Both among the general public and the intelligentsia
interest in this subject peaked in the years following the Second World War. In
fact there is the possibility that what is commonly called ‘Gnosticism’ is – in
the light of the insuperable obstacles encountered by researchers in the field
– a product of the mid-twentieth century. It is a cultural artefact of the
modern age with hardly any connection to the religious beliefs of late
antiquity, a ‘Procrustean paradigm’ (Williams) obscuring the true dynamics behind
textual sources.
Prior to 1945 this assemblage of
belief systems and sects was approached mainly from the viewpoint of the early
Christian heresiologists (Irenaeus, Hippolytus of Rome, Pseudo-Tertullian,
Epiphanius of Salamis) whose writings, naturally, condemned ‘Gnostics’ as
heretics: believers in irrational, blasphemous teachings – perversions of
‘true’ faith.
As the nineteenth century
progressed scholars became more concerned with the simplistic exercise of
symbol derivation – tracing the inheritance of motifs and symbols in art and
literature across various cultures and time zones – and aside from the
speculations of occultists, Gnosticism was of interest only in these contexts.
The occult approach to the
subject may be exemplified by Crowley’s book The Vision and The Voice (written 1900-1909) as it draws upon the
system of personified Aeons (the thirty Aethyrs) found in the Angelic works of
Dr John Dee. This was a magical-spiritual system indirectly derived from
ancient sources considered ‘gnostic’ or, more likely, Neo-Platonic. Other
esoteric interpretations of Gnosticism abound in the occult community, while
Neo-Gnostic churches with their roots in the nineteenth century, such as that
founded by the Patriarch Synesius (Fabre des Essarts), still flourish in
various forms today.
In the late nineteen fifties the
study of Gnosticism attracted attention among a wider readership, partly due to
the seminal study Les Livres secrets des
Gnostiques d’Egypte (1958) by French expert Jean Doresse. But it was The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the
Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (1958, 1963) by Hans Jonas
that probably did more than any other work to cement the image of the
‘revolutionary’ gnostic vision in the popular consciousness and the developing
anti-establishment counter-culture.
Jonas surveyed many relevant
belief systems from a phenomenological perspective and codified many
influential themes and motifs. Also, he linked the gnostic corpus to the
pervasive notion of social crisis and made telling comparisons with
Existentialism. For many, the allure of ‘secret books’, ‘hidden knowledge’,
‘the alien god’ and antinomian, anti-cosmic pessimism proved irresistible. It
is this complex of psycho-spiritual ideas that crystallised the idea of ‘Gnosticism’
as many understand the term today. Perhaps the secret books of the gnostic
sects, like the Necronomicon of H P
Lovecraft and its many spin-offs, hold the keys to ancient mysteries and new,
perhaps terrible, readings of human destiny.
When faced with teleological
crisis, disruptive social change or political disaster the fearful imagination
retreats into the murky underworld of the collective unconscious, the
theological undergrowth of unorthodox speculation. The apparently
‘counter-traditional’ nature of supposed ‘gnostic’ belief systems presents the
onlooker with a rich vein of appropriate symbolism. Here is a dark and
anguished picture of the cosmos – a universe created by inimical powers. This
identification gave rise to what some exasperated experts have referred to as a
‘menu of clichés’, the inflation of a jargon term – Gnosticism – into a
fashionable category. A category that soon became so all-inclusive as to prove
a hindrance to understanding.
Richard Smith and Ioan Culianu
have listed the wide-ranging use of the term Gnosticism in modern times. Thus
we find the term applied to the poetry and prophetic books of William Blake, Moby Dick, the psychology of Jung,
Communism, Nazism and Existentialism. Albert Camus claimed that the Marquis de
Sade was a Gnostic. The philosophy of Hegel as been defined as ‘gnostic’ along
with Psychoanalysis, Marxism, James Joyce, Yeats, Kafka and the novels of
Herman Hesse, to name but a few movements and authors swept up into the
‘gnostic’ stew. Even more recently ‘gnostic’ motifs and images have surfaced in
the lyrics of musician Tori Amos who finds that Jesus was a Christian feminist.
Some claim that science itself is ‘gnostic’. Culianu came to regard the term as
a ‘sick sign’ a bucket term that has come to mean far too much – that is to say
nothing at all. Clearly he was right.
The catalyst for the post-war
fascination with Gnosticism was the discovery in Upper Egypt in 1945 of the
collection of documents known as the Nag Hammadi Library. The ‘discovery’ of
ancient manuscripts or inscriptions, arcane messages from a distant age, is
itself an evocative event, bringing to mind exotic adventures in far away lands
and the exploits of popular heroes like Indiana Jones or Alan Quatermain. In
the Introduction to Rider Haggard’s novel She:
A History of Adventure (1887) we find a reproduction of a facsimile of the
‘Sherd of Amenartas’, an ancient amphora fragment inscribed with the legend of
Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, the Sorceress of the Caves of Kor. The
ancient, enigmatic text is a gateway to mystery, adventure and wild imaginings.
