Eugene Seaich, A Great Mystery: The Secret of The Jerusalem Temple The Embracing Cherubim and at-One-Ment With The Divine

A GREAT MYSTERY: THE SECRET OF
THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE

THE REBIS (“Two-in-One”)
From Jamsthaler’s Vlatorium spagyricum, 1625
The Medieval Alchemist's Version of the “Great Mystery” in the Temple
For this reason shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined
to his wife; and they two shall be one flesh. This is a Great Mystery, but I
speak concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let every man love
his own wife as himself (Eph 5:30-33)
In der Liebesnächte Kühlung, Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest, Überfällt

dich fremde Fühlung, Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.
Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen In der Finsternis Beschattung, Und dich
reisset neu Verlangen Auf zu höherer Begattung. -Goethe
DEITIES AND ANGELS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
1
A Great Mystery: The Secret of the
Jerusalem Temple
The Embracing Cherubim and At-One-Ment with the
Divine
EUGENE SEAICH
GORGIAS PRESS
2008
First Gorgias Press Edition, 2008
Copyright © 2008 by Gorgias Press LLC
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re-
trieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani-
cal, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written
permission of Gorgias Press LLC.
Published in the United States of America by Gorgias Press LLC, New Jersey
ISBN 978-1-59333-840-4
ISSN 1935-4136
GORGIAS PRESS
180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA
www.gorgiaspress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seaich, Eugene, 1925-

A great mystery : the secret of the Jerusalem Temple :
the embracing cherubim and at-one-ment with the Divine /
Eugene Seaich. -- 1st Gorgias Press ed.
p. cm. -- (Deities and angels of the ancient
world ; 1)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and
index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59333-840-4 (alk. paper) 1. Mystical
union--History of doctrines. 2. Mystery--History of doc-
trines. 3. Temple of Jerusalem (Jerusalem) 4. Atonement-
-History of doctrines. I. Title.
BT767.7.S43 2008
296.4'91--dc22
2008002115
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standards.
Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents....................................................................................................v
Foreword .................................................................................................................ix
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................1
1 The Embracing Cherubim..................................................................................5
Introduction ....................................................................................................5
The Cherubim as God’s “Face”...................................................................9
The Cherubim as Symbols of God’s Male-Female Image.....................13
The Cherubim as Symbols of God’s Redemptive Marriage to Israel ..17
The Cherubim as Paradigms of Human Marriage ..................................19
2 The Wisdom Mystery ........................................................................................23
Who Was Wisdom?......................................................................................23
Israel as God’s Bride ....................................................................................28
The Bride Wisdom .......................................................................................33
Philo’s Account of the Wisdom Mystery..................................................38
Theoretical Basis of the Mystery................................................................50
The Temple as a Source of Power.............................................................65
The Tripartite Temple Scheme ..................................................................82
3 Christian Wisdom and the Marriage Mystery ................................................85
Christology as Sophiology...........................................................................85
The Gospel of Thomas and the Christian Wisdom Mystery ......................94
The New Testament Wisdom Mystery ...................................................104
Baptism and the Mystery...........................................................................124
A Multiplication of Hieros Gamos Symbols .............................................128
The Ephesian “Great Mystery” ..............................................................130
Deification ...................................................................................................139
4 The Great Mystery and the Preexistent Church..........................................141
Christ and the Church as the Preexistent Male and Female................141
The Hexaemeron ...........................................................................................143
The Heavenly Man and the Heavenly Community...............................151
Jesus as the Restorer of the Divine Image to Fallen Man ...................156
The “Great Mystery” and the Cosmic Body of Christ.........................161
v
vi A GREAT MYSTERY
5 The Post-New Testament Wisdom Mystery ...............................................167

The “Great Mystery” as Ritual .................................................................167
Joseph and Aseneth .........................................................................................172
The Odes of Solomon ......................................................................................178
The Sacred Marriage of the “Powers” in the Odes of Solomon ..............188
The Holy of Holies as a “Garden of Fruitfulness” in the Odes...........191
Christ as the Mirror of Wisdom and Image of God in the Odes.........195
A “Worldly Mystery of the Church” in the Didache ..............................201
Licentious Agape Feasts and the Didache................................................204
Virgines Subintroductae and the Didache......................................................205
Direct “Marriage” to Christ in the Didache? ...........................................207
The Great Mystery in the Writings of Clement and Origen................212
The Cherubim as “Seraphim” ..................................................................224
Secrecy in the “True Gnosis” of Clement and Origen.........................232
Ebionite Syzygies and the Symbolism of the Cherubim ......................235
Late Developments of the Temple Mystery in “Orthodox” Circles..240
6 Gnosticism and the Wisdom Mystery...........................................................245
Introduction ................................................................................................245
Gnosticism and the Hexaemeron................................................................248
The Origin of the Gnostic Demiurge .....................................................249
The Fall of Sophia ......................................................................................259
The Gnostic Pleroma.................................................................................263
The Gnostic Bridal Chamber ...................................................................274
The Mystery of the Bridal Chamber........................................................281
The Mirrored Bridal Chamber..................................................................285
The Hierogramic Image of the Father .......................................................291
Gnostic Reversal of the Law of Marriage...............................................298
Gnosticism as a Development of the Light-Stream .............................320
7 The Great Mystery in the Middle Ages ........................................................325
The Kabbalistic Great Mystery ................................................................325
The Kabbalistic Sacred Marriage .............................................................332
The Secret of a King ..................................................................................338
Catholic Mysticism and the Sacred Marriage .........................................342
The Sacred Embrace and the Stigmata ...................................................348
The Virgin Mary as a Wisdom Figure in the Sacred Marriage ............353
The Wisdom Mystery in Medieval Gnosticism .....................................359
Sexual Rites amongst the Cathars? ..........................................................369
Templar Gnosticism?.................................................................................372
The Intellectual Wisdom Mystery of Dante Alighieri ..........................375
The Perfect Man as Rebis .........................................................................378
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii
Yin and Yang, the Rebis, and Alchemy....................................................385

The Alchemical Sacred Marriage .............................................................393
The Wisdom Mystery and the Holy Grail ..............................................397
The Gnostic Character of Wolfram’s Grail Christianity.....................405
The Grail-Maiden as Wisdom and Guardian of the Ark .....................411
The Grail as Temple ..................................................................................413
The Ritual Theory of the Holy Grail.......................................................414
Survivals of the Wisdom Mystery in Freemasonry ...............................420
Possible Survivals of the Wisdom Mystery in the Far East.................434
The Tantric Sacred Marriage and the Taoist “Golden Flower” .........443
8 Summary and Conclusion...............................................................................451
The Heavenly Pattern of the Sexes in the Great Mystery....................455
The Light-Stream and the Gnostic Pleroma ..........................................458
Bibliography .........................................................................................................461
Index......................................................................................................................489
FOREWORD
One of the most salient points to emerge in Post-Modernism is the concept

that the “meaning” of a text involves both the reader and the writer. No-
where is this more evident than in the case of a deceased author who can-
not be asked questions about his own work. It is a somber privilege to
copy-edit the work of a departed colleague. In this particular case, I never
had the opportunity to know Eugene Seaich. I was introduced to his work
in my role of acquisitions editor, and, upon reading it immediately realized
its value.
When Bryan Thomas sent the manuscript to me, he also forwarded
letters of support from the late Raphael Patai, an author whose works I
have engaged in my own research. I was struck by the level of enthusiasm
offered by Patai, and upon reading the document I realized why he found
the work to be so engaging. Ambitious, insightful, almost Frazerian in its
scope, even daring at points, amazing cognitive leaps were made by the au-
thor. However, as a student of ancient West Asian material I found many of
his ideas fertile ground for further study and I saw that he had developed a
coherent account of a most fascinating subject. I knew that his manuscript
deserved publication.
Even in this age of high technology, there are limits as to what can be
done with electronic texts. Dr. Seaich’s manuscript had to be reconstituted
from PDF format, and that meant that as an editor I had to compare, con-
stantly, the work I was doing against the original submission. It has been
my intention throughout to change nothing submitted by the author except
in cases of clear, factual error (mostly typographical mistakes). At a few
places in the text the author had highlighted words that he apparently
wished to revisit before submitting a final form for publication. These I
have treated with the utmost care, always erring on the side of leaving the
original manuscript intact if there was any possibility of a loss of direction
based on my own misreading. The places where this occurs are few and
should not detract from the overall contribution of the author.
Futher to the process of editing the work, Drs. Shirley and Stephen
Ricks went over the manuscript for issues of style and consistency, as well
ix
x A GREAT MYSTERY
as the integrity of the typeset version against the original submission. At this
juncture references and citation styles were standardized, and stylistic issues
were ironed out. The final product would have suffered considerably had it
not been for their thorough and conscientious efforts.
A bibliography has also been added to the original submission. This I
compiled from the footnotes in the original submission and additional ma-
terial submitted to me by Bryan Thomas. In reconstructing the bibliography
a few educated guesses about works with incomplete citations were re-
quired. As a matter of practicality I have included in the bibliography only
those sources that date from after the Medieval Period. Multiple editions
exist of many of the works from the periods predating the printing press,
and I have no way of knowing which editions the author originally used.
Abbreviations were generally avoided in the original, but the “industry
standard” ABD for Anchor Bible Dictionary, IDB for Interpreter’s Dictionary of
the Bible, TDOT for Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, and TDNT for
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament have been utilized in this version.
I do not presume to speak for the author, but as both acquisitions and
copy-editor for this book, I would feel remiss should I not thank Bryan
Thomas for bringing the manuscript to me and coaching me through the
process of how to get suitable details worked out in these circumstances.
His encouragement during the process was always appreciated. Also, I
would like to thank Catherine Haas, the daughter of the author in whose
purview his estate rests. She kindly granted permission for Gorgias Press to
produce her father’s work, thus making this book a reality. Shirely Ricks
and her keen eye and unfailing humor greatly improved the results.
The material contained herein will likely be taken as controversial. It is
my firm opinion, however, as a scholar of the Bible and the religious world
of ancient West Asia, which this is a profound contribution to an intracta-
ble issue in the history of both iconography and ancient religion. The work
is thoroughly researched and presented with a keen scholarly analysis, de-
spite its surprises. It has been a privilege for me to have been included, in a
small way, in its production.
Steve. A. Wiggins
January 2008
INTRODUCTION
This book is the story of the Sacred Embrace which anciently united Man
and God in the Jerusalem Temple.
Long forgotten by the “orthodox” of both Judaism and Christianity, it
once enjoyed a supreme place at the very heart of the Mystery of Salvation,
described by Hebrew prophets as Yahweh’s “Espousal” to Israel, and by
Paul as the “Great Mystery” of Christ’s “Marriage” to the Church. And the
Holy of Holies where this all-important union took place was appropriately
referred to as the “Bridal Chamber” (Matt 9:15).
After the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, Gnostic Christians con-
tinued to construct “Bridal Chambers” of their own, patterned after the lost
Holy of Holies, in which the “Great Mystery” was enacted for several more
centuries. The Gentile Church, however, lacking official access to the Tem-
ple, transferred the symbolism of union exclusively to the rites of Baptism
and the Eucharist, thus concealing from future generations an important
function of the Sanctuary, where the initiate had once come to be “wed-
ded” to God’s Light and Wisdom.
This redemptive Sacred Marriage is faintly remembered even today
with uncertain references to Yahweh as the “Husband” of Israel, or to
Christ as the “Bridegroom” of the Church. Yet these obscure epithets
hardly suggest to the modern mind the enormous significance of what R. A.
Batey terms “a widespread nuptial myth” once common to Judaism, early
Christianity, the Mysteries, and the Gnostic systems,1 or what J. Paul Sam-
pley calls “a popular speculation that may have been much more pervasive
than the extant Christian literature indicates.”2 Unfortunately, as Claude
Chavasse laments, “the loss of (this) Nuptial Idea was the loss of that sys-
tem in which the other great symbols find their place,” for it was through
his “marital” fusion with Man that God became incarnate in the midst of
his People, creating the Mystical Community of Israel, otherwise known as
1 “Jewish Gnosticism and the ‘Hieros Gamos’ of Eph V:21–33,” New Testament
Studies 10 (1963–4): 121–27.
2 And the Two Shall Be One Flesh (Cambridge, 1971), 42–43.
1
2 A GREAT MYSTERY
the “Body” or “Temple” of God’s earthly Presence.3 In this way, there oc-
curred “a transfusion of divine energy into the world,” for by “uniting him-
self to humanity,” the Bridegroom “might raise humanity to the heaven
from which he came.”4 Most importantly, the Nuptial Idea explained Salva-
tion by Grace, where the Heavenly redeems the Earthly by uniting itself di-
rectly to her, thus sharing the Divine Nature unearned, save for the Bride’s
humble willingness to remain loyal and obedient to her Spouse.
The use of sexual metaphor to portray God’s redemption of Man—
though offensive to modern sensibilities—was clearly based on Old Testa-
ment precedent:
And I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I
sware unto thee and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord
God, and thou becamest mine (Ezek 16:8).
New Testament authors continued to employ this traditional imagery to
describe “the Redeemer uniting himself to the unholy, in order to make it
holy.”5 In their opinion, the Sacred Embrace was an act of spiritual fusion
(1 Cor 6:16–17; Eph 5:31–32)—happily rendered by the thirteenth-century
English word, “Atonement,” or “At-One-Ment” with the Divine—during
which the Greater Partner shared his divine power with the Lesser, thus
saving her from the corruptibility of the world:
Through this might and splendor, he has given us his promises, great
beyond all price, and through them you may escape the corruption with
which lust has infected the world, and come to share in the very being of
God (2 Pet 1:4, NEB; italics added).
Though the book of Hosea (ca. 750 B.C.) had already referred to
Yahweh as the “Husband” of Israel, our earliest information concerning the
actual Nuptial in the Temple appears in the Wisdom literature and the alle-
gories of Philo. Both saw behind the outward sacrifices of the Sanctuary a
spiritual “pilgrimage” through the cultic wilderness in search of the Divine,
climaxed by a Sacred Marriage to God’s Wisdom. This was symbolically
consummated when symbols of their union were shown, enabling the initi-
ate who stood in the Forecourt to “behold the Face of God”—a process
described by contemporary scholars as thea theou, or “seeing God”—during
3 The Bride of Christ (London, 1940), 17.

4 Ibid., 14, 17.
5 F. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY,
1980), 165.
INTRODUCTION 3
which the Light flowing down from above penetrated and united with the
Light in man, “begetting” royal “virtues” and “sonship” in him. Unfortu-
nately, the expression “behold the Face of God” was deliberately altered by
the Masoretes to read “appear before God,” effectively veiling from later
students the central importance of this forgotten rite.
Yet the idea of thea theou was derived strictly from the Pentateuch and
Jewish tradition. Even E. R. Goodenough—whose By Light, Light is the
classic study of Philo’s Temple Mystery—misunderstood the subordinate
role of Greek learning in Philo’s exegesis of the Temple. Rather than using
Jewish parallels to justify the existence of a contemporary “Hellenistic”
Mystery, Philo had employed the Hellenism of his day to explain a Jewish
Mystery whose basic pattern was already well-established.
We have characterized this Jewish tradition as a “Wisdom Mystery,”
since it was not the Father with whom the initiate came in contact in the
Temple, but his mediating Presence, variously called “Wisdom” (Hokhmah,
Sophia), the “Word” (Logos), God’s “Unique Son” (monogenes huios), the
“Shekhinah,” the “Holy Spirit,” “God’s Glory” (kavod), etc. “Wisdom’s”
gender thus alternated between masculine and feminine—even bisexual—
since the memory of Israel’s recent polytheism still colored the traditions
which went into the creation of this late “hypostatic” intermediary. The
resulting “personification” vacillated between the idea of a virile, young
creator-god and the recollection of a goddess (herself called “Wisdom” by
the early Semites), appearing at times as God’s “Bride,” a “Heavenly
Mother,” or as God’s “Son,” who was “begotten (genna) before the hills.”
The first Christians eventually recognized Jesus as God’s “Son” and mascu-
line “Wisdom,” and the “Mediator” who engenders divine sonship in his
brethren—even their deification.
Modern Judaism and Christianity have largely forgotten these ancient
roots of their belief. Deprived of the Temple in A.D. 70, both were obliged
to develop new methods of worship to replace the sacred symbolism in the
Holy of Holies. Yet thanks to certain recent discoveries—which we shall
attempt to describe in this study—we are able once again to recognize the
supreme importance of the Nuptial Mystery in early Jewish and Christian
theology, significantly augmenting our older concept of the Sanctuary as a
place devoted exclusively to the offering of sacrifices. Even more impor-
tantly, Christians will be able to understand for the first time in nearly two
millennia the meaning of Paul’s expression, a “Great Mystery”—meaning
the redemptive union of Man and God in the Temple, and the sharing of
the latter’s power with the initiate, even the Divine Nature itself.
1 THE EMBRACING CHERUBIM
INTRODUCTION
The ninth chapter of Hebrews, which begins with a detailed account of the
Holy of Holies in the Jewish Temple, has long puzzled commentators be-
cause of the author’s sudden reticence in verse 5 to tell us anything specific
about the Ark and its two Cherubim:
And above (the Ark) are Cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy
seat, concerning which things this is not the (proper) time to speak in
detail (peri on ouk estin nun legein kata meros).1
Typical of modern comments on this passage are the following:
What our author would have had to say about the parabolic significance
of the Cherubim … we can only imagine … He leaves us with the im-
pression that he could have enlarged at some length on their symbolism
if he had chosen to do so.2
We do not know how to account for this failure to describe them, espe-
cially as all other articles connected with the tabernacle are minutely de-
scribed. Whether the form of the Cherubim was so generally known as
to make the description unnecessary, or whether the description was
purposely concealed, as among the secrets of Jehovah, cannot now be
known.3
Earlier authors who lived while the Temple was still standing were even
more reticent to speak of the contents of the Holy of Holies. Philo, for ex-
ample (ca. 20 B.C.–A.D. 40), maintained that “all inside is unseen, except by
the High Priest alone, and indeed, he … gets no view of anything. For he
takes with him a brazier full of lighted coals and incense, and the great
1 Translation by G. W. Buchanan, Hebrews, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY,

1972), 89.
2 F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids, 1964), 191.
3 James M. Freeman, Manners and Customs of the Bible (Plainfield, NJ, 1972).
5
6 A GREAT MYSTERY
quantities of vapor which this gives forth becloud the sight and prevent it
from being able to penetrate to any distance” (On the Special Laws, 1.13).
Orthodox commentators in fact insisted that the Holy of Holies in the
Second Temple was completely empty. According to a prophecy in
Jeremiah (3:16–17), the Ark from the destroyed First Temple was never to
be replaced, since a soon-to-be-redeemed Jerusalem would herself become
Yahweh’s “Throne.” Lamentations 2:1 was also understood to mean that
Yahweh had completely abandoned his Ark, thanks to the continuing sins
of Israel. Yet 2 Maccabees 2:4 records a legend that the prophet Jeremiah
had actually hidden the Ark in a cave, and that God was shielding it from
the world until it could return to the Temple in the Messianic Days.
R. Samuel thus concluded in the Talmud that five things were lacking in the
Second Temple: the Shekhinah, the Spirit of Prophecy, the fire, the Urim
and Thummim, and the Ark—with its famous Cherubim standing above
the Mercy Seat.
Somewhat more uncertainly, however, he then went on to opine that
even “those things were present, though they were not as helpful (as before)”
(b. Yoma 21b). Julian Morgenstern was similarly convinced that “a second
Ark, built more or less in imitation of the first … replaced this in the Sec-
ond Temple.”4 Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz, writing in the 1972 Encyclopedia
Judaica, likewise acknowledged certain haggadic legends which still attrib-
uted the Cherubic statues to the Second Temple, though he personally be-
lieved that they had been present in the First Temple only (5:399). We also
have the above-mentioned witness of Philo, who left us an entire book de-
voted to the two Cherubim, with which he appears to have been personally
acquainted. There is also the ambiguous testimony of Josephus, who in his
Wars (5.5.5) declared that there was nothing at all inside of the Holy of Ho-
lies, while in his Contra Apion he admitted that after Jerusalem was con-
quered in 70 A.D. the Romans found “that which was agreeable to piety,”
though “what they found we are not at liberty to reveal to other nations”
(2:7–8).
What the Romans actually “found” has remained a matter of intense
speculation and rumor for many centuries. The few who were able to read
the medieval book Zohar, for instance, encountered cryptic memories of
male and female nuptial symbols which were said to have resided in the
former Temple. A handful of modern writers have perpetuated these Zo-
haric hints pertaining to the mysterious objects. Madame Blavatsky thus
4 “The Cultic Setting,” HUCA 35 (1964): 34–35, n.71.

THE EMBRACING CHERUBIM 7
theorizes in her Secret Doctrine that the two Cherubim were placed over the
Ark of the Covenant “so that their wings spread in such a manner as to
form a perfect yoni,” or that the yod in God’s Name (YHWH) indicated the
membrum virile, and the he the womb, “the whole forming the perfect bisex-
ual emblem or symbol.”5 B. Z. Goldberg also supposed that the two pillars
in front of the Temple were signs of the male generative principle. He even
detected amongst the prophecies of Ezekiel “a suggestion of a large image
of the lingam in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. And round about the
graven images of lions, palm trees, and Cherubim were figures of the lin-
gam and yoni in union.”6 Manly P. Hall likewise believed that “Solomon
engraved on the walls of his Temple likenesses of the male and female prin-
ciples to adumbrate this mystery; such, it is said, were the figures of the
cherubim.”7
Louis Ginzberg, drawing on Talmudic materials, was more specific
and suggested that “the heads of the Cherubim were slightly turned back,
like that of a scholar bidding his master farewell; but as a token of God’s
delight in his people Israel, the faces of the Cherubim, by a miracle, ‘looked
one to another’ whenever Israel were devoted to their Lord, yea, even
clasped one another like a loving couple.”8 Other Jewish and Christian writ-
ings of the period spoke of the Holy of Holies as a “Bridal Chamber” (Gos-
pel of Philip 69:24–25), or hinted in a cleverly disguised pun that Song of
Songs—itself an erotic poem glorifying sexual love—“WAS the Holy of
Holies” (Rabbi Akiba, in the Mishnah, Yadayim, 3:5).
In 1967, in a very important book, Raphael Patai brought together
much detailed evidence from rabbinical sources which revealed that the
Cherubim in the Holy of Holies had at some unknown time in the early
history of the Second Temple been refashioned to portray the sexual act
itself!9
“In their last version,” he writes, “the Cherubim depicted a man and a
woman in sexual embrace—an erotic representation which was considered
5 The Secret Doctrine, (London, 1888), 2:460.

6 The Sacred Fire (New York, 1930), 176.
7 An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosacrucian Symbolic
Philosophy (Los Angeles, 1957), 176.

8 Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1909), 3:159.
9 The Hebrew Goddess, 1st ed. (New York, 1967); 3rd enlarged ed. (Detroit,
1990). All of our citations are drawn from the first edition, except where noted
otherwise. See especially pp. 101 and 300–310 of the first edition.
8 A GREAT MYSTERY
obscene by the pagans when they at last had a chance to glimpse it.”10 Fur-
thermore, the embracing statues were shown to pilgrims assembled beyond
the Holy Place during the three major feasts of Passover, Weeks, and Tab-
ernacles. According to Rab Qetina (late third century), as recorded in the
Talmud, “When Israel used to make the Pilgrimage, (the priests) would roll
up for them the veil before the Holy of Holies, and show them the Cheru-
bim, which were intertwined with one another” (b. Yoma 54b). Rashi, writ-
ing in the eleventh century, recalled that they were “joined together and
were clinging to, and embracing each other like a male who embraces a fe-
male.” Rabbi Shimeon ben Laqish added that when strangers finally entered
the Sanctuary, “they saw the Cherubim intertwined with each other; they
took them out into the market place and said, Israel, whose blessing is a
blessing and whose curse is a curse, should occupy themselves with such
things! And they despised her because they had seen her nakedness” (b.
Yoma 54b). These scattered materials suggest that symbols of God’s union
with Israel actually survived in the Temple until its destruction in A.D. 70.
Certain midrashim in fact reveal that outsiders caught a glimpse of such sym-
bols when they invaded Jerusalem11 and paraded them in the streets for all
to see:
When the sins caused that the gentiles should enter Jerusalem, Ammon-
ites and Moabites came together with them, and they entered the House
of the Holy of Holies, and found there the two Cherubim, and they
took them and put them in a cage and went around with them in all the
streets of Jerusalem and said: “You used to say that this nation was not
serving idols. Now see what we found and what they were worshipping”
(in Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 123).
Patai’s work has for understandable reasons received little attention
from biblical scholars,12 mainly because “orthodoxy” insists that there was
10 Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 101. Rabbi Rabinowitz, while acknowledging their
sexual embrace, believed that the Cherubim in the Second Temple were merely
carved on the walls (Encyclopedia Judaica, 5:399).
11 This cannot have been at the time of the First Temple’s destruction in 586
B.C., since all of the Amoras quoted in these midrashim were specifically discussing
events which took place in the Second Temple. See Patai’s discussion on this inva-
sion in Hebrew Goddess, 306–8.
12 A notable exception is Marvin H. Pope, who draws “most of (his) sketch”
of Jewish mysticism, the Shekhinah, and the Shekhinah-Matronit in the Kabbalah

from Patai’s Hebrew Goddess; cf. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY,
1977), 153–79.
nothing present inside of the Holy of Holies during the Second Temple pe-
riod and because the sexual nature of the Embracing Cherubim undoubt-
edly kept them a secret from the rest of the world. Yet it is most important
to note that it makes little difference whether or not there were actual stat-
ues surviving in the Second Temple or whether they were but a fabled
memory left over from the time of the First Temple, for their enduring
symbolism is so well documented that there can be little doubt as to their
former importance in Israel’s sacred iconography. And though the existence
of erotic imagery in the Temple inevitably invites emotional resistance from
some, our passage in Hebrews (9:5) suggests that even Christianity still had
a guarded reverence for the venerable statues. We shall later examine the
literature of the early Church to see if this was indeed the case. Not only
would a positive answer provide supporting evidence for Patai’s reconstruc-
tion, but it would throw important light on Christian conceptions of the
Temple during the early years of the Common Era.
Before we consider the Christian evidence, however, we need to de-
termine as far as possible the meanings of the Cherubim in their late Sec-
ond Temple setting. These, as we shall hope to show, were basically four-
fold: (a) the “Face of God”; (b) symbols of God’s Male-Female Image (Gen
1:26–27); (c) symbols of God’s redemptive marriage to Israel; and (d) the para-
digm for human marriages, patterned after God’s Male-Female Image.
THE CHERUBIM AS GOD’S “FACE”

There was a well-known law in the Pentateuch that every male Israelite
“Appear thrice yearly before the Face (panim) of Yahweh” (Exod 23:24;
Deut 16:16; etc.), a technical expression meaning to “visit the Temple.” It is
now generally recognized that this originally read “Behold the Face of
Yahweh” (ra’ah [et]-pene yhwh), suggesting that Israelites once came to the
Temple to see something. The Masoretes, however, by vocalizing the verb
ra’ah as a niph‘al (“be seen”) instead of a qal (“see”), altered the original
meaning to conceal the fact that something had been shown there to repre-
sent God’s “Face” or “Presence” (both KJV translations for panim).13 And
13 Friederich Nötscher, “Das Angesicht Gottes Schauen” (Würzburg, 1924), 90–93.
Abraham Geiger (Urschrift und Übersetzung der Bibel, Breslau, 1857, 337ff) long ago
demonstrated this fact by pointing out that although verbal forms of r’h could be
altered from qal to niph‘al without detection—simply by changing the vowels—the
infinitive form lir’ot (Exod 34:24; Deut 31:11; Isa 1:12) could never have been any-
thing but qal, since the niph‘al should have been l ehera’oh (Judg 13:21; 1 Sam 3:21),
10 A GREAT MYSTERY
when we consider that the three feast days on which the Cherubim were
shown to pilgrims in front of the veil were the exact same days when Israel
was commanded to “Behold the Face of Yahweh,” it becomes apparent
that the Cherubim themselves must have represented the divine panim dur-
ing the late period of the Second Temple. Philo in fact claimed that the
contents of the Holy of Holies had been designed specifically as an “incor-
ruptible facie” (“face,” “vision,” Questions on Exodus, 2.52), so that the race of
mortals could behold and comprehend the “incorporeal and archetypal
things” (ibid.). Those who are “worthily initiated and consecrated to God”
will therefore see in the symbols of the Shrine “the First Cause … Then will
appear to them that manifest One, who causes incorporeal rays to shine for
them, and grants visions of the unambiguous and indescribable things of
nature … For the beginning and end of happiness is to ‘be able to see
God’” (ibid., 2:51), and to have “a correct apprehension of the invisible”
(ibid., 2.52).
R. Abaye, writing around the end of the third century, specifically des-
ignated the two Cherubim as the “large face” and the “small face” (b. Suk-
kah 5b), and “in a context mentioning the face or faces of God and the su-
pernal faces.”14 One of these two “faces” was probably the precursor of the
“Small Face” which appears in the Kabbalistic hieros gamos of God and Israel
(see p. 348, below), and the two together almost certainly inspired the
statement that “Adam and Eve were created … du-parzifum” (from the
Greek loan-word, di-prosopa, “two faces”), “intertwined with one another—
as symbolized by the form of the cherubim.”15
Some time in the first century, the term “Shekhinah” began to appear
in Jewish writings to represent the divine Presence. Derived from the root
š-k-n (“to dwell”), this name was first mentioned in the Targum Onqelos
(based on a version already extant in the first century). In rabbinic literature
or l ehera’ot (1 Kgs 18:2; Ezek 21:29)—in both cases with an added “h.” Further-
more, the niph‘al could not have been connected to p’ne (“Face”) with the particle
’et, as the Masoretes attempted to do in Exodus 23:17; 34:23; Isaiah 1:12; Psalm
42:2. The Syriac versions in fact still read Psalm 42:2 as qal; and in Exodus 34:23f;
Deuteronomy 16:16; 31:11, the particle ’et makes it certain that pene was to be read
as the accusative object of “behold.” This obfuscation probably began with the
translators of the Septuagint, who regularly gave ophthanai (“appear”) in place of
“see,” as well as replaced “seeing God” with “seeing the place where God stood”
(Exod 24:10).
14 Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: A New Perspective (New Haven, 1988), 134.
15 Baddei ha’Aron, 6a (thirteenth century); quoted in Idel, Kabbalah, 331.
the expression “Face of Shekhinah” soon replaced the older “Face of Yah-
weh,” perhaps because the latter had somehow become offensive.16 Thus
one often finds “Body of Shekhinah” as the form assumed by God’s “Pres-
ence” in mystical visions based on Ezekiel 1, where God’s glory is depicted
as a human figure. Indeed, as late as the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
German Hasidics still referred to the Throne-figure as the “Special Cherub”
(keruv meyuhad), which was said to be an “emanation of God’s Shekhinah.”17
They also explained Ezekiel 10:4 (“the glory of the Lord went up from the
Cherubim”) as meaning that the “Special Cherub” was identical with God’s
invisible Presence, the glory, or Shekhinah.18 The same Hasidics identified
the Shekhinah with the Philonic logos, or God’s male-female image, by which
he brought about creation, and whose human form was the model for the
sexes.19
The close connection between a feminine “Shekhinah” and God’s panim
may stem from the fact that the goddess Anath—the wife of the Canaanite
Baal—had long been known in Palestine as the pene Ba‘al (“Face of Baal”),
at Ascalon as Phanebalos, and at Carthage as tennit pene-Ba‘al (“Glory of the
Face of Baal”).20 Though the god himself was generally invisible to his wor-
shippers, his wife could be easily seen and approached at the shrines. In a
Carthaginian votive tablet to Anath and Baal, for example, she is described
as Baal’s “manifestation,” through whom he drew near to men. Thus,
“whoever sees her sees the face of Baal.”21 William Albright also observed
that “in a very ancient Psalm, Ps 18:36 = 2 Sam. 22:36, we find the word
‘anath or ‘anoth used as a surrogate for YHWH.”22 It therefore appears that a
goddess may have anciently represented her divine Husband as his “Face”
or “Presence” in Israelite iconography.
16 Helmer Ringgren, Israelite Religion (Philadelphia, 1966), 163.

17 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1961), 113
(hereafter cited as MTJM); see also his Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1974), 40.
18 Scholem, MTJM, 113.
19 Ibid., 114.
20 William F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (Garden City, NY, 1969)
(hereafter, YGC), 135, 129.

