler. He took a great power (dÊnamiw) from his Mother. And he removed himself from her, and moved away from the places in which he was born.18

The description of Yaldabaoth’s outer appearance—a lion-faced serpent—characterizes him as a demonic figure. Yet Sophia placed him on a throne outside the divine realm, and so installed him as the chief ruler of the lower world. The quoted section also reports that Yaldabaoth took away a portion of divine “power” from his Mother. We have already pointed out that the Gnostic myth centres around this spiritual substance: it is the bone of contention in the conflict between the Invisible Spirit, its rightful owner, and the demiurgical God, the usurper. 13

Cf. G.W. MacRae, “The Jewish Background of the Gnostic Sophia Myth”, 90f. Van der Vliet, L’image du mal 31. Cf. the concluding statement about the Mother in BG 76.2–5; III 39.19–21: “she had rectified her seed” (or: “her defect”). 15 Cf. C. Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology I, 224. 16 See the quotation of NHC II 13.13–26; BG 44.19–45.19 below. 17 See esp. ApJohn’s report of how the cosmic rulers created Adam’s “psychic body” from their own substance. 18 II 10.7–23; BG 38.18–19. 14

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Before the conflict begins, ApJohn mentions in some detail the numerous cosmic powers and angels generated by the demiurgical God: He created for himself other aeons in a blazing flame of light which still exists. And he coupled with the madness within himself and he begot authorities (§jous¤a) for himself.19

It is noteworthy that Yaldabaoth does not share the divine substance taken away from his Mother with these powers. I quote the BG version which on this point is more explicit than NHC II and IV: He shared with them of his fire which belongs to him and of his power. But he did not give them of the pure light power which he had taken away from the Mother.20

So, for the time being, Yaldabaoth is the only one to possess the divine light power in the lower world. Later on it will be disclosed how this substance left him and entered into humanity. The demiurgical God created and organized the cosmic world after the model of the divine aeons. The version of NHC II and IV deny explicitly that this means that Yaldabaoth had any knowledge of the world above: it was the power he had taken away from his Mother that enabled him to produce the likeness to the higher world.21 Also, on other occasions it is emphasized that the demiurgical God had no knowledge of the higher world, notably in the significant passage where ego proclamations by the biblical God are put into his mouth, “I am a jealous God”, “there is no other God apart from me”.22 With these words he is not only supposed to have unwittingly indicated that another God does exist but also that he was unaware of the existence of the other God.23 The introductory sections end with the story of Sophia’s repentance. When she heard the arrogant and blasphemous statements of

19

II 10.24–28; BG 39.1–6, continued in II 10.28–11.35; BG 39.7–42.10. Cf. A.J. Welburn, “The Identity of the Archons”. 20 BG 42.13–18. 21 II 12.33–13.5. 22 The whole passage is quoted above, ch. I. 23 Cf. II 13.26–30; BG 45.19–45.3: When the arrogant demiurgical God took the spiritual power from his Mother, he thought that “no other existed but his Mother alone”. From these reports I conclude that the divine power which Yaldabaoth appropriated was in him as a potential, a “sleeping” capacity. Cf. the next chapter.

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her son, she began to move about (or: to go to and fro) between the world of pure light and the dark regions below.24 BG uses the Greek verb epipheresthai for Sophia’s moving about, the same verb which in the LXX version of Gen. 1:2 is used to express the moving of God’s spirit upon the waters of chaos.25 It is worthwhile quoting this passage in full, not only because of its content (a highly allegorical and mythological interpretation of this well-known biblical verse) but also because it is here that the Gnostic myth begins to run parallel to Moses’ accounts of the creation and the earliest history of humankind. It is also here that the monologous teaching of the Gnostic Christ is interrupted for the first time by a question from John, the receiver of the revelation. From now on ApJohn has the literary form of a revelation dialogue. “Then the Mother began to ‘move to and fro’. She became aware of the deficiency when the radiation of her light diminished. And she grew darker because her consort had not given her his assent.” “Lord, what does ‘she moved to and fro’ mean?” And he smiled and said, “Do not think that it is as Moses said, ‘above the waters’. No, but when she had seen the wickedness which had come to exist, and the theft which her son had committed, she repented. And forgetfulness came over her in the darkness of ignorance, and she began to be ashamed. [And she did not dare to return but she went around.]26 This going around is meant by ‘to move to and fro’.”27

When Sophia recognized her mistake and repented, she was rescued by her divine consort. But she was not restored to her own aeon but to the ninth sphere, above her son, until, that is, she corrected her deficiency.28

24

BG 44.19–45.5. The identification of the (female) Spirit of God (in ancient Jewish and Christian imagery God’s spirit was a female being; this idea had its background in Semitic languages in which the word for spirit, ruah, ruha, is grammatically feminine) and Sophia, ‘the Mother’, is not uncommon in Gnostic literature. 26 Cf. BG 45.16–18 and IV 21.13–14. 27 II 13.13–26; BG 44.19–45.19. 28 II 13.32–14.13; BG 46.9–47.14. Her deficiency will be corrected when the divine power has returned to the world above. 25

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chapter four A Combat Story

In the moral universe of ApJohn, the arrogant and blasphemous claim of the demiurgical God could not be left unanswered. A voice was heard from above testifying to the existence of the highest God.29 Moreover, the explicit reference to the Invisible Spirit brings him back on stage. Now the combat between the two Gods and their helpers can begin. At this moment of the story, the divine “power” is in the possession of the demiurgical God. The true God is therefore compelled to come into action to get the light-power back.30 What follows is a systematized survey of the moves and countermoves of the forces of good and evil. A more detailed discussion of the relevant episodes follows in chapters V–VIII. Yaldabaoth is enticed a) to create man and b) to transmit the power of his Mother into man31 The highest God devised a rather complicated stratagem. First of all he provoked the creation of man. Man will be his chosen instrument to bring the divine light-power back to the world above. But he does not do the creation himself. Apparently the fully transcendent God of Gnostic speculations is not engaged in practical activity.32 He is not a creator but a father.33 With a view to prompting Yaldabaoth and his cosmic fellows to create a human being he revealed himself to them in a human shape: And the holy and perfect Father, the primordial Man, made himself known to them in human form. The Blessed One revealed his image to them. (His image was reflected in the cosmic water.)34 And all the 29 In agreement with the subsequent story of the creation of man after the image and likeness of the true God, this God is presented as “the Man”. 30 The editor of the longer version (NHC II and IV) seems to have realized that this initiative is at odds with the absolute transcendence of the Invisible Spirit, which is emphasized in the first part of the text (see below, ch. IX), for in this version it is not the supreme God himself but one of his aeons (Pronoia, “Providence”) who shows the cosmic archons a manlike form of God (II 14.18–24; IV 22.24–23.2). 31 For a more detailed discussion of sections 1 and 2 see below, ch. V. 32 Cf. above, ch. III. 33 For ancient philosophical ideas about God as Father and Creator see A.P. Bos, “God as ‘Father’ and ‘Maker’ in Philo of Alexandria”. 34 Cf. II 14.26–30: “and the underside of the waters which are above the material world was illuminated by the appearance of his image.”

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rulers of the seven authorities nodded in agreement. They saw in the water the form of the image. They said to each other, “let us create a man in the image of God and the likeness”.35 And they created out of each other and all their powers. They moulded a form out of themselves, and each of the powers created from its power the soul.36

Note that in this first part of the creation story, ApJohn speaks of the creation of the psychic body of man. In spite of the fact that the cosmic powers moulded their creature after the divine image and from their own—obviously psychic— substance, their creation was not completely successful. The soul-body was an artefact rather than a living soul (cf. Gen. 2:7 LXX), for it could not move and become active. Apparently this failure was anticipated by the true God. In a second action, he sent his emissaries into the lower world, and they said to Yaldabaoth, “Blow something of your spirit (pneËma) into his face”37 and his body will arise. And he blew into his face his spirit, which is the power of his Mother. In his ignorance he did not realise (this). And the power of the Mother went out of Yaldabaoth into the psychic body. (. . .) The body moved, gained strength, and shone.38

After Yaldabaoth did what he was told to do, he was left as just a psychic being, while Adam’s soul-body received the divine “power”. As a result, his (man’s) intelligence became stronger than those who had made him and stronger than the first ruler.39

Yaldabaoth and his powers imprison the spiritual substance a) in a physical body and b) in fate The demiurgical God and his powers saw what had happened, and made a counter-move. They seized Adam, i.e. his soul-body with the divine power in it, and brought him deep down into the dark

35 Cf. II 15.2–4: “Come, let us create a man after the image of God and after our (!) likeness, that his image may serve as a light for us.” 36 BG 47.20–48.2; cf. the more detailed version of the story in II 14.17–15.9. 37 Cf. Gen. 2:7 LXX; NHC III 24.7–8 reads: “blow your spirit into his face”. The subsequent stories presuppose that Yaldabaoth blew all the spiritual power into the first human being. 38 II 19.22–33; BG 51.14–52.1. 39 II 20.3–4; BG 52.8–11.

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cosmos where they imprisoned him in a physical body moulded from the four sublunary elements: When they looked, they saw that his thinking was superior. And with all the archons and angels they took counsel. (. . .) They brought him (Adam) into the shadow of death in order to mould once more,40 from earth and water and fire and wind (pneuma) (. . . .) This is the cave41 of the model of the body in which the robbers had clothed man, the fetter of matter (or forgetfulness). And he became a mortal man.42

This passage shows how Gnostics valued their bodily existence in the terrestrial world: they believed that the body of flesh and blood was created by cosmic powers with a view to imprisoning, if not burying, man’s spiritual potential and so to fasten it to the lowest part of the cosmic world. In a later section, the cosmic rulers are made responsible, too, for the establishment of fate (heimarmenê ). Through fate they govern humanity and enchain it in fear and forgetfulness. When the first ruler realized that they (the first human beings) surpassed him in thinking, he wanted to get hold of their thought (. . .) He made a plan with his powers and they begot fate.43

Fate served the cosmic rulers to chain all their creatures with “measures, times, and occasions”. According to NHC II and IV, it made them blind so that they could not recognize the transcendent God.44 A helper is sent from above The spiritual “power” was now imprisoned in the physical world and completely separated from its place of origin. The true God reacted by sending a helper: The blessed Father had mercy on the power of the Mother which had been drawn out of the first ruler (. . .) And through his beneficent Spirit and his great mercy, he sent a helper (bohyÒw) to Adam (cf. Gen. 2:18), a luminous Reflection (ÉEp¤noia), which came out of it (i.e. the Spirit) and which was called “Life” (zvÆ, cf. Gen. 3:20).45 40 It is possible to see in this second creation an allusion to Gen. 2:7. It is also possible that we are dealing with an expression of a specific Greek-Hellenistic anthropology. See above, ch. III. 41 BG 55.10: the tomb. 42 II 20.32–21.7, 9–13; BG 54.9–55.6, 9–13. 43 II 28.11–32; BG 72.2–12. 44 II 28.26–29. 45 II 20.9–19; BG 52.17–53.10.

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The compassion of the Father concerns Adam’s pneumatic component, conceived as the lost portion of Sophia’s divine “power”. The storytellers of ApJohn were inclined to regard Eve as a bringer of the Gnostic truth to Adam. It is possible that this idea was prompted by the LXX version of Genesis which presents Eve as Adam’s bohyÒw (2:18) and as the one who gives him life (3:20: Adam called her zvÆ).46 The helper figure appears more than once, with different names and in various appearances, in ApJohn’s account of the history of Adam and Eve and their offspring.47 First of all, the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Paradise is allegorically interpreted as a manifestation of Epinoia or the Reflection of the Light, the helper from above.48 The cosmic rulers are said to have commanded Adam not to eat from this tree in order to prevent him from remembering his spiritual perfection.49 They (the cosmic rulers) stayed in the presence of the tree which they called “the tree of knowledge of good and evil ”, which is the Reflection of the Light, lest he (Adam) looked up to his perfection (. . .).50

The divine helper plays a role, too, in ApJohn’s allegorical retellings of the story of the creation of the woman and that of Noah and the Flood (see below, nos. 5 and 7). The task of the helper from above is made more explicit in the dialogue about the destination of individual “souls” in the final segment of the text.51 Here, Christ explains that the “power” comes to every human being (“for without it no one can stand”)52 but that this divine potential needs to be awakened. This happens when the spiritual helper comes to it.53

46

See further below, ch. V. Note that ApJohn does not mention Seth as a helper or revealer figure. 48 See further below, ch. VI. 49 Christ reveals to John that he himself taught the first humans to neglect the commandment of the rulers and to eat from the tree of knowledge. But cf. BG 60.18–61.7 where it is Epinoia, the Light Reflection, sitting on the tree in the shape of an eagle, who taught Adam to eat of the knowledge and so awakened him out of a deep sleep. 50 II 22.3–7; BG 57.8–18. 51 II 25.16–27.31; BG 64.13–71.2. 52 II 26.12–15; BG 67.4–7. 53 In the BG version, the dialogue is preceded by an observation to the same effect: the spiritual helper was sent down to human beings in order to awaken their essence (oÈs¤a) from forgetfulness and from the wickedness of the “tomb” (63.18–64.3). 47

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chapter four When the spirit descends upon them they will surely be saved and leave (the world).54

Those on whom the Spirit of Life descends will no longer be distracted by anger, envy, desire, greed and other psychic impulses. Instead, their attention will entirely be devoted to spiritual things.55 The creation of an opposing spirit As a reaction to the sending of the helper from above, the demiurgical God and his powers decided to create a “counterfeit” or “opposing spirit” (antimimon or antikeimenon pneuma): They assembled again and made a plan together. They created an obnoxious spirit in the image of the spirit who had descended.56

The task of this contrary spirit was to pollute the souls and to draw them to the works of evil.57 Actually, the opposing spirit is already mentioned in ApJohn’s retelling of the Paradise story where the tree of life is contrasted with the tree of knowledge of good and evil. While the tree of knowledge is regarded as a manifestation of the spiritual helper from the world above, the tree of life is associated with the demonic “counterfeit spirit”: The tree of their life they placed in the midst of Paradise. I shall teach you what is the mystery of their life. It is their counterfeit spirit. It comes out of them in order to lead him (Adam) astray so that he would not know his perfection.58

In the dialogue about the destination of the souls, the opposing spirit is made responsible for the fact that certain souls do not attain perfection: In those the counterfeit spirit has gained strength when they went astray. And it burdens the soul and draws it to the works of evil and casts it in forgetfulness. And after it has come out (of the body), it is given into the hands of the authorities who came into being by the ruler. And they bind it with chains and cast it into prison.59

54 55 56 57 58 59

II 26.10–12; cf. BG 67.1–4. II 25.23–33; BG 65.3–16. II 29.21–25; BG 74,6–10. II 29.25f; cf. BG 56,14–17. See the following quotations. Combination of II 21.24–27 with BG 56.14–17. II 26.36–27.8; BG 68.17–69.10.

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An attempt made by the demiurgical God to take the spiritual power away from Adam The demiurgical God and his forces had transferred the divine “power” to the lowest part of the cosmic world and chained it in matter and fate but the fact remained that it was now Adam—and not Yaldabaoth—who possessed this divine substance. Strange as it may seem, the biblical story of the creation of Eve was used by the authors of ApJohn to report how the creator God tried to take the spiritual element away from Adam: And he (the First Ruler) wanted to extract the power which he himself had given him (Adam). And he brought a deep sleep over Adam . . .60

But at best his attempt was only partially successful. One result of this action was that Adam gained a female consort with the same spiritual ousia as he had. This was perhaps more in Adam’s interest than in that of Yaldabaoth but, on the other hand, it is likely to have suited the purpose of the demiurgical God that the spiritual substance given to Adam was now divided over two human souls. The further dispersion of the light power 61 After the creation of the woman, the creator God continued along the same lines. ApJohn suggests that his aim was to spread the pneumatic power over more and more human beings (putting into practice the maxim divide et impera). In ApJohn’s version of the Paradise story, it was the serpent who taught the first humans about sexual desire: The serpent taught them (BG: her) to eat from the wickedness of the sexual desire (. . .) so that he (Adam) might become useful to him.62

There can be little doubt that in this narration, the animal is speaking on behalf of the creator God.63 Later on in ApJohn, another story

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II 22.18–21; BG 58,10–14. See also below, ch. VII. 62 II 21.12–15; BG 58,4–7: 63 A. Logan, Gnostic Truth, 235. In TestTruth (NHC IX,3), the serpent in Paradise is a representative of the true God but here it is the creator God who commands the first human couple to multiply (cf. Gen. 1:28; 9:1.7). This command is even regarded as the sum and apex of the Old Testament Law (p. 30.2–5). See below, ch. VI. 61

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is supposed to explain the sexual desire in human beings. In that passage the Gnostic Christ reveals to John how the demiurgical God seduced Eve and thereby implanted sexual desire in humanity: The First Ruler saw the virgin who stood with Adam (. . . . And he) defiled her and begot in her two sons (. . . .) He called them by the names Cain and Abel (. . .) Up to the present day, sexual intercourse, which originated from the first ruler, continued. He planted sexual desire in her who belonged to Adam. And through intercourse he raised the birth of similar bodies, supplying them with his counterfeit spirit.64

Covering and mixing the light substance with darkness65 When eventually Adam “knew” Eve, a human son was born, Seth, who, differently from Cain and Abel but like his parents, possessed the pneumatic power.66 All human generations inherited this spiritual potential through him.67 The superiority of the offspring of Adam and Eve was a nuisance to the demiurgical God. The authors of ApJohn used the biblical traditions of the Great Deluge and the intercourse of sons of God and human females (Gen. 6:5ff. and 6:1–4; in this order) to relate how Yaldabaoth came into action against spiritual humanity: And he repented for all things that had happened through him. This time he made a plan to produce a flood over the work of man.68

The biblical Flood tradition is interpreted allegorically as an attempt by the creator to cover humanity with darkness.69 But Noah and several others were saved in a luminous cloud by the divine helper figure, who now is called Pronoia, “Providence”.

64 II 24.8–32; cf. BG 62.3–63.9. One of the pieces of information which I left out in the abridged quotation of this passage is that the two sons are depicted as demonic cosmic rulers just like their father. Their true names are allegedly not Cain and Abel but Eloim and Yahve. They were set by their father over water and earth and over fire and wind, respectively, the constituent elements of the physical body (“the tomb” of the spiritual element). See further below, ch. VII. 65 Cf. the more detailed discussion in ch. VIII. 66 Cf. II 24.34–25.1; BG 63.12–14. 67 Every human being receives Seth’s divine power. In that sense, all humans are Sethians. But not everybody develops this potential; see chaps III and V. 68 II 28.32–29.1; BG 72.2.12–16. 69 II 29.15: “he brought darkness upon the whole earth”; cf. BG 73.16–18.

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When the demiurge perceived that not all humans were covered with darkness, he tried to mix the saved ones with darkness: He made a plan with his powers. He sent his angels to the daughters of men, that they might take some of them for themselves and raise offspring for their enjoyment. And at first they did not succeed.70

Since this action failed, the cosmic rulers resorted to a deceptive trick: The angels changed themselves into the likeness of their mates, filling them with the spirit of their darkness71 (. . .) and with evil. (. . .) And they led the people who had followed them into great troubles, leading them astray with many deceptions. (. . .) And they took women and begot children out of darkness after the image of their spirit.72

This time the action of the rulers is much more successful. It created the situation which still exists: And their hearts became closed and they were hardened by the hardness of the counterfeit spirit until now.73

On the other hand, the broader context and the purport of the story requires that the mythical ancestresses of the Gnostics did not fall victim to these temptations. They must have kept their spiritual core free from the darkness of the cosmic rulers and their angels. Conclusions In this chapter a partial explanation is provided for the free and critical use of Genesis traditions in ApJohn’s demiurgical-Gnostic myth. I have tried to demonstrate that the information from the relevant biblical stories was subordinated and adapted by the Gnostic mythopoets into a story about a primordial combat between two divine beings, the fully transcendent true God and the inferior demiurgical God Yaldabaoth, over the light substance which the latter

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II 29.16–21; BG 73.18–74.5. I.e. with the opposing spirit created by the cosmic rulers. 72 II 29.26–28; 29.33–30.2, 7–9; BG 74.11–16; 75.1–7. II and IV add that they (those who descended from this illegitimate union) died without having found truth and without knowing. 73 II 30.9–11; BG 75.7–10. 71

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had appropriated from the higher world. In the Gnostic combat myth, the creator of the world is presented as the adversary of the true God and the enemy of spiritual humankind. The cosmic powers engendered by him serve him as his tools. In effect, the demiurgical God and his allies threaten the divine power in humanity in two different ways. As they created the human soul out of their own substance, they were able to control its motions. Indeed, Gnostics believed that they could experience the wickedness of the cosmic rulers in themselves, i.e. in the psychic component of their being. It was their duty to neglect the inclinations of the soul and to devote themselves exclusively to spiritual reality. Evidently, this means that they were basically free to choose: either to let themselves be guided by their psychic impulses—and so to share in the ignorance and the wickedness of the demiurgical God and his powers—or to keep the spiritual core of their being immune to these influences. In the concluding part of ApJohn, this fundamental choice is highlighted by the doctrine of the two spirits: the helper from the world above informs the soul about the divine truth, summoning it to protect its divine core against demonic influences, the other one, the opposing spirit created by the cosmic rulers, incites it to do evil works. The other crime committed against humanity is of a different kind. When the demiurgical God had blown “the power of the Mother” into Adam and he realized that his creature had become spiritually superior to him, he forced the first human being to live in a body made of the four elements and so tied him to the sublunar world. The creation of the physical body marked the beginning of a series of evil actions taken against spiritual humanity. To summarize: the demiurgical God and his allies prompt human beings to forget their spiritual nature and to live as mere psychical beings. Secondly, they created the supposedly distressful situation in which human beings live, making every effort to prevent the divine power in humanity from returning home. They incite man to sin and they are responsible for man’s present suffering. The originator and commander of all this is the demiurgical God Yaldabaoth. In his wickedness and ferocity he even surpasses the Satan of apocalyptic Jewish and (non-Gnostic) Christian traditions.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE CREATION OF ADAM AND EVE (APJOHN )

We turn to Gnostic revisions of individual Genesis stories. In ApJohn the rewritten stories are integrated within a long mythical narration about the creation and the early history of humankind. As I pointed out in chapter IV, the myth relates how the true God and his emissaries endeavour to recover the light substance that Yaldabaoth had usurped and brought down into the cosmic world. The myth makes it clear, too, that this is a difficult task, for Yaldabaoth and his allies do everything in their power to thwart the plan of the true God. Incidentally, in their struggle over the lost divine light power, the forces of good and evil use different methods. Whereas Yaldabaoth and his allies do not shrink away from all kinds of deceit and violence, the forces of good try to outwit the adversaries with a complicated stratagem. The Creation of Adam The creation of Adam’s psychic body (the soul ) ApJohn’s story of the creation of humanity begins when God, the blessed One, reveals his appearance in the cosmic water. This is the first step in his plan to trick Yaldabaoth out of the divine light substance he had taken away from the divine world:1 The blessed One revealed His appearance2 to them. And the entire host of rulers of the seven authorities3 bent down, and they saw in the water the form of the image. They said to each other, “Let us create a man in the image of God and the likeness” (cf. Gen. 1:26 LXX).4 And they created out of each other and (out of ) all their powers. They

1

In the quoted passages Christ speaks to John. In codex III 21–24 the Greek word idea is used to refer to God’s appearance. 3 The seven planetary archons. 4 Cod. III reads “and according to his likeness”; cod. II: “and according to our likeness”. 2

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chapter five molded a form out of themselves and [each one] of the powers. [And] power [they created the soul].5 They created it after the image which they had seen by imitating the one who is from the beginning, the perfect Man. And they said, “Let us call him Adam, that his name and its power may become a light for us.”6

According to this revision of the Genesis account, the psychic component of man, the soul, was created first. The subsequent digression (not quoted) reports that the various cosmic powers contributed something of their own special substance to the composition of the human soul. This is supposed to explain why the soul is subject to the influence of these powers.7 Note that ApJohn’s rewriting offers a solution for a well-known exegetical crux, the plural form: “Let us create . . .” The Gnostic story reports that the archontic rulers said this to each other. On the other hand, the Genesis quotation is freely adapted to the Gnostic story line: “Let us create man in our image” has been changed into “Let us create man in the image of God”.8 In the Gnostic story, it is essential that the true God takes the initiative: He plans to recover the lost divine substance. It will become increasingly clear that God uses the being created by the archons as his instrument. As we noticed above (ch. IV, n. 30), it is strange to find that God, the Father of the All, should have come into action himself and revealed his appearance to the cosmic powers, for this information is at odds with ApJohn’s stress on the absolute trancendence of the supreme Deity.9 The author of the long recension in Nag Hammadi Codex II seems to have realized this. Here, it is not the invisible God but Pronoia, his reflection or image, who reveals the divine appearance.10

5 This passage is a thorough revision of Gen. 2:7a: “God formed man of the dust of the ground”. 6 BG 48.4–49.9 (transl. Waldstein & Wisse); cf. the longer version in II 14.24–15.13. The description of the creation of man draws on Plato’s Tim 73B–77E. See M. Tardieu, Écrits Gnostiques, 306–8, and R. van den Broek, “The Creation of Adam’s Psychic Body”. 7 BG 49.9–50.11; the report in II 15.13–19.10 is much more detailed. 8 But cf. Gen. 5:1, “On the day when God created man he made him in the likeness of God”. 9 Cf. esp. the “negative theology” of II 2.26–4.18; BG 22.17–26.14 (discussed in ch. IX). 10 14,18–24. The long recension reports that Pronoia showed the archons a masculine form of the image. The logic of the story requires this, for the human being created by the archons after a divine image is either male or androgynous.

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We meet with another curious item in this story. In the abovequoted passage, Christ reveals to John that the archons fashioned the human soul out of their own “psychic” power. Later on we are told how man received his spiritual or divine element, and how the material body was finally created. The strange thing is that the soul was formed after the image of God, for, in the anthropology of ApJohn, the pneuma (the spiritual component) is the only godlike element in man. We could guess that the soul was given a godlike form because this makes it worthy to receive the divine pneuma.11 But it should be noticed that the godlike form of the soul is not an object of speculation in ApJohn.12 Within the Gnostic storyline of this writing, the revelation of the divine image is just a first step in God’s scheme: it was meant to empty Jaldabaoth of the spiritual power in his possession. It is tempting to find in the words of Yaldabaoth and his fellows, “Let us call him Adam, that his name and its power may become a light for us”, a trace of an earlier version of the story (a version in which the biblical tradition of the creation of man had not yet been incorporated).13 When we try to read the opening lines of ApJohn’s creation myth without any allusion to Gen. 1:26, we are likely to come upon a story to this effect: The demiurgical God tried to copy man after a luminous archetype that was shown to him from above.14 In doing so, the Demiurge hoped to gain control of this light. However, something quite different happened: he did not gain the light revealed to him but, ironically, lost the light-substance in his

11 H.M. Schenke, Der Gott “Mensch” in der Gnosis, 43: “Entsprechend dem Heilsplan der Lichtwelt soll der göttliche Inhalt eine göttliche Form haben”. 12 In the subsequent section of the creation story of ApJohn we hear that the psychic being formed after God’s image could not stand up. It was probably imagined as rather shapeless (see below). This is an odd feature if the underlying idea would be that the psychic body created by the archons is a bearer of God’s eikon. Other Gnostic texts affirm that the copy was imperfect. LetPetPhil, for instance, tells how the mortal bodies fashioned by the cosmic powers were different from the “idea” that had appeared (NHC VIII, 2 p. 136.13–15). In HypArch and OrigWorld, the archons make a copy of the luminous form hoping that the divine archetype will become enamoured of this figure. This story implies that at that moment the divine light was not yet in their creature. 13 A.H.B. Logan, Gnostic Truth, 183–8. 14 In OrigWorld (NHC II, 112f ), man is created according to the likeness of the Adam of light. Cf. B. Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, vol. II, 61; M. Tardieu, Trois Mythes Gnostiques, 85–92.

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possession. The reference to the biblical text might be a secondary enrichment of the Gnostic creation story. Incidentally, in the Greek language light and man could easily be associated because the normal word for “light” (f«w) and one of the words for “man” (f≈w) were near homonyms. It is possible that a wordplay on these terms contributed to the idea that the archetypal model of man (a noetic or ideal man) was luminous in appearance.15 The reception of the divine pneuma The cosmic powers had made their creature after the image of the highest God and they had given it their own supralunar substance. Nevertheless their work was not successful. The creature could not move and remained inactive. All the angels and demons worked until they had finished the psychic body. But for a long time their product was inactive and motionless. And when the Mother (i.e. Sophia) wanted to recover the power that she had yielded to the first ruler, she beseeched the Mother-Father of the All, the one who is greatly merciful. He sent by (his) holy decree the five luminaries in the shape of the angels of the first ruler. And they decreed him that the power of the Mother be taken out (from him). They said to Yaldabaoth, “Blow something of your spirit into his face, and his body will arise”. And he blew into his face his spirit (cf. Gen. 2:7b LXX), which is the power of his Mother. He did not know it, for he exists in ignorance. And the power of the Mother went out of Yaldabaoth into the psychic body which they had made after the image of the one who exists from the first beginning. The body moved, became strong and luminous.16

The creature of the cosmic rulers turned out to be a thing or artefact rather than a living creature. We find interesting variants of this idea in other versions of the Gnostic creation myth. According to Irenaeus’ account of the doctrine of Saturninus, this early Gnostic teacher described the human figure formed by cosmic angels as a crawling worm.17 Irenaeus reports further that the so-called Ophites imagined the creature of the cosmic powers as a figure of immense

15 16 17

Logan, Gnostic Truth, 184. II 19.10–33; cf. BG 50.11–52.1. AH I 24,1.

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size that could merely wriggle on the earth.18 The idea of the failed creation of a human being by cosmic powers is related to ancient speculations about the possibility of making a living creature in an artificial way. In Jewish lore, this fantasy is expressed in stories about the making of a golem.19 It was associated with the belief in the creative power of speech and of the Hebrew letters. The attempt to create a living being had a somewhat different context in Greek traditions; here it was connected with astrological ideas about the possibility of drawing the power of the stars to lower beings.20 The Gnostic story deals with the transfer of planetary substance to a creature. Its astrological connotations cannot be overlooked. This is one reason for assuming that the Gnostic myth draws on pagan Greek speculations about the creation of a living being rather than on the specifically Jewish variant of this idea. The failure of the Demiurge and his fellows was anticipated by the powers of the hyper-cosmic world and leads to their action to deprive the Demiurge of the light-power he had removed from the world above. The initiative was taken by Sophia, the Mother (who is held responsible for this loss of pneumatic substance).21 At her request, the Father of the All, the God of light, sent five emissaries,22 disguised as cosmic angels to the demiurgical God. At this point, the myth once more incorporates biblical information, viz. the story of God’s blowing the breath of life into man.23 According to the Gnostic story, the demiurgical God was misled by the emissaries of the true God. It was on their orders that he breathed his “spirit” into Adam’s face. The ruse works: when he did what the hyper-cosmic powers had suggested him that he do, he was emptied of the light substance, and the psychic body of man began to move and so manifested that

18

I 30,6. Cf. HypArch (NHC II, 88.3–6); Logan, Gnostic Truth, 209, n. 88. For a discussion of this tradition see L. Teugels, “The Creation of the Human in Rabbinic Interpretation”, 116–8. 20 Art “Golem”, EncJud 7, 753. 21 Here the theme of the repentence of Sophia, the Mother of the creator and the created world, is resumed (cf. II 9–10 and 13; BG 36–38 and 45). 22 For a discussion of the somewhat complicated relations of these and other pleromatic beings see R. van den Broek, “Autogenes and Adamas”; Logan, Gnostic Truth, 218f. 23 Gen. 2:7b LXX, “the Lord God [. . .] breathed into his face the breath of life (pnoØ zv∞w), and man became a living soul”. In ApJohn, the creator breathed into man’s face his pneËma, specified as the power from his Mother. 19

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it had become a living soul (Gen. 2:7b). In the next section of the story (quoted below), the spiritual superiority of man after the reception of the light-power will be stated explicitly: “and his intelligence was greater than (that of ) those who had made him”. This part of the story can be read as a mythological explanation of the selfconfidence of the Gnostics who felt spiritually exalted above the rulers of the cosmic world. As the version of Codex II (19.27f.) states explicitly, the Demiurge acted in ignorance when he breathed the light-power into man.24 The pneuma did not originate from the creator God but merely was mediated by him. The divine element in man is regarded as a reality essentially different from the psychic nature human beings share with the cosmic powers. It was not created but received from above. We already noticed (ch. IV) that according to ApJohn, the light power from above is something all humans need: without it, one is not able to move and to stand up as a human being.25 On the other hand, ApJohn and related Gnostic texts maintain that a limited group of people possess the divine pneuma. Simone Pétrement tries to solve this apparent contradiction by assuming that holding oneself upright was meant figuratively: “In a figurative sense one could say that not all hold themselves upright, but only those who have received the Spirit; the others bustle around upon the earth like animals.”26 Alistair Logan proposes a more convincing solution. He defines the Mother’s light-power, which was breathed into man by the Demiurge, as a “precondition”, a “possibility of (or capacity for) salvation”.27 This solution gains in clearness and cogency if we assume that the Gnostic idea of a divine faculty in man that needs to be developed, had its roots in Hellenistic philosophical traditions influenced by Aristotle’s anthropology. According to Aristotle, the nous, or intellect, is a divine potential (a dunamis) innate in man.28 The nous needs

24 He must have possessed the divine power as an unawakened potential; see below. 25 II 26.12–15; BG 67.4–7: “the power enters into every human, for without it no one can stand”. 26 A Separate God, 105. 27 Cf. the literature mentioned in ch. III, n. 62. 28 Aristotle describes the intellect as a potential of the soul (An II 2, 413b24–27; GenAn II 3, 736b27–29). Before the intellectual activity is realized, the soul with its nous-potential is in a condition of “sleep” (An II 1, 412al0–11 and 412a22–27).

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to be developed (“actualized”) in order to be able to return to the divine realm from where it originated. During the postmortal ascension, it frees itself from its etherial vehicle, the psychic body.29 The Gnostic story about the creation of human beings and the earliest history of humanity gives a characteristically religious turn to this philosophical view of humanity. ApJohn alleges that in the situation in which humans are bound to live, the light power of the Mother is covered by darkness until it is awakened by a call from above. Furthermore, it claims that it is by responding to this saving call that one can bring one’s pneumatic potential to perfection. A later section of ApJohn deals with the destiny of the Gnostics compared to that of other categories of people. There, the Saviour states explicitly that only those persons are “worthy to ascend to the great lights” who live in conformity with the divine knowledge revealed to them and who, thanks to their gnosis, are strong enough to resist the temptations by the evil spirit and to make themselves immune to all passions and greeds.30 The transfer of the Mother’s pneumatic power to Adam marks the beginning of a whole series of moves and counter-moves by the powers of good and evil. The divine element in man is continually threatened. The creation of Adam’s material body In that moment the rest of the powers became jealous, because he (Adam) had come into being through all of them, and they had given their power to the human being. And his intelligence became greater than (that of ) those who made him and stronger than (that of ) the first ruler. And when they recognized that he was luminous and that he thought better than they, and that he was without evil, they took him and cast him down into the lowest regions of all matter.31

A.P. Bos points to the possible implications of his reinterpretation of Aristotle’s psychology for the study of Gnostic ways of thinking in “Cosmic and Meta-Cosmic Theology in Greek Philosophy and Gnosticism”. 29 Cf. above, ch. III, and A.P. Bos, The Soul and Its Instrumental Body. See also his earlier study Cosmic and Meta-Cosmic Theology in Aristotle’s Lost Dialogues, Leiden 1989. 30 II 25–27; BG 65–69. 31 II 19.34–20.9; BG 52.1–17. The action of the archons is interrupted by a counter-move of the Father: he sends a good spirit as a “helper” to Adam (II 20.9–28; BG 52.17–54.4). I shall refer to this section of the narrative below, in connection with the creation of Eve.

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chapter five And the human being became visible because of the shadow32 of the light which is in him. And his thinking was superior to all those who had made him. When they looked down, they saw that his thinking was superior. And they made a plan. with the host of angels and rulers. They took fire and earth and water, they mixed them together with the four fiery winds. And they (the elements) were forged to one another and a great disturbance was made. And they brought him (Adam) into the shadow of death, in order to fashion (him) again from earth and water and fire and the spirit that originates from matter, that is from the ignorance of darkness and desire and their counterfeit spirit. This is the cave of the remodeling of the body with which the robbers had clothed the human being, the fetter of forgetfulness. And he became a mortal human being. This is the first to come down and to be separated.33

The archontic powers became jealous of their creature for two reasons. First, they now realized that they had given Adam a share in their own ethereal substance.34 But they also perceived that, as a result of his reception of the Mother’s light-power, Adam was superior to all of them, the Chief Ruler included. Their jealousy prompted them to take action: they brought the psychic-pneumatic Adam down into the lowest region of the cosmos. Adam is “the first to come down”. He was bound to live fully separated from the divine world. We already observed that the battle between the powers of good and evil about the divine substance in the cosmic world is the central topic of ApJohn’s myth of origins. This might explain why, after the report of the action of the archons, Christ immediately speaks about God’s countermove.35 Christ resumes his revelatory teaching about the imprisonment of man in matter.36 He tells how the archons and their angels created

32 Tardieu, Écrits, 320, suggests that the Greek original did not mention the shadow (aposkiasma) but the particle (apóspasma) of the light in man. He renders II 20.28–30; BG 54,5–7 as follows: “Et l’homme resplendit à cause de la particule de lumière qui était en lui”. 33 II 20.28–21.14; BG 54.5–55.15. 34 As W.C. van Unnik has demonstrated in several studies, in the Greek language phthonos can express the affect of one who has vis-à-vis one who has not: the jealous person does not want to share his material or spiritual possession with someone else. See e.g. “Der Neid in der Paradiesgeschichte nach einigen gnostischen Texten” and “AFYONVS METADIDVMI ”. 35 II 19.34–20.9; BG 52.1–17. 36 The words about the casting down of Adam to the lowest region anticipate and even imply a casting down into the prison of the material body. S. Giversen, Apocryphon Johannis, 257.

