Part 2
1. The _Pistis Sophia_ is not Valentinian, but comes from an obscure sect of what he calls Barbelo-Gnostics, known as Severiani.
2. Its title should not be _Pistis Sophia_ but Τεύχη τοῦ Σωτῆρος.
3. While admitting that the whole work is a “_Miszellenhandschrift_,” he thinks that the Fourth Document is the oldest in the collection and, as it were, the root of the other three, which in their turn form a connected whole.
Dr. Schmidt’s fellow-countrymen Drs. Lichtenhau and Preuschen have already attacked some of these positions in the _Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie_[14] and elsewhere, and after mature consideration, the present writer feels himself compelled to dissent from all three. The reasons for doing so will be best given when we come to consider the composition and authorship of the MS. Before leaving this branch of the subject, however, it may be said that beside the work of Köstlin, Lipsius, and Dr. Schmidt, the _Pistis Sophia_ has been treated of at some length in Father Giraud’s _Ophitus_ (1884), and in a special work by Prof. Harnack in the _Texte und Untersuchungen_ above mentioned (1891). More recently, it has also been dealt with by M. Eugène de Faye in his _Introduction à l’Etude du Gnosticisme_ (1903) and his _Gnostiques et Gnosticisme_ (1913), by Dr. James Moffat in his article under its name in Hastings’ _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_, and by the present writer in his _Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity_ (1915).[15] The late Sir Gaston Maspero and Prof. Lieblein (of Christiania) have also stated their conviction that it could only have been written by persons intimately acquainted with the old Egyptian religion, on which point none could speak with greater authority than they.[16]
2. THE DOCUMENTS IN THE MS.
As has been said above, Dr. Schmidt speaks of our text as a miscellany, and the phrase by no means overstates the case. It contains indeed no less than six documents, only the two first of which are directly connected or can be taken as necessarily intended to be read consecutively. The second of these breaks off in the middle of a conversation, the third has neither beginning nor end. The opening sentence of the fourth implies that it is the continuation of a conversation which cannot be certainly identified with any that has gone before, and the same document concludes with a sentence which does not seem likely to be the end of the extract. The fifth begins with what is clearly a fresh narrative without reference to anything that has preceded it and must have ended in the _lacuna_ caused by the missing pages, while the sixth, whose beginning has been lost in the same _lacuna_, ends in the middle of a phrase. Of these six documents, the third only covers one and a half pages of the MS. and is manifestly a fragment of some document which has somehow strayed over into this place; but as it appears directly after the words: “A Part of the Books of the Saviour,” I hesitate to say that it never formed part of any of the other documents in the text, and I shall therefore speak of it hereafter as “The Interpolated Fragment” merely. Only the two first of the six, also, can claim to be included under the title of the _Pistis Sophia_, but they are by far the largest and take up between them more than half the volume. This arrangement follows strictly the rule of stichometry observed by writers of the period, which prescribes that the longest document shall come first. Thus in this translation:—
Document Begin page End page 1st 63 126 2nd 63 126 Interpolated 127 128 3rd 128 179 4th 180 192 5th 193 199
Taking these in this order, we will summarise them as briefly as possible.