21 Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1967), 2:39.
22 From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, 1957) (hereafter, FSAC), 373fn.
He also suggests that the name of Anath at Elephantine, “Anath-Bethel,” would

mean “Presence of God’s House” (ibid., 373), i.e., Yahweh’s “Face.”
12 A GREAT MYSTERY
Since many of Baal’s attributes were taken over by the Israelite Yah-
weh,23 it is likely that the idea of a wife as the “Face” of the god also be-
came part of the Israelite cultus, as indeed Anath herself did at one time,
23 According to Mark S. Smith (The Early History of God, San Francisco, 1990).
Hosea’s play on Ba‘al as a title of Yahweh (Hos 2:16) indicates that some northern
Israelites did not distinguish between Yahweh and Baal. The verse declares, “And
in that day, says Yahweh, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call
me ‘My ba‘al’” (46). Bearers of the Baal-names “Eshbaal” and “Meribbaal,” be-
longed to the clan of Saul, in which Yahwistic names are also attested, such as
Jonathan, the son of Saul. Yet “why would a Yahwistic family give Baal names,”
asks Smith, “if Baal were a god inimical to Yahweh? The answer is perhaps implicit
in the name of another family member provided in the genealogy of Saul’s clan in
1 Chr 8:30 and 9:36. In this verse, Ba‘al is the name of Saul’s uncle … Direct
analogies are provided by the name be‘alyah, ‘Yah is lord’ (1 Chr 12:6) and ywb‘l,
‘Yaw is lord,’ attested in a seal inscription. These names point to three possibilities.
In Saul’s family, either ba‘al was a title for Yahweh, or Baal was acceptable in royal,
Yahwistic circles, or both. The same range of possible interpretations underlies the
names of Eshbaal and Meribbaal; both were possibly Yahwistic names, later under-
stood as anti-Yahwistic in import. The later defensiveness over these names points
to the fact that the language of Baal, though criticized during the monarchy, was
used during the Judges period. The proper names containing the element ba‘al are
historically ambiguous, possibly reflecting either the name of Baal or the title ‘lord,’
which would have been an appropriate epithet of Yahweh” (14). Helmer Ringgren
also writes that “Obviously both Yahweh and Baal were divinities associated with
atmospheric phenomena like lightning and thunder. The question naturally could
arise whether the Israelite conception of a theophany shows Canaanite influence …
It would have been difficult to apply an epithet to Yahweh if a certain similarity
between him and Baal had not already been present, (thus) we must assume that
the Canaanite ‘baal of the sky’ and Yahweh both belonged to the same phenome-
nological type” (Israelite Religion, 43–44). Gary A. Anderson, writing similarly, notes
that “Elijah … constantly chastises his fellow Israelites for confusing the power of
Baal for that of YHWH. Because this confusing of YHWH and Baal was so wide-
spread in ancient Israel, it is important to understand why such an identification
would have suggested itself in the first place. The most obvious explanation is the
similar natures of YHWH and Baal … These similarities would have led many Isra-
elites to presume that YHWH (the more ‘recent’ figure in the history of ancient
Canaan) was not a unique god but rather just an alternative local title for an older
pan-Canaanite deity. From the perspective of the common Israelite, it was not so
much a matter of rejecting YHWH in preference for Baal, but of seeing the two as
equitable or interchangeable in certain fundamental ways” (“Introduction to Israel-
ite Religion,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Nashville, 1994, 1:275).
probably under the name of “Queen of Heaven.”24 But with her came the
traditional belief that the divine consists of male and female in intimate
connection, as stated originally in Genesis 1:26–7. It is perhaps significant
that the word panim is itself plural, though always used as a singular noun.
THE CHERUBIM AS SYMBOLS OF GOD’S MALE-FEMALE IMAGE

Though Judaism was during most of the Second Temple period officially a
monotheism, it is most significant that during the centuries immediately
preceding Christ, the “One God” was frequently associated with a second
“Power in Heaven,” an “angelic” or “hypostatic” figure who shared and
mediated his influence to the earth, and who eventually gave rise to the de-
velopment of the Church’s christology and the rise of Gnosticism.25
24 Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 63ff. As the “Queen of Heaven,” she was worshipped
at least to the time of the Babylonian Captivity (Jer 7:17–18; 44:17–19). Hugo
Gressman believed that the two stones in the Ark originally represented Yahweh
and his wife, Anath (Die Lade Jahves, Berlin, 1920, 65), and that the plural “gods” in
1 Samuel 4:7 (when the Ark came into the Philistine camp) shows that there was
actually more than one deity within the box, namely, Yahweh/Baal and his female
consort (ibid., 65). Julian Morgenstern (“The Ark, the Ephod, and the ‘Tent of
Meeting,’” HUCA 17 (1942–43): 246–47) compares these stones with the pairs of
betyls or sacred stones worshipped by various other Semitic tribes, such as the Syri-
ans and Nabataeans, who also kept them in a Kubbe, or Ark-like box. He also saw
them as related to the two Cherubim: “Perhaps in the figures of the two Cherubim,
so intimately and seemingly indispensibly associated with the ark … we may see a
reminiscence of the two sacred stones or betyls or divine images … In some, and
on the whole rather striking, respects, they do remind us not a little of the two god-
desses in the Syrian palenquin” (ibid., 247fn).
25 See Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (Leiden, 1977); Margaret Barker, The
Great Angel (Louisville, KY, 1992). According to the original version of Deuteron-
omy 32:8–9, as well as Psalm 82, Israel’s godhead consisted of the Father El (=
Elyon, Elohim) and and his Son Yahweh. The memory of these two gods survived
for many years in the racial memory of the Jews, and scholars like J. A. Emerton,
“The Origins of the Son of Man Imagery,” Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1950): 242;
H. S. Nyberg, “Studien zum Religionskampf im Alten Testament,” Archiv für Re-
ligionswissenschaft 35 (1938): 329ff; Geo Widengren, The Accadian and Hebrew Psalms of
Lamentation in Religious Documents (Uppsala, 1937), 78; Sakrales Königtum im Alten Tes-
tament (Stuttgart, 1955), 11, 85, have suggested that as late as the Exile, Yahweh was
still subordinated to Elyon in parts of the Jerusalem cultus. Even after Judaism
declared that Elohim and Yahweh were merely different names for the “One God”
(Deut 6:4), the memory of a second deity survived as a “manifestation” of God’s
14 A GREAT MYSTERY
According to Philo, the two Cherubim represented just such a heavenly duo,
consisting of God’s creative and beneficent “power,” called “God” (i.e.,
Theos, or El), and God’s kingly and punitive “power,” called “Lord” (i.e.,
kyrios, or Yahweh).26 But in several passages of Scripture, the “One God”
was also said to possess both male and female attributes.27 Thus Philo was the
first to inform us that the two Cherubim represented a male and a female,
symbolizing the “One God’s” masculine and feminine “powers,” as they united
sexually within himself:
While God is indeed One, his highest and chiefest Powers are two …
Of these two potencies … the Cherubim are symbols … These un-
mixed potencies are mingled and united (On the Cherubim, 27–29).
This explanation was obviously derived from an earlier belief in literal
male and female deities, whose memory somehow survived into an age of
monotheistic worship. In fact, the immemorial image of a hieros gamos be-
tween a god and goddess at the time of creation can still be clearly seen in
Philo’s description of God’s two “Powers” in connubial union:
The Architect who made the universe was at the same time the Father
of what was then born, whilst the Mother was the Knowledge possessed
by its maker. With his Knowledge God had union, not as men have it,
and begot created things. And Knowledge, having received the divine
seed, when her travail was consummated, bore the only beloved Son
who is apprehended by the senses, the world which we see (Philo, On
Drunkenness, 30).
The author has of course demythologized the union of “Father” and
“Mother” in this passage and given it a “spiritual” meaning (“not as men
have it”). Nevertheless, the sexual imagery clearly persists, and we should
bear in mind that the worship of actual male and female deities had only
ceased in certain parts of Israel as recently as 419 or 400 B.C.28 This passage
mediating “power,” described variously as his “angel” (Exod 23:20), or as a “per-

sonification” of his creative “word” and “wisdom” (Ps 33:6; 136:4). See also the
discussion of the Danielic “Son of Man,” who may originally have been second in
power to the “Ancient of Days” (p. 87 and note 17, p. 91, below).
26 On the Life of Moses, 2:97–100; Questions on Genesis, 1:57.
27 For example, Jeremiah 31:20; Hosea 8:14; Psalm 131:2; etc. See Phyllis
Trible’s article in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 5:368.

28 For example, in the Jewish garrison at Elephantine, Upper Egypt, where the
goddess was worshipped along side of Yaho (YHWH). See James B. Pritchard,
Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton, 1969), 490; Jeremiah (7:18; 44:17) and Ezekiel
from On Drunkenness in fact preserves the exact same divine Triad of

Father-Mother-Son which scholars like Ditlef Nielsen,29 William Albright,30
Maria Höfner,31 and Julian Morgenstern32 have found to be generally proto-
Semitic. In Albright’s words, the godhead of early popular Hebrew religion
consisted of “a father, El, and mother, whose specific name or names must
remain obscure (perhaps Elat or Anath), and a Son, who appears as the
Storm-god.”33 By the time of Philo, however, this basic godhead of three
had been reduced to “internal features” within the “One God” of monothe-
ism. But as we shall see later on, it reappeared in the “pantheons” of Gnos-
tic Christians, whose systems of heavenly Aeons were descended from a
similar pattern of Father-Mother-and-Divine-Son.34
Most Eastern Mediterranean cultures, however, generally expanded
this divine Triad into a Tetrad by the addition of the Son’s wife (often his
own sister), resulting in a “Father-Mother-Son-and-Daughter.”35 This an-
cient Tetrad remained of extreme importance to Jewish Kabbalists, where
the pattern of hierogamy surfaced once again in the spiritualized unions of
the Sephiroth in medieval Kabbalism, where we still “dimly … perceive …
the male and female gods of antiquity … anathema as they were to the pi-
ous kabbalist.”36 This is particularly significant because it is the nuptials of
the younger pair that were usually the subject of Sacred Marriages in the
Near East,37 possibly because the Father and Mother tended to be otiose
and because it was the Son who was generally responsible for organizing
(8:14) in the early sixth century B.C. still had to speak out against widespread poly-
theism in Israel, even in the Temple itself.
29 Die altarabische Mondreligion (Strassburg, 1944), Der dreieinige Gott in religions-
geschichtlicher Beleuchtung (Copenhagen, 1922); “Die altsemitische Muttergöttin,”

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 17 (1938): 526–50.
30 FSAC, 247, 173.
31 “Die vorislamitische Religionen Arabiens” (Stuttgart, 1970), 245–46.
32 Some Significant Antecedents of Christianity (Leiden, 1966), 82ff, 96.
33 FSAC, 247.
34 H.-M. Schenke, “Nag Hamadi Studien III,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistes-
geschichte 14 (1962): 351–61.

35 Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 164–70.
36 MTJM, 227.
37 Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 177–80. In the Ras Shamra texts there is a description
of the love-making of the Father, El (The Birth of the Fair and Gracious Gods), but it is
the relationship of younger pairs, such as Baal-Anath, Dumuzi-Innana, Tammuz-
Ishtar, Osiris-Isis, etc., which forms the traditional material for Near Eastern Sa-
cred Marriages of the type we are considering.
16 A GREAT MYSTERY
chaos and providing fertility at the time of creation. Their pattern of

hierogamy also reappeared in the allegorical “marriage” of Yahweh and Is-
rael, after prophets like Hosea and Isaiah condemned the immemorial rites
of polytheism, and replaced them with the sanitized image of God’s “Nup-
tial Covenant” with his people.
The figure of the Son’s Wife in these Sacred Marriages is particularly
important to our study. The memory of the young goddess who became a
symbol of Baal/Yahweh’s panim (pp. 11–12, above) can also be seen in
other personae who grew out of the feminine “debris” left over from Israel’s
polytheistic past. Especially revealing is the Shekhinah, originally the name
of God’s “Spirit” or “Presence” in the world, but one who would reemerge
as a virtual goddess in Kabbalism, much like her ancient predecessor. The
literature which grew up around the figure of Shekhinah shows that she was
closely associated with connubial matters, such as the symbolism of the
Embracing Cherubim. Exodus 25:22 thus suggests that Shekhinah (God’s
Presence) would have been present between the two statues: “There will I
meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from between the two
Cherubim.” Thus the statues themselves came to represent the place where
the invisible Shekhinah resided and could therefore be looked upon as her
symbolic “Face.”
Yet the intertwining statues were found by some of the rabbis to be
objectionable. Rab Nabman, however, answered that
a bride who is still in her father’s house is bashful towards her groom;
once she lives in her husband’s house, she is no longer bashful toward
him (b. Yoma 54b).
The meaning of this, as Patai explains, is that “the children of Israel, while
they were in the desert, were bashful and would not look at the Shekhinah,”
since Shekhinah was by definition the visible “Presence” (panim) of God,
i.e., the Embracing Cherubim.38 “Once settled in their land,” however,
“they could feast their eyes upon her” (b. Yoma 54a), thus legitimizing the
otherwise shocking spectacle.
The connection between Shekhinah and the connubial symbolism of
the Cherubim also survived in the Zohar, the great thirteenth-century classic
of Kabbalism, which modern research has shown to be a treasure-house of
mystical lore inherited from the period of the Second Temple.39 There it is
38Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 304.

39Gershom Scholem has found the roots of the Kabbalists in the esoteric doc-
trines of the Second Temple Pharisees dealing with the events of Creation, visions
recalled that “before Shekhinah was espoused” (i.e., united sexually), “no
one could speak to God face to face” (II:22b). But those who would gaze
upon her must themselves be married, for God’s “righteousness and eq-
uity” (Ps 98:9) consist of the fact that he is both male and female, “as were
the Cherubim” (III:59a).
THE CHERUBIM AS SYMBOLS OF GOD’S REDEMPTIVE MARRIAGE TO

ISRAEL
The most direct evidence which we have for this interpretation is found in
the Babylonian Talmud, which explains that when “the Cherubim, whose
bodies were intertwisted with one another,” were shown to the pilgrims
assembled in the Forecourt of the Temple, the priests addressed them as
follows:
Look! You are beloved of God as the love between man and woman (b.
Yoma 54a).
This again reminds us of the image of God’s covenant-marriage to Israel in
Ezekiel 16:8:
Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time
was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy
nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with
thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.
The consummation of this covenant-marriage would later take place in the
Holy of Holies, where the Cherubim were displayed in their connubial em-
brace. Talmudic legend in fact suggests that the Cherubim in the Second
Temple may have been moveable. Rabbis Johanan and Eleazar, in b. Baba
Batra 99a, for example, in attempting to reconcile Exodus 25:20 (“And the
Cherubim … with their faces one to another”) with 2 Chronicles 3:13
(“these Cherubim … their faces were toward the house”), concluded that
this change took place according to whether or not Israel was righteous at
the time:
of God’s Cherubic Throne, and the angelic hierarchies of the Celestial Court, much
of which was already found in books like 1 Enoch. “Subterranean but effective, and
occasionally still traceable, connections exist between these later writers and the
groups which produced a large proportion of the pseudepigrapha and apocalypses
of the first centuries before and after Christ” (MTJM, 42–43).
18 A GREAT MYSTERY
As for him who says that the faces of the Cherubim turned toward one
another, the verse which says And their faces were toward the house
presents no problem, because the one was at a time when Israel did the
will of the Place (i.e., God’s will), and the other was at a time when Is-
rael did not do the will of the Place.
Since the passage from 2 Chronicles 3:13 is merely a description of
how Solomon constructed his Temple, and contains no reference to Israel’s
sinfulness, we must conclude that the rabbis had an independent reason for
assuming that changes in the posture of the Cherubim might be linked to
Israel’s behavior. Thus there is a statement in b. Baba Batra 99a which sug-
gests that the standing position of the Cherubim was itself some kind of
“miracle.” This suggests that a secret duty of the High Priest may have in-
cluded the bringing of the free-standing statues together, in order to effect a
symbolic marriage between Yahweh and Israel. Louis Ginzberg, combining
the foregoing statements with the one from b. Yoma 54a, concluded that “as
a token of God’s delight in His people, Israel, the faces of the Cherubim, by
a miracle, ‘looked one to another’ whenever Israel were devoted to their
Lord, yea even clasped one another like a loving couple.”40 “When all was
linked together, all faces were illumined. Then all fell on their faces and
trembled, and said, ‘Blessed be the Name of his glorious kingdom for ever
and ever,’ to which the High Priest responded, ‘Be ye clean’” (Zohar
III:66b–67a), for the right to gaze on the Embracing Statues was granted
only to those who were “pure in heart.”
It is immediately obvious that the reported change of the Cherubim
from a “facing” to an “opposing” position (b. Baba Batra 99)—if it indeed
occurred—could only have been caused by the one person who entered the
Holy of Holies, namely the High Priest. If this was in fact the case, then we
have the description of a duty formerly performed on the Day of Atone-
ment, but now quite forgotten, namely, the uniting of the Cherubim in a
kind of hieros gamos reflecting the marriage of God and Israel—or the
“Bridegroom” and his “Bride” (Isa 62:5).
Such a marriage rite is indeed hinted at in the Zohar, which declares
that the High Priest had gone in “to unify the Holy Name and to join the
King with the Matrona” (III:66b), i.e., the “Bridegroom” and the “Bride
Israel.” This may have referred simply to the bringing about of the sote-
riological union in heaven, or it may have included the uniting of their
symbols—the Cherubim—though this is presently impossible to determine.
40 Legends of the Jews, 3:159.

Nevertheless, the Heavenly Union (literally “copulation”) “depends on the

priest,” and no man shall be in the tent of meeting “when he goes in to
unite them,” thereby “making atonement for himself and his house”
(III:66a)—meaning the reestablishing of the “wedded” relationship between
Yahweh and Israel.
The Tanhuma Numbers also recalls that the Holy of Holies was a “Nup-
tial Couch … because just as the couch serves fruitfulness and multiplica-
tion, even so the Sanctuary,” since everything therein “was fruitful and mul-
tiplied.” The medieval Zohar Hadash also remembered the Holy of Holies as
a “Wedding Chamber” for God and the exiled Community of Israel, now
unfortunately abandoned and despoiled. But God’s former Bride still enters
mournfully into the ruin where the Holy of Holies once stood, lamenting,
“In here came unto me the Lord of the World, my Husband, and would lie
in my arms and all that I wished he would give me. At this time he used to
come unto me and left his dwelling place and played between my breasts.”41
“Unification of the Holy Name” is further explained in the Zohar by
the statement that “marriage is the union of the Sacred Name here below”
(III:7a). Thus when we recall that Philo also referred to the Embracing
Cherubim as “Father” and “Mother,”42 it becomes apparent that their em-
brace indeed constituted a symbolic hieros gamos, whether their “miraculous”
coming together was still a cultic reality or merely a pious legend inherited
from Israel’s polytheistic past.
THE CHERUBIM AS PARADIGMS OF HUMAN MARRIAGE

Though there is no surviving document which states unequivocally that the
Embracing Cherubim were viewed as prototypes for human union, there
are sufficient statements relating the male-female image in the Temple to its
antitypes in earthly marriages to conclude that this was in fact the case. In-
deed, it cannot have been mere coincidence that visitors to the Festivals,
when the loving statues were displayed, were said to have come to the
Temple in pairs, i.e., as married couples,43 intent on being instructed in the
41 Quoted in Patai, Man and Temple (London, 1947), 92.

42 Also called “Reason and Wisdom,” “Goodness and Sovereignty,” “Benefi-
cial and Correcting,” even “Elohim” and “Yahweh,” etc. See the complete list in
Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 115.
43 Josephus (Antiquities, 15.11.5) mentions a gate “on the east quarter (of the
Court of Women) towards the sunrising … through which such as were pure came
in together with their wives.” The same tradition is mentioned by the medieval
20 A GREAT MYSTERY
ways of the Lord. Thus we note that in Genesis 1:26–28, the creation of
Adam and Eve by an ’Elohim—whose “image” was both “male and fe-
male”—is immediately followed by the commandment to “multiply and
replenish the earth,” i.e., to similarly bring the sexes together and beget
children. This pattern is actually followed in Genesis 5:3, where the exact
same language which had been used to describe the “creation” of the Pri-
mal Adam is used to describe the “begetting” of Seth:
Adam … begat (Seth) in his own likeness, after his own image (Gen
5:3).
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Gen 1:26).
William Albright thus concluded that the latter passage contains “an inter-
esting case of demythologizing … where God speaks in the plural,” refer-
ring to the gods in the Heavenly Council (sôd),44 as they plan the creation of
man.” This, he added, was usually carried out in Near Eastern theogonies
by the “outpouring of semen,” or “creation by sexual act.”45 Thus we are
justified in viewing Genesis 1:26 as a direct model for the begetting of Seth.
We therefore find in the early rabbinic literature the very important
dictum that
“He who does not marry thereby diminishes the Image of God” (To-
sefta, Yebamot, 8:4).
This again shows that marriage and the divine Image were considered at the
time to be identical. Furthermore, since marriage was the “union of the
Holy Name here below” (Zohar III:7a), it followed that human compliance
with the Sacred Embrace was required of all believers. Thus the Zohar de-
fined the “spreading of the radiance of the Sacred Name” as the command
to “multiply and replenish the earth,” and the four letters of God’s Name
(YHWH) came to stand for the primal Tetrad of “Father-Mother-Son-and-
Daughter,”46 or the ongoing process by which life emerges from God,
passes to his female counterpart, and is then “begotten” into male and fe-
male offspring, who are commanded to repeat the procedure (Zohar III:65b;
Jewish traveller, Estori ben Moses (1322), who said that it also could be found in
the writings of R. Eliezer b. Hyrkanus, who claimed that Solomon had built two
gates, one for mourners and those under the ban, and one for married couples. See
Julian Morgenstern, “The Gates of Righteousness,” HUCA 6 (1929), 27–28 and fn.
44 YGC, 191–92.
45 FSAC, 369.
46 Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 162ff.
III:290a–b). This again explains why one had to be married before being
allowed to see the “Shekhinah’s Face” (III:59a), for only when Israel
obeyed God’s will would the Cherubim unite (b. Baba Batra 99a). The “Face
of Shekhinah,” moreover, was a late euphemism for the “Face of God”—as
symbolized by the Embracing Cherubim (pp. 9–10, above)—while “God’s
will” was that men marry and beget children (Gen 1:28; 2:24). Indeed, the
Zohar claimed that until Shekhinah was married (i.e., united sexually), no
one could speak to God “face to face” (II:59a), and only those who were
themselves married were allowed to gaze on her, for “God is both male and
female, as were the Cherubim” (III:59a).
Talmudic and Torah scholars accordingly performed marital inter-
course at precisely midnight on the Sabbath as a symbolic reference to the
heavenly marriage (b. Ketubbot 62b).47 In this way, the Shekhinah was made
to rest between the deserving husband and his wife (b. Sotah 17a). Kabbal-
ists further taught that the human couple must have a conscious “intent”
(kawwanah) to emulate the divine pattern. In this way, they themselves became
Cherubim, or a “living chariot” (merkabah) for God’s Presence, just like the
“Holy Beasts” in the Temple.48 Then the Shekhinah would dwell between
the loving couple, as it had done between the Cherubim (Exod 25:22). As a
consequence, the Zohar promised that the Shekhinah would be present dur-
ing the sexual act, “cleaving to the man, but thanks only to his union with
his wife” (I:50a).
More important still was the warning that unless a man married in
conformity to this divine pattern he would never attain eternal life:
And when he dies and his soul leaves him, it does not unite with him at
all because he has diminished the Image of his Maker (III:7a).
He who remains without a wife, so that he is not both male and female
is considered only half a body. No blessing rests on anything that is
blemished or lacking; it is found only in that which is complete, in
something whole and undivided. A thing which is divided cannot en-
dure forever, nor will it ever receive blessing (III:296a).49
In both of these passages, the union of the man and wife is again patterned
after the Image of God (Gen 1:26–27), which is why the human sexes were
47 Scholem, On the Kabbalah (New York, 1965), 140.

48 Y’hiel Mikhael Epstein, Seder T’fillah Derekh Y’share (Offenbach, 1791), 10b,
23b, 24b; cited in Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 3rd ed., 186.
49 Most of the Zoharic translations used in this book are by Raphael Patai, ei-
ther via personal communication, or taken from The Hebrew Goddess.

22 A GREAT MYSTERY
also commanded to become “one” by means of legitimate marriage (Gen

2:24).
Indeed, so important was this heavenly pattern that it served as the
model for God’s own union with Israel, as well as for Christ’s union with
the Church (Eph 5:31–32). Conversely, the heavenly union which Paul
would call “a Great Mystery” (v. 32) also applied to the marriage of men
and women (v. 33), while at the same time it explained why Paul chose
Adam, at the time of his marriage (Gen 2:24), as the “figure of him who
was to come” (Rom 5:14), i.e., Christ.
We shall in fact discover that the imagery of the Embracing Cherubim
was mentioned for several more centuries in the writings of the early
Church, primarily as a symbol of the soteriological union of man and God,
though the Gnostics always made sure that the “Great Mystery” included
husbands and wives. For this reason, they frequently used human unions in
their so-called “Bridal Chamber rites” to “catalyze” the heavenly union of
the soul with Christ, and to bring about its salvation (see “The Gnostic Bri-
dal Chamber,” below).
2 THE WISDOM MYSTERY
WHO WAS WISDOM?

We must now investigate Wisdom’s role in this important marriage symbol-
ism. We already saw that the Talmud explains the loving embrace of the
Cherubim as a metaphor of God’s redemptive covenant with Israel (b. Yoma
54a), an exegesis obviously related to Ezekiel’s description of God’s “mar-
riage” to Israel (Ezek 16:8). It will be immediately noted, however, that
most of the literature which comes from the centuries immediately before
Christ describes this “marriage” as taking place through the agency of a divine
surrogate, such as God’s “Wisdom” or “Word,”1 rather than through direct
union with the Father. We also learn from the Ras Shamra Tablets that one
of El’s most characteristic attributes was his hkm (“Wisdom”).2 Sirach (ca.
180 B.C.) therefore informs us that those who sought God came to the
Temple in search of his “Wisdom,” rather than El himself:
When I was young, before I wandered about,
I desired Wisdom, and sought her out.
I prayed for her before the Temple,3
And will seek her out even to the end (51:13–14).
This is because Wisdom was the emissary and embodiment of El’s creative
power and knowledge, and the one who ministered between the world of
the Most High and his people, Israel:
1 Amongst Alexandrian Jews “Wisdom was normally equated with God’s

‘Word’” (e.g., Philo, Allegorical Interpretation, 1.65; That the Worse Attacks the Better,
116–19; Questions on Genesis, 4.92; etc.).
2 “The Ugaritic root hkm … is associated with the high God El in all of its oc-
casions.” H.-P. Müller, “chākham; wisdom” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testa-
ment (hereafter TDOT), 4:366).
3 The G version has enanti naou (“before the Temple”), which may have origi-
nally read en neoteti mou (“in my youth”). In any case, G was the form in which
Sirach was officially received into the Church, i.e., as part of the Greek Septuagint.
23
24 A GREAT MYSTERY
From the mouth of the Most High I came forth,

and mist-like covered the earth.
In the heights of heaven I dwelt,
my throne on a pillar of cloud.
The vault of heaven I compassed alone,
through the deep abyss I took my course.
Over waves of the sea, over all the land,
over every people and nation I held sway.
In the holy Tent I ministered before him,
and then in Zion I took up my post.
In the city he loves as he does me, he gave me rest;
in Jerusalem is my domain” (24:1–12, trans. by Skehan and DiLella).
Like the “angel” who acted as God’s satrap over “Jacob” (LXX Deut 32:8–
9), Wisdom “serve(d) a liturgical and priestly function,” especially as “an
intermediary between God and human beings.”4 Thus it was she who regu-
lated the flow of power between the upper and lower worlds. Like the
Cherubim who guarded the entrance to Paradise—and whom Philo likened
to the Logos (On the Cherubim, 28)—she stood at the “limit” (horos) separating
Man from God, which in the Jerusalem Temple was the space between the
two statues, where God’s “Presence” promised to commune with Israel
(Exod 25:22). Cherubs in fact appear throughout the ancient Near East as
traditional guardians of the portals leading into heaven, just as the Egyptian
Sphinx (which is also a Cherub, or a lion with human head) guarded the
entrance into the Pyramids, where the souls of the dead resided.
And since she “compassed the vault of heaven” with the Father’s
power, she further resembled the Stoic Logos, who was also widely viewed
as the controller and the mediator of God’s creative influence to the world:
She is an exhalation from the power of God,
a pure effluence from the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing tainted insinuates itself into her.
She is an effulgence of everlasting light,
an unblemished mirror of the active power of God,
and an image of his goodness.
Though but one she can do everything,
and abiding in herself she renews all things;
generation by generation she enters into holy souls
and renders them friends of God and prophets,
4 P. W. Skehan and A. di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, Anchor Bible (Garden
City, NY, 1987), 335.

THE WISDOM MYSTERY 25
for nothing is pleasing to God but the man who lives with Wisdom.
She is fairer than the sun and surpasses every constellation;
compared to the light of day she is found more radiant;
for day is superseded by night,
but over Wisdom no evil can prevail.
She stretches in might from pole to pole
and effectively orders all things
(Wisdom of Solomon 7:25–8:1, trans. by David Winston)
Unfortunately, most Israelites refused to accept her, and the now “Home-
less Wisdom” was obliged to return to heaven (Sir, 24:7; 1 Enoch 42). Nev-
ertheless, there were Jews who still spoke of a mysterious second power
who “mediated” the “One God’s” influence to the world. This “Second
God” has recently been investigated by scholars like Alan Segal5 and Marga-
ret Barker,6 who showed that memories of Israel’s former polytheism had
survived in the racial consciousness right down to the advent of Christian-
ity, in spite of Judaism’s official monotheism.7 Even Philo called Wisdom
either “the firstborn (protogonos) Son” (On Agriculture, 51; Confusion of Tongues,
146), or “the only beloved Son” (On Drunkenness, 30); and the LXX of
Proverbs 8:22 said that God “begets (genna) Wisdom” as the “beginning” of
his ways—a title which became “the firstborn (prototokos) of all creatures” in
Colossians (1:15). Wisdom was thus said to be monogenes (literally “unique,”
Wis 7:22), though this adjective was understood by Jerome to mean “only
begotten” (unigenitus) when he translated John 1:14. This helps to explain
why the Christian “Wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24) was again accepted as the
literal “Son of God”; and it further explains why the Jews crucified Jesus for
blasphemy when he claimed to be a “Son of God” (John 19:7), for contem-
porary rabbis had condemned the Christians as minim (“heretics”) for imag-
ining that God has offspring.8
Yet even the strictly monotheistic Jews had long maintained that God
did not create the world directly, but through an “agent” of his power, one
whom the Old Testament had called “Wisdom” (“By wisdom he made the
heavens,” Ps 136:5) or “Word” (“By the word of the LORD were the heav-
5 Two Powers in Heaven (Leiden, 1977; see p. 14, above).

