posted 21 April 2005 01:19 PM            

function is to think and whose only possible object of thought is itself, since it alone exists. But its act of thinking is objectified, and this thinking is the second principle.

Again, the first principle is a solitary eye, floating in a luminous reflective medium. Its only function is to look, and all it has to see is itself. The reflection that it sees, however, is the second principle.

Finally, the first principle is a spring of water that flows perpetually. Its only function is to overflow, and that overflow is the second principle.

The second principle is called by the non-Greek name Barbelo or occasionally (EpG 26.10.10) Barbero. In antiquity, obscure mythic names like Barbelo were sometimes invented ad hoc by theological writers rather than being produced by natural language; in some cases, therefore, ancient theological readers were expected to guess their meaning. Such a process is of course difficult to trace without precise identification of the linguistic milieu in which the text was first published.

But if that milieu was Egyptian, the name "Barbero" or "Barbelo" might have called to mind the native words for "emission, projectile" and "great," 3 yielding a pseudo-word meaning "the great emission"-an apt description of the Barbelo's relation to the first principle.
Barbelo is a stock character who occurs in various versions of the gnostic myth.

There are other stock characters as well: especially important among these are the anointed ("Christ"), a metaphysical being that in some versions descends to unite with Jesus of Nazareth; and the four luminaries Harmozel, Oroiael, Daueithai, and Eleleth.

Since they are aeons, the luminaries are both eternal realms and actors. As realms, they are the dwelling places of
four archetypes: Geradamas (or Adamas), the heavenly Adam; Seth, heavenly prototype of Adam's son; the heavenly posterity of Seth, prototypes of the gnostic church on earth; and a fourth group, whose identity varies from tale to tale.

Some scholars also hold that the gnostic myth divides human history into four great epochs, corresponding to the four luminaries and their resident archetypes. According to one formulation of this theory, the first three epochs are antediluvian (the first, the second, and the third to ninth generations of humankind), while the fourth (the epoch of Eleleth) begins with the time of Noah (cf. RR 92:3f) and extends to the end of the material universe.

A parallel conception of history has been proposed in the Zoroastrian religion of Persia.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Act II: The creation of the material universe
After the emission of the spiritual universe has been completed, in order for creation to continue beyond the limit of spiritual existence the activity of a "craftsman"4 or "maker" of the world is introduced; his name is

3 Cf. Coptic berbir, "projectile, lance" (a grammatically feminine noun, surviving only in the northern, or Bohairic, dialect), presumably from Egyptian brbr or b3b3; and -0, "great." The name might also have recalled Coptic berber, "boiling over, overflow" (a masculine noun).
4 "Craftsman," "demiurge" (Greek demiourgos), is Plato's metaphorical term for the maker of the universe in his mythic account of the world's creation entitled Timaeus. Educated readers of gnostic scripture in the second and third centuries A.D. would surely have compaied laldabaoth with the craftsman of the Timaeus.

posted 21 April 2005 01:23 PM            

The sectarians claim to have sprung from Seth
39.1.3 Now, these Sethians proudly derive their ancestry from Seth the son of Adam and honor him and attribute to him whatever belongs to excellence, and proofs of excellence and righteousness and the like. They even do not stop short of calling him the anointed (Christ)" and 39.3.5 insist that he was Jesus.

II. TEACHINGS OF THE SECT Creation of the universe by angels
39.1.4 And they teach the doctrine that the universe has come into BJo 12:33+
existence because of angels and not because of the power on high.

39.1.1 a. Greek haeresis, the usual term for a philosophical school or religious sect. An unspecified degree of social cohesion is implied by the term.
b. In the preceding chapter of the work from which this passage is extracted.
c. To "stand at rest" is philosophical jargon for the state of permanence, nonchange, and real being, as opposed to what exists in instability, change, and becoming.

It was a favorite term of gnostic writers; it is here turned against them by Epiphanius.

39.1.2 a. Or "perhaps."
b. Or possibly "in the Egyptian country
side," Le. the part outside Alexandria.
c. Or "region."

39.1.3 a. "anointed" and "Christ" are the same word in Greek.

posted 21 April 2005 01:26 PM            

39.2.3 But the higher power prevailed, whom they call "mother"" and "female"-forb they suppose that there are mothers above, and females and males, and almost speak of kin ships and patriarchallineages.c

39.2.4 So-they say-since she had prevailed, the mother who is called the female, once she recognized that Abel had been killed, took thought and caused Seth to be born. And she deposited her power ,within him, establishing" in himb a posterityc of the power from above and the spark that had been sent from above for the first establishment of the posterity and the alliance.d

39.2.5 And the latter is an alliance of righteousness and a choosing of a posterity and a people, so that by such an alliance and by this posterity the powers of the angels who had created the world and the two original human beings might be defeated.

