[546]. It is said (p. 9, Copt.) that it is by him that the universe was created and that it is he who causes the sun to rise.
[547]. As has before been said, this is attempted in one of the documents of the Bruce Papyrus. See pp. [191], [192] infra. In the present state of the text this attempt is only difficultly intelligible, and is doubtless both later in date than and the work of an author inferior to that of the Pistis Sophia.
[548]. p. 16, Copt. Yet the First Mystery is not the creator of Matter which is evil, because Matter does not really exist. See Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, p. 126) and n. 2, p. 190 infra.
[549]. As mentioned in the Scottish Review article referred to in n. 1, p. [135] supra, there is no passage but one in the Pistis Sophia which affords any colour for supposing that the author was acquainted with St John’s Gospel. All the quotations set forth by Harnack in his treatise Über das gnostische Buch Pistis-Sophia, Leipzig, 1891, p. 27, on which he relies to prove the converse of this proposition, turn out on analysis to appear also in one or other of the Synoptics, from which the author may well have taken them. The single exception is this (Pistis Sophia, p. 11, Copt.), “Wherefore I said unto you from the beginning, Ye are not from the Cosmos; I likewise am not from it”; John xvii. 14: “(O Father) I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The parallel does not seem so close as to make it certain that one document is copying from the other. Both may very possibly be taken from some collection of Logia now lost, but at one time current in Alexandrian circles; or from the Gospel of the Egyptians, from which the Pistis Sophia afterwards quotes.
[550]. See [Chap. IX], p. [107] supra.
[551]. See last note. The Authades or Proud God of the Pistis Sophia seems to have all the characteristics with which Valentinus endows his Demiurge.
[552]. So Pistis Sophia sings in her second hymn of praise after her deliverance from Chaos (p. 160, Copt.) “I am become pure light,” which she certainly was not before that event. Jesus also promises her later (p. 168, Copt.) that when the three times are fulfilled and the Authades is again wroth with her and tries to stir up Jaldabaoth and Adamas against her “I will take away their powers from them and give them to thee.” That this promise was supposed to be fulfilled seems evident from the low positions which Jaldabaoth and Adamas occupy in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, while Pistis Sophia is said to furnish the “power” for the planet Venus.
[553]. See [Chap. IX], p. [108] and n. 1 supra.
[554]. All the revelations in the Pistis Sophia are in fact made in anticipation of the time “when the universe shall be caught up,” and the disciples be set to reign with Jesus in the Last Parastates. Cf. especially pp. 193-206 Copt.
[555]. The idea may not have been peculiar to Valentinus and his followers. So in the Ascensio Isaiae (x. 8-13) the “Most High the Father of my Lord” says to “my Lord Christ who will be called Jesus”: “And none of the angels of that world shall know that thou art Lord with Me of the seven heavens and of their angels. And they shall not know that Thou art with Me till with a loud voice I have called to the heavens, and their angels, and their lights, even unto the sixth heaven, in order that you may judge and destroy the princes and angels and gods of that world, and the world that is dominated by them.” Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, pp. 70-71.