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for Adam an earthly, mortal body composed of the four elements. The words about their fashioning him again, but now from earth etc., are an allusion to the second biblical account of the creation of Adam in Gen. 2:7a, “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground”.37 But the teaching about the composition of the human body from four physical elements as well as the evaluation of the body as a prison or even a cave or a tomb for the soul draws on Greek traditions. The first idea had its background in (allegorical interpretations of ) the mythical story of the creation of the human body in Plato’s Timaeus,38 the latter in Orphic views which were given their most famous expression in another of Plato’s Dialogues, the Phaedo.39 Despite the fact that this part of the story is focused on the material component of man, the four elements are explained allegorically as matter, darkness, desire, and “counterfeit spirit”.40 The divine light-substance was encased in a material frame composed of hostile elements. The creation of man was completed. According to Christ’s revelation in ApJohn, man consists of three components: a spiritual element which has come down from the hyper-cosmic world, a complex soul made out of the ethereal substance of the seven cosmic powers, and a material prison: the body. Fully separated from its homeland, the divine element in man, the pneuma, is bound to live in an alien environment, the territory of wicked planetary powers. Eve’s Separation from Adam We turn to the most complicated part of ApJohn’s Gnostic creation story. In this section, reference is made to two feminine powers: the light-power which the demiurgical God had stolen from his Mother and thereupon breathed into Adam’s soul, and “the Reflection (or Epinoia) of the light” which was given to Adam as a helper from

37

But see ch. III, n. 51. Tim 42e–43a. The Timaeus was Plato’s best known work in Antiquity. Cf. J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, index; D.T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato, 353–62 and 412. 39 For the profound influence of these ideas in various ancient traditions see P. Courcelle, “Gefängnis (der Seele)” and “Grab der Seele”. 40 For the “counterfeit”or “contrary spirit” given to man by the cosmic rulers in imitation of the spirit sent into man by God, see above, ch. IV. 38

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above. Let me first summarize the Epinoia-episodes that precede the story of the creation of Eve. The first section dealing with the female helper sent to Adam interrupts the story about Adam’s transfer to the lowest regions of the cosmos and the ensuing story about the creation of his material body. This inserted story tells how the merciful Father sent a female “helper” to Adam. Adam calls her “Zoe”/“Life” (see below for the idea of Eve as a helper for Adam). According to the Gnostic revision of this biblical tradition, the female helper was hidden in Adam so as to escape the notice of the archons.41 The story of the creation of Adam’s material body concludes with the remark that the Reflection of the light hidden in Adam, awakened his thinking.42 The story of the creation of Adam’s material body is followed by a paraphrase of the biblical Paradise story.43 Although as yet there has been no mention of the earthly Eve, this story reports that the serpent taught “her” (apparently Eve) about sexual desire, pollution and destruction.44 ApJohn’s Paradise story ends with the observation that Adam was disobedient due to the light of the Epinoia dwelling within him and making him more correct in his thinking than the first ruler. Now we turn to the story about the other female power dwelling in Adam. In spite of his imprisonment in a material body deep down in the cosmos, Adam still possessed the Mother’s light-substance. Apparently the biblical story about the creation of Eve was used by Gnostic myth-tellers to explain how the Demiurge tried to empty Adam of his spiritual element. But once again, what actually happened was different from what the Demiurge and his fellows intended to achieve. The Demiurge tried to bring the divine power out of Adam (so as to regain it for himself ) but the result was that Adam had a consort of the same spiritual “essence” as his.45

41

II 20.9–28; BG 52.17–54.4. II 21.14–16; BG 56.15–18. 43 For Gnostic revisions of the Paradise story see below, ch. VI. 44 II 22.12–15; BG 58.4–10. 45 As the conclusion of this section of the narrative affirms, Adam recognized in the woman created by the Demiurge his equal. Although the biblical text quoted here speaks of bones and flesh, it is clear enough that the spiritual equality of Eve is meant. Eve shared the Mother’s light-power which was breathed into Adam. 42

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“And he (the first ruler) wanted to extract the power which he himself had given him (Adam). And he brought a deep sleep over Adam.” I ( John) said to the Saviour, “Christ, what does ‘deep sleep’ mean?” And he said, “It is not as you have heard that Moses wrote, for he said in his first book, ‘He put him to sleep’ (Gen. 2:21), but it was in his perceptions.46 For indeed he said through the prophet, ‘I will make their hearts heavy that they may not understand and may not see’ (Isa. 6:10).47 (Then Epinoia of the light hid herself in him [Adam]. And the first archon wanted to extract her from his side. But Epinoia of the light is unattainable. Although the darkness pursued her, it did not attain her.48) And he extracted a portion of his power out of him and made another form in the shape of a woman, after the likeness of Epinoia who had appeared to him. And he brought the portion he had taken from the power of the man into the female form, and not ‘his rib’, as Moses said (Gen. 2:21f.). And he saw the woman beside him. And at that moment luminous Epinoia appeared, lifting the veil which lay over his heart. And he became sober from the drunkenness of darkness. And he recognized his image49 and said: ‘This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’ Therefore the man will leave his father and his mother and he will cleave to his wife and the two of them will become one flesh. (Gen. 2:23f.) For his consort will be sent to him, and he will leave his father and his mother. (. . .) Therefore she was called ‘Life’, which means ‘the mother of the living’ (Gen. 3:20).”50

The story makes it clear that both Adam and Eve possessed the Mother’s light-power. The following sections of the myth will show that the Gnostics preserved this spiritual power, while among other people, it was covered or mixed with darkness.51 The story is complicated by the fact that not only Sophia’s light substance but also the feminine helper, Epinoia or the Reflection of the light (sent to Adam by God when the archons brought their creature down into the lowest parts of the cosmos), is connected with

46 Cf. BG 58.18–20: “he veiled his perceptions with a veil; he made him heavy with lack of perception.” 47 The last sentence is discussed in ch. II. 48 An allusion to John 1:5? 49 IV 36.1: “his counter-image”; BG 60.4: “his essence”; III 30.4: “his co-essence”. 50 II 22.18–23.16, 23–25; BG 58.10–60.16. The story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, which follows next, begins with the observation that Epinoia taught Adam about knowledge so that he might remember his perfection (II 23.25–26; BG 60.16–61.5). 51 See ch. VIII (the Flood).

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the biblical Eve. We already noted that Epinoia is designated as a “helper” for Adam (Gen. 2:18) and that she is called by Adam “Zoe” and “Mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20). Obviously the myth-tellers imagined Eve as a helper in the full Gnostic sense of that term, as a bringer, that is, of the divine truth to Adam. She is considered the mother of all those humans who are living (i.e. spiritually living) because she awakened Adam’s light-power. Of course, there is a difference between the light-power in Adam and his spiritual helper, Epinoia. First of all, the light-power is a potential, a “seed”, in Adam that must be developed, whereas the Reflection of the light is a bringer of revelation. Furthermore, the light-substance is inside Adam, whereas Epinoia could be as well outside as inside him.52 Epinoia can move and speak. If we bear these distinct features of the two feminine powers in mind, the story of the creation of Eve becomes more transparent. The Demiurge wants to bring the Mother’s light-power out of Adam. Therefore, he covers Adam’s mind with a veil so that he could not perceive what happened to him. At that moment, Epinoia hastens to help Adam. Although we are told that she hid herself in him, the story implies that the Demiurge saw Epinoia. He wants to bring Epinoia out of Adam. This is a slightly confusing detail because shortly before it was the Mother’s light-power that he tried to bring out of Adam. It is confusing, too, that allusion is made to Adam’s rib (Gen. 2:21) in connection with the creator’s attempt to bring Epinoia out of Adam.53 But the Demiurge does not succeed in bringing Epinoia out of Adam. She remains in him and so can help him in his perilous situation. The narrator repeats that the first archon wanted to bring the power (of the Mother) out of Adam. But now the Demiurge had a different motive. Whereas initially he just wanted to regain the light-power which he had breathed into Adam, he now wished to make a female form out of this power—a form which he might use as a bait for Epinoia. Apparently he now is more interested in Epinoia than in his lost light-power.

52 She hid herself in Adam but also in the tree of knowledge (II 22.3–5; BG 57.8–15). 53 A few lines earlier, reference was made to another detail of Gen. 2:21 (Adam’s sleep, interpreted as trance or oblivion) in connection with the creator’s attempt to bring the Mother’s light-power out of Adam.

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The attempt fails halfway. The Demiurge made a form in the shape of a woman and brought the Mother’s power into this form, but he did not succeed in luring Epinoia out of Adam. Instead, Epinoia lifted the veil which the Demiurge had laid on Adam’s mind. This enabled Adam to perceive the spiritual nature of the new creature, his female consort. The biblical report of Eve’s being made out of one of Adam’s ribs is explicitly rejected. From a Gnostic point of view, this would mean that woman is just a fleshly, material being. Eve was as much a spiritual being as Adam. This is the positive side of the story. The negative side is that, by this action of the creator, the light-substance in Adam was divided. With her creation begins a process of generation and progressive dispersion of divine light in the cosmic world. Of course, propagation and its moving force, sexual desire, were rated negatively. The negative aspect of Eve (the woman) in ApJohn and in similar Gnostic texts is closely related to the biblical tradition about the creation of Eve out of Adam. It was a consequence of her separation from Adam that the human being was split into two sexual halves. Birth and death came into the world when Eve was created. But if we abstract Eve from the story of her creation (her separation from Adam), we find remarkably positive statements about the prototypal woman. First of all, she possessed the same divine pneuma as the man. She is even likely to have had earlier and closer relations to the spiritual world of the true God than the man.54 She is a bringer of help (i.e. saving knowledge) while Adam needs this help. The Gnostic Eve represents the principle of continuous revelation,55 the one who awakens man’s capacity for knowledge and salvation.

54 This is said explicitly in the opening lines of ApocAdam: “The revelation which Adam taught his son, Seth, in the sevenhundredth year, saying: ‘Listen to my words, my son Seth. When god had created me out of the earth along with Eve, your mother, I went about with her in a glory that she had seen in the aeon from which we had come forth. She taught me a word of knowledge of the eternal God’.” (NHC V,5 p. 64.2–14; translation G.W. MacRae in D.M. Parrott, Nag Hammadi Codices V,2–5 and VI,155) 55 Logan, Gnostic Truth, 222.

CHAPTER SIX

PARADISE (APJOHN, TESTTRUTH )

In ApJohn, the story of the creation of humanity is connected with stories about two guiding spirits, a good one and an evil one. The good spirit, Epinoia, or “Reflection of the light”, was sent by the merciful Father as a “helper” to Adam who called her “Zoe”/“Life”. It was her task to inform Adam about his descent from the world above, and about his ascent or salvation.1 The other spirit is imagined as a “counterfeit” or “adversary spirit”. This spirit was created by the archontic rulers in order to lead Adam and his offspring astray.2 The trees in Paradise are allegorically interpreted as representing the two spirits: the tree of life is associated with the demonic counterfeit spirit, the tree of knowledge with Epinoia:3 And the rulers took him (Adam) and put him in paradise (Gen. 2:15).4 And they said to him: “Eat ” (Gen. 2:16) that is, in idleness, for indeed their pleasure (cf. Gen. 3:23–24) is bitter and their beauty is illicit. Their pleasure is a deception and their trees are impiety. Their fruit is an incurable poison and their promise is death. They planted the tree of life in the midst of paradise (Gen. 2:9). I (Christ) shall teach you (plur.) what is the mystery of their life, the plan, that is, they made with one another, the likeness of their spirit.5

1

II 20.9–26; BG 52.18–53.19. See above, ch. IV. 3 In their attempts to reach human beings, the emissaries from the world above use various tricks. In HypArch and OrigWorld we are told how the female spirit (or: spiritual woman) from the imperishable world changed herself into a tree or enters into a tree in the Paradise garden (either the tree of knowledge or the tree of life) HypArch 89.25; OrigWorld 116.28–29: “She entered the tree of knowledge and remained there”. See I.S. Gilhus, The Nature of the Archons, 69–72. Also the wise serpent of the Gnostic Paradise story is depicted as a temporary dwelling of the female spirit. HypArch 89.31–32: “The female spirit entered the serpent, the instructor”. As we shall see, the serpent in the rewritten Paradise story of TestTruth is interpreted typologically as a manifestation of Christ. 4 BG 55.18–56.3: “And the first ruler took him (Adam) and put him in paradise (Gen. 2:15). The one who was saying, ‘It is a pleasure for him’ (Gen. 3:23–24 LXX) did this in order to deceive him.” 5 BG 56.14–17: “It is their counterfeit spirit which came into existence through them in order to lead him (Adam) astray, so that he did not know his perfection.” 2

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Its root is bitter, its branches are deadly, its shadow is hateful, in its leaves is deception, its blossom is the anointing of evil, its fruit is death, its seed is desire sprouting in darkness. The dwelling place of those who taste it is Hades and the darkness is their place of rest. But as to the tree which is called by them the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:9), which is the Epinoia (Reflection) of the light, they stayed in its presence in order that he (Adam) might not look up to his perfection6 and recognize the nakedness of his shame.7

ApJohn’s revision of the biblical Paradise story ends somewhat surprisingly: Christ informs John that it was he, Christ, himself who prompted Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. When John asks if it was not the serpent who did this, the Saviour smiled and explained that the serpent taught them about sexual desire and corruption.8 I will not discuss ApJohn’s revision of the Paradise story in more detail. Instead, I would like to give attention to the very explicit interpretation of the biblical text in TestTruth. The TESTIMONY OF TRUTH TestTruth is the third and last writing of NHC IX. It is also the most extensive writing of this codex. It begins on p. 29 and originally must have covered some 48 to 50 pages of the Coptic manuscript. However, the last part of the manuscript survives in a very fragmentary condition. Some papyrus leaves are completely lost. The damaged part of the manuscript begins on p. 49, at the end of the critical comments on the Paradise story. The few remains of this damaged second half of the text suggest that on these pages the author was engaged in a controversy with other Gnostic groups.9 This is a very

6 BG 57.11–18: “the Epinoia (Reflection) of the light about whom they gave the commandment not to taste (of it), that is, not to obey her, for the commandment was directed against him (Adam) in order that he might not look up to his perfection”. 7 II 21.16–22.9. 8 II 22.9–15; BG 57.20–58.7. In II 24.15–32; BG 62.8–63.9, the origin of the sexual desire in humanity is explained in a different way. Here it is said that it was planted in Adam or in Eve by Yaldabaoth. Cf. below, ch. VII. 9 The damaged pages still reveal the names of several Gnostic teachers and schools: Valentinus and his disciples (56.1f,5), [Basilid]es and his son Isidorus (57.6–8), the Simonians (58.2).

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rare phenomenon in surviving Gnostic literature. It is regrettable that we do not possess this part of the text in a better state. Indeed a characteristic feature of TestTruth is the explicit and detailed polemics against Christian groups: Gnostic Christians but also and primarily proto-orthodox or Catholic Christians. We already find a sharp polemic against Catholic Christianity in the better preserved first half. This controversy with emerging mainstream Christianity and with such Gnostic schools as the Valentinians is of some help in dating the original text of TestTruth. In his introduction to the edition of the Coptic text, Birger Pearson suggests that the writing was composed at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century.10 We shall see that a controversy with orthodox Christianity is also a prominent feature of the Paradise section of TestTruth. I shall further introduce the discussion of this section with a few observations on the nature of the polemics. TestTruth reproaches ecclesiastical Christians for their obedience to the Old Testament creator God and his Law. It is highly significant that for the author of the text, the Old Testament Law is summed up in the commandment to the first humans to procreate. Obviously the purpose of the text is to contrast the strongly ascetic, or rather encratite, lifestyle of the author’s Gnostic group11 with the allegedly worldly, licentious ethics of mainstream Christianity. The contrast between the Gnostic and the ecclesiastical positions is displayed on the first pages of the text: No one who is under the Law will be able to look up to the truth, for they will not be able to serve two masters.12 For the defilement of the Law is manifest, while undefilement belongs to the light. The Law commands (one) to take a husband (or) a wife, and to beget, to multiply like the sand of the sea. But passion which is a delight to them constrains the souls of those who are begotten in this place in order that the Law might be fulfilled through them. And they show that they are assisting the world and they turn away from the light.13

A relatively long section on pp. 41 to 44 can be read as an encomium of the true Gnostic, the person who renounces the world, who subdues

10 11 12 13

Pearson (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X, 118. Its encratism included the rejection of marriage. Matt. 6:24 par. 29.22–30.15.

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desire everywhere in himself, and who is filled with wisdom. Apparently the first main part of the text aims at drawing a clear line between the ideology of the author’s group and that of mainstream Christianity and at upgrading and lauding the author’s system of values at the expense of those of others.14 In this first part of the text, the author addresses fellow members of his own Gnostic group. It is plausible that this part is concluded with the following words on pp. 44–45: This, therefore, is the true testimony (marturia):15 When man knows himself and God who is over the truth, he will be saved, and he will be crowned with the unfading crown.16

The Creator God and the Serpent The retelling of the events in Paradise begins on p. 45, line 23. It is preceded by a question: Why, then, do you [err] and not seek after these mysteries which were prefigured for our sake?17

This introductory question shows that the subsequent part of the text is no longer addressed to Gnostic fellow-spirits but to others: to readers, that is, who do not seek seriously after the real meaning of the events mentioned in the Scriptures.18 We will see that TestTruth does not entirely reject the biblical Paradise story. In fact, the actual events are not doubted.19 The controversy concerns the identity of the actors appearing in the story (the creator, the serpent and the first human beings) and the real meaning of what was said and what was done:

14 For this type of retoric see D. Sullivan, “Establishing Orthodoxy: The Letters of Ignatius of Antioch as Epideictic Rhetoric”. 15 The statement, “This is the true testimony”, has a Johannine ring, cf. esp. John 5:32. The present title of the document was assigned by modern editors on the basis of this passage. Due to the loss of the last papyrus sheet we do not know which title was given to our text in the Coptic manuscript. (In many writings of the Nag Hammadi collection, the title is added at the end of the text.) 16 44.30–45.6. For the last sentence cf. I Pet. 5:4. 17 45.19–22. The wording of this question is reminiscent of Paul’s view of the Scriptures: he claims that the Scriptures contain a cryptic message “for our sake”, cf. esp. Rom. 4:23–4 and 15:4. 18 Pearson, Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X, 102. 19 P. Nagel, “Die Auslegung der Paradieserzählung in der Gnosis”, 50.

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chapter six As to this it is written in the Law—when God gave Adam the commandment—“You may eat from every tree, but do not eat from the tree in the middle of Paradise. For on the day that you eat from it you will surely die (Gen. 2:16–17)”.

The first parts of the biblical story—the description of the garden of Eden (2:8–15) and the creation of Eve (2:18–24)—are omitted. The Gnostic rewriting continues with a paraphrase of Gen. 3:1. Apparently the author confined himself to those elements of the story that lend themselves to his critical comments. Now the serpent was wiser than all the animals in Paradise (Gen. 3:1a).20

Note the words that are not italicized: the serpent is not called a “beast” but an “animal”,21 a word with more favourable connotations. Moreover in this rewriting the serpent does not belong to the earth22 but to Paradise. In a subtle way, in this Gnostic paraphrase the serpent is upgraded. In contrast, as we will see presently, the biblical God is slightly degraded mainly by means of a further emphasis on his anthropomorphic features. And he persuaded Eve, saying, “On the day that you eat from the tree in the middle of Paradise, the eyes of your mind will be opened ”. And Eve obeyed, and reached out her hand and took from the tree and ate. And she gave to her husband who was with her. And immediately they realized that they were naked. They took fig leaves and put them on themselves as aprons. And in the [evening] God came walking through the middle [of ] Paradise. And when Adam saw him he hid himself. And he said, “Adam, where are you? ” And he answered and said, “[1] have gone under the fig tree.” And in that moment God knew that he had eaten from the tree of which he had commanded him not to eat. And he said to him, “Who informed you? ” Adam answered, “The woman whom you gave me.” And the woman said, “It was the serpent who informed me.” And he cursed the serpent and called him “devil” (Gen. 3:4–14).23

In small but significant details this retelling deviates from the LXX version of the Genesis story. Our text does not affirm that the serpent deluded or seduced Eve.24 He persuaded and informed her and

20

45.31–46.2. The Coptic text has the Greek word z“on instead of yhr¤on (Gen. 3:1 LXX). 22 LXX: §p‹ t∞w g∞w. 23 46.2–47.6. 24 In the LXX version Eve says: “the serpent seduced me”; cf. I Cor. 11:3 and I Tim. 2:14. 21

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he explained that her inner eyes would be opened. On the other hand, the anthropomorphic features of the creator are emphasized. In this way the reader is being prepared for the negative comments that follow soon. The text omits Gen. 3:15–21 and continues: And he said, “Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing evil and good.” So he said, “Let us throw him out of Paradise lest he take from the tree of life and eat and live forever ” (Gen. 3:22–23).

Whereas the biblical story merely reports that God threw man out of Paradise, the Gnostic revision has God make a deliberate decision: “Let us throw him out of Paradise . . .” We now turn to the Gnostic author’s comments on this rewritten story of the events in the Paradise garden. What sort of God is this? First [he] was envious of Adam that he should eat from the tree of knowledge. And secondly he said, “Adam, where are you? ” So God did not have foreknowledge? That is, he did not know this from the beginning? And later on he said, “Let us throw him out of this place lest he eat from the tree of life and live for ever ”. Thus he has shown himself to be a malicious envier. What sort of God is this? Indeed, great is the blindness of those who read (this) and have not recognized him!25

This last sentence betrays that the polemic is actually directed to people, most likely Christians of the Church, who believe in the Old Testament creator-God. And he said, “I am a jealous God. I bring the sins of the parents upon the children for three, four generations” (Exod. 20:5). And he said, “I will cause their heart to become hardened and I will cause their mind to be blind, so that they might not understand or comprehend what is said” (cf. Isa. 6:10). These are the things he said to those who believe in him and serve him!26

The author has added two Old Testament passages (quotations of the biblical God) that are supposed to confirm the jealousy and the

25 47.14–48.4. The Coptic text allows other translations. Pearson (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X, 165: “For great is the blindness of those who read. And they did not understand it”. K. Koschorke, “Der gnostische Traktak ‘Testimonium Veritatis’”, 108: “Denn gross ist die Blindheit derer, die (zu ihm) rufen; nicht haben sie ihn erkannt (oder: die (dies) lesen und ihn doch nicht erkannt haben).” 26 48.4–15. Cf. the quotation of Isa. 10:6 in ApJohn (NHC II 22.25–28; BG 2 59.1–6) discussed in ch. II.

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wickedness of the creator God. The last sentence (“These are the things he said to those who believe in him and serve him”) once again shows that the polemic is directed to believers in the Old Testament God. The selection of Old Testament passages allegedly exposing the jealousy and wickedness of the biblical God has a counterpart in a selection of Bible texts speaking about certain serpents. This final section is seriously damaged. 1 quote one lacunal passage: [. . . and the rod] which was in the hand of Moses became a serpent. It swallowed the serpents of the magicians (cf. Exod. 7:10–12). Again it is written, “He made a serpent of bronze (and ) hung it upon a pole” (cf. Num. 21:9) [5 lines damaged] this bronze serpent [. . .] For this is Christ. [Those who] believed in him, have [. . . . .] Those who did not believe [. . . . .] What, then, is this [belief ? They] do not [serve. . . .]27

This passage underlines that the serpents of the relevant Moses stories possessed miraculous saving powers. Apparently the serpent of Num. 21 is explained typologically as a manifestation of Christ. The serpent of the Paradise garden is associated with these respected serpents, whereas the creator God is exposed as a malevolent being. Historical Context How are we to explain the selective and coloured rewriting of the Paradise story and the subsequent resistant comments in TestTruth? As I indicated in chapter I, Gnostic authors were able to revise biblical traditions just by bringing these traditions into agreement with their own convictions. I also pointed out that this explanation is not undisputed in scholarly literature. Actually, the editor of the Coptic text, Birger Pearson, explains the rejection of the biblical God in TestTruth in a completely different way in his essay “Jewish Haggadic Traditions in The Testimony of Truth”.28 I will first discuss his suggestion.29 At the conclusion of his essay, Pearson remarks that our text may be very significant for what it can tell us about Gnostic origins. With respect to the Genesis interpretation of TestTruth, he states: “One

27 28 29

48.23–49.11 (the following 13 lines are missing). In Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, 39–51. See also K.L. King, What is Gnosticism?, 178f.

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can hear in this text echoes of existential despair arising in circles of the people of the Covenant faced with a crisis of history, with the apparent failure of the God of history: ‘What kind of a God is this?’ (48,1); ‘These things he has said (and done, failed to do) to those who believe in him and serve him!’ (48,13ff ).” In Pearson’s opinion, the words, “These things he has said to those who believe in him and serve him”, are an exclamation of Jews who felt abandoned by their own God. Pearson can maintain this because he assumes that the paraphrase of the Paradise story and the subsequent comments (in his view, a “Gnostic midrash”, see below) were borrowed by the Christian Gnostic composer of TestTruth from an earlier Jewish source.30 It is not my intention to go into this sourcecritical question. I just wish to state that the negative and polemical comments in the present section of TestTruth are in perfect agreement with the rejection of the Old Testament God and his Law and with the controversy with Catholic Christians in other parts of the text.31 Pearson explains the resistant, negative comments on the biblical Paradise story as a reaction of disappointment by Jews. He takes this very seriously as evidenced in his remark: “Such expressions of existential anguish are not without parallels in our own time ‘after Auschwitz’.” Pearson surmises that the alleged inner-Jewish rebellion originated in the first century b.c.e. or in the first century c.e.32 I do not endorse this suggestion. It may be recalled, to begin with, that Gnostics were not the only ones to have great problems with some biblical texts, notably with texts that assign anthropomorphic qualities and ways of behaving to the biblical God. The Genesis account of the events in Paradise is one of these texts. Generations of Jewish and Christian commentators and theologians have been puzzled about the way God makes his appearance in this story and about the emotions and actions attributed to him. They have tried to explain away the problematic elements of this and other stories either by means of allegorical interpretation (e.g. Philo of Alexandria

30

Cf. above, ch. I, pp. 6–8. J.D. Kaestli, “Une relecture polémique de Genèse 3 dans le gnosticisme chrétien: le Témoignage de Verité”, 52: “Loin d’être un corps étranger, le développement sur le Dieu de la Genèse et sur le serpent est rattaché au reste du TemVer par des liens évidents.” 32 “Jewish Haggadic Traditions”, 51. 31

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and the Christian theologians of Alexandria), by rewriting and emending the biblical text (e.g. in the Septuagint and the Targums and in such books as Jubilees and Genesis Apocryphon), or by considering the scriptural passages in question as later corruptions (notably in PseudoClementine literature).33 Pagan polemicists made clever use of such notoriously difficult passages to demonstrate the inferiority of the Jewish and Christian God. The second-century Platonist philosopher Celsus, for instance, more than once ridicules the attempts made by Jews and Christians to allegorize the anthropomorphic features of the biblical God.34 Another and more striking instance can be found in a surviving fragment of the treatise Against the Galileans,35 written by the fourth-century Roman emperor Julian, who was surnamed “the Apostate” because he broke with his Christian upbringing and, after his ascent to the throne, strove for a revival of pagan religion in the empire. In a similar fashion to the author of TestTruth, he recapitulates the biblical Paradise story, interlarding his selective summary with some quotations, and he concludes that this story discloses the ignorance, the jealousy and the wickedness of the God in whom Christians believe.36 Incidentally, Julian argues that the ignorance of the creator God became manifest above all in the fact that precisely the one whom he meant to be a helper to Adam turned out to be the cause of his fall. Pagan philosophers as well as early Jewish and early Christian exegetes took offence at the anthropomorphisms and the moral inequalities of the biblical God. I surmise that this observation gives us a clue to understanding the negative comments on the biblical Paradise story in TestTruth. I do not see special grounds for relating the resistant interpretation of the Genesis story in our text to feelings of disappointment and despair on the part of Jews or to explain this interpretation from a supposed hostile attitude towards Jews and their God on the part of pagan outsiders. The resistant interpretation of the Paradise story just demonstrates that in the conviction of the Gnostic author, the God who figures in the biblical Paradise story cannot possibly be equated with the fully transcendent and perfectly

33 34 35 36

See M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 64–7, and above, ch. II. Origenes, Cels IV 3,8–51 and 89. Williams, Rethinking, 67. 75a–94a. K. Koschorke, Die Polemik der Gnostiker, 150f.

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good God in whom Gnostics believed. In the God of this story Gnostics recognized the features of the ignorant Demiurge, the creator of the dark world who tries to prevent spiritual humanity from returning to its home in the world above. The critical comments which were added to the rewritten Paradise story are an organic, integrated part of the polemic against other Christians—in particular Catholic Christians—that permeates through the whole of the surviving text. The words at the beginning of p. 48, “What sort of God is this? Indeed, great is the blindness of those who read (this) and have not recognized him!” and, a few lines further on, “These are the things he said to those who believe in him and serve him!”, were worded by Christian Gnostics who censured Christians of the Church for their belief in the Old Testament creator God and his commandments. We are dealing with a difference of opinion, in fact a sharp and bitter controversy, between Gnostics and other Christians about the revelatory value of the Old Testament. Whereas mainstream Christians identified the biblical creator of heaven and earth with the God revealed by Jesus Christ, Gnostic Christians considered the creator a demonic figure and, accordingly, rejected the God of the Old Testament and all texts testifying to his greatness and holiness. A Gnostic Midrash? Since Pearson’s article, it is usual to refer to the Paradise text of TestTruth as a “Gnostic midrash”.37 Apparently, this designation is based on the literary form of our text segment: a quotation of Scripture followed by a pronouncement upon this quotation.38 But the question is whether in defining midrash we should pay attention exclusively to formal characteristics. It is preferable to reserve this term for those instances of the above literary form that give expression to the typically Rabbinic approach to Scripture.39 If we apply

37 Pearson was probably the first to call the text a Gnostic Midrash. His designation was adopted by others. See e.g. M.A. Williams, Rethinking, 69f. 38 For the literary form of the midrash see esp. A. Goldberg, “Form-Analysis of Midrashic Literature as a Method of Description”. 39 Ph. Alexander, “Midrash and the Gospels”; cf. L. Teugels, “Midrasj in, en op de bijbel?”. In midrashic literature the Rabbis interpreted their own Scripture. For

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this additional criterium, the designation “Gnostic midrash” is a contradictio in adiecto. Pearson underpins this when he states: “it is axiomatic that once Gnosticism is present Judaism has been abandoned”.40 The literary form under discussion, (biblical) quotation + commentary, also occurs outside (and independent from) Rabbinic traditions. An interesting example is the passage of LetPetPhil quoted in the beginning of this book (p. 3). This passages consists of a brief summary of an early christological creed emphasizing the suffering of Jesus followed by the comments: “My brothers, Jesus is a stranger to this suffering. But we are the ones who have suffered through the transgression of the Mother (Sophia)”, etc. Just as in the Paradise text of TestTruth, the quotation and the commentary are clearly separated, and the commentary criticizes the allegedly wrong understanding of the quoted text. It is interesting to compare LetPetPhil for also this source bears witness to a controversy between Gnostics and (other) Christians, in all probability proto-orthodox Christians. While in this text, the discussion is focused on the true meaning of the suffering of Jesus, the polemics of TestTruth are aimed at the obedience of other Christians to the biblical God, particularly to his order to multiply. The Paradise text served to confirm the Gnostic position in this controversy by exposing the creator’s alleged inferior qualities, motives and actions.

the rest, they were not less critical and negative about Gnostic schools and ideas than Gnostics were about biblical and Jewish traditions. Cf A.F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven. 40 “Jewish Haggadic Traditions”, 51. Cf. W.C. van Unnik, “Gnosis und Judentum”, 80.

CHAPTER SEVEN

EVE’S CHILDREN AND THE SALVATION OF HUMANITY (APJOHN, HYPARCH )

Introduction: A Heresiological Cliché Valentinian Christians referred to Cain, Abel, and Seth as the biblical representatives of three types, or “natures”, of human beings: the material or fleshly type, the psychical or “soulish” type, and the pneumatic or spiritual type. We know this from Irenaeus’s report of Valentinian doctrines in the first book of his Adversus haereses,1 and also from one of the fragments of the Valentinian teacher Theodotus quoted by Clement of Alexandria.2 While it is not immediately clear from the Valentinian text preserved by Clement what was the exact meaning of the reference to Cain, Abel, and Seth in connection with three human “natures”, Irenaeus’s report is very definite on this point.3 According to the heresiologist, the Valentinians claimed that the three natures constitute three different races of humans, and, furthermore, that these races, the lineages of Cain, Abel, and Seth, are fixed and unchangeable. Accordingly, being saved or being doomed would depend on whether one belongs to one of these lineages. The material people, who are Cain’s descendants, would certainly perish (“for matter is incapable of salvation”).4 The pneumatics, the offspring of Seth, i.e. the Valentinians themselves, could be completely certain of their future salvation (“for the spiritual cannot be damned”).5

1 AH I 7.5. As indicated in his preface to book I, this report deals with the doctrines of the Valentinian teacher Ptolemy and his school. A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleau, Irenée de Lyon (SC 263), 171. 2 ExTheod 54. Otherwise, the distinction between better and worse types of humans was relatively commonplace in philosophical and religious traditions in the ancient world. Cf. M.A. Williams, Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’, 189, who refers to Philo and Paul. 3 I 6–7; cf. II 29. 4 I 6.1–2; 7.5. 5 Ibid.

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Irenaeus adds to this that the certainty of the Valentinians about their own salvation induced them to maintain that moral behaviour was of no concern to them (“it is impossible for the spiritual to suffer corruption whatever the kinds of behaviour in which one is involved”).6 The middle group of the psychicals, those belonging to the class represented by Abel, i.e. non-Gnostic Christians such as Bishop Irenaeus, were a special case inasmuch as they were said to have some freedom of choice: if they did good works their final destination would be the intermediate region of the Demiurge (the highest part of the cosmic world). If they did not practice good works, they would share the fate of Cain’s lineage.7 There is no hint in Irenaeus’s report that the Valentinians considered the possibility of conversion or transition from one category to another. The Valentinians are depicted by the orthodox bishop as determinists and profiteers from their supposedly safe position. Interestingly, Irenaeus points out an inner contradiction in the soteriological teaching of the Valentinians as he describes it. In AH II 29 he states that they “are inconsistent with themselves”: if nature and substance are the means of salvation, how then, he argues, could they believe that only those psychicals who had lived righteously attained to their destination in the intermediate world? But this observation does not cause the heresiologist to doubt his interpretation of the relevant Valentinian teaching. He explains to his readers that the fatalistic doctrine allegedly advanced by these heretical Christians would not only make righteous conduct useless, but that it also rendered the Christian faith and the descent of the Saviour into the world superfluous.8 Irenaeus’s portrayal of the Valentinians strongly influenced later perceptions of the anthropological and soteriological ideas of these and other Gnostic Christians.9 Clement of Alexandria, who had direct

6 I 6.2. Having made this point, Irenaeus proceeds to describe in some detail their supposed lascivious and libertine conduct (6,3). 7 I 6.4 shows that, in particular, the supposed idea that psychicals, “the people of the Church”, had to do good works and to live in continence while pneumatics could do whatever they wished, aroused the bishop’s anger. 8 II 29.1; cf. II 14.4. W.A. Löhr, “Gnostic determinism reconsidered”, 382. 9 It is difficult to find the charge of determinism in Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, and Plotinus. Irenaeus is quite likely the instigator of this anti-Gnostic cliché. Löhr, “Gnostic determinism”, 386.

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access to Gnostic texts and teachings, was familiar with Irenaeus’s work.10 The charge of determinism originally addressed by Irenaeus to Valentinians was reused by Clement and applied to other Gnostics as well.11 Thus Clement contributed to developing Irenaeus’s antiValentinian criticism into a heresiological cliché. Origen knew the works of both Irenaeus and Clement.12 He adduced more sophisticated theological arguments against allegedly deterministic models of salvation history,13 and he included Marcion among the champions of such a doctrine.14 The clue to this understanding of Gnostic soteriology is the Valentinian notion of “being saved by nature (fÊsei s–zesyai)”.15 However, it is questionable whether the Valentinians understood this notion to mean that they possessed the pneumatic element or nature on account of their belonging to the natural lineage of Seth, and that this inherited possession was the one and only cause of their being saved. It is noteworthy that, according to Clement, their speaking of “being saved by nature” did not prevent the Valentinians from believing that salvation can result from obedience and repentance.16 Furthermore, in one of the fragments quoted by Clement, the Valentinian teacher Theodotus states that the psychic and spiritual components of humanity are not transmitted (“sown”) in the same way as its material part, for, he comments, in that case “all humans would be equal and righteous and in all there would be the teaching” (i.e. the teaching of the Gnostic truth).17

10 A. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque, vol. II, 409ff; Löhr, “Gnostic determinism”, 388, n. 15. 11 Cf. Strom. II 10–11; III 3.3 (with regard to the Basilidians: because they believed they belonged to the elect race they felt free to sin); IV 89.4; V 3.3. L. Schottroff, “Animae naturaliter salvandae”, 67f. 12 A. Le Boulluec, “Y a-t-il des traces de la polémique antignostique d’Irenée dans le Péri Archôn d’Origène?”. 13 Princ. III 1.2–4; In Joh. XIII 10.64; cf. E. Junod’s introduction to Origen’s Philocalie 21–27, Sur le libre arbitre, 73–90 and 110–20; A. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, II, 510f, n. 242; Ph.J. van der Eijk, “Origenes’ Verteidigung des freien Willens in De Oratione 6,1–2”; Löhr, “Gnostic determinism”, 385 with n. 28; H.S. Benjamins, Eingeordnete Freiheit. Freiheit und Vorsehung bei Origenes. 14 A. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, II, 510f with n. 243; Löhr, “Gnostic determinism”, 385. 15 Cf. Clement, ExcTheod 56.3: TÚ m¢n oÔn pneumatikÚn fÊsei sƒzÒmenon. 16 Strom. II 115; L. Schottroff, “Animae naturaliter salvandae”, 84f. 17 ExcTheod 56.2; M.R. Desjardins, Sin in Valentinianism, 35. I already pointed out above that it is unclear how in these fragments, Cain, Abel, and Seth are connected with the supposed sarcic, psychic, and spiritual aspects of humanity.

