THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

therewith (creation) only from a distance”. 43
Creation is depicted as birth, and
“wetness” with the souls hovering over the divine waters in a depiction reminiscent of
Atum and Nun. The third is a lower aspect of the second and is similar to Plutarch’s
soul and body of Osiris, although the evil World Soul takes on a more independent
status than a mere description of a “down-side” of Isis in Plutarch’s view. The
demiurge is depicted in strictly neutral terms in that he is good only as a conduit for
the higher Good. 44
The First God acts out of “desire” for the Second, and the Second
for the Third; the Second only acts in demiurgic fashion in conjunction with the
Third.
As with Plutarch, this theogonic extension, as it were, plunges into the watery
Abyss of fluid Matter, which is seen to be a positive, evil force. 45
Numenius’s World
Soul, however, is not seen to be in complete revolt against this process, but rather
submits, “albeit with certain irreducible recalcitrance”, as Dillon elegantly puts it. 46
In any event, the descent of the soul represents a tragic inducement of a higher entity
into the hylic accretion of bodily form. In descending into the cosmos, Numenius
depicts the soul as struggling with demons of the west, “inasmuch as, according to the
belief of the Egyptians, the West is the abode of harmful demons”. 47
This is not the place to attempt a study of the affinities between Numenius and
the Chaldean Oracles, however, taken together, they suggest a common dualist
backdrop to Gnostic thought that was far more widespread than is generally
appreciated. One key overlap is in a shared negative view of the body. For the
Chaldeans the body is “the root of all evil” 48
; Numenius sees a perpetual struggle
between opposed souls in humankind which allows for no reconciliation: the soul
exists in the body as in a prison, also a battlefield between warring factions (rational
Good vs. irrational Evil).
Albinus of Smyrna (c. 153), a contemporary of Numenius, is difficult to
isolate amongst a welter of Middle Platonic sources, and it is perhaps best to assume
that, as Dillon puts it, “we are in fact giving more an account of Middle Platonic
doctrine in general” 49
to which I would add that he is clearly influenced by Stoic
doctrine and hence does not indicate the same pronounced degree of dualist
tendencies in common with the other philosophers here examined. I should say that
what Chaeremon accomplishes in his idealisation of the Egyptian priesthood, Albinus
attempts in his valorisation of the Philosophical Life. A work attributed to Albinus,
43
Ibid., 30.
44
A much misunderstood aspect of Gnostic thought where it is assumed that the Gnostic
universe must depict the demiurge as being evil. In fact a mitigated dualist system must, by
virtue of an inner theogonic consistency, posit the demiurge as being ignorant, a hapless
tool, or else simply doing the best that he is able to do with limited resources. This is
consistent in all Valentinian tractates.
45
Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 373.
46
Ibid., 375.
47
Guthrie, Neoplatonic Writings, 50.
48
Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy, 277.
49
Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 272.