6 The Great Angel (Louisville, KY, 1992; see p. 14 above).
7 Compare note 29, page 15, above.
8 Segal, Two Powers, 3–7. According to Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, He-
brew Myths, (Garden City, NY, 1963), 104, rabbis during the second century still felt
obliged to curse those who read “sons of God” in the literal sense, and reinter-
preted the expression to mean “judges,” instead of true deities in Psalm 82:6.
26 A GREAT MYSTERY
ens made,” Ps 33:6). But the ultimate prototype of this “mediating agent”
can only have been one or more of the lesser gods of the Israelite pantheon,
especially the Father’s “executive Son,”9 or even a number of assorted fe-
male deities,10 especially the “Daughter” who acted as the Son’s “Face” in
the shrines (pp. 10–11, above).11 She may even have been a form of the
ancient Mother Goddess, Asherah, who was originally the wife of El.12 Sig-
nificantly, after monotheism declared that all of these deities except for the
lone “Yahweh-Elohim” were non-existent (Deut 6:4; Isa 45:5), their ancient
“executive” or “mediating” functions still played a leading role in the Tem-
ple cultus, though they were by now reduced to mere “hypostasis” or “per-
sonification” of the Father’s internal “powers” or “attributes.” Yet as in
previous polytheistic ages, they continued to be described in strikingly “per-
sonal” terms, just as the numerous gods and goddesses of prehistory had
been.
But in addition to God’s mysterious “Word” or “Wisdom,” God also
worked through his all-important Shekhinah (pp. 10–11, above), who was
generally understood to be a form of God’s Spirit. Since her name was de-
rived from the verb š-k-n (“to dwell”), she obviously had a great deal in
common with the Wisdom who “dwelt” in Israel’s Tent and “ministered”
in the Assembly of the Most High. Shekhinah, too, was frequently personi-
fied as a discrete persona, like the gods and goddesses of old, and who could
therefore be described by Rabbi Aha as a discrete “woman” who stood and
9 An expression used by Conrad L’Heureux, Rank among the Canaanite Gods
(Missoula, 1979), 5; and by J. J. M. Roberts, The Earliest Semitic Pantheon (Baltimore,

1972), 148. Walther Eichrodt uses the expression “Heavenly Vizier” in Theology of
the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1967), 2:197–99.
10 Thus Helmer Ringgren writes that the Jewish Wisdom was “a superior coun-
terpart to a mother goddess, or goddess of love.” Israelite Religion (Philadelphia,

1966), 310, and that her figure was formed under the influence of various older
deities, including a Mother and Daughter, Word and Wisdom (Lund, 1947).
11 Albright was of the opinion that “Wisdom” was “a Canaanite goddess asso-
ciated with Baal, and similar to the Mesopotamian Siduri Sabitu … called ‘goddess
of wisdom, giver of life’” (From the Stone Age to Christianity, Baltimore, 1957; hereaf-
ter FSAC, 368–69). As Baal’s associate, she would have been one of El’s daughters.
12 El’s wife also appeared in Qatabanian inscriptions under the name Hukm,
“Wisdom” (= Heb. hokmah), along with her own name, “Ashirat.” (= Heb.
Asherah). “‘Wisdom’ is a standing title of the ancient Semitic Mother Goddess.
This name takes us back to a very primitive stratum of Semitic mythology.” Ditlef
Nielson, “Die Altsemitische Muttergöttin,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen
Gesellschaft 17 (1938): 550.
witnessed before God on Israel’s behalf.13 In the Midrash Mishle (ca. A.D.
1030) she is again referred to as a virtual goddess, one completely separate
and distinct from God. The Kabbalistic literature would even speak of
Shekhinah as God’s “Bride”—one of the Mother Goddess’s ancient titles.
Hence, while technically distinct from Wisdom,14 Shekhinah appears to
have likewise inherited many of the traits of a prehistoric goddess, either the
Father’s own wife, or the wife of his Son, she who traditionally served as
the Son’s “Face.”15
“Wisdom/Word’s” ancestry thus consisted of several male and female
elements, inherited from the age of Israelite polytheism. One of her more
important prototypes, however, may have been El’s Son, Baal—the hus-
band of Anath, and the Canaanite equivalent of Yahweh—whose resurrec-
tion made possible the continuation of all natural life, and of whom the Ras
Shamra texts report, “The wise El has attributed to thee wisdom (hkmt),
together with eternity of life” (II AB iv–v 41–42).16 As the creative Logos,
Wisdom would therefore emerge in Christianity as a masculine figure (John
1:1), while in rabbinic Judaism she was often spoken of as the feminine “To-
13 Leviticus Rabbah, 6:1 (ca. A.D. 300).

14 “Shekhinah” was perhaps originally related to the Pillar of Fire that attended
the Ark in the wilderness (Exod 33:14). Scholem notes that the older rabbinic
sources never identified Shekhinah with Wisdom (“Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte
der kabbalistischen Konzeption der Schechinah,” Eranos Jahrbuch 21 (1953): 56),
though he has demonstrated convincingly that Wisdom’s role as a divine “Bride”
was definitely part of her “prehistory” (ibid., 46). It is only in Kabbalism that their
“essential relationship” becomes explicit once again. See O. S. Rankin, Israel’s Wis-
dom Literature (Lund, 1947), 259, where Shekhinah is also described as “a kindred
figure to Wisdom.”
15 In recent years, archeological discoveries in tenth and ninth century Israel
(mainly at Kuntillat ‘Ajrud in the Sinai desert, and at Khirbet el-Qom, near Hebron)
have shown that Yahweh had a consort, the Asherah. See especially John Day,
“Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwestern Semitic Literature, JBL 105
(1986): 385–408; Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, Atlanta,
1988. The name “Asherah” was eventually translated in the LXX and in modern
versions as “grove” or “tree” (her cult symbols), thus concealing her true identity
from the new monotheists. While the Asherah was originally the wife of the Father,
El, once the monotheists had declared Yahweh to be identical with El, she ended
up as the consort of Yahweh. Thus some of Asherah’s attributes may have colored
the figure of “Wisdom,” or Yahweh’s mediating Presence in the Temple.
16 FSAC, 368; translation of William Albright.
28 A GREAT MYSTERY
rah,”17 or the “Law” by which the universe was governed. In Christianity,

however, she became the masculine “New Torah,” i.e., Jesus Christ, the New
Testament “Wisdom” (1 Cor 1:24). Like the Jewish “Wisdom,” he too me-
diated to his disciples the powers which his Father had “begotten” in him,
for as the Father’s Spirit dwelt in him (John 14:10), he would cause it to
dwell in his followers. But in Gnosticism, we will again encounter Wisdom
as a female, or even as a male-female syzygy—the “Logos-Sophia”— who
bridges the spiritual and the earthly as a bisexual unity, recalling the male-
female Cherubim, whose male-female embrace depicted the reunion of God
and Man in the Temple.
ISRAEL AS GOD’S BRIDE

In rabbinic Judaism, Wisdom, and/or the Shekhinah, came to be described
as “the Community of Israel,” suggesting her origin with God and her des-
tiny to return to him again.18 As the spiritual substance within God’s Old
Testament “Bride” (Hos 2:14–20; Isa 54:4–10; 62:4–5), she was not merely
the earthly race of Israel, but the restored and renewed “soul” of the spiritual
Israel who first came down from the heavens.19 Later mystics therefore
looked forward to God’s “marriage” to his Shekhinah as the Golden Age
when the Preexistent Community of “Adam Kadmon” would be reconsti-
tuted above, and the preexistent world, from which human souls had fallen
when they broke away from their primordial oneness with the Divine, re-
stored.20
17 Wisdom 1:7; 7:17–21; 8:1ff; 9:17; 10; 11:20; 16:24; etc. Sirach 24:23ff; 26–33;
etc.
In Gnostic Christianity “Shekhinah/Wisdom” would also be viewed as the
18
personification of the preexistent ekklesia (e.g., Tripartite Tractate, 58:29–59:1), which

was in turn the spiritual counterpart of the earthly church.
19 As late as 1930, when Albert Schweitzer first called attention to the impor-
tant connection between the Jewish “Preexistent Community” and the Christian
“Preexistent Church,” it was still widely supposed that both doctrines belonged to
the fringes of heterodoxy. Today, it is evident that such beliefs were accepted by
the majority of contemporaty rabbis, whose apocalyptic views were the product of
ordinary Pharisaic Judaism; see W. D. Davies’ summary in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism
4th ed. (Philadelphia, 1980), 9–10. For the Talmudic doctrine of the Preexistent
Community, see Ferdinand Weber’s Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und ver-
wandter Schriften (New York, 1975), 196–225.
20 As we shall show later on, the Kabbalists viewed the Shekhinah as the “lost”
spirit-substance of God, which fell from the heavens at the time of the Fall, and
A “sexual” bond between God and Man appears to have been widely
recognized in ancient Semitic cultures, where there was a widespread con-
cept that cult-cities and their peoples were directly “married” to their dei-
ties.21 This survived in more or less demythologized forms as late as the
time of Christ, and it is not unreasonable to assume that such a belief al-
ready lay behind Israel’s Exodus into the desert, where Israel fled to be
“married” to her God. Indeed, it is not essentially different from the moti-
vation expressed by Moslem pilgrims even today, as they approach the
Ka‘ba at Mecca, chanting the so-called talbiya: “Here we come, O Allah, no
partner hast thou,” suggesting that some kind of communal “espousal” to
the god was once part of the ritual.
Even the present redacted account of the Exodus appears to be a con-
scious readaptation of a former hieros gamos between God and Man in the
desert. It will be recalled that the original reason for Israel’s release from
Egypt was to allow her to make a “three-day journey” into the wilderness to
“sacrifice to Yahweh” (Exod 3:18). But as Wellhausen observed many years
ago, “the exodus is not the occasion of the festival, but the festival the oc-
casion of the exodus.”22 And though it is no longer possible to ascertain the
exact nature of the intended “sacrifice,” it is clear that the desert festival
which was supposedly introduced to commemorate the flight out of Egypt
had actually existed prior to that event.
The Passover, for example, was an ancient rite connected with the
spring parturition rites of the shepherds and herdsmen, and was probably
connected to the Canaanite feast of mazzoth (“Unleavend Bread”) once the
Israelites had settled in Canaan.23 It is even introduced into Exodus 12:21 as
which (because of its natural consanguinity with the Divine) can guide men back to
their Source.
21 Julius Lewy, “The Old West Semitic Sun-God Hammu,” HUCA 18 (1944):
436–43.
22 Quoted in J. C. Rylaarsdam, “Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread,” in
Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 3:664.

23 Roland de Vaux, The History of Early Israel (Philadelphia, 1978), reconstructs
the events as follows: “One spring, when the feast assuring the well-being of the
flocks and herds before they were taken to their summer pasture was being cele-
brated, at a time when the scourge was laying Egypt waste, the Israelites left Egypt,
led by Moses in the name of their God, Yahweh” (370). The unleavened bread
which they ate was the unleavened bread of the Passover, later assimilated to the
unleavened bread of the Canaanite mazzoth feast, after Israel settled in Canaan
(369).
30 A GREAT MYSTERY
a feast already known, though additional statements claim that it was “in-
vented” de novo to memorialize the night when Yahweh “passed over” the
houses of the Israelites as they prepared to leave Egypt (Exod 12:13, 23,
27).
The Feast of Tabernacles—also rationalized as a “memorial” to the
time when Yahweh caused the fleeing Israelites “to dwell in the desert in
booths” (Lev 23:41–43)—had equally ancient roots, though it took place in
the fall (Lev 23:41), i.e., at the time immediately preceding the Solomonic
New Year (1 Kgs 8:2). The riotous nature of this autumnal feast, with its
use of green boughs, and the custom of searching for brides in the vine-
yards, has been variously connected with practices going back to Sumerian
hierogamy,24 the Canaanite hillulim (“jubilation”) which was associated with
the season of harvest and vintage (Lev 19:24; Judg 9:27; cf. Ps 126:6),25 an
ancient pilgrimage hag in the desert26 (perhaps domesticated in later years as
an annual feast of pilgrimage to Shiloh, where the daughters of the country
danced in the vineyards, Judg 21:19–21),27 or even the Babylonian New
Year Festival (Akitu), which concluded with the Sacred Marriage of Marduk
and Sarpanit.28 It is in any case virtually certain that many of the elements
which were combined to create this most important of all early feasts—
originally called simply “the Feast” (hehag; 1 Kgs 8:2)—were already old
when Israel fled into the wilderness, just as in the case of the ancient Pass-
over.
It is especially important to note that one of the preparations for the
intended sacrifice in the desert (Exod 3:18) consisted of “borrowing” pre-
cious ornaments and clothing from the Egyptians with which to decorate
the men and women of Israel:
24 Samuel N. Kramer, The Sacred Marriage Rite (Bloomington, 1969), 49–106. In
this case, however, the pertinent events largely took place in the spring.
25 See, for example, E. G. Kraeling, “The Real Religion of Ancient Israel,” JBL
47 (1928): 148; de Vaux, History of Early Israel, 708.

26 Ivan Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East (Oxford, 1967),
156ff; Julian Morgenstern, “The Despoiling of the Egyptians,” JBL 68 (1949), 18–
19.
27 de Vaux, History of Early Israel, 708.
28 See H. J. Kraus, Gottesdienst in Israel, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1962), 17–21, for his-
torical background. This theory got its main impetus from Paul Volz, Das Neujahrs-
fest Jahwes, which appeared in 1912 (Tübingen).
But every woman shall borrow of her neighbor, and her that sojourneth
in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and ye
shall put them on your sons and upon your daughters (Exod 3:22).
Exodus 11:1–2 again repeats this important instruction, but with the follow-
ing significant addition:
I will bring one more plague upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterwards
he will let you go hence; when he sends you away completely, he shall surely
thrust you away. Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man
borrow of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor jewels of sil-
ver and jewels of gold.
J. Coppens and Van Hoonaker have both noted that the MT of verse
1 can be emended without the slightest consonantal change from “when he
sends you away completely” (keshilleho kalah) to “just as they send away a
bride” (keshillehu kallah).29 Since “completely” (kalah) adds very little to the
meaning of the passage, it has been suggested by modern translators that
“as a bride” (kallah) better suits the argument, as, for example, the authors
of the NEB, who render this passage “as a man dismisses a rejected bride”
(though the word “rejected” is surely unwarranted here, since Israel was
never the “bride” of Pharaoh!).30 Julian Morgenstern, in his classic paper,
“The Despoiling of the Egyptians,” thus concludes that the Israelite
women, “when going forth from Egypt, were to be garbed as brides,’’31 ex-
plaining the need for borrowed garments. In short, the feast to which Israel
was hurrying had a pronounced bridal character.
Yet according to the account in Exodus, the command to “borrow
jewels of gold and silver” came from the mouth of Yahweh himself. Thus
we may assume that they were intended from the very start to be part of the
sacred festival planned in the wilderness (3:18). It is doubly significant, then,
that we next encounter the borrowed jewels in the episode of the Golden
Calf:
29 “Miscellanées Bibliques,” Bulletin d’Histoire et d’Exegese de l’Ancien Testament 23

(1947): 178. Quoted in Morgenstern, “The Despoiling of the Egyptians,” 1. Cop-
pens notes that shilluhim also occurs as “bridal gifts bestowed as on a dowry” in
1 Kings 9:11.
30 The word “rejected” has probably been inferred from the juridical use of
shillah as to “repudiate” a wife (Deut 22:19, 29; 24:1, 3–4). See de Vaux, History of
Early Israel, 371.
31 Morgenstern, “The Despoiling of the Egyptians,” 3.
32 A GREAT MYSTERY
And Aaron said unto them, Break off all the golden earrings which are
in the ears of your wives, and your sons, and your daughters, and bring
them unto me. And all the people broke off the golden earrings which
were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them
at their hand and fashioned them with a graving tool, after he had made
it a golden calf, and they said, These be the gods, O Israel, which
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt (Exod 32:2–4).
Obviously, Aaron believed that this was going to be the fulfillment of
Yahweh’s commandment that Israel go into the wilderness to “hold a feast
unto the Lord” (Exod 32:5). Accordingly, on the morrow, everyone “ate
and drank” and “rose up to play,” an obvious euphemism for sexual aban-
don (compare v. 25, where the people are naked as they dance). They also
“sacrificed” (v. 8), just as Yahweh had commanded (3:18). Finally, the
dance itself took place around the statue of a bull-god (32:19), which was
one of the symbols associated with Yahweh from very early times (“These
be the gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of Egypt,” v. 4).32 This,
then, must have been the original hag, or “feast,” which Israel wished to
hold in the wilderness.
This reconstruction has the advantage of being the simplest explana-
tion for the original data describing the institution of the Passover and the
“Exodus” out of Egypt. Nevertheless, since most of the present account
was redacted during the Deuteronomic Reform, it no longer mentions the
sort of gods and goddesses who might have been involved and focuses
solely on Israel’s covenant relationship with Yahweh. It also attempts to
make the construction of a golden bull-image appear as an afterthought,
when Moses failed to return from the top of Sinai (Exod 32:1). In the end,
the whole event was recast as the “marriage” of Yahweh and Israel, or the
“love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness”
(Jer. 2:2). Nevertheless, its original hierogamic character is still clearly visi-
ble, though the licentious behavior that customarily accompanied such
events is explained as a “defection” on the part of Aaron and the people.
The same attempt to rationalize the sexually oriented wilderness feast
as a “marriage” between Yahweh and Israel is still faintly visible—though
32 Morgenstern (ibid., 26) calls attention to the similarities between this dance
and the dancing of Miriam and her maidens, “arranged like brides, in the garments
and jewels which they had borrowed from the Egyptian women” (Exod 15:20–21);
cf. also the “virginal” (i.e., bridal) dances of the maidens of Samaria (Jer 31:3–4)
and Jerusalem (m. Ta‘anit 4:8; Josephus, Antiqities, 5.2.12), or the dancing “lovers”
of Baal, condemned by Hosea (2:13).
long after the fact—in the rabbinic exegesis of Exod 31:18: “And he gave
to Moses, when he had made an end (kekallotho) of speaking with him on
Mt. Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony.” But by changing the vocaliza-
tion slightly, kekallotho (“when he had made an end”) was altered to kekal-
latho (“as his bride”). Thus, “when Yahweh had made (Israel) his bride,
while speaking to Moses on Mt. Sinai, he gave Moses the two tablets of the
testimony.”33 This view of Moses as the “marriage broker” between Israel
and the Lord closely parallels the role which Paul assumes in 2 Corinthians
11:2: “I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a
chaste virgin to Christ.”
THE BRIDE WISDOM

As we have already seen, the Israelite who went to the Temple during
intertestamental times was “married” to God through his surrogate, “Wis-
dom,” rather than to God directly (pp. 23–24, above). Thus she functioned
as an Intermediate between both parties, having previously been married to
God in order to receive his divine attributes. And since the noun “Wisdom”
is feminine in both Greek and Hebrew,34 she most often took on a female
aspect during the years immediately preceding Christ. Thus the book of
Proverbs (probably committed to writing in the fifth century B.C.) primarily
speaks of her as God’s feminine “companion”:
The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works
of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the
earth was. When [there were] no depths, I was brought forth; when
[there were] no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains
were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had
not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the
world. When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the
fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea his decree, that the wa-
ters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the founda-
tions of the earth: Then I was by him, [as] one brought up [with him]:
and I was daily [his] delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in
the habitable part of his earth; and my delights [were] with the sons of
men (8:22–31).
But the Wisdom of Sirach also speaks of “Wisdom” as if she were a deity
whom the Temple pilgrim could “embrace”:
33 Richard A. Batey, New Testament Nuptial Imagery (Leiden, 1972), 26–27.

34 Greek sophia, and Hebrew hokmah.
34 A GREAT MYSTERY
Mother-like she will meet him,

like a young bride she will embrace him (15:2).
Hence in most of these intertestamental documents, Wisdom appears both
as the “bride” of the Temple pilgrim and the “bride” of God. In the Wis-
dom of Solomon, for example (written sometime between 220 B.C. and
A.D. 50),35 she is described as one who “enjoys intimacy with God,” and is
subsequently able to pass the riches of his knowledge to her own lovers
(8:2–6). But as Philo explained, Wisdom must first be impregnated by God
before she can impregnate those who “marry” her (Questions on Genesis,
4:129–146).36 Thus she is sometimes said to be both female and male, one
who is “sown” and who “sows,” and can therefore act as an intermediary
between the Father and Man. The “Bride” Wisdom accordingly appears in
Philo’s On Flight and Finding (50) as “an allegorical and archetypal image of
the daughter of God (called Bathuel), who is eternally virgin and renewing,”
like her putative prototype, Anath.37 But the same passage goes on to say
that God’s Wisdom is in reality masculine, because she “contains the Father”
(cf. John 14:10), and is therefore able to “sow” knowledge and virtue in
souls to whom she is joined.38
Thus, as Wisdom was once the “Bride” of God (Wis 8:3), so she will
be the “bride” and “wife” of the one who seeks after her (Sir 15:2; 51:13–
30; Wis 8:2; 9:10). By loving and embracing her (Prov 4:6, 9), he persuades
her to give herself to him (Wis 6:12–14). Yet this is possible only because of
man’s prior kinship with her, since he originally came forth from God “like
a stream from a river … as a conduit into a garden” (Sir 24:30). The Wis-
dom of Solomon therefore stresses man’s preexistence and divine potential:
“I was, indeed, a child well-endowed, having had a noble soul fall to my lot,
or rather, being noble, I entered an undefiled body” (8:19–20). Now, how-
ever, this “perishable body weighs down the soul, and this tent of clay en-
cumbers a mind full of cares” (9:15).
35 David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY,
1974), 20.
36 See Goodenough’s exegesis in By Light, Light (New Haven, 1935), 160:
“Now Isaac is consoled for the loss of his mother (= Sophia), for in Rebecca he
has found Sophia (Wisdom) again,” she who is “virgin” because she had earlier
become “one with God.” This concept may have been the original of the Kabbalist’s
“household hieros gamos,” in which marital intercourse catalyzed the union of the
couple and God’s Shekhinah.
37 Scholem, “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte,” 50.
38 Ibid., 51–52.
But Wisdom still “pervades and permeates all things” (Wis 7:24; 8:1),
including the spirit of man (7:23), which is therefore rational and wise.39
Since man was created in God’s Image to be immortal (2:23), he can truly
be counted among the sons of God (5:5), as long as he is careful not to
stray from the light (5:6). Just as Wisdom’s innate nobility (eugeneia) was in-
creased by her union with God (8:3), so she can give her virtue to those of
like birth (suggeneia, 8:17). And since all initially came from Wisdom (God’s
feminine aspect), and have a spark of Wisdom within, all have a natural abil-
ity to seek out Wisdom, if they will make use of it. Wisdom will then lead
them back to God, since man’s union with Wisdom corresponds closely to
Wisdom’s union with God.
“This undoubtedly implies that man’s ultimate goal is union with God,
which may, however, be achieved only through union with Wisdom, which
is but one of His aspects.”40 “Union with Wisdom” is in fact “the mystical
repetition of the union with her as the expression of a special, heavenly
knowledge or revelation.”41 But not only does she who possesses God’s
secret knowledge (Wis 8:4, 8) pass it on to her lovers (7:17–22), she also
“imparts (to them) her immediacy to God,” i.e., her incorruptible nature
(aphtharsia, 8:17).42 In this way she makes them immortal (6:18–19; 8:13),
“friends of God” and prophets (7:27), and saves them from the world
(9:18).
This union with Wisdom is described as the revelation of a “mystery.”
Just as Wisdom received her knowledge as an “initiate” (mustis) into God’s
knowledge by means of intimacy with him (8:3–4), so initiation into her
knowledge is through a sort of hieros gamos with her.43 This mystical hieros
gamos is described in frankly sexual terms in Sirach 51:13–30, though the
text as it has come down to us is rather corrupt. We therefore turn to a He-
brew version of this passage, recently discovered at Qumran (11QV, 21), in
which the pilgrim’s “embrace” with Wisdom is described in blatantly erotic
terms:
39 Winston, Wisdom of Solomon, 41. Compare Ecclesiastes 12:7: “Then shall the
dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
40 Winston, Wisdom of Solomon, 41.
41 U. Wilckens, “sophia,” in TDNT, 7:499.
42 Ibid.
43 Günther Bornkam, “mystārion, myeō,” in TDNT, 4:814; see also note 109, in
the same article.

36 A GREAT MYSTERY
Already in early childhood,

ere I had roved astray,
I used to seek-her-and-find-her
in games of childish play;
But I read her lines to the limit
whenever she came my way.
Came the time when the buds turned to berries,
when the grapes grew luscious and round;
Due to our childhood friendship,
I kept my feet on the ground.
Even when only lightly
my ear unto her I inclined,
charm and learning a-plenty
readily did I find.
Feverishly what she gave me
like mother’s milk I drank,
and never was I unmindful
my tutor to honor and thank.
Gripped by a passion for pleasure
at last, ‘I will take my fun,’
thought I, ‘and never turn backward
when once I have begun.’
Heated like fire I became;
my face never turned away:
I grew busy, and on the uplands
lolled not the livelong day.
[Kept shut though they were,] I forced open
her gates, having only in mind
to set my eyes on the treasures
which surely lay hidden behind.
[Lusty enough was my ardor,]
yet clean did I keep my hands.44
44 Translated by T. H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures, 3rd edition (Garden City,
NY, 1976), 481–91. The translation of Florentino García Martínez, in The Dead Sea
Scrolls Translated (Leiden, 1996), 306–7, gives: “Although still young, before going
astray, I searched for her. Beautiful she came to me when at last I found her. As
falls the flower when grapes are ripening, making the heart happy, directly walked
my foot, for since my youth I have known her. Hardly my ear I bent and found
Yet even Proverbs had spoken of “embracing” Wisdom (4:8), using the
Hebrew verb, habaq, which generally has a physical or erotic sense.45 In fact,
one of the chief characteristics of the Old Testament Wisdom was that she
sat like a prostitute at the crossroads by the city gates, inviting men to her-
self.46 During the intertestamental period, this idea of “marriage” to God
great allure. Wet-nurse was she for me. On my mistress I conferred my honour.
Zealous for good, I decided to enjoy myself ceaselessly. Charred was my soul for
her. I did not give in. Torrid my desire for her, and on her heights I was not serene.
Yes, ‘my hand’ opened [her doors] and I inspected her nakedness. Cleansed then
‘my hand’ […].”
45 In 2 Kgs 4:16 it is used to describe embracing a son; in Proverbs 5:20, the
reader is asked rhetorically whether or not he should consort with prostitutes, and
“embrace the bosom of a stranger.” Ecclesiastes 3:3 speaks of a “time to embrace”
(i.e., make love), while Song of Songs says of the Bridegroom that “his hand doth
embrace me” (2:6; 8:3).
46 Proverbs 1:20–22; 8:1–4. Compare the behavior of Tamar in Genesis 38:14,
21. The cult of sacred prostitutes (qedeshim) in Israel’s “Old Religion” has been de-
nied by some, chiefly by radical feminists, who propose that sexual activities in the
Temple precincts were only the attempts of down-trodden women to earn money
with which to pay their oppressive debts to the priests. See, for example, Karel van
der Toorn, in Anchor Bible Dictionary, 5:510–11; also Elaine Adler Goodfriend,
“Prostitution (OT),” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, 5:507. Others have amply demon-
strated that the shrines and temples were supplied with qedeshoth (female hiero-
dules); Deut 23:17–18; Hos 4:14; etc.), qadashim (KJV “sodomites”; 1 Kgs 14:24;
15:12; 22:46; 23:7) and zonoth (female whores; Jer 2:20; Ezek 16:33; 23:40; Hos 1:2;
2:3; 4:14; etc.). These received a payment (ethnan) for their services (Ezek 16:33;
Hos 2:9; etc.), which they turned over to the Temple for revenue (Deut 23:18). See
Susan Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree, Harvard Semitic Monographs 46 (Atlanta,
1992); Beatrice A. Brooks, “Fertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testament,” JBL
60 (1941): 227–53; H. G. May, “The Fertility Cult in Hosea,” American Journal of
Semitic Literature 48 (1932): 73–78; Andersen and Freedman, Amos, Anchor Bible
(New York, 1989), 829. We should also take note of the sacred prostitutes who
“assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation” in 1 Samuel 2:22—a
memory, perhaps, of the “women who assembled at the door of the Tabernacle” in
Exodus 38:8. The passage in 1 Samuel 2:22 is believed to be an interpolation, not
found in 4QSam, though the LXX (L) and Josephus (Antiquities 5.339) both men-
tion it. See P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., 1 Samuel, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1980),
81. It is also significant that the Egyptian goddess Isis—whom Plutarch tells us was
likewise called “Wisdom”—was said to have served as a prostitute at Tyre (De lside,
3), for the sexual act with a deity’s cultic surrogate was anciently considered to be a
38 A GREAT MYSTERY
through the intermediacy of his “Wisdom” had become one of the standard
metaphors for the spiritual union of God and Man, and would later serve as
the basis for the “Great Mystery” of henosis between God and the Church in
the early Christian Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament Letter to the
Ephesians.
PHILO’S ACCOUNT OF THE WISDOM MYSTERY

We have already seen that Philo and the Wisdom writers pictured the “mar-
riage” between the candidate in the Temple and God as a “mystery.” E. R.
Goodenough, some sixty years ago, characterized this as
the mystery of the holy of holies, the mystery of the sacred marriage
with Sophia.47
Goodenough at first suspected that this was an independent Hellenis-
tic mystery, complete with a “thing made manifest to the sight” (no doubt a
reference to the Cherubim, though Goodenough seems not to have been
aware of their embrace),48 and something which Philo sought to explicate
by adducing parallels drawn from Jewish tradition.49 Later, however, he was
forced to admit that its rites were none other than the ordinary rites of the
Jewish Temple, “rites … externally as unchanged as Philo’s Pentateuch.”50
At the same time, however, Philo’s exegesis reflected a “higher understand-
ing” of these “ordinary rites,” an understanding doubtless current amongst
certain “advanced” or intellectual Jews, and which Goodenough believed
constituted a “Melchizedec Mystery,” as opposed to the every-day “Aaronic
Mystery.”51
Ulrich Wilckens likewise believed that this was part of “a complete
wisdom mystery,” a mystery already known to Philo, being a “special con-
method of establishing direct contact with the powers of the god or goddess, thus
releasing them for the communal or personal good.
47 By Light, Light, 256.
48 An Introduction to Philo Judaeus (Oxford, 1940), 69.
49 By Light, Light, 9, 262. For a time Goodenough believed that the third-
century Jewish synagogue at Dura Europos was an outpost of this secret sect.
50 An Introduction to Philo Judaeus, 206.
51 See By Light, Light, 151. Elsewhere, he calls it a “Mosaic” Mystery, which
taught the fulness of the truth as it was before being diluted by the ordinary cult of
Aaron (ibid., 115). In On the Cherubim, Philo claims that he was initiated by Moses
himself into God’s “greater mysteries,” i.e., direct intercourse with God through his
Wisdom (49–50).
secration” which enabled “the Wise” to rise “beyond the level of the cos-
mos to a direct proximity with God” and to his own personal vision of the
Divine:
The goal is none other than God Himself, He who is, surrounded by
His “powers.” To reach Him in the gnosis and episteme theou52 is the goal
of the way. Sophia, however, is not just God’s sphere. It is also the way
thereto, the teleia hodos he pros theon.53 The identity of way, guide and goal
points to the mystical character of Wisdom as the mediator of revela-
tion, a constitutive feature in Wisdom of Solomon, 6–9, but also in
Gnosticism. Hence there is in fact a series of texts from which may be
deduced a complete Wisdom Mystery which was obviously known to
Philo … On Flight and Finding, 108–112 describes how the high priest, as
the devotee of God his father and Wisdom his mother, is born again to
the logos,54 putting on his radiant garment, which beams the four ele-
ments as a symbol of his dominion over the cosmos. Wisdom as his
mother is also God’s consort by whom He begat the world (On Drunk-
enness, 30f). In the same way, i.e., on a level with the cosmos, the regen-
eration of the devotee takes place. Hence this is not supracosmic (On
Flight and Finding, 108; On Drunkenness, 30). In a special consecration,
however, the wise man can be led beyond the level of the cosmos to the
direct proximity of God. This takes place through union with Wisdom,
which corresponds mystically to God’s union with her (On Flight and
Finding, 49–52; On the Cherubim, 42–50). Thus the wise man is like Wis-
dom, entering into the union with God which as knowledge of God is
also the vision of God (Allegorical Interpretation, 1.43) and even divinisa-
tion (Questions on Exodus, 2.40). This complex of ideas in Philo is re-
markably similar to that in Wisdom of Solomon 6–10 … In Philo, too,
the content and the means of knowledge are identical: “By Wisdom
what is wise is seen; but unlike light Wisdom is not just the instrument
of seeing, it also sees itself” (On the Migration of Abraham, 391). Heavenly
Wisdom thus transports into nephousa mephe55 (On Flight and Finding, 166,
cf. 137). To this degree it is identical with the divine pneuma, or pneuma
Sophias56 (in TDNT, 7:501–2; our capitalization of “Wisdom”).
52 The “secret knowledge” and the “knowledge of God,” respectively.

53 “The perfect way which leads to God.”
54 “The Word.”
55 “Sacred intoxication.”
56 “Holy Spirit” or the “Spirit of Wisdom.” See Wisdom 7:7; 22–23; 9:17; On
the Giants, 47.

