THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

nowhere, it can be present as a motivational ingredient in any rhetoric, no matter
how intensely advantage-seeking such rhetoric may be. 49
I maintain that the entire Thunder: Perfect Mind presents a radical theology of
the Word, one that is meta-rhetorical in its purposes in the sense that it attempts to
persuade a vision of its own persuasiveness. In this work a female speaker addresses
an unknown group of people, possibly Greeks and Egyptians, or barbarians (i.e. non-
Greek speaking peoples), as the text suggests. The confessional rhetoric of this
address is powerfully amplified through the continuous use of the anaphoric “I am...”
which is possibly meant to mirror, or even satirise, the “ego eime” (“I am”)
pronouncements in John’s gospel, although this is uncertain. What is of great interest
is that these confessional “I am...” formulas usually result in paradoxical rather than
definitive statements. The paradoxes are not only intellectual but also take the form of
emotional states, quite often focusing their tension upon language itself.
The work is clearly philosophical and mystical, using language as a poetic
vehicle for these ends. The use of anaphora, parallelism, and metaphor, establishes the
work as poetic, while the use of paradox, oxymoron, and specific philosophical terms
gives the work a contemplative, philosophical bent. These two modes of discourse
are fused throughout; three examples will illustrate this:
For I am the first and the last:
I am the one who is honoured and the one who is scorned (13.16-17) 50
For I am the Gnosis and the ignorance
I am reticence and loquaciousness (14.26-28) 51
For I am the Sophia of the Greeks and the Gnosis of barbarians.
I am the judgement of the Greeks and of the barbarians (16.3-6) 52
The following perplexing statement, it seems to me, indicates a philosophical
focus upon two critical terms: “Those who exist together in my being are ignorant of
me; and those who exist in my substance are the ones who know me”. Being and
substance must be seen to represent two antithetical natures within the speaker
herself, and this is confirmed in the earlier statement, “I am the Gnosis and the
Ignorance” These terms, which are Greek loan-words in the Coptic text, reinforces a
strong allusion to philosophical issues. 53
49
Ibid., 269, 270.
50
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XI, 234.
51
Ibid., 238.
52
Ibid., 240.
53
Although this is not necessarily true for all Greek loan words in Coptic. However, it is clear
in this case that being and substance have to be considered part of a quintessential
philosophical vernacular.