39.2.6 So it is for this reason that the people of Seth have been set apart and are descended from that origin, as being the elect who are differentiated from the other people.-39.2.7 For, they say, as time went on the two peoples belonging to Cain and to Abel coexisted, intermingled, and merged into one owing to great imperfection. Taking note of this fact, the mother of all decided to make the posterity of the human beings pure, as I said, because of the slaying of Abel. And she chose this Seth and showed that he was pure. And in him alone she established the people of her power and purity.

BJnI5:1+ BJn 22:32 BJn 24:8+

IrVnid 1.30.1

BJn 24:34+ BJn 25:20+ IrSat 1.24.H

IrSat 1.24.2<

posted 21 April 2005 01:31 PM            

ACCORDING TO ST. EPIPHANIUS OF SALAMIS, AGAINST HERESIES CHAPTERS 25-26
(EpG)

Contents and literary background
Gnostic myth sets out to show that only the soul is the true self; that the body is a negative element, a "prison" or "fetter" of the soul; and that salvation entails escape from the "bondage" of bodily existence.

Yet classic gnostic scriptures almost never go on to draw explicit conclusions about the way that gnostics should in consequence behave. This is understandable, for the literary form of the gnostic scriptures provides almost no occasion for ethical conclusions to be drawn.

To some extent, such ethical conclusions may have seemed too obvious to state; for, to many
thinkers in the second century A.D., the acceptance of a split between bodr and
soul implied that the best mode of life was continence, so as to minimize the body's adverse influence. upon the soul ("passion").

This is also confirmed by a certain amount of direct literary evidence in the gnostic scriptures. Z6strianos (Zs 131:8f) states explicitly that "it is not to experience passion that you have come. (to' this place), but to break your fetters" (cf. also BJn 25:30£); St. Epiphanius of Salamis (EpA) mentions the monastic asceticism of the "Archontic" gnostics, though ambiguously; and St. Irenaeus (IrS) reports Satorninos's teaching that "marriage and the engendering of offspring are from Satan," adding that most of his followers "abstain from (the flesh of) living things." The speaker in Thunder (Th 15: 18f) exhorts the listeners, "Love my continence."

Against this background, St. Epiphanius's description (written A.D. ca. 375) of the licentious behavior of the "gnostics, also known as Borborites," completely diverges from the expected norm and is shockingly anomalous.
Stories about sexually licentious Christian sects were not unheard of in antiquity.

Starting as early as St. Irenaeus, anti-gnostic writers occasionally reported on libertine sects, some of whom even called themselves "gnostics," that is, "people capable of acquaintance" (it should be remembered that in the language of the Old Testament, "to know, to gain acquaintance of" could be a euphemism for sexual 'ntercourse).

It is difficult to judge the accuracy and fairness of such polemical 'eports. Irenaeus (1.25.1-6), for example, states that followers of a certain Carpo;rates (in the second century A.D,) believed that they must experience every kind )f deed, including what is ordinarily held to be wicked, in order to escape reincarnation another body after death.

Whether or not this statement is accurate or reasonable, the doctrine of the Carpocratians bears no noticeable resemblance to gnostic myth, ld so there are no grounds to conclude that the Carpocratians were gnostics in the
lassie sense of the word, although they may have borrowed the name "gnostic," :rhaps as a form of self-praise.

The same is not true of St. Epiphanius's description, translated here, of a licentious 'gnostic" sect in Egypt, for in this instance the teachings of the sect bear an

posted 21 April 2005 01:35 PM            

unmistakable resemblance to classic gnostic myth, touching selectively on alii acts of the mythic drama. The following mythic elements are mentioned or impl although their presentation by Epiphanius is disorderly and obscure: emanatioi the Barbelo from the parent of the entirety; the afterthought of light, here conf_ with both Barbelo and "vulgar" wisdom (Prounikos); production of laldabal theft of wisdom's power and its passage into human beings; wisdom's repente

icreation ofthe world by laldabaoth; the existence of 365 heavenly rulers or authori of which the seven main ones have traditional gnostic names; laldabaoth's clai be honored as god; his defeat and replacement by Sabaoth, as in RR (only imp

1cf. 25.2.2 and 26.10.3); the chief ruler's arrogance; the serpentine form of Sab (known also from EpA); Eve and the serpent; activity of the female spiritual princ
(the speaker in the gnostic Gospel of Eve, 26.3.1); Norea (here called "Noria") , Noah; struggle of two spirits active in humankind; incarnation of the preexis_ Christ within Jesus of Nazareth; escape of the soul and ingathering ("collectio; of gnostic souls into their spiritual home. .