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The common heresiological portrayal of Valentinian and other Gnostic Christians as determinists (and libertines), coined by Irenaeus and refined by the two Alexandrian theologians, underlies modern understanding of Gnostic anthropology and soteriology. It is repeated in scholarly discussions18 as well as in more popular presentations.19 However, as recent studies have demonstrated, the authentic Gnostic texts rediscovered in the last centuries, in particular the Nag Hammadi writings, do not confirm this picture.20 We find in these texts, among other things, a preference for a strict ascetic lifestyle,21 ethical exhortation,22 awareness of the need for outside redemption,23 summons to spread the Gnostic truth in the world,24 attitudes, issues, and concerns that are hardly compatible with a deterministic model of salvation. In the rest of this chapter I will examine the information relating to Eve’s children and the salvation of humanity in two non-Valentinion Gnostic writings, ApJohn and HypArch. These demiurgical-Gnostic texts speak in some detail about Cain, Abel, and Seth. HypArch also refers to a daughter of Eve, Norea. How are the children of Eve related to later generations, and what do the rewritten stories tell us about the soteriological ideas of the Gnostics in question?

18 Notably in the works of leading scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann (cf. e.g. his Das Evangelium des Johannes, 96f, n. 5; 114, n. 2) and Hans Jonas (Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, I, 236; II/1, 29–31). Cf. Tardieu, Écrits gnostiques, 331. 19 Michael Williams: this widespread picture is “a treasured caricature that has provided countless hours of intellectual satisfaction”, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 189. 20 See in particular the aforementioned publications by Schottroff, Löhr, and Desjardins; further Schottroff, Der glaubende und die feindliche Welt, 96–9; M.A. Williams, The Immovable Race, and Rethinking Gnosticism; S. Pétrement, Le dieu séparé; H.W. Attridge and E.H. Pagels, “The Tripartite Tractate”, 446: “It might almost be said that behavior (the behavior of individuals) produces essence, inasmuch as each soul by its response to the savior actualizes one of the potentialities implanted within it”; E. Thomassen, Le traité tripartite, 428f; A.H.B. Logan, Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy. 21 But F. Wisse, “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt”, argues that asceticism is not a feature of Gnosticism in general but of the Nag Hammadi collection of Gnostic and other books which was used by Pachomean monks. 22 Cf. e.g. the concluding words of OrigWorld (NHC II,5) 127.16f: “by his praxis and his gnosis each one will make his physis known”; TreatSeth (NHC VII,2) 61f. 23 According to TracTrip. (NHCod. I, 5) 124.32–125.11, a Valentinian text, everybody in this world needs redemption through Christ. Desjardins, Sin in Valentinianism, 85. 24 An interesting case is LetPetPhil (NHC VIII,2), esp. 132.20–133.1; 137.6–9 and 22–25.

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The APOCRYPHON OF JOHN In ApJohn, Cain-Eloim and Abel-Yave are sons of the demiurgical God Yaldabaoth. Their mother is not the spiritual Eve,25 for we are told that representatives of the true God had removed Life26 from Eve when Yaldabaoth approached her. Her sarcic and psychic aspects were left.27 Cain-Eloim and Abel-Yave were born from an illicit union between the demiurgical God and the sarcic-psychic Eve. (Cain and Abel) The first ruler saw the virgin who stood with Adam, and that the luminous Reflection (Epinoia) of life had appeared in her. And Yaldabaoth was filled with ignorance.28 And when the Providence of the All noticed (it), she sent some (angelic powers) and they snatched Life (Zoê ) out of Eve. And the first ruler defiled her and begot in her two sons; the first and the second (are) Eloim and Yave. Eloim has a bear-face and Yave has a cat-face. The one is righteous, but the other is unrighteous. Yave he set over fire and wind, and Eloim he set over water and earth. These he called with the names Cain and Abel with a view to deceive. To the present day, sexual intercourse has continued due to the first ruler. He planted sexual desire in her who belongs to Adam.29 And through intercourse he raised up the generation of similar bodies, and he supplied them with his counterfeit spirit. And he set the two rulers over powers so that they ruled over the cave.30

According to ancient views about human procreation, the contribution of the male parent to the formation of the child is more important than that of the mother.31 If the cosmic ruler Yaldabaoth was the father, it should therefore not surprise us that the children were

25 According to ApJohn, Eve was not created from Adam’s rib but from the spiritual light power that the demiurgical God had breathed into Adam. Cf. above, ch. V. 26 The association of the spiritual Eve with “life” reflects Gen. 3:20 LXX. 27 According to ApJohn’s creation story, human beings have a psychic and a sarcic body. Cf., above, ch. V. 28 BG 62.6–7 adds: “so that he wanted to raise up a seed from her”; cf. III 31.8–9. 29 The three parallel texts read: “in Adam”. Cf. K.L. King, “Sophia and Christ in the Apocryphon of John”, esp. 170f. 30 II 24.8–34; cf. BG 62.3–63.12. 31 Aristotle taught that the male parent provides the form, the mother the matter of the child (GenAn 729a–730a). This idea was widely accepted in later antiquity. See I.S. Gilhus, “Gnosticism: A Study in Liminal Symbolism”, esp. 112.

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cosmic powers. Yaldabaoth set them over the four elements and, consequently, over the “cave”, the cosmic world—perhaps more in particular the human body—made from these elements.32 Note that ApJohn does not mention that Abel was killed by his brother. This prominent feature of the Genesis account is omitted in ApJohn’s Gnostic revision, apparently because Abel-Yave is seen as a cosmic power who, together with his brother Cain-Eloim, is still controlling the “cave” of the sublunary world. The first names of the two cosmic sons of the Demiurge are Eloim and Yave.33 The above-quoted text of NHC II suggests that it was Yaldabaoth who gave them the names Cain and Abel, and that he did so with a view to deceiving humanity: those who did not understand their demonic nature ran the risk of being exposed to their enduring power. The theriomorphic description of the two cosmic rulers—Eloim-Cain is bear-faced, Yave-Abel cat-faced34—is in line with the earlier description of their father as a lion-faced serpent.35 Sexual intercourse between divine males and human females was a well-known topic in Greek tradition, but it is quite possible that the words spoken by the biblical Eve after the birth of Cain (Gen. 4:1), “I have gotten a man through the Lord (or: through God; LXX: diå toË yeoË)”, and Jewish speculations about this statement, contributed to the idea that Cain was a son of the demiurgical God.36 Incidentally, the story of Eve’s being raped by a superhuman figure (the Devil disguised as a serpent or the demonic Demiurge) has some features in common with the biblical story of the intercourse between heavenly beings (sons of God or angels) and “the daughters of men” (Gen. 6:1f.).37 Both traditions speak of an intercourse between super-

32

Cf. above, ch. V. Earlier in cod. II (10.34–36), Cain and Abel are mentioned among the rulers of the Zodiacal constellations. 34 In the version of BG and NHC III, Eloim has the cat-face and Yave the bearface. In HypArch (II 87. 29) the archontic rulers likewise have animal faces. 35 II 10,8–11; BG 37.19–38.1. Cf. H.M. Jackson, The Lion Becomes Man, 34–39. 36 The Hebrew text can be read as, “I have gotten a man, namely Yahweh”. See L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, I, 105–7, V, 132–5; A.F.J. Klijn, Seth in Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Literature, 7–10, 16, 21, 28–30; G.A.G. Stroumsa, Another Seed, 47–49; B. Pearson, “The Figure of Seth in Gnostic Literature” and “Cain and the Cainites”, in Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, 52–83 and 95–107; F. García Martínez, “Eve’s Children in the Targumim”. 37 See below, ch. VIII. 33

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human and human beings, and, in both cases, this illicit union causes moral decay in humanity. The qualification of Eloim-Cain and Yave-Abel as righteous and unrighteous might reflect Jewish speculations about the divine names Elohim and Jahweh, God and Lord.38 But whereas in Jewish tradition, Elohim and Yahweh are different names of the one and only God (or designations of two powers or qualities of the one God), the mythologizers of ApJohn refer to two separate cosmic powers, who, as is also current in Greek mythology, are related to a superior cosmic God as sons to a father. It is possible, finally, that EloimCain’s association with the elements earth and water was derived from his biblical description as an agricultural farmer, bringing offerings of fruits of the earth, and Yave-Abel’s connection with fire and wind from his description as a herdsman who brought a burnt offering of sheep and their fat.39 The purpose of the second paragraph of the section quoted above is to give a mythological explanation of the sexual desire in human beings. Sexual desire is the moving force behind human procreation. In the view of Gnostics, the result of procreation is that the divine light substance given to Adam is scattered over ever more human beings. According to the above quotation from ApJohn, sexual desire was planted in the first humans by the Demiurge.40 Several features of this Gnostic text are reminiscent of the Genesis story of Cain and Abel. First of all this applies to their names (Eloim and Yave as well as Cain and Abel) and to their birth from Eve. It is possible, as we have noted, that the words of the biblical Eve (or speculations about these words) contributed to the idea that Cain’s father was not Adam but the demiurgical God Yaldabaoth. Also, their qualifications as righteous and unrighteous may reflect biblical

38 In Jewish tradition, the name Yahwe was sometimes associated with God’s mercy, the name Elohim with his judgement. In Philo’s allegorical explanations the name “God” is supposed to represent God’s creative and beneficent power, the name “Lord” his royal and punishing power. Cf. N.A. Dahl and A.F. Segal, “Philo and the Rabbis on the Names of God”; R. van den Broek, “Jewish and Platonic Speculations in Early Alexandrian Theology: Eugnostos, Philo, Valentinus, and Origen”, esp. 193. 39 Tardieu, Écrits gnostiques, 328. In codex IV 38.4–6, these connections are reversed. According to Tardieu we are dealing here with an adaptation to the biblical text (Cain unrighteous and Abel righteous). 40 Cf. above, ch. IV.

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tradition. On the other hand, the story line and the basic convictions about God and humanity—the negative attitude towards the biblical God and the view of man as a compositum of matter, soul and divine spirit—are radically different. In the context of this chapter’s examination, the most important conclusion is that Cain and Abel—unlike Adam, Eve, and Seth (see below)—are not regarded as human ancestors, let alone that they are related to special types of human beings. Their connection with humanity is of a fully different order: Eloim-Cain and Yave-Abel are supposedly demonic rulers over the “cave” or “tomb” in which humans are forced to dwell. I shall now proceed to the brief passage devoted to Seth. (Seth) He (Adam) knew his essence (ousia) who was like him. Adam begot Seth. And just as the race above, in the aeons, the Mother sent the one who is hers. The Spirit came down to her (Eve?) to awaken the essence (ousia) which is like him (the Spirit), after the model of the perfection, in order to awaken them from forgetfulness and the wickedness of the tomb.41

Seth was essentially different from Cain and Abel. It is possible, once again, that words of the biblical Eve suggested this idea to the Gnostic myth-tellers. Gen. 4:25 reports that when Eve had given birth to her son Seth, she said: “God has raised up for me ‘another seed’ (LXX: sp°rma ßteron) instead of Abel.” The reference to Eve as Adam’s “essence (oÈs¤a) which was like him”, means that the child was born from a union of spiritually equals. Seth belonged “essentially” to the true God, whereas Cain and Abel shared the nature of the demiurgical God Yaldabaoth. The report of the coming down of the Spirit is of prime importance when we try to ascertain ApJohn’s model of salvation. Here we read that the spiritual or divine “essence” in the first humans has to be awakened from outside. In the BG-version quoted above, it is hinted that this also applies to their posterity: “The Spirit came down (. . . .) in order to awaken them (note the plural) from forgetfulness.”42

41 BG 63.12–64.3 (III 32.7 wrongly has anomia instead of ousia). Cf. the more complicated version of II 24.34–25.7. 42 Cf. II 25.23–25; BG 65.3–8: “Those upon whom the Spirit of life will descend (. . .) will be saved and become perfect.”

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According to ApJohn, all human beings are descendants of Seth and they all inherit his light substance. But not all will develop this potential. It is on this point that human beings differ. The subsequent section of ApJohn which speaks about various types of souls, makes this more clear.43 In line with the above quotation no reference is made there to “natural” differences in humanity. What is more, the Gnostic Christ reveals that sooner or later everyone—also the souls that are ruled by the forces of evil—will be called.44 But the souls react differently to the revelation of the Gnostic truth. Those that react positively acquire knowledge, realize to whom they belong, and will flee from evil; those that do not will go astray and run the danger of falling into forgetfulness. We are far removed here from a deterministic type of soteriology. The TRUE NATURE OF THE ARCHONS The text of Hypostasis of the Archons (HypArch) is known from only one Coptic manuscript, NHC II. This codex also contains a copy of ApJohn. It is generally assumed that HypArch was composed later than ApJohn, probably sometime during the first half of the third century.45 The stories about Eve’s children in HypArch differ from those in ApJohn. First of all, HypArch keeps closer to the biblical text in having Cain attack (and kill?) his brother Abel. In agreement with the biblical tradition, Seth occupies Abel’s place. But this does not mean, as we shall see, that Seth has the same descent as Abel. Furthermore, in this text the biblical God is split up into two figures, the unrighteous ruler of Chaos who—in conformity with ApJohn—is called Yaldabaoth, and the righteous ruler of the planetary and astral regions who is called Sabaoth, “the God of the forces”. As a result, HypArch has three different Gods (as well as many cosmic powers): the wicked cosmic God Yaldabaoth, the righteous cosmic God Sabaoth, and the hyper-cosmic God, the True Father. We shall see that in some way

43 II 25.16–27.31. See Williams, The Immovable Race, 166–9; Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’, 196–8. 44 II 27.4–11; BG 69.5–13. Williams, Rethinking, 196: “in one way or another, sooner or later, all souls will have access to revealed knowledge. The differentiating factors are how quickly this takes place and whether the knowledge is finally accepted or rejected.” 45 R.A. Bullard in: B. Layton (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2–7, 222.

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or another, the three Gods are related to three children of Eve: Cain, Seth, and Eve’s daughter Norea (or Orea).46 (Eve’s material shadow raped by the rulers) Then the authorities (the archontic rulers) came up to their Adam.47 And when they saw his female counterpart (i.e. the spiritual Eve) speaking with him, they became agitated with great agitation; and they became enamored of her. They said to one another, “Come, let us sow our seed in her”, and they pursued her. And she laughed at them for their foolishness and their blindness; and in their clutches, she became a tree,48 and left before them her shadowy reflection resembling herself, and they defiled [it] foully. And they defiled the stamp of her voice, so that by the form they had modelled, together with [their] (own) image, they made themselves liable to condemnation.49 (Cain and Abel ) Afterwards she bore Cain, their son; and Cain cultivated the land. Thereupon (? palin)50 he knew his wife; again becoming pregnant she bore Abel; and Abel was a herdsman of sheep (Gen. 4:1–2). Now Cain brought in from the crops of his field, but Abel brought in an offering from among his lambs. God (the God Sabaoth?) gazed upon the offerings of Abel; but he did not accept the offerings of Cain (Gen. 4:3–5). And sarcic Cain pursued Abel his brother (cf. Gen. 4:8). And God said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” He answered saying, “Am I, then, my brother’s keeper?” God said to Cain, “Listen! The voice of your brother’s blood is crying up to me! (Gen. 4:9–10) You have sinned with your mouth. It will return to you: anyone who kills Cain will let loose seven vengeances (Gen. 4:15), and you will exist groaning and trembling upon the earth” (Gen. 4:12 LXX).51 (Seth and Norea) And Adam [knew] his female counterpart Eve, and she became pregnant, and bore [Seth] (Gen. 4:25) to Adam. And she said, “I have born [another] man through God,52 in place [of Abel ]” (Gen. 4:25). 46

The names Norea and Orea are used alternately, apparently for the same figure, who is Seth’s sister as well as Noah’s wife. See B. Pearson, “The Figure of Norea in Gnostic Literature”, in: Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, 84–94, and I.S. Gilhus, The Nature of the Archons, 77–95. 47 Adam was created by the cosmic archons, cf. below, n. 58. 48 Cf. the mythological story of the transformation of the virgin Daphne into a tree (a laurel), retold by Ovidius, Metamorphoses I, 548–557. Christian authors and artists were familiar with this pagan motif. A. Hermann, ‘Daphne’, RAC III, 585–93. 49 89.17–31. 50 Cf. below, n. 56. 51 91.11–30. 52 ‘Through God (hm pnoute)’ is an addition to the biblical text (Gen. 4:25; cf. 4:1). The Gnostic author wishes to make it clear that not Cain’s but Seth’s birth was according to the will of the true God.

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Again Eve became pregnant, and she bore [Norea]. And she said, “He has begotten on [me a] virgin as an assistance [for] many generations of humankind.” She is the virgin whom the powers did not defile.53

Note that the short report of the birth of Eve’s son Cain does not immediately follow the story of her being raped by the archontic powers.54 It is therefore not fully clear to whom the pronoun “their” (“she bore Cain, their son”) refers: to Adam and Eve, the protagonists of the preceding Paradise story, or to the archontic rulers who raped the sarcic Eve. With most commentators, I prefer the latter interpretation, chiefly because otherwise the story of the rape of the sarcic Eve by the demonic rulers would have no sequel.55 There is some obscurity, too, about the father of Abel. It may seem obvious that “he” (“thereupon56 he knew his wife; again becoming pregnant she bore Abel”) refers to Adam, but after the report of the birth of Cain from a union of Eve and the demonic rulers one would expect a more explicit mention of Abel’s father.57 If we assume that Adam is meant, the reference is to the fleshly-psychic Adam.58

53 91.30–92.3. With some minor adaptations I adopt the translation by B. Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2–7, 241–7. 54 I omitted HypArch’s version of the Paradise story, p. 89.31–91.11, which interrupts the story of Eve’s being raped by the rulers and the birth of Cain. 55 B. Layton, “The Hypostasis of the Archons”, 60, and Gnostic Scriptures, 72, B. Barc, L’Hypostase des Archontes, 97f. and 104f.; B. Pearson, “The Figure of Seth”, in: Gnosticism, Judaism and Egyptian Christianity, 58, Gilhus, The Nature of the Archons, 79. Differently R.A. Bullard, The Hypostasis of the Archons, 92. 56 The Greek time adjunct palin (91.13) can be understood in different ways. If it means “again” (“again he knew his wife”, cf. R.A. Bullard, The Hypostasis of the Archons, 29; M. Krause in: W. Foerster, Die Gnosis, II, Zürich 1971, 57: “wiederum”) the implication would be that “he” (Adam) knew his wife earlier, to wit before the birth of Cain. If we understand palin as “thereupon” (with Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2–7, 245, and Gnostic Scriptures, 72, cf. B. Barc, L’Hypostase des Archontes, 61: “ensuite”), it is not implied that Adam knew Eve before the birth of Cain. 57 According to Barc, L’Hypostase des Archontes, 105f., the “he” is the God Sabaoth. 58 That reference is made to the sarcic-psychic Adam can be inferred from the previous story of the creation of Adam and Eve: We are told that Adam was made by the archontic rulers as one wholly of the earth (87.26–27); then “he” (Yaldabaoth or rather Sabaoth) breathed into his face (Gen. 2:7a LXX) and he came to be a “psychical” (a fleshly being with a soul; 88.3–4); finally, the Spirit saw the psychic human being, it descended and came to dwell within him so that he became a living soul (Gen. 2:7b LXX; 88.11–16). But now HypArch goes on to tell how the archontic rulers caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, opened his side and took the living woman (Eve) out of it and closed his side with flesh (cf. Gen. 2:21). When

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The other two children, Seth and Norea, however, were not born from the fleshly Eve but from her spiritual prototype.59 This is clear from the designation of their mother as Adam’s female ‘counterpart’ or “other half ”. This same expression was used earlier to denote the spiritual Eve (89.18–19, quoted above).60 No doubt Seth’s father was the spiritual Adam. But it remains unclear who was the father of Norea.61 The spiritual Eve announces that Norea will be “an assistance for many generations of humankind”. The textual basis of this statement is Gen. 2:18, where it is said that Eve was created as a “helper”62 to Adam. The idea might be that what she, the spiritual Eve, is to Adam, Norea will be to later generations of humankind. Indeed, both female figures are envisaged as bringers of true spiritual life. The distinction between Yaldabaoth and his dark powers on the one hand, and the righteous ruler Sabaoth on the other, is carried through in HypArch’s revision of the biblical Flood story. The flood was allegedly caused by Yaldabaoth’s demonic forces but “the ruler of the powers”, i.e. Sabaoth, attempted to save Noah, a descendant of Seth, and his children, advising him to make an ark and to set it upon Mount Sir. We will discuss HypArch’s story of Noah and the Flood in the next chapter. In the present connection, this story is interesting because it enlarges upon the concept of Norea/Orea as a spiritual helper of Seth’s offspring. Norea wished to board the ark but initially Noah did not admit her. Thereupon she set the ark on fire and Noah had to make the ark once more. Here the story ends rather abruptly. We do not hear about later generations of “Sethians”. The important thing is that Norea is depicted as a helper to Noah and his children, the posterity of Seth. The story suggests that descen-

the woman had left him, Adam was once again without spirit. So Abel’s father was this Adam, his mother was the “shadowy reflection” of the spiritual Eve; cf. 89. 26–27, quoted above. 59 The spiritual Eve is the living woman who left Adam when the archontic rulers opened his side (89.7–10). Cf. the preceding note. 60 According to HypArch, the father of Seth (the spiritual Adam) was not the same as the father of Abel (the psychic Adam). It is somewhat easier to understand this idea on the basis of the LXX-version of Gen. 4:25 than on the basis of the Hebrew text since the Greek text does not report that Adam knew his wife again before the birth of Seth. Cf. Gilhus, The Nature of the Archons, 24. 61 Barc, L’Hypostase des Archontes, 109; Gilhus, The Nature of the Archons, 80. 62 LXX: bohyÒw.

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dants of Seth are free to choose between admitting and refusing the bringer of the Gnostic truth. Another aspect of the story about Norea deserves our attention. After the Flood, Yaldabaoth and his dark forces try to delude Norea, just as they tried earlier to attack her mother, the spiritual Eve. When she cries up to the true God for help, “Rescue me from the unrighteous rulers and save me from their clutches”, an angelic representative of the divine world, who is called Eleleth, appears to her and informs her of her “root”, i.e. of her divine provenance, and of the nature of the dark rulers. Apparently, her divine provenance does not make Norea immune to the threats of the forces of evil, and her divine origin does not yet ensure full spiritual knowledge. She has to receive the truth about God, about herself, and about the nature of the archontic rulers through revelation. Actually, the revelation granted to her by the angel Eleleth does not yet convey the complete Gnostic insight. The angel explains to her that the full truth is reserved for her “children” who, after three generations, will receive the revelation of “the perfect Man” ( Jesus Christ).63 Conclusions In ApJohn, we do not find the idea that salvation is restricted to a closed and fixed group of human beings to the exclusion of others. What we do find is the idea that in the end the innermost centre of all human souls will be saved because this element is of divine origin and nature. According to this text, all human beings are descendants of Seth and all inherited the divine nature (usually designated as “the power of the Mother”, i.e. Sophia) through him. On the other hand, this divine element is supposedly given to Seth and all his children as a power or potential (dÊnamiw).64 Only after the Spirit came down to Seth was the divine potential in him awakened. The same will happen

63

In 91.2 he is called “the perfect Man”, in 96.33f. “the true Man”. In particular in cod. III, the Greek term dÊnamiw is used to denote the spiritual element in humanity: 15.24 (also II 10.21); 18.14,18; 22.17; 23.20; 24.6,10 (also in II 19.29); 25.2 (also in II 20.11 and IV 31.6); 29.1,18; 34.2,7 (also in II 26.12f and IV 40.29), 14. In these cases BG always uses the Coptic equivalent. Cf. the index of Greek words in Waldstein-Wisse, 235. 64

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to his posterity. The Gnostic Christ of ApJohn emphasizes that human souls should react positively to the call from above (the coming of the Spirit to them). If they do not, they run the risk of relapsing into forgetfulness. The spiritual power or nature is not a sufficient condition for salvation. Salvation is also dependent on grace (the grace of the divine call) and choice (the wish to develop one’s spiritual potential). The story of Eve’s children in ApJohn is meant, too, as a warning to John’s fellow-spirits (the Gnostic readers): their light power is constantly endangered by Eloim-Cain and Yave-Abel, the supposed rulers over the physical environment in which they are forced to live (their “cave” or “tomb”). In Hyp Arch, the process of salvation is presented in a similar way. Although there is more interest here in the different descents of Cain, Abel, Seth, and Norea, this idea is not elaborated into a soteriological paradigm. The children of the sarcic and the spiritual Eve, respectively, are not depicted as the natural ancestors of different generations.65 As far as Norea is concerned, even she was endangered by the forces of darkness and she, too, was in need of revelation and redemption.66 In ApJohn and in HypArch, the light power in human beings is imagined as a potential that has to grow and develop and to be brought to perfection.67 According to these texts, Gnostics should live lives in accordance with their spiritual nature and therefore resist the temptations of the archontic rulers. Seth and, in HypArch, Norea, “the woman whom the powers did not defile”, were their models.

65 Gilhus, The Nature of the Archons, 115, finds in the text “an aversion for developing fixed salvation categories dependent on birth”, and argues that descent from the sarcic or the pneumatic Eve is a question of choice rather than of natural birth. Indeed on this point HypArch does not deviate substantially from the pertinent views of Philo (all virtuous people are descendants of Seth, Post. Caini 42) and John’s gospel (cf. esp. 3:3 and 8:44). 66 But this does not mean that we are entitled to see in Norea a “saved saviour’’ figure, as Pearson, “Revisiting Norea”, 274f., proposes. Rather she is presented as the prototype of true humanity in the way she preserved and developed her spiritual potency. If the soteriology of HypArch is in basic agreement with that of ApJohn, Gilhus misses the mark when she states, “It is a gnostic paradox that she who is to be a saviour for men and the initiator of a new era (92.3–4) must herself be saved.” Also in Norea, the potency for salvation must be awakened and developed. 67 The Valentinians used other terminology to express basically the same idea: the pneumatic “seed” that was “sown” in the souls had to grow and to be “formed”. Cf. ExcTheod 53. 3–5; 57.1; Schottroff, “Animae naturaliter salvandae”, 91.

CHAPTER EIGHT

NOAH AND THE FLOOD (APJOHN, HYPARCH, APOCADAM ) In several Gnostic writings we find allusions to the biblical story of Noah and the flood.1 ApJohn, HypArch, and ApocAdam are of special importance because they speak in a more detailed way about the great primeval deluge and because their flood narratives include clear echoes of the Genesis story. In ApJohn, Christ narrates the story of the creation and the early history of humanity. The episode of Noah and the flood belongs to the concluding section of his mythical teaching. HypArch has a different and less transparent literary form. In the relevant section of the text, an anonymous Gnostic teacher is speaking. He replies to a question about the true nature (hypostasis) of the cosmic rulers, illustrating his argument with references to events of the earliest history of humankind. ApocAdam presents itself as a revelation given by Adam to his son Seth.2 The revelation concerns the history of humankind, from the creation of Eve until the coming of the Saviour. Since the fictive speaker is Adam, the text is mainly worded in the future tense. The flood is mentioned in the opening section of the text. The flood stories of these three writings show similar features but we shall see that they also deviate on significant points. There can be no doubt that the writers of the passages in question were familiar with some form of the biblical flood tradition.3 Note, first of all, that the name of Noah is mentioned in their stories. Furthermore, the Greek terms kataklusmÒw and kibvtÒw, used

1 Cf. C.A. Evans et al., Nag Hammadi Texts & the Bible, 472; M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 72–4. 2 The Coptic text is contained in NHC V. There are good reasons to assume that ApocAdam is a comparatively early Gnostic writing but the exact date and the place of composition are unknown. 3 We must account for the possibility that the Gnostic myth-makers knew the flood story and other biblical traditions through second-hand collections of (allegorical) interpretations.

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in the LXX version, recur in the Coptic texts. I begin with just one aspect of the stories: the motivation for the plan of the demiurgical God to destroy his creation. The Motivation of the Creator God In the Hebrew Bible, the story of the great deluge is prefaced by a story about the intercourse of the sons of God with the daughters of humans and the offspring of that intercourse (Gen. 6:1–4).4 The actual flood story opens with the report that God saw that the wickedness of humankind was great on the earth and that the thoughts of their hearts were always evil (6:5). Then we hear that God repented that he had made humans and that he was filled with grief. It is interesting to see how the LXX version, the textual base of the Gnostic rewritings, tries to avoid the anthropomorphisms of the Hebrew original. In this translation we read that God “laid it in his heart” that he had created the human on the earth and that he “pondered it deeply”.5 But this does not alter the fact that, also according to the LXX, God reacted to the increasing wickedness of men on earth. In our three Gnostic texts, the creator God does not react to a negative development in humanity but, on the contrary, to something that in the view of the Gnostic mythographers was very positive. ApJohn reports that the creator (“the First Ruler”) became aware that the human beings surpassed him in their knowledge: When the First Ruler realized that they were very superior to him and thought better than he did, he wanted to seize their thought. He did not know that they were superior to him in thinking and that he could not seize them. (. . . .)6

4 In the Genesis account, the relation of the intercourse between heavenly and human beings to the flood caused by God is not fully clear, but in later exegetical speculations we find diverse attempts to connect the origin of evil with the descent of the heavenly angels to the daughters of humans. Cf. esp. 1 Hen. 6–10; Jub. 7:20–25; Test. Reub 5:6–7; CD 2:14–21; ApGen II; Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer 22. See A.G. Stroumsa, Another Seed, 17–31; J. van Ruiten, “Interpretation of the Flood in the Book of Jubilees”. 5 §n°yumÆyh and dienoÆyh, respectively. 6 The omitted passage relates how the cosmic rulers created fate in order to have control of the whole cosmos.

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And he repented for all things that had happened through him (cf. Gen. 6:6).7

In these passages, ApJohn’s myth-tellers claim that the regret of the creator God was caused by his envy. We shall see that he does not only try to cover humanity with a flood of darkness but that he also takes other measures. In HypArch, he story of the coming down of the sons of God to the daughters of humans is omitted: Then humankind began to multiply and to improve (cf. Gen. 6:1f.). The rulers made a plan amongst themselves and said, “Come, let us make a deluge with our hands and obliterate all flesh, from man to beast (cf. Gen. 6:7,17).”8

There can be no doubt that the Genesis text is at the base of this story: the growth of humankind is reported in Gen. 6:1 (“When humankind began to multiply on the earth . . .”), and the advance or improvement of humankind may be an allusion to 6:2, where the sons of God see that the daughters of humans are beautiful. In the biblical text, the short account of the multiplication of humankind and the fairness of the daughters serves as an introduction to the story of the intercourse of the sons of God with the daughters of humans. But since in HypArch, the story about the sons of God and the daughters of humans is omitted along with the opening sentence of the actual flood story, “God saw that the wickedness of humankind was great on the earth” (6:5), the plan of the rulers to destroy all flesh is a direct continuation of the report of the increase and the improvement of humankind. So, just as in ApJohn, the creator and his allies react to a positive development in humanity, by which their plan turns out to be evil. The author of HypArch radically transformed the message of the biblical tradition by just omitting a few sentences. In our third text, ApocAdam, a comparable motive is mentioned: For rain-showers of [God] the almighty9 will be poured forth [so that] he might destroy [all] fleshly beings from the earth because of what they seek after [. . .] upon [those who are from] the seed [of ] the

7 8 9

II 28.5–11; 28.32–34 and parallel passages. NHC II,4 92.3–8. I.e. the creator God.

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chapter eight humans into whom passed the life of the knowledge ( gnosis), which came from me [and] Eve, your mother. For they were strangers to him.10

This damaged passage is likely to suggest that the creator aimed at destroying humanity because it possessed (spiritual) life and was seeking after the truth. In agreement with the other two Gnostic texts, the demiurgical God is disqualified as an inferior and evil figure who acted out of envy when he tried to destroy humankind. The Purpose of the Gnostic Revisions It is possible to discern two story lines intrinsic to the Gnostic myth in these revisions of the biblical flood tradition. I pointed to the first story line in chapter IV: the early history of humanity is regarded as the theatre of a battle between the powers of light and darkness. The great deluge forms part of this history. Also in the attempt to destroy humanity and the subsequent redemption of those who listened to the divine message, Gnostic mythographers recognized this conflict about the lost divine light substance. The second story line is connected with this particular narrative. The authors seem to have used the biblical flood tradition in order to explain the existence of two or more categories or “races” of human beings, Gnostics and non-Gnostics.11 The existence of a pure race of enlightened humans is explained from the mythical fact that the powers of darkness could not affect the ancestors of this race, while the existence of non-Gnostics is explained from the influence of evil powers on their forbears. We shall see that this second leitmotiv induced the authors of ApocJohn and HypArch to change the order of Gen. 6:1–4 and 6:5ff. The two story lines will become more visible when we discuss the texts in more detail. I start with ApJohn.

10

NHC V,5 69.2–72.14. In the last sentence, the author (or the Coptic translator) erroneously uses the past tense. 11 A.F.J. Klijn, “An Analysis of the Use of the Story of the Flood in the Apocalyps of Adam”; M. Tardieu, Écrits gnostiques, 337–9. The words “races” or “generations”, used in the texts, can easily be misunderstood. Obviously it is possible to change over from one race to another. One can become a Gnostic (or be born into the immovable race) and Gnostics can lose their gnosis and, as a result, lose their identity as members of spiritual humankind. Cf. above, ch. VII, and M.A. Williams, The Immovable Race, 160–172.

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ApJohn The introduction to the flood story speaking about God’s repentence is quoted above. This introductory passage is followed by the report that the first ruler and his allies took measures in order to get hold of spiritual humanity. First they begot fate and bound all cosmic beings, humans included, to its bond. The flood was their next attempt to overpower humanity. According to ApJohn, the creator God tried to bring humans back into a state of ignorance for, as this text intimates, it was not a flood of water in the literal sense. Rather the water should be taken metaphorically as darkness: God wished to cover humankind with darkness with the obvious intention to cut it off from the world of light from which it originated. But the light powers, one again represented by the mythical figure of Epinoia, or Pronoia, came to the rescue. Pronoia/Epinoia informs or enlightens Noah: He (the First Ruler) made a plan to bring a flood 12 upon the creation of the humans (cf. Gen. 6:17). But the greatness of the light of Pronoia (Providence)13 taught Noah and he preached to all the offspring, that is, the children of humankind. But those who were strangers to him did not listen to him. It is not as Moses said, “They hid themselves in an ark”,14 but they hid themselves in a place, not only Noah but also many other people from the immovable race.15 They went into a place and hid themselves in a luminous cloud. And he (Noah) recognized his authority16 and she who belongs to the light was with him, who illuminated them, for he (the creator) had brought darkness upon the whole earth.17

In the teaching of ApJohn, Noah and all other humans are descendants of Seth18 and therefore belong to the true God. When they

12 13

kataklusmÒw, as in the LXX.

BG 72.18f adds: “that is Epinoia (Reflection) of the light”. kibvtÒw, as in the LXX. In fact, the biblical story does not report that Noah hid himself in an ark. This tradition can be found in 1 Hen 10.2 and also in HypArch 92.11: “Make yourself an ark from some wood that does not rot and hide in it”. 15 BG 73.6–10: “she (Pronoia-Epinoia) sheltered him in a place, not Noah alone but people from the immovable race”. 16 BG 73.13–14: “his lordship”. It is not fully clear whether the authority/lordship of the creator God is meant or rather the superiority of Noah and the other people of the immovable race over the creator. 17 II 28.34–29.15; BG 72.14–18. 18 Cf. above, chap. VII. 14

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were threatened by the demiurgical God, Epinoia chose Noah and taught him how he could be rescued. Noah, in his turn, proclaimed this message of salvation to all others.19 But not everybody listened to him. Here the second story line becomes manifest. ApJohn does not report what happened to these disbelieving people but we may take it for granted that they were covered with darkness. While darkness covered the other people, Noah and those who listened to him were saved. Not by an ark, though, but by a luminous cloud.20 The salvation of Noah and those who listened to him (“the immovable race”) means that the demiurgical God and his cronies did not succeed in covering all humanity with darkness. Therefore they devised another scheme. They send their angels to the daughters of humans with a view to raising offspring from them. This story goes back to Gen. 6:2–4, but, as we observed before, the order is reversed. In Genesis, the intercourse of the sons of God with the daughters of humankind preceeds the deluge and apparently induces God to produce a flood. The logic of the Gnostic story is different. When the cosmic rulers did not succeed in covering all humans with darkness, they make an attempt to mix those who were saved with darkness: He (the First Ruler) made a plan with his powers. He sent his angels to the daughters of men, that they might take some of them for themselves and raise offspring for their enjoyment.21

The story goes on to tell that at first they did not succeed. Thereupon the cosmic rulers decided to create the opposing or counterfeit spirit,22 “so as to pollute the souls through it”.23 And the angels changed themselves into the likeness of their (the daughters of humankind) mates, filling them with the spirit of darkness which they mixed with them, and with evil.24

19 This report seems to be a variant of a Jewish and early-Christian tradition according to which Noah preached repentance to the sinners. L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, V, 174ff; Cf. GreatPow 36.12; 38.26–28: “For he (Noah) preached piety for one hundred and twenty years (Gen. 6:3) but nobody listened to him”; Stroumsa, Another Seed, 84. 20 According to the BG-version it was Epinoia who sheltered them within the cloud. Cf. above, n. 15. 21 II 29.16–20; BG 73.18–74.5. 22 This spirit is already mentioned in the rewritten Paradise story, cf. above, chaps. IV and VI. 23 II 29.25f. 24 II 29.26–30; BG 74.11–16.