* * * * *
The FIRST DOCUMENT, then, tells how Jesus spent twelve years after the Resurrection teaching His disciples the mysteries of the heavenly “places,”[17] but that their instruction did not extend beyond this visible, or more accurately, this sensible, universe which corresponds, it would seem, to the Third Chorema or Space of the “First Mystery” or God Manifest, of Whom Jesus is the Incarnation. This Chorema is under the governance of a Power called the First Law, under whom are eleven others called the Five Marks, the Great Light, and the Five Parastatai or Helpers; and all these twelve came from still higher states of being from which, we are told later, they voluntarily descended to take part in the scheme of salvation. When the First Document opens, however, Jesus has only told His disciples of the existence of those Powers, but has not revealed to them their origin, function, or arrangement; and all the action in this Document passes in the lower part of this Chorema which is called the Kerasmos or Confusion, because in it Light is mingled with Matter. The highest part of the Kerasmos is the Treasure house where the Light as it is won from Matter is stored up; and then come a great number of inferior Places inhabited by Powers concerned with the administration of our universe’s more material parts, especially the heavenly bodies or sun, moon, and stars. Below these again is our earth with its firmament or “Height,” and outside this Chaos or the dark and unformed mass of Matter which has received no Light.[18]
While Jesus is sitting with His disciples on the Mount of Olives, the Document goes on to say, there descends upon Him a “Great Power of Light,” which is in fact the “vesture” or Heavenly Nature which He had left in the Limit or Lower Boundary of the upper worlds on His descent to earth in “the shape of Gabriel.” This vesture enables Him to rise to the Boundary and there assume two other vestures which are necessary for the continuation of the journey to the two transcendental “Spaces” which are higher than this. In this first vesture, also, He finds five mysterious words written which are here interpreted as an address from the higher powers hailing Him as the First Mystery, and the catalogue of names which follows enables us to form a fairly correct idea of the arrangement of this Chorema as well as of the higher ones which are known as the “Spaces” of the First Mystery and of the “Ineffable” or Supreme Unmanifested God respectively.[19]
On assuming this vesture, Jesus flies into the Height, but returns the next day clad in three vestures of dazzling light, and tells His disciples how He provided for the births of Himself and them by casting into their respective mothers Powers from the higher parts of the Kerasmos instead of the material souls which they would otherwise have received from the Rulers of the stars. In like manner also, He tells how He caused the soul of Elijah to become incarnate in the body of John the Baptist. He then goes on to describe His journey upward through the First Sphere directly above the firmament, the Second Sphere called Destiny, and the Twelve Æons,[20] which appear to be the signs of the Zodiac. The Kings or Tyrants of these last rebel against Him, and He punishes them by taking away part of their power and altering their course, so that mankind will no longer be able to foretell the future by means of the astrology and magic taught them by the sinning angels. Leaving their Place, He ascends to the thirteenth Æon, and finds below it Pistis Sophia, the heroine of the book. She is, it appears, one of the twenty-four Unseen or Invisible Ones put forth in pairs by the head of the Left Hand or most material part of the Kerasmos, and had left her spouse and her work to pursue a light which she saw below her and which she thought would enable her to mount to the Treasure-house. This light, however, was a snare sent into Chaos by one of the material Powers immediately above her; and on her advancing to seize it, she was set upon by several material Powers that her persecutor had put forth and deprived of her own light, so that she could not return to her own Place in the thirteenth Æon.
In this plight, she sings hymns of penitence to the “Light of Lights” or Light of the Treasure-house, and these are all recited at full length by Jesus to His disciples, who identify them at His instance with passages from the Canonical Psalms, and from those “Odes of Solomon” which are mentioned above. These Penitences are twelve in number, and in the course of their recital and the conversation that takes place on them, we learn something more about the arrangement of the different worlds and the process of the redemption of Light from Matter which it is apparently the object of the book to describe. Finally, after this tenth “Penitence,” Jesus, who has throughout her affliction procured for Pistis Sophia certain alleviations in her misery, calls into existence several new Powers who go into Chaos to her assistance and form a crown of light to her head, so that her tormentors dare not come near to her.
With this the Document ends, and it is manifest from the appearance of the MS. that the scribes who wrote it, at this point thought that they had come to the end of their task and did not then expect to carry it further.
* * * * *
The SECOND DOCUMENT begins with the caption “The Second Tome of Pistis Sophia” in a handwriting which Mr. Crum has no hesitation in declaring to be the same as that of the first seventy pages of the Document. Whereas the First Document ends, however, with Jesus’ approval of Mary Magdalene’s interpretation of the quotation from the Psalms about Mercy and Truth kissing each other, the Second Document opens with another interpretation of the same text offered by John. Coupled with the caption given above, this seems sufficient to show that the Second Document was intended to be taken for a continuation of the First, although this by no means proves that they were written at the same time or by the same author. The Document goes on to elaborate the story of the rescue of Pistis Sophia, and tells with great detail how Gabriel and Michael being summoned for that purpose go to her assistance. This provokes a fresh display of anger on the part of the “Self-willed God” who is Pistis Sophia’s chief persecutor, and the powers of Chaos make a fresh assault upon her. On this, Jesus orders Gabriel and Michael to bear her on their hands out of Chaos, while He Himself descends thither, smites her tormentors, and renders them powerless to follow her. He then leads her into the “Place below the thirteenth Æon” where He finds her on His ascension from the Mount of Olives, and warns her that she will again be tormented when the Gate of the Treasure-house is set open. This apparently happens just before Jesus’ ascension in the vesture of light, and He then routs her enemies for the last time and restores her to her original Place in the thirteenth Æon, where she sings a final song of praise to Him for the wonders which He has wrought for her “in the world of men.”
