Passing upward to the Thirteenth Aeon, Jesus tells His disciples that he found Pistis Sophia dwelling alone in a place immediately below it, and He here makes a long digression to recount her history. She is, as has been said above, one of the twenty-four invisible but material emanations projected by the Great Unseen Forefather and his consort Barbelo, and formerly dwelt with her own partner, whose name is not mentioned, in the Thirteenth Aeon[[532]]. But one day happening to look forth from her place and beholding the light of the Treasure-house, she longed to ascend towards it and began to sing praises to it. This angered exceedingly the Authades or Proud God, the Third Triple Power or chief of the Thirteenth Aeon, who had already, as has been said, shown his disobedience in refusing to give up his light. Out of envy and jealousy of Pistis Sophia, he sends forth from himself a great power with a lion’s face who is “half flame and half darkness” and bears the name of Jaldabaoth, which we have met with before among the Ophites[[533]]. This Jaldabaoth is sent below into the regions of Chaos, the unformed and shapeless darkness which is either below or surrounds the earth[[534]], and when Pistis Sophia sees him shining there, she mistakes his light for the light of the Treasure-house, and, leaving her consort, plunges downwards towards it. She is instantly seized by Jaldabaoth and other wicked powers sent forth by the Proud God, and grievously tormented with the object of taking from her her light, so that she may never again be able to return to her own place. In this plight, she sings several Metanoiae or hymns of penitence to the light, and after seven of these, Jesus, as He says, “from pity and without commandment,” raises her to the uppermost parts of Chaos where she is slightly more at ease[[535]]. She continues here to sing hymns of penitence, but is tormented afresh until, after her ninth repentance, Jesus receives command from the First Mystery to succour her. This he does in a battle with fresh emanations from the Authades, including one in the shape of “a flying arrow[[536]].” Adamas, the king of the wicked Eons, also sends a power to the assistance of Jaldabaoth, and the other emanations of the Proud God turn into serpents, a basilisk with seven heads, and a dragon[[537]]. The powers of light sent by Jesus, however, defeat all her enemies, and the archangels Gabriel and Michael bear her aloft and establish her in the place below the Thirteenth Aeon, where Jesus finds her on His ascension as here recorded. But this is not the end. Jesus tells her that when “three times” are fulfilled[[538]], she will be tormented again. This happens as predicted immediately before the descent of the “vesture” on Him on the Mount of Olives. Thereupon, He delivers her for the last time and restores her to her place in the 13th Aeon, where she sings to him a final hymn of thanksgiving.
This completes the episode of Pistis Sophia, and the rest of the book is filled with the questionings upon it of Mary Magdalene and the other disciples, among whom are prominent Mary the Mother of Jesus, Salome, Martha, St John the Divine, St Philip, St Thomas, and St Matthew, to which last-named three is said to be entrusted the recording of the words of Jesus, together with St Peter, St James and St Andrew. This has led some commentators to think that the work may possibly be the Interrogations of Mary (Ἐρωτήσεις Μαρίας), concerning which Epiphanius says that two versions, a greater and a lesser, were used by several Gnostic sects[[539]]. These questionings and the answers of Jesus are extremely tedious, and include the comparison of the hymns of Pistis Sophia, fourteen in all, with certain named Psalms and Odes of David and Solomon of which they are said to be the “interpretation[[540]].” In the course of this, however, the purpose of the book is disclosed, and appears as the revelation of the glories awaiting the believer in the world to come, the coming of the Millennium, and the announcement that Jesus has brought the “mysteries” to the earth for the salvation of men. But before describing these, it may be as well to draw attention to the manifest likeness between the theology and cosmology of the Pistis Sophia proper and what has been said above of the tenets of the Ophites and of Valentinus.