40 A GREAT MYSTERY
Indeed, Goodenough was convinced that this was the general goal of all
mystically enlightened Jews:
I strongly suspect this was the hope of Mystic Judaism, as it expressed
itself in terms of the Sophia formulation … Here one becomes identi-
fied with God, the Spouse of Sophia (“Wisdom”). And the mystic inter-
course as male, with Sophia as female, is the sweet token of one’s ulti-
mate deification.57
Yet the most remarkable description of the “Sacred Marriage to
Sophia” is to be found in Philo’s On the Cherubim:
O then, my mind, admit the image unalloyed of the two Cherubim, that
having learnt its clear lesson … thou mayest reap the fruits of a happy
lot. For straightway thou shalt understand how these unmixed potencies
are mingled and united … thus thou mayest gain the virtues begotten
of these potencies … This is a divine mystery and its lesson is for the
initiated who are worthy to receive the holiest secret … Then must the
sacred instruction begin. Man and Woman, male and female of the hu-
man race, in the course of nature come together to hold intercourse for
the procreation of children. But virtues whose offspring are so many
and so perfect may not have to do with mortal man, yet if they receive
not seed of generation from another they will never of themselves con-
ceive. Who then is he that sows in them the good seed save the Father
of all, that is God unbegotten and begetter of all things? He then sows,
but the fruit of his sowing, the fruit which is His own, He bestows as a
gift … Thus virtue (i.e., Wisdom) receives the divine seed from the
Creator, but brings forth to one of her own lovers … (God) is the fa-
ther of all things, for He begat them, and the husband of Wisdom,
dropping the seed of happiness for the race of mortals into good and
virgin soil … But when God begins to consort with the soul, He makes
what before was a woman into a virgin again … the idea of which is
unchangeable and eternal (29–51).
It is especially significant that Philo spoke of this “mystery” as a
“commonplace” to his readers,58 suggesting that it was readily available to
the average Jew. Yet at the same time, Rendel Harris quotes a passage sup-
posedly belonging to Philo’s Questions on Exodus which warns that “it is not
permitted to speak out the sacred Mysteries to the uninitiated until they
shall have been purified with the proper purification … To declare the
57By Light, Light, 202. Sophia thus serves as proxy for God in the traditional
Jewish “marriage” between himself and his “Bride,” Israel.
58 Ibid., 236.
Mysteries to the uninitiated would mean the destruction of the laws of the
most sacred Mystery.”59 Taken together, these two statements suggest that
the “Mystery” was well-known to the Jewish people, but that it was some-
thing which they were cautioned to keep to themselves. Such a “Mystery”
can only have belonged to the Temple and its policy of ethnic exclusive-
ness.
The fragment then goes on to say that the greatest danger of disclo-
sure was that the ignorant might be “deceived by the thing which is made
manifest to the sight” (p. 38, above), and thus be led to “cast reproach upon
the irreproachable.”60 Furthermore, when we learn that Philo’s chief pur-
pose was to explain the “Sacred Marriage with Wisdom,”61 it again becomes
likely that the Embracing Cherubim and their potentially shocking hieros
gamos were indeed the very “thing made manifest” to the eyes of the
Temple pilgrims. Indeed, Philo tells us elsewhere that the embarrassing
statues were expressly designed as “mirrors” of Wisdom and her role of
“divine surrogate” during the soul’s “consorting” with God (Questions on
Genesis, 1.57; On the Cherubim, 50). Thus it would appear that Philo’s “mys-
tery” was simply an enlightened explanation of the pilgrim’s visit to the
Temple and his covenant “marriage to God,” but couched in the familiar
language of the Wisdom literature, and using the learning of contemporary
Hellenism to further clarify the theological truths which were expressed on
that solemn occasion.
Indeed, the “highly charged language” in the Wisdom of Solomon al-
ready presupposes “an important movement along the road to mysticism,”
when it describes “the pursuit of Wisdom and her promised gifts,” the most
startling of which was the individual’s “union with Deity.”62 Such a mystical
tradition (the so-called “Merkabah Mysticism”) is now known to have ex-
isted amongst Pharisaic circles during the late period of the Second Temple,
perhaps as early as the first century B.C, a tradition which would survive
with set practices and a developed system of belief for more than a thou-
sand years.63 But we are doubtless correct in assuming that general knowl-
edge of it was protected by cultic restrictions, for example, the limiting of
59Fragments of Philo Judaeus (Cambridge, 1886), 69.

60Ibid., 69.
61 Goodenough, By Light, Light., 256.
62 Winston, Wisdom of Solomon, 42.
63 See Scholem, MTJM, 40–43, who traces the beginnings of this important
movement back to the Pharisaic Judaism of the Second Temple.

42 A GREAT MYSTERY
entry into the Temple to married couples.64 In such ways, it could be veri-
fied that those who attended were “pure in heart” (Ps 24).
An overall view of the Mystery is contained in Philo’s On the Migration
of Abraham, which describes the great Patriarch as the very first Temple pil-
grim, one who was called a “Hebrew” because he was a “Migrant” on a
pilgrimage through the cultic wilderness in search of God (20–23).65 It is
interesting to note that Abraham’s spiritual “seed” in the New Testament
(Gal 3:29; Heb 2:16; 11:18) were likewise addressed as “Hebrews” (as in the
title of the “Epistle to the Hebrews”), again suggesting “pilgrims” in search
of a heavenly goal (Heb 11:13). Thus the so-called “Hebrews” from whom
the New Testament epistle took its name were probably ordinary Jews with
a spiritual understanding of the Temple cult, who saw themselves as Abra-
ham’s religious heirs, reliving Israel’s cultic journey towards the “promised
land” (cf. Exod 13:8).66
This special understanding of the word “Hebrew” appears to have
been widely current in Hellenistic Judaism even prior to Philo, since “He-
brew” is conspicuously translated several times in the Septuagint with
Greek expressions describing “wanderers,” “sojourners,” and “strangers,”
etc., i.e., pilgrims passing thrugh the wilderness in search of God. Thus, Genesis
14:13, originally reading “Abram the Hebrew,” became Abram ho perates,
“Abram the Passer-Through,” or “Wanderer” (from perao, “to pass
through”); and in 1 Samuel 13:7, “Hebrews” became hoi diabainontes diebesan,
“They who crossed over.” This symbolic meaning was noticed some time
ago by the German author Carl Siegfried,67 who wrote in 1875 that for
Philo, “the universal symbol for the elevation of the sensuous into the spiri-
tual is the Ebraeus (perates). He is the pilgrim who turns from earthly to
heavenly things, and becomes part of the heavenly Race.”68 At the conclu-
sion of his search, he receives a gift of the “promised land,” which was
64 See Josephus’ remarks in his Antiquities, p. 19, note 42, above.

65 This very likely became the basis for the title of the New Testament Epistle
to the “Hebrews,” according to Ernst Käsemann (Das wandernde Gottesvolk, Göttin-
gen, 1961). See especially his pp. 27–32 and 156, notes.
66 Friederich Schiele, “Harnack’s ‘Probabilia’ Concerning the Address and the
Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” American Journal of Theology 9 (1910): 305;
Robert M. Grant, A Historical Introduction to the New Testament (New York, 1972),
218–19.
67 Philo von Alexandrien; quoted by Schiele, “Harnack’s ‘Probabilia’,” 306.
68 Philo, On the Sacrifices of Cain and Abel, 6–7.
Wisdom herself (On the Migration of Abraham, 28), i.e., “seeing the Divine
Light,” which is “knowledge that opens up the soul’s eye” (ibid., 39).
Philo’s cultic “migrant” further belonged to what E. R. Goodenough
has called the “Mystery of Moses,” in contrast to the “Mystery of Aaron,”
or the ordinary Temple cult, with its animal sacrifices and its “letter of the
Law.”69 And at the conclusion of On the Special Laws, Philo tells us that the
“outer meaning” of the Aaronic Mystery was simply to promote piety by
means of commands and prohibitions. But he now desires to inform us of
its inner meaning, or the “Mystery of Moses,” which is the “Mystery of
God and his incorporeal Powers” (1.229–30), being no less than intercourse
with Wisdom herself (On the Cherubim, 49).
Goodenough suspected that the “Mystery of Moses” was also a “Mel-
chizedec Mystery,” as opposed to the lower, or “Aaronic Mystery,” though
the appropriate passages from Questions on Genesis which would have de-
scribed Abraham’s “coming to Melchizedec for … spiritual development”
are presently missing.70 The significance of Melchizedec may nevertheless
be inferred from widely scattered hints in both Philonic and non-Philonic
writings of the time, including the New Testament Epistle to the He-
brews,71 which show that speculation on a “higher priesthood” bearing the
name of this mysterious figure were already rife in Hellenistic circles prior
to the time of Christ, and that they were shared by writers in the early
Church.
The “Mosaic” mystery was also thought of by Philo in terms of a
group of initiates traveling a “Royal Road” through the wilderness in search
of God. When they arrived at Sinai, they were divided into three groups,
according to their various abilities and attainments:

70 Ibid., 151.
71 See, for example, Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 1.23 (discussed by
Goodenough, in By Light, Light, 292–93); the Apostolic Constitutions (quoted by

Goodenough, ibid., 323, 326, 330–31), both of which reflected a growing feeling
during the years just prior to Christianity that Melchizedec represented a heavenly
figure superior to Levi and Aaron, in fact, a being who does not die (11QMelch).
For general views on the importance of Melchizedec in theological speculations
during the intertestamental period and early Christianity, see Joseph A. Fitzmeyer,
“Now this Melchizedec,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963): 305–21; and “Further
Light on Melchizedec from the Qumran Cave 11,” JBL 86 (1967): 25–41; also
Schiele, “Harnack’s ‘Probabilia’.”
44 A GREAT MYSTERY
At the top, Moses, then those who are capable of traversing the path to
higher knowledge, and at the bottom the mass, which is entirely unor-
ganized and must remain at the foot of the mountain, only a few of
whom will catch even a glimpse … of the path to higher regions.72
These three stages correspond to (1) the earthly level of humanity, (2)
the “Immaterial Stage,” and (3) to On, God’s “Transcendent Nature.” As an
example of the highest stage, Moses was able to have direct communion
with to On (Exod 24:2), by being filled with God’s power, thus becoming
like a “monad,” i.e., one with God, hence beyond the duality of mortal con-
cerns (Questions on Exodus, 2.29). Thus it was said that Moses was impreg-
nated with the seeds of Wisdom by divine inspiration (The Preliminary Studies,
130–35), and the Zohar would claim that Moses had direct intercourse with
God’s Shekhinah—the Kabbalistic version of Wisdom.73 The result, Philo
informs us, was that Moses was “changed into divinity, so that he might be
made akin to God and truly divine” (Questions on Exodus, 2.29).74 This is the
same sort of spiritual procreation by which God begat the great patriarchs,
as when he visited Sarah (Gen 21:1), and brought forth issue to her hus-
band, Abraham, or when Rebecca became pregnant “through the power of
him who was besought” (Gen 25:21). It also explains how Moses’ wife,
Zipporah, was found to be “pregnant through no mortal agency” (On the
Cherubim, 46–47).
Because he was the “most pure and perfect mind,” who had been ini-
tiated by God into the great mysteries (Allegorical Interpretation, 3.100), Moses
was able to teach lesser men like Bezaleel, Aaron, and Miriam (ibid., 3.1–3),
after their own minds were sufficiently purified to hear the great truths (On
Giants, 54ff). The whole Exodus was in fact—says Philo—an allegory on
how Moses led men’s souls out of their lower natures toward a vision of
Deity,75 for even those lower down on the mountain at Sinai “saw God”
(Exod 24:11), i.e., “attained to the Face of the Father” (Questions on Exodus,
2.39). Thus “Israel” was for him “the Race which sees God” (Allegorical In-
terpretation, 2.43; On the Migration of Abraham, 113, 125; etc.), just as Jacob
was “the man who sees God” (’ysh r’ah ’el)—a folk etymology appearing
some 49 times in his works. It thus joins “Hebrews” as a “code name” for
72 Reinhardt Wagner, Die Gnosis von Alexandrien (Stuttgart, n.d. [1968]), 23.
74 See also On the Posterity of Cain, 28ff; On the Giants, 47ff; That God Is Unchange-
able, 23; On the Confusion of Tongues, 30–31.

75 Goodenough, By Light, Light, 205, 206.
those engaged in a spiritualizing Temple cult, and whose object was to “Be-
hold God’s Face” and have his divine attributes “begotten” in them.
But whereas ordinary birth makes us one of the masses, it is spiritual
procreation by God which makes us one of “the Race,” or those who be-
long to “the One on the Heights” (Sacrifices of Cain and Abel, 61). According
to Reinhardt Wagner, Philo viewed this divine begetting as an “initiation,”
not merely as an “instruction in a secret doctrine.” Those who received it
became virtually supernatural beings, i.e., “sons of God,” a belief that
would influence the first Christians, who similarly believed that Jesus had
been begotten by God through the agency of the Holy Spirit.76 But Philo
not only argued that God may beget “divine attributes” in others, but that
“man himself can become a divine being, that he is a ‘son of God,’ that
man himself can become a god.’’77 Philo could have quoted Psalm 82 as
“proof” of this belief (as did Jesus in John 10:34–36); instead, he cited three
similar passages which Wagner says “have the same content”:78
They who use knowledge (epistēmē) are with right spoken of as sons of
God. This Moses acknowledges when he says, “Ye are the children of
the Lord God” (Deut 14:1), and, “Of the God that begat thee” (Deut
32:18), and “Is he not himself your father?” (Deut 32:6) (On the Confusion
of Tongues, 145).
The possibility of miraculous procreation through divine agency is also
reflected in other early portions of the Old Testament. “When Boaz took
Ruth … she became his wife. When he had intercourse with her, the Lord
caused her to conceive and she bore a son” (Ruth 4:13). This was even
more significant since the woman was beyond the capability of bearing
children. “The Lord visited Sarah, and did to Sarah as he had promised.
And Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age” (Gen 21:1–
2).79 This divine intervention has been called the doctrine of “dual pater-
nity,”80 and the Talmud explains that “there are three partners in the pro-
duction of any human being—the Holy One, blessed be He, his father, and
his mother” (Kiddushin 30b). Thus “man will not be able to come into exis-
76 Die Gnosis von Alexandrien, 30–31.

77 Ibid., 56–57.
78 Ibid., 58. Epistēmē is knowledge gained through Logos/Wisdom.
79 Translations from William E. Phipps, The Sexuality of Jesus (New York, 1973),
23.
80 Phipps, Sexuality of Jesus, 21–36.
46 A GREAT MYSTERY
tence without woman, nor woman without man, nor both without the
Shekhinah” (Genesis Rabbah 8:9)—who in Talmudic times was synonymous
with God’s Spirit. Indeed, as we saw already, the Shekhinah is always pre-
sent during legitimate sexual relations as a divine “partner” in the conjugal
relationship (Zohar I:50a; cf. b. Sotah 17a). This idea is further expressed in
On the Special Laws (2.2.225), where it is said that Isaac was both the son of
Abraham and Sarah, and a “son of God,” because he was “begotten by
God” (Allegorical Interpretation, 3.218; On the Change of Names, 131, 137).
Indeed, one of God’s chief characteristics, according to the early Se-
mitic literature, was his universal paternity. In the Canaanite epics, for ex-
ample, Father El was called both ’ab bn ’il, “father of the gods,” and ’ab
’adm, “father of men,” and the gods in the aggregate were represented as his
literal family.81 At the same time, he is said in the Keret Epic to be responsi-
ble for the birth of human children.82 In Mesopotamia, “Il” (the Akkadian
form of his name) was specifically connected with the giving of children,83
as can be seen in the numerous theophoric name compounds commemo-
rating his role in the formation of the child.84
These ancient traditions came together once again in Philo’s discussion
of the two Cherubim, whose loving embrace suggested to him the great
event which took place in the Holy of Holies, where men secretly “con-
sorted with God” and were filled with his divine “seed.” Philo especially
indicates that this sacred union—also prefigured by the marriages of the
Patriarchs and their wives—resulted in the rebirth and restoration of the
rational soul (the heavenly nous), as based on the Divine Image (Gen 1:27)
before the sexes were divided. This restoration was metaphorically de-
scribed by him as becoming “male” or “virgin” again.
Philo’s assessment of “woman,” on the other hand, in keeping with
the language of contemporary Hellenism, was extremely disparaging, being
equated with the divided and sense-perceptible world of the “feminine”
soul, while the rational nous was “masculine” and undivided.85 The “mascu-
line” nous, moreover, was patterned after the Divine Image, or the Logos/
81M. H. Pope, El in the Ugaritic Texts (Leiden, 1955), 48.

82A, 37. See J. J. M. Roberts, The Earliest Semitic Pantheon (Baltimore, 1972), 33.
83 Ibid., 32–33.
84 Ibid., 32, 31. He adds that there needs to be a thorough study of Hebrew
personal names, to see if any of the theophoric compounds reflect a similar belief.
85 Richard A. Baer, Jr., Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female (Leiden, 1970),
46–48.
Wisdom (Creation of the World, 69), while the “feminine” senses represent a
departure from God’s perfection and the unity of the sexes.86
In Questions on Exodus, Philo prescribes the remedy for this “fallen”
condition, i.e., the restoration of man’s primal “maleness.” “Progress,” in
fact, “is nothing else than giving up the female gender by changing into the
male, since the female gender is material, passive, corporeal, and sense-
perceptible, while the male is active, rational, incorporeal, and more akin to
mind and thought” (2.8). In Questions on Genesis, he even suggests that when
the time for the soul’s cleansing arrives, “man should join with man, i.e., the
sovereign mind, like a father, should join with its particular thoughts as with
its sons, but not join any of the female sex, i.e., what belongs to sense”
(2.49). This, of course, means union with the Divine, where “like returns to
like” and man “comes near to God in a kind of family relationship,” being
again resolved into the nature of unity” (Questions on Exodus, 2.29).
The reason why this can take place is that man’s higher nature has a
natural affinity for God, having originated as a “fragment of the Divine
Mind” (Creation of the World, 145–46).87 Furthermore, whatever is divine by
nature remains essentially undivided (Allegorical Interpretation, 2.203; On the
Change of Names, 183ff), just as God is undivided. In fact, man’s mind has
never really “cut itself off and become separate” from God, but has only
“extended itself” (That the Worse Attacks the Better, 90), leaving open the pos-
sibility that it can be reunited with its source, becoming “filled with God”
and made “truly divine” (Questions on Exodus, 2.29).88
Philo also describes the restoration of “maleness”—or unity with
God—as “virgin.” Here we are especially dealing with the “Mystery of the
Holy of Holies,” i.e., the “sacred marriage with Sophia” (to use Goode-
nough’s phraseology),89 during which God, the husband of Wisdom, “be-
gins to consort with the soul,” making that which “before was as a woman
into a virgin again” (On the Cherubim, 50). Indeed, the aim of “marrying” the
soul to God is to restore it to its primal “oneness” and incorruptibility, so
that it will no longer be “defiled by the licentious passions” (51); for while
86 Ibid., 14–35. “It is clear that Philo here employs Gen 1:27 not to refer to the
idea of man, but to the higher nous in empirical man. That ‘the nous in each of us’
was created ‘after the image of God’ means that man’s higher nature is essentially
like the divine nature” (ibid., 23).
87 Compare man’s suggeneia with Wisdom, i.e., God’s surrogate, pp. 35–36,
above.
88 Ibid., 48–50 [uncertain reference, ed. note].
48 A GREAT MYSTERY
lustful intercourse turns virgins into women, union with God turns woman
back into “virgins.’’90
There is some inconsistency, however, in Philo’s understanding of the
man created “in God’s image” (Gen 1:27):
Throughout most of his writings, Philo emphasizes the oneness and in-
divisibility of God. God is by nature simple, not compound. He is free
from all mixture, and is himself the sole standard for the monad, “for
like time, all number is subsequent to the universe, and God is prior to
the universe and is its maker” (Alleg. Int., 2.13). Likewise, the divine
Wisdom is pure and unmixed, for “incorporeal and divine forms of
knowledge cannot be divided into warring opposites” (Who Is the Heir?
132). The divine Spirit is susceptible of neither severance nor divisions
and thus, even “though it be shared with others or added to others, suf-
fers no diminution in understanding and knowledge and Wisdom” (On
Giants, 27). Here, Philo employs the learning of the Greek schools—
including Platonism, the philosophy of Stoicism, and above all, Neo-
Pythagoreanism—to explain what he has received from the Jewish
Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One.”91
What this implies, as far as the “mystery” was concerned, is that God was
not “male and female,” but “asexual,” since he cannot be subdivided in any
way. Thus the man formed “in his own image” would likewise be “neither
male nor female” (out arsen oute thelu) (On the Creation of the World, 134).
Elsewhere, however, he reflects a more Scriptural view that God’s Im-
age was “androgynous”—not “asexual”—for it says that when male and
female behold each other, “love supervenes, brings them together, and fits
into one the divided halves, as it were, of a single living creature” (On the
Creation of the World, 151–52). Moreover, in the Allegorical Interpretation, Philo
adds that the original work of creation included “the genera and kinds and
the originals of the passions,” among which must be counted the sexes; for
“having first fashioned man as a genus, in which (Moses) says that there is
the male and the female genus, God afterward makes Adam, the finished
form, a species” (2.13). Most authorities thus conclude that Philo’s “first
man” was not “asexual” at all, but “bisexual,” or “androgynous.” C. H.
Dodd, for instance, states that “Philo understood the LXX of Gen. 1:27 …
to mean, ‘God created men like Himself, bisexual,’ i.e., bisexuality (or
asexuality) is a part of the image of God.”92 This is also the view held by
90 Baer, Philo’s Use, 51.

91 lbid., 16–17.
92 The Bible and the Greeks (London, 1935), 151; quoted in Baer, Philo’s Use, 21.
J. Jervell, in his widely admired study Imago Dei, as well as by other leading
authorities on Philo.93 But what is ultimately important for our study is the
fact that as long as the two “halves” of this “bisexual” being were “part of
one and the same being,” they were not tempted by desire for each other.
The first man, “androgynous” by nature, was therefore able to give himself
fully to God, and was not distracted by the attractions of the material world,
chief of which is sexual desire for his missing half (Allegorical Interpretation,
2.74; On the Special Laws, 1.9; Questions on Genesis, 3.48).94
This, then, is what Philo appears to have meant by “asexual”: male and
female in such perfect union as to approximate the Divine Nature itself,
complete, harmonious, and free from inner distractions. Philo was in fact
much too Jewish to repudiate the sexuality implicit in Scripture (Gen 1:27–
28), though too much the monotheist to deny the oneness of God, which
he continually sought to explain with the language of Hellenism. Thus God
could be for him either “bisexual” or “asexual,” according to the context,
though if we take Scripture at its face value, we would have to conclude that
the “oneness” of God was really a sexual unity—a married unity—rather
than sexlessness.
This interpretation of the Genesis account, as we will later discover,
remained determinative for Gnostic Christians, who viewed the union of
man and woman as a return to “the original androgynous unity of man,”
hence “an archetype of salvation.”95 It was also the interpretation which
most Jews preferred, as we saw earlier in passages from both Talmudic and
Zoharic literature (“He who remains without a wife, so that he is not both
male and female, is considered only half a body … The thing which is di-
vided cannot endure forever” (Zohar III:296a).96
93 64ff; quoted in Baer, Philo’s Use, 21. Baer’s recognition of the asexual image
in On the Creation of the World, 134, follows that of B. Stegmann, made in 1927
(Christ, the Man from Heaven, Washington, 1927, 19–48). This is repeated by Robin
Scroggs, The Last Adam (Oxford, 1966), 115–17, who notes that Stegmann was for
long the “one lone dissenting judgment” amongst scholars who are “almost
unanimously in agreement that Philo uses the two accounts of creation in Gen. 1
and 2 to speak of the creation of the heavenly man and of the earthly Adam, re-
spectively” (ibid., 116).
94 Baer, Philo’s Use, 38.
95 Ibid., 73.
96 Unlike the Gnostics, however, Philo never makes direct use of Genesis 1:24
to show how married union restores the “androgynous” unity of Primal Man. He
does, however, indicate that union with God—as symbolized by the marriage of
50 A GREAT MYSTERY
THEORETICAL BASIS OF THE MYSTERY

As Philo understood it, the Wisdom Mystery was first and foremost a
means of reestablishing fallen man’s primordial relationship with the world
of Light, from which he originated.
We already saw (pp. 24–26, above) that Wisdom’s depiction in Wis-
dom 7:25ff contained ancient solar elements (“a pure effluence from the
glory of the Almighty, an effulgence of everlasting light”). This solar termi-
nology had already been employed to describe God’s kavod (“glory”) in
early Israelite Scripture, though it survives in Scripture mainly as linguistic
“fossils,” such as Malachi 4:7, which describes Yahweh as a “sun of right-
eousness,” Psalm 84:11, a “sun and a shield,” or even Psalm 19:45, which
many scholars hold to be a remnant of an earlier hieros gamos myth: “In them
hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of
his chamber and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.”97 A cognate Baby-
lonian belief was that after crossing the sky, the Sun-god entered a tent in
the Western Sea, where his Bride dwelt. (It is possible that the first words of
the Hebrew version originally read “in the sea,” but were later changed to a
phonetically similar “in them” to obscure their solar background).98 Other
relics of solar-worship abound in the Old Testament, though we must un-
fortunately pass over them here.99
the Patriarchs and their wives—results in restoration of the divine Image, meta-
phorically described as “becoming male,” or “becoming virgin” again.
97 A well-known Babylonian poem to the sun-god, Shamash, describes the de-
ity in similar terms: “O Shamash! On the horizon of heaven thou ridest forth, the
bars of the shining heavens thou openest! ... O Shamash! Over the world thou lift-
est thy head … With the glory of the heavens hast thou covered the lands, thy
course through the world thou takest.” See Pritchard, ANET, 387–89.
98 G. W. Anderson, “The Psalms,” in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible (London,
1963), 417.
99 See, for example, place-names like Beth-Shemesh, “House of the Sun” (Josh
15:10; 1 Sam 6:9; 1 Kgs 4:9) and En-Shemesh, “Spring of the Sun” (Josh 15:7; 18:17).
Sun-worship had to be specifically forbidden by the Yahwist reformers (Deut 4:19;
17:3); but before that, we read of Sun-images (hamman) in the shrines (Isa 17:8;
27:9; 2 Chr 34:4; Ezek 6:4, 6), as well as sun-worship associated with the Temple (2
Kgs 23:5, 11; 2 Chr 33:3; Ezek 8:16; Jer 8:2). There were also “horses and chariots
of the sun” at the entrance of the Temple (2 Kgs 23:11). These and many more
important evidences of Israelite solar-worship have been brought together in J.
Glen Taylor’s Yahweh and the Sun (Sheffield, 1993).
It is important to note, however, that the Temple itself was from the
beginning very closely connected with Yahweh’s theophany as a solar deity.
Solomon’s deliberate adoption of a solar-calendar suggests that his national
god shared the characteristics of other sun-gods, like Baal-Shamen-Melcarth
of Tyre, or Marduk of Babylon.100 Solomon’s great Temple was in fact de-
liberately fashioned by Tyrian workmen after the solar temple of Mel-
carth101 and other Palestinian sanctuaries which have been recently exca-
vated.102 It is significant in this respect that solar discs representing the male
deity have been found in the “Holies of Holies” of three closely related Ca-
naanite temples uncovered at Hazor, dating from ca. 1550 to 1150 B.C.103 It
has even been suggested that the two pillars (“Yakin” and “Boaz”), standing
at the entrance to Solomon’s Temple, had a solar significance,104 so that the
light of the rising sun on days of equinox would pass directly between them
as it penetrated the depths of the Holy of Holies at the far western end.105
Whatever the true significance of these pillars, there appears to have
once been a special ritual celebrating the entry of Yahweh’s kavod into his
Temple on the autumnal day of equinox, i.e., the day of the original New
Year:
In the folk-lore of Jerusalem, as the place of exit from the netherworld,
the top of the Mount of Olives was the natural place of resurrection of
the dead. It was there upon the summit of the mountain that Yahweh,
now, for the time being a solar god in the fullest sense of the word, was
100 Julian Morgenstern, “The Cultic Setting of the ‘Enthronement Psalms’,”
HUCA 35 (1964): 7.
101 H. G. May, “Some Aspects of Solar Worship,” Zeitschrift für die Alttesta-
mentliche Wissenschaft 55 (1937): 269.

102 T. H. Vriezen, Religion of Ancient Israel (Philadelphia, 1967), 53–54; Roland
de Vaux, Ancient Israel (New York, 1961), 2:314–5; William F. Albright, Archaeology
and the Religion of Israel (hereafter ARI) (Baltimore, 1953), 142–43.
103 Vriezen, Religion of Ancient Israel, 55.
104 They were perhaps large examples of the male massebah and the Asherah-
pole, which symbolized the god and goddess on the “high places” (De Vaux, An-
cient Israel., 2:284). Herodotus (History, Book 11.44) stated that one of the pillars of
Melcarth’s temple at Tyre was made of “refined gold” and the other of “emerald.”
Albright suggests that fires—the solar element par excellence— were traditionally
burned on them (ARI, 144, 148).
105 Albright, ARI, 146; Morgenstern, “The Cultic Setting,” 9. The best general
discussion of this equinoctial event is Morgenstern’s The Fire upon the Altar (Leiden,
1963), which tells how the incoming kavod and its powerful light ignited the fire on
the Altar of Burnt Offering, which was to be kept burning perpetually (Lev 24:1–4).
52 A GREAT MYSTERY
thought to rise from the netherworld, from the realm of the dead, upon
the day of the autumnal equinox, to be restored to life and to return
from there in the fiery, radiant form of the first rays of the risen sun
upon this equinoctial day, the kebod Yahweh, “the radiance of Yahweh,”
to His new sanctuary. This He entered through the eastern gate, the so-
called “Golden Gate,” the “Gates of Righteousness.” Then He ad-
vanced on a straight line over the altar in the courtyard of the Temple in
front of the Porch, rekindling as He did so, in some manner not yet
known with any certainty, the sacred fire thereon, which in anticipation
of this sacred day and this all-important ceremony had been previously
extinguished. Then He moved onward through the open Gate of the
Porch, down the long axis of the Temple building into the d ebir (Holy of
Holies) at its western end, where stood the golden throne (the Ark and
the Cherubim). Upon this He would settle, still in radiant form, and
proceed, so it was thought, to judge Israel, and, insofar as they had rela-
tions with Israel, the other nations as well. Then, as the sun rose in the
heavens higher and higher, and the solar rays within the Temple build-
ing slowly shortened and receded, Yahweh, the solar deity, was thought
to withdraw from the Temple and to resume His normal abode in the
heavens, there to function throughout the new year beneficently in be-
half of His people. The doors and gates of the Temple were solemnly
closed, and within the Temple building, so it seems, darkness reigned
for the remainder of the year, until the next equinoctial New Year’s Day.
But upon the altar in the courtyard in front of the Temple porch the
new sacred fire burned brightly and was carefully kept alive by the
priests …106
Evidence has indeed been offered to show that the Jerusalem Temple was
laid out so that the long axis of the building was more or less aligned with
the sun on these dates.107 Solomon even dedicated his Temple during “the
Feast,” i.e., Asif, the traditional harvest celebration, which had been moved
106Fire upon the Altar, 90.

107Julian Morgenstern, “The Gates of Righteousness,” HUCA 6 (1929): 18
and notes, quoting Charlier, “Ein astronomischer Beitrag zur Exegese des Alten
Testaments,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 58 (1904): 386–94.
Yet H. van Dyke Parunak, “Was Solomon’s Temple Aligned to the Sun?” Palestine
Exploration Quarterly 110 (1978): 29–33, offers astronomical calculations to show
that the sun could not have penetrated the Holy of Holies in a straight line from
the Mount of Olives, though precise geometrical alignment was hardly necessary
for the assumed entrance of Yahweh’s kavod, nor is it possible today to know ex-
actly where the Temple formerly stood. See also Taylor (Yahweh and the Sun, 84–86),
who offers a conclusion similar to ours.
to the last seven days of Ethanim, just before the New Year.108 The Temple
was thus prepared on the following day to receive Yahweh, whose “going
forth from end to end in the heavens” (his “yearly circuit”)109 marked the
seasonal decline and renewal of the sun.110 Thus it was said that on the New
Year itself, Yahweh’s kavod could be visibly seen entering his Temple as the
sun rose in the East:
And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy [place],
that the cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could
not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glow of the LORD
had filled the house of the LORD (1 Kgs 8:10–11).
Ezekiel, nearly 400 years later, still described the same solar spectacle,
as God’ s glory penetrated and filled the Temple. He also recalled that on a
similar occasion twenty-five priests had “their backs to the Temple of the
Lord, and their faces to the east” as they “worshipped the sun” (8:16). We
also know from the Mishnah that this took place during the festival of Asif-
Sukkoth, for it states that as part of that celebration, the priests of the Sec-
ond Temple advanced towards the eastern gates with the sound of trum-
pets, but prostrated themselves in the opposite direction (towards the Holy of
Holies), proclaiming,
Our fathers who were in this place had their backs toward the Temple
and their faces toward the east, toward the sun; but for us, our eyes are
toward Yahweh (Ezek 8:16; compare 2 Chr 29:6–7) (m. Sukkah 5:4).
It was also recorded that Solomon finished his preparations for the
dedication of the First Temple by bringing the two Cherubim into the Holy
of Holies. Then, “the two staves that were attached to the Ark extended
until they touched the curtain, so that two protuberances like a woman’s
breasts became visible at the back of it.’’111 Thus the Sanctuary assumed a
kind of numinous feminine character, ready to receive her Bridegroom (cf. Ps
19:5) as he returned from his circuit of the heavens, suggesting that this was
108 1 Kgs 8:2. See Morgenstern, “The Cultic Setting,” 11.

