At the same time it is evident that the MS. of the Pistis Sophia that has come down to us is not the original form of the book. All the scholars who have studied it are agreed that the Coptic version has been made from a Greek original by a scribe who had no very profound acquaintance with the first-named tongue[[606]]. This appears not only from the frequent appearance in it of Greek words following Coptic ones of as nearly as possible the same meaning; but from the fact that the scribe here and there gives us others declined according to the rules not of Coptic but of Greek accidence. We must therefore look for an author who, though an Egyptian and acquainted with the native Egyptian religion, would naturally have written in Greek; and on the whole there is no one who fulfils these requirements so well as Valentinus himself. The fact that the author never quotes from the Gospel according to St John indicates that it had not come to his knowledge; for the opening chapter of St John’s Gospel contains many expressions that could easily on the Gnostic system of interpretation be made to accord with the Valentinian theology, and is in fact so used by later writers of the same school as the author of the Pistis Sophia[[607]]. Now the first direct and acknowledged quotation from St John’s Gospel that we have is that made by Theophilus, who was made bishop of Antioch in A.D. 170, and the generally received opinion is that this Gospel, whenever written, was not widely known long before this date[[608]]. The only founders of Gnostic sects of Egyptian birth prior to this were Basilides and Valentinus, and of these two, Valentinus is the more likely author, because he, unlike his predecessor, evidently taught for general edification, and possessed, as the Fathers agree, a numerically large following. We have, moreover, some reason for thinking that Valentinus actually did write a book with some such title as the Sophia. Tertullian, in his declamation against the Valentinians, quotes a sentence from “the Wisdom (Lat. Sophia) not of Valentinus but of Solomon[[609]].” It has been suggested that he is here referring to some saying of the Valentinian aeon Sophia; but no writings would in the nature of things be attributed to her, and, as M. Amélineau points out, it is more natural to think that he was here comparing a book with a book[[610]]. This figure of rhetoric was a favourite one with Tertullian, for in his treatise De Carne Christi we find him quoting in like manner the Psalms—“not the Psalms of Valentinus, the apostate, heretic, and Platonist, but the Psalms of David[[611]].” The fact that the story in the British Museum MS. is called Pistis Sophia instead of Sophia only need not hinder us from identifying this with the work presumably referred to by Tertullian, because this title is, as has been said, the work of another scribe than those who transcribed the original; and Pistis Sophia is sometimes spoken of in the MS. itself as Sophia only[[612]]. Moreover, there is some reason for thinking that certain of the Fathers and even their Pagan adversaries had seen and read the story of Pistis Sophia. The allusion quoted above from Origen to gates opening of their own accord seems to refer to one of its episodes, and Tertullian, in the treatise in which he says he is exposing the original tenets of the sect[[613]], uses many expressions that he can hardly have borrowed from any other source. Thus, he speaks of Sophia “breaking away from her spouse[[614]]” which is the expression used by Pistis Sophia in her first Metanoia and is in no way applicable to the Valentinian Sophia of Irenaeus or Hippolytus. He again speaks of the same Sophia as being all but swallowed up and dissolved in “the substance” evidently of Chaos, which is the fate which Pistis Sophia anticipates for herself in the MS. Tertullian, like the Pistis Sophia, also assigns to the psychic substance the place of honour or right hand in the quasi-material world, while the hylic is relegated in both to the left hand[[615]]. The Paradise of Adam is said by him to be fixed by Valentinus “above the third heaven[[616]]” as it is in the Pistis Sophia, if, as we may suppose, the soul of the protoplast dwelt in the same place as that of Elijah. The name of Ecclesia or the Church is given not only to a particular aeon in the Pleroma, but also to the divine power breathed into man from a higher world in both Tertullian and the Pistis Sophia[[617]], and, in the treatise De Carne Christi, Tertullian alludes contemptuously to an heretical doctrine that Christ possessed “any new kind of flesh miraculously obtained from the stars[[618]],” which seems to refer to the taking by Jesus in the opening of the Pistis Sophia of a body from “Barbelo” the goddess or Triple Power set over matter and inspiring the benefic planet Venus. For all which reasons it seems probable that in the Pistis Sophia we have the translation of an authentic work by Valentinus.
