The Epiphany of Gnosis 2004 - E Thomassen

The Epiphany of Gnosis
Author(s): EINAR THOMASSEN

Source: Illinois Classical Studies, Vol. 29, Diving Epiphanies in the Ancient World (2004), pp.
217-226
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23065349 .
Accessed: 01/11/2014 07:36
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Illinois
Classical Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 129.177.32.128 on Sat, 1 Nov 2014 07:36:50 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
12
The Epiphany of Gnosis
EINAR THOMASSEN
The apostles went upon the mountain called the Mount of Olives, where they
used to gather with the blessed Christ when he was in the body. Together they
fell on their knees and prayed: "Father, Father, Father of light, possessor of the
incorruptible, hear us, just as you took pleasure in your holy child Jesus Christ.
For he became for us an illuminator in the darkness. Hear us!"
And they prayed a second time: "Son of life, Son of immortality who is in
the light, Son, immortal Christ, our Redeemer, give us power, for they seek to
kill us."
Then a great light appeared so that the mountain from the sight of
shone
that which appeared. And a voice called out to them: "Listen to my words that I
may speak to you! Why do you seek me? I am Jesus Christ who am with you
forever."
The apostles answered: "Lord, we wish to understand the deficiency of the
aeons and how they are perfected. Also: How are we detained in this dwelling
place? How did we get here? How shall we depart? How do we acquire
boldness and authority? And why do the powers attack us?"
Then a voice came to them out of the light: "You are yourselves witnesses
that I have already spoken all these things to you. But because of your unbelief
I shall speak again. First, with regard to the deficiency of the aeons,..."
This text comes from the beginning of a short tractate from the Nag
Hammadi Library called The Letter of Peter to Philip.1 The tractate is not
actually a letter; it only begins with a brief letter from Peter summoning
Philip to meet with the rest of the disciples. The main part of the tractate is
in fact an account of what happened after the disciples had come together
on the Mount of Olives. An epiphany of Jesus took place, and he proceeded
to instructthe disciples on a set of well-defined questions.
1 132. 10 - 140. 27. The text quoted is found at 133. 13 - 135. 9. The
NHC VIII,2
translation (somewhat free) is my own.

218 Illinois Classical Studies 29 (2004)
The genre is a familiar one in Gnostic literature. It is the so-called

revelation discourse, a literary vehicle for presenting Gnostic truths
dramatically as revelations coming from the mouth of the Redeemer

himself. A number of Nag Hammadi tractates exhibit the same pattern. In
the famous Apocryphon of John, for example, John the disciple has
retreated to "a desert place." Crushed by doubt and despair, he asks himself
a series of questions: "How was the Saviour appointed, why was he sent
into the world by his Father, and who is his Father who sent him . .etc.,
whereupon the heavens open, the Saviour appears in several forms, and
starts answering John's questions.2
Other examples are provided by the Corpus Hermeticum. In the
Poimandres, "an enormous being completely unbounded in size" appears to

the narrator, asks him what he desires to know, and proceeds to instruct him
about "the things that are" and about God.3
In all the revelation discourses, the revealer's instruction is interrupted
every now and then by new questions, or remarks from his audience. In this
sense, the formal requirements of the dialogue genre are maintained. On the
other hand, real debate or argument never takes place; we are a long way
from the style and the idea of the Socratic dialogue, where the exchange
between the interlocutors serves the gradual and shared discovery of a truth
that none of them possessed at the outset.4 The genre of the revelation
discourse is evidently not sufficiently defined by identifying it as a
dialogue. The exchange is one that takes place between two unequal parties;
the element of revelation—or even epiphany—seems to be an essential
feature of the genre.
Relevant to the question of the history of the genre, is the fact that the
revelation discourse framework in certain cases can be shown to be a
secondary feature of a document. The text called Eugnostos (NHC 111,5) is

a treatise on the generation of the transcendent world. It is prefixed by the
words "Eugnostos, the Blessed, to those who are his," a feature that makes
it, perhaps, a letter—though there are no epistolary characteristics in the

text—or a homily. A version of Eugnostos however, was used as the main
raw material in another text, the Sophia of Jesus Christ (NHC 111,4 and
BG,5), where it was turned into a revelation discourse spoken by the
Saviour to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee after the resurrection. To
serve this purpose, the original treatise was cut up into a series of replies
2NHC 11,2 I. 18-2.9.

