THE GNOSTIC BIBLE E D I T E D BY Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer S H A M B H A L A Boston & London 2003 Shambhala Publications, Inc. Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 www.shambhala.com ©2003 by Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Printed in the United States of America © This edition is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39.48 Standard. Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., and in Canada by Random House of Canada Ltd Interior design and composition: Greta D. Sibley & Associates Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The gnostic Bible/edited by Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 1-57062-242-6 (alk. paper) 1. Gnostic literature. I. Barnstone, Willis, 1927- II. Meyer, Marvin W. BT1390.G4937 2003 299'.932 DC21 2003007148 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX GNOSTICISM, GNOSTICS, AND THE GNOSTIC BIBLE • Marvin Meyer l LETTING IN THE LIGHT: TRANSLATING HOLY TEXTS • Willis Barnstone 21 PART ONE Early Wisdom Gospels 29 INTRODUCTION • Marvin Meyer 31 1. The Gospel of Thomas 43 2. The Gospel of John 70 PART TWO Literature of Gnostic Wisdom 105 INTRODUCTION • Marvin Meyer 107 3. The Book of Baruch • Justin 119 SETHIAN LITERATURE 4. The Secret Book of John 135 5. The Reality of the Rulers 166 6. The Revelation of Adam 178 7. Three Forms of First Thought 189 CONTENTS 8. The Three Steles of Seth 201 9. The Vision of the Foreigner 212 10. The Sermon of Zostrianos 215 11. The Baptismal Ceremony of the Gospel of the Egyptians 218 12. Thunder 224 13. The Letter of Peter to Philip 233 VALENTINIAN LITERATURE 14. The Gospel of Truth 239 15. The Gospel of Philip 257 16. The Letter to Flora • Ptolemy 299 17. Commentary on the Gospel of John • Herakleon 307 18. The Treatise on Resurrection 326 19. The Prayer of the Messenger Paul 332 20. Valentinian Liturgical Readings 335 21. The Secret Book of James 340 22. The Round Dance of the Cross 351 THOMAS AND OTHER SYRIAN LITERATURE 23. The Songs of Solomon 357 24. The Song of the Pearl 386 25. The Book of Thomas 395 ADDITIONAL LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 26. The Exegesis on the Soul 405 27. On the Origin of the World 414 CONTENTS VII 28. The Paraphrase of Shem 438 29. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth 465 30. The Gospel of Mary 477 31. The Naassene Sermon 482 PART THREE Hermetic Literature 495 INTRODUCTION • Willis Barnstone 497 32. Poimandres 502 33. The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth 512 34. The Prayer of Thanksgiving 521 PART FOUR Mandaean Literature 525 INTRODUCTION • NathanielDeutsch 527 35. The Ginza 536 36. Hibil's Lament from the Book of John 555 37. Songs from the Mandaean Liturgy 561 PART FIVE Manichaean Literature 567 INTRODUCTION • PaulMirecki 569 38. On the Origin of His Body 581 39. The Story of the Death of Mani 593 40. Kephalaia 598 41. The Coptic Manichaean Songbook 616 VIII CONTENTS 42. Parthian Songs 639 43. The Great Song to Mani 647 ' PART SIX Islamic Mystical Literature 655 INTRODUCTION • Marvin Meyer 657 44. The Mother of Books 665 PART SEVEN Cathar Literature 727 INTRODUCTION • Willis Barnstone 729 45. The Gospel of the Secret Supper 740 46. The Book of the Two Principles 751 47. A Nun's Sermon 762 EPILOGUE: HISTORICAL MEDITATION ON THE INNER LIGHT OF GNOSIS • Willis Barnstone 765 GLOSSARY 801 BIBLIOGRAPHY FURTHER READING 821 SOURCES CITED 835 INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 849 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to acknowledge several people and organizations that have helped in the production of this volume. For a number of years Chapman University has given generous encouragement to the scholarly research of Marvin Meyer on gnostic texts by providing sabbatical leaves and financial as- sistance, and the work on this volume has been undertaken with the support of the Griset Chair in Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University. Nathaniel Deutsch and Paul Mirecki have contributed insightful introduc- tions to Mandaean and Manichaean literature in this volume, and Heather Terjung has produced an English translation of the German version of the Mother of Books. Linden Youngquist has provided essential computer expert- ise for formatting the texts and preparing the bibliography. The editorial staff of Shambhala Publications has taken on this large publishing project with creativity and resourcefulness. Joel Segel has brought his editorial vision to the creation of the book and has been a model of patience, persistence, and pro- fessionalism. Kendra Crossen Burroughs and Dave O'Neal have seen the man- uscript successfully through press. Lastly, we recognize our colleagues, friends, and family members who have long endured our preoccupations and have offered us, in many ways, insights into wisdom and gnosis. Willis Barnstone Marvin Meyer IX GNOSTICISM, GNOSTICS, AND THE GNOSTIC BIBLE M A R V I N M E Y E R Know what is in front of your face and what is hidden from you will be disclosed. —Gospel of Thomas 5 I he gnostics were religious mystics who proclaimed gnosis, knowl- • edge, as the way of salvation. To know oneself truly allowed gnos- JL. tic men and women to know god1 directly, without any need for the mediation of rabbis, priests, bishops, imams, or other religious officials. 