The Pistis Sophia, however, is not the only work in the British Museum MS. The first and second books of it, as they are called by the annotator, come to an end, rather abrupt but evidently intentional, on the 252nd page of the MS. There then appears the heading in the hand of the annotator “Part of the Texts of the Saviour[[619]],” and on this follow two pages dealing with the “members” of the Ineffable One, as to which it is expressly said that only a partial revelation is made[[620]]. These seem to have slipped out of their proper place, and are followed by two discontinuous extracts from another treatise, the second of which is also headed by the annotator “Part of the Texts of the Saviour.” This second part, which we shall venture to take before the other, is evidently the introduction to or the commencement of a new treatise, for it begins with the statement that “After they had crucified Our Lord Jesus He rose from the dead on the third day,” and that His disciples gathered round Him, reminding Him that they had left all to follow Him[[621]]. Jesus “standing on the shore of the sea Ocean,” then makes invocation to the “Father of every Fatherhood, boundless light,” in a prayer composed of Egyptian and Hebrew words jumbled together after the fashion of the spells in the Magic Papyri[[622]]. He then shows the disciples the “disk of the sun” as a great dragon with his tail in his mouth drawn by four white horses and the disk of the moon like a ship drawn by two white steers[[623]]. The two steering oars of this last are depicted as a male and a female dragon who take away the light from the rulers of the stars among whom they move. Jesus and His disciples are then translated to the place called the “Middle Way[[624]].” He there describes how the Archons of Adamas rebelled and persisted in engendering and bringing forth “rulers and archangels and angels and ministers and decans.” We further hear, for the first time, that the Twelve Aeons, instead of being, as in the Pistis Sophia, all under the rule of Adamas, are divided into two classes, one Jabraoth ruling over six of them and Sabaoth Adamas over the other six; that Jabraoth and his subjects repented and practised “the mysteries of the light,” including, as we have seen, abstinence from generation[[625]], whereupon they were taken up by Jeû to the light of the sun between the “places of the middle and those of the left.” “Sabaoth Adamas,” on the other hand, with his subjects to the number of 1800, were bound to the sphere, 360 powers being set over them, the 360 being controlled by the five planets Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter. Jesus then describes in great detail the different tortures in the Middle Way and two other hells called Chaos and Amenti, wherein the souls of uninitiated men who commit sins are tormented between their incarnations[[626]], the final punishment being in the worst cases annihilation. He then affords His disciples a vision of “fire and water and wine and blood” which He declares He brought with Him on His Incarnation, and celebrates a sacrament which He calls “the baptism of the First Oblation,” but which seems to be a peculiar form of the Eucharist with invocations in the jargon alluded to above, and a thaumaturgic conversion of the wine used in it into water and vice versâ[[627]]. There are several lacunae in this part of the MS., and the tortures for certain specified sins are differently given in different places, so that it is probable that with the Part of the Texts of the Saviour has here been mixed extracts from another document whose title has been lost[[628]].
The remaining document of the British Museum MS., being the third in order of place, was probably taken from the same book as that last described, and was placed out of its natural order to satisfy the pedantry of the scribes, the rule in such cases being that the longer document should always come first. Like its successor, it deals largely with the “punishments” of the souls who have not received the mysteries of the light, and introduces a new and still more terrible hell in the shape of the “Dragon of Outer Darkness” which it declares to be a vast dragon surrounding the world, having his tail in his mouth, and containing twelve chambers, wherein the souls of the uninitiated dead are tortured after their transmigrations are ended until they reach the annihilation reserved for them at the last judgment[[629]]. There is also given here a very curious account of man’s invisible part, which is said to be made up of the “Power” infused into it by the Virgin of Light which returns to its giver after death[[630]], and the Moira or Fate which it derives from the Sphere of Destiny and has as its sole function to lead the man it inhabits to the death he is predestined to die[[631]]. Then there is the Counterfeit of the Spirit, which is in effect a duplicate of the soul proper and is made out of the matter of the wicked Archons. This not only incites the soul to sin, but follows it about after death, denouncing to the powers set over the punishments the sins it has induced the soul to commit[[632]]. All these punishments, to describe which is evidently the purpose of all the extracts from the Texts of the Saviour here given, are escaped by those who have received the mysteries.
