Religious Questions

Gnostic Christian Texts: Introduction Bart D. Ehrman

(taken from After the New Testament, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2015, pgs 165–223)

Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, we were ill-informed concerning the beliefs and practices of early Christian Gnostics, since virtually all of our information came from attacks leveled against them by their proto-orthodox opponents. An enemy can scarcely be trusted to provide a fair or accurate portrayal of one’s views. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts did not completely remedy the problem, however. For one thing, these texts do not themselves present a unified view of what Gnosticism was, but represent a remarkable range of perspective and belief. Even more problematic, these documents do not as a rule lay out what the Gnostics believed and practiced, but presuppose such matters as the backdrop for what they do want to discuss. That is to say, these books were written by Gnostics for Gnostics, and so do not go to any great lengths to explain what the authors and readers together assume to be true (any more than an article on the sports page about the first game of the World Series explains the rules and history of baseball). Modern readers who want to know what Gnosticism was about, then, are compelled to read between the lines to try to reconstruct the underlying assumptions about the divine realm, the world, and the place of humanity in it, as well as to see what ritual practices and ethical systems were found among such groups. As a result, scholars devoted to uncovering such matters continue to dispute rather basic issues. These include the most fundamental question of all: whether it makes sense even to use the term “Gnosticism,” given the circumstance that it has been used to describe so many different ancient religious groups and phenomena. Most scholars continue to utilize the term, either to refer to only one such group (the Sethians, who will be discussed below) or as an umbrella term to cover a number of groups with many similarities among themselves. Those who use the term in this latter sense have heated debates over such matters as where Gnosticism came from, whether it was originally connected with Christianity, and what its various permutations were. It is often thought, in any event, that (a) a wide range of Gnostic groups, many of them Christian, thrived in the second century of the common era; (b) these groups agreed that this material world is not the creation of the one true God, but by lower divinities, often thought to be ignorant or inferior, and that the world is a place of imprisonment for elements of the divine who are trapped here in human bodies; (c) these groups stressed “knowledge” (= gnosis, hence the term “gnostic”) as a way of salvation from this awful world; and (d) this saving knowledge was brought from above, by Christ, and it is this revelation of truth, rather than his death and resurrection, that ultimately matter for salvation. Several of the texts from Nag Hammadi represent explications of the Gnostic myths that convey these views; these are probably to be allowed poetic license rather than taken as propositional truths or historical sketches of what “really” happened in the mythic

past. Many of these are interpretations of the Jewish Scriptures, especially the opening chapters of Genesis, which provided fuel for the mythological imagination. Other texts are poetical reflections on the divine realm, the need for liberating knowledge, and the nature of the world or of the human place in it; yet others contain attacks on literal- minded Christians who failed to recognize the truth (see Chapter 7). The few Gnostic texts that have survived in other places (i.e., outside of Nag Hammadi), also seem to share many of these basic perspectives. We know of three major religious groups that subscribed to such views, to one degree or another: the Sethians, the Valentinians, and (possibly) the Thomasines. I will explain the characteristics of each of these groups, and introduce an undifferentiated set of fourth texts (different from the three, but not cohesive as a separate group) below. Sethian Gnostics The group of Gnostics that scholars have labeled the “Sethians” are known from the writings of proto-orthodox heresiologists beginning with Irenaeus (around 180 CE) and from some of the significant writings of the Nag Hammadi library. They were a thriving sect already by the middle of the second century.

Members of the group may not have called themselves Sethians. Scholars call them this because among their distinctive features they understood themselves to be the spiritual descendants of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. Many of the books associated with the Sethians present detailed and complex myths that explain the origins of the divine realm, the material world, and the humans who inhabit it. These mind-stretching myths, best seen in the Apocryphon of John (the first Selection included here), were not simply intellectual flights of fancy meant to mystify outsiders. They were understood as explanations of the very real, but inordinate, complexities of the world, especially of the divine, spiritual world above, which was separated from the material realm we inhabit. By understanding the world one could be united with the mind of God and separated from the concerns of the body. As was true of other systems of thought influenced by the writings of Plato, the Sethian exercise of coming to understand the true nature of things was a means of ascending to the spiritual realm above, away from the crass material existence of our daily lives.