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The angels seduced the women,25 and those who yielded to them were brought into temptations. They took women and begot children out of darkness after the image of their spirit. And their hearts became closed and they were hardened by the hardness of the counterfeit spirit until now.26

With these words the narration of the myth of origins ends. In BG and NHC III, the concluding frame story follows immediately. NHC II and IV insert a poem in which the female helper or spirit Pronoia/Epinoia speaks about her descents into the world of darkness in order to wake up humanity. Summarizing: this last section of ApJohn’s mythical narration explains the existence of three categories of human beings: ever since the flood some people live in darkness, others were saved from the darkness by divine intervention but yet let themselves be affected by the powers of darkness (humans, that is, whose knowledge is mixed with ignorance), others, finally, were saved from the darkness and did not mix with the powers of darkness (the immovable race of the Gnostics).27 HypArch In some of its features, the flood story of HypArch deviates from that in ApJohn. The differences are caused by the special position of the biblical God Sabaoth.28 In HypArch, this God is distinguished from the creator of the lower world, Yaldabaoth.29 While the Gnostics are represented by Norea, or Orea, a daughter of Eve, “the virgin whom the powers did not defile”,30 Noah is

25 They offered them gold and silver, metals of copper and iron, and other gifts. Cf. Test Reub 5:6–7; ps.-Clem. Hom VIII 12–14. Stroumsa, Another Seed, 23. 26 II 30.7–11; BG 75.4–10. The story about the seduction of females by evil mythic figures is likely to go back to an unknown pagan mythical source as well as to Gen. 6:2–4. 27 This is in basic agreement with the preceding distinction of several categories of “souls”, II 25–27; BG 64–71. 28 For the role and function of the God Sabaoth. “the ruler of the forces”, in HypArch see F.T. Fallon, The Enthronement of Sabaoth, esp. 67–88. We should bear in mind, though, that the biblical God was not only the God of the Jews but also of mainstream Christianity. 29 Cf. ch. VII. 30 92.3–4.

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viewed as a mythical representative of Jews and non-Gnostic Christians. He is related to the God Sabaoth, “the ruler of the forces”. The existence of fully ignorant people, finally, is explained from the mythical fact of the rape of the fleshly Eve by the demiurgical God Yaldabaoth and his powers. They descend from this illicit intercourse. The powers of darkness (the archons) are the actual subject of HypArch. If we keep these distinctions in mind, the purpose of HypArch’s flood story becomes clear. Noah is rescued by his God, the biblical God Sabaoth, from an attack by the creator God and his powers. Then (N)orea wishes to join Noah but Noah rejects her, apparently because he fails to recognize that only she offers to humanity the hope of salvation.31 She reacts by blowing upon the ark and causing it to be consumed by fire.32 Then mankind began to multiply and improve (cf. Gen. 6:1f ). The rulers made a plan together and said, “Come, let us cause a flood with our hands and obliterate all flesh, from man to beast” (cf. Gen. 6:7, 13, 17). But when the ruler of the forces came to know their plan, he said to Noah, “Make yourself an ark from some wood that does not rot and hide in it, you and your children and the beasts and the birds of heaven from small to large, and set it upon Mount Sir” (cf. Gen. 6:14; 7:1–3). Then (N)orea came to him wanting to board the ark. And he did not admit her. She blew upon the ark and set it afire. Again he made the ark, for a second time. The rulers went to meet her intending to lead her astray. Their supreme chief said to her, “Your mother Eve came to us.” But Norea turned to them and said to them, “You are the rulers of the darkness; you are cursed. And you did not know my mother; instead it was your female co-image that you knew. I did not descend from you; rather I came from above.”33

The flood is followed by a form of sexual intimidation by the demiurgical God and his powers, which is reminiscent of the order of events reported in ApJohn. The cosmic rulers tried to lead Norea astray while their chief referred to the intercourse of the physical

31

B. Layton, “The Hypostasis of the Archons”, 62. Gnostic authors are likely to have assumed that the name “Norea” was related to Aramaic nura (“fire”). I Gilhus, The Nature of the Archons, 89: “When Norea burns the ark, she performs a function which lies inherent in het name”; for etymological explanations of the name see R.A. Bullard, The Hypostasis of the Archons, 95–8; B.A. Pearson, “The Figure of Norea in Gnostic Literature”, esp. 88, Gilhus, ibid. 33 92.2–26. 32

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Eve with the powers. But Norea declares that she herself is unattainable to them since she is a purely spiritual woman. She is not related to the demonic powers but she came from the world above. Norea is pictured as a model Gnostic. After her example, the Gnostics should be cautious not to fall prey to the powers of the darkness. ApocAdam The distinction of three categories of humans returns in ApocAdam, although in a different way. Seth and his descendants belong to the true God but Noah—although, in Genesis, a descendant of Seth— is related to the creator.34 Accordingly, the people of Seth are saved by the true God while Noah and his family are saved by the Demiurge.35 The rest of humankind is left behind in the dark waters. After this,36 great angels will come on high clouds, who will bring those people37 into the place where the spirit [of ] life dwells. (± 4 lines lacking)38 [Then . . . .] will come from the heaven to the earth. [Then] the whole [. . .] of flesh will be left behind in the [waters]. Then God will rest from his wrath. And he will cast his power upon the waters. And [he (Noah?) will] strengthen his sons and [their wives . . .] from the ark39 along with [the] animals that pleased him, and the birds of heaven that he called and released upon the earth. And God will say to Noah—whom the generations will call Deucalion—: “Behold, I have protected in the ark along with your wife and your sons and their wives and their animals and the birds of [heaven] that you called [and released upon the earth.] (± 4 lines lacking) Therefore I will give the [earth] to you and your sons. In kingly fashion you will rule over it, you and your sons. And no seed of those

34 As we have seen, in ApJohn, Noah is related to the true God, in HypArch to the intermediate God Sabaoth. 35 But as we will see below, 400.000 descendants of Ham and Japhet, two of Noah’s sons, will join the people of Seth. 36 In the preceding passage (quoted above), Adam reveals that the creator God will cause a great deluge. 37 The people of Seth. 38 It is possible that here Noah and the ark were introduced. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 57. 39 kibvtÒw.

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chapter eight people will come from you that will not stand before me in another glory.40 Then they41 will become as the cloud of the great light. Those people42 will come who have been cast forth from the knowledge ( gnosis) of the great aeons and the angels. They will stand before Noah and the aeons.43 And God will say to Noah: “Why have you departed from what I told you? You have created another generation so that you might scorn my power.” Then Noah will say: “I shall testity before your might that the generation of these people did not come [from me] nor [from my sons . . .]”

According to ApocAdam, the creator God saved his servant Noah. After the deluge, the early Gnostics (the people that were saved by the true God) returned from above and joined Noah’s descendants. The creator mistakenly assumes that these people came from Noah. Therefore he reproaches him. Later on in the text, Adam reveals that the Gnostics will enter a land that is worthy of them. They will live there with light angels for six hundred years. Shem, one of Noah’s sons, swears that he and his posterity will remain faithful to Noah and his God. But from the posterity of Ham and Japhet four hundred thousand people will be converted and sojourn with the Gnostics.44 It is not difficult, in conclusion, to find also in ApocAdam’s rewriting the two story lines mentioned above. The first motif, the battle between the two Gods about spiritual humanity, becomes apparent in the attempts of the creator God to destroy all humans, first by a flood of water, later by fire, and in the subsequent counter actions by emissaries of the true God. The other story line, the explanation of the coming into existence of different human “races”, Gnostics and non-Gnostics, is more specifically connected with the flood narrative. It is interesting to compare ApocAdam with the other two texts. In ApocAdam and in ApJohn, the category of fully ignorant humans is prefigured by the people who were covered by the flood; in HypArch the story of the rape of the fleshly Eve by the demonic rulers has a comparable explicative function. 40 In this sentence, the creator’s command to Noah to repopulate the earth is interpreted as an injunction that Noah and his descendants do not produce people that possess a glory unknown to him. Ch.W. Hedrick, The Apocalypse of Adam, 187. 41 The people of Seth. 42 Here the reference must be to other people (the offspring of Cain?). 43 In ApocAdam, the term “(a)eons” is not reserved for hypercosmic realities; cf. 61.21: “the archon of the eons”. 44 72.1–73.24.

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ApJohn presents Noah and the people who listened to him as the spiritual ancestors of the Gnostics. ApocAdam seems to distinguish two groups of enlightened people: those who were saved from the flood by light angels (this is in basic agreement with the story of ApJohn) and the 400.000 descendants of Ham and Japheth who joined them.45 In HypArch, Norea is the spiritual model of the Gnostic. On the one hand, she is of divine descent and nature and, on the other, she needs to be enlightened and strengthened by revelations from above. The three texts also mention an intermediate category, probably consisting of non-Gnostic Christians as well as Jews. ApJohn is likely to trace this category of humans back to the mythical women who after their having been saved from the flood let themselves be polluted by demonic powers (an allusion to the story of the intercourse of celestial beings with the daughters of humankind, Gen. 6:2–4). As a result their gnosis was mixed with darkness. In HypArch, Noah and his family represent the servants of the biblical God Sabaoth. In ApocAdam, the descendants of Shem together with the descendants of Ham and Japheth who did not join the Gnostics, obey the creator and so represent the people who remain faithful to the Old Testament God.

45 Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 52, suggest a slightly different division of three groups or races of humans in ApocAdam.

CHAPTER NINE

THE INEFFABLE GOD (APJOHN, TRIMPROT )

In the preceding chapters, attention focused on Gnostic ideas about the demiurgical God and, more particularly, on the various ways in which Gnostic intellectuals interpreted biblical traditions in their attempts to expose the ignorance, jealousy and maliciousness of this God. In the present chapter, I will turn to Gnostic ideas about the supreme God. The-One-Who-Is Let us first consider the question of whether Gnostic authors also made use of Old Testament texts and concepts when speaking about the transcendent God.1 In several Gnostic texts we find a designation for God which in this connection deserves particular notice, to wit the reference to God, or—in prayers and hymns—the addressing of God as “The-One-who-is”, “You-who-are”. For instance, in Eugnostos and SophJesChr it is stated that “The-One-who-is” is ineffable.2 In Allogenes, God is addressed as “You are The-One-who-is”.3 One very interesting instance is a passage in I ApocJames where Christ exhorts James to cast away the bond of flesh that encircles him, and continues:

1 If we assume that Gnostic writers used Old Testament texts and concepts for their positive utterances about the true transcendent God as well as for their negative statements about the demiurgical God, this would mean, as B. Pearson argues, that they divided the biblical God into two. Cf. his essay “Jewish Elements in Gnosticism”, 128: “Gnostic theology actually splits the biblical God into a transcendent, ‘unknown’ God and a lower creator deity. In his aspect as Creator of the world the biblical God is portrayed as a demonic being (. . .)”; M. Waldstein, “The Primal Triad in the Apocryphon of John”, claims that ApJohn’s transcendent deity “retains central features of the God of Israel” (154). 2 Eugn III,3 71.13f (cf. V,1 2.8f ); SophJesChr III,4 94.5 (cf. BG 3 83.5). 3 NHC XI,3 54.32f; cf. Disc 8–9 (NHC VI,6) 61.15f. In StelesSeth (NHC VII,5 119.25), the prototypical Seth adresses Adam (“Adamas” or “Geradamas”) as TheOne-who-is.

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Then you will reach The-One-who-is. And you will no longer be James; rather you are The-One-who-is.4

This passage renders the gist of Gnostic soteriology: the Gnostic should cut the bond with the material world; then the inner self will be able to return to its origin and be united with “The-One-whois”, the transcendent God. Was this designation for God inspired by the book of Exodus, chap. 3, verse 14, where the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob speaks to Moses from a burning bush? Or should we rather understand it in the light of Greek philosophical theology? In the Septuagint version, God says to Moses: Ö n. ÑEg≈ efimi ı v

And God charges Moses to say to the people: ÑO Ãn ép°stalk°n me prÚw Ímçw.5

This is not the place to discuss the question of the extent to which this is a correct translation of the Hebrew original.6 After all, if Gnostic authors were familiar with the words spoken to Moses— directly or through second-hand sources—they knew them in Greek, most probably the Greek of the Septuagint. We are more interested in knowing how the biblical designation for God as ı vÖ n was understood at the time when our Gnostic texts were written.7

4 V,3 27.7–10; cf. 24.20, 23; 25.1, 3; 26.27; 27.15; 29.18f; 36.10f. Cf. GosTruth (NHC I,3) 28.13; TractTrip (I,5) 91.6; 114.15; 130.29f; GosEg (III,2) 66.16, 21; 67.26; AuthTeach (VI,3) 25.29; TreatSeth (VII,2) 67.18f; 68.12; ApocPet (VII,3) 84.6; Silv (VII,4) 101.24; Zostr (VIII,1) 16.6; Mars (X,1) 7.5f, 24f; 13.17 Allog (XI,3) 49.26f, 35f. Note that the Coptic language has no neuter gender and therefore does not distinguish between “he who is” and “that which is”. 5 Ö n also occurs in SapSal 13:1 (tÚn ˆnta) and Rev 1:4 (épÚ ı v Ö n!), 8; 4:8. ÑO v 6 In the RSV, the words "ehyeh "asher "ehyeh are translated as “I AM WHO I AM”. In a note to this translation, the RSV edition adds that God’s self-designation may also be translated as “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE”. Cf. Traduction oecuménique de la Bible 1988 (nouvelle éd. 1995): “JE SUIS QUI JE SERAI”, and the new Dutch oecumenical translation (2004): “Ik ben die er zijn zal”. These translations are perhaps preferable inasmuch as they are better attempts to express that here and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, God reveals himself as a covenant God who promises to be present for his people. 7 Ö n do not occur in texts before As far as I know, other references to God as ı v the first century C.E. We cannot decide, therefore, whether or not the LXX designation for God reflects a current theological idea.

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Since the first century of our era at least, Jewish and Christian authors have been convinced that Moses’ conception of God as ı vÖ n, “The-One-who-is”, agrees with Plato’s doctrine of true being. Sometimes this view of the correspondence between Moses and Plato was supported by a reference to the Timaeus passage (27d–28a) where Plato speaks of tÚ ¯n ée¤, “that which always is”. In Plato’s philosophy, tÚ ¯n ée¤ means the unchangeably perfect reality—accessible only to pure reason—in contrast with the transient world of “becoming”. Later pagan as well as Jewish and Christian philosophers insisted that Plato’s eternal being is not an intellectual abstraction from the visible world but a primary being, and as such the source of all things.8 Plutarch, for instance, in his answer to the question “What, then, really is being?”, argues that only God can be said to be, while all other things are transitory and perishable and therefore unreal. It is interesting to read Plutarch’s explanation of the inscription of the letter E on the temple of Delphi. Plutarch suggests that E is short for E‰. “You are” (without any nominal or verbal complement), he argues, is the right address of God because it is characteristic of God that he “is”, while all other things are in the process of creation or destruction.9 Similar theistic interpretations of Plato’s real and eternal being were proposed by second-century pagan writers such as Maximus of Tyrus, Alcinous, Apuleius and Numenius.10 Furthermore, the theological understanding of Plato’s teaching of real being enabled early Christian philosophers to speak of God in Platonic terms.11 Philo of Alexandria combined the Mosaic title for God and the Timaeus passage. In Det 160, he writes:

8 M. Frede rightly emphasizes that Aristotle already speaks of one divine principle as a living and thinking being (“Monotheism and Pagan Philosophy”, 48). 9 De E apud Delphos 392e–393f (F.C. Babbitt, Plutarch’s moralia, V, 242–8). Plutarch makes an exception for the address of God as “You are One” for, he comments, “Being must have Unity” whereas humans are compounded of many different factors. 10 Maximus in his treatise devoted to this question, Who is God according to Plato? (Orat 11 ed. H. Hobein, 127–45); Alcinous, Didaskalikos X; Apuleius, De Platone I; Numenius, fragments of On the Good and other treatises (ed. É. des Places). Cf. A.J. Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, IV, 92–140; J.P. Kenney, Mystical Monotheism, 32–90. 11 Athenagoras, Suppl. 19 (with reference to Tim 27d 6f ); Justin Martyr, Dial 3: God is tÚ katå tå aÈtå ka‹ …saÊtvw afle‹ ¶xon.

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God alone has veritable being. This is why Moses will say of Him as best as he may in human speech, “I AM HE that is”, implying that others lesser than He have not being, as being indeed is, but exist in semblance only, and are conventionally said to exist.12

Significantly, Philo uses the neuter as well as the masculine form to refer to God.13 Christian writers also noticed the resemblance between Exod 3:14 LXX and the Timaeus passage. In Pseudo-Justin’s Cohort 22 (second half of the third century) we read: Moses said, “He who is” and Plato, “That which is”. But either expression seems to apply to the ever-existent God, for he is the only one who always is, and has no origin.14

Eusebius explains the supposed agreement between Moses and Plato with reference to the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher and exegete Aristobulus (second century b.c.e.) who claimed that Plato borrowed many of his teachings from Moses.15 It is generally assumed in recent scholarship that the second-century philosopher Numenius of Apamea had some direct or indirect knowledge of the Greek Bible.16 One of the surviving fragments of his treatises suggests that he used the Septuagint title ı vÖn as well as more Platonic terms (e.g. aÈtoÒn, “being itself ”) to refer to his “First God”.17 The correspondence between the Mosaic and the Platonic conception may have confirmed him in his view that Moses taught essentially the same truths as Plato.18 Hence Numenius’ remarkable statement,

12

Transl. F.H. Colson (Loeb ed., Philo II). Cf. Mut 11; Somn I, 231. C.H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 61: “Philo’s favourite designaÖ n or ÑO ˆntvw v Ö n. When however he turns this into the neuter tion for God is ÑO v and speaks of TÚ ˆn or TÚ ˆntvw ˆn, he is deserting the Old Testament, and assimilating the God of his fathers to the impersonal Absolute of the Platonists”. Cf. J. Whittaker, “Moses Atticizing”, 197, who adds: “This identification of the supreme deity with Platonic reality constitutes the cornerstone of Philo’s system and no doubt of Alexandrian Jewish theology in general”. 14 22.2 (ed. M. Marcovich, 53). 15 PraepEv IX 6.6; cf. Josephus, Apion I 165; II 168, 257; Tatian, Or 40.1; 41.1f; Clement, Strom V, ch. 14 (97,7); Origen, Cels VI 19 with H. Chadwick’s comment, “That Plato and the Greek philosophers plagiarized the Hebrew prophets and Moses was a commonplace of Jewish apologetic, taken over by Christian writers” (Contra Celsum, 332, n. 3). Cf. J.G. Gager, Moses in Graeco-Roman Paganism, 76–9. 16 M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, II, 206–16; G. Rinaldi, Biblia Gentium, 264f. 17 Fr. 13 des Places (22 Leemans) and fr. 17 des Places (26 Leemans). 18 Cf. fr. 1a des Places (9a Leemans) and the discussion by J. Whittaker, “Moses Atticizing”, 199. 13

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quoted approvingly by Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius: “What is Plato but Moses talking Attic (t¤ gãr §sti Plãtvn μ Mvs∞w éttik¤zvn)?”19 It is difficult to decide to what extent Gnostic authors were aware of the biblical connotation of the title “The-One-who-is”. If they were familiar with the Exodus text, they are very likely to have understood this designation for God in basically the same Platonist way as their contemporaries did. In that case, “The-One-who-is” is a biblical term with a typically Greek-philosophical meaning. A God beyond being and Comprehension At the same time there was a tendency to stress God’s transcendence to such a degree that he was believed to be elevated above—and prior to—any form of being.20 This idea was also inspired by Plato’s texts. In their discussion of monism and pluralism, the dialogue partners in Plato’s Parmenides reach the conclusion that the One (tÚ ßn) cannot be known and is beyond being.21 Cf. Socrates’ statement in the Republic (509b 9): “the Good is not a being but still beyond being (§p°keina t∞w oÈs¤aw)”.22 Later Platonists applied both notions of transcendence to the divine: on the one hand God was regarded as the only real Being, on the other, as the One beyond being. The strong emphasis on God’s transcendence induced philosophers to avoid positive descriptions of the Divinity and, instead, to use the via negationis. In particular, the method of abstraction (aphairesis) developed by Aristotle became a mode of dealing with what is beyond the senses.23 One classic example is chapter X of Alcinous’ philosophical textbook, the Didaskalikos. I shall quote section 4, and the beginning of section 5 (in the translation by J. Dillon). Although Alcinous expresses himself in negative-theological terminology, he holds to the idea that God is “graspable by the intellect”: (4) God is ineffable and graspable only by the intellect, as we have said, since he is neither genus, nor species, nor differentia, nor does 19 Clement, Strom I, ch. 22 (150.4); Eusebius, PraepEv IX 6.9; XI 10.14 (fr. 8 des Places, 10 Leemans). 20 For the following see R. Mortley, From Word to Silence; J.P. Kenney, Mystical Monotheism; A.P. Bos, “Immanenz und Transzendenz”. 21 137c–142a (the “First Hypothesis”). 22 Cf. the only preserved fragment of Aristotle’s lost work Per‹ EÈx∞w in Simplicius, De Caelo 485.19–22: ı yeÚw μ noËw §st‹n μ §p°keinã toË noË. 23 R. Mortley, From Word to Silence, I, 125–62.

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he possess any attributes, neither bad (for it is improper to utter such a thought), nor good (for he would be thus by participation in something, to wit, goodness) nor indifferent (for neither is this in accordance with the concept we have of him), nor yet qualified (for he is not endowed with quality, nor is his peculiar perfection due to qualification) nor unqualified (for he is not deprived of any quality which might accrue to him). Further, he is not a part of anything, nor is he the same as anything or different from anything; for no attribute is proper to him, in virtue of which he could be distinguished from other things. Also, he neither moves anything, nor is he himself moved. (5) The first way of conceiving God is by abstraction of these attributes, etc.24

Similar formulations occur in a variety of contemporary texts: not only texts in the mainstream of Platonist philosophy but also in Hellenistic Jewish (Philo), early orthodox Christian (Aristides), Hermetic and Gnostic writings.25 The most marked and detailed instances in Gnostic literature occur in ApJohn (quoted below), Eugn-SophJesChr, Allogenes, and TractTrip.26 Note that in the opening section of Christ’s revelation to John in ApJohn, the via negationis is alternated with the via eminentiae and that, just as in Alcinous’s Didaskalikos, (quasi-)philosophical foundations are added to several statements: It is not right to think of him as a god or something similar, for he is more than a god. He is a rule over which nothing rules for there is nothing before him. (. . .) He is illimitable since there is no one prior to him to set limits to him; the unsearchable One since there exists no one prior to him to examine him;

24 J. Dillon, Alcinous. The Handbook of Platonism, 18. Subsequently, Alcinous mentions two further ways to conceive of God: the via analogiae, for which he refers to Plato’s Sun Simile in Rep VI, and the via eminentiae: “one contemplates first beauty in bodies, than one turns to the beauty in soul, then to that in customs and laws, then to the ‘great sea of Beauty’, after which one gains an intuition of the Good itself (. . .)”. 25 A particularly interesting parallel occurs in Aristides’ Apology, J.R. Harris (ed.), The Apology of Aristides, 35f. Cf. W.C. van Unnik, “Die Gotteslehre bei Aristides und in gnostischen Schriften”, there p. 174: “Die Gottesprädikate der philosophischen Sprache wurden Aussagen einer höheren Form des Christentums, und deshalb kann man sie (. . .) als die höchste christliche Offenbarung predigen”; R. van den Broek, “Eugnostos and Aristides on the Ineffable God”; M. Waldstein, “The Primal Triad”. 26 Eugn NHC III,3 71.13–73.3 = NHC V,1 2.8–3.8; SophJesChr BG,3 83.5–86.6 = NHC III,4 94.5–95.18; Allog (NHC IX,3) 61.32–67.38; TractTrip (NHC I,5) 52.2–53.5.

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chapter nine the immeasurable One since no one else measured him, as if being prior to him; the invisible One since no one saw him. (. . .) He is neither perfection nor blessedness nor divinity but he is something far superior to them. He is neither unlimited nor limited, but he is something superior to these. For he is not corporeal, he is not incorporeal. He is not large; he is not small. He is not quantifiable, for he is not a creature. Nor can anyone know him. He is not at all something that exists, but he is something superior to them, Not as being superior, but as being himself.27

While Alcinous states that the ineffable God is “graspable by the intellect”, this is explicitly denied in ApJohn: no-one can know him. Accordingly, Allogenes characterises the knowledge of God as “notknowing knowledge” and as “ignorance that sees”.28 How could Gnostics narrow the distance to a God beyond being and intelligibility and claim to possess this special knowledge (while denying it to others)?29 We find several answers to these questions in Gnostic literature, notably in narrations of the myth of origins. In the preceding chapters, I have discussed this myth as it is narrated in ApJohn in some detail (see esp. chapters IV and V). A very brief summary of its relevant ideas may suffice here. The myth tells how the inferior creator and ruler of the physical world came into existence, how he usurped a portion of divine substance and, subsequently, breathed it into Adam’s soul. When the demiurgical God realized his mistake he fashioned the human body from the four elements with a view to tying the divine core of Adam’s soul to the earth. This mythical story suggests that in their inner selves, human beings are consubstantial to the transcendent God, and so are able to “know” him. We have already pointed out that according to ApJohn, all Adam’s descendants belong to the supreme God (above, 27

BG 23.3–7; 23.15–24.1; 24.9–25.1. M.A. Williams, “Negative Theologies and Demiurgical Myths”, 290, with reference to Allog 59.28–32; 60.8–12; 61.1f; 64.10–14. 29 In the opening sections of Eugn and SophJesChr, Gnostic knowledge is contrasted with the allegedly superficial theologies of several philosophical schools. 28

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chapters V and VII) and that Gnostics are not likely to have distinguished themselves from other people because they believed they possessed the divine pneuma, but because they claimed to be aware of their divine “power” (and to live a life in conformity with it) while others were not. ApJohn’s narration of the myth deals primarily with the origin of the present condition of humanity: given the existence of a perfect good God, why are human beings forced to live in such an imperfect and evil world? The revelation of the unknowable God is not the main topic of its teaching. TrimProt, a closely related Gnostic text, is more explicitly devoted to this theme. Therefore I shall add an analysis of TrimProt’s basic line of thought. In TrimProt, Protennoia introduces herself as the Thought of the Father.30 The obvious implication is that God thinks, and therefore has self-knowledge:31 his Thought is his image.32 In the Greek language, the word for “thought”—¶nnoia—is feminine. This may have contributed to the idea that God’s spiritual image is a female being. Although they often addressed him as “Father”, Gnostics of various schools imagined their God as an androgynous entity.33 As God’s Thought, Protennoia is present in everything that exists outside God.34 This is her first morfÆ. In her second manifestation, Protennoia is also God’s Voice. Although we find few traces of the demiurgical-Gnostic myth in TrimProt,35 there can be little doubt that this is the background to the idea of Protennoia’s descending into the lower world in order to wake up the divine seed scattered in humanity.36 Protennoia refers to the lost divine substance as part of

30 XIII,1 36.17; 42.6; cf. 48.14 and the opening lines: “[I ] am [Protennoia, the] Thought that [dwells] in [the Light.]” (transl. J.D. Turner; cf. G. Schenke’s transl: “[Ich] bin die Pro[tennoia, der Ge]danke, der exi[stiert] in [dem Vater.])”. In ApJohn and other Gnostic texts she is also called Epinoia or Pronoia. Cf. above, ch. IV. 31 This reminds us of the Aristotelian definition of God as a metacosmic Mind which thinks that which is best, to wit itself, Metaph. XII 1074b. 32 Cf. ApJohn (BG 27.1f, 4f, 17–19 and parallel passages): “he perceived (noe›n) his own efik≈n”; “his Thought became actual”; “she is his first Thought, his image”. 33 In ApJohn, NHC II, God is sometimes addressed as Mhtropãtvr, “MotherFather”, II,1 5.6; 6.16; 14.9; 19.12; 20.9; 27.33. 34 This basically pantheistic concept is somehow related to contemporary Stoic thought. Cf. C. Colpe, “Heidnische, jüdische und christliche Überlieferung in den Schriften aus Nag Hammadi, III”, 119. But note that the Stoics denied the existence of a metacosmic God. 35 Cf. 39.13–40.7 and 41.7–20. 36 Cf. 36.15f: “I cry out in everyone, and they recognize it (i.e., the voice), since

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herself.37 Her Voice sounded all through the history of humanity. The third time, Protennoia descended at a certain moment in time as God’s Word, in the likeness of a human being. This third manifestation is introduced in the following way: The third time I revealed myself to them [in] their tents (skhnÆ) as Word (LÒgow) and I revealed myself in the likeness of their shape (efik≈n).38

We find in this passage a clear allusion to verse 14 of the Prologue of John’s Gospel: Ka‹ ı lÒgow sårj §g°neto ka‹ §skÆnvsen §n ≤m›n. But the information in the Johannine verse is reinterpreted in a Gnostic way.39 This applies first of all to the different metaphorical use of the term “tent”: in TrimProt it is a reference to the body, the temporary dwelling-place of human beings. It was in the likeness of that shape, the body of Jesus, that Protennoia revealed herself as Word. On the last page of the text, this statement is repeated in other terminology. Here Protennoia states: “It was I who put on Jesus”.40 Apparently Protennoia does not fully coincide with her third manifestation, for following on the phrase, “It was I who put on Jesus”, she discloses that she bore God’s Word from “the cursed wood” and that she established it (him) in “the dwelling-places of his Father”.41 With this Gnostic view of the mission of the divine Saviour we touch on the main topic of the second part of this volume.42 For the moment, I will conclude that TrimProt can be read as a more or less systematic attempt to explain how the completely transcendent and unknowable God reveals himself and can be known by human beings. a seed (sp°rma) indwells [them]” (transl. J.D. Turner); cf. the last lines of the text (50.16–20). 37 40.12–15: “I am coming down to the world of mortals for the sake of my portion (m°row) that was in that place from the time when the innocent Sophia was conquered”; cf. 41.7: “my members (m°low)”; 50. 18: “my seed”. 38 47.13–16. 39 J. Helderman, “‘In ihren Zelten . . .’. Bemerkungen bei Codex XIII Nag Hammadi p. 47:14–18”. 40 50.12–13. 41 The expression “the dwelling-places of his Father” is also an echo of John’s Gospel, to wit John 14:2, where Jesus says “In the house of my Father are many mona¤”. 42 TrimProt and its relationship to the Johannine Prologue will be studied in more detail in chapter XIII.

PART TWO

EARLY JESUS TRADITIONS

CHAPTER TEN

THE TEACHING OF JESUS

Introduction: The LETTER OF PETER TO PHILIP The Letter of Peter to Philip1 relates how at Peter’s request, Philip returned from his missionary travels, and thereupon how all the apostles gathered together on the Mount of Olives.2 When they were praying to the Father and to the Son, suddenly a great light appeared to them. The apostles heard the voice of Jesus Christ asking them why they were seeking him. They reacted by putting several questions to Christ: they wanted to understand the deficiency of the aeons and their fullness, and they asked him why they were detained in this world, how they came here, how they would be able to leave, and why the cosmic powers fought against them. Christ answered their questions with a summarized version of the Gnostic myth of origins and with other typically Gnostic teachings. But before giving these answers the voice of Christ uttered the following comment: You yourselves bear witness that I said all these things to you. But because of your unbelief I shall say it again.3

In this statement, Christ makes it clear to the assembled apostles that the Gnostic doctrines which he is about to reveal conform with his prepaschal teachings. This includes Christ already being a Gnostic teacher before Easter. But at that time the apostles allegedly did not believe or understand his words. For this reason a repetition was necessary. The apostles are called as witnesses to the unity and the immutability of Christ’s teachings. At the same time, they are criticized for their initial unbelief.

1 NHC VIII, 2. Text editions: M.W. Meyer, The Letter of Peter to Philip; H.G. Bethge, Der Brief des Petnis an Philippus. 2 As in other early Christian sources, Philip the evangelist (Acts 6:5; 8:4–40; 21:8) is identified with Philip the apostle (Acts 1:13 and elsewhere). 3 135.5–8.

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LetPetPhil refers more than once to the prepaschal existence of Christ in a human body. For instance, the Mount of Olives is designated as the mountain where the apostles used to come together with Christ, “when he was in the body”.4 This distinction, however, does not serve to stress, the differences. On the contrary, the continuity of Christ’s teachings before and after Easter is underlined.5 This view of the relation of Christ’s Gnostic revelations to his prepaschal teachings has polemical overtones: if Peter and the other disciples could attest that the Gnostic doctrines were identical with the teachings Jesus Christ had given when he was still in their midst, it follows that the Gnostics were his true followers and, moreover, the legitimate representatives of the early apostolic tradition. While the author of LetPetPhil connects his Gnostic ideas with the teachings of Jesus Christ as they were understood by the apostles after their final enlightenment, he must have associated non-Gnostic accounts of Christ’s teachings—notably the Lucan writings which he is likely to have read and used for his reports of several appearances of the exalted Christ in and near Jerusalem6—with the unbelief and the incomprehension of the disciples before their enlightenment. To summarize, LetPetPhil claims that its Gnostic contents are consistent with the prepaschal message of Jesus; secondly, it appeals to the assembled apostles as witnesses to this interpretation of Jesus’ teachings. In addition, and more implicitly, non-Gnostic accounts of the teachings of Jesus are disparaged as documents of the supposed initial unbelief of the disciples. Below we shall compare the claims of this writing with the pertinent views of other Gnostic texts. How were the Gnostic Revelations of the Exalted Christ Related to His Prepaschal Teachings? It is possible that The Sophia of Jesus Christ (SophJChr)7 contains a similar view on the relation between the Gnostic revelations of Christ and his earlier teachings. The opening fiame story tells how after

4

133.17; cf. 138.3 and 139.11. Cf. 139.11f, where Peter states: “Our Lord Jesus, when he was in the body, indicated everything to us”. 6 Cf. Luttikhuizen, “The Letter of Peter to Philip and the New Testament”. 7 NHC III,4 and BG 3; D.M. Parrott, Nag Hammadi Codices III, 3–4 and V, 1. 5

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the resurrection of Christ, the twelve disciples and seven women followers came together on the Mount of Olives8 and how they were in great confusion about the nature of the Universe, about the power of the cosmic authorities, the plan of the Saviour, etc. Then the Saviour appeared to them in the likeness of a great angel of light asking them what they were perplexed about and what they were searching for. When they submitted their questions to Christ, he revealed to them the Gnostic truth. At the conclusion of the text we learn that these revelations dispelled the disciples’ uncertainties and that their perplexities gave way to ineffable joy. They were now prepared to preach the gospel of God.9 Just like LetPetPhil, this writing reports that after Easter the disciples were still in the dark about quite fundamental issues of Gnostic knowledge. But SophJChr does not explain their uncertainties. Was the earthly Jesus a Gnostic teacher and did his own followers not believe or understand this, as LetPetPhil wishes its readers to believe? Or were the disciples still ignorant because it was not until after Easter that the Saviour revealed the full truth? The latter idea is suggested in ApJohn. The opening section of this text tells how after a dispute with a Pharisean, John the son of Zebedee went to a desert place on “the mountain”, apparently the Mount of Olives. There he pondered the following questions: How was the Saviour appointed and why was he sent into the world by his Father, and who is his Father, who sent him, and what is that aeon like to which we shall go? He said to us, “This aeon has been stamped after the model of that imperishable aeon”, but he did not teach us what that one is like.10

The last sentence seems to reveal how the Gnostics behind this writing related Christ’s postpaschal revelations to his earlier teachings. If it was characteristic of Christ’s earlier teachings that he mentioned the imperishable aeon but that he did not reveal of what kind it is, his prepaschal teachings must have had an incomplete and provisional character, while the full and definitive truth was only revealed after Easter.

8 9 10

The text situates this mountain in Galilee, NHC III 90.18–91.1; BG 77.15–78.1. NHC III 119.10–16; BG 127.1–10. NHC II.1.21–29; BG 20.8–19.

