DeConick A.D

319
PLEASANTVILLE RELIGIONS
This pattern may help explain the origin of the name Ieou, a question
that has remained unresolved in scholarship. The word appears to
be formulaic, used in conjunction with names of gods. In magical spell
books from the same historical period and geographic area, we find invocations
like Êi-Ieou-Mareith and Êi-Ieou-Sathimôoueêou (Greek Magical
Papyri XII.337–350). In these cases, “Ieou” derives from the word i3w
(pronounced ah-oo) in Egyptian hieroglyphics, which means “praise,” so
that the spell is cast by hailing the deities: “Oh, praise Mareith!” and “Oh,
praise Sathimôoueêou!” (Ritner in Betz 1992, 165, note 86).
In the case of the Jeuians, they appear to hail their greatest deity with
the shorthand “Jeu” or “Praise!” They address the other deities by their
names, followed by the invocation to praise. So, “Ieouaieaôieou! Praise!”
and “Ôêeaêôiot! Praise!”
Who is Jeu, then, the much-praised world ruler? A clue comes from one
of their liturgies, where it is said that the sixty treasuries are bisected by the
five ranks in the “middle.” This is technical astrological language referencing
the path of the sun, the ecliptic, as the “middle” through which the
five planets move. This is where the Jeuians believed that their god Jeu
lives (1 Jeu 33, 83.16–19). Jeu, then, is the sun god Rê, moving through
the ecliptic. His Father, who emits him as the first word from his mouth
(“Praise!”), must be Atum, the primordial god who transcends the cosmos.
In this religious narrative, we are back to the old Egyptian story from
Heliopolis we discussed in chapter 2. The difference here is that Jesus
has entered the picture as the chosen divine emissary, sent by the Father
to reveal the mysteries of Jeu to the faithful. To put it bluntly, the earliest
version of Jeuian faith was a Christian Gnostic adaptation of the worship
of Rê.
The Jeuian faith is a new religious movement that emerges within
Egypt, from a religious buffer where Gnostic spirituality meets up with
the predispositions of an Egyptian solar cult and familiarity with the Gospel
of John. The resulting blend is a revealed Gnostic religion, unique
unto itself. It doesn’t match our pigeonholes. Its claim to revelation is
not a claim to a personal vision, such as we saw with Mani. There is no
privileged founder or first prophet among the Jeuians. Rather, the claim
to revelation is a claim that the Jeuians are the only people to fully understand
what Jesus came here to reveal—not during his life, as recorded in
the Gospels, but after his resurrection.