The Sethian myths begin by describing the original, single, perfect divine being called the Invisible Spirit. This one is both unknown and unknowable — so distinct from anything we can imagine that it cannot be described. This Spirit is said to evolve into an entire Pleroma (= fullness) or other divine beings called aeons. The first of these is the Mother of all, named Barbelo, who is often accompanied by a being called Son (or Christ, or “Self-Originate”) – making, then, a kind of original Trinity. The Pleroma within which the ensuing aeons emerge and exist is encompassed by four realms of light, each assigned to a different being: Harmozel, Oroiael, Daueithai, and Eleleth. There are numerous other beings who occupy these realms, including the first Human, named Adamas, who is the divine version of the first material human, Adam.

In a number of these myths, the various aeons that make up the Pleroma come into existence in gendered pairs, male and female. One of the female figures, far down the chain of divinity, is named Sophia (= Wisdom), who for one reason or another conceives progeny without her male consort. Among the resulting offspring of Sophia is a divinity named Ialdabaoth (sometimes called Sakla; and sometimes accompanied by one named Nebruel). Since this one is born outside the realm of the divine Pleroma – or was cast out from there –it is portrayed as haughty, ignorant, and sometimes even malevolent. Ialdabaoth, in his ignorance, boasts that he alone is God. For the Sethians, he is, in fact, considered to be the Creator God of the Old Testament.

Based on what little they know or recall of the spiritual realm of the Pleroma, this outcast deity and his divine minions that come into being create the material world, a place of imperfection, injustice, and suffering. There is, therefore, a strong dualistic element in these Sethian myths: the imperfect and awful material world stands in stark contrast with the perfection of the spiritual realm above. Humans themselves are created as purely material beings; but the spiritual power from on high is breathed into them by Sophia herself (or by another divine being, such as Barbelo).

The goal of the Sethian religion is to return this divine power, resident in humans, to its heavenly home. For that to happen, this imperfect creation in which we live needs to be corrected. The “seed of Seth” – those among humans who have the power of Sophia resident within them — can restore lost humanity to the spiritual realm. This happens when one learns the truth of one’s divine origin.

But how can one learn this truth? It happens when the divine Seth himself comes to be incarnate in the man Jesus, who is the human form of the savior above. He then provides the means for perfection and a return to the divine realm. In this understanding of things, Jesus has a real body, but he is an incarnation of an aeon from the Pleroma, come to bring salvation for the souls that are trapped in the prisons of their material bodies, who need to return to their heavenly home. This return comes not only by learning the truth of the world and our place in it, but also by receiving a baptism that involves being sealed with five mystical seals. This baptism allows one to transcend this limited material existence and to experience a mystical ascent to the realm above, so as to contemplate its greatness, becoming one with the divine. In addition to learning the truth and undergoing baptism, the Sethian Gnostic is to live an ascetic life, avoiding the pleasures of the flesh that tie one to this material existence, preparing the soul for its ascent to the divine world of the Pleroma.

Valentinians Unlike the Sethian Gnostics, the Valentinians were named after an actual person, Valentinus, the founder and original leader of the group. We know about the Valentinians from the writings of proto-orthodox heresiologists beginning with Irenaeus and by some of the writings discovered among the Nag Hammadi Library that almost certainly derive from Valentinian authors, including one book that may actually have been written by Valentinus himself (The Gospel of Truth).

Valentinus was born around 100 CE and was raised in Alexandria Egypt. He allegedly was a student of the Christian teacher Theudas, who was in turn a disciple of the apostle Paul. Valentinus moved to Rome in the late 130s and there became an influential speaker and teacher. According to some of our early reports he very nearly was elected to be the bishop of Rome. Despite his distinctive views – which for the proto-orthodox seemed completely aberrant – he and his followers continued on in the Roman church. There is nothing to suggest that he or his followers started their own churches; they worshiped with proto-orthodox Christians and were in outer appearance very difficult to tell apart from them.

