THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

with which the present study was commenced was that the Egyptian priest stands
behind the Egyptian Gnostic. If the textual overlaps and influences could be charted, I
felt that a socio-historical case might be made for their superimposition.
Of interest in studying Gnostic thought in a religious-theological light, is the
ever-present gravitational pull of Egyptian motifs, mythological elements, and
theogonic substructures. What shall be defined as Archaic Gnosis manifests as much
of a radical change in mood as does Hellenistic Gnosis, its more sophisticated spiritual
sister; however, this priestly-derived outlook was one unwilling to let go of the
ancient social structures of Egyptian religious experience. The underlying cosmogony
and methodology of the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, or the Books of Jeu, strongly suggests
the authority and hegemony of an inner elite with access to the new sacred texts, their
traditional role being a proper furthering of ritual and rote understanding. The static,
inner component of Egyptian religiosity attempted to remain true to the letter of the
ancient word, handed down in the hieratic continuum. Underlying this thesis is the
assumption that a revolutionary change occurred within literate classes beyond these
sacred precincts, an offshoot of speculative thought intent upon dynamically engaging
the perceived limitations of the conservative priestly tradition. For these groups Ma’at
was patently not manifest in the now empty shell of pharaonic rule: for them one
might say the emperor had no clothes, or rather, in this case, the clothes had no
emperor, as a distant Lagid ensconced in Alexandria could hardly be seen to
completely fulfil the deeper mandates of the Egyptian theogony. Cleopatra VII could
be said to have attempted to wear the double crown of Egypt, acknowledging and
mastering the critical prerequisites of language. Beyond this short-lived mirage of
total Greek and Egyptian synthesis however, the palpable experience of evil in Egypt
under the Romans following the death of Cleopatra and the murder of her son
required, for some, the restructuring of the ancient mythos so as to pull the traditional
components of Egyptian thought into a new synthesis. The enabling ideal of
pharaonic Ma’at was now seen to be everywhere elided by the oppressive realities of
Roman rule. If some priests were barely able to accept the religious legitimacy of a
Ptolemaic king in Alexandria, far fewer could have believed in the Roman praefectus
Aegypti acting on behalf of an absent liege-lord of Egypt. This mood, surfacing within
the religious-minded literati, found expression in both the underworld-obsessed
magical papyrus and later Gnostic tractate.
There was also a more philosophical mode of Gnosis exhibiting the same
pronounced tendency to draw upon Egyptian theogonic models. Hellenistic Gnosis, as
we shall call it, moved far from the Egyptian temple precinct, entering into open
debate in the agora where it displayed the heterodoxy of its make-up in its openness to
engage and incorporate other religious models, and in its disdain for religious
authoritarianism. It is in the area of Hellenistic Gnosis that the Egyptian foundations
of Gnostic thought attained their greatest synthesis with the diverse strata of
metaphysical thought in Hellenistic and Roman times. Here we have the beguiling
and obscure phenomenon of literate Jews who were no longer Jews in any real sense
of the term, Greeks who were no longer Greeks in their religious affiliations and
bloodlines, Egyptians who were no longer “pure” Egyptians, and proto-Gnostic
magicians and priests in the period from 100 B.C.E. to 100 C.E., all of who
contributed to the evolution of Gnostic thought. Above all, there remains the essential
enigma of the literate and bilingual, if not multi-lingual, “Graeco-Egyptian”. In a
sense, this group represents both and neither of the scholastic categories of “Greek”
and “Egyptian”, so removed were they from traditional modes of thought and even
clear ethnic divisions.
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