109 “End” (tequpah) is cognate with Ugaritic uqpt, “year.” See Mitchell Dahood,
The Psalms, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1966), 1:123.
110 Compare Hosea 6:1–3, where Yahweh’s gift of renewal is likened to that of
the sun-god, Shahar: “Like Shahar, is his going forth established; and he comes like
the winter rain to us, like the spring rain that waters the land” (H. G. May, “Solar
Worship,” 273).
111 Meleket ha-Mishkan 7; Tosefta Yoma 2(3).7; and Babli 64a. From Louis
Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 3:159; 6:65.

54 A GREAT MYSTERY
the time when the sort of worship for which Solomon and his successors
were later condemned took place,112 and that an actual female deity
(Asherah, later called “the Grove” to conceal her identity) had once dwelt in
his Temple (2 Kgs 21:7; 2 Chr 33:15; compare 33:3; also Isa 17:8; Mic 5:13–
14; etc.).
But to symbolize the Bridegroom’s presence in the otherwise dark in-
terior (1 Kgs 8:12), the sacred surfaces were completely plated with gold
(1 Kgs 6:21–22). According to the Qumran Temple Scroll, the staircase
leading to the roof of the restored Temple—where the “horses of the Sun”
had formerly stood113—were also to be covered with gold (Column XXXI).
This is consistent with the statement in Column XXIX that God would
again “consecrate his Temple by (his) glory.” Even the outer doors, which
had to be opened on the morning of the New Year to admit the light of the
rising sun from the East, had been plated with polished Corinthian bronze,
so that its rays were blindingly reflected off of them to the eyes of the pil-
grims in the Forecourt:
The first rising rays of the sun reflected back a very fiery splendor, and
made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes
away, just as they would have done at the sun’s own rays (Josephus,
Wars, 5.5.6).
Ezekiel, too, beheld this spectacular descent of Yahweh’s glory from
the heavens, though at the time he had been carried off with the rest of Is-
rael’ s leading citizens to the banks of the Chebar, in Babylon (Ezek 1).
Again, he describes a great cloud of fire, having the “color of amber”
(v. 4),114 and filled with “living creatures” (hayyoth, i.e., Cherubim), who
darted about “like coals of fire” (vv. 13–14), and whose forms were those
of “a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle” (v. 10). Their great activity suggests
that they represented the all-pervading power of God’s Spirit (v. 20), the
112 Compare, for instance, 1 Kgs 3:3, which shows that Solomon worshipped
on the “high places,” where the goddess was venerated (Albright, YGC, 205).
However, the goddess actually found her way into the Temple itself (2 Kgs 21:7;
see Deut 16:21; Ezek 8:3). Since it was the worship on the “high places” that was
later described as “whoring” or “whoredoms” (2 Chr 21:11–13), we must suppose
that the same sort of worship (v. 11) could take place on occasion in the Temple as
well (Deut 23:18; 1 Sam 2:22; 2 Kgs 23:7; Ezek 23:39–44; etc.).
113 Note 99, p. 50, above.
114 Actually, hashmal, the bright substance which was adopted as the word for
“electricity,” in modern Hebrew.

voice of which was heard “like the sound of great waters” echoing through
the firmament (vv. 24–5). Finally, from out of the effluence of light and
flame there materialized “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the
LORD,” sitting upon his heavenly throne (vv. 26–28). His form was that of
a man (v. 26), and he was enveloped in a fiery radiance (vv. 27–28). As
Ezekiel gazed on the sacred spectacle, God’s Spirit “entered” him, and set
him apart to be a prophet to Israel (2:2ff).
Ezekiel’s famous vision in turn became the starting point for a further
series of images of God’s luminous glory. Daniel, for instance, saw the
“brightness” issuing forth from the Throne of God as a “fiery stream”
(Dan 7:10). The author of 1 Enoch, however, beheld God’s glory not as a
single “stream,” but as multiple “rivers of running fire,” which issued forth
from beneath the seat of God’ s glory (14:19–20). 3 Enoch numbered these
rivers as seven (33:4–5), because tradition had it that they gave rise to the
“seven heavens” and the “seven planets” (Pirke R. Eleazer, 3).
In other writings of the period, the “river of light” was composed of
God’s Wisdom, which eventually took on the form of Wisdom’s “seven
pillars” (Prov 9:1), or the planetary bodies and their governing “powers”
(cf. Rom 8:38). But we already saw in the Wisdom of Solomon that Wis-
dom was no less than a form of the divine glory, “an exhalation from the
power of God, a pure effluence (aporroia) of the glory of the Almighty …
an effluence of everlasting light” (7:25–26). Sirach said that she originated
from God’s mouth, “like a spirit” (24:3), becoming a mighty “stream” like
the Nile, and “shining forth” on the land “like the dawn” (24:30–33). The
Jewish writer Aristobulus also wrote that this “River of Wisdom” was seven-
fold, giving rise to the “sevenfold Logos,” or the Divine Reason (4.22;
2.40).115
115 Quoted in Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel, 8.10 and 13.12. Aristobulus
wrote around 160 B.C. The same “Light-Stream” was characterized in still other
ways in various Jewish traditions. In apocalyptic Judaism, for example, God’s
“glory” was seen as his divine “garment,” out of which there emerged a complex
system of “angels,” through which he mediated his power to the earth. These later
gave rise to the Gnostic aeons and the Kabbalistic sephiroth, both comprising a “river
of light” which contained God’s attributes, and through which the Transcendent
entered and sustained the material world. Talmudic and Midrashic commentators
also spoke of angelic “rivers of light,” which comprised the radiant “garment” of
God’s glory. G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradi-
tion, (New York, 1960), 56–64.
56 A GREAT MYSTERY
Philo also described this seven-fold Light-Stream as a “tide which

streams forth from the Almighty” (On Dreams, 2:221), or a “faculty stream-
ing forth” from a “fountain of reason” (That the Worse Attacks the Better, 83).
In On Dreams, he tells how this “fountain” became the source of the “Lo-
gos-River” (2.242); but in his On Flight and Finding, the Logos is said to be
the source of the “River of Wisdom” (47, 97), which he likens to an “efflu-
ence of the sun’s rays” as they emerge from God (Creation of the World, 140).
Significantly, when he speaks of cultic matters, Philo still pictures the “River
of Wisdom” as a sevenfold “Light-Stream,” which flowed down from above
to fill the Temple, and which finally emerged as the seven objects in the Holy
of Holies.
By taking the sun as a figure for God, he thus pictures a “Self-existent
Existence,” which projects itself outward from the center, diminishing in
strength the farther it is removed from the Source. While it is actually One,
it is refracted into various rays, whose seven parts give it contrast and dy-
namic power. As it enters the Temple from the east, the Light-Stream then
penetrates the dark recesses of the Holy of Holies, where it divides into the
seven articles within the sacred enclosure: the Ark, the Law within the Ark,
the mercy seat, the two Cherubim, the voice that spoke to Moses from the
Ark, and the Presence, or the God who spoke.116 It is significant that the
passage from Hebrews 9:1–5, which we quoted at the beginning of this
study, also enumerates seven articles as constituting the contents of the Holy
of Holies: the golden censer, the Ark, the golden pot of manna, Aaron’s
rod, the Tablets of the Covenant, and the two Cherubim.
Using more “theological” language, Philo goes on to explain that the
“Presence” in the Holy of Holies is none other than the Highest God, “He
who is Older than the Beginning.” From him radiates the Logos/Wisdom,
or the “voice” heard by Moses. From the Logos then come the two Cheru-
bim, or God’s Creative and Ruling “Powers.” The Creative Power in turn
sends forth a Merciful Power (the Mercy Seat), while the Ruling Power
sends forth a Legislative Power (the Law in the Ark) (Questions on Exodus,
2.68). The Ark itself is the world of the senses.117 These seven articles in
116 Goodenough, By Light, Light, 23. This description is summarized mainly
from Philo’s Questions on Exodus, 2.68, and from Rendel Harris, Fragments of Philo
Judaeus (Cambridge, 1886), 63–68. Goodenough reproduces all of the pertinent
material in his By Light, Light, 25–27, which is too long to be reproduced here.
117 Goodenough, By Light, Light, 23–25.
fact comprise the mystic “Seven” which created and controls all of nature
(Allegorical Interpretation, 1.8–16).118
Goodenough refers to these seven components of the Light-Stream as
a “pleroma,”119 though the term as he employs it more properly belongs to
the Gnostic schools. Nevertheless, it appears that Philo himself had a
primitive conception similar to that of the Gnostic “Aeons,” which were
likewise conceived as a hierarchy of devolving emanations from a Divine
Source.120 Again, their cosmic significance seems to have been derived from
Wisdom’s “seven pillars” (Prov 9:1), or the planetary structure of the uni-
verse, as it was laid out by her at the time of Creation. Her contribution to
these cosmic hierarchies remained visible as the Kabbalistic Sephiroth,
which Scholem describes as “the garments of the Divinity,” or “the beams
of light which he sends out,” and through which “God descends from the
inmost recesses down to his revelation in the Shekhinah.”121 Still, Philo’s
Light-Stream lacks both the complex angelology which apocalyptic Judaism
employed to describe the mediation of God’s influence to the world and
the intricate relationships within the Sephiroth, as they interact and flow
into creation. In this respect, Philo’s Light-Stream seems closer to the origi-
nal conception of Yahweh’s kavod, as it entered the Holy of Holies from the
east, or even the fiery “rivers” which emanated from Ezekiel’s Throne of
God. In fact, the only “angelic” forms which Philo mentions are the Logos
118 As we shall show later on (pp. 153ff), these correspond roughtly to the seven
archangels who comprise the Primitive Christian Hexaemeron, or Christ (“the Be-
ginning”) plus the six “days of Creation.”
119 By Light, Light, 23, 28.
120 Goodenough noted this basic similarity of the Philonic Light-Stream to that
of the Kabbalistic Sephiroth, though the differences are duly acknowledged as well:
“Both the Kabbalah and Philo have fundamentally the identical conception that the
Absolute and Unrelated God is related to the lower world or worlds through a se-
ries of emanations which are as a whole to be conceived by the figure of a single
Stream of Light from the Source” (ibid., 360). According to the Zohar, “When (the
Unknown) first assumed the form” (i.e., the first Sephirah, or the Philonic Logos),
“He caused nine splendid lights” (the other Sephiroth) “to emanate from it, which,
shining through it, diffused a bright light in all directions. Imagine an elevated light
sending forth its rays in all directions. Now if we approach it and examine its rays,
we understand no more that that they emanate from said light. So is the Holy Aged
an absolute light, but in Himself concealed and incomprehensible. We can only
comprehend him through those luminous emanations” (Sephiroth) “which again are
partly visible and partly concealed” (III:288a).
58 A GREAT MYSTERY
and the Cherubim at the very end of the Stream, where the divine male-
female Image at last becomes perceptible to the beholder.
In still another formulation, the two Cherubim represent all seven
components of the Light-Stream. In On the Cherubim, 22, for example, they
are described as the two spheres which constitute the cosmos—the immov-
able outer sphere (the fixed sphere) and the seven planets (the moveable
inner spheres), the latter rotating within the former. As parts of a “universal
harmony,” they appear to be separate; but the soul who is “in full accor-
dance with the truth … holds the One to be the same as the Seven” (That
God Is Unchangeable, 11).
Another time, he suggests that the outer sphere represents the rational
nous, which is undivided, while the inner sphere symbolizes the irrational
mind, which is divided according to the weakness of the senses. Neverthe-
less, both are ultimately part of a single divine harmony:
Our mind is indivisible in its nature. But the irrational part of the soul
underwent a sixfold division, and thus the Creator formed seven parts:
sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, voice, and the reproductive faculty.
But the rational part, which was named mind, he left undivided, after
the likeness of the entire heaven. For there, it is said, the outer, fixed
sphere is kept undivided, whereas the inner sphere underwent a sixfold
division, thus completing the seven circles of what are called the wan-
dering stars or planets. For I regard the soul in man as being what the
heaven is in the universe. Therefore, the two thinking and rational na-
tures, the one in man and the other in the universe, prove to be com-
plete and indivisible” (Who Is the Heir? 232–33).
This mystical harmony is expressed in yet another way. In On the Deca-
logue, Philo explains that the two Cherubim symbolized the “undivided” and
the “divided” aspects of the universe, or “that which is closest to the initial
Unit, the Idea of the planets,” as opposed to the planets themselves (102).
Yet even the planets “preserve their unity unbroken,” without “swerving or
alteration” (ibid., 104), for it is the function of the Logos to unite them as a
Whole (Who Is the Heir? 201–22). Thus, the Seven—who are in reality
One—become a “mirror” and a “vision of God … creating the world and
controlling all that is” (On the Decalogue, 104–5).
To do this, God further unites within himself a creative and beneficent
Power—which is called “God” (theos, “Elohim”) and a legislative and puni-
tive Power—which is called “Lord” (kyrios, “Yahweh”). These two Powers
were represented by the two Cherubim, which Philo describes as “mirrors”
of Wisdom, or Wisdom as “a mirror of the Powers of God, in accordance
with which … the universe is governed and managed” (Questions on Genesis,
1.57). Thus the statues served as an “incorruptible Face” through which

mortals were able to see the Maker of the Universe and have “a correct ap-
prehension of the invisible” (Questions on Exodus, 2.41, 52).
Philo’s picture of the Light-Stream, however, differs in one important
respect from Ezekiel’s: he no longer mentions the “form of a man” sitting
on the Throne. But instead of eliminating the “form of a man” from the
Light-Stream altogether, Philo places him invisibly among the articles in the
Holy of Holies, where he gives rise to the “voice which Moses heard” (the
Logos), and to his visible Powers, the Embracing Cherubim.
Yet Ezekiel’s vision of God on his Throne was itself a kind of circum-
locution (“the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord”; 1:28),
and thus no closer to the essential being of God than Philo’s symbolic arti-
cles in the Holy of Holies. As Ezekiel was careful to point out, the “figure”
on the Throne was merely a “likeness” (d emuth) in the “appearance” (mar’eh)
of a man, i.e., God three times hidden behind the “likeness” of an “appear-
ance” of the “glory” of his actual self.
It is significant in this regard that the word mar’eh can also be vocalized
to give mar’ah (“mirror”), which suggests that we have here the source of
those Wisdom traditions which were wont to describe these anthropomor-
phisms as “mirrors” of the Divine.122 Ezekiel’s “form in the likeness of a
man” (1:26), and Philo’s visible “Powers,” then, were roughly equivalent,
that is to say, they both made apprehensible to the senses what was essen-
tially beyond apprehension.
This generally agrees with the Priestly doctrine that while God is in-
visible, he descended between the two Cherubim to communicate with men
(Exod 25:22). Thus when one saw the Cherubim, one knew that the divine
Presence was there, which further explains how these symbolic objects
could have functioned as his visible surrogates. Yet it was not claimed that
these represented the invisible God in person, but only his “Powers,” which
again were but “indications” of his essence, i.e., a “sense perceptible type-
form” which served as an “image of the incorporeal” (Questions on Exodus,
2.37). Even the “glory” which Israel beheld on Sinai (Exod 24:16) is said to
have been “not the essence of God” but only his two-fold “Powers” (Ques-
tions on Exodus, 2.45).
Modern readers may perhaps find it difficult to understand how a “vi-
sion of God’s Face” could produce tangible results in the beholder. Yet
122 Compare again Wisdom 7:26: “She is an unblemished mirror of the active
power of God, and an image of his goodness.”

60 A GREAT MYSTERY
even today, travelers occasionally meet primitive people who refuse to allow
their photographs to be taken, for fear of “losing their image” to the cam-
era. This is the same kind of awe with which early men generally viewed
their shadows, reflections, and pictorial representations. Like a “name,”
such images were thought to contain part of the individual’s nature, and to
convey something of his power. To gaze upon them could even rob one of
that power, just as viewing someone’s “nakedness” was perceived as a tan-
gible intrusion upon one’s person (cf. Lev 18:9–16). One therefore believed
that something real was derived from the act of seeing, which was no doubt
synonymous with making personal contact with God’s holiness.123 Thus,
when Ezekiel beheld the vision of God, he reported that “the Spirit entered
me” (Ezek 2:2), and he heard a “Voice” from amongst the Cherubim.124
Such a vision described by Philo as “attaining the Face of the Father”—
then became“beholding God’s Face”—a rite “food of the soul” and “the
cause of a life of immortality” (Questions on Exodus, 2.39).
Philo further explains this vision of God’ s Face as a form of the Hel-
lenistic thea theou (“seeing God”). The Cherubim had thus been designed to
function as “mirrors” of Wisdom, whose task it was to reflect God’s
“glory” to the beholder, so that it might penetrate his senses “as through
orifices,” filling the mind with its “multitudinous light” and its “luminous
clarity,” and enlightening as “by the flash of the sun’s beams” (On the Cheru-
bim, 61–62). Such is the “one and only fruit which feeds the soul of him
whose quest is the Vision” (85). In this way, “through reciprocity and com-
bination, even as a lyre is formed of unlike strings,” God provides that
“virtue-loving souls” shall have “sown within themselves the nature of hap-
piness” (110, 106), so that they shall “come to fellowship and concord, and
form a single harmony … that this whole, of which each is a part, might be
that perfect work worthy of its Architect” (110, 112).
This is of course possible, as Philo reminds us, only because of man’s
prior kinship with Wisdom. As we saw earlier, “every man, in respect of his
mind, is allied to the divine Reason, having come into being as a copy or
fragment or ray of that blessed nature” (On the Creation of the World, 146).
123 Visualized symbols are generally “substitutes or ways of entering into rela-
tionship with sacred objects of some sort or other.” Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Com-
parative Religion (New York, 1958), 446. They “tend to become one with the Whole,
just as the hierophany tends to embody all of the sacred, to include in itself all of
the manifestation of sacred power” (ibid., 452).
124 See Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (New York, 1948), 266–97, for a general de-
scription of the unio mystica which involves sensory images.

Now we are told that the same Wisdom which resides in men perceives itself
as the primordial Image within the Light-Stream: “But Wisdom is not only,
after the manner of light, an instrument of sight, but is able to see its own
self … Wisdom is God’s archetypal luminary, and the sun is a copy and
image of it” (Allegorical Interpretation, 1.40).
Another way of saying the same thing is that “by Wisdom what is wise
is seen” (Allegorical Interpretation, 1.40), or that “God can be grasped only
through God, and light through light” (On Rewards and Punishments, 40).
Philo also speaks of the “all-pervading Logos”—another of Wisdom’s
names—which reaches into men’s minds, effectively converting them into
extensions of the Divine Mind, though of a lesser sort, thus capable of
comprehending the light (That the Worse Attacks the Better, 90; On Giants, 47;
Allegorical Interpretation, 1.37–38). The presence of the heavenly Wisdom is
even said to induce “sober drunkenness” (On Flight and Finding, 166), i.e.,
“possession” by the Holy Spirit (On Giants, 47; On Dreams, 11.12; Who Is the
Heir? 264ff; On the Migration of Abraham, 37–38), which in turn reveals the
unseen things of God (cf. 1 Cor 2:10–11).
There is even a more basic reason, however, for this mutual affinity
between men’s souls and the Light-Stream. According to the Wisdom of
Solomon, the soul had originated in the heights, from whence it came down
to take up residence in a body (8:19–20). We also saw (pp. 47–48, above)
that Philo referred to the soul’s heavenly origin and preexistence by describ-
ing the human mind as a “divine fragment” (apospasma theion), which has but
“extended itself from God” (That the Worse Attacks the Better, 90). He then
went on to describe its descent and passage through the world as a kind of
“pilgrimage” through an alien land: “Each of us has come into the world as
into a foreign city, in which before birth we had no part, and in this city
does but sojourn, until he has exhausted his appointed span of life” (On the
Cherubim, 120; cf. also On Dreams, 135; On Planting, 12; On Giants, 6; Who Is
the Heir? 240).
But this takes place, he adds, “by a law of necessity,” so that the soul
might “inspect terrestrial things” and gain a share in their wisdom, thus par-
ticipate in a better existence (Questions on Genesis, 4.74). To assist us in attain-
ing this noble goal, Wisdom—or the divine Logos—becomes our constant
“helper and comrade,” ever quickening us with its new life (On Dreams,
1.147). Thus filled by the Logos with its heavenly light, earthly man can at
last become divine, truly a “son of God” (ibid., 1.92, 99), and a “first-
begotten of the One who is without beginning” (On the Posterity of Cain, 63).
Moses himself was begotten as a “divine Logos” in this way. By the ac-
tion of “God his Father and Wisdom his Mother” he was made incorrupti-
62 A GREAT MYSTERY
ble and immune from material defilement (On Flight and Finding, 108–12).
This took place, we are told, at the top of Mount Sinai, i.e., in the prototype
of the Holy of Holies, where Moses was instructed by God to “stand here
with me” (Exod 33:21), meaning that Moses was given a share of God’s
own nature (On the Posterity of Cain, 28ff; On Giants, 47ff), changed into di-
vinity, and made “akin to God” (Questions on Exodus, 2.29).
Philo addresses his readers as mystae (“initiates”) when he describes this
procreation of godhood in men:
Open your ears, mystae, and hear the holiest of mysteries. “Laughing”
means joy, “creation” means procreation; the words “God hath made
me to laugh” (Gen 21:6) mean, therefore, The Lord fathered Isaac, he is
the father of all Perfect Beings, the One who sows joy in souls and who
procreates (Allegorical Interpretation, 3.219).
As supporting passages, Philo refers in his On the Confusion of Tongues to
Deut 14:1 (“Ye are the children of the Lord God”), 32:18 (“of the God
who begot thee”), and 32:6 (“is he not himself your father?”) to show that
divine sonship can indeed be sown in men by their union with the Logos
(ibid., 145–46), i.e., God’s “invisible Image” (ibid., 147).
Presumably, this was the hope of all those who gathered in the Fore-
court of the Temple, when the High Priest, acting for Moses, revealed the
“secondary splendor” of God’s procreative Powers to the “pure in heart,”
and who came away with a light of their own, just as Moses came down
from the Mount with an illuminated countenance (Exod 34:29–30). Thus it
was recalled over a millennium later that
When all was linked together, all faces were illumined. Then all fell on
their faces and trembled, and said, Blessed be the Name of his kingdom
for ever (Zohar III:66b–67a).
Now men were restored to the Tree of Life. In On the Cherubim, Philo
had begun his description of the embracing statues by giving his exegesis of
Gen 3:24: “And he cast forth Adam and set over against the Garden of
Pleasure the Cherubim and the sword of flame which turns every way.”
This appears at first glance to be a pretext for introducing the subject of the
Temple-Cherubim, because Philo quickly abandons the story of man’s ex-
pulsion from Eden and turns his attention to the significance of the statues
in the Holy of Holies. But it is obvious that he had an even deeper reason
for beginning his exegesis with an account of the Cherubim in the Garden,
for he quickly points out that they were not only set there to guard the Tree
of Life, but also to lead men back to it.
According to the earlier Wisdom books, Wisdom is none other than

the Tree of Life (Prov 3:18; 1 Enoch 32:3–6). In Questions on Genesis, he adds
that the Cherubim are her “mirrors” (1.57). The Cherubim are therefore
“mirrors” of the Tree of Life, and he who receives their reflection partakes
again from its branches, feasting of Wisdom’s fruit, “eating her berries,”
and “drinking her wine” (Sir 24:19; Prov 9:5). In short, mankind experi-
ences through a vision of the Cherubim what he had lost in the Garden of
Eden, being restored to the Tree of Life and the companionship of God’s
Presence. One cannot doubt that this is also the idea which is expressed in
John 15, where Jesus-Wisdom is described as the “True Vine,” i.e., the di-
vine Reality in whose branches man is invited to “abide,” as man is invited
to “lodge” in the branches of Wisdom (Sir 14:26).
This interpretation is supported by Philo himself, when he tells us that
man’s expulsion from the Garden was equivalent to “going forth from the
vision of God” (On the Cherubim, 13). But the Cherubim were not placed
there solely to “guard the Tree of Life,” or to ban him forever from the
“dwelling place of virtue” (10), but rather to promote “closer intimacy” be-
tween those who “seek … to draw nigh to each other” (18). Thus, man is
assured that “he is not far from divine happiness” (19) when he beholds the
Cherubim. “It is with this thought that (God) assigns to the Cherubim and
the flaming sword the abode in front of Paradise.” Indeed, “the ‘Powers,’
ever gazing at each other in unbroken contemplation, acquire a mutual
yearning, even that winged and heavenly love, wherewith God the bountiful
Giver inspires them” (20). Such is the love which unites even the spheres of
heaven, like the two Cherubim, revolving one within the other (22).
This, Philo explains, is the “allegory of the Cherubim” (On the Cheru-
bim, 25), or the union of God’s chief “Powers” (27–28). From it the initiate
not only learns the “lesson” of God’s beneficence, but receives for himself
the “virtues” begotten by their connubial “mingling,” and reaps the “fruits”
of a happy lot (29). It is the “divine mystery” of God’s intercourse with the
soul, Wisdom being the intermediary through whom he “consorts” with his
human lovers (42–44, 50). As Wisdom’s “Husband,” God “drops the seed
of happiness for the race of mortals into good and virgin soil” (50). But
wanting nothing for himself, he freely bestows the fruit of this union upon
those who have not the power to conceive by themselves (44). This is why
the barren wombs of Sarah, Leah, and Rebecca were “opened” by the Lord
for their husbands (Gen 21:1; 29:31; 25: 21; On the Cherubim, 45–47). In this,
we detect an early form of the Pauline doctrine of grace.
Finally, we should not ignore the didactic value of “beholding the di-
vine Image” as a model for human behavior. Philo referred to this as a vi-
64 A GREAT MYSTERY
sion of the “river of Wisdom,” or the Light-Stream and Logos (Allegorical

Interpretation, 1.65; Questions on Exodus, 2.68), hence the true essence of To-
rah. This was accompanied by an admonition to obey the “verbs and
nouns” with which the Torah clothed herself.125 At the same time, the
truth-seeker was to search out her higher doctrine, which for Philo was that
the righteous person could eventually be deified by perfect harmony with
God’s revelation of himself (Questions on Exodus, 2.39–40). For Christians,
this would imply the restructuring of one’s life in the “likeness” of God, i.e.,
the exemplary life of his Logos, Jesus Christ.
Thus we have reason to suppose that pilgrims came to the Temple for
moral instruction, which they somehow obtained through beholding the
divine symbols in the Holy of Holies. This was already hinted at in Sirach,
where the author tells us that he sought Wisdom “before the Temple”
(51:14). After describing his hieros gamos with her (vv. 19–21), he refers to
the place where he “looked upon her” as a “house of instruction” (v. 23),
an expression sometimes used by rabbis to characterize the Holy Shrine
(called the Beth ha-Midrash ha-gadol, the “Great House of Instruction”).126
Indeed, Wisdom tells us that the Temple is her own special dwelling, having
been brought down with her from on high: “The Creator caused my taber-
nacle to rest with Israel … He created me from the beginning, before the
world … In the holy tabernacle I served him and so was established in
Zion” (ibid., 24:8–10). Philo adds that the Temple was itself an image of
Wisdom or divine Virtue: “When God willed to send down the image of
divine excellence from heaven to earth in pity for our race, that it should
not lose its share in the better lot, he constructs as a symbol of the truth the
holy tabernacle and its contents to be a representation and a copy of Wis-
dom” (Who Is The Heir? 112; also see That the Worse Attacks the Better, 160–
61; On the Preliminary Studies, 111). The Temple, in short, was the place of
instruction where the mysteries of the truth were revealed as types and
symbols, and where one could receive images of God’s Wisdom. In this
way, the “First Cause” himself appeared, enlightening mortals with knowl-
edge of the Invisible, and enabling them to attain their own visions of
God’s Face.
125Goodenough, By Light, Light, 8.

126See, for example, Tanna debe Eliyahu R., 9, 10, 16; reference in R. H. Charles,
Apocrypha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1971), 516. Compare also Matthew 21:23;
26:55; Luke 2: 46; 20:1; 21:37; and John 18:20, where Jesus teaches in the Temple.
THE TEMPLE AS A SOURCE OF POWER

The Temple, however, was not only a house of instruction, but a place
where one hoped to come into contact with tangible, life-giving power. Ear-
lier we saw that Ezekiel described the fiery river of light which issued from
the Throne of God as “amber” (hashmal), the word which modern Hebrew
uses for “electricity” (p. 56, above). Its enormous physical potency is sug-
gested by the fact that it was thought to be both holy and dangerous, as in
the story of the child who was burned by fire while speaking about hashmal
(b. Hagigah 13a).127 We must also try to picture the numinous quality of the
Holy of Holies, which as the successor to the Ark of the Covenant must
have retained some of the awesome power which it anciently possessed, for
example, when Uzzah put forth his hand to “steady the Ark” and was im-
mediately struck dead (2 Sam 6:6–7), or when the Levites—who were
obliged to transport the holy things from place to place in the wilderness—
were not allowed to see them uncovered, lest they die (Num 4:20). It was
even rumored that the High Priest burned incense in the Holy of Holies in
order that the smoke would conceal its contents from his view, lest he too
be killed (Lev 16:13).
We already suggested that “seeing the Face of God” within the context
of the Wisdom Mystery was thought to be a way to establish contact with
God’s holiness (p. 60, above). Ancient Judaism looked upon this “holiness”
as an actual, tangible “substance,” one that could readily be passed from
various sancta to whomever touched them. As Jacob Milgrom points out,
the earliest traditions of the Bible show that the sancta communicated holi-
ness to persons by sight (if uncovered), or by touch, even if the contact was
accidental. The general formula for this “sancta contagion” was “kol-
hannegea‘ b- (on some sacred object) yiqdaš,” i.e., “everything touching (on
said object) will be made holy”:128
According to the early narratives, this power can be deadly; note the sto-
ries about the Ark (1 Sam 6:19; 2 Sam 6:6–7), Mount Sinai (Exod 19:12–
127 Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1983),
51.
128 For example, “bahammizbeah” (“on the altar”), or “bahem” (“on them [the
sacred objects]”). Yiqdaš, however, is limited to pi‘el and hithpa‘el stems (i.e., “to
make holy, to become holy”), and never used for qal stems (“to be holy”). This is
further shown by a parallel formula (e.g., Lev 11:24): “kol-hannegea‘ b- (some object)
yitma” (“everything touching on (said object) will become impure”). See Milgrom’s
Leviticus 1–16, Anchor Bible (New York, 1991), 443–56.
66 A GREAT MYSTERY
13), and the divine fire (Lev 10:1–2). In P a major change has occurred.
This fatal power is restricted to the rare moment in which the Taberna-
cle is dismantled (Num 4:15, 20), but otherwise the sancta can no longer
infect persons, even if touched. Clearly, this drastic reduction in the
contagious power of the sancta was not accepted by all Priestly schools.
Ezekiel holds out for the older view that sancta (in his example, the
priestly clothing, 44:19; 46:20) are contagious to persons (contrary to
P).129
The late P-tradents, on the other hand, began to teach that God’s holiness
stood for the forces of life and that only when approached in an unauthor-
ized way (e.g.,, Num 10:1–2) would it bring death. But an even more practi-
cal reason might have encouraged this new attitude toward the sancta in the
Temple, namely dissatisfaction with the anarchic institution of altar asylum.
Precisely because the altar sanctified those who touched it, it thereby
automatically gave them asylum regardless of whether they were mur-
derers, bandits, or other assorted criminals. By taking the radical step of
declaring that the sancta, in particular the altar, were no longer conta-
gious to persons, the priests ended, once and for all, the institution of al-
tar asylum. In this matter they were undoubtedly abetted by the king and
his bureaucracy, who earnestly wanted to terminate the veto power of
the sanctuary over their jurisdiction.130
Ezekiel, however, “invokes the viewpoint posited by the oldest biblical nar-
ratives that the sancta are contagious to persons. This simple postulate is all
that is needed to explain Ezekiel’s severer code for the priests whereby he
both elevates their holy status and distances them more from the laity, even
to the point of preventing the laity from direct contact with the priestly
clothing and the sacrifices … Thus Ezekiel is a religious conservative whose
view represents a continuing polemic against the prevailing practice of the
Jerusalem Temple.”131 Ezekiel in fact preserves a much older tradition (e.g.,
Exod 30:26–30), according to which persons may still be consecrated (or
harmed) by contact with the sacra (Ezek 46:20; 46:3), including cast-off
priestly garments (Ezek 44:19; 42:14). Ezekiel’s visionary Temple would
even prohibit the laity from approaching the gates to the Inner Court (Ezek
46:3), and would restrict all slaughter to the Levites (40:39–42).
129 Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 45.