3
Corp. herm. 1. 1ff.
4
Cf. Rudolph 1968, especially p. 87.

Einar Thomassen 219
made by the Saviour to various questions asked in turn by the disciples

Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Mary, and Bartholomew.
In that case we have an instructive example of how a treatise was at a
later stage converted into a dialogue. Similar processes may be assumed to
have taken place with certain other revelation discourses, although in those
cases we no longer possess the material in treatise format. The Apocryphon
of John is one likely candidate for being a treatise where the framework of a
revelation situation and a dialogue has been secondarily added (Kragerud
1965; Logan 1996: 72-74). In the case of another Nag Hammadi text, the
Apocryphon of James (NHC 1,2), the raw materials do not, on the other
hand, have the characteristics of a treatise, but are rather sayings of the Lord
that have been dramatized by being turned into lines spoken by him in an
exchange with James and Peter in the course of a post-resurrection
epiphany. In this case we may envisage a trajectory starting from the genre
of sayings collections, such as Q and the Gospel of Thomas, and leading
towards the revelation discourse (Cameron 1984; Koester 1990: 187-200).
An intermediate stage may be found in the canonical gospels, which have
also framed in narratives sayings attributed to Jesus, and sometimes in

dialogues. At all events it should be possible to discern, as a general
phenomenon, a growing trend to frame what were originally instruction
materials, such as wisdom sayings, homilies and treatises, in the dramatic
form of discourses spoken by a revealer figure in the course of a
supernatural epiphany and in dialogue with an audience of one or more

disciples. It is interesting to note that in the latest preserved specimens of
Gnostic literature such as the Pistis Sophia and the Books of Jeu, the genre
looks as if has become the normal vehicle for Gnostic instruction.
This trend may be interpreted in terms of a more general observation
about the nature of the knowledge imparted in these documents: Putting this
into the mouth of a revealer not only enhances its prestige, but
knowledge
also transforms the knowledge itself from being "rational," i.e. accessible
of common human to being revealed
by the exercise faculties, knowledge
and thus on faith in the revealer's superhuman status. I shall
dependent
however, that it is important not to think of this dichotomy as an easy
argue,
one, but that the most interesting feature of the revelation dialogue genre is
the dialectical tension between the claims to inherent rationality of the

instruction materials and their postulated revealed status.
I shall come back to that point. First, I should like to take a somewhat
closer look at the question of the history of the genre. Festugiere, in 1942,
commented on the Hermetic "logos" of instruction in an article that was

later incorporated in volume two of La Revelation d'Hermes Trismegisle.5

Here, he argued that the dialogue form of the Hermetic tractates had arisen
from, and reflected, the situation of teaching in intimate philosophical

circles: They are basically didactic and edifying homilies spoken by a
teacher to a small number of pupils, whereby the pupils make their presence
felt by posing occasional questions. At the same time, however, the

discourses also have an element of revelation, which he identified as
belonging to a Platonic tradition of discourse as well, exemplified by the

speech of Diotima in the Symposium.
More recently, however, Jean-Pierre Mahe has argued for a different
affiliation for the Hermetic revelation discourse. He describes it as a

descendant of the ancient Egyptian wisdom text, which often takes the form
of a dialogue between a father and his son. In fact, there is often a
father/son relationship between the revealer and his interlocutor in the