1. Throughout the present volume we have tried to avoid unnecessary capitalization of the word god and the names of personified spiritual powers and aeons. We are aware that the word god may be used as a name for the divine, but it frequently functions as a general term for the divine, so that even when "god" appears to be a name, it retains its primary nature as a term signifying the concept of divinity. For the same reason, other names of divine expressions, such as divine forethought, afterthought, and wisdom, are likewise left uncapitalized. Conversely, for the sake of clarity, when the Greek word "Sophia" is used for wisdom, that is capitalized, as are other names that are transliterated directly from other languages. We also want to avoid the common practice of singling out a particular deity, for example, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic deity, for the exclusive honor of the capitalized name "God," while other deities are relegated to the status of mere "gods" and "goddesses." We do not wish to limit the divine by restricting deity through name or selectivity. Traditionally the name and face of the divine are essentially unknowable, and so it is in this volume. 2 INTRODUCTION Religious officials, who were not pleased with such freedom and independ- ence, condemned the gnostics as heretical and a threat to the well-being and good order of organized religion. Heresiologists—heresy hunters of a bygone age who busied themselves exposing people judged dangerous to the Christ- ian masses—fulminated against what they maintained was the falsehood of the gnostics. Nonetheless, from the challenge of this perceived threat came much of the theological reflection that has characterized the intellectual his- tory of the Christian church. The historical roots of the gnostics reach back into the time of the Greeks, Romans, and Second Temple Jews. Some gnostics were Jewish, others Greco- Roman, and many were Christian. There were Mandaean gnostics from Iraq and Iran; Manichaeans from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and all the way to China; Islamic gnostics in the Muslim world; and Cathars in west- ern Europe. The heyday of their influence extends from the second century CE through the next several centuries. Their influence and their presence, some say, continue to the present day. Gnostics sought knowledge and wisdom from many different sources, and they accepted insight wherever it could be found. Like those who came before them, they embraced a personified wisdom, Sophia, understood vari- ously and taken as the manifestation of divine insight. To gain knowledge of the deep things of god, gnostics read and studied diverse religious and philo- sophical texts. In addition to Jewish sacred literature, Christian documents, and Greco-Roman religious and philosophical texts, gnostics studied reli- gious works from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Zoroastrians, Muslims, and Buddhists. All such sacred texts disclosed truths, and all were to be celebrated for their wisdom. Gnostics loved to explore who they were and from where they had come, and hence they read creation stories such as the opening chapters of Genesis with vigor and enthusiasm. Like others, they recognized that creation stories not only claim to describe what was, once upon a time, but also suggest what is, now, in our own world. The gnostics carried to their reading a conviction that the story of creation was not a happy one. There is, they reasoned, something fundamentally wrong with the world, there is too much evil and pain and death in the world, and so there must have been something wrong with creation. Consequently, gnostics provided innovative and oftentimes disturbing in- terpretations of the creation stories they read. They concluded that a distinc- tion, often a dualistic distinction, must be made between the transcendent, INTRODUCTION 3 spiritual deity, who is surrounded by aeons and is all wisdom and light, and the creator of the world, who is at best incompetent and at worst malevolent. Yet through everything, they maintained, a spark of transcendent knowledge, wisdom, and light persists within people who are in the know. The transcen- dent deity is the source of that enlightened life and light. The meaning of the creation drama, when properly understood, is that human beings—gnostics in particular—derive their knowledge and light from the transcendent god, but through the mean-spirited actions of the demiurge, the creator of the world, they have been confined within this world. (The platonic aspects of this imagery are apparent.) Humans in this world are imprisoned, asleep, drunken, fallen, ignorant. They need to find themselves—to be freed, awak- ened, made sober, raised, and enlightened. In other words, they need to return to gnosis. This distinction between a transcendent god and the creator of the world is all the