At first sight, the Pistis Sophia in this respect seems to be almost entirely an Ophite book. The Ineffable One, as has been said, is not to be distinguished from the Ophite Bythos, while “the First Mystery looking inward and outward” is a fairly close parallel to the First Man and the Son of Man of the Ophite system. The names Sabaoth, Iao, and Jaldabaoth also appear both here and with the Ophites, although the last-named power now occupies a greatly inferior position to that assigned to him by them, and from a merely ignorant power has now become an actively malignant one. The work assigned to Sophia Without in the older system is here taken in the Place of the Middle by the Virgin of Light, who is throughout the working agent in the salvation of mankind; but it should be noted that she here operates directly and not through a grosser power as with the Ophites. The idea of a female divinity ordering the affairs of men for their good as a mother with her children had already gained possession of the heathen world in the character of (the Greek) Isis, and in the hint here given as to the resemblance between her delegates and the Virgin Mary, we may see, perhaps, the road by which the Christian world travelled towards that conception of the Theotokos or Mother of God which played such an important part in its later creed. Among the powers inferior to her the names and places are changed, but the general arrangement remains nearly the same as with the Ophites, especially the Ophites of the diagram. The starry world in particular here comes much into evidence, and is given more important functions than in any other Gnostic system except the Ophite[[541]]. The “Gates” of the firmaments are met with both here and in the Ophite prayers or “defences” recorded by Origen[[542]], and an allusion put by this last into the mouth of Celsus and not otherwise explained, to “gates that open of their own accord,” looks as if Origen’s heathen adversary may himself have come across the story of the Pistis Sophia[[543]]. The general hostility of this starry world and its rulers towards mankind is a leading feature in both systems.
On the other hand, the parallels between the theology of the Pistis Sophia and that of Valentinus are even closer, and are too important to be merely accidental. The complete identification of Jesus with the First Mystery strongly recalls the statement of Valentinus, rather slurred over by the Fathers, that Jesus was Himself the Joint Fruit or summary of the perfections of the whole Pleroma or Godhead, and is a much more Christian conception than that of the earlier Ophites as to His nature[[544]]. So, too, the curious theory that each of the lower worlds has its own “saviour” finds expression in both systems, as does the idea that Jesus received something from all the worlds through which He passed on His way to earth. One may even find a vivid reminiscence of the Valentinian nomenclature in the name of Pistis Sophia herself, which combines the names of the feminine members of the first and last syzygies of the Valentinian Dodecad[[545]], Pistis there being the spouse of Paracletus or the Legate, and Sophia that of Theletus or the Beloved, while the cause of her fall in the present book is the same as that assigned in the system of Valentinus. Hence it may appear that the author of the Pistis Sophia, whoever he may have been, was well acquainted with the Ophite and Valentinian theology, and that he continued it with modifications of his own after the innovating habit current among the Gnostics and noticed by Tertullian.
In the cosmology of the Pistis Sophia, again, the preference given to Valentinian rather than to the older Ophitic views is clearly marked. The cause of the descent of the light into matter in the first instance is no accident as with the Ophites, but is part of the large scheme for the evolution or, as the author calls it, the “emanation” of the universe which was devised and watched over in its smallest details by the First Mystery[[546]]. Whether the author accepted the wild story attributed to Valentinus by Irenaeus concerning the Fall of Sophia and her Ectroma, it is impossible to say, because, as we have seen, he omits all detailed description of the way in which the two higher worlds which we have called the heavens of the Ineffable One and the world of the First Mystery came into being[[547]]. But it is plain that both must have been made by or rather through Jesus, because it is stated in the mysterious five words written on the vesture of Jesus that it is through the First Mystery that all things exist, and that it was from him that all the emanations flowed forth[[548]]. As the Pistis Sophia also says that Jesus is Himself the First Mystery, this corresponds to the opening words of St John’s Gospel, that “by Him all things were made[[549]].” Hence the author of the Pistis Sophia, if confronted with the story of the Ectroma, would doubtless have replied that this was merely a myth designed to teach the danger for the uninstructed of acting on one’s own initiative instead of waiting for the commands of God, and that in his book he had told the same story in a slightly different way. This seems to be the only construction to be placed on the trials of Pistis Sophia herself, since her desire for light seems not to have been looked upon as in itself sinful, and the real cause of her downfall was the mistaking the light of Jaldabaoth for that of the Treasure-house. But her descent into Chaos, unlike