The Texts of the Saviour therefore clearly belong to a later form of Gnosticism than the Pistis Sophia properly so called. The author’s intention is evidently to frighten his readers with the fate reserved for those who do not accept the teaching of the sect. For this purpose the division of mankind into pneumatic, psychic, and hylic is ignored[[633]], and this is especially plain in certain passages where the torments after death of those who follow “the doctrines of error” are set forth. Magic, which has been spoken of with horror in the Pistis Sophia, is here made use of in the celebration of the rites described, and the miraculous power of healing the sick and raising the dead, though said to be of archontic, i.e. diabolic, origin is here recommended as a means to be employed under certain safeguards for the purpose of converting “the whole world[[634]].” Even the duration of the punishments and the different bodies into which the souls of the men are to be cast are made to depend upon the relative positions of the stars and planets which seem to be interpreted according to the rules of the astrology of the time,—a so-called science, which is spoken of scornfully in the Pistis Sophia itself[[635]]. Yet it is evident that the author or authors of the Texts of the Saviour are acquainted with the book which precedes it; for in a description of the powers which Jeû, who appears in both as the angelic arranger of the Kerasmos, “binds” in the five planets set to rule over it, we learn that he draws a power from “Pistis Sophia, the daughter of Barbelo” and binds it in the planet Venus or Aphrodite[[636]]. As this is the only reference to her, and receives no further explanation, it is plain that the writer assumed his readers to be well acquainted with Pistis Sophia’s history, and Jeû, Melchisidek, Adamas, and Jaldabaoth, now one of the torturers in Chaos, appear, as we have seen, in both works. The author of the Texts of the Saviour also shows himself the avowed opponent of the Pagan deities still worshipped in the early Christian centuries, as is evidenced by his making not only the Egyptian Typhon, but Adonis, Persephone, and Hecate, fiends in hell. Oddly enough, however, he gives an explanation of the myth of the two springs of memory and oblivion that we have seen in the Orphic gold plates in the following passage, which may serve as an example of the style of the book:
“Jesus said: When the time set by the Sphere of Destiny[[637]] for a man that is a persistent slanderer to go forth from the body is fulfilled, there come unto him Abiuth and Charmon, the receivers of Ariel[[638]], and lead forth his soul from the body, that they may take it about with them for three days, showing it the creatures of the world. Thereafter they drag it into Amenti unto Ariel that he may torment it in his torments for eleven months and twenty-one days. Thereafter they lead it into Chaos unto Jaldabaoth and his forty-nine demons, that each of his demons may set upon it for eleven months and twenty-one days with whips of smoke. Thereafter they lead it into rivers of smoke and seas of fire that they may torment it therein eleven months and twenty-one days. Thereafter they lead it on high into the Middle Way that each of the Archons of the Middle Way may torment it with his own torments another eleven months and twenty-one days. And thereafter they lead it unto the Virgin of Light who judges the righteous and the sinners, and she shall judge it. And when the Sphere is turned round, she delivers it to her receivers that they may cast it forth among the Aeons of the Sphere. And the servants of the Sphere lead it into the water which is below the Sphere, that the boiling steam may eat into it, until it cleanse it thoroughly. Then Jaluha the receiver of Sabaoth Adamas, bearing the cup of oblivion delivers it to the soul, that it may drink therein and forget all the places and the things therein through which it has passed[[639]]. And it is placed in an afflicted body wherein it shall spend its appointed time[[640]].”
The object of the cup of oblivion is obviously that the wicked man may learn nothing from the torments he has endured. In the case of the righteous but uninitiated dead, the baleful effect of this cup will be annulled by “the Little Sabaoth the Good” who will administer to him another cup “of perception and understanding and wisdom” which will make the soul seek after the mysteries of light, on finding which it will inherit light eternal.
It would be easy to see in these features of the Texts of the Saviour the work of Marcus the magician who, as was said in a former chapter, taught, according to the Fathers, a corrupted form of the doctrine of Valentinus for his own interested purposes[[641]]. The distinguishing feature about his celebration of the Eucharist is the same as that given in the Texts of the Saviour, and as Clement of Alexandria was acquainted with a sect in his day which substituted water for wine therein[[642]], it is probable that Marcosians were to be found during the latter part of the IInd century in Egypt. It is also to be noted that the annotator has written upon the blank leaf which separates the first and second books of the Pistis Sophia a cryptogram concealing, apparently, the names of the Ineffable One and the other higher powers worshipped by Valentinus, and this seems to be constructed in much the same way as the isopsephisms and other word-puzzles attributed by Irenaeus to Marcus[[643]]. The mixture of Hebrew names and words with Egyptian ones in the prayer of Jesus given in the Texts of the Saviour would agree well with what the last-named Father says about Marcus being a Jew, and a prayer which he represents Marcus as making over the head of a convert baptized into his sect is couched in a jargon of the same character[[644]]. On the other hand, the opening sentence of the book calls Jesus “our Lord,” which Irenaeus tells us the Valentinians carefully abstained from doing[[645]], and the long and detailed description of the different hells and their tortures is much more Egyptian than Jewish[[646]]. The remark attributed to Basilides as to one in a thousand and two in ten thousand being worthy to take the higher mysteries is here put into the mouth of Jesus, and perhaps it would be safer to attribute for the present the Texts of the Saviour not to Marcus himself, but to some later Gnostic who fused together his teaching with that of the earlier and more disinterested professors of Egyptian Gnosticism.