130 Ibid., 45.
131 Ibid., 453.
The holy contagion of the sancta would appear to derive from the fact
that the blood which was spilled upon the altar by the sacrifice of “the
Lord’s goat” (Lev 16:8) contained life—God’s special power—for “the life
(nephesh) of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the
altar to make an atonement for your souls” (17:11). The blood of a bullock
was added, and both were sprinkled on the horns of the altar (16:18),
thereby transforming the Temple into a genuine source of quickening
power.
This ancient view of sancta contagion also appears to have survived in
the Wisdom Mystery, where beholding the sacred objects visually in the Tem-
ple transmitted holiness to the beholder. This is most clearly embodied in
the traditional expression, ra’ah ’et-pene YHWH¸ “Behold the face of Yah-
weh,” by which act the beholder was filled with God’s light and sanctified,
even made divine (Wis 7:25–27; Philo, On the Cherubim, 61–62, 84):
What is the meaning of the words, “They appeared to God in that place
and they ate and drank”? Having attained to the face of the Father, they
do not remain in any mortal place at all, for all such places are profane
and polluted, but they send and make a migration to a holy a divine
place, which is called by another name, Logos. Being in this place
through the steward, they see the Master in a lofty and clear manner,
envisioning God with the keen-sighted eyes of the mind. But this vision
is the food of the soul, and true partaking is the case of a life of immor-
tality. Wherefore it is said, “they ate and drank.” What is the meaning of
the words, “Come up to Me in the mountain and be there”? This signi-
fies that a holy soul is divinized by ascending not to the air or to the
ether or to heaven (which is) higher than all but to (a region) above the
heavens. And beyond the world there is no place but God (Philo, Ques-
tions on Exodus, 2:39–40).
Philo is of course speaking of those who ascended the Temple Mount—the
new “Sinai”—and who contacted God through a vision of his Logos/
Wisdom, whose “mirrors” were the Embracing Cherubim. Such contact
was much more than mere “instruction,” for it provided the beholder with
luminous power, mediated to the senses by God’s “steward,” i.e., his
“Word.” Indeed, as Isaiah proclaimed as he stood before the Ark, “mine
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts” (Isa 6:5), because the Lord
promised to commune with Israel from between the two Cherubim (Exod
25:22). Thus it has been suggested that nearly every one of the 225 times
that the expression, “Before the Lord,” appears in the Old Testament—
68 A GREAT MYSTERY
especially in the Psalms—it has a reference to standing before the Ark and
its invisible Deity, a cultic situation being presupposed.132
According to Gerhard von Rad, the words, “With thee is the fountain
of light, and in thy light we see light” (Ps 36:9) describe the “almost mysti-
cal” sense of “spiritual communion” which the worshipper experienced
with God in the Temple,133 a communion which even death could not
break:134
For thou wilt not abandon my life to the realm of the dead,
Thou wilt not let thy godly one see the pit.
Thou shewest me the way to life,
fulness of joy even before my face,
pleasure is in thy right hand for ever (Ps 16:10–11).
But I am ever with thee, thou hast taken hold of my right hand;
According to thy counsel wilt thou lead me and hereafter carry me to
glory.
Whom have I in heaven? Besides thee I desire naught on earth.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God remains at all times my rock
and my part.
Yea, those who forsake thee perish, But my possession is to draw near
to God; I have put my refuge in Yahweh (Ps 73:23–28).
God is my chief possession for ever … They who are far from thee are
lost … But my chief good is to be near to thee, O God (Ps 73:26).
Walter Eichrodt likewise sees in the Temple experience an opportunity to
“overcome death” through “fellowship with God.”135 Von Rad in fact con-
sidered such “fellowship” to be the source of shalom, or the state of peace
and equilibrium which the devout worshipper hopes to establish between
himself and God.136 Isaiah likewise considered this communion to be a
“covenant of peace (shalom)” which covenant promised to last beyond the
destruction of earth (Isa 54:10).
132 G. Henton Davies, “Ark of the Covenant,” in IDB, 1:225–26. This would
also include such expressions as “Before God,” the “glory” of God, and the
“Name” of God, all referring to his cultic presence.
133 Old Testament Theology (New York, 1962), 1:401–3.
134 Ibid, 1:406.
135 Theology of the Old Testament, quoted by von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 1:407.
136 Old Testament Theology, 1:130.
The finest study of this mystical communion with God in the Temple
has been written by H. J. Franken,137 who believes that the shalom of which
von Rad speaks came about through a cleaving together of God’s Spirit with
that of the believer to create an “extension of personality,” so that both
partners could think and feel as one.138 J. Pedersen likewise opined that dur-
ing the process “self-consciousness is lost and the soul is filled with a power
that is divine … Therefore the mystic may say that his soul is God.”139 Au-
brey R. Johnson adds that “for the time being (the beholder) was an active
“extension” of Yahweh’s Personality and as such, was Yahweh.”140 We shall
encounter this important principle again in the New Testament, when John
speaks of the “spiritual indwelling” which creates oneness with the Divine (John
10:30; 14:10; 17:20–23), or when Paul speaks of the “spiritual cleavage”
which unites two spirits as one (1 Cor 6:17; 12:13). Such “communion” and
“fellowship” with the Divine thus led to a single pneumatic “circuit” which
transmitted the energy of the Whole to its parts, providing access to the
Heavenly Council (sôd),141 at whose center stood the Throne of God—or
the Source of power which enabled the cosmos to operate as a “grand syn-
thesis” and an integrative “harmony.”142
Franken has performed a particularly valuable service in analyzing the
language of the Psalter, showing how the Psalms expressed this mystical
sense of communion with Yahweh in the Temple. He begins with the verb
damah (“to be silent”), and its substantive demahmah (“stillness, quiet”),143
expressing a sense of expectation (“My soul, ‘wait upon’ [dami] God, for my
hope is from him,” Ps 62:5). This, of course, was not “quiet” of an ordinary
sort, but the breathless sense of awe which silences one in the presence of a
mysterious numen or energy:144
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.
Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It
stood still, but I could not discover the form thereof; an image was be-
fore mine eyes, there was silence … (Job 4:14–16).
137 The Mystical Communion with JHWH in the Book of Psalms (Leiden, 1954).
138 Ibid., 1, notes.
139 Israel, Its Life and Culture (Copenhagen, 1940), iii–iv; our emphasis.
140 The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God (Cardiff, 1961), 33.
141 Franken, Israel, Its Life and Culture, 63.
142 Ibid., 66–69.
143 Ibid., 13–18.
144 Ibid., 17–18.
70 A GREAT MYSTERY
Inevitably, it produced in the beholder a response which the Psalms desig-

nated as syah (KJV “meditation,” Ps 104:34), or an “audible expression of
the soul’s absorption in God,”145 the same kind of “absorption” or “drunk-
enness” which is encapsulated in the word meshuga (“insane, mad”). Thus,
when Hannah behaved like a “drunken” woman in the Temple, she was
merely expressing “the fulness of her siah” (1 Sam 1:15–16). Franken also
refers to Psalms 102:1 and 119:97–99, where the pilgrim’s “absorption” in
God emerges as an audible “meditation,” as he is “filled as a jar with the
substance of the Torah.”146
The word hasah (KJV “place trust in”) is also used repeatedly to show
how one “takes refuge” in God’s “shelter” by being “transplanted into a
sacred spiritual element” (Pss 25:20; 31:1; 71:1; etc.). Finding safety in this
“spiritual element” is also referred to as “taking shelter under God’s ‘wing’
or ‘skirt’” (both translations of kenaphim), as in Psalm 91:1–4 and Ruth 2:12.
It especially reminds us of God’s marriage to Israel, when their union is de-
scribed as the spreading of his “skirt” over his Bride (Ezek 16:8). Some
would even connect this metaphor with the “wings” of the Cherubim,
whose embrace symbolized God’s union with Israel (b. Yoma 54a), for
Psalm 61:4 goes on to liken the worshipper’s communion with Yahweh to
“taking refuge under God’s wings,” while Psalm 28:1–2 shows that this
“refuge” is none other than the security of the Holy of Holies (the d ebir,
KJV “oracle”).147
One also “waited” (qawa) on the Lord” (Ps 25:5) with an urgent sense
of “reaching out” to God” (Isa 21:9, 21). The pi‘el of this verb in fact means
“to be tense,” as when a string is drawn tight between two points (2 Kgs
21:13).148 The original meaning of qawa is thus thought to have been “to tie
together, to bind,” i.e., an act of persistent longing for actual communion
with God.149 The derived noun, tiqwa (KJV “expectation”) likewise has
“more substance than the word in translation can denote,” for in Psalm
9:18 it suggests that one has received a sure hope and claim on God’s
promise.150
All of these Hebrew expressions denoting some palpably felt “reaching
out” to God for communion with his awesome power came to a climax in the verb
145 Ibid., 18.

146 Ibid., 20–21.
147 Ibid., 29–30.
148 See also Strong’s Concordance, Hebrew Dictionary, #6960.
149 Franken, Old Testament Theology, 32.
150 Ibid., 32.
dabaq (“to glue, to fasten together”), which though it appears but twice in
the Psalter with obviously mystical import would in time become the most
widely used of all Judaeo-Christian terms indicating spiritual henosis
(“union”) with God. According to Franken, dabaq means
the sticking together of two elements that are considered as whole in
themselves … These parts form a unity, but they can easily be distin-
guished one from the other … The word denotes mostly the cleaving
together of heterogeneous elements … The two different beings be-
come entirely one, each of them keeping (its) own nature and yet form-
ing a new unity.151
This is not the same as Far Eastern “absorption” in God, where one loses
his identity in some greater personality, but a “fastening together,” as when
electronic components are joined and attuned to each other to function as a
single electrical circuit. Thus it can denote “attachment” to God’s precepts
by “hearing his voice” and keeping his commandments (Deut 13:4). But in
Psalms 63:8 and 119:31 it suggests that the individual literally “cleaves” to
God and his laws, and thereby receives vitalizing power from his transcen-
dent holiness:
My soul cleaves to thee (Ps 63:8).
I have cleaved to thy principles … I have longed after thy precepts …
Quicken me in thy righteousness (Ps 119:31, 40).
This explains why the Psalms could speak of God’s righteousness as some-
thing tangible that can be transferred from one individual to another:
He shall receive righteousness from the God of his salvation (Ps 24:6).
Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness (Ps 132:9).
This direct sharing of God’s righteousness, however, was determined solely
by the will of the stronger party, i.e., by the one who laid out the covenant
terms of the unifying relationship.152
The same meaning is expressed is still other Psalms by the verb hasaq
(“attach”), with its sense of “strong unity,” or a “cleaving together” to form
a bond of a “mystical nature.”153 In Ps 91:14, for example, it is said that
151 Ibid., 34–35. Compare 2 Chronicles 3:12, which tells how the metallic wing
tips of the Cherubim in the First Temple were “joined” (dabaq) together.
152 Ibid., 35–36.
153 Ibid., 36.
72 A GREAT MYSTERY
God will rescue those to whom he has “attached his love,” thereby providing
them with the safety of an intimate connection to himself. The numinous
quality of this mystical bond is further indicated by the use of the word tob
(“goodness”), referring to a palpable divine righteousness, as in Psalm 23:6,
where “goodness and mercy” are treated as spiritual substances.154 Psalm
34:8, 12 thus speaks of tob as something that can actually be “tasted” and
“seen,” something that was specifically to be found in the Temple (Pss
27:13 and 65:4). Moses was also shown this “good righteousness” when he
beheld God’s “glory” (Exod 33:18–19), a statement which Franken believes
to be the hidden meaning behind the expression, “To see the Face of God,”
i.e., to behold substantial evidence of his divine power.155 Judging from these
statements, we are probably right to conclude that biblical “righteousness”
was not merely “correct behavior,” but the divine energy that makes such be-
havior possible.
The Psalms also describe the Temple as the special place where one
might encounter God’s “glory” (kabod), a word whose palpable nature is
again thought to have been expressed by an original meaning of “weight” or
“abundance,” i.e., by an overwhelming sense of God’s powerful presence
(“I have seen thy power and glory in the Sanctuary” (Ps 63:2). This tangible
“weight” could be felt as an actual “heaviness” in times of distress (Ps 32:4);
yet to experience it in a positive way was the ultimate purpose of one’s visit
to the Temple. Hence, as Moses had experienced the divine “glory” on the
old Sinai, the pilgrim came to the new Sinai (Ps 68:17), where God’s kabod
would “rise” (zarah) upon him and make him a “bearer” of its light (Isa
60:1–3), just as Moses had “borne” it when he returned from the top of the
Holy Mountain (Exod 34:29–35).156
Franken explains man’s preternatural affinity for union with God’s
“light” and “glory” in much the same way that Philo had done (pp. 35–36,
47–49, above), namely as a matter of “light apprehending light,” or of “like
seeking like”:
154 Compare Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids,
1969), 5:331: “As good spirits Jahve sends forth tob and hesed to overtake David’s
enemies, and to protect him against them to their shame.”
155 Franken, Old Testament Theology, 38–39.
156 Ibid., 45–46.
The light of God meets light … He who meets the light of God knows
that there is light within him … there is light of God in the light of
men.157
This resulting “unbroken unity of godly light” caused the pilgrim himself to
“shine” (nogah, Ps 18:28), purifying his heart with its glow (Pss 18:30; 26:1–
3), and revealing God’s word as a “radiant unity” subsuming both subject
and object (Ps 12:6–7).158
This all-important light was God’s own “garment” (Ps 104:2), some-
thing that had originated “with God” (Ps 139:11–12). More than mere
“brightness,” however, it was the “light of life” (Ps 56:13; Job 33:28–30),
which “lightened” man’s intellect and senses (Pss 13:3; 1:28; 19:8). The light
of earth could not in fact exist without the light of heaven, and statements
that God will “light my candle” or “enlighten my darkness” prove that
God’s luminous power could be readily received here below in an “intense
fashion” (Ps 18:28).159 F. Delitzsch called the resulting fusion of “the light
of the soul and the light of God” (Ps 36:9) a “holy mysticism” and a “vital
godliness,” adding that when the pilgrim became “immersed in God’s sea
of light (he was) illumined by divine knowledge and lighted up with spiritual
joy.”160
Access to God’s “light” was another way of saying that one could
come into communion with the raz or sôd (both synonyms for the “Heav-
enly Council”). Talmudic mystics especially saw a connection between the
raz and God’s “light” (’or), since both words had a numerical value of
207.161 Reaching God’s “light” thus meant that one could mystically reach
the raz or sôd, and have communion with the beings around the Throne of
God (the merkabah). The result was “the ecstasy of the Sanctuary, the per-
fect peace (shalom) with the world of God … the lifting up of the hands and
blessings, and finally the experience of seeing God.”162 Its overall effect on
the pilgrim was that he was enveloped by the Divine Presence and felt that
God had literally descended and entered into spiritual contact with him,163
thus making him a part of the heavenly sôd. Ezekiel likewise believed that
157Ibid., 46, 49.

158Ibid., 47–48.
159 Ibid., 49.
160 Commentary on the Old Testament, 5:7.
161 According to the rules of gematria, both Hebrew rz (r = 200, z = 7), and
Hebrew ’yr (’ = 1, y = 6, r = 200), equal 207.

162 Ibid., 92 [uncertain reference, ed. note].
163 Ibid., 74.
74 A GREAT MYSTERY
Israel merged with the sôd when united in obedience to God’s will (Ezek
13:9). We shall also learn from writings of Qumran that the sectaries who
composed the Dead Sea Scrolls continued to believe that when they prayed
together, they become united with the angels around God’s Throne to form
a single Heavenly Community (Angelic Liturgy, 4QS 1:40, 24). Significantly,
the traditional number of these “angels” (formerly the “Sons of God”)164
was 70, and the rabbis found it meaningful that the numerical value of the
sôd was also 70.165 The Temple pilgrim thus believed that he stood in the
midst of an angelic host, at whose center was Yahweh himself, seated upon
the merkabah:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a
throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the Temple. Above it
stood the Seraphim … One cried unto the other, and said, Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is filled with his glory … And
I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will
go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me (Isa 6:1–8).
And above the firmament that was over (the Cherubim’s) heads was the
likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon
the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man
above upon it … This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of
the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard the voice
of one that spoke. And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy
feet, and I will speak unto thee. And the Spirit entered into me (Ezek
1:26–2:2).
Job also spoke of the sôd, where God’s Wisdom (hokmah) is to be
found (Job 15:8), hence the notion that Wisdom was communicated in a
“mystery” (1 Cor 2:7)—the New Testament equivalent of sôd 166—and
whose earthly focus was the Temple. Thus Psalm 55:14 says, “Together we
made sweet the sôd in Elohim’s Temple,” and Proverbs adds that God’s sôd
is “with the upright … in the habitation of the just” (3:32–33). Even after
the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, the tradition of seeking Wisdom
164 Compare the Hebrew original of Deuteronomy 32:8, which reads “sons of
God,” with the LXX version, which reads “angels of God.”

165 Spelled swd (s = 60, w = 6, d = 4).
166 The New Testament word mysterion has been traced directly back to the He-
brew words sôd and raz, meaning “God’s Heavenly Council and its sercets,” and by
extension, all other kinds of “secrecy.” See Raymond E. Brown, The Semitic Back-
ground of the Term “Mystery” in the New Testament (Philadelphia, 1968).
through a vision of the world about God’s Throne survived as one of the
chief goals of Jewish Kabbalism. It also became the hope of the Christian
Temple cult, as we shall see later on in the case of Paul’s vision of the
“Third Heaven” (2 Cor 12:1–4).
Finally, the Temple pilgrim felt that he was being re-created, as he lis-
tened to the story of Israel’s “Birth,” when she was “baptized” in the Red
Sea, and the forces of chaos were defeated. Now, that act of re-creation was
applied specifically to himself:
Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills
moved and were shaken, because he (God) was wroth. There went up a
smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals
were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also and came down: and
darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub and did fly:
yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret
place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds
of the skies. At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds
passed, hail stones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered from the
heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire.
Yea, he sent out his arrows and scattered them; and he shook out light-
nings, and discomfited them. Then the channels of waters were seen,
and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O
Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. He sent from above, he
took me, he drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my
strong enemy, and from them which hated me: for they were too strong
for me. He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me,
because he delighted in me. The Lord rewarded me according to my
righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recom-
pensed me (Ps 18:7–20).
This caused his heart to become “light,” the very light which had been
transformed into the “words” of the Bible. Thus God’s commandments
were “pure and enlightening” (Ps 19:8) and would serve forever as “a light
unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Ps 119:105).167
After the Qumran community withdrew from the Temple at Jerusa-
lem, believing that it had been corrupted by the official priesthood, its
members continued to practice a form of the Temple mysteries in their de-
sert seclusion, claiming that they could still “atone for the earth and pay the
wicked their reward” (1QS VIII, 1–10). Although they left no precise de-
scription of these desert “mysteries”—which were to serve as Israel’s “in-
167 Franken, Old Testament Theology, 77.

76 A GREAT MYSTERY
terim cultus” until a new Temple could be built—we do know that com-
munion with the sôd by means of the afore-mentioned “Angelic Liturgy”
was one of their central features.
Originally consisting of a pair of short fragments, published by John
Strugnell in 1960,168 the “Angelic Liturgy” has more recently been aug-
mented by the discovery of additional versions of the same material, includ-
ing one from Masada, so that we can piece together a more complete pic-
ture of the Sabbath mysteries as they were held at Qumran.169 We are now
able to see an emerging picture of the “angelic” light-world which mediated
between God and the world, governed by a heptad of “Chief Princes.” This
closely approximates the sevenfold “River of Light” which we encountered in
the apocryphal literature and the writings of Philo (pp. 56–59, above). But
now, the “Seven Princes” have already come close to the Primitive Chris-
tian doctrine of the Hexaemeron (“Six Days”), which understood the story of
Creation in Genesis 1 to be a picture of the preexistent realities which first
emerged from the Light-Stream, and then served as the basis for the physi-
cal creation in Genesis 2.170 Though the six hēmera were ostensibly the “six
days” of Creation, to which must be added the “day of rest,” they actually
stood for the six ruling “Powers,” whose chief was the seventh “Power,”
i.e., Christ, making seven in all. In some formulations these were known as
the Preexistent Church.171 In Revelation these seven “chief angels” would
become the “Spirits of the Church” (Rev 1:4, 20; 3:1; 4:5; 8:2, 6). But in the
Sabbath Songs they were especially designated as “Dispensers of “Knowl-
edge”; and in the Qumran Hymns they are spoken of as “Spirits of Knowl-
edge” (1QH III, 22), showing that they were an integral part of the “Wis-
dom Mystery.”172 Indeed, the Qumran text of the Sirach 51:13–20 was spe-
cifically interpreted by the sectaries as the worshipper’s “marriage” to Wis-
dom in a Temple setting (p. 36, above). And though there is no specific
mention of the seven planets in the Qumran Liturgy, it is clear that these
168 “The Angelic Liturgy at Qumran (4q serak šhirot ‘olat haššabbat),” in Con-
gress Volume, Oxford, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum vii (Leiden, 1960), 318–
45.
169 Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition, Harvard Se-
mitic Studies (Atlanta, 1985).

170 See the section on “The Hexaemeron,” below.
171 Jean Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (London, 1964), 300–310.
172 One of the sapiential works from Cave 4 admonishes the faithful to “con-
sider the mystery of existence and take the offering of salvation and know who will
inherit glory and injustice” (4Q417).
“Spirits of Knowledge” reflected the same sevenfold cosmic structure which

mediated Wisdom’s influence to the world in Proverbs 9:1.173 Thus we read
in the Community Rule (1QS X) how God unlocks the heavenly “lights” at
the time of worship, specifically identified by A. Dupont-Sommer174 and
Geza Vermes175 as the “Liturgy of the Sabbath”:
When the heavenly lights shine out from the dwelling place of Holiness
… their renewal is a great day for the Holy of Holies, and a sign for the
unlocking of everlasting mercies at the beginning of seasons in all times
to come (1QS X, 1–3, trans. Vermes).
Though we are now in the desert, the cultic setting is still that of an
idealized Temple, and its ultimate purpose is to dispense divine righteousness
to men and cleanse them from sin:
I will declare His judgment concerning my sins, and my transgressions
shall be before my eyes as an engraved Precept. I will say to God, “My
Righteousness,” and “Author of my Goodness” to the Most High,
“Fountain of Knowledge” and “Source of Holiness …” (1QS X, 11–
12).
Especially significant is the fact that this “idealized Temple” is a source
of literal power, a power which comes in the form or God’s awesome holiness:
May the holy ones of God make holy the king of glory, who makes holy
with his holiness all the holy ones (4Q404 [4Q Shir Shabbd 31], our em-
phasis).176
This special form of “sancta contagion,” through which the worshipper
drew “holiness” from God’s dynamic Presence in the Temple, would re-
main the basis for the Christian doctrine of grace, where it was also God’s
righteousness—not man’s—which saves (Rom 10:3; Phil 3:9–10). This we
saw described in certain Psalms which spoke of “receiving righteousness
173 Compare Tobit 12:15: “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels that of-
fer the prayers of the saints and stand before the glory of the Holy One.” Also Tes-
tament of Levi 8:1–2; 1 Enoch 81:5; 87:2; 90:21; 2 Enoch 8. One should also note that
the seven branches of the Menorah in the Temple have been associated with these
seven “lights” or “angels,” who correspond to the “eyes of the Lord which run to
and fro through the whole earth” (Zech 4:10).
174 I.e., the “Angelic Liturgy” or “Songs of the Sabbath Service.” See his The
Essene Writings from Qumran (Oxford, 1961), 97, n. 3.

175 The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Harmondsworth, 1969), 210.
176 In García Martínez, Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, 422.
78 A GREAT MYSTERY
from God,” and of “clothing God’s priests with righteousness” (p. 71,
above).
But even more important is the fact that those who received God’s
holiness and attributes believed that they would actually become gods—just
as Philo had claimed in his Questions on Exodus (2:29, 40):177
[El Elyon gave me a seat among] those perfect forever
a mighty throne in the congregation of the gods (elohim).
None of the kings of the earth shall sit in it
and their nobles shall not [come near it.]
No Edomite shall be like me in glory.
And none shall be exalted save me, nor shall come against me.
For I have taken my seat in the [congregation] in the heavens,
and none [find fault with me].
I shall be reckoned with gods
and established in the holy congregation (4QMa).178
The Qumran Hymns and Community Rule also suggest that these righteous
priests would be counted one day among the “heavenly beings” (’elohim) and
the “Holy Ones” (qedoshim):
You have purified a perverse spirit of great sin so that it may stand in
assembly with the host of the holy ones, and enter into community with
the congregation of heavenly beings (1QH III, 21–22);
For the sake of Your glory You have purified man of sin in order to be
made holy for You without abominable uncleanness or faithless guilt, to
be united [with] the children of Your truth and share in the lot of Your
holy ones … to stand in the appointed place before You with the ever-
lasting host and with [Your holy] spirits (1QH XI, 10–13).
God has given them to the ones He has chosen as an everlasting posses-
sion, and has given them an inheritance in the lot of the holy ones. He
has joined their assembly with the heavenly beings to be a council of the
community … (1QS XI, 7–8).
This is also true of the priests described in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice:
O you godlike ones (’elohim) among all the holiest of the holy ones
(qedoshim); and in the divinity [of His reign rejoice, for He has estab-
Page 61, above.

177
Translated by Morton Smith; quoted in Alan Segal, Paul the Convert (New
178
Haven, 1990), 319.

lished] among the eternally holy the holiest of the holy ones (qedoshim),
and they have become for him priests (4Q400, column 1:2–3).179
Indeed, all are now in the presence of the mighty ’elohim, who worship with
the earthly Community as a single body around the merkabah, each member
directly sharing God’s glory:
[ … the minis]ters of the glorious Face in the Abo[de of the God] of
knowledge fall do[wn] before the [Cheru]bim and utter b[less]ings while
the sound of the divine wind rises[…] and there is a tumult of shouting
while their wings cause the sound of the divine [win]d to rise. The
Cherubim above the heavens bless the likeness of the Throne of the
Merkabah [and] acclaim the [majes]ty of the firmament of light beneath
the seat of His glory. And when the wheels turn, angels of holiness
come and go between His glorious wheels like visions of fire. Spirits of
supreme holiness surround them, visions of streams of fires similar to
scarlet; and [sh]ining creatures clothed in glorious brocades, many col-
ored marvelous garments, more (brilliant) than pure salt, spirits of the
living [G]od, unceasingly accompany the glory [of] the marvelous Mer-
kabah. And the sound of the wind of blessing (is mingled) with the tu-
mult of their marching, and they praise Holiness while they return on
their steps. When they rise, they rise marvelously; and when they alight
[and are s]till, the sound of joyous shouting ceases in all the camp of
God and also the win[d] of [d]ivine blessing, [and] a voice of praise […]
from the midst of all their battalions in [ … and] all the numbered ones
cry out, e[ach], each , in his pla[ce…] (trans. Vermes, based on Strugnell,
4Q400).180
The worshippers on earth were thus commingled with the Heavenly Com-
munity to become an eternal race of priests, even an “assembly of dei-
ties”:181
179 Newsom writes that “It is difficult to find appropriate translation values for
the various terms for angelic beings which occur in the Sabbath Shirot. In general, I
have translated ’elohim as ‘angels,’ and simply rendered ’elim as ‘elim’ or ‘angelic
elim.’ Since ’elohim is such an unusual term for the angels, I have tried to translate it
in ways that underscore its aura of divinity (‘godlike beings,’ ‘godlike ones,’ etc.)”
(Songs of the Sabbath, 97). She further notes that it was only “priests” who would
attain to this high calling, though she leaves open the question of whether or not
the entire Qumran Community (thanks to its rigid qualifications for membership)
considered itself to be composed of worthy priests (ibid., 62–63).
180 In Dupont-Sommer, Essene Writers, 333–34.
181 As Carol Newsom observes, the songs begin with a “stronger conscious-
ness of the human worshipping community,” and then become increasingly

80 A GREAT MYSTERY
Praise [the God of … ,] you, the gods, among the holy of holies; and in
the divinity [of his kingdom, rejoice. Because he has established] the
holy of holies among the eternal holy ones, so that for him they can be
priests [who approach the temple of his kingship,] the servants of the
Presence in the sanctuary of his glory. In the assembly of all the deities
[of knowledge, and in the council of all the spirits] of God, he has en-
graved his ordinances for all spiritual works, and his [glorious] precepts
[for those who establish] knowledge of the people of the intelligence of
his glory, the gods who approach knowledge. Eternal […]. And from
the holy source of the sanctuaries of the holy of [holies…] priests who
approach, to serve in the presence of the holy king of [the holy ones …]
of his glory. (4Q400 [4QShirShabba 1–9]).
In this way, the visions of Ezekiel (chap. 1 and 9:2) opened up onto a grand
conception of God’s “Primal Light” as it emanated from the merkabah and
then flowed down to earth in the form of mediating “angels” and “spirits,”
each bearing some divine attribute and power as a blessing to mankind. In
Christianity and Gnosticism this rich effluence of God’s luminous power
and characteristics would be called the pleroma (the “fulness”), being the total-
ity of God’s energy and attributes as they might be bestowed on others, deifying them in
the process.
In Jewish Kabbalah, the seven “spirits” would eventually become the
seven lower sephiroth182—which initially emanated from a Ruling Triad of
God’s three highest “attributes” (kether, binah and hokmah),183 thus giving a
total of ten sephiroth, or the ten preexistent characteristics of “Adam Kad-
mon,” the god intermediate between the transcendent Ein Sof and man. It
“submerged in the concentration on the heavenly sanctuary” (Songs of the Sabbath,

14). “During the course of this thirteen week cycle, the community which recites
the compositions is led through a lengthy preparation. The mysteries of the angelic
priesthood are recounted, a hypnotic celebration of the sabbatical number seven
produces an anticipatory climax at the center of the work, and the community is
then gradually led through the spiritually animate heavenly temple until the wor-
shippers experience the holiness of the merkabah and of the sabbath sacrifice as it
is conducted by the high priests of the angels” (ibid., 19).
182 According to Gershom Scholem, sephira (sing.) is related to the Hebrew sap-
pir (“sapphire”), being a part of God’s “radiance.” In Kabbalistic use, it generally

referred to the preexistent “numbers” or “ideas” from which all things were cre-
ated; also the structural “sayings,” “names,” “lights,” “stages,” “sources,” etc.,
which went into the Creation. See his Kabbalah, 99–100.
183 Compare Albright’s proto-Semitic Triad of Father, Mother, and Son (p. 15,
above).
was Adam Kadmon’s primordial characteristics that would serve as a blue-

print for the material world. Gershom Scholem believes that this mystical
world of God’s Light was one of the leading themes of both early Judaism
and Christianity; indeed, it remained determinative for Jewish Kabbalah
throughout the Middle Ages:
The throne-world is to the Jewish mystic what the pleroma, the “fulness,”
the bright sphere of divinity with its potencies, aeons, archons and do-
minions is to the Hellenistic and early Christian mystics of the period
who appear in the history of religion under the names of Gnostics and
Hermetics. The Jewish mystic, though guided by motives similar to
theirs, nevertheless expresses his vision in terms of his own religious
background. God’s pre-existing throne, which embodies and exemplifies
all forms of creation, is at once the goal and the theme of his mystical
vision (MTJM, 44).
Professor Scholem for a time suspected that the beginnings of this “Merka-
bah mysticism” went back to Qumran,184 but we have seen that it was al-
ready well established in the Wisdom literature, which held man’s deifica-
tion through union with God’s Presence in the Temple to be its ultimate
goal.
It is strange, however, that the Embracing Cherubim are not men-
tioned specifically in the Qumran literature, though the idea of man’s “mar-
riage to God”185 was as important to its authors as it was to those Jews who
left us the Talmudic and Midrashic writings. This may offer a clue as to why
the Qumran sectaries looked on the Jerusalem Temple as “defiled,” perhaps
because of the blatant sexuality of its cherubic symbols. Indeed, as Patai has
theorized, the Cherubim had been redesigned in their late erotic form
sometime during the first half of the third century B.C., when Hellenistic
art-forms and literary conventions were first accepted into Jewish wor-
ship.186 It was not long after this (mid-second century B.C.) that the Qum-
ran covenanters broke altogether with the “Hellenized” priests in Jerusalem.
To summarize, we have seen that the Jews of the Second Temple con-
sidered the Sanctuary to be much more than a place of sacrifice, or even of
instruction in God’s Torah, for it was a place where literal power flowed
down from Heaven as a stream of light-energy and was made available to

185 Compare the Qumran version of the Wisdom of Sirach, pp. 36–37, above.
186 See The Hebrew Goddess, 130–32. This “Hellenization” also included the
Septuagint translation of the Old Testament into Greek.