This ends the episode of Pistis Sophia, who is not again mentioned until we come to the Fourth Document. The author now turns to what was probably the main reason for attempting the continuation of the First Document, which is the questioning of Mary Magdalene and the other disciples upon the order and use of the Heavenly Places, and the Saviour’s replies thereto.[21] Beginning with the answer to Mary’s question as to the nature of the twenty-four Unseen Ones of whom Pistis Sophia was one, the Saviour promises Himself to lead the disciples through all the Upper worlds right up to that of the Ineffable One Himself, each successive world and even Place being, it is said, so greatly superior in size and in light to the lower ones, that they will appear like grains of dust when viewed from it. He also tells them that the beatitudes in store for them will be progressive, beginning with the Millenium which will ensue when the number of perfect souls is accomplished, the Kerasmos purified and “caught up,” and the Twelve Disciples established with Jesus as joint Kings reigning over the blessed in the Last Parastates or Helper—a name given to the world which is placed in our universe immediately over the Treasure-house. Here they will apparently receive further instruction and be given “mysteries” which will enable them to mount to the upper universes before, it is expressly said, the “Projections” or emanations of the Treasure-house who are concerned with the administration of the scheme of salvation. The details of this scheme are extremely complicated, the Saviour several times promising to explain further in a subsequent revelation constantly referred to as “the Distribution of the Universe.”
But its final aim is indicated without ambiguity. Jesus, who as we have seen was hailed in the First Document as the First Mystery in the address of the Spirits written on the vesture of light sent to Him on the Mount of Olives, is throughout this part of the Second Document always spoken of by that title; and we are told that those who receive the highest mystery of all, called the “Mystery of the Ineffable One,” will be absorbed into His being. “That Man is I, and I am that Man,” are the words in which this announcement is made, and the full meaning of the phrase can be appreciated by other sentences in the narrative which go to show that this First Mystery is the first Being to come forth from the Ineffable One, and is regarded as a “Twin Mystery” or Father and Son, the first-named or “First Mystery looking inwards” being alone capable of remaining in contemplation of the greatness of the Ineffable One, while the Son or “First Mystery looking outwards” is sent to earth in the Person of Jesus Himself.[22]
The way to obtain this elevation in the scale of being is, perhaps, left purposely obscure, but it can apparently be gained by certain initiations or mysteries, which like the Mysteries of Eleusis will give the initiate the knowledge of the universe, how it came to be, and how it will end. These also are progressive and culminate in the “One Word of the Ineffable One,” the effect of which is so tremendous that if it be spoken over the dying, or for the dead, whether partly initiate or wholly uninitiate, it will expedite his passage to the heaven to which his initiation entitles him, or, in the case of one wholly uninitiate, will ensure his reincarnation in a “righteous” body, which will “find the God of Truth and the exalted mysteries, and will inherit them and the Light for ever and ever.”[23] The way to this and to the Mysteries in general is “the renunciation of the whole world and all the matter therein.”
Beside this, however, there are lesser mysteries which will admit the faithful recipient to heaven and privileges less exalted indeed than that last described, but will yet confer on him great beatitude after death. These, known collectively as the “Mysteries of the third Space,” involve a “Defence” a “Password” and a “Symbol” which have to be handed in by the dead in his flight upward so as to procure him uninterrupted passage to the heaven of which he has received the mystery. Of these, it is said that the disciples have no need, because nothing of the sort is required by the recipients of the higher mysteries, but Jesus adds that they are to be found in “the two great Books of Jeu” which “Enoch wrote when I spake with him out of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life in the Paradise of Adam.”[24] In spite of these assurances, Andrew provokes the Saviour by asking how “men of this world” can be expected to adventure after death upon the long and dangerous journey among all the Great Powers of the Treasurehouse and their subordinates, and the Saviour reminds him in reply that they and He are all of the same origin, being made from “the same mass and the same matter and the same substance” and are all “out of the same Confusion.”[25] On this, the other disciples successfully implore Jesus to pardon Andrew, and this Document ends in the middle of a sentence in which He declares that He has been sent for the remission of sins.