Hermetic texts (Mahe 1982: 278-305).
Another approach was that of Heinrich Dorrie (1966: 346-347; cf. also
Rudolph 1968: 87-88, 104-105) who related the Hermetica to the literary
model of erotapokriseis—a scholastic form of exposition in the question
and-answer form used originally in ancient philological exegesis but later
extended to be used with other forms of technical knowledge as well. He
admits, however, that in the Hermetica this genre is conflated with the style
of oracular divination. Here, it may be pointed out that exegetical issues do
in fact form part of the subject matter in certain Gnostic revelation
discourses—notably the Apocryphon of John—though in the Hermetica, on

the other hand, the exegesis of texts does not seem to be discussed.
If we turn to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, to which the Gnostic texts
belong, still other models may be found. In apocalyptic texts, a visionary is
regularly given instruction by an angel—the angelus interpres—about the

course of history and secrets of the heavenly realm (see, e.g., Himmelfarb
1983). Here, too, a question-and-answer form is frequent. And, of course,

the canonical Gospels offer several instances of dialogues between Jesus
and the disciples, as, for example, the discussion in the Synoptic Gospels
about whether those who are rich will enter the kingdom of God (Matthew
19:23-30, and parallels; Majercik 1992: 187).
As we can see, a bewildering variety of antecedents for the Gnostic and
Hermetic revelation dialogue may be, and have been, proposed, and no
agreement exists regarding the origins of the genre. It would seem, in fact,
that any notion of a single genealogy is here misplaced, and that we have to
5
Festugiere 1942, corresponding to Festugiere 1949: 28-59.

Einar Thomassen 221
be open to the likelihood that multiple strands of tradition have contributed

to the genre: apocalyptic revelation, Near Eastern wisdom instruction,
Hellenistic scholasticism, philosophical diatribe, and the literary model of
the rabbi Jesus. No doubt the ratio of the individual ingredients varies from
one case to the next; thus the apocalyptic elements and traditions about
Jesus are, naturally, stronger in the Gnostic dialogues than in the Hermetic
ones. But this situation may very well be another of those instances where
Wittgenstein's well-worn metaphor of "family resemblance" is useful in

order to grasp the unity as well as the diversity of the phenomenon.
Genealogical derivation is, in any case, an insufficient approach for

explaining any phenomenon in the history of human thought and
institutions. To explain origins, it is not enough merely to answer the
question, "where does this come from?" We also need to ask about
structural causes—the internal mechanisms of the phenomenon that
produce its outward shape. It is in this connection that we should look at the
fact that these dialogues are set in the context and the literary frame of an
epiphany. The structural pertinence of this setting—its "function," if you

like—is not simply the fact that it provides added authority for the doctrines
expounded in the course of the dialogue; it is also intimately related to an
essential element of these doctrines themselves. In brief: the revelation
dialogues not only tell about the revelation of gnosis, they are in an
essential way a revelation of gnosis themselves.
There is what one might describe as a kind of self-referential circularity

in much of Gnostic writing. In the mythical narratives unfolded in the texts,
the turning point invariably occurs when a Saviour figure is sent down from
the transcendent realm to help, instruct and make whole again the spirit lost
in the darkness and deficiency of matter. This act of revelation is, of course,
itself an epiphany: the revealing saviour is the outward manifestation of the
invisible and unknown deity. His (sometimes her) revelation not

supreme
consists of imparting information but is also a visual demonstration of
only
the transcendent, a theoria or an epopteia with connotations of initiation
and of a transformation of those who are granted the vision of the epiphany.
This epiphany, which occurs as an event in the Gnostic narrative itself, is

reflected and in the epiphany that sets the context of the
duplicated
revelation dialogues, and also provides its deeper systematic justification.
The instruction given by the revealer in the course of his dialogue with his
disciples is evidently identical to the gnosis that is revealed by the Saviour
matter of
figure to the fallen spirit in the narrative which forms the subject
the revealer's instruction. We thus have here something like a Chinese

boxes situation, or a self-referential textuality which, like the ouroboros
snake, bites its own tail.6

