Religious Questions

The Gnostics The First Christian Heretics

SEAN MARTIN

POCKET ESSENTIALS

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First published in 2006 by Pocket Essentials

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© Sean Martin 2006

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Texts and Gospels

The Nag Hammadi discovery is the single largest and best known find of Gnostic documents in history. The texts, as we have noted, were bound into 13 leather codices and their contents offer us direct access into the mystic, mythic world of Gnosticism. Of the 52 works that comprise the Nag Hammadi library, 40 were previously unknown. The texts fall into a number of loose categories, such as creation myths, liturgical and ritual texts, writings on various Gnostic themes such as the nature of the soul and the Divine Feminine, the sayings of Jesus, the lives of the Apostles, as well as a small number of Hermetic texts and a section of Plato’s Republic. There were originally further works that have not survived, or are so fragmentary that nothing can be gleaned from them. While it is beyond the scope of our present discussion to study the entire Nag Hammadi library, a few of the more important texts are the ones that follow.

The Apocryphon of John

The Apocryphon, or Secret Book, of John, contains one of the most detailed Gnostic creation myths that has come down to us. Thought to have been based on an earlier Jewish text, the Apocryphon of John was Christianised to feature the figure of Jesus, who appears throughout as the Revealer, and recounts the mysteries of creation to the apostle John, the narrator. The Secret Book was widely

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copied and belongs to the Sethian school of Gnosticism; it has been suggested that they even regarded it as the sequel to the Gospel of John. Its main theme is the origin of evil, and how we can escape it and return to the Pleroma.

The text opens with John at the Temple in Jerusalem, some time after the Crucifixion. A Pharisee appears and mocks him, telling him that his teacher (Jesus) has filled his head with lies, ‘closed your minds, and turned you from the traditions of your parents’.78

Troubled, John flees to a mountain to contemplate, when suddenly the heavens open and Jesus appears to him in the form of a child, then as an old man and finally as a youth. He consoles John, telling him ‘I am with you always. I am the father, I am the mother, I am the child. I am the incorruptible and the defiled one.’79

Jesus begins to recount the story of creation, beginning with a description of the true God, describing him as ‘pure light into which no eye can gaze’.

The One is illimitable, since there is nothing before it to limit it, Unfathomable, since there is nothing before it to fathom it, Immeasurable, since there was nothing before to measure it, Invisible, since nothing has seen it, Eternal, since it exists eternally, Unutterable, since there is nothing before it to give it a name. […] The One is a realm that gives a realm, life that gives life, a blessed one that gives blessedness, knowledge that gives knowledge, a good one that gives goodness, mercy that gives mercy and redemption, grace that gives grace.80

The true God, enamoured with his own reflection, emanates Barbelo and her attributes are listed: ‘her light shines like the father’s light; she, the perfect power, is the image of the perfect and invisible virgin spirit… the perfect glory among the realms, the

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glory of revelation’.81 The Christ child is then born to Barbelo, fol- lowed by the emanation of the aeons and the appearance of the first human, Geradamas. His name probably means ‘Adam the stranger’, implying that Adam is a stranger to the created world of matter, whose real home is the eternal realm of light. The fall occurs when Sophia desires to bring forth a being without the approval or knowl- edge of her consort. The being she produces is Ialdabaoth, who ‘did not resemble its mother and was misshapen’ and has ‘the figure of a snake with the face of a lion. Its eyes were like flashing bolts of light- ning’.82

Ialdabaoth, believing himself to be the only god, takes power from his mother and produces from his own mindlessness the first archons, who rule over each sphere of the heavens. It is clear that the Demiurge’s creation is flawed:

When the light mixed with darkness, it made the darkness shine. When darkness mixed with light, it dimmed the light and became neither light nor darkness, but rather gloom.83

Sophia, feeling depleted after Ialdabaoth’s theft of some of her light, repents ‘with many tears’.The beings in the Pleroma hear her and offer her praises to the great virgin spirit, who accepts Sophia’s repentance. Sophia must remain in the ninth sphere ‘until she restored what was lacking in herself’.84

A voice calls out in Ialdabaoth’s realm, ‘The man exists and the son of Man’, which the Demiurge thinks is his mother calling him. He doesn’t realise that this is the true God speaking to him, who then appears to the arrogant creator God in human form.

Inspired by this divine encounter, Ialdabaoth and a team of archons create Adam’s soul. A still greater array of archons then create his body, each of them being given a specific job, from Raphao, who creates Adam’s head, down to Miamai, who does the toenails. A further detachment of archons is required to animate

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Adam, again, each one being given responsibility for a particular body part, but try as they might they can’t bring Adam to life.

A group of aeons descend in order to recover Sophia’s light and advise Ialdabaoth to breathe life into Adam himself. Ialdabaoth does so, unaware that he has breathed light into Adam. Having some of Sophia’s power within him, Adam immediately comes to life. Ialdabaoth and the archons become jealous, recognising that Adam has superior intelligence to any of them.They throw Adam into ‘the lowest part of the whole material realm’.

Eve joins Adam in the Garden of Eden; Jesus, in the form of an eagle, bids them to eat the fruit of the tree of life. Ialdabaoth becomes jealous that Eve has attained gnosis and rapes her. This results in the birth of Cain and Abel. It is only with her third child, Seth, that Eve has a child with Adam.

Christ then speaks to John about human destiny, the fate of believers (Gnostics) and those who ‘had knowledge but turned away’.85 The Apocryphon ends with Jesus’ hymn, in which he declares himself to be ‘the light dwelling in light’ and ‘let whoever hears arise from deep sleep’.86

Other Nag Hammadi texts offer variant versions of Gnostic cos- mology and cosmogony, among them the Hypostasis of the Archons, On the Origin of the World, the Apocalypse of Adam and the Paraphrase of Shem; lack of space in the present volume sadly prevents discussion here.

The Gospel of Truth

The Gospel of Truth is a Valentinian gospel, thought by some to be the work of Valentinus himself. The gospel is mentioned by Irenaeus, which dates it to around the middle of the second century, which would make Valentinus’ authorship all the more plausible. It is generally considered to be one of the gems of the

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entire Nag Hammadi collection. Unlike the canonical gospels, which all recount Jesus’ life and ministry as a narrative, the Gospel of Truth is typical of Gnostic gospels in that narrative is largely absent. The gospel is essentially a poetic exegesis, portraying Jesus as a ‘quiet guide’ who has come to reveal the mysteries of the hidden father, ignorance of whom can only lead to terror and fear. Jesus confounds the other scribes and teachers, claiming that they were foolish since they tried to understand the world by analysing the law. It is only knowledge which leads to salvation, not adhering to the letter of the law. Jesus’ crucifixion is seen as the price to be paid for bringing the good news of gnosis to ‘the empty territory of fears’.

In a celebrated passage, ignorance is likened to a nightmare:

Either they are fleeing somewhere, or they lack strength to escape when pursued. They are involved in inflicting blows, or they them- selves receive bruises. They are falling from high places, or they fly through the air with no wings at all. Other times, it is as if certain people were trying to kill them, even though there is no one pur- suing them; or they themselves are killing those beside them, and they are stained by their blood. Until the moment when they who are passing through all these things – I mean they who have experi- enced all these confusions – awaken, they see nothing because the dreams were nothing.87

Awakening, the gaining of gnosis, the gospel states, is the only way out of the nightmare of material existence.

The Gospel of Thomas

Arguably the most famous Nag Hammadi text, the Gospel of Thomas was in fact partially discovered at Oxyrhynchus when three Greek fragments were unearthed in 1897, with further

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