Before leaving this Document, it must be noted that in it there appear long rhetorical statements in a form which has no parallel in the other documents of our text. They repeat the same phrase with the variation of two or three words at each repetition, the object being apparently to give the hearer an idea which he could not otherwise obtain—except, perhaps, by a picture or diagram[26] of the different hierarchies of Powers or arrangement of Places which the speaker is describing. Thus in one place, Jesus, after speaking of the “Mystery of the Ineffable One,” goes on to declare that “that Mystery knoweth why the Darkness came to be and why the Light,” and then after going through a string of similar antitheses in which the Treasurehouse is contrasted with Chaos, murder with the quickening of souls, Death with Life and all sorts of natural phenomena with one another, continues with “That Mystery knoweth why the Triple Powers came to be and why the Unseen Ones,” and so on through an incredible number of Spirits and Powers until He at last reaches the First Emanation of the Ineffable One which is in fact Himself. This is amplified when He says later that “That Mystery knoweth” why these higher Powers “despoiled” themselves (or stripped themselves of their exalted natures), when a great part of the Places and Powers of the highest worlds are enumerated all over again. Not long after this, He has occasion to speak of the man who receives this same Mystery of the Ineffable One, when He says that “He is a man in the world, but he excelleth all the Angels and is more excellent than them all,” and then repeats the same phrase with regard to Archangels, Unseen Ones, Triple Powers, and all the Projections of the Treasurehouse and its dependencies for the third time.[27] This kind of rhapsody does not seem to be cast into any rhythmical form, yet seems to be intended for repetition by word of mouth rather than by writing. The only likeness that I can find to this practice is in one of the Chapters of the _Book of the Dead_, where all the different parts of the Hall of Two Truths demand to be told their names, or those in the _Book of Gates_ where the parts of the Bark of Ra make the like demand. It therefore seems to be a purely Egyptian feature and may be connected with the fact that the early Egyptian Church, like the colleges formed for the worship of gods like Amen in earlier times, had “prophets,” who seem to have occupied a position in the Church next after the bishop.
* * * * *
The INTERPOLATED FRAGMENT which occupies most of the first leaf of the Third Document is entirely taken up with the relation of the Ineffable one to His “members”; but is too short and disconnected to give us much information on the subject. It is put into the mouth of Jesus and it makes allusion to other revelations which Jesus is said to have previously made or “written,” or which He promises. The style is not unlike that of the First Document, so that I do not see why it may not be an extract from the same book if, as may be probable, Jesus continued in it the account of His upward journey after leaving Pistis Sophia in the thirteenth Æon.[28]
* * * * *
The THIRD DOCUMENT may perhaps be called without fear of contradiction “Part of the Books of the Saviour,” because it bears that title both at its head and at its foot. It begins by an exhortation to the disciples to preach “to the whole world” a series of ἀποτάγματα or renunciations of sin which may be connected with Jesus’ speech to Andrew at the end of the Second Document. It should be noted, however, that while in the Second Document mankind is to be entreated to renounce the world and its matter so that they may “go unto the Light,” the author of this Document presses them to abjure sin lest they suffer the torments of hell. These torments are also dealt with in considerable detail, and we can gather from the description that there are four Places of Punishment called respectively Amente, Chaos, the Middle Way, and the Outer Darkness.[29] This seems to be a sort of amalgam of different traditional beliefs, for while Amente appears in the _Book of the Dead_, Chaos in the First Document does not seem to be thought of as necessarily a Place of Punishment, and we have seen Pistis Sophia speaking of it in the Second Document as “the world of men.” So, too, the location of these different hells shows some confusion of thought. Amente is probably in the West or beyond the earth as it is in the _Book of the Dead_, Chaos is either the earth itself or beneath it, while the Middle Way is, like the Place of Punishment in the Enochian literature, in the firmament or “below the Sphere.” As for the Outer Darkness, its name shows it to be a relic of Pagan Egypt where it was held that beyond the confines of the earth, the air became so thick as to be actually tangible and concrete. Among the tormentors in these various hells we find Ariel, Pistis Sophia’s persecutor Ialdabaoth, one “Iakhthanabas the Merciless” and the Dragon of Outer Darkness who is depicted as a great serpent coiled round the world having his tail in his mouth and containing places of torment within him where ice and cold come to supplement the tortures of fire and smoke.