82 A GREAT MYSTERY
men. By having direct contact with this “light-energy”—generally mediated

in the form of God’s “Wisdom” or “Word”—the worshipper could be
“impregnated” with divine qualities and attributes, and filled with God’s
Divine Nature, metaphorically described as a “Sacred Marriage” between
the individual and the awesome Presence in the Holy of Holies. In some
writings, it was even said that the individual was divinized, and would take his
place one day amongst the gods. This was in fact a continuation of the idea
of “sancta contagion,” which filled the recipient directly with God’s holiness
and clothed him with divine righteousness, thus giving him supernatural knowl-
edge and power. Thus we have an incipient form of the Christian doctrine
of “grace,” as well as an understanding of the “Great Mystery” which Paul
would enunciate in his Epistle to the Ephesians, and which John would
explain in his doctrine of “Spiritual Indwelling.” Both, indeed, were devel-
opments of the Jewish “Wisdom Mystery” and would in time be associated
with a theory of Atonement through spiritual oneness with God (“At-One-
Ment with the Divine”) and the begetting of “new lives in Christ.” Of this,
the Embracing Cherubim would continue to be special symbols, though (as
Josephus indicated), they would remain a secret from the world at large.
THE TRIPARTITE TEMPLE SCHEME

When the Israelites encamped at Mt. Sinai—which served as the legendary
prototype for the Jerusalem Temple (Ps 68:15–17)—they were granted ac-
cess to its holy precincts according to three graduated degrees: the people
standing beyond the mountain’s base (Exod 19:12, 23); Aaron, his sons, and
the Seventy part way up (24:1); and Moses alone ascending into God’s pres-
ence at the top (19:20; 24:1), where he went to make atonement for Israel’s
sins (32:20).
This scheme later served as the pattern for the Temple, which was
looked upon as a reenactment of the great Sinai experience, with the people
again standing in the Forecourt, outside of the inner precincts; the ordinary
priests operating in the Holy Place; and the High Priest alone entering the
Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur to atone for Israel’s sins. We already saw how
Philo viewed this tripartite scheme as a “three-stage journey” along the
“Royal Road,” as the pilgrims sought God according to their individual
abilities and attainments (p. 43, above). Significantly, P. W. Skehan saw the
structure of the book of Proverbs as a three-part journey through the
“House of Wisdom,” again corresponding to the three parts of the Temple
(Prov 1:1–9:18; 10:1–22:16; 22:17–31:31).187 Thus Philo believed that God

had caused the Temple to be constructed as a “symbol of the truth” and a
“copy of Wisdom” (Who Is the Heir? 112), i.e., as an image of Wisdom’s
“light-stream” and its various degrees of radiance as it penetrated the
depths of the Sanctuary. At the same time, these gradations would serve as
an invitation to men to work their way back toward the Source of the Light,
as medieval Kabbalists would do when seeking to attain God’s Throne.
Thus it was believed that God’s “glory” came to earth by degrees, cor-
responding to a general belief in three heavens. As Jean Daniélou has shown,
the Jews had a “heaven of God,” a “heaven of stars,” and a “heaven of me-
teors.”188 The Apocalypse of Moses also speaks of three heavens (37:5), the
Testament of Levi adding that the lowest was “gloomy” (characterized by “wa-
ter”), the second holding the “armies of heaven,” and the highest being the
place where the “Great Glory” dwells (2:1–10; 3:1–4). It was also in the
highest of these three heavens that Paul claimed to hear “secret doctrines”
which he was not to reveal to others (2 Cor 12:4). The same three heavens
entered Christianity as an “abode in heaven,” “the delights of paradise,” and
“the splendor of the city,” all granted to men “as each is or shall be wor-
thy.”189 Jesus also taught that the saved would bring forth fruit “some an
hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold” (Matt 13:8, 23), corre-
sponding to Paul’s three degrees of glory, these being “like the sun, the moon,
and the stars” (1 Cor 15:41). The Church Fathers continued for many years
to believe in three heavens, for example Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 5.36.2),
Clement of Alexandria (Miscellanies, 6.13, 14), and Tertullian (On Monogamy,
4.67), showing that the layout of the Jerusalem Temple was an important
link between the Jewish Wisdom Mystery and the Christian “Great Mys-
tery,” to which we now turn.
187 Studies in Israelite Poetry and Wisdom (Washington, DC, 1971), 27–45. Skehan
also believes that the collection was deliberately arranged into 930 lines, numeri-
cally equivalent to the mystical values of the names “Solomon,” “David,” and
“Israel,” thus corresponding to the legendary wisdom attained by various heroes
and pilgrims in the Temple.
188 Theology of Jewish Christianity, 174.
189 Papias, Relics of the Elders, 5.
3 CHRISTIAN WISDOM AND THE MARRIAGE
MYSTERY
CHRISTOLOGY AS SOPHIOLOGY
History records a wide diversity of opinions in the early Church concerning
the exact nature and mission of Jesus. Our study, however, is concerned
chiefly with his creative and redemptive activity as “Wisdom” or “Light”
(John 8:12), first revealed to the apostles during the Feast of Tabernacles on
the Mount of Transfiguration (7:37–39; Matt 17:1–9; Mark 9:2–10; Luke
9:28–36). Most of all, we are interested in the effects which the Jewish
“Wisdom” tradition had on developing Christian doctrine.1
The significance of the Temple to the Jews of Jesus’ day appears to
have been expressed in two broadly contrasting ways: (1) as a place where
sacrifices could expiate guilt; and (2) as a place where the divine Presence
could infuse and transform men. Not surprisingly, the Church from the
very start viewed Christ’s mission in two similarly contrasting ways: (1) as a
cultically inspired Latin soteriology, which viewed God and Christ as “law-
givers” and “judges,” anxious to punish the guilty and provide the faithful
with a “forensic” solution to the problem of sin; and (2) as a Wisdom-
inspired Greek soteriology, which viewed them as the Eternal Reality with
which men must be united in order to be re-created and divinized as “sons
of God.”2
We have already seen how certain Jews viewed the Temple as a source
of transforming power, a concept which found its best expression in the
1 Pp. 50–55, above. Jesus’ appearance on a “mountain apart” instead of the
Temple was undoubtedly necessitated because he was not yet able to claim the
Temple as his own, nor would he have been allowed by the temporal authorities
who controlled the Jerusalem Sanctuary. Recall that the Temple was merely a
model of the “mountain” of the Lord, i.e., Sinai (Pss 24:3; 68:17).
2 W. Adams Brown, “Expiation and Atonement,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics, ed. James Hastings (New York, 1925), 5:641–50.
85
86 A GREAT MYSTERY
“Wisdom Mystery,” or man’s spiritual “marriage” to God through the me-

diation of the “Logos/Wisdom.” In Christianity, this gave rise to Paul’s
“Great Mystery,” with its idea of becoming “one flesh” with “Christ/
Wisdom,” as well as the Johannine mystery of man’s henosis3 with God
through his mediating “Word.” As we shall show later on, the Embracing
Cherubim would be remembered as one of the chief symbols of this all-
important spiritual communion, later epitomized by English writers as
man’s “at-one-ment” with the Divine. At the same time, however, their
extreme sacredness precluded their being widely written about, a situation
not unlike that of the Eleusinian Mysteries, of which most people were also
well aware, though no one left us any details concerning their exact nature.
The precise meaning of the many titles ascribed to Jesus during the
formative stages of Christian theology, especially that of “Son of God,” has
not yet been thoroughly worked out. Among the first Christians there were
still Jews who believed that Jesus had been “adopted” and “elevated” as
God’s “son” (cf. 2 Sam 7:14); this supposedly occurred at the time of his
baptism, as reflected in Mark’s early account (1:9–11), as well as in the Co-
dex Bezae and the Old Latin Versions of Luke 3:22. Both of these retain the
adoptionist formula of Ps 2:7 to describe his special anointing: “You are my
son, this day I have begotten you.”4
Others understood that this “adoption” or “elevation” took place at
the time of his Resurrection, as stated in Acts 13:32–33: “What God prom-
ised to the fathers, he has fulfilled for us their children by raising Jesus, as it
is written in Psalm Two: ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you.”5
Later on, the idea that the Holy Spirit had somehow entered into the pro-
cess was additionally recognized: “Born of the seed of David according to
the flesh; designated Son of God in power according to a spirit of holiness,
as of resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:3–4).
Thus there was “a growth in awareness … that what Jesus was recog-
nized to be after the resurrection he must have been still earlier.” Luke and
Matthew therefore claimed that “Jesus was the Son of God, not only at his
3 Literally “becoming one” (based on the Greek numerical adjective, hen, i.e.,
“one”). See John 17:20–23.

4 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Luke I–IX, Anchor Bible (New York, 1981), 485; Rich-
ard Longenecker, The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity (Grand Rapids, 1981), 71–
72.
5 Quoted from Mary in the New Testament, by Raymond E. Brown and Paul J.
Achtemeier (Philadelphia, 1978), 89.

CHRISTIAN WISDOM AND THE MARRIAGE MYSTERY 87
conception, but through his conception.”6 Accordingly, we read in their na-

tivity accounts that the child was begotten through the Holy Spirit (Matt
1:20): “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most
High will cast a shadow over you. Therefore the child to be born will be
holy; he will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
Finally, the Johannine and Pauline writings stated explicitly for the first
time that Jesus was the incarnation of a preexistent divine Being—the
“Logos/Wisdom” (John 1:1, 14; 17:5; Phil 2:6–8). John even goes so far as
to identity him as “God” (John 1:1; 20:28), and Paul possibly does the same
in Romans 9:8. This is significant because there are statements throughout
the Gospels and the Epistles suggesting that Christ was none other than the
Old Testament Yahweh (compare, for example, Isa 40:3 with Matt 3:3;
Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23; and Isa 45:23 with Phil 2:10–11). Certainly,
by ascribing the title “Lord” (kyrios) to him (1 Cor 8:6; 16:22; Jas 5:7–8; Acts
11:20; Rom 10:9; Phil 2:9–11), it would have been inferred that he was the
one whom the Septuagint called kyrios, the Greek translation for Hebrew
adonai, “My Lord.”
Mark, for example, begins his account by identifying Christ as the
“Son of God” (1:1), whose advent in the desert was announced by the Bap-
tist (v. 3), though the words which he quotes allude clearly to Yahweh (Isa
40:3). Later, however, he again tells us that Jesus was baptized, filled with
the Holy Spirit, and declared to be God’s “beloved Son” (1:10–11). This in
fact parallels the famous Ebionite fragment from the Gospel of the Hebrews, as
preserved in Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah:
And it came to pass that when the Lord was come up out of the water,
the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended upon him and rested upon
him and said to him, My Son, in all the prophets I was waiting for thee
that thou shouldest come and I might rest in thee (cf. Sir 24:7 and Wis
7:27–8). For thou art my rest, thou art my first-begotten Son, that reig-
nest forever.7
Here we are in the presence of a well-developed Ebionite Christology,
based on the figure of Wisdom as the “True Prophet,” or the divine
“Power” which descended in various degrees on Israel’s greatest heroes,
beginning with Adam, making them “prophets and friends of God” (Wis
7:27). But it finally came to rest in its full and complete form in Jesus
6 Fitzmeyer, Luke I–IX, 340. Italics added.

7 In Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha (Philadelphia,
1963), I: 163–4.
88 A GREAT MYSTERY
(Clementine Homilies, 3.20). We shall also see later on that the “True Prophet”
preexisted with a female companion, “Female Prophecy,” who separated
from him in order to create the material world, becoming in the process the
source of the “lesser” Old Testament revelation (the “False Pericopes”). By
reuniting with her Husband, their redeemed offspring would provide the
bodies for Wisdom’s “spiritual seed” (Clementine Recognitions, 1.45).
Yet we also note that Mark goes on to demonstrate that Jesus “knew
himself to be and referred to himself as the divine Heavenly Man (or ‘Son
of Man’)” who is apparently to be “identified with the celestial figure of
Daniel’s vision” (Dan 7:13; Mark 8:31, 38; 9:9, 12, 31; 10:33, 45; 13:26;
14:21, 42, 62).8 R. G. Hamerton-Kelly therefore concludes that Mark con-
tains a Christology “which uses both the Wisdom myth and the Son of Man
and then relinquishes the former in favor of the latter.”9
8 Frederick C. Grant, Mark, Interpreter’s Bible, 7:642. See Mark 8:31, 38; 9:9,
12, 31; 10:33, 45; 13:26; 14:21, 41, 62.

9 Pre-Existence (Cambridge, 1973), 56; italics added. As far as the mysterious
identification of Jesus and Yahweh (Mark 1:3) is concerned, Daniel’s identification

of the Son of Man as the younger of two gods (Dan 7:13) closely resembles Ugaritic
and Tyrian myths of the father-god, El, and his son, where the latter derives his
power and authority from the older figure (see ibid., 39–40). This would agree with
an early distinction between El and Yahweh in Israelite religion, making the
Danielic “Son of Man” correspond to Yahweh, and the “Ancient of Days” to El.
Yahweh further corresponded to Baal (the son of El) in early Israelite syncretism,
where Yahweh has “Baal” as “either an alternative name or a co-god.” Francis I.
Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY,
1980), 49. This is significant because Yahweh was generally assimilated to Baal (the
Son) in the Monarchic or pre-Monarchic period (cf. Hos 2:16: “She shall no more
call me ‘My Baal’”), suggesting to a number of scholars that Yahweh was originally
separate from El, the Father. Otto Eissfeldt, for instance, writes that El once “en-
joyed a monarchic status … superior to that of the other gods and among them
Yahweh.” “El and Yahweh,” Journal of Semitic Studies 1 (1956): 29, a view also held
by Helmer Ringgren in Israelite Religion (Philadelphia, 1966), 44. T. J. Meek sees this
distinction preserved in Deuteronomy 32:8–9, where El Elyon assigns the leader-
ship of the various nations to the bene ha ‘El, including Yahweh, who is given Israel
as “his portion.” University of Toronto Quarterly 7 (1939): 196. See also Cyrus Gordon
(addendum to Before Columbus, 4th printing, NY, 1973, 163), who claims that Yah-
weh-Elohim is Elohim’s son; also J. A. Emerton, “The Origin of the Son of Man
Imagery,” Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1950): 242, who raises the possibility that
“as late as the exile, Yahweh was subordinated to Elyon in parts of the Jerusalem
cultus,” since El (or El Elyon) “was recognized as formally superior to—though
not necessarily more prominent—than Yahweh” (ibid., 240). Compare also the
The so-called “Q” source, however, apparently reconciled these two

positions from the start, for it not only calls Jesus the “Son of Man,” but
describes him as the special one in whom Wisdom dwells, or even as Wis-
dom herself. James M. Robinson thus speaks of “Q” as “a book of the Acts
of Sophia,”10 and he shows that she was associated with the Son of Man “in
the highest degree,” making him the “Wise Man.” Indeed, as the “Son of
Man,” Jesus/Wisdom still called men to repentance, was rejected, and re-
turned to heaven, having found no earthly dwelling place. Luke 9:58 (=
Matt 8:20) likewise stresses the Son of Man’s homelessness on earth, like
that of the earlier Wisdom figure (see p. 26, above). In Luke 7:33–35 (=
Matt 11:18–19), Jesus and John the Baptist are both depicted as rejected
envoys of Wisdom, though Jesus is on a much higher level, being also the
“Son of Man.” Luke 11:31–32 (= Matt 12:38–47; cf. Luke 11:29–30) di-
rectly describes the Son of Man as the “Wise Man” and the “Prophet” who
is greater than Solomon or Jonah; and Luke 13:34–35 (= Matt 23:37–39)
laments over a Jerusalem which stones the “prophets,” still another refer-
ence to Wisdom and her envoys. Luke 12:10 (= Mark 12:32), on the other
hand, emphasizes the “hiddenness” of the Son of Man’s authority, an au-
thority which he ultimately derived from the Spirit—the latter being com-
monly identified by the rabbis with Wisdom. In short, it was possible to
identify Jesus as both the one who was “filled with Wisdom” at the time of
his baptism, and a preexistent heavenly being, either “Wisdom” herself or
the “Son of Man,” one personally possessing the power of life and resurrec-
tion. This ability he finally demonstrated when he fulfilled his mission and
was “set at the right hand of God,” and given a “name above all other
names” (Heb 1).
views of H. S. Nyberg and Geo Widengren, who point to Genesis 14:18–24 as evi-
dence that early Yahwist kings recognized Melchizedec’s god, El Elyon, as superior
to their own Yahweh. In time, of course, “the traits of the Father-god and El were
attached to Yahweh;” Theodore Vriezen, The Religion of Ancient Israel, (London,
1967), 165, and “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in spite of the differences
in the names, was identified in his essence with Yahweh” (Eissfeldt, “El and Yah-
weh,” 28). El henceforth came to be thought of as “a revelation in the past of the
God who manifested himself later by his real name of Yahweh” (Exod 6:3; see
ibid., 36). Thus, whereas “El” still presides over the pantheon of bene ha ‘Elyon (Ps
82), he is now officially understood to be identical with Yahweh (Deut 6:4)—who
originally had no pantheon of his own.
10 “Basic Shifts in German Theology,” Interpretation 16 (1962): 76–97, 83. In
Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence, 24.

90 A GREAT MYSTERY
Hamerton-Kelly therefore interprets the above passages as showing

that “Q” in some sense already identified Wisdom with the Son of Man, “a
title which probably suggested a heavenly origin for its designee,” particu-
larly “in connection with his rejection by men.”11 Many recent scholars
agree with him that both Mark and “Q” understood the “Son of Man” to
be a transcendent, preexistent Being,12 a title already connected by “Q” with
familiar motifs from the Wisdom tradition. Whether or not Mark began
with a similar view, or subsequently brought together disparate sources de-
scribing Jesus as either “Wisdom” or the “Son of Man,” is of course impos-
sible to answer at present, though he appears to have at least started out
with an identification of Jesus and the figure of Wisdom.
Other traces of a preexistence Christology (which never mention con-
ception or birth)13 can be found in both the incarnation-Christology of John
(1:1–14, 18) and the Pauline letters (Phil 2:5–7; 1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:15–17). Yet
it is significant that these are again associated mostly with the Wisdom tra-
dition. The Johannine passages, for example, clearly derive from descrip-
tions of Wisdom as “Creator” and “Logos,” as does the Colossian state-
ment that “all things” are “by him” (“What is richer than Wisdom, maker of
all things?” Wis 8:5). The Philippian passage, on the other hand, merely
states that Jesus was once “in the form of God” and “equal to God,”
though he “emptied” himself (ekenose) of this “equality” before undertaking
his earthly mission (2:6–7). Whether this is to be understood in terms of the
indwelling Wisdom (Wis 3–4; 18:13),14 or some other preexistent redeemer-
figure (e.g., the Son of Man, who eventually receives homage as the “Lord
of spirits” and “Lord of Kings,” 1 Enoch 63),15 or even as Yahweh himself,
is not clear, though it has been pointed out that the phrase “in the form of
God” (en morphe theou) commonly meant in the “image of God” (eikon theou)
in contemporary Hellenism (e.g., Corpus Hermeticum 1.12–14), and would
11 Ibid., 46–47. See his general discussion of “Q,” pp. 22–47.

12 Ibid., 34–47, summarizing the work of H. E. Tödt, The Son of Man in the Syn-
optic Tradition (Philadelphia, 1965); Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus
(New York, 1967); F. H. Borsch, The Son of Man (Philadelphia, 1967); and Morna
Hooker, The Son of Man in Mark (Montreal, 1967). See also Frederick Grant,
“Mark,” 642.
13 Mary in the New Testament, 90, notes.
14 See, for example, D. Georgi, “Der vorpaulinische Hymnus Phil. 2:6–11,” in
Zeit und Geschichte, ed. E. Dinkler (Tübingen, 1964). In Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence,

165–66.
15 Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence, 167–68.
probably have caused one to think of the traditional Wisdom-figure, who

was God’s “mirror” and “image” (Wis 7:26), as he is in Hebrews 1:3 (“in
the brightness of his glory, the express image [eikon] of his nature”; cf. Wis
7:25ff).
Thus there was a great diversity of opinions concerning the exact na-
ture of Jesus, even as they are preserved in the Church’s surviving Canon.
Taking the basic fact of the Resurrection as a starting point, there was a
gradual discussion and analysis of the various stages of Jesus’ life, until each
was revealed as a link in the miraculous chain of events which culminated in
his victory over death. In their book, Mary and the New Testament, Catholic
scholars have described this evolving awareness of Christ’s true nature as “a
chronological sequence in which a moment of christological understanding
is moved back from the resurrection (early preaching) to the baptism and
ministry (Mark) and finally to the conception (Matthew, Luke).”16 Even
before that, Christ must have been the incarnation of a preexistent heavenly
being (John and Paul), one whom most New Testament writers identified in
some way with the Wisdom/Logos. We must therefore conclude that the
earliest explanations of Jesus’ divine nature came directly from the Wisdom
tradition, as in Jesus’ baptismal adoption and anointing by the “Spirit/
Wisdom.” The same tradition was also associated with the first claims of his
divine preexistence, either as Yahweh, Yahweh’s “Logos-Word,” or the
“Son of Man,” he who was second in command under the mysterious “An-
cient of Days.”17 In all cases, however, this preexistent being was not God
16 Page 475. See note 5, above, for reference.

17 J. A. Emerton has argued that the Danielic “Son of Man” can have been
none other than Yahweh, and that the “Ancient of Days” must have been El, the
Father-god of the Canaanite/Israelite pantheon (“The Origins of the Son of Man
Imagery,” 225–42). But Judaism had already begun to conflate El and Yahweh into
a single “Yahweh-Elohim” (Deut 6:4), or simply “Yahweh.” N. Schmidt, “The Son
of Man in the Book of Daniel,” JBL 19 (1900): 22ff, believed that one of the “One
God’s” roles as “dragon-slayer” (cf. Rev 12:7ff) must have been transferred during
the intertestamental period to a second divine being, the archangel Michael, while
Yahweh himself remained God. Thus “(Schmidt) seems to think that Yahwe [sic]
was, as it were, split into two. Yahwe proper remained God, and sat, somewhat
silently, in the background, while Yahwe the slayer of the dragon was reduced to
angelic status and identified with Michael” (summarized by Emerton, “Son of
Man,” 239). But Emerton goes on to point out that these two new figures (Yahweh
as the “Ancient of Days,” and Michael as the “Son of Man”) were not modifica-
tions of Jewish monotheism—both derived from a single “Yahweh-Elohim”—but
the original form of the myth, reflecting a much older Canaanite/Israelite theology
92 A GREAT MYSTERY
the Father—who never appeared directly to men—but his mediator, appear-

ing chiefly as his agent in the Temple. Basically, then, each of the Wisdom-
figures whom we have inspected so far was a mediator-figure, which helps us
to explain why they were so often used as synonyms for each other.18
of a separate El and Yahweh. John J. Collins, starting from the late Maccabean
account in Daniel 7, agrees with Emerton and Schmidt that during the second cen-
tury B.C. the “Ancient of Days” was indeed identified as the lone “Yahweh-
Elohim,” while the “Son of Man” was thought of his “archangel” Michael. “The
Son of Man and the Saints of the Most High in the Book of Daniel,” JBL 93
(1979): 50–66. Nevertheless, he too acknowledges that there must have been an
earlier “Canaanite” version of the myth (ibid., 53)—presumably similar to the myth
proposed by Emerton, and in which the “Son of Man” would have been the “Son
of El.” His true identity was in fact verified in Acts 7:56, when Stephen saw the
“Son of Man” standing at the right hand of the Father. Significantly, Paul’s theol-
ogy of “One God the Father, and One Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 8:6) also marks a
return to the original “Father-Son” paradigm of the Canaanites and Israelites, as
does John’s “God” (ho theos, with the article) and “the Word who was God” (theos,
without the article), as we read in John 1:1. Compare also Philo’s distinction be-
tween ho theos, “the God,” and his Logos, who is simply theos, “a God” (On Dreams,
1. 228). Origen makes the same distinction in his Commentary on John (7.2).
18 Other titles which were applied to Jesus included “Prophet,” either the
“Spirit-filled prophet” predicted in Isaiah 61:1–2 (= Luke 4:18–19; 11:49), an un-

named prophet (Mark 6:15; 8:28; John 6:14; 7:40, 52), or the “Prophet like unto
Moses” (Deut 18:15, 18 = Acts 3:22), again denoting one in whom Wisdom re-
sided, making him a “friend of God and a prophet” (Wis 7:27), i.e., an “envoy” of
Wisdom (Matt 7:24–27; Luke 7:31–35; 11:49), or Wisdom’s “teacher” (didaskalos,
Greek for rabboni, “Master,” Mark 5:35; John 1:38; 20:16), all of which would have
made Jesus a manifestation of some mediating figure. Yet 14 times in the Synoptic
Gospels he claimed to be no less than God’s “Son” by calling him “Father,” or
even “Abba” (Aramaic for “Daddy,” Mark 14:36), and he taught the disciples to do
the same (Matt 6:9; Luke 11:2; Rom 8:15–16; Gal 4:6). This went beyond the figu-
rative idea of “adoption” (cf. Exod 4:22; 2 Sam 7:14), because it brought with it an
accusation of blasphemy and led to Jesus’ death (Matt 26:65–66; John 19:7). And
though he was initially reticent to accept the title “Messiah”—until his true nature
was vindicated (Mark 8:29–31)—he eventually admitted to being the “Anointed
One” (christos = mašiah, Matt 16:16), a title which he then equated with both “Son
of God” and “Son of Man” (Matt 26:63–64). Joseph A. Fitzmyer sees these last
identifications as the “springboard” to the entire messianic tradition in the New
Testament. “Son of David in Mt. 22:41–46,” in Essays on the Semitic Background of the
New Testament (Missoula, 1978), 125. This was especially significant because the
Jews had never expected the Messiah to be a “Son of God” in the literal sense,
A scriptural bridge between the Jewish Wisdom tradition and Christian

sophiology was the Gospel of Thomas, a work which describes Jesus in the
traditional Wisdom-categories, but never as “Christ,” “Lord,” or “Son of
God.”19 Stevan L. Davies has in fact made a good case for believing that
this important work was actually written before the canonical Gospels,
probably as early as A.D. 50–70,20 making it roughly contemporary with the
Epistles of Paul.
Based on extensive comparisons between Thomas and the Wisdom lit-
erature—both within and without the Church—he now argues persuasively
that this important tractate, discovered in Upper Egypt around 1946, was
not a “gnostic reworking” of earlier Gospel materials, as many at first sup-
posed, but a compilation containing an independent nucleus of original ma-
terial which “may be as old or even older than Q,” the source used by Syn-
optic Gospel writers.21 Other researchers, such as Helmut Koester, claimed
as early as 1968 that Thomas was a “sayings collection … more primitive
there being no “Second God” in the monotheist’s heaven. The title “King of the
Jews” (Mark 15:26–32) was also a reflection of this messianic identification, be-
cause it had widely been expected that the Messiah would be a Davidic King (2
Sam 7:13; Isa 11:1–5; John 6:15). Jesus finally connected these titles with the “Mel-
chizedec priest” and “Son of Man” who would return “in glory” to be “seated on
the right hand of God” (Matt 26:64; Mark 14:62; Luke 22:69), a prophecy which
drew on Psalm 110:1–4 (“The LORD said to my Lord, sit thou on my right hand
… Thou are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec”). In Acts 7:55, the
“Son of Man” is once more shown to be “Wisdom,” or God’s “glory” (cf. Wis
7:25), just as John identifies the “Son” as God’s “glory” (John 1:14; 1:41; 3:16; 3:35;
4:25; 5:26; 9:35; 11:4; 14:13; 17:1; 19:7; 20:31). Thus the Christian “Messiah/Son” is
again seen to be a variation of the Jewish “Wisdom/Word.” But the Son is also said
to be “Lord” (kyrios, 20:28; 1 Cor 8:6), this time pointing to Yahweh, the Old Tes-
tament kyrios. Yet all of these titles make Jesus second to the Father in importance
(John 10:39; 13:16; 15:13), being the Father’s “Mediator” (14:6; 1 Tim 2:5; Heb 8:6;
9:15; 12:25). The Arians, during the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century,
in fact continued to see Christ as a created being who was begotten by the Father
(cf. LXX Prov 8:22–24). See also pp. 14, 26–27, above, and note 24, concerning
Christ as a “Second Power” in heaven.
19 Stevan L. Davies, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom (New York,
1983), 81, 98–99.