The sources of St. Epiphanius's information were literary, for he cites them title. Apart from the usual gnostic myth, he speaks also of an unusual gnostic cI to be obliged to "collect" the dispersed units of wisdom's power ("emissions") the form of "soul" dispersed in all "living things, whether beasts, fishes, reptil human beings, vegetables, trees, or fruit. . . No matter what we eat," they cIai "whether meat, vegetable, bread, or anything else, we are doing a favor to creat things by collecting soul from all things and transporting it with us to the above

Likewise they claim that when a gnostic soul ascends through the seven heavens can only get past the rulers if it has "not sown children for the ruler, but.
eradicated its roots and collected the scattered members. . ." If it has produced child, the soul is swallowed by Sabaoth, the celestial snake (the Milky Way?), ar ____.

!This striking notion of a religious elect who deliberately gather entrapped particl of the divine from foodstuffs and transport them to the metaphysical universe' well known from the Manichaean religion-though the Manichaean diet was veg
tarian and the Manichaean elect were extreme ascetics.

Since Manichee missionariej were active in Egypt starting in the late third century A.D., St. Epiphanius may hav! encountered a gnostic church that had been influenced by the pattern of Manichaear theology. Alternatively, he may be using a polemical source that parodies Mani chaeism.

In the absence of further information, it is impossible to reconstruct any ration.' alization of the gnostic diet as described in this excerpt. The reputedly licentious behavior of the sect appears difficult to justify or explain on the basis of the theology just described. S1. Epiphanius's description ofthe gnostic church therefore remains a mystery.

The historian must weigh the saint's claim of first-hand observation and the grisly detail of his report against his avowed desire to discredit and destroy the sect. In any case, there is no reason to assume that this is a typical description of gnostic Christianity.

St. Epiphanius lists various names under which the sect was known. One of these in particular, "Borborites," continued to be mentioned in later historical documents, especially in Syria and Mesopotamia (see Map 1). In fact, the original form of this name may have been Barb_rites, "followers of Barbero," for Epiphanius reports that Barbero was an alternate form of Barbelo (26.10.10), and that the sect was also known as Barbelites (26.3.7).

The form spelled Borborites, "filthies, muddies," may thus be a polemical tag coined by opponents of the sect.

Mythic characters

I. Higher Powers Mentioned by St. Epiphanius
The PARENT OF THE ENTIRETY
The BARBELO or BARBERO

posted 21 April 2005 01:37 PM            

Genealogy and diversity of the gnostics
25.2.1 And from this source," those who belong to gn6sis (acquaintance), falsely so called, also began to spring up in the world-namely, gnostics,b Phibionites, the so-called followers of Epiphanes, Stratiotics, Levities, Borborites, and the rest. For, each of these has provoked its own school of thought" by its own particular passions, and has invented myriad ways of evil.

I. TEACHINGS OF THE SECT

A. VENERA nON OF BARBELQ Barbelo's offspring. Its arrogance.
25.2.2 Now, certain ones of them venerate a certain Barbelo, whothey say-is above in the eighth heaven." And-they say-this female was emitted from the parent. Some say she is the mother of Ialdabaoth; others, of Sabaoth; 25.2.3 and her offspring keeps charge of the seventh heaven in arrogance and absolute dominion; and says to those below, "It is I who am the first and hereafter; there is no other god apart from me." 25.2.4 But (they say) the Barbelo heard this utterance and wept.

26.10.4+ BJn 4:26: BJn 9:25: 26.10.11
RR 95:13EpA 40.5 BJn 13:5' Is 44:6
8.25.2.4 BJn 13:32

Recovery of her power
Moreover, she is repeatedly" shown forth to the rulers in a kind of
beauty, and through pleasure and outflowing robs the sperm from them, so that-of course-she might again recover her power that has been sown into various places.b * * *

Title a. This title properly belongs only to chapter 26 of Epiphanius's catalogue of heresies; it appears in the MSS at 26.1.1. But the following extract, which is taken from chapter 25, "Against the Nicolaitans," actually concerns the gnostics and is a transitional prelude to chapter 26. Elsewhere in his catalogue of heresies (the table of contents with book 2 of the catalogue) Epiphanius gives a summary description of each of the schools of thought that he intends to refute. His summary of the gnostic school provides a few supplementary points of information (italicized below) that are not found in the extracts translated here:
"Gnostics: successors to the aforementioned schools of thought; but more than they, raving devotees of filthy conduct; in Egypt, called Stratiotics and Phibionites, but in the" Upper" (i.e. southern) part (of Egypt), called Secundians, elsewhere S6kratites, and by still others called Zacchaeuses. Others, still, call them Coddians; yet others call them Borborites. These people take pride in Barbela, who is also called Barbero."