This perspective may be carried one step further if we contemplate that
gnosis is given not only by the Saviour in his revelation discourse with the
disciples, but that the text which describes and relates this revelation
discourse may itself be considered a vehicle of gnosis. Thus the encounter
between the text and its reader is, as well, analogous to the situation of
saving revelation described in the Gnostic narrative. In this sense, the text
itself is a revealer, the Gnostic tractate itself an epiphany.
If we adopt this perspective on the Gnostic text, and on the experience
of reading it, we may in turn add the observation that the revelation of
gnosis in the Gnostic myths of salvation itself sometimes takes the form of
the revelation of a piece of writing: a letter from heaven, for example, as in
the Hymn of the Pearl:7
The letter flew like an eagle, the king of all birds; it flew and alighted
beside me, and became all speech. At its voice and the sound of its
rustling, I started and arose from my sleep. I took it up and kissed it, and
began to read it. And according to what was traced on my heart were the
words of my letter written. I remembered that I was a son of royal parents,
and my noble birth asserted its nature.
Another example: In the Gospel of Truth the appearance of the Saviour

in the world is described as the manifestation of "the living book of the
living," in which are written the names of the spiritual elect.8 The revelation
of the Saviour is the same as opening that book, and in that book you see
who you really are; from it you obtain your true self (cf. Thomassen 2002).
So the book, the dialogue and the manifestation event of the Gnostic
Saviour in the mythical narrative are homologous—they are conceived
under the same schema of thought. Moreover, that schema corresponds, I
6
Hans Jonas expressed this insight long ago, with incomparable precision: "Im Mythos
selbst namlich ist die Idee seines Wissens als ein Moment seines gegenstandlichen Inhaltes
thematisch exponiert, und hierdurch ist er spezifisch "gnostischer" Mythos. Dessen
berichtende Mitteilung wird so zum vorgesehenen Akt innerhalb des mythischen Horizontes, ja
zur Peripetie seines ganzen inhaltlichen Geschehens, das mit diesem Ereignis seiner selbst in
den neuen Modus der Offenbarung, der Erkenntnis, also des Se/fofbewusstseins hiniibertritt.
Insofern diese Offenbarung in seiner Erzahlung auch als Szene vorkommt, erscheint sich der
gnostische Mythos selbst und ist eigentiimlich auf sich riickbezogen, in sich riickverschlungen.
Anstatt einfach, wie sonst Mythos, von seinen Gegenstanden zu reden, gehort der gnostiche
vielmehr selber, unter dem Titel der 'Gnosis', zu seinen ausgezeichneten Gegenstanden"
(Jonas 1954: 14).
7
Lines 51-56 in Acts Thorn. 111.
8
NHC 1,5 19.34-21.25.

Einar Thomassen 223
now suggest, to an essential structure of Greek philosophical anthropology,

namely the relationship between mind and soul. In each case, the revealer is
cast in the role of the Nous, or the Logos, whereas the receiver of the
revelation occupies the correlative position of Psyche. In this sense,

therefore, what you have in the revelation discourses, is a soul conversing
with and receiving instruction from its own mind—a conversation driven by
the simultaneous division and unity of the two, which is also what forms the
essential subject matter of the conversation. We see a divided self that
speaks to itself about its own division in a discourse that simultaneously

articulates and purports to heal that division.
Now, what lesson can be drawn from such observations as far as the
notion of epiphany is concerned? One is that the epiphany in the revelation

discourses is a textual device that provides authority for a text whose author
is constructed by the text itself as being in a state of fallenness and
deficiency. Since the story told in the text discredits the voice of its author
as being in essence imperfect, another, transcendent voice has to be
introduced to recover the credibility of the text.

Another lesson could be that the gnostic epiphanies represent an
internalization of the epiphany experience if this experience is compared to

historical antecedents in either the Greek or the apocalyptic tradition. Thus
the epiphany of Poimandres is described as follows:
Once, thought came to me of the things that are and my thinking

when
soared high and my bodily senses were suspended ..., an enormous being
completely unbounded in size seemed to appear to me and call my name
and say to me: "What do you want to hear and see; what do you want to
learn and know from your understanding?" "Who are you?" I asked. "I am
Poimandres," he said, "mind of sovereignty; 1 know what you want, and 1

am with you everywhere." (Corp. herm. 1. 1-2; tr. Copenhaver, slightly
modified.)
The epiphany of Poimandres, though in one of its aspects described in

accordance with traditional epiphanies—the enormous size of the god—
does not originate in some distant but is the speaker's own Mind
Olympus,
emerging from inside himself. The presence of the god is evoked by an

I would
introspective meditation carried out by the human person. suggest
that the epiphanies of the Gnostic revelation dialogues should be regarded
in the same way. They are not simply copies and extensions of the pre- and
situations with Jesus narrated in the gospels, nor
post-resurrection teaching
is their primary Sitz im Leben a setting of instruction in schools. Rather,
these epiphanies are generically typical elements of mystical tracts intended
for the edification of the solitary individual, describing an experience of
illumination to be re-enacted by the reader in the encounter with the book.