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In ApJohn, Christ does not deliver his revelatory teachings to the assembled apostles or to the apostles plus several women followers but to one of them, John. The limitation of the audience is connected with another difference from the above-mentioned two writings. In LetPetPhil and SophJChr, the Saviour reveals the Gnostic truth to his disciples and thereupon commissions them to preach the Gospel (the Gospel of Gnostic salvation) in the world, whereas in ApJohn the true knowledge is reserved for John and his “fellow spirits”, the people of the “Immovable Race”. In the concluding section of the text, Christ does not send his followers out into the world, as he does in the above two texts. Rather he emphasizes the secret character of his teachings. I have told you all things that you might write them down and transmit them secretly to your fellow spirits. For this is the mystery of the Immovable Race.11

This means that the chronological distinction between a period of incomplete teachings and a period in which the full and definitive truth is revealed runs parallel with a distinction between public and secret teachings:12 while Christ addressed his prepaschal message to all and sundry, he reserved his postpaschal revelations for the select group of Johannine Gnostics. In the opening frame story quoted above, John wishes to be informed about the meaning of an earlier saying of Christ. But nowhere in his actual revelations does the Gnostic Saviour explain or consider words spoken by him before. It was perhaps precisely because the Gnostics of ApJohn were convinced of the fundamental dissimilarity of the words spoken by Christ before and after Easter that they were no longer interested in the earlier teachings. For the sake of completeness I should add that we encounter a very different interpretation of Christ’s prepaschal teachings in the surviving fragments of the exegetical works of Valentinian authors

11

NHC II 31.28–32; BG 75.15–76.1. In HE II 1.4, Eusebius ascribes a similar distinction to Clement of Alexandria (Hypotyposes VII). This idea is reminiscent of the distinction made in the Gospel of John between parabolic or veiled teachings in the period before Easter and clear language after Easter. Cf. esp. 16.25: “Till now I have spoken in figures (paroim¤ai); the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures, but tell you plainly of the Father.” 12

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such as Heracleon, Theodotus, and Ptolemy. These Gnostic theologians claimed that the things done, said, and experienced by Christ during his temporary dwelling in a human body had a hidden symbolic meaning. Their intention was to uncover this spiritual meaning in the familiar Gospel accounts of Christ’s public ministry. In their view, Christ’s prepaschal teachings contained the whole truth, but a special hermeneutical key to the sources was needed to find this truth.13 Witnesses and Mediators of the Teaching of Jesus Peter LetPetPhil supports its Gnostic interpretation of the teachings of Jesus with a reference to Peter and to the testimony of the assembled apostles. We find a comparable reference to Peter in the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter.14 Ths text speaks of visions and auditions received by Peter during the events of Good Friday.15 On one of the first pages, the Saviour says to Peter: From you I have made a beginning for the others whom I have called to knowledge ( gnosis).16

ApocPet tells how Peter was gradually given full insight into the nature and the mission of the Saviour. In addition, Christ revealed that in the course of time, some of his followers would turn away from the truth and that they would cause several schisms. In particular, the future leaders of orthodox Christianity were blamed, “those who call themselves ‘bishop’, and also ‘deacons’, as if they have received their authority from God”.17 They were designated by the Gnostic Christ as “the messengers of error (. . .) who merchandise in my word”.18

13 E.H. Pagels, The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis, 14. The author discusses the hermeneutics of various Gnostic schools, including the Naassenes and the Peratae (reported and refuted by Irenaeus and Hippolytus). It should be noticed that this hermeneutical principle was also used by other Christian teachers, notably by the Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen. 14 NHC VII,3. H.W. Havelaar, The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter. 15 See below, ch. XI. 16 71.19–21. 17 79.24–28. 18 77.24–25 and 77.33–78.1.

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ApocPet insists that these Christian leaders wrongly claim the authority of Peter for their traditions.19 With their appeal to Peter, LetPetPhil and ApocPet attempt to show that the Gnostics were the true heirs of the apostolic tradition. This can be seen as a frontal attack against emerging orthodox Christianity. The more usual way to defend the own position vis-à-vis other Christian groups was the appeal to another disciple, someone, that is, who, because of his or her close contacts with Jesus, was supposed to have been more familiar with the person and the teaching of the Saviour than Peter and other disciples. John ApJohn appeals to John, one of the sons of Zebedee. It was commonly assumed in early Christianity that John was “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, the authority behind the special eyewitness tradition of the Fourth Gospel. Indeed, “Beloved Disciple” is a fitting designation of a confidant of the teacher. In the Fourth Gospel, the position of this disciple is contrasted with that of Peter (cf. John 20:29 and 21:4–24). ApJohn’s preference for John as a recipient of Christ’s secret teachings, at the expense of Peter and “the Twelve”, respectively, is in line with this tradition.20 James Followers of Jesus who continued to live in conformity with the Mosaic Law used to refer to James, Jesus’ brother (Gal. 1:19; Mark 6:3), as their main authority. No doubt, the historical James derived his leadership role from his family relationship with Jesus. There is no evidence that he belonged to the inner circle of disciples before the death of Jesus. But soon after Easter he began to play a prominent role in the community of followers of Jesus in Jerusalem (cf. esp. Gal. 2:9). The apostle Paul rated him among those to whom the risen Christ had appeared (I Cor. 15:7). According to one of the surviving fragments of the Jewish-Christian “Gospel of the Hebrews”,

19 Cf. K Koschorke, Die Polemik der Gnostiker gegen das kirchliche Christentum, esp. 11–90, T.V. Smith, Petrine Controversies in Early Christianity, 126–137. 20 Cf also the Gnostic section of the Acts of John (94–102), discussed below, ch. XII, and P.J. Lalleman, The Acts of John.

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James was the very first person to see Jesus after his resurrection.21 The authority of James is strongly emphasized in some Gnostic writings, notably in GosThom, logion 12: The disciples said to Jesus, “We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?” Jesus said to them: “Wherever you are, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.”22

These words of Jesus are likely to represent an early tradition. It is remarkable that they are preserved in GosThom for, as appears from the next logion (13, quoted below), in this document it is Thomas, Jesus’ supposed twin brother, who is regarded as the ideal follower of Jesus. A similar tradition about James can be found in the so-called Second Apocalypse of James. In a direct speech to James, Jesus characterizes him as the one who shall take over his ( Jesus’) work of redemption: You are not the redeemer nor a helper of strangers. You are an illuminator and a redeemer of those who are mine, and now of those who are yours. You shall be a revealer; you shall bring (what is) good among them all. [They shall] admire you, because of (your) powerful (deeds). You are blessed by the heavens.23 My beloved! Behold, I shall reveal to you those (things) that (neither) [the] heavens nor their archons have known. (. . .) Behold, I shall reveal to you everything, my beloved. [Understand] and know them [that] you may come forth just as I did. Behold, I [shall] reveal to you Him who [is hidden].24

As these passages show, we can distinguish several aspects in the figure of the favourite disciple: this follower receives special revelations

21 W. Schneemelcher, Neutestamentliche Apokryphen I, 147; J. Painter, Just Jarnes. The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition, 184–6. 22 NHC II 34.25–30. This logion is easier to understand in the light of ancient Jewish and Christian texts according to which the world was created, or continues to exist, for the sake of the righteous, Abraham, Moses, the Messiah, the Church, etc. See L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews V, 67–8. The tradition that Jesus appointed James as the leader of the community can also he found in pseudoClementine texts: ContJac. 5,4; EpClem 1, 1 (“to James, the brother of the Lord and the bishop of bishops”); Rec 1 43,3; J. Painter, Just James, 187–97. 23 NHC V,3 55.15–25; transl. Ch. Hedrick, in: D.M. Parrott (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codices V,2–5 and VI, 131. 24 NHC V,3 56.16–20; 57.4–10.

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(“I shall reveal to you everything”), he or she is a mediator of secret knowledge (“you are a revealer”) and also a prototype of the future believer. In The Apocryphon of James,25 James speaks of a revelation granted to him and to Peter. But the two disciples are not on the same level. It is James and not Peter who is appointed as the guardian of the higher knowledge of the Saviour. At the conclusion of the text, James sends each of the disciples out on their missions, while he himself goes up to Jerusalem. Jude-Thomas In the eastern part of Syria, early Christians referred to Thomas, a disciple of Jesus who was identified with Jude, a brother of Jesus and James (Mark 6:3; Matt. 13:55; Jude 1:1). The Aramaic (Syriac) name Thomas means “twin (brother)”, just as the Greek name Didymos does. In the Thomas tradition it was assumed that the disciple Jude-Thomas was not just a brother but a twin brother of Jesus. The close relationship between Jesus and his twin brother served as a model for the relationship between the individual believers and their heavenly “twin”. Through union with their other “self ” they could reach self-knowledge and at the same time knowledge of God.26 Logion 13 of GosThom (which comes after logion 12 in which priority is assigned to James) tells how Jesus took Thomas aside and revealed three things to him. When Thomas returned to the group of the disciples, the others were eager to know what Jesus had said to him, but Thomas did not disclose Jesus’ words, for their own benefit: If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up.27

Whereas in logion 12 James is presented as the spiritual leader after Jesus’ departure, this passage points to Thomas as Jesus’ favourite disciple and as the prototypical Gnostic believer. The two logions

25

NHC I,2. The so-called Hymn of the Pearl (ActsThom, 108–113) can be read as a poetic expression of this idea. Cf. Luttikhuizen, “The Hymn of Jude-Thomas, the Apostle, in the Country of the Indians”. 27 NHC II,2 35,11–14. 26

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might reflect a shift in the tradition: in earlier stages, James was regarded as the leader of the community of followers of Jesus; when the sayings tradition was transmitted in Syria, Jude-Thomas is likely to have replaced him.28 Mary Magdalene According to the Fourth Gospel, Mary Magdalene was the first person to meet Jesus after his resurrection.29 This report is remarkable since other traditions claim that it was Peter (I Cor. 15:5; Luke 24:34) or James (cf. above) who first saw Jesus after his resurrection. To early Christians, Mary’s first encounter with the risen Jesus must have been a token of her special bond with the Saviour. In The Gospel of Mary,30 Peter invites Mary to disclose to him and to the other disciples the words of the Saviour which she remembered, and which the other disciples did not know. But after Mary’s speech Peter appears to have taken offence at her privileged position: Did he really speak with a woman without our knowledge (and) not openly? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?31

Peter was rebuked by Levi. Among other things, Levi said: Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us.32

28

Cf. H. Koester, Introduction to the New Testament II, 152–3, and R. Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas, 78. 29 John 20. Cf. also Matt. 28:9–10. 30 BG 1. 31 17.18–22. The conclusion of GosThom (logion 114) also points to a controversy between Mary and Peter. Peter said to his fellow apostles: “Mary should leave us for women are not worthy of Life”. But Jesus sides with Mary: “Every woman who will make herself male (i.e. who becomes a complete human being, a monachos, cf. esp. logia 22 and 49) will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Cf. also PistSoph 17 ( Jesus said to Mary: “You are she whose heart is more openly directed to the Kingdom of Heaven than all your brothers); 19; 36; 72 (Mary said to Jesus; “I am afraid of Peter, for he threatens me and hates our race [ genos]”. Text and transl: C. Schmidt and V. MacDermot, Pistis Sophia. Cf. A. Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents; S. Petersen, “Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit!” Maria Magdalena, Salome und andere Jüngerinnen Jesu in christlichgnostischen Schriften. 32 18.7–15.

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GosPhil also points to a special spiritual bond between Jesus and Mary: The [Saviour loved] Mary Magdalene more than [all] the disciples [and used] to kiss her on her [mouth].33 The rest of [the disciples. . . .] They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Saviour answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you like her?”34

It should be observed that in all the above cases we are dealing with personal rather than with apostolic authority: it was believed that the Beloved Disciple ( John), James, Jude-Thomas, and Mary Magdalene, respectively, were more intimately related to the Saviour than any of the other early followers was, and that for this reason they possessed knowledge that the other disciples did not have.35 The view of the twelve apostles as a more or less closed group of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry and at the same time as joint leaders of the Jerusalem church can be found in the canonical book of Acts.36 This notion is likely to have developed in the community of the author.37 The critical attitude towards Peter and towards the disciples of Jesus in general in such early texts as Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and the Gospel of Mark suggests that in the first decades their authority was not unchallenged. In the texts quoted above, the criticism is not levelled against the historical apostles but against emerging orthodox Christianity and its claim to represent the teaching of Jesus and his first followers. Summary Gnostics regarded Jesus Christ above all as a bringer of divine gnosis. Their texts pretend to convey the teachings he revealed to his worthy followers. In various ways, these revelations are related to his (other)38 prepaschal teachings. Gnostics were aware that for their

33 The kiss was an expression of the spiritual union between Gnostics. It was supposed to convey spiritual powers to the receiver. H.G. Gaffron, Studien zum koptischen Philippusevangelium. Cf. H.M. Schenke, Das Philippusevangelium, 336, n. 792. 34 NHC II,3 63.34–64.5. 35 S.J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 116. 36 Cf. esp. 1:21–26. 37 E. Haenchen, Die Apostelgeschichte, 129. 38 In ApocPet, the Saviour reveals his teachings to Peter before Easter (on Good

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knowledge of the teachings of Jesus Christ—also and particularly for their knowledge of his private instructions—they were dependent on the evidence of witnesses. They refuted the early orthodox appeal to the twelve apostles and their leader Peter either by claiming the authority of the apostles—first of all Peter—for their own traditions or by referring to witnesses who were allegedly more qualified than Peter and the Twelve.

Friday, cf. below, ch. XI). GosThom does not distinguish between prepaschal and postpachal teachings. The sayings of this Gospel are spoken by “the living Jesus”. By hearing and contemplating his words, the believer becomes one with him. Cf. logion 108 (NHC II,2 50.28–31): Jesus says, “Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE PASSION OF JESUS: THE SUFFERING JESUS AND THE IMPASSIBLE CHRIST (APOCPET )

The Apocalypse of Peter1 discloses how, through several visions and revelations, Peter was led to full understanding of the nature and the mission of Christ. The curious thing is that the revelations take place during the events of Good Friday, and that Christ is the object as well as the giver of the revelatory teaching.2 The only surviving manuscript contains the complete text in a clear legible handwriting. However, in other respects, it is a poor copy. Almost every page contains one or more grammatically unclear phrases.3 These obscurities may be due to the incompetence of the translator or to an inaccurate transmission of the Coptic text. In some cases, the transcriber is likely to have inserted his own comments into the text. This could explain some of the convoluted sentences (see e.g. the opening lines quoted below). On several occasions we have no other choice than to accept that the text is corrupt. In their attempts to date the hypothetical Greek original of ApocPet, James Brashler and Henriette Havelaar rightly concentrate on the terminus post quem.4 The text can hardly be earlier than the end of the second century. The many references to texts that later became part of the New Testament preclude this.5 Brashler and Havelaar

1 NHC VII, 3. Text editions: J. Brashler, The Coptic “Apocalypse of Peter”: A Genre Analysis and Interpretation; H.W. Havelaar, The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter. 2 Compare this to the New Testament Gospels, where Jesus speaks about future events while he is together with his disciples shortly before Good Friday, and with Gnostic revelations as ApJohn, LetPetPhil, SophJChr, where the exalted Christ speaks to one or more of his followers from the world above. See K. Rudolph, “Der gnostische ‘Dialog’ als literarisches Genus”, 91: “Die Szene (Hintergrund, Ort) ist stets in die Zeit nach der Auferstehung Jesu verlegt”; Ph. Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue, 37–58. 3 Virtually all grammatical problems are discussed in Havelaar, 54–69 (“Grammatical Annotations”). 4 J. Brashler, 217; Havelaar, 16. 5 See Havelaar, ch. 6 (“The Apocalypse of Peter and the New Testament”).

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also point to the polemics directed at emerging mainstream Christians, notably the rejection of their claims that “the mystery of truth” belonged to them alone.6 In the third century, the exclusive claims of the great Church were increasingly pressed upon minority groups that did not accept orthodox teaching and practice. The opening lines seem to indicate the location of the visions and revelations. Unfortunately, they belong to the more obscure passages in the Coptic manuscript. In all editions, the text has been emended. I quote Brasher’s translation of 1996:7 APOCALYPSE OF PETER. As the Saviour was sitting in the temple, in the inner part of the building at the convergence of the tenth pillar, and as he was at rest above the congregation of the living incorruptible Majesty, he said to me: “Peter, (. . . .)”.8

The translation: “the inner part of the building”, is an emendation of a combination of Coptic words that does not make sense.9 However, if we assume that this emendation, and its translation, is correct, what does the text mean?10 Is this a reference to the earthly temple in Jerusalem or, rather, to a spiritual temple in the divine world? It is quite probable that the reference is to both places at the same time. As we will see, ApocPet frequently directs the attention to a spiritual dimension in visible reality. In particular the subsequent phrase, “and as he was at rest above the congregation of the living incorruptible Majesty”, suggests that the Saviour is in his true spiritual environment together with all those who belong to the Father.11

6

76.31–34, quoted below, n. 27. In: B.A. Pearson (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codex VII, 219. 8 70.13–20. 9 70.15–16: hN Tmeht= Nte pism=ne; Havelaar: “in the threehundredth of the construction”; Brashler: hN

meht= Nte pism=ne (the gender of the definite article is changed before meht=). In his dissertation (above, n. 1) and in his subsequent translation in J.M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English, Brashler suggested reading: “in the three hundredth (year) of the covenant”; cf. A. Werner in: W. Schneemelcher (ed.), New Testament Apocrypha II (English transl. by R. McL. Wilson), 705: “in the three hundredth (year) of the foundation”. 10 Cf. J.D. Dubois, “Le Préambule de l’Apocalypse de Pierre”, and the grammatical annotation by H. Havelaar, 54. 11 Cf. Havelaar, 73–5. 7

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In ApocPet, Peter speaks about teachings revealed to him by Jesus Christ on Good Friday. An important part of the revelations concerned the true meaning of the events of that day. Christ explained to Peter that he himself—the divine and, allegedly, impassible Saviour— would not be arrested and crucified but only the physical body of Jesus. The apostle also intimates that Christ used special didactics to teach him. For instance, after the first words had been addressed to him, Peter noticed that the priests and the people were running towards them. Christ made use of this occasion to instruct the apostle how he could inwardly transcend visible reality:12 And as he was saying these things, I (Peter) saw the priests and the people running toward us with stones, as if they were about to kill us. And I was afraid that we were going to die.13

Christ summoned the apostle to put his hands over his eyes and to describe what he could see. At first, Peter did not understand the instruction for he said that he could not see anything in this way. However, when Christ asked him to do it once more, something changed. Peter reports: Fear and joy came over me, for I saw a new light brighter than the light of day. Thereupon it came down upon the Saviour.14

This experience was repeated with Peter’s auditory senses. Christ asked him to listen to what the priests and the people said. Peter describes what he heard: I heard the priests as they sat with the scribes. The crowds were shouting with a loud voice.15

When Christ insisted that he listen with his spiritual ear, Peter heard something quite different, for he said to Christ: You are glorified while you are seated.16

12 Cf. U. Schoenborn, Diverbium Salutis. Literarische Struktur und theologische Intention des gnostischen Dialogs am Beispiel der koptischen “Apokalypse des Petrus”, esp. 110–12. 13 72.4–8 (transl. Brashler in: Pearson, Nag Hammadi Codex VII, 223). 14 72.21–27 (apart from a few minor points I adopt Havelaar’s translation). 15 73.2–4. 16 73.9–10. This statement recalls the opening lines of the text speaking about the Saviour sitting in the temple. In both cases the reference is to a spiritual temple in the divine world as well as to the earthly temple.

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With his physical eyes and ears Peter heard chaotic and threatening things but the inner self perceived the joyful truth about the Saviour. In this way, the apostle was prepared for what he would experience shortly later on that day. Jesus’ Arrest and Crucifixion The actual arrest and the crucifixion of Jesus are reported on the last pages of the text. First Christ encouraged Peter: “Peter, come! Let us go and fulfill the will of the incorruptible Father. Behold, those who will bring judgement upon themselves are coming. They will put themselves to shame. But me they cannot touch. And you, Peter, will stand in their midst. Do not be afraid because of your cowardice. Their minds shall be closed for the Invisible One has opposed them.” When he had said these things, I saw him seemingly being seized by them.17

After the last sentence of this quotation, the attention is shifted from the arrest (still in the temple?) to the crucifixion scene. Even during the crucifixion, Christ remained Peter’s angelus interpres and answered the questions posed by the apostle: And I said, “What am I seeing, O Lord? Is it you yourself whom they take? And are you holding on to me? Who is the one who is glad and laughing above the cross? Do they hit another one on his feet and on his hands?” The Saviour said to me, “The one you see above the cross, glad and laughing, is the living Jesus. But the one into whose hands and feet they are driving the nails is his fleshly part (sarkikon), which is the substitute. They put to shame that which came into existence after his likeness (. . . .). The son of their glory, instead of my servant, they have put to shame.”18

An essential feature of this vision account is the distinction made between the suffering Jesus and the invulnerable Saviour. What is more, the two figures are related to conflicting powers. The Saviour is an agent of the incorruptible Father, whereas the human body of

17 18

80.23–81.6. 81.6–23; 82.1–3.

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Jesus supposedly is “the son” of the cosmic powers. Such an interpretation implies that the wrongdoers who arrested and crucified Jesus, did not torture the Saviour but a human body. Above the cross, “the living Jesus” laughs at their blindness. Thereupon, Peter reports, he perceived another figure: And I saw someone about to approach us who looked like him and like the one who was laughing above the cross. He was woven in holy Spirit. He was the Saviour. And there was a great ineffable light, surrounding them, and the multitude of ineffable and invisible angels, blessing them. And I saw that the one who glorifies was revealed.19

After this vision of what seems to be a higher dimension of the Saviour, Christ resumed his explanations to Peter: And he said to me, “Be strong! For you are the one to whom these mysteries have been given through revelation in order that you will know – that the one they crucified is the first-born, the home of the demons, the clay vessel in which they dwell; it belongs to Elohim and to the cross that is under the law. – But he who stands near him is the living Saviour, he who was in him before, (in) the one who was seized. And he was released. He stands joyfully, looking at those who treated him violently. They are divided among themselves. Therefore, he laughs at their inability to see. He knows that they are born blind. – So, the one who suffers will stay (behind), because the body is the substitute. – But the one who was released is my incorporeal body. – I am the intellectual spirit filled with radiant light. – The one you saw coming to me is our intellectual Pleroma, who unites the perfect light with my holy spirit.”20

Peter’s visions are characterized as “mysteries” given exclusively to him.21 In his explanations, Christ paid special attention to the temporal dwelling of the Saviour in the physical Jesus: until the arrest of Jesus, the Saviour was in him (“he was in him before”); after his “release” from Jesus, he witnessed how “the one staying behind” was seized and treated violently.

19

82.3–17. 82.7–83.15. 21 Cf. 71.8–21, where Christ says to Peter, “from you I have made a beginning for the others whom I have called to knowledge”, and 71.25–27, where Peter is reminded that he was called “to know him (Christ) in the proper way”. 20

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Actually the vision accounts and the subsequent interpretations refer to two different aspects of the impassible Christ. Like the physical Jesus, these higher forms were seen by Peter as more or less independent figures: 1. “the living Jesus” or “living Saviour”, also designated by Christ as his “servant” and as his “incorporeal body”; 2. “the intellectual Pleroma”, who in Peter’s vision looked like “the living Jesus”. These two distinctions within the concept of the Saviour indicate that ApocPet does not conceive of two “natures” (one human and one divine) as in later orthodox Christology but of three. In particular, “the living Saviour” deserves closer examination. His position between Christ’s intellectual, or pleromatic, spirit and the physical body of Jesus reminds us of the role of the soul in a trichotomous concept of reality. In this view of man and the world, the innermost centre of the human being (designated as the mind, nous, the spirit, pneuma, or the rational part of the soul) is related to the hypercosmic realm of God. In contrast, the soul (or its irrational part) is related to the realm of the stars and the planets. This enables the soul to mediate between the incorporeal spirit and the material body.22 It was commonly thought that when the spirit left the hypercosmic realm, it was wrapped in psychic or ethereal “clothes”. Their function was to protect the spiritual principle, to bridge the distance between the spirit and the earthly body, and, more specifically, to serve as a vehicle (ochêma) for the spirit. In this “psychic body”, the spirit descended to the lower world and, after the death of the individual, returned to the world above.23

22 The fine-material substance of the soul was regarded as the fifth element (quinta essentia) and was seen as a special kind of “body”. Cf. above, ch. III, and P. Moraux, “Quinta essentia”, 1245–56. 23 Cf. Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis VII 7.25–26: “if we must speak of the substance of the soul, we must say (. . .) either that it is this, as it were, luciform and ethereal body (. . .) or that it is an incorporeal substance, and (that) this body is its first vehicle, by means of which it establishes partnership (koinônia) with other bodies”; similar views are expressed by Philo (Her 281–2), Cicero, Plutarch, and also by Patristic authors. According to Irenaeus, AH I 6–7, the Valentinian Gnostics had very definite ideas about the three levels of being. Some of them believed that when Christ’s spirit came down it was wrapped in a “body having psychic substance”

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The cryptic designations, “my incorporeal body” and “my servant”, that Christ used to refer to the figure who left the body of the earthly Jesus before he was arrested and later appeared to Peter above the cross, are easier to understand if we relate them to the speculations about an ethereal soul-body and its mediating role between the spiritual and the earthly-material components of man. Peter’s Example ApocPet claims that the Saviour was immune to the attacks by the forces of evil:24 it was not he who was tortured and humiliated but his temporal “substitute”: the human body of Jesus. This claim is also voiced in the sections dealing with the “future” errors of other Christian groups.25 Orthodox followers of Jesus are criticized for worshipping “a dead man”26 and for imposing their belief in redemption, through Jesus’ death (?), on others: They are the ones who suppress their brothers saying to them: “through this our God has mercy, because salvation comes to us through this”.27

The Christians in question are depicted as victims of the archontic powers: Many will accept our teaching in the beginning but turn away again in accordance with the will of the father of their error,28 because they have done what he wanted.29

(6.1). See further H.S. Schibli, “Origen, Didymus, and the vehicle of the soul”, in: R.J. Daly, Origeniana Quinta, 381–91, and A.P. Bos, The Soul and its Instrumental Body, 258–303. According to ApJohn, humans have a “psychic body” (made by the cosmic rulers out of their own substance) as well as a carnal body; cf. above, ch. V. 24 This is already alluded to in the first words addressed to Peter: “the principalities sought him but they did not find him”, 71.5–7. 25 For this aspect of ApocPet see K. Koschorke, Die Polemik der Gnostiker gegen das kirchliche Christentum, 11–90, and Havelaar, 193–204. 26 74.13–15: “they adhere to the belief in a dead man, thinking that they will become pure”; Havelaar, 89: “The belief in the name of a dead man will appear to be the core of the conflict between the Petrine Gnostics and their opponents”. 27 79.1–16; cf. 76.31–34: “they will boast that the mystery of truth is with them alone”. 28 This seems to be a designation of the Demiurge, the chief archon, who in several Gnostic texts is seen as the cause of evil and as the enemy of spiritual humanity. Cf. 74.29–30; “they (non-Gnostic Christians) stand in the power of the archons”. 29 73.23–27; cf. 74.22: “they will be ruled in a heretical manner”.

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Peter feared that in this way many of “the living ones” would be led astray but Christ reassured him: For a period of time determined for them in proportion to their error, they will rule over the little ones. But, after the completion of the error, the ageless (race) of immortal understanding will be renewed, and they (the little ones) will rule over their rulers.30

When the text was written, the Petrine Gnostics were still in conflict with other Christian groups and they had reasons to believe that they lived in a world dominated by cosmic rulers. They could feel encouraged by the last words addressed to Peter and by Peter’s exemplary reaction: “You, therefore, be brave and do not fear anything, for I will be with you so that none of your enemies will domineer over you. Peace be with you. Be strong!” When he had said these things, he (Peter) came to his senses.31

The translation of the concluding words was proposed by Alexander Böhlig32 and adopted by Brashler and Havelaar.33 I suggest that the relevant Coptic phrase34 is laden with far more meaning: after Christ’s teachings Peter “came to himself (i.e. to his true self )”. This interpretation means that when the Saviour had completed his teachings, Peter achieved the state of perfection to which he was called before by Christ: You, too, Peter, become perfect (. . .) just like me, the one who has chosen you. For from you I have made a beginning for the others whom I have called to knowledge35

Conclusions ApocPet claims to contain Peter’s own account of the revelations granted to him by Jesus Christ on Good Friday. The revelations 30

80.8–16 (transl. Brashler, 1996, 239; I added “race” between brackets). The designation of the Gnostics as “the little ones” recalls the expression “these little ones” used by Jesus to refer to his followers in Matthew’s Gospel (10:42; 18:6, 10, 14). See Havelaar, 97, 152, 179f. 31 84.6–13. 32 “Zur Apokalypse des Petrus”. 33 For the use of the third person style in this interpretation of the last sentence of the text see Havelaar, 68f and 78f. 34 afqwpe hrai Nhytf=. 35 71.5–21.

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pertain first and foremost to the true meaning of the things seen and the events experienced by the apostle on that day. It is remarkable, and somewhat confusing, that Christ, the Saviour, is both the subject and object of the revelation. Peter saw different forms of Christ, while at the same time Christ was with him and spoke to him. Christ insisted that the suffering Jesus should not be mistaken for the divine Saviour. In Christ’s explanation, the human body of Jesus was merely a temporary dwelling-place. Moreover, he repudiated this sarkikon as the product (“the son”) of quasi-glorious cosmic powers. In ApocPet, the cosmic powers are the assailants and enemies of Christ and the Gnostics. As Christ disclosed in his first words addressed to Peter, “the principalities” sought him (the Saviour) but could not find him.36 Christ himself was fully immune to the attacks of the forces of evil. His followers could attain this level of protection if they allowed themselves to be enlightened by Christ’s teaching and, accordingly, were prepared to live in this world as “strangers” and “children of light”.37 Actually, Christ predicted that some of his followers would turn away from the truth and accused their leaders, “the messengers of error”, of siding with his enemies.38 The “children of this age” would do what “the father of their error” wanted them to do.39 Christ made great demands on Peter and, through him, on “the others whom (he had) called to knowledge”.40 He frequently encouraged and reassured the apostle. Peter’s fears concerned the future as well as the present. He was afraid of what might happen to Christ, and to himself, when he saw what the priests and the people wanted to do. But he also feared future oppression by the cosmic forces and the people “in their power”.41 Only gradually did the apostle overcome his fears; and through Christ’s revelations he was led, finally, to full understanding. The inner transformation of Peter was meant to set an example to the Gnostic readers of this writing.42

36 37 38 39 40 41 42

71.5–7. 78.25f and 83.17–19. 77.24f and 80.2–6. Cf. above, n. 28. Above, n. 35. 73.17–18. This aspect of ApocPet is particularly highlighted in U. Schoenborn, Diverbium Salutis.

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The interpretation of the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus in ApocPet does not deviate substantially from what we find in some other Gnostic texts. In the introductory chapter, I already referred to Peter’s sermon in LetPetPhil. In this sermon, the apostle summarizes a more or less orthodox account of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection, and subsequently states: “My brothers, Jesus is a stranger to this suffering”.43 Elsewhere in LetPetPhil, the disciples claim that they suffered more than the Lord: “If he, our Lord, suffered, then how much do we?” Peter reacts by saying: “He suffered on account of [us]”.44 It is possible that the descent of the Saviour into the world is regarded as his suffering.45 In TreatSeth, the exalted Christ reveals that it was not he who suffered but someone else: Another was the one who lifted up the cross on his shoulder, who was Simon. Another was the one on whom they put the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the riches of the archons and the offspring of their error and their conceit, and I was laughing at their ignorance.46

In the following chapter we will draw attention to comparable ideas about Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion in the Greek Acts of John.

43

NHC VIII 139.13–25. 138.15–18. 45 M.W. Meyer, The Letter of Peter to Philip, 152–7; p. 154: “Jesus’ suffering is addressed in a more general manner, as a life of suffering while he was embodied”. 46 NHC VII 56.9–20, transl. by G. Riley in B.A. Pearson, Nag Hammadi Codex VII, 165, 167. A very similar view is attributed by Irenaeus, HA I 24.4, to Basilides: Christ did not suffer but Simon; Christ had taken Simon’s form and stood by the cross laughing at them (at the archons?). 44

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE PASSION OF JESUS: THE WOODEN CROSS AND THE COSMIC CROSS OF LIGHT (ACTSJOHN )

The Greek Acts of John consist of two main parts: a lengthy narration about the deeds of the apostle in Asia (chapters 18–86 and 106–115; the opening chapters are lost) and a speech by John, the protagonist of the book (chapters 87–105).1 Although the latter part is a speech and not a story told in the third person, it may be regarded as a gospel-like text, even as a critical revision of the New Testament Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John.2 My main interest is in the “passion narrative” of chapters 97–102. But the suffering/non-suffering of the Lord is also an issue in the three preceding chapters (94–96). In these chapters, John relates a mysterious dance rite which Jesus is said to have performed with his disciples shortly before his arrest. Recent scholarship agrees about the Gnostic character of chapters 94–102.3

1 John’s speech is comparable to the speeches of leading figures in profane historical books and in the New Testament Book of Acts. Their purpose is to review the situation for the reader, to elucidate backgrounds and perspectives, and to disclose the thoughts and experiences of one of the protagonists of the story. Cf. H.J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts, 184. P. Lalleman, The Acts of John, explains the two main parts (the Asian episodes and John’s speech) as a “two-stage initiation into Johannine Gnosticism”. 2 See K. Schäferdiek, NTA II, English transl. by R. McL. Wilson, 164; R. Pervo, “Johannine Trajectories”, esp. 57f and 65–8; J.D. Kaestli, “Le mystère de la croix et le Johannisme”. 3 See E. Junod and J.D. Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 588: “Nous avons affaire dans AJ (ActsJohn) 94–102 à un texte typiquement gnostique, structuré à la manière des ‘discours de révélation’ dominé par les thèmes de la connaissance et de la ‘passion’ (. . .)”; K. Schäferdiek affirms: “the hymn and the revelation discourse about the mystery of the Cross have a clearly gnostic character” (introduction to ActsJohn, in NTA II, English transl. by R. McL. Wilson, 165); P.J. Lalleman, Acts of John, 50 and passim.

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ACTSJOHN 94–96 My brief discussion of chapters 94–96 is based on the detailed comments by Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, the editors of the text, and by Paul G. Schneider in his monographic study The Mystery of the Acts of John.4 In chap. 94, John tells how the Lord summoned his disciples to make a circle and join hands, while he himself stood in their midst, and to answer “amen” to the words sung by him. The poem opened with a doxological praise of the Father.5 Thereupon, in chap. 95.1, the Lord declared: “And why we give thanks, I will say”.6 The first section, 95.2–17, consists mainly of antithetical statements: I I I I I I I I

will will will will will will will will

be saved and I will save. Amen. be released and I will release. Amen. be wounded and I will wound. Amen. be born and I will bear. Amen. eat and I will be eaten. Amen. hear and I will be heard. Amen. be thought, being wholly thought (or: mind).7 Amen. be washed and I will wash. Amen.

To a certain extent, the quoted lines are reminiscent of the paradoxical sayings in such texts as The Thunder: Perfect Mind (NHC VI,2).8

4 Junod and Kaestli, Acta Joannis, II, 621–7 and 642–55; Schneider, 144–226. Cf. also A.J. Dewey, “The Hymn in the Acts of John: Dance as Hermeneutic” and the “Response” to this article by J.D. Kaestli, Semeia 38 (1986), 67–80 and 81–88. 5 I have reservations though, about the hymnic character of the rest of the poem sung by the Saviour. For definitions of this literary genre see K. Berger, “Hellenistische Gattungen im Neuen Testament”, ANRW II 25,2, 1031–432, and Luttikhuizen, “The poetic character of Revelation 4 and 5” (15: “a hymn is a cultic song in which the emphasis is on the praise of God”). 6 ÉEfÉ ⁄ d¢ eÈxaristoËmen l°gv. It is possible to understand this statement as a reference to the Eucharist. Schneider, The Mystery of the Acts of John, 170, n. 4, points to a striking parallel to the Acts’ possible connection of a dance with the Eucharist in Hippolytus, Hom. in Pascha 6. Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 621–7, 644, deny a connection with the Eucharist. They surmise that the community behind chaps. 94–102 did not practice the Eucharist. In their view, the mystery rite was meant to replace the Last Supper. In that case, the final editor must have overlooked the references to the Eucharist in chaps. 72, 85, 109. 7 Nohy∞nai y°lv noËw Ãn ˜low. Cf. the comments by Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 648. 8 This parallel is emphasized by Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 640f.; A.J. Dewey, “The hymn in the Acts of John”, 73. Cf. G.W. MacRae, “The Thunder: Perfect Mind”, 232. P.H. Poirier, Le tonnerre, intellect parfait, 98f.

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But the differences are also significant.9 The Johannine poem does not include the emphatic “I am” formulas, one of the characteristic features of Thund and comparable texts. What is more, ActsJohn 95 is an antiphonal song, and it is connected with a dance ceremony. The quoted lines make perfect sense if they are understood as the first part of a mystery rite instituted, or at least performed for the first time, by Christ. The alternation between active and passive seems to give expression to the desire of the initiate to become one with the mystery god. He wishes to be saved by the Lord and, in turn, save others. The “wounding” in line three suggests that the transformation of the believer is painful, apparently because it means one’s death to the world.10 The line “I will eat and I will be eaten” can be explained as a reference to the Eucharist.11 But it should be noted that in ActsJohn, the Eucharist is not associated with Jesus’ suffering and death.12 Perhaps it was celebrated in memory of the table fellowship of the Lord with his disciples.13 The desire to become one with the divine Lord culminates in the statement, “I will be thought, being wholly nous”. The last line of this section refers to the spiritual purification of the believers. The second main section of the poem is preceded by a title (or a narrative introduction by the editor?14): “Grace dances”, “Grace” being a designation of the Saviour. The first lines, 95.19–22, are a Gnostic version of the parable of the children in the marketplace (Matt. 11:16–17/Luke 7:31–32). The piping Saviour acts as a mystery god who invites the initiates to dance with him. While they are dancing they share in the praise of the astral spheres. I will pipe: dance you all. Amen I will mourn: lament you all. Amen

9 B. Layton, “The Riddle of the Thunder: The Function of Paradox in a Gnostic Text from Nag Hammadi”, does not refer to ActsJohn 95. 10 P. Schneider, The Mystery of the Acts of John, 169. 11 Cf. above, n. 6. 12 The Eucharistic prayers in chaps. 85f and 109 only mention the breaking of bread, there is no mention of wine or water. Schneider, The Mystery, 74f and 171. For a different explanation see Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 648. 13 Schneider also mentions the possibility that the Eucharist was celebrated “as a remembrance of the Lord who brought the salvific gnosis” (The Mystery, 171). 14 If the words ≤ xãriw xoreÊei are part of the frame story, we would, however, expect the past tense.

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The one Ogdoas sings praise with us. Amen The twelfth number (the Zodiac?) dances on high. Amen. To the All it belongs to dance on high. Amen. The one who does not dance, does not know what happens. Amen.