For many the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts evoked the same ethos.
Reportedly discovered by locals
engaged in a melodramatic blood feud the small cache of ancient Coptic texts
were unearthed in a red earthenware jar in the caves at Jabal al-Tarif near the
town of Nag Hammadi. This library comprised thirteen codices (twelve intact and
one surviving only in a few pages) and eventually became the property of the
Coptic Museum in Cairo. This collection comprises the largest single surviving
set of Coptic translations of original Greek devotional works dating from the
2nd or 3rd Century or possibly earlier. Each codex contains a number of tracts,
some anthologies more wide-ranging than others. For example Codex I (known as
the Jung Foundation Codex) contains five tractates while Codex VI contains
eight works, including the famous ‘voice of the revealer’ paradox poem Thunder, Perfect Mind. On the other hand
Codex X contains only one work and Codex VIII merely two. One item The Apocryphon (Secret Book) of John is
included several times and seems to be the most popular and respected tractate
in the collection.
The entire library soon became
popularly known as The Gnostic Gospels – unfortunately not one of the 52
tractates in the entire collection mentions the word gnostikos/gnostikoi (or the Coptic equivalent of that Greek term)
even once. How very odd – very odd indeed!
Even among the sects
anathematised by heresiologists close analysis shows that it is virtually
impossible to identify any group of believers who actually used ‘Gnostic’ as a
label of self-definition. Although the sects use a variety of nomenclature,
including Pneumatics, Seed, Elect, Race of Seth, Race of the Perfect Human and Immovable
Race the name ‘Gnostic’ is not among those used by devotees. In any case there
is a need to distinguish between ‘Gnosticism’ and ‘gnosis’. The term ‘gnosis’
can refer to any mode of mystical knowledge, whereas the term ‘Gnosticism’
implies a generalised unity, some form of coherent, established, historical
movement, system or religious organisation. Gnosticism means The Gnostic
Religion, an entity for which ‘there is no evidence and against which there is
much,’ to quote Michael Allen Williams. The idea of specialised mystical
knowledge (‘gnosis’) as a factor defining a particular set of believers is
widespread among many different religions – it is a very broad term of little
analytical value.
The provenance of the collection
remains a matter of speculation. One should draw a distinction between the
possible custodians of the Codices and their producers. Williams speculates
that the books may have been produced by fourth century Egyptian monks
interested in examining questions of divinity and spiritual techniques for
attaining transcendence of the created order. The writers of these scriptures
would, at the time of composition, have found nothing un-Christian about the
contents of the tractates. However the diversity of the contents has given rise
to conflicting theories about the ownership and purpose of the collection.
Possibilities include a particular sect of unknown designation; a
heresiological resource used to refute unorthodox arguments; a haphazard
collection maintained as general reading matter before the imposition of strict
orthodoxy in biblical literature by Bishop Athanasius (in the year 367).
The codices fall into four rough
groupings comprising items from the Corpus
Hermeticum, part of Plato’s Republic
and two other sets: ‘demiurgical’ texts and ‘non-demiurgical’ texts – among the
latter there are items on the subject of Baptism and the Eucharist.
This brief survey highlights the
particular group of texts defined as ‘demiurgical’, or to be precise ‘biblical
demiurgical’. It is the demiurgical myth pattern that emerges as a particular
type of revelation tradition within the Codices of interest to researchers
concerned with the issue of ‘Gnosticism’. It might appear that these tractates
indicate a religious innovation in the context of orthodox Christian teaching,
and this might indeed be the case. However one must be clear on two points:
firstly that all these texts are within the sphere of Judaic Scriptural
exegesis, and secondly, that the demiurgical idea is not unique to Judaism, Christianity
or an emerging new doctrine of ‘Gnosticism’. In fact the myth pattern is an
import from older philosophical traditions, specifically from Platonism.
The main source of the demiurgic
myth is Plato’s dialogue Timaeus
(circa 448 BC).
The term demiurge (demiourgos) means ‘producer’, ‘workman’
or ‘creator’. In Timaeus the demiurge
is the creator of the visible, material world – the sensible, mundane universe
made from the four elements. That the material universe is a copy of an ideal
universe existing only in the realm of Ideas or Forms, is an essential point of
the Platonic mythic pattern. The Timaeus
pattern is an example of cosmogenesis of the emanationist type. In this kind of
system, by virtue of its secondary status, the ‘real’ world of human beings is
already perceived as a degraded mode of existence, a downward emanation from a
purer form of spiritual being.