25.2.1 a. The Nicolaitans, a school of thought mentioned in the preceding passage (not translated here). From early Christian times, the condemnation of a group called Nicolaitans had apostolic and scriptural sanction (Rv 2:6f; see Map I); Epiphanius's assertion that the gnostics and other schools were merely offshoots of the Nicolaitans is one of his refutations of their authenticity.
b. "gnostics," here used in the narrower sense as the designation of a particular school.
c. Greek hairesis, the usual term for a philosophical school or religious sect. An unsJecified degree of cohesion is implied by the term.

25.2.2 a. In other gnostic texts, it is Barbela's manifestation in the form of wisdom who presides in the eighth heaven.

25.2.4 a. Or "always."
b. The following passage (not translated
here) is a polemic by Epiphanius.

posted 21 April 2005 01:42 PM            

Valentinus's early years

Valentinus (A.D. ca. 10O-ca. 175) was born in the Egyptian Delta, at Phrebonisl (see Map 4). He enjoyed the good fortune of a Greek education in the nearby metropolis of Alexandria, the world capital of Hellenistic culture. In Alexandria he probably met the Christian philosopher Basilides (see Part Five), who was teaching there, and may have been influenced by him.

There, too, he must have made the acquaintance of Greek philosophy. Valentinus's familiarity with Platonism may have come to him through study of Hellenistic Jewish interpretation of the bible, for in a passage of one of his sermons he seems to show knowledge of a work by the great Alexandrian Jewish allegorist and philosopher Philo Judaeus (ca. 30 B.C.-A.D. ca. 45).2

Valentinus's distinguished career as a teacher began in Alexandria, sometime between A.D. 117 and 138. Since most of the Fragments of his works (VFr) were preserved by a second-century Christian intellectual in Alexandria, Valentinus may have written and published in Alexandria while he was teaching there.

If so, his considerable expertise in rhetorical composition, which is evident in these Fragments, must have been acquired while he was studying in Alexandria. Valentinus's followers in Alexandria later reported that he had claimed a kind of apostolic sanction for his teaching by maintaining that he had received lessons in Christian religion from a certain Theudas, who-he said-had been a student of St. Paul.

If there is any truth in this claim, his contact with Theudas and his reading of St. Paul may have occurred in Alexandria.

In the second century all roads led to Rome. Thus, sometime between A.D. 136 and 140, Valentinus migrated to the great nerve center of the Roman empire, where he assumed a role in ecclesiastical affairs.

81. Irenaeus of Lyon reports in about the year 180 that Valentinus based his theological system in part upon the gnostic myth (IrV, "Relation to gnostic myth"). Where then did Valentinus come into contact with the sect of gnostics-Alexandria or Rome? Since VFrC speaks of a "preexistent," or

I A city of the north central Egyptian Delta, otherwise called Phlabonis. The sixth-century encyclopedist Hierocles places it between Xois and Pachnemunis. thus nearly at the latitude of Alexandria but halfway between the two main branches of the Nile. Its exact modem equivalent cannot be discovered.

! GTr 36:35fmay use the allegory ofGn 2:8 found in Philo Judaeus, "Questions and Answers on Genesis" 1.6. For the text, see Philo: Supplement I, Questions and Answers on Genesis Translatedfrom the Ancient Armenian Version of the Original Greek, by R. Marcus (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge; Mass: Harvard University Press, 1953). .

posted 21 April 2005 01:45 PM            

among other things involved a large-scale literary program at the appropriate time and place of the production of the Nag Hammadi codices. But the publication of this cartonnage in 1981 involved a critical sifting of the evidence, which proved to be less conclusive than had been previously maintained. The relation of the Nag Hammadi codices to the Pachomian movement remains a tantalizing possibility, more concrete than any other that has been suggested, and yet far from assured.

In view of the orthodoxy of the Pachomian monasteries reflected in The Life of St. Pachomius and other monastic legends, some have hesitated to associate the Nag Hammadi library with these monasteries, unless it be that such texts were copied for ready reference in refuting heresy.

But a defender of Christian orthodoxy would hardly bother to collect the non-Christian texts that are in the Nag Hammadi library. And some of the Christian texts are not explicitly "heretical" and hence would hardly have been included in such a blacklist.