An interesting parallel to the singing of the Ogdoas (the eighth sphere) can be found in the Hermetic Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth (NHC VI,6): “For the entire Ogdoas, my son, and the souls that are in it, and the angels, sing a hymn in silence”.15 This text speaks of the experiences of an initiate who is transferred into the cosmic realm above the seven planetary spheres.16 In the third section, the antithetical parallelism is resumed: (95.31–42) I will flee, and I will stay. Amen. I will adorn, and I will be adorned. Amen. I will be united and I will unite. Amen. I have no house, and I have houses. Amen. I have no place, and I have places. Amen. I have no temple, and I have temples. Amen.

The initiate wishes to escape from this world and be united with the Lord (in the Cross of Light? cf. chaps. 97–102). The third line summarizes the purpose of the whole ceremony. Once he is united with the Lord, the initiate will find the houses, places and temples he does not have in this world.17 In the concluding lines, the Lord addresses the individual dancer: (95.43–50) I am a lamp to you who sees me. Amen. I am a mirror to you who perceives me. Amen. I am a door to you who knocks on me. Amen. I am a way to you, traveller.

The Saviour qualifies himself as the door and the way to the world above. In chap. 98, he will use the same designations to refer to the luminous Cross, the place where the believers are united with the Lord before their collective return to the Pleroma. The quoted words mark the transition to the mystagogical instructions of the next chapter. There the Lord explains that he is a mirror in which believers see 15 NHC VI,6 58.17–21. For other occurrences of the term “Ogdoas” in Nag Hammadi texts see F. Siegert, Nag-Hammadi-Register, 276. 16 In a damaged passage of Marsanes (NHC X), 4.13–24, the eleventh, the twelfth, and the thirteenth spheres speak of the invisible God and his powers. See B.A. Pearson, Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X, 258–61. 17 Possible allusions to Matt. 8:20; 19:29 and parallel passages.

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themselves. In conformity with the Greek mystery tradition, he requires that the initiate be silent about the ceremony. (96.1–23) Responding to my dance, see yourself in me who am speaking. And when you have seen what I do, keep silence about my mysteries. You who dance, perceive what I do, For yours is this passion of man which I am to suffer. For you could not possibly understand what you suffer, Had I not been sent to you as the Word of the Father. You who saw what I do, saw me as if suffering. And seeing it you did not stand still but were wholly moved. Being moved, (. . .).18 You have me as a couch; rest upon me. Who I am, you shall know when I go away.19 What I now appear to be, that I am not. , you shall see when you come. If you knew how to suffer, you would have been able not to suffer. Learn to suffer, and you shall be able not to suffer. What you do not know, I myself shall teach you. I am your God, not that of the traitor. I wish that holy souls keep tune with me. Know the word of wisdom. Say again to me: Glory be to thee, Father. Glory be to thee, Word. Glory be to thee, Spirit.

The main theme of these enigmatic instructions is the suffering/nonsuffering of the divine Lord and the believers (who in chap. 100 are viewed as his “members”). The believers suffer because they still live in the lower world, while the Lord suffers because spiritual humankind has not yet ascended and united with him. One should also observe that John’s God (the Lord himself ) is opposed to the God of the traitor ( Judas). If we are correct in identifying the God of Judas with the Jewish God, this dualism is in basic agreement with the theology of ApJohn and other demiurgical Gnostic texts. The four lines that follow the doxography (96.24–27) are poorly preserved in the only extant manuscript.20 Junod and Kaestli assume that according to one of these lines, the Lord stated that he was not put to shame (by the archons?). They explain this statement with

18 The text is corrupt. For several emendations see the critical apparatus in Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, I, 205. 19 Probably a reference to the Lord’s ascension. Cf. chap. 102. 20 J.D. Kaestli, “Response”, 84: “The lines that follow the doxology in chap. 96 (96:24–25) are hopelessly corrupt.”

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the help of the passages from TreatSeth and ApocPet quoted above, chapter XI.21 The order of the chapters suggests that the author or editor wished to show that the meaning of the dance ceremony is bound to remain obscure without the esoteric instructions and the subsequent revelation of the Cross of Light. This implies that the ceremony is comprehensible only to John and to persons acquainted with John’s revelation account (notably the readers of the book).22 ACTSJOHN 97–102 The passion narrative in ActsJohn 97–102 is a revision of the accounts of Jesus’ suffering in the New Testament Gospels.23 The author appears to be mainly interested in the crucifixion. The Last Supper, the treason by Judas, Jesus’ arrest, and his being sentenced are only hinted at or not mentioned at all. We can be sure that the intended readers were supposed to be familiar with earlier accounts of the suffering of Jesus. In the first sentences of chap. 97, John reports that after the dance ceremony, the Lord “went out”, and that the disciples fled in various directions.24 John goes on to relate that he saw Jesus suffering and that he did not abide at his passion but fled to the Mount of Olives, weeping at what had happened (97.1–5). Shortly after, the Lord appeared to John in a cave on the Mount of Olives in order to reveal to him a higher dimension of his suffering. (97.5–12) And when he was hung on Friday,25 at the sixth hour of the day, darkness came over the whole earth.26 And my Lord standing

21

Acta Johannis, II, 654f. The words, “who does not dance, does not know what happens” (95.29–30), probably speak about the meaning of the dance as it was explained by the Lord in the subsequent chapters. Cf. A.J. Dewey, “The Hymn in the Acts of John”, 73: “this section (chap. 96) wants the reader to revisit the Godhead of the hymn by returning once more to the hymn and understanding everything which has been sung at this higher level.” 23 Cf. J.D. Kaestli, “Response”, Semeia 38, p. 86. See for a survey of references to the New Testament Gospels in ActsJohn 94–102 Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 595–600. 24 Cf. Mark 14:50/Matt. 26:56 and John 16:32. 25 The manuscript uses a Greek transcription (t“ éroubãtƒ) of a Syriac term for the day of preparation. Cf. Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 631 and 655, who find in this designation a reason for assuming that ActsJohn 94–102 had a Syrian background. 26 Cf. Matt. 27:45 and synoptic parallels. 22

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chapter twelve in the middle of the cave and enlightening me, said: “John, to the people below in Jerusalem I am being crucified and pierced with lances and reeds, and vinegar and gall is given me to drink.27 But to you I am speaking; listen to what I say. I put it in your mind to come up to this mountain so that you might hear what a disciple should learn from his teacher and a man from God.”

The scene reported here recalls the last part of ApocPet (discussed in chap. XI). In both texts, the Saviour is with the apostle (Peter and John respectively) during the crucifixion of Jesus and reveals to him aspects of his divine identity. In ActsJohn 97–102, the revelations are given while John is in a cave on the Mount of Olives. In several respects this is also reminiscent of the opening frame story of ApJohn.28 What the latter text has in common with ActsJohn 97–102 is that John himself is the narrator, that he is on the Mount of Olives in a sorrowful mood, and that he relates how the Saviour appeared to him in multiple forms.29 In ActsJohn 98, the Lord shows the apostle a cosmic Cross of Light. Note that the report of this vision is relatively short. After mentioning the voice of Christ above the Cross, John’s report changes over to an account of what the voice said to him. In fact, chapters 98–102 consist mainly of explanations of the Cross of Light and the human beings in and around it. The Saviour functions as John’s angelus interpres: (98) And when he had said these things he showed me a Cross of Light solidly fixed, and around the Cross a great multitude, which had not one form; and in it (the Cross) was one form and one likeness. And I saw the Lord himself above the Cross, having no shape but only a voice—not the voice which was familiar to us, but one that was sweet and gentle and truly divine—which said to me: “John, it is necessary that one human hear these things from me, for I need one who is ready to hear. 27 Cf. Matt. 27:30/Mark 15:19 (“a reed”); John 19:34 (“a lance”); Matt. 27:48/Mark 15:36/Luke 23:36 and John 19:29 (“vinegar”); Matt. 27:34 (“gall”); the combination “vinegar and gall” occurs in Ephraem’s Diatessaron commentary XX,27, GosPet 16, TreatSeth (NHC VII,2) 56.6f. 28 II 1.18–2.9; BG 20.3–21.13. 29 Cf. also the narrative schema and the ideas about Christ’s suffering in I ApocJames (NHC V,3), mentioned by Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 655: Jesus leaves James and is arrested (29.13–30.13); the apostle is in distress after having heard about Jesus’ suffering (30.13–15; 31.5–9; 32.13–14); after a few days the Saviour appears to him while he is on a mountain (30.17ff); the Saviour says to James that he did not suffer at all (31.14ff ).

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The Cross of Light is sometimes called the Word by me for your sake, sometimes Mind, sometimes Christ, sometimes Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Bread, sometimes Seed, sometimes Resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace; by these names it is called for the sake of men. But what it truly is, as known in itself and spoken to you: it is the delimitation of all things and the strong uplifting of what is firmly fixed out of what is unstable, and the harmony of wisdom. Now when wisdom is in harmony, there are those of the right and the left, powers, authorities, principalities and demons, activities, threatenings, passions, calumnies, Satan and the inferior root from which the nature of transient things proceeded. (99) This Cross then, which has made all things stable through the Word and separated off what is transitory and inferior, and then has extended itself unto everything, is not that wooden cross which you will see when you go down from here; nor am I he who is on the cross, (I) whom now you do not see but only hear (my) voice. I was taken to be what I am not, I who am not what for the many I am; but what they will say of me is mean and not worthy of me. Just as the place of rest is neither seen nor spoken of, much less shall I, the Lord of this place, be seen or . (100) The multitude around the Cross that is of one form is the inferior nature. And if those whom you see in the Cross do not have one form, this is because every member of him who came down has not yet been gathered together. But when human nature is taken up, and the race that comes to me in obedience to my voice, then he who now hears me shall be united with it and shall no longer be what he now is, but shall be above it (the Cross), as I am now. For so long as you do not call yourself mine, I am not what I was; but if you hear me: you, too, in hearing me shall be as I am, when [. . .]. Therefore ignore the many and despise those who are outside the mystery. Know that I am wholly with the Father, and the Father with me.30 (101) Therefore I have suffered none of those things which they will say of me. The suffering which I showed to you and to the rest in dance, I wish it to be called a mystery. For what you are you see. I have shown it to you; but what I am, that I alone know, and no one else. Let me, therefore, keep what is mine; what is yours you must see through me; but to see me as I really am, I have said you that this is not possible, unless you are able to know me as (my) kinsman. You hear that I suffered, yet I suffered not; and that I suffered not, yet I did suffer; and that I was pierced, yet I was not wounded; that 30

Cf. John 10:38; 14:10f; 17:21.

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I was hanged, yet I was not hanged; that blood flowed from me,31 yet it did not flow; and, in a word, those things that they say of me, I did not endure, but what they do not say, those things I did suffer. What these things are, I will speak to you in veiled terms,32 for I know that you will understand. Know me, then, as the capture of the Word, the piercing of the Word, the blood of the Word, the wounding of the Word, the hanging of the Word, the suffering of the Word, the fastening of the Word, the death of the Word. And so I speak, having made consideration for man (?):33 in the first place understand the Word; then you shall understand the Lord, and thirdly the man, and what he has suffered.” (102) When he had said these things to me, and other things which I do not know how to render as he wishes me to do, he was taken up, without any of the multitude seeing him. And going down I laughed at them all when they told me the things they had said about him; and I held this one thing firmly in my mind, that the Lord had performed everything symbolically and in accommodation to men, for their conversion and salvation.

The realities seen by John—the Cross of Light, the multitude around the Cross, and the Lord himself above the Cross—are situated in three different places.34 The Lord above the Cross who had no shape but only a voice is situated in the supramundane realm of true divinity. Unlike the other two phenomena, this figure without shape is not explained, apparently because the pleromatic Lord is beyond description. Accordingly, Christ says to John that to see him as he truly is is not possible, unless he is able to know him as his suggenÆw (chap. 101).35 The Cross of Light is situated below the divine realm in the highest region of the cosmos. The horizontal bar of the Cross separates the world above from the lower world and therefore coincides with the supposed boundary between the two realms.36 This

31 32

Cf. John 19:34. Cf. John 16:25.

33 xvrÆsaw ênyrvpon. Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, I, 212: “après avoir fait une place à l’Homme”; Schäferdiek-Wilson, NTA, II,186: “having made room for the man”, J.K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 321: “discarding manhood”. 34 Schneider does not sufficiently distinguish the presence of the Lord in the divine realm above the boundary from his presence in the Cross. Cf. The Mystery of the Acts of John, 180–2, 192. 35 In chaps. 87, 90, and 102, John intimates that he is not able to render everything he had seen and heard. 36 This idea is well known from heresiological reports about Valentinian doctrines. Cf. esp. Exc Theod 22.4 and 42.1; Irenaeus, AH I 2.4 and 3.5; Hippolytus, Ref VI 31.5–7; Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 612–4.

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bar was “solidly fixed (pephgm°non)” for it rested on the vertical or main beam which used to be firmly established in the soil.37 It seems evident that in this vision account, the Cross of Light has the form of the capital T38 rather than the X-form proposed by Wilhelm Bousset.39 The multitude around the Cross, i.e. around its main beam, is situated in the inferior world underneath the boundary.40 The right and the left sides of the supporting beam are the places where the cosmic rulers, the demons, the passions, etc. are located (cf. chap. 98.16–19). The vision account and the subsequent explanations also mention the people who are in the Cross. In a way they have one form and one resemblance (? morfØ m¤a ka‹ fid°a ımo¤a, chap. 98) for they are all “members” of the Lord and particles of one light. On the other hand, they are not yet one because, as chap. 100 explains, “every member of him who came down has not yet been gathered together.” When all the light particles are united with the Lord, “human nature” will be lifted up unto the place where the divine Lord is. Conclusion: Two Levels of Understanding The key to understanding the suffering of the Lord is already given in the mystagogical instructions of chap. 96 where it is suggested that the suffering of humankind is also his suffering. In chapters 97–102 it is intimated that the Saviour suffers as long as his “members” or “relatives” have not yet united with him. The passages relating to this suffering, however, are worded in cryptic language, apparently on purpose. Cf. chap. 101, where the Saviour states that

37 In Ref VI 31.6, Hippolytus reports that the Valentinians called the boundary (˜row) a cross because of its stability and immobility (˜ti p°phgen éklin«w ka‹ émetakinÆtvw). 38 So rightly Schneider, The Mystery, 96. 39 W. Bousset, “Plato’s Weltseele und das Kreuz Christi”, connects the Cross of Light with Plato’s cosmic soul (Tim 34b–c); cf. esp. 279: “Das Kreuz ist ein Lichtkreuz, es ist ja ursprünglich das grosse Chi, das die Gestirnbahnen bestimmt”. Cf. also A. Böhlig, “Zur Vorstellung vom Lichtkreuz in Gnostizismus und Manichäismus”, esp. 475 and 482f. According to Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, 657, Bousset’s derivation of the Cross of Light from Plato’s cosmic soul is correct and generally accepted. 40 The people in Jerusalem mentioned in chap. 94 (and 102) belong to the same category.

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he speaks “in veiled terms”, and that he wishes that the suffering which he showed in his dance be called a mystery. The people “below in Jerusalem” are contrasted with the members of the Lord who are gathered together in the luminous Cross. What the people below say of the Lord is rejected as “mean and unworthy” of him (chap. 99). In chap. 102, John laughs at them when he hears what they said about the Lord. This contrast between Johannine insiders and people “outside the mystery” (chap. 100) bears witness to a fundamental difference of opinion about the nature of the Saviour and the means of salvation brought by him. The outsiders are blamed for putting their faith in a mortal man.41 Unfortunately it is not fully clear how the Johannine Gnostics related the suffering Jesus in Jerusalem to their divine Saviour. Only to a certain extent is a comparison with other Gnostic texts helpful. As we have seen, ApocPet claims that the suffering body of Jesus was a creature of the cosmic rulers. It had nothing to do with the Saviour. In LetPetPhil we find a similar idea: the Saviour would have put on a “dead” human body when he descended into the lower world. This body served him as a mask disguising his true identity.42 TreatSeth advances another solution: it was not the Saviour who was crucified but Simon of Cyrene.43 I assume that in ActsJohn, the relationship between the mortal person on the cross and the divine Saviour is imagined in a slightly different way. First of all, it should be observed that chapters 94–102 stress that the Lord is a fully transcendent being who cannot be represented by any cosmic symbol or name. Instead, he revealed himself to men in different shapes, and many names are used to refer to him. Because it is impossible to define who he is, contradictory statements can be made about him: he is identical with the luminous

41 Also in TreatSeth (NHC VII,2) 60.21f and ApocPet (NHC VII,3) 74.13–14, early orthodox Christians are blamed for their belief in “a dead man”. 42 VIII 136.16–22. Cf. TrimProt XIII 47.16f, 24: “I wore everyone’s garments (. . .) And none of them (the cosmic powers) recognized me” (see the discussion in the next chapter). According to ExcTheod 59.3, the Saviour first put on “the psychic Christ”, then a perceptible body. See also Hippolytus’ report of the ideas about the crucifixion of Jesus in Justin’s Baruch, Ref V 26.31f: Jesus left the body on the cross and ascended to the good God. 43 But cf. VII 56.21–25: “For when I came down no one saw me. For I kept changing my forms above, transforming from appearance to appearance” (transl. by G. Riley, “Second Treatise of the Great Seth”, 167).

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Cross and he is not; he suffered and he suffered not, etc. Furthermore, since the Saviour could not manifest himself in the created world as he really is, he had to adapt himself to the comprehension of humans. Chap. 98: the Cross of Light is called by different names “for the sake of men”, “for your sake”.44 It is possible, therefore, that in the view of the author of these chapters, the representation of the Lord in the suffering Jesus on the cross in Jerusalem was an accommodation to the poor understanding of immature Christians. In that case the human person on the cross was not so much regarded as something completely foreign to the divine Saviour but rather as a material representation adapted to the comprehension of the multitude. They are blamed for their simple belief but John’s report does not suggest that there is no hope for them. It might be significant that his report concludes with the remark (chap. 102), “the Lord had performed everything symbolically and in accommodation to men,45 for their conversion and salvation”. It is possible that the author or editor of chapters 94–102 believed that “those outside the mystery” could be converted to the esoteric understanding of the Lord and his suffering which was fostered in his Johannine Gnostic group and that other Christians could be convinced of the alleged superiority of the Christological and soteriological ideas of this group.46

44 Chap. 101: in his speaking he made consideration for man. Previous studies have already pointed to the very interesting explanation for this phenomenon in GosPhil (NHC II,3). See esp. Junod and Kaestli, Acta Johannis, II, 619; Schneider, The Mystery of the Acts of John, 94f. Cf. GosPhil 67.9–12: “Truth did not enter the world naked but in symbols and images. It (the world) will not receive it in any other way”. This fundamental thesis is elaborated on pp. 53f. Of special relevance in connection with the manifold names and appearances of the Lord in ActsJohn is GosPhil 54.13–18: “For our sake truth produced names in the world because it cannot be learned without names. Truth is one. It is (however) manifold for our sake who are taught about this one thing through many (names) in love.” 57.29–58.10: “( Jesus) did not appear as he was, but he appeared in such a way that he could be seen. He appeared to them all. To the great ones he appeared as great; to the small ones as small. He appeared to the angels as an angel, and to men as a man. Therefore he hid his Word from everybody. Some saw him, thinking that they saw themselves. But when he gloriously appeared to his disciples on the mountain, they became great. But he made his disciples great, that they might be able to see him in his greatness.” 45 The term ofikonomik«w can also be used in opposition to “absolutely” and mean “progressively”; cf. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, 943b. 46 See further P.J. Lalleman, The Acts of John: a Two-Stage Initiation into Johannine Gnosticism. esp. 52–66.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JOHANNINE VOCABULARY AND GNOSTIC THOUGHT (LETPETPHIL, TRIMPROT )

The purpose of this chapter is to assess in which way, and to what extent, Gnostic texts such as The Letter of Peter to Philip (NHC VIII,2) and Trimorphic Protennoia (NHC XIII,1) are related to the Gospel of John, particularly to its Prologue: can we find reasons to assume that the Prologue was influenced by the type of Redeemer myth we find in LetPetPhil and TrimProt, or, vice versa, that the Prologue influenced the Gnostic texts? I will start from the assumption that if Johannine Christology developed from a Gnostic myth, or, the other way round, if the Gnostic soteriological myth originated from Johannine ideas, we should not only expect terminological similarities but also agreements in the thought structure of the relevant texts.1 The Prologue to John’s Gospel I shall begin with some observations relating to the basic ideas of the Johannine Prologue.2 A discussion of the thought pattern expressed in the two Gnostic texts will follow in the next sections. According to the Prologue, all things came into being through the divine Word ( John 1:3). This means that all creation bears the stamp of God’s Word.3 Furthermore, the Word is the light that shines in the darkness (1:5a). The origin of the darkness is not explained but the assumption must be that God’s creation has become dark as a result of human sin. The opposition of light and darkness is ethical rather than cosmological. By its sins humankind has lost eternal life and enlightenment. In the Prologue, the created world does not recognize the divine Word, even though it owes its existence to him, and his very own 1 For the notion of the basic thought structure of myths see C. Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth” (cf. chap. I, p. 8 with n. 33). 2 Cf. P. Perkins, Gnosticism and the New Testament, 109–21. 3 R. Brown, The Gospel According to John, I, 25.

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do not accept him (vs. 5b and 10f ).4 But the Prologue continues that the Word has become flesh and has formed around himself a new “his own”. Cf. v. 12: “But all who did accept him, he empowered to become children of God”. Thus, the darkness is overcome in the Christian belief in Christ as God’s Light and God’s revelatory Word. The LETTER

OF

PETER

TO

PHILIP 136.16–137.4

In LetPetPhil, the Saviour answers a set of questions posed by the apostles who are gathered together on the Mount of Olives. Their first question consists of two parts: “Lord, we wish to understand the deficiency of the aeons and their pleroma” (134.20–23). The first half of this question is answered with a summary account of the demiurgical-Gnostic myth of origins (135.8–136.15). In 136.16–137.4, Christ answers the short second question which relates to the pleroma or “fullness” of the aeons. In fact he speaks about his redemptive mission: “Now concerning the fullness, it is I:5 I was sent down in the body because of the seed that had fallen away, And I came down to their dead product. But as for them,6 they did not recognize me, They were thinking that I was a dead man. And I spoke with the one who is mine, And he listened to me, just as you who listened today. And I empowered him that he might enter into the inheritance of his fatherhood, And I took [. . . was] filled (?) [. . .] in his salvation. As he was deficiency, for this reason he became fullness.”

The style of this passage differs from the preceding section.7 Whereas the present passage is a poetic text worded in the first person, the foregoing section about “the deficiency of the aeons” is a running narrative in the third person. Yet there is a close connection between these two sections of the revelation discourse: in the first section, the

4

E.H. Pagels, “Exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Gospels of Thomas and John”, 489f. Cf. GosThom, log. 77 (p. 46.24–25): “It is I who am the All”. 6 Cf. below, n. 9. 7 In the above translation I distinguish four double strophes apart from the introductory and concluding sentences. Cf. H.G. Bethge, Der Brief des Petrus an Philippus, 94. 5

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Saviour has explained how divine light substance (“a portion of the Mother”) fell into the hands of the arrogant Demiurge and his powers; the second part—our present text—deals with the redemption of the divine substance. Several elements in this section of the text— e.g. the metaphoric expressions “the seed that had fallen away”, “their dead product”—are easier to understand if we relate them to the preceding brief account of the myth where we hear that a portion of divine light was sowed by the Demiurge, and where mention is made of the shaping of “dead bodies” by the Demiurge and his powers.8 These two sections can indeed be regarded as complementary expressions of the same mythical thought. A characteristic feature of this underlying thought pattern is the opposition between the divine or pleromatic reality of the world of light, which is represented by the Saviour, and the dark reality of the cosmic powers. That the divine light substance has fallen down into the darkness is a consequence of the misbehaviour of “the Mother” (Sophia), a pleromatic being. But the deficient light substance will be restored to fullness by the Saviour, who to this end came down into a human body. While the preceding passage is supposed to explain how a portion of divine light could fall away from the Pleroma and become deficient, our passage speaks of the role of the Saviour in the eventual restoration of the “fullness”. The impersonal plural aUt+n+nooUt (to be translated as “I was sent”) in the second line (136.17) must be understood as a passivum divinum: Christ was sent by the Father to save the light that had fallen down. But the forces of evil tried to thwart him. In this short text they are just denoted by pronouns: “I came down to their dead model, but as for them, they did not recognize me”. The phrase “as for them, they did not recognize me (NtooU de m=poUsoUwn+t+)” reminds us of v. 10 of the Prologue: ı kÒsmow aÈtÚn oÈk ¶gnv, but in LetPetPhil the reference is to the cosmic powers. There is no mention of human resistance. Here similar terminology gives expression to quite different ideas.9 The expression “he who is mine” should be understood within a Gnostic thought pattern. It indicates that the light seed, which is 8

135.21–24 and 136.11–15. It is possible that the emphatic NtooU (“as for them, they” . . .; “it is they who” . . .) is meant as a correction of John 1:10. 9

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now imprisoned in the cosmos, does not really belong to the realm of the Demiurge and his evil powers but to the pleromatic realm represented by the Saviour. The Saviour and the light seed share the same divine substance. In this sense it is his own.10 A similar terminology is used in the Johannine Prologue (vs. 11: tå ‡dia, ofl ‡dioi) but this vocabulary expresses a different view of the relationship between God and humankind. According to the Prologue, the material world and man are created by the divine Word; for this reason they are called “his own”. Nevertheless “his own” did not accept him. The phrase, “the inheritance of his fatherhood”, is likewise a significant expression of the underlying mythical thought pattern: it suggests that the light seed has a claim to the realm of the Father; but as long as it is in the power of the cosmic rulers, it cannot make use of its right. This idea is absent in Johannine thought, in spite of the fact that a similar expression is used in v. 12: ¶dvken aÈto›w §jous¤an t°kna yeoË gen°syai. The Prologue speaks of becoming (adoptive) children of God, whereas the idea underlying LetPetPhil is that thanks to the revelation of the Saviour the light particles in humankind become aware that they are and always have been (natural) children of the Father. Although the two texts speak about an otherworldly Saviour coming into the world, the differences in thought pattern seem too conspicuous to conclude that the ideas of the Johannine Prologue concerning the mission of the Logos stem from a type of Gnosis as represented in LetPetPhil,11 or that the opposite is true, viz. that the Gnostic Redeemer myth has developed from the Prologue.12 If we cannot assume dependency at the level of the thought structure of the texts, how, then, are we to explain the common vocabulary? I have already pointed out the most striking instances: John 1:10: “the world did not recognize him” 136, 20–21: “as for them, they did not recognize me” 10 In this passage, the light seed is personified: “I spoke with the one who is mine, and he listened to me”. 11 Contra M.W. Meyer, The Letter of Peter to Philip, 133: this section of LetPetPhil “could reflect a non-Christian Gnostic redeemer myth, a myth with certain affinities to the lÒgow hymn adopted and adapted by John”. See also H.G. Bethge, Der Brief des Petrus an Philippus, 113. 12 Contra K. Koschorke, “Eine gnostische Paraphrase des johanneischen Prologs”, cf. 388f: Let PetPhil 136.16–137.4 “(ist) eine Paraphrase, die (. . .) das Bewegungsschema

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chapter thirteen John 1: 11: tå ‡dia, ofl ‡dioi 136, 23: “the one who is mine” John 1: 12: ¶dvken aÈto›w §jous¤an, “he empowered them” 136,26: aiT naf NnoUeKoUsia, “I empowered him”

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the introductory sentence of LetPetPhil 136.16–137.4 associates the Saviour with the pleroma: “Now concerning the pleroma, it is I”. This could perhaps be related to John 1:16: “and of his pleroma we have all received”. These verbal agreements seem to be specific enough to surmise that the author of LetPetPhil was familiar with the Johannine Prologue. Or should we reckon with the possibility that he knew this vocabulary only indirectly, through other Gnostic texts? Below we shall see that similar expressions are found in TrimProt. Although we cannot wholly exclude the latter possibility, a more direct knowledge of the Gospel of John is very probable.13 The important thing, however, is that the Johannine terminology has been given a typically Gnostic content and meaning. The vocabulary elements which may have been adopted from the Prologue are fully integrated into a developed Gnostic thought pattern. Therefore, this use of the Prologue does not imply that the author regarded John’s Gospel as an authoritative text or that he agreed with its contents. Rather, LetPetPhil 136.16–137.4 is a revisionary Gnostic interpretation of Johannine ideas about the person and the mission of the Saviour. Although the two texts use similar language, they profoundly disagree about the situation of humankind and about the redemption brought by Jesus Christ: while it would seem that according to the Prologue, the darkness of the world is caused by human sin, and redemption is effected through belief in the only source of Light in the world, the divine Word, LetPetPhil makes the demiurgical God responsible for the bad plight of the divine “seeds”, or particles of divine light, in the created world; Christ is sent to inform humans about their true origin and nature and to enable them to return to their Father’s home.

des ganzen Prologs wiedergibt”; see also P. Hofrichter, Im Anfang war der “Johannesprolog”, 225–228. 13 The author had detailed knowledge at least of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. See Luttikhuizen, “The Letter of Peter to Philip and the New Testament”; M.W. Meyer, The Letter of Peter to Philip, 183, n. 192 (“numerous parallels between Ep.Pet.Phil. and Luke-Acts”).

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TRIMORPHIC PROTENNOIA I believe that this approach can also be applied to more complicated Gnostic texts, in particular to TrimProt,14 a document, incidentally, which so far has aroused more scholarly attention than LetPetPhil, no doubt because of what C. Colpe has called “the stupendous parallels” between this text and the Prologue to John’s Gospel.15 Scholars have defined and explained the relationship between TrimProt and the Johannine Prologue in various ways. In 1973–74, the Berlin Arbeitskreis fur koptisch-gnostische Schriften suggested that in particular the third part of TrimProt, speaking about the manifestation of Protennoia as Word (NHC XIII 46.5–50.21), presents a substantial parallel (“eine Sachparallele”) to the Prologue.16 The Berlin scholars argued that this third subtractate is on the same level as the hypothetical pre-Christian Gnostic Logos hymn which Rudolf Bultmann considered to be the source of the Johannine Prologue,17 and that therefore the Prologue was influenced by a Gnostic text like TrimProt rather than vice versa. At the same time, Yvonne Janssens defended the opposite view.18 For one thing, she discovered many more “contacts littéraires” between TrimProt and the Gospel of John.19 From these alleged literary contacts she concluded that the elements which TrimProt has in common with John’s Gospel (and with other New Testament texts) were

14 See the introductions to this text by G. Schenke, Die dreigestaltige Protennoia; Y. Janssens, La prôtennoia trimorphe, and J.D. Turner, “Trimorphic Protennoia”. 15 C. Colpe, “Heidnische, jüdische und christliche Überlieferung in den Schriften aus Nag Hammadi”, 122. See also K. Rudolph, Gnosis, 143; for detailed surveys of the supposed parallels see Colpe, ibid., 123; Y. Janssens, “Une source gnostique du Prologue?”; C. Evans, “On the Prologue of John and the Trimorphic Protennoia”, 397; N. Denzey, “Genesis traditions in conflict?”, 25. 16 G. Schenke (ed.), “‘Die dreigestaltige Protennoia’: Eine gnostische Offenbarungsrede in koptischer Sprache aus dem Fund von Nag Hammadi”, esp. col. 733. Cf. K.W. Tröger (ed.), Gnosis und Neues Testament, 76. 17 See R. Bultmann, “Der religionsgeschichtliche Hintergrund des Prologs zum Johannesevangelium”. 18 Y. Janssens, “Le codex XIII de Nag Hammadi”; “Une source gnostique du Prologue?”, esp. 356–8; La prôtennoia trimorphe. In a later essay, “The Trimorphic Protennoia and the Fourth Gospel”, she observes: “All I wanted to emphasize was the sameness of vocabulary (but not of meaning)” (239, cf. 242: “while identical terms occur in Trimorphic Protennoia and the Fourth Gospel, they do not have the same meaning”). 19 “Une source gnostique du Prologue?”; “The Trimorphic Protennoia and the Fourth Gospel”, 240–2. Cf. R. McL. Wilson, “The Trimorphic Protennoia”, 53f.

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borrowed from the New Testament. In a detailed study of TrimProt 47.14–18, Jan Helderman reached the same conclusion. He found in TrimProt proof of intentional and polemic reinterpretation of the Prologue.20 In a review article from 1974, Carsten Colpe suggested that it is not necessary to accept direct literary influence in either direction: the similarities between the two texts can also be explained as a common dependency on Jewish Wisdom speculations.21 Colpe repeated his suggestion at the Yale Conference on Gnosticism in 1978: “we can proceed by assuming that both shared a similar sapiential background”.22 This solution was adopted by several scholars who attended the conference, and has become the consensus view.23 Incidentally, the thesis of TrimProt’s background in Jewish sapiential traditions24 confirmed scholars in their opinion that the earliest stages of Gnostic thought must be sought in a Jewish environment.25 In a recent article, Nicola Denzey expresses doubts that the Prologue and TrimProt draw upon Wisdom traditions. In her view, the two texts are examples of “a distinct ‘Word tradition’ which shared sapiential literature’s dependency on Genesis yet interpreted it rather differently”.26 She argues that the Wisdom hypothesis cannot explain distinctive features of TrimProt’s thought, notably its “theology of sound”27 (“sound heralds the epiphany of the Savior figure”) and the

20 “‘In ihren Zelten . . .’”, 208. Cf. also A.H.B. Logan, “John and the Gnostics”, esp. 58f. 21 “Heidnische, jüdische und christliche Überlieferung”, 124. 22 In B. Layton (ed), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, II, 663. 23 See e.g. J.D. Turner, “Trimorphic Protennoia’, 392f, 396; R. van den Broek, “Von der jüdischen Weisheit zum gnostischen Erlöser”, esp. 101f; C.A. Evans, “On the Prologue of John and the Trimorphic Protennoia”; R. Halford, “Trimorphic Protennoia and the Wisdom Tradition”. 24 In The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, II, 666, J.M. Robinson speaks of “the insight that the development of the Jewish Wisdom tradition towards Gnosticism was already at work in the background of the two documents”, and he adds: “the shadow land between Jewish Wisdom and Gnosticism must be accorded the status of an historical reality”. The possible development from Jewish Wisdom to Gnosis was already discussed by K. Rudolph in an article in 1967, “Randerscheinungen des Judentums und das Problem der Entstehung des Gnostizismus”; cf. his “Sophia und Gnosis. Bemerkungen zum Problem ‘Gnosis und Frühjudentum’” (1980); H.M. Schenke, “Die Tendenz der Weisheit zur Gnosis” (1978). 25 Cf. above, ch. I. 26 “Genesis traditions in conflict?”, quotation on p. 28. 27 TrimProt uses auditory metaphors to designate the revealer: God’s First Thought manifests itself as “Sound, “Voice”, “Word”. See also above, ch. IX.

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motif of the threefold descent of a Redeemer figure.28 At the same time Denzey qualifies the observation that there are “stupendous parallels” between the Johannine Prologue and TrimProt. Denzey argues that because the Prologue and TrimProt follow the sequence of events reported in Gen 1–3, Genesis is a more convincing source for the two texts than scattered Wisdom traditions.29 But she adds that the authors of the two texts filled in the “gaps” in the Genesis account, and, what is more, that they did so in very different ways.30 Denzey illustrates the deviating “gap-filling” by contrasting some of the basic ideas of the two texts: whereas in TrimProt Protennoia’s light penetrates all beings, in John’s Prologue Christ is the sole embodiment of the light in the world; in TrimProt, the adversaries of the revealer figure are the cosmic powers, and there is no mention of opposition at the human level, as is the case in the Johannine text; in TrimProt, finally, salvation is attained through the recognition of one’s inherent status as a light-being, while according to the Prologue spiritual transformation is realised through belief in Christ.31 It is interesting to note that on the last two points TrimProt agrees with LetPetPhil 136.16–137.4 (quoted and discussed above). The first point, the view of Protennoia (God’s First Thought) as origin and foundation of the whole cosmos, is peculiar to TrimProt. Denzey suspects that a debate about the nature of divine revelation and redemption lies behind John’s Prologue and TrimProt. Cf. her statement “what appears at the surface as a striking parallel is actually the locus of a profound debate or disagreement (. . .)”32 Only partly, however, does her judgement of the relationship of TrimProt and John’s Prologue accord with the results of the above comparison of LetPetPhil and the Prologue. Similar terminology is indeed used to express fundamentally different ideas, but Denzey passes quickly over the parallels “at the surface”. She does not account for the possibility that the authors of TrimProt made deliberate use of Johannine vocabulary in a conflict with more orthodox Christians.

28

Ibid., 29f. On pp. 31–33 Denzy compares individual words, concepts, and phrases in TrimProt with similar terms and concepts in the first chapters of Genesis. She claims that “in its earliest strata” TrimProt is a “conceptual elaboration on Genesis”. 30 Ibid., 33. 31 Ibid., 37–40. 32 Ibid., 36f. 29

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On this point I agree with John D. Turner who, although endorsing the consensus view (virtually all these parallels can be explained from a common sapiential background), yet with the parallels to John’s farewell discourse in 50.11f and 50.14–16 and especially to John 1:14 in 47.14f,33 surmises that in TrimProt Johannine language “is intentionally employed, if not reinterpreted”.34 Denzey draws attention to the fact that the Prologue and TrimProt “argue different and often contrary points about the nature of the divine and about human spiritual possibilities”.35 But her answer to the question of where we are to locate the origin of these conflicting theological and anthropological-soteriological ideas is very short. In fact she confines herself to stating that the authors were Hellenized Jews who drew upon “a wide range of complex philosophical ideas”.36 Denzey intimates that she is following “the trend in recent scholarship to uncover hermeneutical patterns of Jewish scriptural exegesis in early Christian heterodox literature”.37 Further, as far as TrimProt is concerned, she has most likely worked with a very specific and rather complex hypothesis about the compositional history of this text in which at least three stages of composition are distinguished, and which attributes all Christian materials to the supposed last stage.38 Starting from these two hypotheses, it may seem a matter of course that TrimProt was written by Hellenized Jews, and that only at a late stage was it (superficially) “Christianized”.39 But if we leave these hypotheses aside, it is much less clear why TrimProt should have been

33 “The third time I revealed myself to them [in] their tents (skyny) as Word (logos)”; cf. John 1:14, ı lÒgow (. . .) §skÆnvsen §n ≤m›n. 34 “Trimorphic Protennoia”, 393 (with reference to J. Helderman, whose observation I quoted above). Cf. Turner’s conclusion, ibid.: “On balance it seems that the final redaction of Trimorphic Protennoia does employ Johannine language in such a way as to score a polemical point against more orthodox Christian views of Christ’s incarnation”; cf. p. 400: “the goal of the tractate is to show the poverty of orthodox Christologies (including the Johannine) and to convey a higher (Sethian) one”. 35 Ibid., 23. 36 Ibid., 34; on the same page: the authors of the two texts were “fluent in the concepts and vocabulary of Greek philosophy”; cf. p. 41: “these texts responded polemically to the ideas which formed part of the intellectual koine of the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman world”. 37 Ibid., 22. 38 This hypothesis is worked out in detail by J.D. Turner, cf., “Trimorphic Protennoia”, 397–401. See also his “Sethian Gnosticism: A Literary History” and his recent monograph, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition, esp. 142–55. 39 Denzey, ibid., 42.