Valentinus nonetheless had been heavily influenced by the Sethian Gnostic myth and adopted it into a kind of proto-orthodox framework. His understanding of the divine and material realms were somewhat less complex than the Sethian; his views of the creator God were not as harsh; he was not as condemning of the material world; and he had a more developed understanding of the human race: according to Irenaeus, he and his followers taught that just as a person has a body, soul, and spirit, so too the race itself is divided up into people who are purely animal (bodies that ceased to exist when they died), or psychic (i.e., “soulish” – these are regular Christians who can be saved and given a decent afterlife if they have faith and do good works), or pneumatic (i.e. “spiritual: – these are the Valentinians who understand the deeper truths that are necessary for a full salvation in a return to the Pleroma above).

None of the surviving Valentinian writings lays out their understanding of how the divine and human realms came into being in a way comparable to the Sethians (for example, the Secret Book of John). But it is clear that the Valentinians not only worshiped in the proto-orthodox churches, they also accepted proto-orthodox Scriptural texts (books that were coming to be seen as canonical) and adhered to proto-orthodox doctrinal teachings – at least on the surface. What made the Valentinians distinctive is that they interpreted both these writings and these doctrines in their own, decidedly non-orthodox, ways, to teach the fuller truths of the nature of the divine Pleroma, the inferiority of this material world, the entrapment of elements of the divine here in human bodies, and the need for them to be set free by recognizing the truths that could be brought from above by Christ and by undergoing the rituals necessary for redemption.

Because they remained in the proto-orthodox churches, confessed the proto-orthodox doctrines, and read the proto-orthodox writings – all the while interpreting them in a vastly different way from the non-Valentinians among them – they were seen by the proto-orthodox heresiologists to be a particularly nefarious group, hard to detect and difficult to root out. And they were thought to be dangerous to the communities in which they resided, as they taught their views as a kind of elitist understanding of the faith for those who wanted to advance to a higher level of spiritual knowledge.

The lure of the Valentinian view can be seen in the beautiful reflection known as the Gospel of Truth which, as indicated, may actually derive from the pen of Valentinus himself. Others of their writings show how close to the proto-orthodox views of

Scripture the Valentinians stood (in contrast to the Sethians), as in the Letter of Ptolemy to Flora (see Chapter 10) and the Treatise on the Resurrection. Yet other writings show how mystical, deep, and esoteric Valentinian reflections on the nature of the world and our place in it can be, as in the powerful, but difficult, Gospel of Philip.

Thomasines A number of books from the early Christian tradition are connected with a figure known as Didymus Judas Thomas. The word “Didymus” means “twin” in Greek; so too the name “Thomas” means “twin” in Aramaic. And so this person is Judas, or Jude, the twin. But the twin of whom? In our earliest surviving Gospel, Jesus himself is said to have a brother who is named Jude (for example, Mark 6). And in later traditions, especially from Syria, this Jude was thought to have been a twin of Jesus himself. In fact, in some traditions – including the Acts of Thomas that we have already seen (Chapter 2) – Thomas is Jesus’ identical twin. How Jesus could have a (mortal) twin if he was born of a virgin is something these traditions never explain.

There appears to have been a range of Christians who especially revered Didymus Judas Thomas. And who better to acclaim the truth among Jesus’ earthly associates than his own identical twin brother? Several of these books share important views and concerns, making it appear that these Thomasine Christians may have been their own Christian group, sharing key theological views and accepting various literary texts associated with Thomas.

Among these texts would be the Gospel of Thomas, given elsewhere here (see Selection 43), the Acts of Thomas, also given elsewhere (see Selection 48), a beautiful poem called the “Hymn of the Pearl,” embedded in these Acts of Thomas, and a book discovered among the Nag Hammadi Library called the Book of Thomas the Contender, or sometimes simply the Book of Thomas.

It is debated whether any or all of these books should be considered “Gnostic.” Many scholars today think that the answer is no, but it must be admitted that there is at least a Gnostic-like quality about these writings. They certainly do not narrate any of the complex Gnostic myths, as can be found among Sethian writings such as the Secret Book of John. If the narration of these myths is what makes a book Gnostic, then obviously the Thomasine literature does not qualify. On the other hand, these Thomasine writings do seem to presuppose a mythological understanding of the world which, without all the complexities of the developed Gnostic systems that we read elsewhere, has in broad outline many fundamental parallels with and similarities to the Gnostic myths.