The very fact that the library seems to have been made up by combining several smaller collections tends to point toward individual Christian Gnostics or monasteries producing individual books or small collections for their own spiritual enlightenment, rather than to a heresy-hunting scribal campaign.

Since the familiar heresy-hunting literature is in Greek, one should hesitate to postulate such a widespread heresy-hunting activity in Coptic. And the Pachomian literature transmitted through monastic channels is much more pedestrian.
Of course it is conceivable that book manufacture could have been one of the handicrafts common in monasteries to produce commodities to trade or sell for the necessities of life.

Hence one could conjecture that uninscribed books were produced in the monastery and sold to Gnostics (or anyone else) to inscribe as they saw fit. But there is some evidence from that period that books were first inscribed and then bound, as when a line of writing passes through the fold at the spine.

And in the Nag Hammadi library blotting is usually present on the first and last pages but not elsewhere, which may perhaps be explained as due to the dampness of the paste in the cartonnage at the time of the binding, in which case the quire would have had to have been inscribed before being bound.

The care and religious devotion reflected in the manufacture of the Nag Hammadi library hardly suggest that the books were produced out of antagonism or even disinterest in their contents, but rather reflect the veneration accorded to holy texts.

The leather covers are not very ornate, compared, for example, with reports that Manichaean books were studded with jewels (though the very plain extant wooden covers of the Mani

posted 21 April 2005 01:47 PM            

The philosopher queried him on something for which the answer was not difficult to find, "Who was not born but died? Who was born but did not die? And who died without giving off the stench of decomposition?" Theodore replied that Adam was not born but died, Enoch was born but did not die, and Lot's wife died but, having become a pillar of salt, did not give off the stench of decomposition. The philosopher accepted these answers and departed.

This may well be a faint echo of Pachomian debates with Christian Gnostics before the middle of the fourth century C.E. Epiphanius' efforts to run Christian Gnostics out of town took place in Egypt about the same time.

In 367 C.E. Archbishop Athanasius wrote an Easter letter that condemns heretics and their "apocryphal books to which they attribute antiquity and give the name of saints." Theodore, by then head of the Pachomian monasteries, had the letter translated into Coptic, and "deposited it in the monastery to serve them as a rule."

There must still have been heretics or heretical books influencing the Pachomian monastic movement which made this act necessary. Of course many of the Nag Hammadi texts are indeed pseudonymous, that is to say, ascribed in their titles to some "saint" of the past. In another of the Pachomian legends one of "these books that the heretics write" but "give out under the name of saints" is quoted: "After Eve was deceived and had eaten the

posted 21 April 2005 01:50 PM            

These terms, which Shenoute seems to borrow from the group, are so well-known in the Nag Hammadi library that it may have been a Christian Gnostic, perhaps a Sethian group, even though in his polemic Shenoute calls them pagan heretics.

He seized their "books full of abomination" and "of every kind of magic." Indeed, series of vowels and unintelligible magic words (Plotinus called it "hissing") occur in the Nag Hammadi library itself. Actually Pachomius himself wrote to the heads of his monasteries using a code that even his successors could not decipher!

Hence the Nag Hammadi library and Pachomius' "books of spiritual letters" may not have been entirely different in appearance from what Shenoute would call a book of magic.

Shenoute threatened the heretics: "I shall make you acknowledge. .. the Archbishop Cyril, or else the sword will wipe out most of you, and moreover those of you who are spared will go into exile." Just as the Dead Sea Scrolls were put in jars for safekeeping and hidden at the time of the approach of the Roman Tenth Legion, the burial of the Nag Hammadi library in a jar may also have been precipitated by the approach of Roman authorities, who by then had become Christian.

The fact that the Nag Hammadi library was hidden in a jar suggests the intention not to eliminate but to preserve, the books. For not only were the Dead Sea Scrolls put in such jars for safekeeping, but biblical manuscripts have been found similarly preserved up and down the Nile, in some cases dating from the same period and buried in the Nag Hammadi region.

posted 21 April 2005 01:53 PM            

In ancient Mesopotamia, wisdom is also praised, often as a gift of the gods. In one text an unnamed sage praises wisdom and the divine lord of wisdom, here understood to be Marduk, god of Babylon, whose way is both terrible and gentle: "I will praise. . . Marduk, the lord of wisdom, the deliberate god, who lays hold of the night but frees the day, whose fury surrounds him like a storm wind, but whose breeze is as pleasant as a morning zephyr, whose anger is irresistible, whose rage is a devastating flood, but whose heart is merciful, whose mind forgiving. . . whose hands the heavens cannot hold back, but whose gentle hand sustains the dying."2