The same remarks apply with but little modification to some other fragments of Gnostic writings which have come down to us. In the Bodleian Library at Oxford is to be seen a MS. written on papyrus, which was brought to this country by the Abyssinian traveller, Bruce. This also is in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic, and although it has been badly damaged and the ink is rapidly disappearing in the damp climate of Oxford, yet a copy taken nearly a century ago by Woide makes its decipherment possible in most places. The Bruce Papyrus, like the British Museum parchment MS., contains more than one document. Unfortunately the arrangement of the leaves is by no means certain, and the two scholars who have studied it most thoroughly differ almost as widely as possible as to the order of its contents. M. Amélineau, a celebrated Egyptologist and Coptic scholar, who published in 1882 a copy of the text with a French translation in the Notices et Extraits of the Académie des Inscriptions, considers that the treatises contained in it are only two in number, the first being called by the author in what seems to be its heading The Book of the Knowledge of the Invisible God and the second The Book of the Great Word in Every Mystery. Dr Carl Schmidt, of the University of Berlin, on the other hand, who, like M. Amélineau, has studied the Papyrus at Oxford, thinks that he can distinguish in the Bruce Papyrus no less than six documents, of which the first two are according to him the two books of Jeû referred to in the Pistis Sophia, two others, fragments of Gnostic prayers, the fifth a fragment on the passage of the soul through the Archons of the Middle Way, and the sixth, an extract from an otherwise unknown Gnostic work which he does not venture to identify further[[647]]. To enter into the controversy raised by this diversity of opinion would take one outside the limits of the present work; but it may be said that at least one, and that the most important, of the documents in question must be later than the Pistis Sophia. Not only does this—which M. Amélineau calls the Book of the Knowledge of the Invisible God and Dr Schmidt “Unbekanntes Altgnostisches Werk”—quote the opening words of St John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God without whom nothing was made[[648]],” which, as has been said, the author of the Pistis Sophia was unable to do; but it mentions in briefer form than this last the heavenly origin of the souls of the Twelve Apostles[[649]]. There is also in the same document a description of what appears to be the “emanation of the universe,” in which the following passage occurs:
“And He [i.e. the Ineffable One] heard them [[650]]. He established their Orders according to the orders of the Height, and according to the hidden arrangement they began from below upward in order that the building might unite them. He created the aëry earth as a place of habitation for those who had gone forth, in order that they might dwell thereon until those which were below them should be made strong. Then he created the true habitation within it[[651]], the Place of Repentance (Metanoia) within it, the Place of Repentance within it, the antitype of Aerodios[[652]]. Then [he created] the Place of Repentance within it, the antitype of Autogenes (Self-begotten or, perhaps, ‘of his own kind’). In this Place is purification in the name of Autogenes who is god over them and powers were set there over the source of the waters which they make to go forth (?). Here are the names of the powers who are set over the Water of Life: Michar and Micheu, and they are purified in the name of Barpharanges[[653]]. Within these are the Aeons of Sophia. Within these is the true Truth. And in this Place is found Pistis Sophia, as also the pre-existent Jesus the Living, Aerodios, and his Twelve Aeons[[654]].”
What is intended to be conveyed by this it is difficult to say in the absence of the context; but the Pistis Sophia mentioned is evidently the heroine of the book of that name, and the abrupt mention of her name without explanation shows, as in the Texts of the Saviour, that the author supposed his readers to be acquainted with her story. While this part of the Papyrus may possibly be an attempt by some later writer to fulfil the promise to tell His disciples at some future time the “emanation of the universe” frequently made by Jesus in the Pistis Sophia, it cannot be earlier in date than this last-named document.