15 Chapter 12 - The Recent Discoveries in the Field of Gnosticism.doc

RECENT  DISCOVERIES  IN  THE  FIELD OF GNOSTICISM

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Chapter 12. The Recent Discoveries in the Field of Gnosticism

The discovery, about 1945, at Nag Hamadi in Egypt (the ancient Chenoboskion), of what was probably the complete sacred library of a gnostic sect, is one of those sensational events in the history of religious-historical scholarship which archeology and accident have so lavishly provided since the beginning of this cen­tury. It was preceded (speaking of written relics only) by the enormous find, early in the century, of Manichaean writings at Turfan in Chinese Turkestan; by the further unearthing, about 1930 in the Egyptian Fayum, of parts of a Manichaean library in Coptic; and was closely followed by the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in Palestine. If we add to these new sources the Mandaean writings, whose progressive coming to light since the latter part of the last century is owed, not to the digging of archeologists or the scavenging of shepherds and peasants, but to contacts with the still living, long forgotten sect itself, we find ourselves now in possession of a massive literature of "lost causes" from those crucial five or so centuries, from the first century b.c. onward, in which the spiritual destiny of the Western world took shape: the voice of creeds and flights of thought which, part of that creative process, nourished by it and stimulating it, were to become obliterated in the consolidation of official creeds that followed upon the turmoil of novelty and boundless vision.

Unlike the Dead Sea finds of the same years, the gnostic find from Nag Hamadi has been beset from the beginning and to this day by a persistent curse of political roadblocks, litigation and, worst of all, scholarly jealousies and "firstmanship"—the combined upshot of which is that fifteen years after the first recognition of the nature of the documents, only two of the 46 (49)1 writings have been

1One writing occurs twice, and one occurs three times in the collection.

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properly edited,2 three more have been translated in full;3 and another two (4)4 are available from a different papyrus also con­taining them and published not long ago in its gnostic parts, after having been in the Berlin Museum for sixty years.5 For all the rest, about which fragmentary information has been seeping out over the years, we have now,* and probably for some time, to be content with the provisional descriptions, excerpts and summaries offered in J. Doresse's book The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics? It is the purpose of this chapter to take such account of the whole body of new evidence as it presently yields and as is pertinent to our general treatment of the gnostic problem.

2Evangelium veritatis . . . eds. M. Malinine, H.-Ch. Puech, G. Quispel. Zurich, 1956; The Gospel according to Thomas, eds. A. Guillaumont, H.-Ch. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till, Y. 'Abd al Masih. Leiden, 1959. The first could just be utilized to some extent in the first edition of this book. [See end of note 3.]

8 The Hypostasis of the Archons, the Gospel according to Philip, and an untitled cosmogony (no. 40 of the collection by Doresse's counting, no. 14 by Puech's)— all three translated into German by H. M. Schenke: see supplementary bibliography. These translations were made from a photographic reproduction of the texts in Pahor Labib, Coptic Gnostic Papyri in the Coptic Museum at Old Cairo, Vol. I. Cairo, 1956 (the beginning of a planned, provisional publication of all the manuscripts). For the missing title of the cosmogony (no. 40), Schenke proposes "Discourse on the Origin of the World," which we shall here adopt in a shortened form: Origin of the World. [Since this was written and set, the complete text of the treatise was published, with translation and commentary, by A. Bohlig and P. Labib: see sup­plementary bibliography. Schenke's translation, it now appears, covers only the first half of the writing, which he took for the whole.]

4The Sophia of Jesus and The Secret Book, of John (quoted later as Apocryphon
of John).

5 W. Till, Die gnostischen Schriften des kpptischen Papyrus Berolinensis 8502. Berlin, 1955. The codex will be quoted as BG.

6              (Subtitle, An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts discovered at
Chenoboskion.) New York, 1960. The French original appeared in 1958. Its author,
a French Egyptologist, happened to be on the spot when, in 1947, the first of the
thirteen papyrus codices comprising the find was acquired by the Coptic Museum in
Cairo.   He recognized its significance and was from then on intimately connected
with the unfolding story of further acquisition—and the aforementioned intramural
feuds.  Having had access, if for brief times only, to all of the twelve Cairo codices
(one codex found its way to Europe and was acquired by the Jung Institute in
Zurich), he has catalogued the writings composing them and taken notes—sometimes
hurried—of their contents.   These, as embodied in his book, are at the moment
a major evidence beyond the fully published or translated writings cited above.

*This was written in 1962 and no longer holds (1970). For present condition, including numeration of codices and writings, see Addendum on p. 319.