the Fall of her prototype, apparently had nothing to do with the creation of the universe and its inhabitants, which in the Pistis Sophia seems to have taken place before the story opens. If they were supposed by the author to have originated in the passions of Sophia Without, as Hippolytus tells us Valentinus taught[[550]], they were none the less the direct work of Jesus, and the statement in Hippolytus, that in the Valentinian teaching Jesus made out of the supplication of Sophia Without a path of repentance, finds a sort of echo in the Pistis Sophia, where it is the “Metanoiae” or hymns of penitence many times repeated of Pistis Sophia, her antitype or copy, which bring Jesus to her succour. A further parallel may be found in Hippolytus’ other statement from Valentinus that Jesus gave this “supplication” power over the psychic substance which is called the Demiurge[[551]]. In the Pistis Sophia, the heroine defeats the Authades with the assistance of Jesus; and there does not seem much doubt that Pistis Sophia is eventually to receive her adversary the Authades’ place, an event which is foreshadowed by the quotation of the text “His bishopric let another take” in one of her penitential psalms[[552]]. It would also appear that Adamas, the wicked king of the Twelve Aeons, may be the Adversary or Diabolos described by the Valentinians[[553]] as the cosmocrator or ruler of this world, his rule being exercised in the Pistis Sophia through his servants, the Archons of “Heimarmene and the Sphere.” The epithet of Adamas or ἀδαμαστὸς given in classical literature to Hades as the Lord of Hell would seem appropriate enough in his case. This would only leave Beelzebub, prince of the demons, unaccounted for; but the author does not here give any detailed description of Chaos which may be supposed to be his seat. Although the omission was, as we shall see, amply repaired in other documents put forth by the sect, it may be here explained by the conviction of the nearness of the Parusia or Second Advent which marks the Pistis Sophia[[554]]. On the fulfilment of this hope, the Cosmos was, as we are informed, to be “caught up,” and all matter to be destroyed[[555]]. What need then to elaborate the description of its most malignant ministers?
The joys of the elect in the world to come, on the contrary, receive the fullest treatment. In the “completion of the Aeon, when the number of the assembly of perfect souls is made up[[556]],” or in other words when all pneumatic or spiritual men have laid aside their material bodies, they will ascend through all the firmaments and places of the lesser powers until they come to the last Parastates, where they are to reign with Jesus over all the worlds below it[[557]]. This is the place from which the power, which the Great Light, the legate of the Ineffable One, took from the First Precept and passed into the Kerasmos or Confusion, originated; and it was this world, or rather its ruler, who arranged Jeû and the other Powers of the Right Hand in their Places and thus set going the whole machinery of salvation. Its “light” or glory is said to be so tremendous that it can be compared to nothing in this world, and here Jesus will reign with the disciples for 1000 “years of light” which are equal to 365,000 of our years[[558]]. Here the thrones of the twelve “disciples” (μαθηταί) will depend on His[[559]], “but Mary Magdalene and John the Virgin shall be higher than all the disciples[[560]].” In the midst of these beatitudes they will apparently receive further instruction or further mysteries, the effect of which will be that they will at the conclusion of the Millennium be united with Jesus in so close a union that, as it is expressly said, they will become one with Him, and finally they will become members of the Godhead and, as it were, “the last limb of the Ineffable One[[561]].” In the meantime they will be at liberty to visit any of the worlds below them. All those who have received lesser mysteries,—that is to say, who have received a lesser degree of instruction and have not become wholly pneumatic or spiritual—will after death in this world go to the heaven of which they have received the mystery, or, in cases where their instruction has only just begun, be brought before the Virgin of Light, who will cause their souls to be sent back to earth in “righteous” bodies, which will of themselves seek after the mysteries, and, having obtained them, will, if time be allowed, achieve a more or less perfect salvation. Here, again, we meet with a close resemblance to the system of those later Ophites who possessed the diagram described by Origen; for Jesus tells His disciples that those who have only taken these lower mysteries will have to exhibit a seal or token (σύμβολον) and to make an “announcement” (ἀπόφασις) and a defence (ἀπολογία) in the different regions through which they pass after death[[562]]. No such requirements, He says, will be made from those who have received the higher mysteries, whose souls on leaving the body will become great streams of light, which will pass through all the lower places “during the time that a man can shoot an arrow,” the powers therein falling back terror-stricken from its light until the soul arrives at its appointed place. As, therefore, these seals and announcements and defences will be of no use to the disciples, the Jesus of the Pistis Sophia declares that He will not describe them in detail, they having been already set out in “the two great Books of Jeû[[563]].”
