THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Gnostic Studies, 17
there has been few attempts to explore the literary relationships
between late-phase Egyptian religious thought and Gnostic-Coptic expression for
example, or to attempt to tackle the extremely complicated issue of Gnostic thought
appearing against a particular socio-political backdrop in Egypt. This lack appears at
times to be a wilful deficiency, often simple neglect with respect to a host of
methodologies whose boundaries happen to coincide here, and I have been unable to
simply discuss “Gnostic connections” in various areas without directly raising the
larger impediments that exist in the modern scholarly appreciation of dualist
speculation as a whole. And yet it must be said that this general situation is much
mitigated by the excellent work of a host of exceptional scholars who have worked on
specific elements that support my case; indeed, this thesis rests upon their work at
critical junctures and would not have been possible without it. Even so: while not out
to be overly captious, indeed cynical, in the development of an antidotal hermeneutic,
however “Gnostic Studies”,the study of Egyptian Gnostic thought in particular, is a
field still shaped by strong antipathies. It often exists as a stalking-horse for narrow
theological and philosophical concerns, a veritable Potempkin textual village directly
comparable to the Roman orientalist apprehension of Alexandria which existed ad
Aegyptum, but not in Aegyptos.
It will therefore simplify the task at hand to dispense with the whole Christian
Origins issue as the root emanationist structures we are concerned with in Egypt
predate by millennia the widespread acceptance of Christianity in Egypt in the 4th
century C.E.. Middle Platonic, Hermetic, and Egyptian magical cosmologies, all of
which subtend Gnosis in Egypt, are completely devoid of Christian influences, and
Manichaeism in Egypt is, in addition, polemically and formidably arrayed against
evolving orthodoxy. Textual analyses of extant patristic sources and Gnostic works
outside of a limited number of “canonical” Gnostic tractates that Christian Origins is
wrestling with, clearly indicates that the Christian influence upon the dualist systems
of the first centuries of our era, with the possible exception of the so-called Gnostic
“School of Thomas” located in Syria, was in many ways limited, and often marginal,
literally worlds removed from the later synoptic Christ Myth. One must bear in mind,
too, that the role of a saviour in Gnostic thought quite clearly exists apart from all
developed christologies where it appears at all. The inclusion of Christ is usually
effected as a supporting player amongst players on the Gnostic stage, and his role is
more often supererogated by a female salvific figure, or at least distinctly shared with
her. That this manifest dynamic is scarcely recognised by the field is a hermeneutic
issue. 18
In short, the mere inclusion of Jesus in a Gnostic metaphysic does not a full-
Androgyne Gott in Ägypten ein Erscheinungsbild des Weltschöpfers,” in Religion im Erbe
Ägyptens.
17
Jan Helderman, “Isis as Plane in the Gospel of Truth?” in Gnosis and Gnosticism, ed.
Martin Krause (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), 26-46; R. McL.Wilson “Gnostic Origins an
Egyptian Connection?” in Religion im Erbe Ägypten; Douglas M. Parrott “Eugnostos and
‘All the Philosophers’,” in Religion im Erbe Ägyptens, and “Gnosticism and Egyptian
Religion,” NT XXIX,1 (1987); Benno Przybylski, “The Role of Calendrical Data in Gnostic
,” VC 34 (1980): 56-70; Albert Torhoudt, Een Onbekend Gnostisch Systeem in Plutarchus’
De Iside et Osiride (Lovanii: Studia Hellenistica, 1942).
18
Pheme Perkins, “Sophia as Goddess in the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Images of the
Feminine in Gnosticism, ed. Karen L. King (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 102: “Both
the christianization of the gnostic myths and the fact that most scholars who study them have
interiorized the religious symbolics of a Jewish or a Christian “patriarchal orthodoxy”
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