THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

1) The physical realm is inferior to the perfection of Being.
2) “Something happened” which brought this about, and divine powers are
responsible for the elaboration of the original error.
3) A plurality of divinities is involved in the theogonic extension (my
phrase).
4) The goddess who plays a direct role in the construction of the world is
situated in the lower realm.
5) The goddess “commands” to which I would add that a soteriological
medium of “higher language” is also focused upon.
I would also point out another important motif which occurs in Parmenides:
firstly, the poet is “a man who knows” (Fr. 28B1,3) and, as Mansfeld puts it, “he is
called ‘initiated’ before he has been initiated” 10 and this surely anticipates the Gnostic
pneumatic. Parmenides, and presumably his fellow “poets” have direct access to this
transition, whereas others must look to the language these poets leave behind. Taken
in conjunction with this foreshadowing of “Gnostic elitism” the cosmogonic emphasis
upon the goddess and the word is especially striking.
The ambiguous dual-aspect of the Parmenidean goddess is drawn out by
Empedocles into an explicitly lower entity, Hate, who is seen to embody evil. While
Love and Hate are subordinate to a higher divinity in Parmenides, they themselves are
the dualistic framework of Empedocles’ cosmos.
For Empedocles, the two powers of Strife and Love appear out of the “single
One” and fragment 22 suggests the Egyptian emphasis upon Order bounded by
Disorder: “As things came together in harmony, Strife withdrew to the outermost
region”. 11
This dualism is further developed in fragment 29:
When Strife had fallen to the lowest depth of the vortex and Love had reached
its very center, then all things came together so as to be a single whole. This
unity was attained not all at once, but according to the wishes of the things that
were uniting, as they came some from one direction, some from another. Yet
along with the things that became mixed there were many things that remained
unmixed – all, in fact, of which Strife retained possession; for Strife had not yet
retreated entirely from them to the outermost limit of the circle, but he had
departed from some things while in others he remained. 12
As with the identical Egyptian view on Disorder existing as a theogonic entity, there
is no sense in Empedocles that Strife can be finally vanquished, indeed its
interpenetration of the All is seen to be necessary. It is also worth emphasising that
inquiry... perhaps he had some information about Egyptian lore. This must remain
speculation. The parallel with what is found in Gnostic thought is not less surprising for this
reason, even if – as is, on the whole, the most probable explanation – the Gnostics took over
their plurality of gates from Egyptian religion, transposing them from the Nether World to
the Heavens.”
10
Ibid., 276.
11
Trans. Wheelwright, The Presocratics, 131.
12
Ibid., 132.