"Mystical" is the best word I can think of to describe this particular,

ambiguous form of epiphany, which is internal and introspective, but at the
same time describes itself as something coming from the outside, as from a
transcendent source. There the matter will have to remain, with an epiphany
that is at the same time internal and external, a subjective experience as
well as an objective event, discursive and textual in form while ineffable in

meaning. For there seems to be a way in which mysticism, for all its
preoccupation with the mystic's own self, always requires an epiphany, just
as every epiphany may be said to contain an essential element of the
mystical. After
all, Wittgenstein said: "Es gibt allerdings
Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische" (Tractatus 6. 522).
Bergen, Norway

Einar Thomassen
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cameron, R. 1984. Sayings Traditions in the Apocryphon of James.

Harvard Theological Studies 34. Philadelphia.
Copenhaver, B. P. 1992. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and
the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation. Cambridge.
Dorrie, H. 1966. "Erotapokriseis A." In Reallexikon fiir Antike und
Christentum, 6.342-47. Stuttgart.
Festugiere, A. J. M. 1942. "Le 'logos' hermetique d'enseignement." Revue
des Etudes Grecques 55, 77-108.
. 1949. La Revelation d' Hermes Trismegiste, Volume 2: Le Dieu
cosmique. Paris.
Himmelfarb, M. 1983. Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and

Christian Literature. Philadelphia.
Jonas, H. 1954. Gnosis und spatantiker Geist, II: Von der Mythologie zur
mystischen Philosophie. Erste Halfte. Reprinted in H. Jonas. 1993.

Gnosis und spatantiker Geist, II: Von der Mythologie zur mystischen
Philosophie. Erste und zweite Halfte. Forschungen zur Religion und

Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, 159. Gottingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993.
Koester, H. 1990. Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and
Development. Philadelphia.
A. 1965. "Apocryphon Iohannis: En formanalyse." Norsk
Kragerud,
Teologisk Tidsskrift66, 15-38.
Logan, A. H. B. 1996. Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy: A Study in the
History of Gnosticism. Edinburgh.
Mahe, J.-P. 1982. Hermes en Haute-Egypte, II: Le Fragment du Discours
Parfait et les Definitions hermetiques armeniennes (NH VI, 8.8a).
Bibliotheque copte de Nag Hammadi 7. Quebec.

F.
Majercik, R. 1992. "Dialogue." In D. N. Freedman, G. A. Herion, David
Graf, and J. D. Pleins (eds.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 2.185-88.
New York.
In P.
Rudolph, K. 1968. "Der gnostische Dialog als Literarisches Genus."
Probleme der Literatur. Wissenschaftliche
Nagel (ed.), koptischen
Beitrage der Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg 196. Second

edition, 85-107. Halle.

Illinois Classical Studies 29 (2004)
Thomassen, E. 2002. "Revelation as Book and Book as Revelation:

Reflections on the Gospel of Truth." In S. Giversen, T. Petersen, and J.
P. Sorensen (eds.), The Nag Hammadi Texts in the History of
Religions: Proceedings of the International Conference at the Royal
Academy and Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen, September 19-24,
1995, On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Nag Hammadi
Discovery. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab: Historisk

filosofiske Skrifter26, 35-45. Copenhagen.


The Epiphany of Gnosis 2004 - E Thomassen

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Epiphany of Gnosis 2004 - E Thomassen

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Epiphany of Gnosis

Author(s): EINAR THOMASSEN

This content downloaded from 129.177.32.128 on Sat, 1 Nov 2014 07:36:50 AM