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written by Hellenized Jews rather than by (second-century?) Christians. In either case, the authors must have been profoundly influenced by Greek-philosophical ways of thinking.40 While one wonders what the distinctly Jewish element in the thought system of this tractate is, it is not difficult to trace a Gnostic Christian line of thought. The following observations may elucidate this. I would like to emphasize that in TrimProt, God’s First Thought41 does not compete with Christ. The tractate philosophizes about God’s First Thought which came from “a hidden Intellect”,42 and is the beginning and lasting foundation of everything that has come into existence. Also, God’s Thought is the principle of consciousness and knowledge in the cosmic world.43 The demiurgical-Gnostic passages speaking about the origin of Yaldabaoth serve to explain how “parts” or “members” of God’s First Thought were imprisoned in darkness.44 Once again God’s Thought descended into the world, this time in another capacity—as a voice or call—in order to save its “own”.45 The Gnostic intellectuals behind this tractate seem to have imagined Christ as the last and most articulate manifestation of God’s First Thought. Apparently their “high Christology” brought them into conflict with Christians who believed that Christ had humbled himself to the level of a human being and that his death on a cross had effected redemption. TrimProt dishonours the orthodox Christ as the son of the demiurgical God, and his cross as “cursed wood”.46 If we assign these polemical passages to a later stage in the literary history of TrimProt—in itself a plausible assumption—they were inserted into a Gnostic Christian document.

40 C. Colpe points out the Stoic character of Protennoia’s presence everywhere and in everybody (“Heidnische, jüdische und christliche Überlieferung”, 119). Cf. above, ch. IX, n. 34. 41 In the Greek original, God’s First Thought may not yet have been understood as merely a proper name. 42 46.21–23. 43 Cf. e.g. 36.9–23; G. Schenke, Die dreigestaltige Protennoia, 101–4. 44 39.13–40.7. 45 42.4f: “I am the Voice that appeared through my Thought”. 46 49.12f; 50.13f.

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With a view to the controversy concerning TrimProt, James Robinson rightly states that careful attention to methodology is required to move us beyond this impasse.47 It is my contention that in the present case, careful attention to methodology means that we should try to distinguish similarities in the actual wording from affinities on the level of the mythical thought structure expressed or presupposed in the texts.48 A comparison of the Johannine Prologue with LetPetPhil and TrimProt does not lead to the conclusion that the soteriological myth of the two Gnostic texts developed from Johannine ideas. Yet, as several authors have demonstrated, it is possible to assume dependency in a more superficial sense. But if we are dealing with points of agreement at just this level, it is perhaps better to avoid such terms as “dependency”, “background”, “influence”. As we noted in the preceding chapters, Gnostic authors composed their texts with the help of items of information they found in earlier texts and traditions (inter alia Genesis, the Prophets, Jesus traditions). We have also seen that they thoroughly adapted these items of information to their own teachings. Initially, Gnostic mythopoets are likely to have integrated scriptural and early Christian traditions with their protological and soteriological myths without a specific polemical motive. But eventually their free manner of interpreting texts and traditions was bound to bring them into conflict with more orthodox Christians.49

47

In Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, II, 662. Cf. the question posed by J. Strugnell in the discussion after Robinson’s paper: “is it not possible that only verbal parallels and not the mythic structure were drawn from the Fourth Gospel?”, in B. Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, II, 667. In “John and the Gnostics”, 57, A.H.B. Logan contrasts the appeal to “individual possible Johannine allusions” with the appeal to “the underlying structure which the myth presupposed”; cf. also the conclusion of P.H. Poirier’s article, “La prôtennoia trimorphique et le vocabulaire du descensus ad inferos”. 49 Cf. Koschorke, Die Polemik der Gnostiker gegen das kirchliche Christentum; Turner, “Trimorphic Protennoia”, 395. 48

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE: READERS OF GNOSTIC TEXTS

In the preceding chapters we have been concerned with Gnostic readers. The central question was how did Gnostics read and interpret earlier texts, and why did they understand these oral and written texts in the way they did? In my attempt to answer these questions I have argued that they evaluated non-Gnostic texts in the light of their own favoured traditions. This approach could result in very critical comments and revisions. In this epilogue we will see that basically the same hermeneutical procedure is at work with both ancient and modern readers of Gnostic texts. Reading is an act of “intertextualization”,1 because during the reading process, the reader’s knowledge of other oral and written texts is constantly activated. If we want to know how a given Gnostic text is understood by ancient or modern readers, we should therefore try to find out what are the texts in the light of which it is read. These reference texts are not limited to the texts quoted or alluded to in the focused text. The reader may, after all, see intertextual relationships which could not be known to the author. Because one and the same text can be connected with diverse traditions, it can be understood and evaluated in very different ways. I would like to illustrate this with an exploration of the ways in which a particular Gnostic text is read. I shall choose the same short passage from ApJohn which I discussed in the first pages of this book. For ease of reference I shall quote it once again: And he (the demiurgical God) saw the creation and the numerous angels around him, who had sprung from him. And he said to them: “I am a jealous God; there is no other God apart from me”. But by stating this he indicated to the angels who attended him that another God does exist. For if there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous?2

1 C. Grivel, “Thèses préparatoires sur les intertextes”, 240. See also L. Painchaud, “The Use of Scripture in Gnostic Literature”, esp. 137. 2 NHC II 13.5–13; BG 44.9–19.

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The present question is how were—and how are—these sentences understood by readers? In answering this question it will be helpful if we can discern specific categories of readers. Here, it must be recalled that ApJohn was probably not read between the end of the fourth century and its recent rediscovery.3 In a way, this makes our task easier. I shall distinguish the following groups of Gnostic and non-Gnostic readers: 1a. the original intended readers 1b. Gnostic Christian readers of the fourth century (at the time before the burial of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts)4 2a. Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons 2b. modern readers, i.e. scholarly and other interested readers of the rediscovered text of ApJohn. 1a. The Intended Readers It is with some hesitation that I mention the intended readers. The problem is that the texts of the surviving copies of ApJohn are more or less accidental offshoots of a complicated process of text transmission. As far as the document as a whole is concerned, it would therefore be an oversimplification to speak of the author and the intended readers. We may take it for granted that the present versions were written for people who shared the Gnostic convictions of the authors/editors.5 But I would like to emphasize that ApJohn is a composite text. There is no evidence that all the narrative material used by the authors, notably the quoted passage dealing with the arrogance of the Demiurge, had originally this esoteric character. It is possible, in my opinion, to apply the notion of intended readers, or original addressees, also to an individual passage like the sen-

3 There are a few indications that ApJohn was still used by Gnostics, in particular by the Babylonian Audians, after the fifth century. See H.C. Puech, “Audianer”, RAC I, 910–5; id., “Das Apokryphon des Johannes”, in E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, I, Tübingen, 4th ed. 1968, 231–4 (omitted in the 5th ed.). 4 This happened during the second half of the fourth century; at approximately the same time as Gnostic Christianity was about to disappear as a significant historical phenomenon. 5 This can be concluded from the esoteric contents and from the explicit warning against transmitting Christ’s Gnostic teaching to people outside the Immovable Race, NHC II 31.28–32.2; BG 75.15–76.17. Cf. II 2.14–15; BG 22.10–16.

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tences quoted above. The central questions then are: Were the readers whom the author of these sentences had in mind supposed to recognize the Old Testament provenance of the vain utterances of the Demiurge? Did they realise what the identification of this inferior figure with the biblical God meant to Jews and/or non-Gnostic Christians? I suggested in chapter II that the polemical comment on the claims of the demiurgical God was orginally aimed—indirectly and perhaps even directly—at Christians who continued to believe in the Old Testament God. The disparaging remark about the creator of the cosmic world can be compared with the critical comment added to the Gnostic revision of the Paradise story in TestTruth (discussed in chapter VI): “What sort of a God is this? Indeed, great is the blindness of those who read (this) and have not recognized him!” If it is a reasonable assumption that the quoted sentences were formulated in a controversy with other Christians it might shed some light on a more fundamental question: How are we to explain the attribution of explicitly evil character traits to the creator God: his arrogance, ignorance, and his evil intentions? In a detailed study, “Bad world and demiurge: A ‘Gnostic’ motif from Parmenides and Empedocles to Lucretius and Philo”, Jaap Mansfeld argues that it was usual for Greek philosophers to combine a pessimistic anthropology with an optimistic cosmology. In contrast, as Mansfeld observes, Gnostic (demiurgical-Gnostic?) anthropology is unthinkable without a very definite and pessimistic view of the universe and its creator.6 He concludes his inquiry with the intriguing observation that given the discussion among Greek philosophers and “given the fact that some of them, if only to reject it immediately, had toyed with the idea of an evil Demiurge”, it is hardly surprising that at a given moment “some outsider(s)” (to wit, Gnostics) would introduce this idea. This might suggest that Greek philosophical traditions laid the foundation for this Gnostic innovation.7 It is striking that in quite diverse Gnostic texts the negative picture of the Demiurge is accompanied by references to the ego-statements

6

Mansfeld, “Bad world and demiurge”, 292f. I borrow the notion of innovation from M.A. Williams, “The Demonizing of the Demiurge: The Innovation of Gnostic Myth”, and “Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’”, 84–95. 7

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of the biblical God.8 Should we consider the possibility that the evil character of the Demiurge was emphasized in theological debates with non-Gnostic Christians, and, furthermore, that Gnostic intellectuals inferred these character traits from their (selective) study of the Old Testament? 1b. Gnostic Christian readers of the fourth century Gnostic readers of the fourth century are not likely to have related ApJohn’s story about the arrogance of the Demiurge first of all to the Old Testament. It is more plausible to assume that their reaction to this text—and to many other texts as well—was principally determined by its relationship to Gnostic esoteric traditions. The following observations might support this assumption. The esoteric Gnostic myth is narrated—or at least referred to or presupposed—in virtually all the surviving Gnostic sources; indeed, the most detailed narration is found in ApJohn. The myth dealt with questions that were of the greatest relevance to Gnostics: it disclosed how the reality of an imperfect world supposedly ruled by evil forces is compatible with the eternal existence of a pure and perfect God; it revealed the origin and the destiny of the innermost centre of the human soul; it explained why certain people belong to “the immov-

8 Quotations from Exod 20.5, “I am a jealous God”, are found in TreatSeth and in TestTruth (NHC VII 64.22–6 and IX 48.4–7). It can further be conjectured that these words were spoken by the Demiurge in damaged passages of GosEg, II ApocJames, and ApocAdam (NHC III 58.25; V 55.27; V 66.28–9). In OrigWorld, we find three occurrences of the statement, “There is no other God apart from me”. The first passage runs as follows: “And all the (powers) and their angels praised and glorified him. And he rejoiced in his heart, and he boasted continually, saying to them, ‘I do not need anything’. He said, ‘I am God and there is no other apart from me’” (NHC II, 103. 6–18; cf. 107.28–108.5 and 112.27). In HypArch and TreatSeth, this proclamation occurs twice (NHC II 86.27–31; 94.21–2; cf. also 95.5; NHC VII 53.30–1 and 64.19–20; see further TrimProt NHC XIII, 43.35–44.2). The use of this self-proclamation of the biblical God is attributed by Irenaeus and Hippolytus to the Valentinians (AH I 5.4; II 9.2; Ref VI 33), to Basilides (Ref VII 25.3), and to the so-called Ophites (AH I 30.6). Other texts mention the boasting of the Demiurge without explicit reference to the statements of the biblical God. Cf. e.g. LetPetPhil, NHC VIII 135.23–136.8: “The Arrogant One became haughty on account of the praise of the powers. He became jealous, and he wanted to make an image in place [of an image] and a form in place of a form.” Cf. the different explanations proposed by G. MacRae, “The Ego-Proclamation in Gnostic Sources”, esp. 210f, and K.W. Tröger, “The attitude of the Gnostic religion towards Judaism”, 91.

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able race” of the Gnostics and others do not, and so on. ApJohn claims explicitly to convey secret teachings which were revealed by the exalted Christ—teachings, that is, which could not be understood by non-Gnostics and should not be transmitted to them.9 We can be sure that Gnostics were interested in their myth of origins not so much because it reported events of the remote past but rather inasmuch as it shed light on the present and the future.10 This also applies to the short passage under discussion. At first sight, it speaks about a prehistoric event (the boasting of the Demiurge, when “he saw the creation and the numerous angels around him, who had sprung from him”) but no doubt Gnostics saw in these statements an expression of the fundamental difference between the Demiurge and his world—the world in which they were forced to live—on the one hand, and the true God and his transcendent realm of light, on the other. They were convinced that they belonged to the “other God”, the God whose existence was unknown to the ignorant Demiurge. Through this component of the myth, Gnostic readers were reminded of their superiority: they had knowledge that the creator of the material world did not have.11 In spite of the fact that to a certain extent they were still his victims, they could mock him because of his ignorance and his self-conceit. 2a. Irenaeus In his Adversus Haereses (ca 180), Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons summarizes an early Greek version of the first main part of ApJohn.12 Interestingly, his report ends with the passage under examination: “. . . he (the first archon) believed that he was the only one and therefore he said, ‘I am a jealous God; there is none apart from

9 NHC II 31.30–32 and parallels: “I (Christ) have said everything to you ( John) that you might write them down and give them secretly to your fellow spirits, for this is the mystery of the immovable race.” See further B. Layton. The Gnostic Scriptures, 9. 10 C. Lévi-Strauss, “A Structural Study of Myth”, 209: “On the one hand, a myth always refers to events alleged to have taken place long ago. But what gives the myth an operational value is that the specific pattern described is timeless; it explains the present and the past as well as the future.” 11 Dahl, “The Arrogant Archon”, 697 (also quoted above, chap. I, n. 38). 12 AH I 29; cf. II 9; IV 5.1.

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me’.” To this Irenaeus adds: “Such are their lies”. This very short refutation seems to be just an appeal to common sense.13 But from other passages in his heresiological work, we know that Irenaeus laid great stress on the unity of God which he related to the unity of the two Testaments. As Gérard Vallée rightly observes, “Irenaeus repeatedly counters the Gnostic devaluation of the Old Testament God by insisting on the unity of God and the Creator and by affirming the truth and reality of the Old Testament God.”14 The heresiologist is likely to have understood the quoted passage in essentially the same way as later readers would do (see below). It is probably correct to say that Irenaeus’s refutation is at the basis of virtually all later Christian responses to the text.15 2b. Modern Readers Although the quoted fragment does not explicitly refer to scriptural passages, modern readers—with or without the help of scholarly commentaries—will realise that the words allegedly uttered by the Gnostic Demiurge are composed of self-proclamations of the biblical God. They cannot fail to notice the radical difference between the traditional meaning of the divine self-proclamations (the meaning given to them—explicitly or implicitly—in a whole library of Jewish and Christian texts speaking about the biblical God) and the meaning of these very same words in the mouth of the Gnostic Demiurge. The strong awareness of this intertextual tension easily leads to the assumption that what we have here is a deliberate defamation of the biblical God. As Norbert Brox puts it, “Derartige Rekurse auf das AT (richten) sich bewusst gegen dessen eigene Aussage und (werden) zur Zerstörung seines Gottesbildes unternommen . . .”.16 If

13 For similar rejections see AH II 25.1; 26.3; 27.1: the Gnostic theories do not harmonize with common sense, with human experience, “with what actually exists”. Cf. also AH I 16.3. G. Vallée, “Theological and non-theological motives in Irenaeus’s refutation of the Gnostics”, 175–7. 14 “Theological and non-theological motives”, 179. Cf. AH II 31.1. 15 For a discussion of Irenaeus’s evaluation of Gnostic Old Testament interpretations (in ApJohn and in other Gnostic sources) see, apart from G. Vallée, “Theological and non-theological motives”, N. Brox, Offenbarung, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos bei Irenäus von Lyon, 37–103; R. Roukema, Gnosis and Faith in Early Christianity, 13–25; P.L. Wansink, Irenaeus en het Oude Testament, 188–94. 16 Offenbarung, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos, 52. Cf. the opinions of R. McL. Wilson,

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we disconnect the story of the arrogant Demiurge from its present Gnostic context, this judgement is not unfounded (cf. above, section 1a). Nevertheless I would like to maintain that the strained intertextual relationship to passages of the Bible is not an inherent quality of the Gnostic text but an effect of reading this text in the light of the more familiar—and more respected—scriptural text.17 Whereas the ancient Gnostic understanding was guided by references to esoteric Gnostic traditions, most modern understandings of this passage are likely to be determined by references to the Old Testament and to countless texts speaking about the biblical God.

The Gnostic Problem, 172–255, and Hans Jonas, discussed above, ch. I. It is not unusual in scholarly literature to take a further step—a step, that is, into the realm of history—and to argue that the real aim of similar Gnostic texts must have been to attack people who appealed to the biblical God. Cf. e.g. N.A. Dahl, “The arrogant archon and the lewd Sophia”, 706: “originally, the gnostic revolt was directed against the jealous God of exclusivist Jewish monotheism and his zealous representatives on earth”. Dahl does not account for the fact that non-Gnostic Christians, too, honoured the biblical God. 17 Cf. above, chap. I.

APPENDIX

THE BAPTISTS OF MANI’S YOUTH AND THE ELCHASAITES

The so-called Cologne Mani Codex (CMC )1 and the Fihrist (“Catalogue”) of al-Nadim, a tenth-century Islamic encyclopaedia,2 report that Mani spent his youth in a southern Babylonian community of baptists.3 In the CMC, the members of the community are just called baptista¤, in the Fihrist they are referred to as Mughtasilah, “those who wash themselves”. The baptists regarded Alchasaios or al-Hasih as their érxhgÒw or ra’is. The Greek and the Arabic word can mean “founder” but also “leader”. In the CMC, some legendary stories about this érxhgÒw of the baptists are put into the mouth of Mani. The editors of the Mani Codex, Albert Henrichs and Ludwig Koenen, argued that “Alchasaios” is a variant of the name “Elchasai” or “Elxai” mentioned in patristic sources,4 and, furthermore, that the baptists considered this Elchasai/Alchasaios to be the very founder of their sect. Indeed, in the editors’ opinion, these southern Babylonian baptists were Elchasaites.5 In The Revelation of Elchasai (1985), I expressed serious doubts about the Elchasaite connection of the Babylonian baptists and proposed that in the CMC, érxhgÒw means “leader”, as in other Manichaean texts. In addition, I pointed out that references to the Book of Elchasai do not occur in the Mani Codex and the Fihrist, and that there is nothing in the information about the baptists that reminds us of the contents of this book.6

1 L. Koenen and C. Römer, Der Kölner Mani-Kodex. Abbildungen und diplomatischer Text; R. Cameron and A.J. Dewey, The Cologne Mani Codex, “Concerning the Origin of his Body”; excerpts in English transl by J.M. and S.N.C. Lieu in I. Gardner and S.N.C. Lieu, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire, chap. 2. 2 G. Flügel, Kitab al-Fihrist; B. Dodge, The Fihrist of al-Nadîm. 3 The community, that is, in which his father Pattikios or Futtuq lived. 4 Hippolytus, Ref IX 13–17; Epiphanius, Pan 19, 30, and 53. 5 A. Henrichs and L. Koenen, “Ein griechischer Mani-Codex”, 135–60. In later studies they are somewhat more prudent. See esp. A. Henrichs, “Mani and the Babylonian Baptists”, 46f, and “The Mani Codex Reconsidered”, 356f. 6 Pp. 162f. Cf. the discussion of my arguments in I. Gardner and S.N.C. Lieu, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire, 33f.

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In this appendix, I would like to come back once again to the question of whether or not the baptists of Mani’s youth were Elchasaites. I am challenged to do so by Reinhold Merkelbach’s article, “Die Täufer, bei denen Mani aufwuchs”.7 His article is very much in line with the position of the editors of the CMC and highly representative of the current approach to the sources for Mani’s baptists and the Elchasaites.8 It will therefore not be necessary to discuss more reactions to my source-critical investigation. Merkelbach’s treatment of the relevant sources deviates from my approach, and leads to substantially different results. I would like to find out where our ways part and will try to explain why they do so. After observing that my assessment of the baptist sect seems fallacious, Merkelbach states: Ich habe versucht, die Probleme anhand des von Luttikhuizen so bequem bereitgestellten Materials neu zu durchdenken und bin zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass an dem Zusammenhang der Baptisten Manis mit Elchasai kein Zweifel möglich ist. Die Argumente hierfür scheinen mir geradezu überwältigend: ich möchte sie hier zusammenfassend darstellen.9

Merkelbach’s working method is as follows. First, he examines the patristic reports of the Elchasaites, searching for parallels with Manichaean teachings or customs. Where he finds a parallel, he argues that the baptists of Mani’s youth must be the link between the Elchasaites and the Manichaeans, even if there is no evidence that these baptists were familiar with the doctrine or custom in question.10 Merkelbach concludes:

7 In: P. Bryder (ed.), Manichaean Studies, 105–33. I. Gardner and S. Lieu, Manichaean Texts, 35, n. 50, refer in assent to Merkelbach’s contribution. 8 Cf. J. van Oort, “Manicheïsme: nieuwe ontdekkingen”, esp. 30f; S.N. Lieu, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East, 84–7; K. Rudolph, “Jüdische und christliche Täufertraditionen im Spiegel des Kölner Mani-Kodex”, in id., Gnosis und spätantike Religionsgeschichte, 686–713; id., “The Baptist Sects”, in W. Horbury et al., The Cambridge History of Judaism, III, The Early Roman Period, 483–92; S.C. Mimouni, “Les elkasaïtes: états des questions et des recherches”, in P.J. Tomson and D. LambersPetry, The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature, 209–29. F. Stanley Jones, “The Book of Elchasai in its Relevance for Manichaean Institutions”. 9 Ibid., 107. 10 According to Merkelbach, ibid., 110, we often (“manchmal”) face the following situation: “(a) Ein einziges Lehrstück oder ein Ritus ist für Elchasai bezeugt, entweder für sein Buch oder auch durch Nachrichten über die von ihm abhängigen Sekten. (b) Über die Mugtasila ist in dieser Hinsicht nichts bekannt. (c) Bei den Manichäern

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appendix Wenn man also die direkten Nachrichten über die Mugtasila zusammennimmt mit jenen Lehrstücken, die man für sie erschliessen kann (aus dem Vergleich der Nachrichten über die Elchasaiten mit denen über die Manichäer), dann kann man sich ein viel runderes Bild über die Mugtasila machen: dann werden sie eine der am besten bekannten christlichen Gemeinden aus der Zeit vor Konstantin; und vor allem, dann können wir viel deutlicher sehen, von wo Mani gekommen ist.11

Indeed, Merkelbach’s thesis agrees with the position held by the editors of the CMC. For instance, Henrichs and Koenen argued that Mani must have become acquainted with the concept of the cyclic incarnation of the True Prophet when he lived among the baptists as a young man, and that he developed his idea of being the last incarnation of the Apostle of Light from this allegedly baptist concept.12 Note that this conclusion is not based on the two reports of Mani’s baptists since these reports are completely silent about their Christology. The first part of this essay will be concerned with two questions: 1. can Mani’s concept of the repeated manifestation of the True Prophet be traced back to the Book of Elchasai, and 2. did Mani become familiar with this concept through the Babylonian baptists? In the second part of the essay, I will focus on the water rites of the baptists and the extent to which these rites can be defined as Elchasaite. The Cyclic Incarnation of the True Prophet Was Mani’s concept of the cyclic incarnation of the light-messenger inspired by an Elchasaite type of Christology? My answer is twofold. I do not doubt that the relevant Manichaean idea developed from a Jewish Christian background. What I do doubt, however, is that this originally Jewish Christian idea was included in the Book of Elchasai. This is not an unimportant issue, because Merkelbach explicitly states that he considers a tradition as Elchasaite if it can

ist dasselbe Lehrstück aufzufinden, welches auch für Elchasai bezeugt ist. In einem solchen Fall ist der Schluss praktisch sicher, dass die Mugtasila dasselbe Lehrstück vertreten haben: denn sie bilden ja das Bindeglied zwischen Elchasai und dem Manichäismus.” 11 Ibid., 110. 12 ZPE 5 (1970), 139f.

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be traced back to the Book of Elchasai.13 The question at stake, therefore, is whether we have evidence that speculations about repeated appearances of Christ were part of the book’s message. Our primary sources for the Book of Elchasai are Hippolytus of Rome and Epiphanius of Salamis (above, n. 4). In addition, Eusebius’s Church History includes a brief report by Origen which to an extent agrees with Hippolytus.14 These sources are far from transparent and consequently it is useful to preface the discussion of the relevant Christological ideas with some brief source-critical observations. Hippolytus Hippolytus deals with a contemporary Elchasaite missionary, Alcibiades, who came from Apamea in Syria. Apparently, Hippolytus had no first hand knowledge of Elchasai or the mysterious book connected with this name.15 The heresiologist reports that Alcibiades came to Rome with a book that he claimed had been revealed by a huge angel: It had been revealed by an angel whose height was 24 schoeni—that is 96 miles—and whose girth was 4 schoeni; from shoulder to shoulder he was 6 schoeni; his footprints were three and a half schoeni long— that is fourteen miles—, the breadth being one and a half (. . .) With him was a female whose dimensions, he said, accorded with those mentioned, the male being the Son of God and the female was called “Holy Spirit”.16

According to Hippolytus, Alcibiades stated that a certain Elchasai, had received the book somewhere in Parthia, and that this “righteous man” had transmitted the book to someone called Sobiai. As far as the name “Sobiai” is concerned, we might be dealing with a misunderstanding on the part of Hippolytus. It is not unlikely that what Alcibiades actually stated was that Elchasai had transmitted the

13 Ibid., 109: “Nur wenn für einen speziellen Zug ausdrücklich bezeugt ist, dass er im Buch des Elchasai gestanden hat, dann wird man annehmen dürfen, dass alle elchasaitischen Gruppen in diesem Punkt zusammentrafen, da sie ja alle die Offenbarung des Elchasai zugrundelegten.” 14 HE VI 38. All other patristic sources are dependent on Hippolytus, Epiphanius and/or Eusebius. Cf. The Revelation of Elchasai, 152. 15 Alcibiades treated the book as a secret text. Cf. Ref IX 17.1. 16 Ref IX 13.2–3.

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book to the Sobiai or “baptists”17 (to the Syrian baptists represented by Alcibiades?). It is highly significant that following his introduction of Alcibiades and the mysterious book, Hippolytus immediately draws attention to the second baptism which “he” (obviously Alcibiades) decreed for Christians who had committed a grave sin.18 Hippolytus’ report does not give us any reason to assume that this second baptism for Christian sinners was part of the message of the book. On the contrary, the heresiologist suggests that the rebaptism of Christian sinners was an innovation introduced by Alcibiades when he was in Rome. At the time of Alcibiades’ arrival in Rome, the Roman church did not yet have an institutional possibility for the remission of grave sins committed by baptised Christians (the later sacrament of penance). In the preceding sections of his book IX, Hippolytus speaks at length of a controversy about the position of Christian sinners in the Roman church. Alcibiades’ promise of remission of sins even to notorious sinners was seized upon by Hippolytus as an opportunity to continue his polemics against Calixtus, his former rival in the bishop’s see of Rome. In his refutation of Calixtus, Hippolytus tries to explain why the Catholic bishop’s church had so many members compared to his own community. He charges Calixtus with having admitted sinners into his “school” by promising them remission of their sins.19 In the subsequent refutation of Alcibiades, Hippolytus states that the idea of a baptism for the remission of grievous sins was suggested to this “heretic” by the teachings of Calixtus. In this way Hippolytus made the Catholic bishop accountable for what he considered the most objectionable aspect of Alcibiades’ heresy. Actually, the refutation of Alcibiades is nothing more than a digression added to Hippolytus’ bitter polemics against Calixtus. In the second part of his report, Hippolytus summarises what he designates as “some main points of his statements”.20 Although most scholars suppose that the heresiologist refers to statements made by Elchasai in the mysterious book, there can be no shadow of doubt, in my opinion, that the reference is to Alcibiades.21 The problem is that 17 W. Brandt, Elchasai, 42, and the literature mentioned in The Revelation of Elchasai, 61, n. 28. 18 Ref IX 13.4. 19 Ref IX 12.20–26. 20 Ref IX 14, introduced in 13.6. 21 See The Revelation of Elchasai, 47, n. 7, and my essays “The Book of Elchasai:

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the names of both Elchasai and Alcibiades are only mentioned at the beginning and end of this refutation. However, because the heresiologist speaks about a contemporary of his and because the heresy refuted in this chapter is closely related by Hippolytus to the “tenet” of Calixtus mentioned before (Calixtus’ allegedly indulgent attitude towards sinners),22 we must assume that he means Alcibiades. It is in this connection—his account of some of the main teachings of Alcibiades—that Hippolytus mentions the relevant Christological ideas: He says that Christ was a man like all (others), and that he was not born for the first time when he was born of a virgin, but that already earlier and many times again, having been begotten and being born, he appeared and came into existence, thus going through several births and transmigrating from body to body.23

In the third and last part of his report, Hippolytus comes back to the second baptism introduced by Alcibiades and also reports the therapeutic water rites prescribed by Alcibiades. I shall discuss these passages below. As to Alcibiades’ Christology: are we to trace the relevant ideas back to the Book of Elchasai?24 This is at least open to discussion. Why should we assume that everything taught by Alcibiades in Rome came directly from this book?25 It is quite possible, as we will see below, to connect these ideas with the Syrian type of Jewish Christianity represented by Alcibiades.

A Jewish Apocalyptic Writing, not a Christian Church Order”, SBL Seminar Papers 38 (1999), 405–25 (esp. 410, n. 17) and “Elkesaites and their Book”, in P. Luomanen and A. Marjanen (eds), A Compendium to Second-Century “Heretics”, 335–64 (esp. 338f ). 22 Ref IX 13.4–5: “He ventured to achieve these knaveries starting from the already mentioned tenet which Calixtus had brought forward. For perceiving that many were pleased with such a promise, he understood that the time was ripe to make the attempt. Yet we resisted this man too, and we did not permit many to be deceived for long, demonstrating that this was the work of a spurious mind and the invention of a bumptious heart, and that he, like a wolf, had risen up against many stray sheep which Calixtus by his misguidance had scattered abroad.” 23 Ref IX 14.1. Cf. the parallel report in Ref X 29.2. For the relationship between book X and the main reports in I–IX see J. Frickel, Die “Apophasis megale” in Hippolyts Refutatio, 49–74. Curiously enough, the second baptism is not mentioned at all in Ref X 29, although Hippolytus considered it the most dangerous and objectionable aspect of the heresy in question. 24 Merkelbach, ibid., 116: “Diese Vorstellung ist auch für das Buch des Elchasai bezeugt”. 25 At least the second baptism for Christian sinners was introduced by Alcibiades (see above).

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In Epiphanius’ reports we encounter several Transjordan sects allegedly influenced by “Elxai” or “Elxaios”: Ossaeans (Ossenes), Nasaraeans, Nazoraeans, Sampsaeans (Sampsites, Sampsenes) or Elkesaeans, and Ebionites (Ebionaeans). It is, however, questionable to what extent we can trust the connections which Epiphanius finds between the Elchasaite book and these Jewish and Jewish-Christian sects. For Henrichs and Koenen, and also for Merkelbach, however, this problem does not exist for they take Epiphanius’ reports for granted. I do not intend to discuss systematically the rather complicated issue of the relationships detected or hypothesised by Epiphanius.26 I will try to focus on the Christological ideas which the Church Father attributes to Elxai and to some of the aforementioned sects, notably the Ebionites and the Sampsaeans/Elkesaeans. I start from two passages in Epiphanius’ report on the Ebionites: At first this Ebion (the putative founder of the sect), as I said,27 determined that Christ was from the seed of a man, Joseph. But from a certain time up to now among his followers different things are told about Christ, since they have turned their minds to chaotic and impossible things. I suppose that perhaps after Elxaios joined them—the false prophet in connection with the so-called Sampsenes and Ossenes and Elkesaeans—they tell some fantasy about Christ and about the Holy Spirit, in the same way as he did.28 For some of them say that Christ is also Adam, the first man created and breathed into by God’s inspiration. But others among them say that he is from above and that he was created before all (. . .) that he comes into the world whenever he wishes, as he also came in Adam and appeared to the patriachs putting on a body (. . .)29

26 Following several predecessors, F. Stanley Jones rightly characterizes Epiphanius as a “doctor confusus” (“The Genre of the Book of Elchasai”, in A. Ötzen, Historische Wahrheit und theologische Wissenschaft, 87–104). 27 Pan 30.2.2: “First he (Ebion) said that Christ was born from human intercourse and the seed of a man, Joseph.” 28 Pan 19.4.1–2: “Next he (Elxai) describes Christ as some power, of whom he also indicates the dimensions: his length is twenty-four schoeni, approximately ninetysix miles, and his breadth is six schoeni, twenty-four miles (. . .) And (he says) that there is also the Holy Spirit, a female being, similar to Christ, as a statue extending above the clouds, and standing between two mountains.” Cf. Pan 30.17.6–7 (quoted below); 53.1.9; Hippolytus, Ref IX 13.2–3. 29 Pan 30.3.1–6.

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Epiphanius writes that the Ebionites used to endorse the well-known adoptionist idea of Christ as the son of Joseph, and that he supposed (tãxa d¢ o‰mai) that they changed their ideas about Christ under the influence of Elxai, and that since then they had been telling fantastic stories about Christ. Later on in his report on the Ebionites, the heresiologist writes something similar: After some time, when his (Ebion’s) followers had joined Elxai, they retained from Ebion circumcision and the Sabbath and the customs, but from Elxai the fantasy, so as to suppose that Christ is some manlike figure, invisible to men, ninety miles long, that is twenty-four schoeni, the breadth is six schoeni, twenty-four miles, and the thickness is of some other dimension. Opposite to him stands also the Holy Spirit, invisible, in the form of a female, and having the same size.30

How could it occur to Epiphanius that the Ebionites changed their opinion about Christ after Elxai joined them? In agreement with other scholars,31 I assume that the Church Father combined two groups of sources: early heresiological reports about the Ebionites (mainly Irenaeus and Eusebius),32 on the one hand, and authentic documents which for some reason or other he considered to be Ebionite. The greater part of the documents to which Epiphanius himself refers, first of all the Periodoi Petrou,33 do not survive but they must have been closely related to the extant pseudo-Clementine writings. Obviously, Epiphanius detected striking differences between the beliefs of the Ebionites in his patristic sources and those in his new documents, notably with regard to Christ. According to his patristic sources, the Ebionites believed that Christ was a man, the son of Joseph, whereas in his new sources, Christ came from above into Adam and others, and so appeared at different times. The latter idea, the concept of the True Prophet Adam-Christ, can indeed be found in the pseudo-Clementine writings.34

30

Pan 30.17.5–6. A.F.J. Klijn and G.J. Reinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish Christian Sects, 28–38; G.A. Koch, A Critical Investigation of Epiphanius’ Knowledge of the Ebionites. 32 See Irenaeus, AH III 11.7 and 21.1; Eusebius, HE III 27. 33 Pan 30.15.1–3. 34 Cf. esp. Hom III 20.2: “no other possesses the spirit but he who from the beginning of the world, changing his forms and his names, runs through universal time until, anointed for his toils by the mercy of God, he comes to his own time and will have rest for ever”. See the detailed discussion by G. Strecker, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen, 145–53. 31

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Indeed Epiphanius states in Pan 30.3.2 that he just believed or supposed that the Ebionites changed their opinions about Christ after they came under the influence of Elxai. If this supposition were correct, it would mean that it was Elxai who taught the Ebionites about the True Prophet who first appeared in Adam. It will become increasingly clear, however, that this is a highly questionable hypothesis, pace Merkelbach. For the time being I note that we do not find any reference to Elxai/Elchasai in the surviving pseudo-Clementine texts.35 Because Epiphanius supposed that the Ebionites adopted these Christological speculations from Elxai, he further hypothesised that all the groups which in his opinion were influenced by Elxai must be familiar with these speculations. This might be the reason why we find a quite similar report of Christological speculations in his report on the Transjordan Sampsaeans or Elkesaeans.36 Epiphanius was convinced that the Sampsaeans/ Elkesaeans regarded Elxai as their teacher and that this teacher was the author of the mysterious book. With respect to this issue Merkelbach states: “An mehreren (. . .) Stellen des Epiphanius wird über die Ebionäer und Sampsäer, die beide mit den Elkesäern zusammenfielen, berichtet: Christus sei zum erstenmal in Adam erschienen”.37 In reality, as we have seen, it was just Epiphanius’ conjecture that at some time Elxai had joined the early Ebionites, and that these “later” Ebionites (“pseudo-Clementine” Jewish Christians) owed their speculations about Christ to him. A Syrian Christology? To return to the Christology of Alcibiades reported by Hippolytus— the idea of the repeated incarnation of Christ—I have already mentioned that there is no decisive reason to assume that this Christology stems from the Book of Elchasai. It is likewise possible that these speculations developed in the Syrian Jewish-Christian environment represented by Alcibiades. The latter solution would mean that the partial (!) agreement between Alcibiades’ Christological ideas and those of Epiphanius’ new documents (early versions of the pseudoClementine writings) can be explained in a different way: the com-

35 36 37

G.A. Koch, A Critical Investigation, 294. Pan 53.1.8–9. Ibid., 120.