more remarkable when it is recalled that many of the earliest gnostic thinkers who made such a distinction seem to have been Jews. What might have led them to such a conclusion that seems to fly in the face of Jewish monotheistic affirmations? Could it have been the experience of the political and social trauma of the time, culminating in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, which prompted serious reflection upon the problem of evil and stimulated the production of Jewish apocalyptic compositions? Could it have been the reflection of hellenistic Jewish thinkers who were schooled in Judaica and Greek philosophy and recognized the deep philosophical and the- ological issues surrounding the transcendence of the high god and the need for cosmic intermediaries to be involved with this world? Could it have been that among the creative Jewish minds, representative of the rich diversity of Judaism during the first centuries before and of the Common Era, who boldly addressed the real challenges of Jewish mysticism before Kabbalah, of the wis- dom and Hokhmah of god, of world-wrenching apocalyptic, of theodicy and evil in the world, there were those who finally drew gnostic conclusions? We know the names of some of these creative Jewish people: John the baptizer, who initiated Jesus of Nazareth and preached apocalyptic ideas in the vicinity of Qumran, where Covenanters and Essenes practiced their separatist, ethical dualism; Simon Magus and Dositheos, who lived about the same time as Jesus and advocated their ideas in Samaria and beyond; Philo of Alexandria, a hel- lenistic Jewish thinker who provided Greek philosophical perspectives on the Hebrew Bible; Rabbi Elisha ben Abuya, nicknamed Aher, "Other," who dabbled in dualism; and there were more. We shall encounter some of these Jewish 4 INTRODUCTION thinkers in this volume. John the baptizer becomes the gnostic hero of the Man- daeans, Jesus of the Christian gnostics. Simon Magus may lurk in the back- ground of several gnostic texts, and Dositheos is said to be the compiler of the Three Steles of Seth. Others, mostly unnamed, may have made similar contri- butions to the discussion of the profound question of the transcendent god and the demiurge. The role of the gnostic savior or revealer is to awaken people who are under the spell of the demiurge—not, as in the case of the Christ of the emerging or- thodox church, to die for the salvation of people, to be a sacrifice for sins, or to rise from the dead on Easter. The gnostic revealer discloses knowledge that frees and awakens people, and that helps them recall who they are. When en- lightened, gnostics can live a life appropriate for those who know themselves and god. They can return back to the beginning, when they were one with god. Such a life transcends what is mundane and mortal in this world and experi- ences the bliss of oneness with the divine. As the divine forethought, or Christ, in the Secret Book of John says to a person—every person—in the pit of the underworld, "I am the forethought of pure light, I am the thought of the vir- gin spirit, who raises you to a place of honor. Arise, remember that you have heard, and trace your root, which is I, the compassionate." Gnostic literature includes a typical cast of spiritual or mythological fig- ures and realms, but they are referred to by different names. Above and beyond all is the transcendent deity. In the Book of Baruch this deity is called the Good and is identified with the fertility god Priapos. In the Secret Book of John and elsewhere this deity is called the One, or monad, as well as the invisible spirit, virgin spirit, and father. It is said that the One should not be confused with a god, since it is greater than a god. Elsewhere the transcendent is called the boundless, depth, majesty, light. Poimandres reveals itself as the light, mind, first god. Mandaeans call this deity the great life and lord of greatness, Manichaeans the father of greatness, Muslim mystics the ex- alted king, Cathars the invisible father, true god, good god. The glory of the transcendent is made manifest in a heavenly world of light. In the classic literature of gnostic wisdom this exalted world is often called the pleroma or fullness of god, and the inhabitants of this world are called aeons or eternal realms. The first of the aeons is usually the divine mother. For Simon Magus she is Helena, or ennoia, the thought of god. In the Secret Book of John she is Barbelo, or pronoia, the first thought or forethought of god. Thunder, in the text by that name, has certain similarities as well. Sometimes the transcendent father and the divine mother produce a child in INTRODUCTION 5 spiritual love. Often the aeons are identified as spiritual attributes of the di- vine, are given names, and are joined together as couples, spiritual lovers in the fullness of the divine. In the Mandaean divine world the great life is surrounded by other lives and a host of Jordans, or heavenly waters; in the Manichaean kingdom of light the father of greatness is surrounded by 12 aeons and 144 aeons of aeons; and in the Mother of Books the exalted