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, wisdom was the domain of the philosopher, the lover of wisdom and knowledge, who dispenses wisdom and knowledge. Those philosophers with Cynic proclivities, so named for their rough, doglike lifestyles, employ witty sayings with a Cynic bite in order to teach the good and noble life. Thus: "Marcus Porcius Cato, when asked why he was studying Greek literature after his eightieth year, said, 'Not that I may die learned but that I may not die unlearned.'" And: "The Pythagorean philosopher Theano, when asked by someone how long it takes after having sex with a man for a woman to be pure to go to the Thesmophoria, said, 'If it is with her own husband, at once, but if with someone else's, never.'" And again: "When Diogenes the Cynic philosopher saw a country boy scooping up water in his hand in order to drink, he threw away the cup that he was carrying in his bag and said, 'Now I can be this much lighter.'" 3

In the world of early Judaism, sages are revered for their insight into the human condition before god, and sometimes the wisdom they proclaim is personified as Hokhmah (in Hebrew) or Sophia (in Greek), terms of feminine gender used to indicate wisdom as the female expression of the divine. The figure of wisdom in Judaism echoes the earlier goddesses of wisdom in other traditions-Maat in Egypt, Ishtar in Mesopotamia-and wisdom's career continues through the gnostic texts published in the present volume. In Proverbs wisdom herself is said to raise her voice:

1. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 412.
2. Ibid., p. 596.
3. On sayings of the Cynic philosophers, see Hock and O'Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric.

posted 21 April 2005 01:55 PM            

This ancient wisdom, which provided ideas of how people might live with insight, virtue, and happiness, proved to be compelling, and wisdom sayings were communicated both by word of mouth and in written form.

In the ancient world, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greco-Roman, and Jewish books of
wisdom were compiled and circulated widely. The wisdom literature of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia dates back to the second and third millennia BCE with collections of wisdom sayings by sages such as Amenemhat, Amenemope, Ptahhotep, Shuruppak, and Ahikar.

The Cynic sayings from GrecoRoman times were collected in textbooks called Progymnasmata. These sayings were called chreiai, "useful sayings;' and they were judged useful for rhetorical instruction and for the conduct of life.

The Progymnasmata were

posted 21 April 2005 01:57 PM            

YESHUA FORETELLS HIS DEATH

Now, there were some Greek Jews46 among those who went up to worship at the feast. They came to Philippos from Bethsaida of Galil and asked him, saying, "Sir, we wish to see Yeshua."
Philippos came and told Andreas.
Andreas and Philippos came and told Yeshua.
And Yeshua answered them, saying,
"The hour has come when the earthly son is glorifiedY Truly, truly I say to you,
unless a grain of wheat falling into the earth dies,
it remains alone.
But if it dies it brings forth a great harvest.48

"Whoever loves life will lose it, and whoever hates life in this world will keep it for life everlasting.

"Let anyone who serves me, follow me,
and where I am, there also will be my servant. Whoever serves me, the father will honor.

46. Ethnic Greeks who had converted to Judaism.
47. Glorification is the hour of his death, resurrection, and ascension.
48. "Harvest" is literally "fruie' It is often translated "harvest" or "crop;' since here it refers specifically to the fruit of a wheat grain, which would be a harvest or crop.

posted 21 April 2005 02:00 PM            

Another well-know teacher of the second century is Marcion, whom we discussed briefly in tb
general introduction to this volume. On account of his theological dualisIJ with its critical stance toward the Jewish god, the Hebrew Bible, and the woij in general, Marcion sometimes is called a gnostic, though we do not unde stand him to be an advocate of a religion of gnosis, as we noted above.

Valentinos was an Egyptian born in the Nile delta around the beginning
the second century. A convert to Christianity, Valentin os was educated Alexandria, and he learned about Greek philosophy, Christian thinking (m likely including that of Basilides), and hellenistic Jewish methods of readi and interpreting the scriptures.

He also seems to have been influenced by
Sethian gnostics of his time. Bentley Layton supports this by citing Irenael
observation: "Valentinos adapted the fundamental principles of the so-cal gnostic school of thought [Layton's classic gnostics] to his own kind of: tem."8

Valentinos went on to Rome, where he was caught up in theolog and ecclesiastical affairs in the Christian community there. The heresiolc Tertullian maintained that Valentinos hoped to become bishop of Romewe might say, his century's equivalent of the pope.

Valentin os proved to
brilliant teacher, and among his followers several continued his gn thought in their own literary works. This volume contains the best of the forts. Of Valentin os's own writings little survives.