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mon background is not the book of Elchasai but a Syrian type of Jewish Christianity. In my hypothesis it is still possible that Mani borrowed his idea about the cyclic incarnation of the Apostle of Light from the Babylonian baptists of his youth. However, in this case, the Babylonian baptists were familiar with this Christological speculation not through the Book of Elchasai but rather through their affiliation with the Syrian Jewish Christianity represented by Alcibiades and early versions of the pseudo-Clementine writings. But I repeat that the CMC and the Fihrist are silent about this doctrine and, for this reason, we cannot exclude more direct connections between Mani (or his early followers) and the Syrian Jewish Christians in question. It might be more difficult to determine the source or background of the Manichaean doctrine of the cyclic revelations of the lightmessenger than Merkelbach and the editors of the CMC believe. The possible historical and literary connections between the Syrian Jewish Christianity attested by the pseudo-Clementines, and early Manichaeans deserve more scholarly attention than they have had so far. Water Rites Now I turn to what was apparently the distinct feature of the community in which Mani was reared. The members of the community—probably celibate men38—washed themselves daily because, as the CMC informs us, they expected the resurrection of the body.39 Moreover, they washed their food before it was consumed.40 Compare this to the patristic reports about the water rites of Alcibiades and those of the Transjordan sects which according to Epiphanius were influenced by the author of the mysterious book. I argued above that the greater part of Hippolytus’ report does not relate to the contents of the book connected with the name of “Elchasai” but to doctrines and prescriptions of the Syrian JewishChristian missionary Alcibiades. But whether or not the water rites

38 A. Henrichs, “Mani and the Babylonian baptists”, 54; id., “The Cologne Mani Codex reconsidered”, 365. 39 Cf. CMC 87.2–6. 40 CMC 80.1–3; 80.23–83.13; 87.2–6; 88.13–15. Cf. Fihrist transl. Dodge II 811: “They observe ablution as a rite and wash everything which they eat.”

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were quoted by Alcibiades from the Mesopotamian book or belonged to his Syrian Jewish Christianity, the point is that we do not find specific agreement between the rites mentioned by Hippolytus and the rites of the Babylonian baptists. On the one hand, Hippolytus reports a second baptism for the remission of grievous sins, first of all sexual trespasses (not mentioned in the two sources about the community of Mani’s youth). On the other hand, Hippolytus quotes therapeutic water rites: any man or woman, boy or girl who was bitten or touched by a rabid dog, had to go down fully clothed into a river or a spring.41 It is possible that the bite or touch of a rabid dog was understood as a metaphor of sexual desire,42 but we are obviously not dealing with a daily water rite (a regular bath to be taken by every member of the community). Hippolytus adds that sufferers of consumption and demonic possession were summoned by Alcibiades to immerse themselves in cold water up to forty times during seven days.43 Considering the wide spread use of all kinds of water rites in the ancient world and elsewhere, we can hardly assume a specific connection between the second baptism for grievous sinners and the therapeutic immersions reported by Hippolytus, on the one hand, and the daily ritual ablutions of the Babylonian baptists, on the other. Epiphanius reports ritual immersions, but he does so in his account of the Ebionites. As we have seen, the heresiologist surmises that the supposed later (pseudo-Clementine) Ebionites were influenced by Elxai, but it is significant that he does not hold Elxai responsible for their water rites. In Pan 30.2–4 he writes: He (Ebion!) says that a man has to wash himself with water every day, after he had intercourse with a woman and left her, if there is enough water available either of the sea or of other waters. And likewise when he meets someone44 when he comes up from the immersion and the baptism with water, he returns to wash himself in the same way, several times and fully clothed.

Apart from the fact that Epiphanius does not trace these water rites to Elxai but to Ebion, they do not seem to presuppose the celibate life which was probably practiced by the baptists of Mani’s youth.

41 42 43 44

Ref IX 15.4–6. E. Peterson, “Die Behandlung der Tollwut”. Ref IX 15.4–16.1. From the preceding context it appears that someone from the Gentiles is meant.

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Incidentally, the fact that Epiphanius does not attribute the Ebionite water rites to Elxai suggests that he did not find a prescription about daily baptisms in his source on the book.45 Interim Conclusion What did the convent-like community in southern Babylonia have to do with Elchasai and the Elchasaites? First of all, their ritual ablutions are hardly comparable to the second baptism and the water rites prescribed by Alcibiades to Christian sinners and to sufferers of various diseases, respectively, and we noted that the ritual immersions of the Ebionites are not traced back by Epiphanius to “Elxai” but to “Ebion”. In my opinion, the Christological ideas held by Alcibiades and some Transjordan sects do not stem from the book46 but have their background in a Syrian form of Jewish Christianity (indirectly attested by the surviving versions of the pseudo-Clementines).47 It should also be observed that the CMC and the Fihrist are silent about the Christological beliefs of the Jewish-Christian baptists. It is possible that Mani owed his idea of the cyclic incarnation of the light-messenger to the Babylonian baptists but this hypothesis cannot be based on the extant sources. If (!) the baptists were familiar with this Christological speculation, we could explain this on the assumption that they were remotely related to the Syrian Jewish Christianity attested by Alcibiades (in Hippolytus) as well as by the 45

In Pan 19.3.7, Epiphanius quotes a metaphorical saying: “Children, do not go toward the sight of fire, for you shall err. This is an error, because you see it quite near and it is far away. Do not go toward the sight of it but rather go to the voice of water.” It is possible to explain this ambiguous saying in the light of the anticultic ideas of some Transjordan sects and their introduction of water rites in substitution for burnt offerings, as Epiphanius does (for a polemical reason, see Pan 19.3.6), but other explanations are also possible: a rejection of martyrdom? an allusion to sexual desire (cf. ps.-Clem. Hom XI 26.4: “Flee to the water, for that alone can extinguish the violence of fire. He who will not come to it, still bears the spirit of passion”)? 46 Epiphanius must be right in stating that the author of the book was a Jew. He quotes the book in the first part of his voluminous work devoted to the Jewish “heresies” (Pan 1–20); in Pan 19.1.5 he writes: “He was of Jewish origin and his ideas were Jewish, but he did not live according to the Law”. 47 Indirectly, because the Jewish Christian sources and/or early versions of the pseudo-Clementine books are lost. Their contents can only hypothetically be reconstructed from the surviving texts.

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pseudo-Clementines. There is nothing in the extant sources that warrants the assumption that they borrowed their possible (!) Christological ideas from the book of Elchasai.48 Elchasai and Elxai-Alchasaios/al-Óasi˙/’lxs’ Strikingly, both the CMC and the Fihrist mention a baptist leader (the founder of the sect?) Alchasaios/al-Óasi˙. The discovery by W. Sundermann of the name ’lxs’ in an Iranian papyrus fragment of what seems to be an autobiographical account of Mani’s youth makes this even more intriguing.49 How should we relate the three versions of this name to our Patristic reports about the Elchasaites50 and their book? It might be helpful to distinguish three historical phenomena: 1. The book of Elchasai.51 In all likelihood it was a Jewish apocalyptic book written in Aramaic in Mesopotamia-Parthia in 116 c.e. The book was translated into Greek before 230.52 2. Two groups of Jewish-Christian missionaries (probably baptists)53 who possessed a Greek version of the book. They appeared in

48 With reference to Merkelbach, I. Gardner and S.N.C. Lieu, Manichaean Texts, 34f., state: “if the search for Elchasaite influences on Mani is widened (. . .) there is much to be found. Both sects (the Elchasaites and the Babylonian baptists) for instance placed great emphasis on (. . .) the cyclical reappearance of Christ.” This might be true but the question is whether we should explain these possible agreement from the book of Elchasai. 49 “Iranische Lebensbeschreibungen Manis”, 129f.; Mitteliranische manichäische Texte kirchengeschichtlichen Inhalts, 19. Note, however, that the text is badly mutilated and that the relevant letters occur without readable context. 50 “Elchasaites” is a modern designation. Origen’s sermon in Eusebius speaks of “Helkesaites”; Epiphanius mentions a (fourth-century) sect of “Elkesaeans” (another name of the “Sampsaeans”). 51 In the early sources (Hippolytus and Epiphanius), “Elchasai” and “Elxai” are spelled with an etha, not an epsilon, as Gardner and Lieu seem to assume (Manichaean Texts, 34; cf. S.N. Lieu, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia, 86). I endorse the well-known hypothesis that the name “Elchasai” originally belonged to the huge male angel (˙ayil ksay, “Hidden Power”) who in Epiphanius’ source on the book was described as a “power” (Pan 19.4.1), “invisible to men” (30.17.6). 52 Cf. The Revelation of Elchasai, 194–208. 53 Sobiai ? Cf. Hippolytus, Ref IX 13.1 (discussed above). Alcibiades prescribed several therapeutical immersions apart from a second baptism for the remission of grievous sins committed by Christians. The brief report of Origen-Eusebius (HE VI 38) does not report baptist rites.

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the Gentile-Christian churches of Rome and Palestine.54 Their Jewish-Christianity (minus the book of Elchasai!) is indirectly attested in the pseudo-Clementine books and more directly by Epiphanius who used earlier versions or sources of the pseudoClementines for his reports of the Ebionites (Pan 30) and some other Transjordan sects.55 3. Baptist communities in Transjordan regions and in Southern Babylonia who referred to a teacher Elxai/Alchasaios/al-Óasi˙ (’lxs’). In the CMC and the Fihrist, Alchasaios/al-Óasi˙ is mentioned as a leader (or the founder?) of the third-century Babylonian sect of baptists in which Mani was reared. Epiphanius informs us that Elxai was the teacher of a fourth century Transjordan baptist56 sect of Sampsaeans/Elkesaeans.57 It is very difficult to decide whether Alcibiades in mentioning “a certain righteous man, Elchasai”, who would have received the book from Seres in Parthia58 (Hippolytus, Ref IX 13.1), refers to the same religious authority. First of all, for Hippolytus, Elchasai was a a wholly obscure figure.59 Who Elchasai was in the mind of Alcibiades, is likewise unclear. At least Alcibiades did not regard him as the author of the book. In his view, Elchasai “received” the book, apparently in its complete form. It is quite possible that Alcibiades thought of the origin and the character of the book in essentially the same way as the Helkesaites did who, according to Origen, claimed that the book had fallen from heaven.60 We have no indication that 54 According to Hippolytus (Ref IX 13.1), the leader of the group in Rome, Alcibiades, came from Apamea in Syria. 55 That the the group of Alcibiades was related to the Jewish Christianity of the pseudo-Clementines (Epiphanius’ “later Ebionites”) is suggested first of all by a comparison of the Christology of the pseudo-Clementine books and Epiphanius’ new sources for the Ebionites with that of Alcibiades and his group (see above). 56 Pan 53.1.4: “They pretend to honour God by using certain baptisms”, 53.1.7: “Water is revered by them and they take it for a god, asserting more or less that life comes from it”. 57 The heresiologist was probably wrong in hypothesizing that this Transjordan teacher was the author of the Mesopotamian-Jewish book (see above). 58 Cf. The Revelation of Elchasai, 60. 59 In IX 4, he characterizes Alcibiades’ activity in Rome as “the recent appearance of the strange demon Elchasai”; in IX 17.2 he qualifies Alcibiades as “the most amazing interpreter of the wretched Elchasai”; here he also considers the possibility that Elchasai lived at the time of the Egyptian sages; in X 29.1 he suggests that the heretics in question composed the book and called it after “a certain Elchasai”. 60 In Eusebius, HE VI 38.

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Alcibiades referred to teachings of “Elchasai” which were not contained in the book connected with this name. The religious authority Elchasai-Elxai-Alchasaios/al-Óasi˙ emerges from the extant sources as a completely legendary figure. It is even unclear whether the various names refer to the same figure. According to Alcibiades, “Elchasai” received the book somewhere in Parthia. According to Epiphanius, the book was written by the Transjordan teacher “Elxai”. He reports that the fourth-century Sampsaeans/ Elkesaeans appealed to this teacher, and he “supposed” that Ebionites changed their ideas about Christ after Elxai joined them. Furthermore he writes that “Elxai” had a brother, Jexai, who also wrote a book (Pan 53.1.3; cf. 19.1.4) and that two female descendants of Elxai were worshipped as goddesses in his (Epiphanius’) own days (53.2 and 5–6; cf. Pan 19.2.4–5). In the CMC, “Alchasaios” is polemically presented by Mani-Baraies as an authoritative baptist leader (the sect’s founder?) who converted to essential Manichaean insights. Alcibiades-Hippolytus, Origen-Eusebius and Epiphanius refer to the book and quote from its contents but—like the CMC and the Fihrist— the Patristic sources are silent about the specific ideas of a teacher “Elchasai”/ “Elxai”. Above, I proposed that the Syrian Jewish-Christianity represented by Alcibiades in Rome might be related to the Jewish Christianity of the early pseudo-Clementines and Epiphanius’ “Ebionites”. This hypothesis is mainly based an a comparison of the Christology of Alcibiades and his group with that of the pseudo-Clementines and the “later Ebionites” (who did not possess the book!). It is quite possible, as we have seen, that the baptists of Mani’s youth were somehow related to this Syrian-Transjordan Jewish Christianity, and, furthermore, that Mani borrowed his idea of the repeated manifestation of the Apostle of Light from these Jewish Christians. But this does not make them Elchasaites.

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INDEX OF ANCIENT TEXTS

I. Greek and Latin Pagan Texts Alcinous Didaskalikos IX 3 X X 4–5

40 33 110 112f

Apuleius De Platone I

110

Aristotle An I 404b6ff II 412a10–11 II 412a22–27 II 412b4–6 II 413b24–27 II 413b27–29 III 429a23–27 III 429b5f III 430a10ff III 430a16–18 III 430a23–25

41 64 64 38 64 40 39f 40 39 40 40

Cael I 269a30ff Ethic. Eud. I 8, 1217b22 II 1, 1218b34

38 31 31

Ethic. Nicom. I 3, 1102a26–28 VI 4, 1140a1–3

31 31

Eud fr. 1–3 (56, 58, 61) fr. 3 (61) fr. 5 (923) fr. 6 (65) fr. 10 (1012)

42 32 37 37 42

GenAn I 729a–730a

87

II 3, 736b27–29 II 3, 737a7

40 38

GenCor II 10, 336a31

36

Metaph. I 9, 991a9–13, 20–24 I 9, 991b3–9 XII 5, 1071a15 XII 7, 1072b1–7 XII 7, 1072b19–21 XII 8, 1074b XIII 1, 1076a28

36 36 36 36 42 115 31

MotAn 10, 703a4–27

38

Phys. IV 10, 217b30

31

Prot fr. 10b (73)

37

Atticus fr. 7

37

Celsus

80

Cicero Acad. I 7,26 I 17 and 21

135 38 33

NatDeor I 13,33 II 15,42–44

38 38

Tusc I 10 22, 26, 65f

38

Diogenes Laertius V 32

36

index of ancient texts

200 Galen De plac. Hipp. VII

135

Iamblichus Prot 8

37

Julian Against the Galileans 75a–94a

80

Maximus of Tyrus Or 11

110

Numenius On the Good fr. 1a (9a) fr. 8 (10) fr. 13 (22); fr. 17 (26)

110 111 112 111

Plato Parm 137c–142a

Tim 27d–28a 34b–c 42e–43a 51d–e 73b–77e

34 110 149 67 35 39, 60

Plotinus

84

Plutarch De E apud Delphos 392c–393f

135 110

Is 67, 377f 77, 382d–e

36 42

Cons 115b–e

37

112

Pseudo-Plutarch Placita II 3

36

Rep 509b9

112

Proclus RemPubl 2.349.13–26

37

Theaet 187a–210b

35

Simplicius De Caelo 485.19–22

112

II. Jewish Bible Gen. 1–3 1:2 1:26 1:28 2:7 2:8–15 2:9 2:16f 2:18–24 2:18 2:21 2:23f 3 3:1 3:5 3:15–21 3:20 3:22f 3:23f

159 17f, 49 24, 59 55 24, 39f, 51f, 60, 62–64, 67, 93 76 72f 76 76 52, 70, 94 17, 69f, 93 69 17 76 46 77 52, 69f, 87 77 72

4:1f 4:3–15 4:25 6:1–7 6:1f, 7 6:1–4 6:5ff 6–8 6:13f 6:17 7:1–3 9:1, 7 15:5 16 21:10 Exod. 3:14 7:10–12 20:5 32:19 34:14

88, 92 92 90, 92, 94 99, 102–104 104 56, 88, 98, 100 56, 98–100 17 104 99, 101, 104 104 55 38 21 21 109, 111f 78 2, 77, 166 22 2

index of ancient texts Deut. 4:24 5:9

2 2

Num. 21:9

78

Prov. 3:19 8:27–30 13:1

46 46 109

201

Sap.Sal. 7:21 8:4

46 46

Isa. 6:10 43:11 44:6, 8 45:7

19, 69, 77 2 2 24

Jer 31:31–34

21

III. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha ApGen

80

Jub 7:20–25

80 98

CD 2:14–21

98

Test. Reub 5:6f

98, 103

1 Hen 6–10 10.2

98 101 IV. Philo and Josephus

Philo Det 160

83, 113 110

Her 281–3

38, 135

Mut 11

111

Opif 67

40

Post. Caini 42

96

Josephus Apion I 165, II 168, 257

111

V. New Testament Matt. 6:24 11:16f 26:56 27:30, 34 27:45 28:9f

74 142 145 146 145 127

Mark 6:3 14.50 15:19

124 145 146

Luke 7:31f

142

John 1:3 1:5 1:10 1:11f 1:14 1:16 3:3 5:32 8:44 10:38 14:2 14.10f 16.25 16:32

152 69, 152 154f 155f 116, 160 156 96 75 96 147 116 147 122, 148 145

index of ancient texts

202 17:21 19:29 19:34 20 20:29 21:4–24

147 146 148 126 124 124

Acts 1:13 1:21–26 6:4 8:4–40 21:8

119 128 119 119 119

Rom 4:23f 15:4

5 75 75

1 Cor 11:3 15:7

76 124

2 Cor. 3:6 3:14

21 21

Gal 1:19 2:9 4:21–31

5 124 124 21

Eph. 6:12

6

1 Tim 2:14

76

Hebr. 8:8–13 10:15–18

21 21

Rev. 1:4, 8 4:8

109 109

VI. Extra-Canonical Ancient Christian Texts ActsJohn 85f 87–105 87 94–102 94–96 95 95.2–17 95.19–22 95.31–42, 43–50 96.1–23, 24–27 97–102 98 99 100 101 102 109

142 140 148 124, 140, 145, 149f, 151 140–145 142 141 142 143 144f, 149 143, 145–9 143, 146, 149, 151 150 144, 149 148f, 151 144, 148, 150f 142

ActsThom 108–113

126

Allog (NHC XI,3) 54.32f 49.26f, 35f 59.28–32

108 109 114

60.8–12; 61.1f 61.32–67.38 64.10–14 ApJohn NHC II,1 1.18–2.9 1.21–29 2.14f 2.26–4.18 5.6; 6.16 9–10 9.15 9.25–35 10.2–7 10.7–23 10.8–11 10.21 10.24–28 10.28–11.35 10.34–36 12.33–13.5 13 13.5–13 13.9–13 13.13–26 13.17–23 13.20

140 113 114

146 121 164 60 115 63 7 45 45 47 88 95 48 48 88 48 63 2, 163 19 47, 49 17f 1

index of ancient texts 13.26–30 13.32–14.13 14.9 14.17–15.9 14.18–24 14.24–15.13 14.26–30 15.2–4 15.13–19.10 19.5f 19.10–33 19.12 19.22–33 19.25–30 19.27f 19.29 19.34–20.9 20.3f 20.9–28 20.9–19 20.9 20.11 20.28–21.14 20.28–30 20.32–21.7, 9–13 21.12–15 21.14–16 21.16–22.9 21.24–27 22.3–7 22.9–15 22.12–15 22.18–23.16, 23–25 22.18–21 22.22 22.25–28 25.16–27.31 22.25–28 23.3 23.25f 24.8–32 24.15–34 24.34–25.7 25–27 25.16–35 25.23–33 26.10–12 26.12–15 26.36–27.8 27.4–11 27.31–35 27.33 28.5–11

48 49 115 51 50, 60 60 50 51 60 30 62 30, 115 51 40 64 95 65f 51 65, 68, 72 52 115 95 66 66 52 55 68 73 54 53, 70 17, 73 68 69 55 1 77 53 19 1 69 56 73, 87 56, 90 65, 91, 103 17 42, 54, 90 54 30, 41, 53, 64, 95 54 91 17 115 99

28.11–32 28.26f 28.32–29.1 28.32–34 28.34–29.15 29.6 29.6–8 29.15 29.16–21 29.21–25 29.25f 29.26–30 29.33–30.2, 7–9 30.7–11 30.9–11 31.28–32

203 52 52 56 99 101 1 17 56 57, 102 54 54, 102 57, 102 57 103 57 122, 164, 167

NHC III,1 13.21 15.24 18.14, 18 21.24 22.17 23.20 24.6, 10 24.7f 24.9–12 25.2 29.1 29.5 29.18 29.22 30.4 31.8f 32.7 34.2, 7 37.23 39.19–21

7 95 95 59 95 95 95 51 40 95 95 1 95 1 69 87 90 95 1 47

NHC IV,1 21.13f 22.24–23.2 31.6 36.1 38.4–6 40.29

49 50 95 69 89 95

BG 2 20.3–21.13 20.8–19 22.10–16 22.17–26.14 23.3–7 23.15–24.1

146 121 164 60 114 114

204 24.9–25.1 27.1f, 4f, 17–19 36–38 36.3–4 37.11 37.13–18 37.19–38.1 38.18f 39.1–6 39.7–42.10 42.13–18 44.9–19 44.15–19 44.19–45.19 45 45.5–11 45.5–13 45.9 45.16–18 45.19–45.3 46.9–47.14 47.20–48.2 48.4–49.9 49.9–50.11 50.11–52.1 51.4 51.14–52.1 51.17–20 52.1–17 52.8–11 52.17–54.4 52.17–53.10 52.18–53.19 54.5–55.15 54.5–7 54.9–55.6, 9–13 55.10 55.18–56.3 56.14–17 56.15–18 57.8–18 57.11–18 57.20–58.7 58.1–7 58.4–10 58.10–60.16 58.10–14 58.17 58.18–20 59.1–6 59.17 60.3f 60.4 60.16–61.5

index of ancient texts 114 115 63 7 45 45 88 47 48 48 48 2, 163 19 47, 49 63 17 18 1 49 48 49 51 60 60 62 45 51 40 65, 66 51 65, 68 52 72 66 66 52 52 72 54, 72 68 53, 70 73 73 17, 55 68 69 55 1 69 19, 77 1 41 69 69

62.3–63.12 62.6–7 62.8–63.9 63.12–14 63.12–64.3 64–71 64.13–71.2 65–69 65.3–16 65.3–8 67.1–4 67.4–7 68.17–69.10 69.5–13 71.2–5 72.2–12 72.12–16 72.14–19 73.4 73.4–7 73.6–10, 13f 73.16–18 73.18–74.5 74.6–10 74.11–16 75.1–7 75.4–10 75.15–76.17 76.2–5 ApocAdam (NHC V,5) 61.21 64.2–14 66.28f 69.2–72.14 72.1–73.24

56, 87 87 73 56 53, 90 103 17, 53 65 54 42, 90 54 30, 41, 53, 64 54 91 17 52 56 101 1 17 101 56 57, 102 54 57, 102 57 57, 103 122, 164 47 106 71 166 100 106

I ApocJames (NHC V,3) 24.20, 23 109 25.1, 3 109 26.27 109 27.7–10 109 27.15 109 29.13–30.13 146 30.13–15 146 29.18f 109 30.17ff 146 31.5–9, 14ff 146 32.13f 146 36.10f 109 II ApocJames 55.15–25 55.27

125 166

index of ancient texts 56.16–20 57.4–10 ApocPet (VII,3) 70.13–20 71.5–21 71.25–27 72.4–8 72.21–27 73.2–4, 9–10 73.17f 73.23–27 74.13–15, 22, 29f 76.31–34 77.24f 77.33–78.1 78.25f 79.1–16 79.24–26 80.2–6 80.8–16 80.23–81.6 81.6–23 82.1–3 82.3–17 82.7–83.15 83.17–19 84.6 84.6–13

125 125 131 123, 134 132 132 132 138 136 136, 131, 123, 123 138 136 123 138 137 133 133 133 134 134 138 109 137

AuthTeach (NHC VI,3) 25.29 109 Barn 4.7f

22

Disc 8–9 (NHC VI,6) 58.17–21 61.15f

143 108

Eugn NHC III,3 71.13–73.3 71.13f

113 108

NHC V,1 2.8–3.8 2.8f

113 108

GosEg NHC III,2 58.25 66.16, 21 67.26

166 109 109

205

GosMary (BG 1) 17.18–22 18.7–15

127 127

GosPet 16

146

GosPhil (NHC II,3) 54.13–18 57.29–58.10 63.34–64.5 67.9–12

151 151 128 151

GosThom NHC II,2 Log. 12 Log. 13 Log. 22 Log. 49 Log. 77 Log. 108 Log. 114

125f 126 127 127 153 129 127

GosTruth NHC I,3 28.13

109

GreatPow (NHC VI,4) 36.12; 38.26–28

102

HypArch (NHC II,4) 86.23–25 86.27–31 87.26f 87.29 88.3–6 88.11–16 89.7–10 89.17–31 89.25 89.31–91.11 89.31f 91.2 91.11–30 91.13 91.30–92.3 92.2–26 92.3–8 92.3f 92.11 94.19–21 94.21f 95.5 96.33f

27, 61 4 166 93 88 63, 93 93 94 92 72 93 72 95 92 93 93 104 99, 103 96 101 2 166 166 95

134, 136f

150 136 138

206

index of ancient texts

LetPetPhil (NHC VIII,2) 132.20–133.1 133.17 134.20–23 135.5–8 135.8–136.15 135.21–24 135.23–136.8 136.11–15 136.16–137.4 136.16–22 136.17f 136.20–22 136.22f 136.26 137.6–9, 22–25 138.3 138.18 139.11f 139.13–25

86 120 153 119 153 154 166 61, 154 153–6 150 3, 154 4, 155 3, 156 156 86 120 4, 139 120 3, 82, 139

Mars (NHC X,1) 7.5f, 24f 13.17

109 109

OrigWorld NHC II,5 103.6–18 103.11–14 107.28–108.5 112f 112.27 116.28f 127.16f

166 2 166 61 166 72 86 127

Silv (NHC VII,4) 101.24

109

StelesSeth (NHC VII,5) 119.25

10, 55, 165 74 75 75 76 76 77 79 166 2 79 78 73 73 73

Thund (NHC VI,2)

141

TracTrip (NHC I,5) 52.2–53.5 56.6f 91.6 114.15 124.32–125.11 130.29f

113 146 109 109 86 109

TreatSeth (NHC VII,2) 53.30f 56.9–20 56.21–25 60.21f 61f 64.19–26 64.19f 64.22–26 67.18f 68.12

10 166 139 150 150 86 2 166 166 109 109

TrimProt (NHC XIII,1) 35.1f 36.9–23 36.15f, 17 39.13–40.7 40.12–15 41.7–20 42.4f 42.6 43.35–44.2 46.5–50.21 46.21–23 47.13–18 47.14f 47.16f, 24 48.14 49.12f

115 161 115 115, 161 116 115 161 115 2, 166 157 161 116, 158 160 150 114 161

61

PistSoph 17, 19, 36, 72

SophJChr NHC III,4 90.18–91.1 94.5–95.18 94.5 119.10–16 BG 3 77.15–78.1 83.5–86.6 83.5 127.21–29

TestTruth (NHC IX,3) 29.22–30.15 44.30–45.6 45.19–22 45.31–46.2 46.2–47.6 47.14–48.4 48.1 48.4–7 48.4f 48.13ff 48.23–49.11 56.1f, 5 57.6–8 58.2

121 113 108 121 121 113 108 121 108

index of ancient texts 50.11f 50.12f 50.13f

160 116 161

50.14–16 50.16–20 Zostr (NHC VIII,1) 16.6

207 160 116 109

VII. Patristic Texts Aristides Apol

113

Athenagoras Leg. 25

36

Suppl. 19

110

Augustine JulPel IV 15.78 Clement of Alexandria ExcTheod 22.4 28 42.1 53.3–6 54 56.2f 57.1 59.3

37

148 2 148 96 83 85 96 150

Protr I 7,4 V 66,4

37 36

Strom I 22 II 10f II 115 III 3.3 IV 89.4 V 3.3 V 14

112 85 85 85 85 85 36, 111

Pseudo-Clementines ContJac 5.4

125

EpClem 1.1

125

Hom III 17.1

27

III 20.1–2 III 49.2 VIII 12–14 XI 26.4

27, 177 27 103 181

Rec I 43.3 X 29

125 27

Diognetus 3–4

23

Ephraem Diat. comm. XX, 27

146

Epiphanius Pan 1–20 19 19.1.4, 2.4f, 3.7 19.1.5 19.4.1f 30 30.2.2 30.23.4 30.3.1–6 30.17.5–7 33.3–7 53 53.1.3, 4, 5–6, 7 53.1.8f

181 170 184 181 174, 182 170 176 180 176, 178 176f, 182 25 170 183f 176, 178

Eusebius HE II 1.4 III 27 VI 38

122 177 171, 182f

Praep. Evang. IX 6,6 IX 6,9 XI 10,4 XV 5,1 XV 9,1–14 XV 9,14

111 112 112 36 33 37

208

index of ancient texts

Hippolytus Ref I 20.3–4 V 26.31f VI 31.5–7 VI 33 VII 19.2 VII 25.3 IX 4 IX 12.20–26 IX 13–17 IX 13.1 IX 13.2–3 IX 13.4–6 IX 14.1 IX 15.4–16.1 IX 17.1 IX 17.2 X 29

84 37 150 148f 166 36 2, 166 183 174 170 182f 173, 176 174f 175 180 173 183 175, 183

Ignatius Phld 8,2

23

Irenaeus AH I 2.4 I 3.5 I 5.4 I 6.2 I 6.4 I 6–7 I 7.5 I 16.3 I 24.1 I 24.4 I 29 I 30.6 II 9 II 14.4

148 148 2, 166 84 84 83, 135 83 168 62 139 2, 167 2, 63, 166 166f 84

II 25.1 II 26.3 II 27.1 II 29 II 31.1 III 1.2 III 11.7, 21.1 IV 5.1

168 168 168 83f 168 25 177 167

Justin Martyr Dial 3 18f 27; 29

84 110 22 22

Pseudo-Justin Cohort 22

111

Origen Cels I 21 III 75 IV 3.8–15 and 89 VI 19

36 36 80 111

Princ III 1.2–4

85

Tatianus Or 2 40.1; 41.1f

36 111

Tertullianus AdvMarc I 2.2 I 19.2 II 5.1

24 24 24

VIII. Manichaean Texts CMC 80.1–3 80.23–83.13 87.2–6 88.13–15

170, 179 179 179 179 179

Fihrist II 811

170, 179, 184 179

Iran. pap. frs M 1344, 5910

182

NAG HAMMADI AND MANICHAEAN STUDIES 16. Barns, J.W.B., G.M. Browne, & J.C. Shelton, (eds.). Nag Hammadi Codices. Greek and Coptic papyri from the cartonnage of the covers. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06277 7 17. Krause, M. (ed.). Gnosis and Gnosticism. Papers read at the Eighth International Conference on Patristic Studies. Oxford, September 3rd-8th, 1979. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06399 4 18. Helderman, J. Die Anapausis im Evangelium Veritatis. Eine vergleichende Untersuchung des valentinianisch-gnostischen Heilsgutes der Ruhe im Evangelium Veritatis und in anderen Schriften der Nag-Hammadi Bibliothek. 1984. ISBN 90 04 07260 8 19. Frickel, J. Hellenistische Erlösung in christlicher Deutung. Die gnostische Naassenerschrift. Quellen, kritische Studien, Strukturanalyse, Schichtenscheidung, Rekonstruktion der Anthropos-Lehrschrift. 1984. ISBN 90 04 07227 6 20-21. Layton, B. (ed.). Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2-7, together with XIII, 2* Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1) and P. Oxy. 1, 654, 655. I. Gospel according to Thomas, Gospel according to Philip, Hypostasis of the Archons, Indexes. II. On the origin of the world, Expository treatise on the Soul, Book of Thomas the Contender. 1989. 2 volumes. ISBN 90 04 09019 3 22. Attridge, H.W. (ed.). Nag Hammadi Codex I (The Jung Codex). I. Introductions, texts, translations, indices. 1985. ISBN 90 04 07677 8 23. Attridge, H.W. (ed.). Nag Hammadi Codex I (The Jung Codex). II. Notes. 1985. ISBN 90 04 07678 6 24. Stroumsa, G.A.G. Another seed. Studies in Gnostic mythology. 1984. ISBN 90 04 07419 8 25. Scopello, M. L’exégèse de l’âme. Nag Hammadi Codex II, 6. Introduction, traduction et commentaire. 1985. ISBN 90 04 07469 4 26. Emmel, S. (ed.). Nag Hammadi Codex III, 5. The Dialogue of the Savior. 1984. ISBN 90 04 07558 5 27. Parrott, D.M. (ed.) Nag Hammadi Codices III, 3-4 and V, 1 with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502,3 and Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1081. Eugnostos and the Sophia of Jesus Christ. 1991. ISBN 90 04 08366 9 28. Hedrick, C.W. (ed.). Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII. 1990. ISBN 90 04 07825 8 29. Williams, M.A. The immovable race. A gnostic designation and the theme of stability in Late Antiquity. 1985. ISBN 90 04 07597 6 30. Pearson, B.A. (ed.). Nag Hammadi Codex VII. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10451 8 31. Sieber, J.H. (ed.). Nag Hammadi Codex VIII. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09477 6 32. Scholer, D.M. Nag Hammadi Bibliography 1970-1994. 1997. ISBN 90 04 09473 3 33. Wisse, FFF. & M. Waldstein, (eds.). The Apocryphon of John. Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II,1; III,1; and IV,1 with BG 8502,2. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10395 3 34. Lelyveld, M. Les logia de la vie dans l’Evangile selon Thomas. A la recherche d’une tradition et d’une rédaction. 1988. ISBN 90 04 07610 7 35. Williams, F. (Tr.). The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. Book I (Sects 1-46). 1987. Reprint 1997. ISBN 90 04 07926 2

36. Williams, F. (Tr.). The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. Books II and III (Sects 4780, De Fide). 1994. ISBN 90 04 09898 4 37. Gardner, I. The Kephalaia of the Teacher. The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in Translation with Commentary. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10248 5 38. Turner, M.L. The Gospel according to Philip. The Sources and Coherence of an Early Christian Collection. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10443 7 39. van den Broek, R. Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10654 5 40. Marjanen, A. The Woman Jesus Loved. Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10658 8 41. Reeves, J.C. Heralds of that Good Realm. Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis and Jewish Traditions. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10459 3 42. Rudolph, K. Gnosis & spätantike Religionsgeschichte. Gesammelte Aufsätze. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10625 1 43. Mirecki, P. & J. BeDuhn, (eds.). Emerging from Darkness. Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10760 6 44. Turner, J.D. & A. McGuire, (eds.). The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years. Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10824 6 45. Lieu, S.N.C. Manichaeism in Central Asia and China. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10405 4 46. Heuser, M & H.-J. Klimkeit. Studies in Manichaean Literature and Art. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10716 9 47. Zöckler, T. Jesu Lehren im Thomasevangelium. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11445 9 48. Petersen, S. “Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit!”. Maria Magdalena, Salome und andere Jüngerinnen Jesu in christlich-gnostischen Schriften. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11449 1 49. Van Oort, J. , O. Wermelinger & G. Wurst (eds.). Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West. Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht International Symposium of the IAMS. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11423 8 50. Mirecki, P. & J. BeDuhn (eds.). The Light and the Darkness. Studies in Manichaeism and its World. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11673 7 51. Williams, F.E. Mental Perception. A Commentary on NHC, VI,4: The Concept of Our Great Power. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11692 3 52. Pleàe, Z. The Apocryphon of John. Narrative, Cosmology, Composition (in preparation) ISBN 90 04 11674 5 53. Scopello, M. Femme, Gnose et manichéisme. De l’espace mythique au territoire du réel. 2005. ISBN 90 04 11452 1 54. Bethge, H., S. Emmel, K.L. King, & I. Schletterer (eds.). For the Children, Perfect Instruction. Studies in Honor of Hans-Martin Schenke on the Occasion of the Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften’s Thirtieth Year (in preparation) ISBN 90 04 12672 4 55. Quispel, G. Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica (in preparation) ISBN 90 04 13945 1 56. Pedersen, N., Demonstrative Proof in Defence of God. A Study of Titus of Bostra’s Contra Manichaeos – The Work’s Sources, Aims and Relation to its Contemporary Theology. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13883 8 57. Gulácsi, Z. Mediaeval Manichaean Book Art. A Codicological Study of Iranian and Turkic Illuminated Book Fragments from 8th-11th Century East Central Asia. 2005. ISBN 90 04 13994 X 58. Luttikhuizen, G.P. Gnostic Revisions of Genesis Stories and Early Jesus Traditions. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14510 9