king is surrounded by seas, angels, lights, and colors. Among the aeons and manifestations of the divine is often a figure who represents the divine in this world, fallen from the light above yet present as the light of god with us and in us. In many gnostic texts this is the figure called Sophia or wisdom, as mentioned above. In Valentinian traditions two forms of wisdom are evident, a higher wisdom called Sophia and a lower wisdom called Achamoth. Wisdom is closely linked to Eve in the creation stories, and Eve is portrayed as the mother of the living and a revealer of knowledge. Wis- dom may also be linked to the gnostic revealer, and wisdom may take part in the process of salvation. In the Gospel of John and other texts the divine logos, or word, plays a similar role. Such is also the case with Ruha, the spirit, in Mandaean texts, and perhaps Salman, including great Salman and lesser Salman, in the Islamic Mother of Books. As noted, the demiurge or creator of this world is commonly distinguished from the transcendent deity in gnostic texts. The demiurge is ignorant, tragic, megalomaniacal. In the Secret Book of John he is depicted as the ugly child of Sophia, snakelike in appearance, with the face of a lion and eyes flashing like bolts of lightning. He is named Yaldabaoth, Sakla, Samael, and he is the chief archon and an arrogant, jealous god. In the Gospel of Truth error behaves like the demiurge, for it becomes strong and works in the world, but erroneously. Similar, too, are the actions of nature in the Paraphrase of Shem, Ptahil in Mandaean literature, the five evil archons in Manichaean literature, Azazi'il in the Mother of Books, and Lucifer or Satan among the Cathars. The gnostic revealer awakens people who are under the spell of the demi- urge. Within a Jewish context the gnostic revealer is Seth, the child of Adam and Eve, or Derdekeas, probably Aramaic for "male child," or the first thought or the afterthought or the wisdom of the divine. Within a Christian context the revealer is Jesus the anointed, within a Manichaean context Jesus of light, as well as others. More abstractly, the call to revelation and knowledge—the wake-up call—is a winged divine messenger in the Song of the Pearl, instruc- tion of mind in Hermetic literature, and enlightened Manda dHayye, knowl- edge of life, in Mandaean literature. In other words, the call to knowledge is 6 I N T R O D U C T I O N the dawning of awareness, from within and without, of "what is, what was, and what is to come." It is insight. It is gnosis. In gnostic literature those who come to knowledge are described in differ- ent ways. Occasionally they are specifically called gnostics; the Mandaeans are also called by the word that means "gnostics" in Mandaic. More often they are named the unshakable race, or the seed or offspring of Seth, or the gener- ation without a king, or the elect or chosen, or, in the Mother of Books, the ones who know. With a mystical flourish the Gospel of Philip recommends that rather than be called a Christian, a person with knowledge might be un- derstood to be at one with the gnostic revealer and be called Christ. This re- calls the Gospel of Thomas, saying 108, where Jesus says, "Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to that one." Such people of knowledge know how to live profoundly and well in the truth and light of god. The Gospel of Truth concludes, "It is they who manifest themselves truly, since they are in that true and eternal life and speak of the perfect light filled with the seed of the father, which is in his heart and in the fullness, while his spirit rejoices in it and glorifies him in whom it was, because the father is good. And his children are perfect and worthy of his name, because he is the father. Children of this kind are those whom he loves." The sacred texts presented in this volume all help to clarify what gnosticism is and who the gnostics were. The similarities and differences among these texts are equally instructive, as are the connections among them, whether historical or phenomenological. The early "wisdom gospels" of Thomas and John, both perhaps dating from the first century CE, portray Jesus as a speaker of wise words or even as the divine word itself, which is itself "wisdom." These early wisdom gospels represent incipient gnostic perspectives, and they were used extensively by later gnostics, so that their impact upon the history of gnosti- cism was huge. The classic literature of gnostic wisdom dates from the second century CE, and some materials in the literature are probably even older. Justin's Book of Baruch illustrates a Jewish form of gnosticism with Greco-Roman allusions. So does Sethian gnostic literature, with its provocative Jewish inter- pretation of the opening chapters of Genesis and its emphasis on the special roles of Eve, the mother of the living, and Seth, whom the Sethian gnostics claimed as ancestor. Valentinian gnostic literature is named after the great second- century teacher Valentinos, who, along with his students, seems to have made use of Sethian insights in order to fashion an elegant gnostic system for