These books, for example, understand that the real human is a being that has come from another realm into this world, and that it has been trapped here in the realm of matter. Being here, in the human body, is like being drunk or forgetful – out of touch with reality. The real person needs to escape this entrapment in the body, by becoming sober again, wakeful, and alert. This can happen when the person comes to the gnosis – the knowledge – of the truth, as revealed, for example, by Christ. And part of this salvation by gnosis comes through the practice of rigorous asceticism, the rejection of

the pleasures of the flesh. These are all themes that would have resonated with Gnostic Christians, and so it may be that even if this Thomasine literature was not generated by Gnostics and for Gnostics, it would have easily been amenable to Gnostic understandings of the world. This may be why two of these Thomasine writings were included among the treatises of the Nag Hammadi library, most of which are more clearly Gnostic in their orientation.

Other Gnostic Texts As we have seen, scholars over the past two decades have come to realize that Gnosticism was an inordinately complex and messy set of religious traditions and practices. In some ways it is very convenient, but completely misleading, to categorize all Gnostics as Sethians, Valentinians, and Thomasines. Just as Christianity itself has a mind-boggling range of variant groups supporting divergent beliefs and practices – yet all of them in some way or another cohering enough to warrant labeling them “Christian” – so too with Gnosticism.

Some of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi library do not fit neatly into the narrow confines of Sethian, Valentinian, or Thomasine texts, yet they share many of the same concerns. In particular, there are texts that recount myths about the rise of the divine realm, the creation of the material world, and the beginning of the human race that do not contain many of the most salient features of the specifically Sethian myths. They may talk about divine Sophia or the creator God Ialdabaoth, for example, but they make no reference to the distinctively Sethian concept of the four luminaries: Harmozel, Oroiael, Daueithai, and Eleleth. And so these texts are not Sethian (and certainly not Valentinian or Thomasine), and yet they are very much aligned with Sethian understandings of the world and the human’s place in it.

These various texts do not cohere particularly well with one another either, so that they do not represent yet another Gnostic school of thought. And so it is perhaps better simply to say that they represent “Other Gnostic” views or that they are “Gnostic-like” in their concerns, views, and myths. Here we will see two such documents that can give a sense of what non-Sethian Gnostic myth can look like.

Major Views of Various Gnostic Groups (this is taken from Ehrman’s The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to Early Christian Writings.) Despite the many differences among the various Gnostic groups, most of them appear to have subscribed to the following views. (1) The divine realm is inhabited not only by one ultimate God but also by a range of other divine beings, widely known as aeons. These aeons are, in a sense, personifications of the ultimate God’s mental capacities and/or powers (some of them were called such things as Reason, Will, Grace, and Wisdom). (2) The physical world that we inhabit was not the creation of the ultimate God but of a lower, ignorant divine being, who is often identified with the God of the Jewish

Bible. Because the creator-god is an inferior being, the material world is a miserable place in which to live and was widely separated from the spiritual world above. (3) The ultimate reason there is evil in this world – and the reason the inferior creator- God came into existence in the first place – is related to the actions of one of higher divine powers (aeons) that inhabited the spiritual realm. Usually this divine figure is called “Sophia,” or “Wisdom.” (4) All human beings, or for some Gnostics, only some human beings, possess a spiritual element or an immortal soul that is connected with the divine realm. But because of their imprisonment in this world they have become oblivious of their divine origin. (5) Salvation has been achieved because a divine being from the spiritual realm has visited this realm and awakened human beings endowed with the spiritual element or the immortal soul to the knowledge (gnosis) of their divine origin. (6) For Christian Gnostics, it is Jesus Christ who is that divine being from above, who has come to provide knowledge that brings salvation. The most common way Gnostics explained these views to themselves was not by stating them as “doctrines” to be believed, but by recounting myths that embodied and portrayed their various ideas. Different gnostic groups had different versions of these myths. Here I can discuss two of the most important of these groups, as known by scholars today.