What now are these “mysteries” which have so tremendous an effect on their recipient as actually to unite him with the Deity after death? The Greek word μυστήριον, which is that used in the Coptic MS., does not seem to mean etymologically more than a secret, in which sense it was applied to the ceremonies or secret dramas exhibited, as has been said, at Eleusis and elsewhere, and later, to the Christian Eucharist[[564]]. In the early part of the Pistis Sophia it is the word used to denote the First Mystery or first and greatest emanation of God, who is withdrawn from human contemplation and, as it were, concealed behind a veil impenetrable by the senses of man. But in the part of the book with which we are now dealing it seems to refer not to hidden persons, but to secret things. These things seem to fall into two categories, one of which is spoken of as the Mystery of the Ineffable One, and the other as the Mysteries of the First Mystery. The Mystery of the Ineffable One is said to be one, but, with the provoking arithmetic peculiar to the book, it is immediately added that it “makes” three mysteries and also another five, while it is still one[[565]]. The Mysteries of the First Mystery on the other hand are said to be twelve in number, and these figures may possibly cover some allusion to the Ogdoad and the Dodecad of Valentinus[[566]]. It is also fairly clear that each of these Twelve Mysteries of the First Mystery must be some kind of ceremony, and a ceremony which can be performed without much preparation or many participants. This we may deduce from the following description of the merits of one of them:
“For the second mystery of the First Mystery, if it is duly accomplished in all its forms, and the man who accomplishes it shall speak the mystery over the head of a man on the point of going forth from the body, so that he throws it into his two ears:—even when the man who is going forth from the body shall have received it aforetime, and is a partaker of the word of Truth[[567]],—verily, I say unto you that when that man shall go forth from the body of matter, his soul will make a great flash of light, and will pass through every Place until it come into the kingdom of that mystery.
“But and if that man has not [aforetime] received that mystery, and is not a partaker of the word of Truth,—verily I say unto you that man when he shall go forth from the body shall not be judged in any Place whatever, nor shall he be tormented in any Place whatever, and no fire shall touch him on account of that great mystery of the Ineffable One which is in him; and all shall make haste to pass him from one hand to the other, and to guide him into every Place and every order, until they shall lead him before the Virgin of Light, all the Places being filled with fear before the sign of the mystery of the kingdom of that Ineffable One which shall be with him.
“And the Virgin of Light shall wonder and she shall try him, but he will not be led towards the light until he shall have accomplished all the service of the light of that mystery, that is to say, the purifications of the renunciation of the world and all the matter that is therein[[568]]. But the Virgin of Light shall seal that soul with the excellent seal which is this XXXX[[569]], and she shall have it cast in the same month in which it went forth from the body of matter into a righteous body which will find the God of Truth and the excellent mysteries in order that it may receive them by inheritance and also the light for eternity. Which is the gift of the second mystery of the First Mystery of that Ineffable One[[570]].”