However this kind of hierarchy also extends to the
entities that inhabit the lower world. The demiurge created not only the Soul
of the World, but also the stars and a caste of ‘lower gods’. It is these lower
gods who are responsible for the creation of the mortal bodies of men, although
the demiurge is thought responsible for their immortal souls.
In later antiquity this scheme
was subject to vast elaboration and, as in the original Platonic system, the
demiurge was differentiated from the ultimate principle of Good, a moral
category closely associated with the Ideal Universe of Forms. Greek Christians
and Jewish scholars influenced by Neo-Platonism and other aspects of Greek
thought soon identified the demiourgos
as the Creator God of Genesis. This is the origin of the biblical demiurgic
tradition, a mode of Judaeo-Christian theological speculation that over time
has given rise to the idea of ‘Gnosticism’. This analysis would exclude other
religions or sects that promoted a dualistic vision – thus Manichaeans and
Mandeans are not to be classed as ‘Gnostics’. While ‘classic gnostic’ works
such as The Apocryphon of John should
properly be seen as variations of the Judaic scriptural tradition, not a
separate religion with a unique ‘revolutionary’ or ‘anarchic’ attitude. The two
distinguishing features being (1) a distinction between the ‘ultimate’
transcendent deity (‘God’) and the Creator God of the Bible and (2) the theme
of a message of reawakening (salvation) sent from the higher realm. This higher
realm is clearly a variant of the Platonic ideal realm of Forms, later
vulgarised in the familiar notion of a celestial Heaven.
Given that the terminology
associated with ‘Biblical Demiurgy’ is a more viable and clear than that
associated with ‘Gnosticism’ some experts argue that this category provides the
only fruitful avenue for further research. One can but agree with this
assumption, even if it spells the end of a romantic love affair with a
fictional anti-establishment religion.
It remains to examine the
motivations, if not the origins, of this variant tradition within
Judaeo-Christian speculation.
The particular character of
Biblical Demiurgical myths derives from moral preoccupations. Salvation
ideology is above all an ideology of moral purity. The notion of ‘evil’ is
therefore, not only central to the redemptive ethic typical of the Christian
tradition (and all other puritan moral doctrines world-wide), it is also a
notoriously difficult concept to integrate into a framework determined by a
supernatural principle of ultimate Goodness.
The difficulties arising from the
problem of evil and other anomalies or peculiarities in scripture (anthropomorphic
characterisations of the deity, for example) account for the particular
character of the Biblical Demiurgical constellation of mythic systems. It is
strenuous attempts to deal with these concerns of Theodicy, sometimes in the
face of satire and criticism from non-Jews and non-Christians that lead to the
innovations enshrined in some of the Nag Hammadi Codices.
Michael Allen Williams draws attention to elements
of Genesis that were well known as problem features of the scripture. For
example, in Gen 1:26 the creator is referred to in the plural (“Let us make man
in our image, after our likeness…”). Other stories, such as the Sin of Adam and
Eve (the Paradise story); the Descent of the ‘Sons of God’; The Flood story and
related tales of The Tower of Babel or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
(similar to the Platonic myth of Atlantis), all presented problems of exegesis.
Innovative mythmakers constructed elaborate scenarios to account for the
anthropomorphism and perceived moral difficulties of these texts.
If the very notion of jealous or
angry deity worked against the idea of transcendent spiritual serenity, the
Platonic demiurge provided a very convenient solution. Clearly the creator of
‘this world’ of sin and suffering was not an omnipotent, all seeing, Supreme
Being incapable of evil, but the work of a ‘lower’ emanation or entity in the
role of ‘creator’. Classic ‘gnostic’ texts are typical of this kind of early
Christian hermeneutic speculation, giving rise in the natural course of events
to sects and sub-sects later condemned as heretics. Modern commentators who
seek to present ‘Gnosticism’ as a pessimistic ‘anticosmic’ religion of revolt
with a special essence that sets it apart from the mainstream are clinging to a
distorted caricature vision – despite their diversity and variation all the
original ‘gnostic’ texts known to us are, in fact, Christian. There never was a
distinctive unified counter-traditional religion of revolt known to its
adherents as ‘Gnosticism’.
Furthermore it is quite misleading
to see the writings under discussion as a radical departure from the norms of
early Christian and Judaic moral thinking. It is only to be expected, given the
entrenched misogyny of all faiths based on moral purity, that the source of
‘evil’ in both the Sethian Apocryphon of
John and Valentinianism (to cite just two examples) is a feminine
principle. It is Sophia (‘Wisdom’) who initiates the degeneration of the
emanations of being and disrupts the ‘serenity of the divine world’ (sometimes
seen as a ‘household’) by a self-willed act of imaginative projection.
