THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

een discovered that they existed like a fetus. In the same manner as the
Logos(the Word), he begot them, (they) subsisting spermatically along with
those who had not yet been brought into existence by him. The Father,
therefore, initially thinking of them – not only that they might exist for him, but
that they might exist for themselves as well, that they might then exist in his
thought in the substance of Idea(Ennoea) and that they might exist for
themselves too 48
– sows Idea(Ennoea) like a seed of [knowledge]so that they
might conceive of what exists for them. (60.16-61.11) 49
We note the presence of Nun here as Bythos (the Depths), and its traditional
relationship to the generation of the various divinities. 50
As well, the Memphite
emphasis upon Ptah creating gods and the world through utterance and thought is also
present.
A major focus of the work is upon the aeons, their free-will, and their function
as independent hypostases of the Father. These names are not at all gratuitous (as
many scholars seem to assume – remarkably little has been done in this regard), and
their functions, if not exactly clearly defined in this tractate, are at least adumbrated:
Each one of the aeons has a name, each of which is a quality and power of the
Father, since he exists in many names, which are intermingled and harmonious
with one another. (73.8-12) 51
Marsanes also demonstrates the emanationist focus upon the nature and
relationship of the various aeons:
existent god made a non-existent world of non-existent things, setting down and
hypostasising a single seed that has within itself the all-seed of the cosmos in its entirety”,
trans. Catherine Osborne, Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy, 287; also Libellus IX from
the Hermetica: “The Kosmos is an instrument of God’s will; and it was made by him to this
end, that, having received from God the seeds of all things that belong to it, and keeping
these seeds within itself, it might bring all things into actual existence,” trans. W. Scott,
Hermetica (Boston: Shambala Publications, 1985), 183. Many of the concepts used in the
TripartiteTractate, the thought of Basileides, and the Hermetica, display a close affinity with
the so called Barbelognostics who were pre-Christian and whose system was built about the
concept of a female aspect of the Father (Barbelo, or Sophia). Cf. also with Melchizedek
(NHC IX, 1, 9:5-10): “They were engendered, the gods and the angels and the men, out of
the seed, all of the natures, those in the heavens and those upon the earth and those under the
earth” (Coptic transcription from NHS, Vol. XV, 56, 58). There is an interesting possibility
that the word “Barbelo” is derived from the Coptic word for seed, “BLBILE.” The seed,
apart from the above metaphorical expression of potentiality, also represents the Gnostic
ideal of bisexuality – the pre-Fall state of androgynous purity.
48
The point made here is that the aeons have been given free will even though they subsist in
the thought of the Father. They are independent hypostases.
49
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XXII, 206, 208.
50
In section 25, Bythos is referred to as “depth of depth, elder of elders”, a description highly
reminiscent of “the father of the gods” epithet of Nun.
51
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XXII, 228.