THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

There does not yet exist in English a translation and commentary of all four
versions of the Apocryphon (“Secret Book”) of John, 24
nor has there been any viable
theory put forward as to the existence of an Urtext from which these four versions
have come down to us. 25
This, in large part, results from the usual paucity of
sociological evidence we have about specific Gnostic sects in general. The lack of a
firm date and place of composition, and anonymity of the author, only adds to the
difficulty in assessing the rhetorical intent of the work and in what sort of contexts it
was actually used. At the very least it is clear that the work attained widespread
appeal in various recensions. Certainly if The Apocryphon of John made it to the
wilds of Lyon where Irenaeus reacted to it, 26
as well as to Alexandria and southern
Egypt, 27
it was as likely to have been used in Syria and the cities of Asia Minor.
The depiction of aeonial generation follows the description of primal unity of
the Source. In the Apocryphon of John. this Source creates “its own image”, a first
entity separate from itself which is a female “forethought”, called Barbelo, referred to
as “the womb of everything” (NHC II, 5:5). 28
Through Barbelo, various aeons are
created forming a Pentad made up of male-female pairs. It is at this point that the
24
There are in fact five versions if Irenaeus’s rather abbreviated account (Adv.Haer. I 29,1-4)
is included. The Coptic tractates contained in Nag Hammadi codices II and IV are rather
similar and have been taken together (by B. Layton among others) to provide a long version
with a minimal number of lacunae; the tractate contained in Nag Hammadi codice III and the
Berolinensis manuscript 8502, now in Berlin (hereafter ‘BG’), differ in more specific details
and are the “short” versions referred to in this study.
25
See Martin Krause and Pahor Labib, Die Drei Versionen des Apokryphon des Johannes
(Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1962), in which the three Nag Hammadi texts now in the
Cairo museum are translated; Walter C. Till and Hans-Martin Schenke, eds. and trans. Die
Gnostischen Schriften des Koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis 8502 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
1972); also Michel Tardieu, Écrits Gnostiques: Codex de Berlin (Paris: Les Éditions du cerf,
1984).
26
Referring to “their lies”– and depicting them as a sect descended from the Simonians,
Irenaeus describes them as “a multitude of Barbelognostics, appearing like mushrooms out
of the ground (Adv.Haer. I 29,1).
27
The NHC II “long” version is written in Sahidic Coptic but with a Sahidic with dialectical
elements which place it at the northern edge of the Sahidic area. Søren Giversen, in the
introduction to his Apocryphon Johannis (Copenhagen: Prostant Apud Munksgaard, 1963),
concludes that, “we must admit that the linguistic peculiarities only testify in favour of the
text having actually been written in the area around that place at Nag Hammadi which is
stated to be the finding place, though the area slightly north thereof would fit,”(44).
28
This raises the very important issue (for more orthodox Christian scholars in any case), of
whether the Gnostic concept of the Primal Source (“the Unity”, “God”, “Father of the All”,
“the Invisible” in our text) was dyadic or strictly monist. The inclusion of the feminine
principle at the very beginning of the theogony accords well with many other gnostic texts in
creating a certain ambiguity. “The tradition that Valentinus taught an ultimate dyad must be
viewed in the light of the extreme ambiguity of the term ‘dyad’. In philosophical usage it
could mean (a) plurality as such, the ‘indefinite dyad’, (b) duality, (c) the number two (two
may be added to two, but not twoness to twoness), (d) the second cosmic principle, and (e)
the first pair of principles. In theology it could indicate a pair of antagonistic first principles;
or again, a God with two complimentary aspects.” G.C. Stead, “The Valentinian Myth of
Sophia,” JTS, N.S. XX, Pt.1 (April 1969): 88.