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OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHENOBOSKION LIBRARY

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I. OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHENOBOSKION LIBRARY

With the obvious reservations dictated by the state of affairs, let us ask: What do the new finds7 add to our knowledge and understanding of Christian gnosticism? It is, of course, simply not the case that our evidence hitherto was scanty. The patristic testi­mony is rich and stands vindicated with every test by newly recov­ered originals (i.e., texts preserved on their own and not through doxography). Also, as regards the question of authentic information in general, the reminder is not out of place that nothing in the new sources, being translations one and all (from Greek into Coptic), equals in directness of testimony the direct quotations in the Greek fathers (such as, e.g., Ptolemy's Letter to Flora), which render the Greek originals themselves—even if a longer line of copyists then intervenes between them and our oldest manuscript. This aspect is easily forgotten in the elation over the mere physical age of the writing which happens to come into our hands. But of such com­plete or extensive verbatim renderings (see above, p. 38) there are not many in the Church writers, while the original Coptic works which hitherto constituted our independent evidence (sc., of "Chris­tian" gnostic literature) were not from the classical period of heret­ical growth (second and third centuries a.d.), with which the Church writers dealt. It is of this period that we now possess a whole library:8 with it we are truly "contemporaneous" with the Christian critics, and this is an inestimable advantage.

A priori, and quite apart from questions of doctrine, it is obvious that so large an accretion of original writings will afford us a much more full-blooded, full-bodied experience of the authentic flavor of gnostic literary utterance, a more intimate view of the working and manner of self-communication of the gnostic mind, than any doxo-graphic excerpts or rendering of doctrinal substance can convey. As has happened before in the case of the Manichaean documents, the form and tone of statement in all its profusion now add their undimmed voice to the object "content," the "themes" as it were,

TI include in these the writings of the Berlin papyrus, whose publication at long last, in 1955, was indeed prompted by the Nag Hamadi discovery.

8 The manuscripts are probably from the 4th century, but the contents are older, and some can be dated with fair certainty in the 2nd century.

which the heresiologists could for purposes of debate detach from the din of their polyphonous treatment: and the latter is of the substance, even if it should not show it to advantage. If the picture becomes more blurred instead of more clear, this would be part of the truth of the matter.

Further, we learn what was the reading matter of a gnostic community9 of the fourth century, probably typical for the Coptic area and possibly well beyond it. From the relative weight of Sethian documents in the total we may conclude that the community was Sethian. But the presence of many writings of quite different affilia­tions10 shows the openmindedness, the feeling of solidarity, or the mutual interpenetration, which must have been the rule among the Gnostics at large. Really surprising in this respect is the inclusion of five Hermetic treatises in an otherwise "Christian" gnostic collec­tion—which proves a greater proximity, or at any rate feeling of proximity at this time, between the two streams of speculation than is usually conceded. On the other hand, as Doresse has pointed out (op. cit., p. 250), none of "the great heretical teachers" of patristic literature "makes any explicit appearance in the writings from Chenoboskion," i.e., none is either named as author of a writing or mentioned in a writing. From this, however, it does not follow, especially in an age of revelatory literature, which favors anonymous authorship or outright pseudepigraphy, that some of the texts might not be by one or the other of the known teachers. Some conjectures, involving the authorship of Valentinus and Heracleon, have indeed been advanced in connection with the strongly Valentinian parts of the Jung Codex; and Doresse believes to recognize "Simon Magus" in two treatises (op. cit., Appendix I). In any case, the absence of the "great names" of the second century must not be taken to detract from the importance which patristic testimony ascribes to them (and thereby from the value of that testimony in general)—it merely reflects the intellectual level and literary habits of the Chenoboskion group and its likes in the fourth century.

9              It is, of course, possible that the collection was that of a wealthy individual,
but he too must have belonged to some kind of group, whatever its form of co­
herence.

10              E.g., the Apocryphon of John, Hypostasis of the Archons, Origin of the World
are barbelo-gnostic, the Gospel of Truth, Letter to Reginos, Gospel of Philip are
Valentinian, etc.

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THE PRIDE OF THE DEMIURGE

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To the Sethians no historical teacher is attributed by the heresi-ologists anyway. Their teaching itself is now richly documented. The (Iranian) doctrine of "three roots," i.e., of a third primordial principle intermediate between Light and Darkness—which they shared with the Peratae, Justin, the Naassenes, and others—stands forth clearly and in full accord with Hippolytus' account. Of course, the relative prominence of this cosmogonic feature in the Chenobo-skion collection—a consequence of its Sethian emphasis—is no reason for now seeing in it more than the quite specific feature, peculiar to one group of teachings, as which it appeared before. The ema­nation-, aeon- and Sophia-speculation of the whole "Syrian-Egyptian" gnosis has no room for it; the "Iranian" gnosis itself, to which it belongs, can do without it (as not only Mani, but long before him the system cited by Basilides proves—see above, p. 214, n. 10); and even in the Sethian case the speculative role of the intermediate principle is in fact slight: the real meaning is dualistic, and in gen­eral the third principle either affords—as "Space"—the mere topological meeting ground for the opposites, or in its substantial descrip­tion—as "Spirit"—is an attenuated form (notwithstanding the assurance of co-primacy) of the higher principle, susceptible of inter­mingling. As the various alternatives show, this susceptibility, for which gnostic speculation calls, does not really require a separate aboriginal principle. Because of this relative systematic unimpor­tance—as distinct from the importance for questions of historic affiliations—no example of this type was included in our selection of gnostic myths.11 However, a full publication of the Paraphrase of Shem, the main Sethian cosmogony in the collection (and the longest of the "revelations" in the whole library) may in time prompt a new evaluation of this point....