Among the Valentinian presented here only the mystical meditation entitled the Gospel of Truth have been composed by Valentinos himself.9 Of the other literary war Valentinos, a fragment of a poem, "Summer Harvest," survives in the wr of the heresiologist Hippolytus:

Through spirit I see that all are suspended, through spirit I know that all are conveyed, flesh suspended from soul,
soul depending on air,
air suspended from atmosphere.

8. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.11.1.
9. Kurt Rudolph, incidentally, disagrees with this suggestion (Gnosis, 319).

posted 21 April 2005 02:03 PM            

Mandaeans, whose very name means "knowers" or "gnostics;' view Adam and Eve as their ancestors in two ways.

the Mandaeans' own salvation depends not only on revelations from heavenly light messengers such as Manda dHayye but also on their own correct performance of rituals, most notably baptism (masbuta) in living waters (mia hiyya).
Another important set of Mandaean myths reflects the highly ambivalent relationship of Mandaeism to Judaism. In oral traditions, the Mandaeans imply that they were present in Egypt with the Israelites and at the biblical

posted 21 April 2005 02:06 PM            

Although these stories suggest a desire to differentiate the Mandaeans icrn the biblical Israelites, they also reveal a kind of kinship, at least in terms aihistorical consciousness. Equally provocative is a text that depicts Judaism lastage that must be "cast off" before becoming Mandaean.

The same text, tnown as the Scroll of Exalted Kingship, connects the Mandaic term for Jewih people, or iahutaiia, with another word meaning "abortion" or "miscarriage," a midrashic type of pun that implies that Judaism is an incompletely developed religion in comparison with Mandaeism.

The most explicitly historical account of the group's origins, a document called the Haran gawaita, also suggests a link to Judaism. According to the Haran gawaita, a community of Mandaeans once lived in Jerusalem, where they were persecuted by the Jewish people. In response to this pressure, the text claims, the Mandaeans emigrated to the east, eventually settling in presalt day Iran and Iraq.

Elements of the text, including a reference to a certain king Ardban (perhaps the Parthian ruler Artaban III, Iv, or V), indicate a first or second century CE date for the events described. Finally, another story that takes place in Jerusalem tells of a Jewish girl named Miriai, who converted to Mandaeism after receiving a revelation from the savior figure Anosh. Miriai became the ancestor of 365 disciples, whose death at the hands of the Jewish people incited Anosh to destroy the city of Jerusalem and slay the Jewish community.

These and other complex stories allude to an intimate if highly ambivalent relationship between Mandaeism and Judaism. This relationship is also attested to by a host of similar (and in some cases identical) beliefs in angels, a number of striking and important parallels between Mandaeism and Jewish mysticism, and a shared history in Babylonia, where the two communities spoke similar dialects of Aramaic and had extensive contact over the centuries.

A different theory of origins was offered by the Portuguese Christians who came into contact with the Mandaeans in the sixteenth century. Although they were not the first European Christians to encounter the Mandaeans (an Italian Dominican monk reported a meeting in 1290), the

posted 21 April 2005 02:09 PM            

From these sources they formed their own cosmogony (creation of the world) and theogony (creation of the gods) and their fantastic symbolic legends.

While confined to the earth, the gnostics believed, each human being consists of a vital trinity of material body, temporal soul, and eternal spirit. Within that physical and mental trinity, one is free to ascend from body and soul to eternal spirit, even before death, from darkness to the freedom of full illumination. These powerful, radical ideas opened interior ways of endless possibility.

Nothing is all new, yet the specific articulation of gnosticism was a new, alluring alternative to the normative religion that locked ideas into dogma, bureaucracy, and worldly power to defeat infidels and banish creative solitude. The attractive equation of knowledge, light, spirit, and god was at the heart of gnosticism as it developed in differing modes all over the ancient world.

Around the time of the crucifixion, gnosticism rose in the Near East, Egypt, and the European Roman Empire. In this turbulent period of diaspora, dispirit, intense speculation, and self-proclaimed prophets and messiahs, the gnostics chose the meditative gaze.

Their dualism was not only of two conflicting gods but of external flesh and internal spirit, and these two human attributes lived in absolute separation. There is nothing new about the Cartesian split of mind and matter, but in the instance of the gnostics mind is all and the rest an encumbrance. The body is matter. Their turn from the body is not Asian asceticism or flesh-loathing puritanism.

It is simply that mind is the only reality that can turn into light. In this sense we see how close the gnostics are to Plotinian immersion in the all, the sun, the good, where all the rest is illusion. In gnosticism (which Plotinos derided) the ascent is inward to the fullness, to a glimpse of and participation in the light of the pleroma.