Achamoth, offspring of Sophia, a personification of imperfect thinking, is also
a feminine principle. In the Valentinian system it is Achamoth who creates the
Demiurge, who, in ignorance of the supernal realms claims “I am the lord, and there is no one else…” (Isaiah 45:5). This utterance is as a sign
of hubris – even though the demiurge is the Creator, he is still a degraded
spiritual entity compared to the ultimate Good, the true God. The Devil, Cosmocrator
of the World is created by the Demiurge.
Thus, we see how, by an indirect
chain of emanations, the evil principle, the Devil, is a descendent of the only
female principle in this patriarchal scheme so compatible with original
Platonic thinking. Plato taught that evil men were reincarnated as women.
It is true that various
categorisations of higher spiritual principles (such as Barbelo the mediating
first-thought or self-image of the supreme entity) are pictured as androgynous
– but one can be sure that such an idea simply confirmed the ‘heretical’ nature
of these sects in the eyes of the orthodox. Nevertheless the general drift of
all these mainly ascetic doctrines conforms to the overall pattern of salvation
ideology, an ideology compelled by its own inner logic to assert the debased
nature of the sensible world; for, if ‘the world’ is not ‘fallen’ there is no
need of salvation.
The levels of emanation and
complex strata of lower gods, angels and Aeons simply represent a more baroque
variation on the original idea that the ‘real’ world is but a pale imitation
(inferior or ‘fallen’) of a higher realm of pure perfection. The notion that
evolution implies a continuing distance from the first principle of absolute
purity implies that all subsequent phases, or changes, are more debased, more
impure than previous phases. This is one of the main tenets of all
authoritarian systems – the idea that change is always change for the worse,
that tradition is preferable to innovation – one of the main rationales for the
suppression of dissent in this particular kind of ideological framework.
This is why Sophia is seen as an
‘unruly’ element, a personification of cosmological perturbation, enemy of
stability and harmonious authority. It is an interpretation serving the
interests of a patriarchal caste horrified by the disruptive, truly anarchic
(chaotic) potential of desire in general and female desire in particular.
At a more fundamental level these
pre-orthodox, ‘heretical’ systems oscillate between the twin poles of
temporality. Here we find, as one might expect, myths of the past and myths of
the future. Myths of the past are creation myths, myths devised to explain or
explore issues of origins, meaning and purpose, including the meaning and
origin of evil. Myths of the future often derive from the universal notion of
‘deliverance’, sublimated (in the case of ‘Gnosticism’) via the
Judaeo-Christian paradigm as the principle of Redemption or Salvation.
Insofar as the ‘gnostic’ beliefs
outlined here fail to step beyond these parameters it is clear that the
attribution of ‘revolutionary’ attitudes to so-called ‘gnostic’ believers is
misleading, just as the notion that ‘Gnostics’ sought to invert interpretative
traditions (‘value-reversal’) as a systematic programme of subversion is also
misleading. Demiurgical interpretations of scripture represented specific
attempts to deal with specific textual issues. These were issues well known as
problematic and subject to continuous revision, analysis and scriptural surgery
by many philosophers and theologians of the time. Of course, in many cases the
church simply explained anomalies by allegory and parable, but others wrongly
called ‘Gnostics’ invented alternative cosmologies using the familiar symbolic
lexicon of Platonic philosophy in synthesis with Judaic myths and traditions
assimilated into Christianity.
The origins and identities of the
authors of the Nag Hammadi Codices will probably remain unknown. Behind these
shadowy authors one should image a tangled web of complex theological
speculation giving rise to multiple mythic innovations. The outcome of this
process being the multiplicity of demiurgical interpretations found in the
known sources. One thing, however, is quite certain: there was no distinct
‘religion’ or doctrine called ‘Gnosticism’ by its followers and there were no
‘spiritual anarchists’ in late antiquity.
We can be sure that this idea is a symptom of
modern anxiety or anomie, a product of twentieth century pessimism.
‘Gnosticism’ is a modern myth – the myth of a Religion That Never Was.
Select Bibliography
Carroll, Peter J. Liber Null and Psychonaut, Samuel Weiser, 1987
Howatson, M. C. The Oxford
Companion to Classical Literature. OUP, 1997
Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic
Religion. Beacon Press, 1958
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic
Gospels. Pelican Books, 1982
Plato. Timaeus. Penguin Books,
1965
Webb, James. The Flight From
Reason. Macdonald, 1971
Williams, Michael Allen.
Rethinking Gnosticism. Princeton University, 1996
Illustration: The End Of Everything, 2000
Illustration: The End Of Everything, 2000
