THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

aura of power about the philologist” 73
and to the extent that there were prominent
Gnostic groups in Alexandria and Memphis in Egypt, or further afield in such similar
cross-roads cities as Antioch, Edessa, and the rival library in Pergamum, there can be
no doubt that their discourse operated in the Burkean “dramatistic context” that a
political/religious realm of practical effects was moved in the wake of such
comparativist activities. As “philology” in its inception connoted a final rejection of
the divine origins of language, we can see an early forerunner of this literary criticism
in the literary activities of the Museon in Alexandria, in its multilingistic collation of
ancient religious Truths, and in the universalism of the preceding Ptolemaic epoch
which fostered this pluralism. The de-historicising Word of Hellenistic Gnosis was
seen to be a numinous pearl of insight, one prompted by the original irritant “dirt” of
historical process, and thereby formed by language-borne contending Truth claims,
but ultimately transcendent in its left-wing utopian aspirations of a “return to
fullness.” To pick up the desacralised word and use it in this cause was undoubtedly
the greatest challenge faced by these early deconstructionists. In ostensibly forsaking
the political possibilities of sectarianism one might say they took up the last option
open to them and became a literary genre. The Thunder Perfect Mind is, in my view,
the one extant Gnostic work which can be placed alongside the patristic accounts of
Basileides by way of demonstrating a very high level of rhetorical sophistication. In
these few passages we see a cosmic-critical perception brought into the political
arena, one which self-consciously drives the discourse itself:
I am the one whose image is great in Egypt and the one who has no image
among the barbarians. I am the one who has been hated and loved in every place
I am the one called Life whom you called Death. I am the one called Law whom
you called Anarchy. (16.7-15) 74
I am peace and war comes to be because of me. And I am a foreigner and a
citizen. (18.23-26) 75
Hear me you auditors, and learn from my words those who know me. I am the
hearing that is attainable to everything, I am the speech which cannot be
grasped. I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name. I am the sign of
the letter and the manifestation of the division. (20.26-35) 76
73
Said, Orientalism, 132
74
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XI, 240, 242.
75
Ibid., 246.
76
Ibid., 250, 252.