Other than the jargon and metaphor, there is little difference in the mystical leap to immediate salvation in gnosticism and the Plotinian way. Both offer salvation now in one's life, in contrast to the three orthodox Abrahamic religions, which hold out some form of salvation as a reward after death. The Kabbalist and Christian mystics, who have operated on the borders of heresy, also report ascension and adhesion to or immersion in god, and their voyage is immediate and presumably outside time.

The meaning of their experience differs specifically from that of the gnostic, however, in that their communion or union with god is not consummated as a confirmation of eternal salvation-all that must occur as a reward in the afterlife-while the gnostic does find eternal salvation in the now, which even later death will

posted 21 April 2005 02:12 PM            

The gnosticsi did not accept the humanity of Jesus (Jesus was a phantom), nor the trinity of! father, son, and holy spirit, nor god himself as their god.

To the Christians, gnosticism was not only a threat to their dominion but also a negation of the conceptual frame of Christianity. The traditional Christians were also in a period of anxiety, instability, and danger. Christianity was still at odds with Judaism and with imperial Rome, which persecuted it.

From Rome to Cappadocia in Anatolia (present-day Turkey), the Christians were living in caves and underground to escape the Roman sword. They lacked a mainstream church (from the start there were internal feuds, as their own beginning had been a feud with feIiow Jews), and they were struggling to confirm their own doctrine and d_main.

Above all, the lack of a defined Bible createdi a scriptural vacuum. There would not be an official selection of books to bel included in the New Testament until the Nicaean Council in 325.20 The He brew Bible history of the Jews, which they either denied or interpreted as their histoty, was a scriptural dilemma and a plague to them even till this day.

So while the gnostics were creating abundant scripture with extravagant: myths that made god the counterfeit creator of the world, the Christians wandered in a maze of overlapping apocrypha, epistles, and apocalypses, all competing for inclusion in a yet to be determined canon. The Jews were less of ai

20. In The First Edition of the New Testament, David Trobisch states that by the middle of the second century the essential New Testament was defined and being copied. Nevertheless, while the core texts of the Gospels, Acts, and some of the letters may have been set in their final form. the question of which other texts would be included remained a matter of dispute until well into the fourth century.

posted 21 April 2005 02:15 PM            

threat, except for the unchangeable fact that their Hebrew Bible, though interpreted throughout as a prophecy of Christianity, had been appropriated to stand alone as the Christian Bible.

It was odd and surely discomforting that the one established book of the Christians was still the Book of the Jews, whether read in Hebrew, in Septuagint Greek, or in the Old Latin translation.

While the Jewish Bible had long been set, New Testament scriptures (written by Christian Jews, about and for Jews) remained in flux, and a Christian Bible, containing Old and New Testaments, was still nearly four centuries away.

In response to these many challenges to the church, Christian apologists forcefully rejected "the abominable writings of the demonic heretics." Ironically, in the course of angry refutation, the heresiologists imitated the gnostic philosophers and developed their own Christian exegesis.

For its part, gnosticism with immense vitality challenged and widely subverted Christian theology-which had its own divisions-and remained Christianity's most serious rival, even when muted, until the birth of Islam.

THE DESTRUCTION OF RIVAL GNOSTICS AND CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION

Christianity responded to rivals of their dominion by silencing the gnostics along with the religious and philosophical remnants of the Greco-Roman world. As early as the second century, Christian clerics destroyed gnostic texts, burned meeting places, and went after the pagan arts and philosophers with a fury. But how did the syncretistic hellenistic ethos disappear in the West?

The classical Greek civilization of Alexandria had given us Euclid and his principles of geometry, Longinos describing Sappho's religious ecstasy in "On the Sublime;' the philosophers Philo and Plotinos keeping platonism alive, and the main schools of classical gnosticism. But after this great flowering, the city's culture was violently shut down.

Christians under the command of the Alexandrian patriarch Theophilos of Alexandria (later saint), with approval by the Byzantine emperor Theodosios I, leveled the major temple complex of the Sarapeum in 391. In the Sarapeum was lodged the Mouseion (museum) library, the greatest library of antiquity, holding about 700,000 rolls.

After razing the buildings, Theophilos used the temple stone to construct Christian churches. His nephew Bishop Cyril (later saint), attacked Egyptian Christian and hermetic gnostics as heretics, burned synagogues, and drove the Jews out of Alexandria. In 415 Cyril ordered a mob of Nitrian monks to stone to death the woman philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician Hypatia, the last