20 Ibid., 146–47.
21 Ibid., 17.
94 A GREAT MYSTERY
than the Gospels.”22 Gilles Quispel, a year later, demonstrated that it was
written independently of the canonical Gospels, rather than as a Gnostic
modification thereof,23 a conclusion with which Davies’ feels “most schol-
ars now agree.”24 Finally, Kendrick Grobel has shown that little, if anything,
in Thomas is Gnostic at all.25 Some who would still list Thomas among the
texts of “Gnosticism” (mainly because it was discovered bound together
with predominantly Gnostic works) have even theorized that its admitted
lack of definite Gnostic characteristics was probably “an instrument of
Gnostic propaganda designed to lure the unsuspecting away from ortho-
doxy and into the ranks of heresy.”26
THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS AND THE CHRISTIAN WISDOM MYSTERY

The genuineness of the Gospel of Thomas as an early Christian document be-
comes especially apparent when we compare it with elements from the
Wisdom tradition which are contained in the oldest portions of the canoni-
cal New Testament. But that it is pre-Gnostic becomes evident when we
compare it with the Old Testament Wisdom tradition, whose themes it per-
petuates and develops in a manner consistent with the teachings of the ca-
nonical New Testament. Thomas is therefore a link between Jewish Wisdom
traditions—especially those connected with the Temple—and the Christi-
anity of the New Testament. We shall also discover that it is an important
link leading to the Gnostic “Bridal Chamber” rite, as described some eighty
or so years later in the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip and in subsequent
Gnostic texts.
22 In James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories through Early Christi-

anity (Philadelphia, 1971), 186.
23 “Gnosis and the New Sayings of Jesus,” Eranos Jahrbuch 38 (1969): 271.
24 Davies, Gospel of Thomas, 4.
25 “How Gnostic Is the Gospel of Thomas?” New Testament Studies 8 (1962):
367–73.
26 R. McLain Wilson, Studies in the Gospel of Thomas (London, 1960), 13. See also
H. E. W. Turner and Hugh Montifiore, Thomas and the Evangelists (Naperville, IL,
1962), in which it is noted that “the problem … remains of a document probably
compiled and obviously used by gnostics in which many of the distinctive gnostic
ideas are either completely absent or left on the level of inference” (83). H. J.
Schoeps also claims that Thomas goes back to the “milieu and thought-circle of
ancient Jewish Christianity,” and is therefore actually anti-gnostic. “Judenchristen-
tum und Gnosis,” in Origini dello Gnosticismo, ed. U. Bianchi (Leiden, 1967), 528.
We have already noted that Stevan L. Davies has attempted to show

that Thomas was written between A.D. 50 and 70. Helmut Koester, how-
ever, suggests that the basis of Thomas must have been an even earlier col-
lection of Jesus’ sayings which taught that “the kingdom is uniquely present
in Jesus’ eschatological preaching, and that eternal wisdom about man’s true
self is disclosed in his words.”27 This, he concludes, must have been a “very
primitive” version of “Q,” one “in which Jesus’ radicalized eschatology of
the kingdom and his revelation of divine wisdom in his own words were domi-
nant motifs.”28 In fact, he suggests that “Q” itself was a “secondary ver-
sion” of this sayings collection, making Thomas the older of the two, since
“Q” adds certain “apocalyptic expectations concerning the Son of Man”
which are missing from Thomas.29 The inclusion of these virtually unaltered
Wisdom-sayings in Thomas takes us back to the very oldest layers of Chris-
tian history, just after the death of Philo (ca. A.D. 40), who was himself a
witness to the continuing existence of these Wisdom-themes in the con-
temporary world of Jesus (ca. A.D. 30).
Davies’ careful analysis of the relationship between Thomas and the
Wisdom tradition is too detailed to repeat in its entirety, but the following
general points should be noted, showing how closely Thomas fits into the
historical developments which we have been considering.
Both the Wisdom books and Thomas begin with the premise that
God’s “Wisdom” or “Word” created everything which we see, and is there-
fore to be found in all things, including the self. The Wisdom of Solomon
declares that Wisdom “stretches in might from pole to pole and effectively
orders things” (8:1). This includes the soul of man, who is a subsidiary
“stream” derived from her “river” (Sir 24:30), and a “copy, fragment or ray”
of her light (Philo, On the Creation of the World, 146). Deuteronomy 30:10–15
had also taught that God’s word is within us, sufficient to guide us if we will
but hearken to it. Job 28:20–27, commenting on this same passage, identi-
fies this indwelling word as “Wisdom,” but cautions that she remains hid-
den from most of us (cf. Prov 1:28). Baruch 3:29–4:1 adds that she de-
scended to earth as a special gift to Jacob and admonishes his descendants
to seek her diligently and to “walk toward the shining of her light.”
Thomas continually speaks of this vital search for Wisdom’s hidden but
ubiquitous light. Jesus, identified as Wisdom, therefore says in Logion 77: “I
27 In Trajectories, 186.
28 Ibid., 186; italics added.
29 Ibid., 187.
96 A GREAT MYSTERY
am the Light which is above them all, I am in all things;30 all things came
forth from me, and all things reached me. Cleave a piece of wood I am
there; lift up the stone and you will find me there.” In a later passage, he
adds that “whosoever is near me is near to the fire” (Log. 82), and he scolds
the disciples for failing to recognize him: “You test the face of the sky and
of the earth, and him who is before your face you have not known” (Log.
91). He therefore encourages them to diligently “Seek, and you will find”
(Log. 92), for “whosoever seeks will find, and whoever knocks, it will be
opened unto him” (Log. 94).
By comparing the various contexts in which it appears, Davies has
shown that Thomas frequently uses the word “Kingdom,” where other au-
thors use the words “light” or “Wisdom.” “Kingdom” is therefore a syno-
nym for the omnipresent Wisdom and her power. We accordingly read that
“the Kingdom is within you and it is without you.” In fact, if you say “The
Kingdom is in heaven, then the birds in heaven will precede you there”
(Log. 3). In another saying, the disciples want to know when the “new
world” (= Kingdom) will come; Jesus’ answer is that “What you expect has
come, but you know it not” (Log. 51). Those who are unaware of it are like
the woman carrying a jar full of meal. “While she was walking, the handle of
the jar broke. The meal streamed out behind her on the road. She did not
know it, she noticed no accident. After she came to her home, she put the
jar down and found it empty” (Log. 97). The Kingdom is therefore like a
“treasure hidden in a field,” unknown to its owner (Log. 109), and spread
upon the earth, though unseen by men (Log. 113).
The significance of these statements is twofold. First of all, men are
ignorant of the omnipresent Kingdom because of their blindness—a blind-
ness which came upon them through the Fall. This “blindness” amounts to
a kind of “dualism” (not to be confused with “Gnostic dualism”) because it
failed to comprehend the light which Wisdom has dispersed throughout all
things (compare the Gospel of John: “And the light shineth in darkness,
and the darkness comprehendeth it not … He was in the world, and the
world knew him not,” 1:5, 9–10). This was in fact another example of the
“Homeless Wisdom,” who remained unrecognized by Israel and an “alien”
in the world (p. 89, above).
30See Davies’ note, Gospel of Thomas, 157, and 167, for the emendation of “the
All” (a later Gnostic term) to “all things,” which is closer to the language of the
Wisdom tradition.
Secondly, men are unaware of their divine potential: “Adam came into
existence from a great Power (dynamis), and a great wealth, but he did not
become worthy of you. For if he had been worthy, he would not have
tasted death” (Log. 85). Since men first came from Wisdom (cf. Wis 7:21–
29), they should realize that both the self and the world outside contain the
“Kingdom,” if they would but look for it (Thomas, Log. 3, 24).
One of the chief objectives of Jesus’ teaching in Thomas is therefore
that of recognition. “Discovery of the light or Kingdom is made through
the discovery of one’s own nature and the nature of all creation. This dis-
covery collapses time into a unity; the present is both the beginning and
end.”31 Ernst Käsemann detected a similar scheme in the Gospel of John,
where the author’s Prologue “places the community … in the situation of
the beginning where the Word of God came forth and called the world out
of darkness into light and life. This beginning is not a past occurrence in
saving history which is lost forever. It is instead a new reality eschatologi-
cally revealed … The community under the Word exists because of the
place granted it in the presence of the Creator from its ever new experience
of the first day of Creation in its own life.”32
Thomas further correlates this “restored paradise” and the rediscovery
of one’s divine potential with the doctrine of man’s preexistence and heav-
enly origin (“Blessed is he who was before he came into being”; Log. 19).
Thus, a “new creation” should reveal once again the original light and “im-
ages” which God transmitted to things at the time of the world’s founda-
tion. In particular, Man’s own light still contains “the image of the light of
the Father” (Log. 83). This he received through God’s creative Wisdom as a
copy of the Father’s personal likeness. In fact, the whole of creation is but a
copy of the heavenly world,33 as Philo had earlier explained: “If the part is
an image of an image, then it is obvious that the whole is too” (On the Crea-
tion of the World, 25). This naturally includes the individual soul, within
whose heavenly radiance there lies concealed the Divine Image: “If they ask
you, ‘From whence have you originated?’ say to them, ‘We have come from
the Light, where the Light has originated through itself. It stood and it
31 Ibid., 78.
32 The Testament of Jesus (Philadelphia, 1968), 53. Quoted in Davies, Gospel of
Thomas, 107.
33 Compare Wis 9:8, where the author shows that the Temple was created ac-
cording to a preexistent image; also Philo, On Flight and Finding, 101, which says that
Wisdom (= the Logos) is herself an image of God; and On the Confusion of Tongues,
101. See Winston, Wisdom of Solomon, 187, 203–5.
98 A GREAT MYSTERY
revealed itself in their image” (Log. 50).34 Rediscovery of this “image”

within the radiance of the soul is tantamount to restoring men to the King-
dom as it existed at the beginning: “You shall find the Kingdom because
you came from there, and you shall go there again” (Log. 49).
Recognition of this hidden “treasure” (Log. 109) is of utmost impor-
tance for gaining salvation: “If they say to you, ‘Who are you?,’ say to them,
‘We are the sons and we are the elect of the Living Father” (Log. 50). This
is identical to learning that “the Kingdom is within” (Log. 3), for the author
adds that “If you will know yourselves, then you will be known and you will
know that you are the sons of the Living Father. But if you do not know
yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty.” Stated in another
way, one must discover the “man of light” within himself, which contains
the same light which “lights up the world” (Log. 24), i.e., the “image of the
Father’s light” (Log. 83)—which for Thomas is also the light of Wisdom
which permeates and sustains all things (Log. 77). If one does not recognize
its presence, “there is darkness.”
The Wisdom of Solomon had already taught that one can become a
“son of the Living Father” by discovering one’s divine origin and essential
kinship with Wisdom (7:24; 8:1, 3),35 being guided in the “way of truth” by
her “lamp of righteousness” (5:56).36 Such a one was said to be a “son of
God” (5:5), and a “child of the Lord” (2:13), whose Father is God (2:16).37
But such a claim also depends on the fact that one was already derived from
God’s Wisdom (Philo, On the Creation of the World, 146), or (as Thomas says),
“as a son of God, (he) came forth from the light.”38
This realization of divine potential is also expressed in a number of
other ways in Thomas. He speaks of “coming from the light” (Log. 50), of
“having light within” (Log. 24), and thus of “coming to the light” (“When
you come into the light, what will you do?” Log. 11). He also speaks of
“coming from the Kingdom” (Log. 49), “having the Kingdom within”
(Log. 3), or of “returning to the Kingdom” (Log. 49).39 Yet all such state-
ments adhere closely to the basic theory of the Wisdom books, namely that
“all persons come from Wisdom, have Wisdom within, which will allow
34 Davies, Gospel of Thomas, 66–67.

35 Ibid., 54–55, quoting Winston, Wisdom of Solomon, 38.
36 Davies, Gospel of Thomas, 55, 48.
37 Ibid., 48.
38 Ibid., 55; italics in the original.
39 Ibid., 56.
them, if they utilize it, to find Wisdom,”40 who will then make them “sons
of God.” (Here the parallel to the New Testament doctrine of being “be-
gotten” as “sons of God” by the Holy Spirit—the rabbinic version of Wis-
dom—is clear.)
Yet in Thomas one does not gain salvation solely by “knowing oneself,”
or by discovering that one is “inherently divine.” Finding “light” or “King-
dom” within is in fact but the start, being a recognition of one’s potential,
and the means whereby one may be led into contact with God’s divinity.
We already learned that Wisdom “pervades and penetrates all things”
(Wis 7:24), and that it is this inner light that enables one to find further
light—even the light of God (“God can be grasped only through God, and
light through light,” Philo, On Rewards and Punishments, 40). The wise man
therefore begins his quest by discovering that the “Kingdom” is already
within, and, guided by that, discovers the greater Kingdom which is “spread
out on earth.” Thus, the first stage in Thomas is synonymous with the Old
Testament tradition which von Rad calls “the self-revelation of creation,”41
in which we are constantly reminded that “the heavens declare the glory of
God; and the firmament sheweth forth his handiwork. Day unto day utter-
eth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge” (Ps 19:1–2). In short,
the present created world reveals to the enlightened person the presence of
God’s creative Wisdom in all things, including himself: “When I consider
thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou
hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of
man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the
elohim, and hast crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps 8:3–5).
This is quite different from the Gnostic idea of an evil creation, from
which one withdraws after recognizing ones’s own superior nature. Instead,
Thomas teaches that to “utilize one’s given internal capacity,”42 one must be
led outside of the self, as well as within; then a “new world” will become
visible in the midst of the old (Log. 51): “Know what is in thy sight, and
what is hidden from thee will be revealed to thee. For there is nothing
which will not be manifest” (Log. 5). If one is wise enough, one will even
look for and find Jesus, the Author of the Kingdom, for there is but limited
time in one’s short life to “search and find” (Log. 38). Indeed, the ultimate
40 Ibid., 56.
41 Wisdom in Israel (Nashville, 1972), 148. Quoted in Davies, Gospel of Thomas,
47. See also ibid., 46–47.
42 Ibid., 46.
100 A GREAT MYSTERY
stage in Thomas is to find and have decisive union with the Source of the
Kingdom in its original completeness and purity, i.e., “Jesus-Wisdom.” The
initial intent of God at the time of Creation will then have been realized,
and all things will be reunited with the One who “lights up the world” (Log.
22–24).43
This reunion with one’s true “Source” is what most elevates the mes-
sage of Thomas above a mere philosophical accommodation to Wisdom’s
“presence in all things.” In Logion 18, for instance, Jesus asks the following
question, which contains a cleverly guarded reference to himself: “Have you
then discovered the beginning (archē),44 so that you inquire about the end?”
He then goes on to explain that “where the beginning is, there shall be the
end. Blessed is he who shall stand at the beginning, and he shall not taste
death.”
It is significant that the Coptic translator has throughout retained the
well-known Septuagint word for “beginning,” rather than using a Coptic
equivalent (as he does in the case of “end”). Thus, it would appear that he
wishes to emphasize not merely a return to the individual’s own beginning,
but to the traditional Old Testament “Source of all things”—the preexistent
Wisdom—who was God’s own companion, and the archē of his ways (Prov
8:22 LXX). Reunion with him will then be a “non-verbal, ritual experience
of transformation,”45 which brings about a restoration of man’s “prelapsar-
ian Paradise”46 and the conditions of a “new creation”:
They said to Him: Shall we then, being children, enter the Kingdom? Je-
sus said to them: When you make the two one, and when you make the
inner as the outer, and the outer as the inner, and the above as the be-
low, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so
that the male will not be male and the female not be female … then
shall you enter the Kingdom (Log. 22).
This is perhaps the oldest known example in the Christian literature of a
statement which we shall also encounter in 2 Clement (written ca. A.D. 140):
43 Compare Ephesians 1:10 and Colossians 1:19–20, where all must be gath-
ered into “one” so that Christ can reign within all.

44 We shall later take up the tradtion of Jesus as the First Day of Creation (ar-
chē) according to the Hexaemeron doctrine. See “The Great Mystery and the Preexis-
tent Church,” below.
46 Ibid., 59.
“When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male
with the female, neither male nor female” (ch. 12).47
This appears to be a restatement of Philo’s becoming “neither male nor
female” (On the Creation of the World, 134), or the restoration of man’s arche-
typal “maleness” through union with Wisdom (pp. 47–48, above). In Log-
ion 114, the author further refers to the Philonic doctrine of “becoming
male,” when he says, “See, I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that
she too may become a living Spirit (pneuma), resembling you males. For
every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
According to the last passage, the initiate who becomes “one” with Je-
sus actually becomes what Jesus is, namely, a “living Spirit” (cf. 1 Cor 15:45;
Rom 8:9–11). Thus we are informed that those who become “the same”
will “be filled with light,” while those who remain “divided” will be “filled
with darkness” (Log. 61). In Logia 16 and 75, “the same” are also called
“Unitaries” (monachoi), i.e., those who “stand as a single One” (Log. 23),
thus sharing the light that “lights up the whole world” (Log. 24).
Union with Jesus further “begets” divine sonship, through the sharing
of Jesus’ miraculous power: “When you make the two one, you shall be sons
of Man, and when you say, ‘Mountain, be moved,’ it will be moved” (Log.
106, our emphasis). Behind this divine “begetting” we recognize once again
what E. R. Goodenough called the “Sacred Marriage with Wisdom,” or the
“Mystery of the Holy of Holies” (p. 38, above), for Thomas describes the
event as a nuptial union in a “Bridal Chamber” (numphon), with Jesus as the
“Bridegroom” (numphios). While the “Bridegroom” is yet with the disciples,
there is reason for rejoicing; “but when the Bridegroom comes out of the
Bridal Chamber, then let us fast and pray” (Log. 104).
The same Logion occurs in Matt 9:14–15 (= Mark 2:18–20 = Luke
5:33–35), where the disciples are referred to as “sons of the Bridal Cham-
ber” (huioi tou numphonos), an obvious Semiticism whose ordinary meaning is
“affiliation” or “cultic association.”48 The only possible explanation for this
47 This explains why Clement says that “the Books” already contained this in-
formation (14), implying that the idea was considered to have been “canonical” by
him.
48 “Sons of” in Semitic expresses “origin” or “formal terms of relationship.”
Eduard Lohse, “huios, huiothesia,” in TDNT, 8:345, 365, defines it as a reference to

“the member of a society, group or fellowship.” It also describes those having a
common origin, or those “sharing a nature, or quality or fate” (ibid., 346). Thus,
“sons of the Bridal Chamber” indicates that the disciples owe their peculiar status
vis-à-vis Jesus to the Bridal Chamber.
102 A GREAT MYSTERY
cryptic expression in the present context is that of the unique relationship

which exists between Jesus and the disciples, and which originated in a
“Bridal Chamber.” Commentators have long puzzled over the meaning of
huioi tou numphonos,49 but in light of what we now know about the mystery of
man’s union with Wisdom in the Temple, it appears that the “Bridal Cham-
ber” to which Jesus referred was none other than the Jerusalem Holy of
Holies, and that the cultic action which was imagined to take place there
was the source of the disciples’ “sonship” or “cultic affiliation” with him.
We have already seen that Philo described those having union with
Wisdom in the Temple as mystae, i.e., “initiates into the holiest of mysteries”
(p. 62, above). It is therefore significant that Jesus refers to his relationship
with the disciples as a “mystery” (Log. 62), one which is to be kept from the
ears of the profane: “Jesus said, I tell my mysteries to those who are worthy
of my mysteries.” He further cautions them to “Give not what is holy to
the dogs, lest they cast it upon the dung-heap” (Log. 93). This sacred “mys-
tery” obviously possessed sacramental or redemptive value, as we learn
from Jesus’ added reference to a heavenly Bridal Chamber, whose access will
be closed to all but those who become “Solitaries” or “Unitaries” in the
present Bridal Chamber (cf. Log. 104): “Many are standing at the door, but
the Solitaries are the ones who will enter into the Bridal Chamber” (i.e., the
one above; Log. 75).
That the earthly Holy of Holies was indeed thought to be a “figure” of
a heavenly “Bridal Chamber” is clearly stated in Heb 9:24: “For Christ is
not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of
the true, but into heaven itself.” (Compare also 8:5, which refers to the
priests who presently “serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly
things.”) Thus, we must conclude that what was hoped for in the world to
come needed to be performed symbolically in the earthly cult-center before
it could become a reality in the eternal (cf. Matt 16:19).
Specific details of the ritual in the earthly “Bridal Chamber” are few,
but Thomas gives us the following glimpse of how the “male and the fe-
male” were made into a “single One”:
49 The translation of huioi tou numphonos as “Wedding Guests” (RSV) is evi-
dently based on its use in b. Sukka 25b; but it makes no sense when used of those
being married to the Savior. “Groomsmen” (Interpreter’s Bible, 8:l–3), or “close
friends of the bridegroom” (ibid., 7:675–76), are mere guesses, and fit even less
within the context of the Christian nuptial myth.
When you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a
hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image (eikon) in the place
of an image, then shall you enter the Kingdom (Log. 22).
This bringing together of the various members of the body “eye to eye” and
“hand to hand,” etc., appears to have been a kind of ritual embrace, patterned
after the “face to face” embrace of the Cherubim (p. 17, above). Its purpose
was to cause the image within the initiate to merge with the Image borne by
Jesus-Wisdom—God’s own Image. Thus the Divine Image which God be-
stowed on the Primal Adam (Gen 1:27) was restored in its completeness
and perfection to the initiate. This would have been especially meaningful
to those early Christians who in some sense identified the “Bridegroom”
Jesus with Yahweh, the original Creator of Man (John 1:3; 1 Cor 8:6; 2 Cor
4:6; Eph 3:9; Heb 1:2–3).50
The Christianized version of this embrace seems to have included a
ritual kiss, as we learn from the following saying of Jesus: “Whosoever
drinks from my mouth shall become as I am, and I myself shall become he,
and the hidden things shall be revealed to him” (Log. 108). Such a “cere-
monial kiss” may have been the original model for the “agape-kiss” which
Primitive Christians exchanged as a sign of solidarity and brotherly esteem
(1 Thess 5:26; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; Rom 16:16; 1 Pet 5:14). The Odes of
Solomon—which James H. Charlesworth has recently identified as a Jewish-
Christian “hymn-book” from between A.D. 70 and 10051—specifically
mentions such a kiss which the worshipper is said to have received from
Jesus: “And Immortal Life embraced me and kissed me. From that is the
50 Most commentators admit that the source of the New Testament nuptial
myth are Old Testament passages describing the marriage of Yahweh and Israel. R.
A. Batey, for example, begins his New Testament Nuptial Imagery (Leiden, 1972) by
stating that “the New Testament writers build upon the Old Testament and rab-
binic figure of Israel as the wife of Yahweh” (1). Paul’s “betrothal figure,” he adds,
was an apocalyptic “modification of the Old Testament image of Israel as the wife
of Yahweh” (15). R. M. Grant also believes that “Christ has taken the place of God
at Sinai, (and) the apostle (Paul) has assumed the role of Moses (as ‘marriage bro-
ker’).” “The Mystery of Marriage in the Gospel of Philip,” VC 15 (1961): 130.
Christ’s title of “Bridegroom” (Matt 25; John 3:29: etc.) must also have been drawn
from Old Testament passages such as Isaiah 61:10 and 62:5, which describe Yah-
weh’s marital relationship with Israel as that of “Bridegroom” and “Bride,” or nu-
merous others describing him as the “Husband” of his People.
51 “The Odes of Solomon—Not Gnostic,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 31 (1969):
369.
104 A GREAT MYSTERY
Spirit which is within me” (28:7–8). The Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip fur-
ther informs us that the Savior’s kiss was passed from mouth to mouth
amongst the members of the Congregation, thus spreading his grace and
“begetting” power in all: “Those who are begotten by Him … are nour-
ished … from the mouth, because if the word had gone out from the
mouth it would be nourished from the mouth and it would become perfect.
For it is by a kiss that the perfect conceive and give birth. For that reason,
we also kiss one another. We receive conception from the grace which is in
each other” (58:28–59:6). The Tripartite Tractate from the same library makes
the similar statement that “His offspring … like kisses came forth from the
Son and the Father … because of the multitude of those who kiss one an-
other with a good, insatiable thought, the kiss being a unity” (58:19–20).
THE NEW TESTAMENT WISDOM MYSTERY

We have already seen how various New Testament writers depicted Jesus as
the “envoy” of Wisdom, or even as “Wisdom” herself (pp. 85–94, above).
Paul thus refers to Christ as the “Wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24), a figure
whom Luke and Matthew would also identify with Jesus, when he prophe-
sied concerning his approaching death (Luke 11:49; Matt 23:34). The intert-
estamentel figure of “Wisdom,” moreover, had been a “Companion” and
“Bride” of God (Prov 8:22–31; Wis 8:3), hence was “initiate in his Wis-
dom” (8:4), and the one who reflected God’s glory to her “wooers” (Sir
51:13–30; Wis 7:25–28; 8:13–16). In the same way, Jesus/Wisdom was em-
powered preexistently with the Father’s glory (John 17:5; Phil 2:6), a glory
which “he”52 now offered to share with his disciples through a “Sacred
Marriage”:
52 This “sex-change” need not disturb us, since we know that the memory of
various lesser gods from the ancient Israelite pantheon went into the personifica-
tion of “Wisdom,” chiefly that of God’s “Executive Son,” but also that of certain
goddesses who were called “Wisdom” (pp. 26–28, above). “Wisdom,” moreover,
was a feminine noun in both Hebrew and Greek; therefore it was natural to refer to
“her” as a feminine hypostasis, whereas dabar and logos (Hebrew and Greek for
“Word”) were both masculine nouns. It should further be recalled that the Danielic
“Son of Man” was probably El’s satrap, Yahweh (note 17, p. 91 above). Thus Je-
sus/Yahweh (as either “Word” or “Son of Man”) would have been a masculine fig-
ure, who appeared directly as the Church’s “Bridegroom,” rather than his surro-
gate, the feminine “Wisdom.”
My brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ;
that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from
the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God (Rom 7:4).
For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you
to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ (2
Cor 11:2).
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and
gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the wash-
ing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious
church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should
be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their
own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet
hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord
the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his
bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall
be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great
mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church (Eph 5:26–32).
The latter quotation from Ephesians (written ca. A.D. 62, if it is genu-
inely Pauline, and between 70–90, if it is not) is still very close to the pas-
sage from the Gospel of Thomas (p. 103, above), describing the unifying em-
brace of Jesus and the disciples, just prior to the latters’ entry into the
Kingdom:
Jesus saw children who were being suckled. He said to his disciples:
These children who are being suckled are like those who enter the
Kingdom. They said to Him: Shall we then, being children, enter the
Kingdom? Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and when
you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the
above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a
single one, so that the male will not be male and the female (not) be fe-
male, when you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place
of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image (eikon) in the
place of an image (eikon), then shall you enter the Kingdom (Log. 22).53
53 This appears to be similar to the life-giving sacred embraces which Elijah
and Elisha bestowed on a “Widow’s Son” in 1 and 2 Kings: “And he stretched

himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my
God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again. And the LORD heard the
voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived” (1
Kgs 17:20–21); “And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his
mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and he stretched himself
106 A GREAT MYSTERY
Thomas’s “making the two one” is equivalent to Paul’s “becoming one

flesh” in the Ephesian “Great Mystery.” Paul elsewhere explains the real
meaning of becoming “one flesh” as follows:
Know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two,
saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit
(1 Cor 6:16–17; our emphasis).
This short passage is one of the major keys to a correct understanding of
New Testament soteriology, yet one which is frequently overlooked by
those who are interested solely in homiletics. But it is also the gist of John’s
important process of spiritual henosis (“becoming one):
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on
me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in
me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may
believe that thou hast sent me (John 17:20–21).
For as John goes on to explain, the chief purpose for establishing a state of
spiritual oneness between God and Man is so that God’s perfection and attributes
might be shared directly with his disciples:
And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may
be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be
made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent
me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me (John 17:22–23).
Such oneness was often referred to by Peter and Paul as koinonia (“fellow-
ship, coparticipation”) with the Divine (1 Cor 1:9; 2 Cor 13:14; Phil 2:1;
upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm” (2 Kgs 4:34). It is signifi-
cant that the LXX later added the fact that Elijah “breathed into the boy,” just as
God “breathed the breath of life into man’s nostrils” at the time of creation (Gen
2:7). Paul also used such an embrace to revive the dead Eutychus in Acts 20:9–10:
“And Paul went down, and fell upon him, and embracing him said, Trouble not
yourselves, for his life is in him.” It is very likely that a memory of this ancient em-
brace survived in the Masonic “Third Degree” and its life-giving “Five Points of
Fellowship”: “Foot to foot teaches that we will not hesitate to go on foot and aid and
succor a needy brother. Knee to knee teaches that we will ever remember a Brother’s
welfare … Breast to breast that we will ever keep a Brother’s secrets ... Hand to hand
that we will ever be ready to stretch forth our hand and support a falling brother.
Cheek to cheek, or mouth to mouth, that we will ever whisper good counsel in the ear of
a Brother.” Robert Morris, The Poetry of Freemasonry (Chicago, 1895); our italics. See
also the Sacred Embrace in Joseph and Aseneth, pp. 179–80, below.
2 Pet 1:4)—even koinonia with the divine suffering (1 Cor 10:16; Phil 3:10).
Indeed, this is how Jesus explained the source of his divine power, a power
which he received by means of perfect henosis with the Father:
The Father and I are one ( John 10:30).
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The
words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father,
and the Father in me (John 14:10–11).
This is, of course, utterly different than the fourth century theory of
Trinitarianism, which asserts that the Father and Son consist of one and the
same substance (homoousios). Scripture instead teaches that a “fulness of the
Father’s Godhood” came to dwell in the Son by means of the Father’s
Spirit:
For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead (plērōma tēs theotetos)
bodily (somatikos,54 Col 2:9).
For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God, so measure-
less is the gift of the Spirit to him (John 3:34, partly NEB).
This important difference, which separates the Church’s original Christol-
ogy from its later Trinitarian theology, is further emphasized by the fact that
this same divine presence may come to dwell in men:
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter …
even the Spirit of truth … At that day ye shall know that I am in my Fa-
ther, and ye in me, and I in you (John 14:16–17, 20).
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that
they also may be one in us (John 17:21).
Indeed, it is through the Holy Spirit that men too can be “indwelt” by the
Father (1 John 4:2; Phil 2:13). Their resulting spiritual oneness is frequently
referred to by Paul as being “in the Spirit” (Rom 8:9; Gal 5:25; etc.), and by
means of the Spirit, “in Christ” (“in the Lord,” “in him,” etc.). But he who
is “in the Spirit” and “in Christ” is also “in the Father” (en theo), i.e., part of
an ontic corporeity, created by pneumatic participation in the Father’s Divine
Nature:
Ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. (1 John 1:24).
54 somatikos, i.e., “in reality, not symbolically” (Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich,
Greek-English Lexikon, s.v.).

108 A GREAT MYSTERY
Your life is hid with Christ in God (en to theo, Col 3:3).
Sharing the Father’s Divine Nature thus creates a spiritual continuum which
links its many members together as one and bestows the attributes of the
Whole upon the Parts:
For the fullness of godhood lives in Christ … and you have been given
full life in union with him (Col 2:9–10, partly Good News Bible).
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that
by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature (“the very being of
God,” theas physeos, NEB), having escaped the corruption that is in the
world through lust (2 Pet 1:4).
There is in fact but one “Divine Nature” or “Fulness of Godhood,” which is
pneumatically bestowed by the Father on his divine Sons. This is undoubtedly
how Christ became the “Creator of all things” (John 1:1–3), having been
made “like God” (en morphe theou) and “equal to God” (isa theo, Phil 2:6).
And just before the Crucifixion, the man Jesus prayed that the Father
would reinvest him with this divine authority and power, “reenveloping”
him, as it were, “in the Father’s own presence” (KJV, “with thine own
self”):
Father, glorify thou me with thine own self (para seauto)55 with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was (John 17:5).
Yet Jesus still confessed that “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), for
his divine qualities were derived solely from the indwelling presence of the
Father (John 14:10), though they were “perfected” in him through strict
obedience to the Father’s will:
And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good
but one, that is, God (Matt 19:17; Mark 10:18).
Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he
suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal sal-
vation unto all them that obey him (Heb 5:8–9).
55 Actually “in thy own presence” (NEB). Para implies “spatial proximity,” as
was the case in Philo’s Questions on Exodus, 2.40: “Come up to me … where there is
no place but God,” and “become divinized.” This reminds us again of Philo’s claim
in the same book (2:39–40) that one who is enveloped in God’s presence may also
be filled with God, and made one with him—even divinized (pp. 61–62, 67, above).
Luke’s Gospel in fact claims that everything Jesus was had resulted from his
becoming endowed with God’s Spirit, just as Isaiah had prophesied:
And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet. And when
he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the
gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at
liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord
(Luke 4:17–19).
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me
to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of
the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of
the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that
mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them
beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for
the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified (Isa 61:1–3).
Luke in fact believed that Jesus’ “endowment of Spirit” came upon him at
the time of his begetting, just as man’s “rebirth” comes upon him through
the “begetting” of the Spirit:
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come
upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: there-
fore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the
Son of God (Luke 1:35; cf. Matt 1:18).
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:5–6).
According to Paul, this “spiritual endowment” would eventually in-
clude all of the Father’s fulness:
And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might
be filled with all the fulness of God (pan to plērōma to theou, Eph 3:19).
In the process, the Spirit would fill the believer with God’s own glory, trans-
forming him step by step into the “image of the Lord”:
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,
are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the
Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor 3:18).
110 A GREAT MYSTERY
These “steps” in glorification became known in Patristic writings as the

“Three Degrees of Glory” (Papias, Relics of the Elders, 5; Irenaeus, Against
Heresies, 5.36.2; Clement, Miscellanies, 6.14; etc.), supported by New Testa-
ment passages like 1 Cor 14:41 and Matt 13:8, 23. The language of the Jew-
ish Wisdom mystery is also still much in evidence, for the expression, “as in
a glass,” again refers to Wisdom’s traditional function as the “mirror”
(mar’ah) who reflects God’s glory to the recipient (pp. 59–60, above).
That Paul employed this “mystery” language deliberately was sug-
gested by Richard Reitzenstein, who pointed out that the expression meta-
morphoumetha (“we are transformed into his Image”) was widely used by
contemporary mystery writers, who believed that the essential substance of
the soul contains the same light as God’s glory56 and that a vision of God
would transfer a fulness of that glory to the beholder, thereby effecting his
“transfiguration.” Paul elsewhere describes this “transfiguration” as being
“fashioned like (summorphon) unto his glorious body” (Phil 3:21), or being
“conformed (summorphon) to the image of his Son (eikonos tou huiou theou)”
(Rom 8:29),57 meaning that God was preparing a heavenly body for the ini-
tiate, which he would receive when he rose in the Resurrection (1 Cor
15:44):
And yet that celestial body already exists in him in a certain sense, be-
cause he has received the earnest of the Spirit.58 Since he has seen re-
flected with unveiled face the Face of God, he experiences that “bodi-
less body” (soma asomatou)—as the Hellenistic mysteries called this mir-
ror image of the heavenly in the earthly—or the transfiguration (meta-
morphosis) from one glorification to another; the Spirit (pneuma) accom-
plishes that.59
Again, the “beholding of God” (thea theou) is said to impart the Spirit and to
produce its mystical effect on the recipient,60 with the result that the soul
“partakes” of the visible “effluence of God” (aporroiai theou; Wis 7:25). The
soul thus takes on the “form of God” (morphe theou), because God himself
has pneumatically entered the person.61 This is tantamount to mystical
“knowledge” (gnosis), during which one is filled with and becomes one with
56 Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (Leipzig, 1927), 264.

57 Ibid., 357.
58 Cf. Ephesians 1:13–14; 4:30.
59 Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterireligion, 77.
60 Ibid., 358.
61 Ibid., 358.
the very “Spirit” or “Soul” (nous) that animates Creation,62 as Plato himself
once observed:
Then bursts upon him the wondrous vision which is the very soul of the
beauty he has toiled so long for … subsisting of itself and by itself in an
eternal oneness, while every lovely thing partakes of it in such sort that,
however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be neither more nor
less, but still the same inevitable whole (Symposium 210e–211b).63
Just where this mystical experience took place we are never told,
though its Philonic analogs were specifically connected with the Jerusalem
Temple. It will of course be obvious that Jesus could hardly have intro-
duced new forms of worship into that edifice while it was still controlled by
the Jews. Nor is there any evidence that a personal embrace or kiss—such
as we described earlier (pp. 103–4, above)—was ever part of Jewish Temple
ritual.64 Both must therefore have been instituted and practiced away from
the Temple as Christian innovations, probably by Jesus himself (Matt 17:1
= Mark 9:2). There is in fact a mysterious incident recorded near the end of
62 Ibid., 290.
63 Reitzenstein offers a parallel account from the mystery of Apuleius: “Apu-
leius enters in hand with the High Priest into the Holy of Holies, into the actual
consecration, of which he betrays only this, that he has passed over the threshold
of the world of the dead, and has returned home to the light, having borne (or
wandered through) all of the physical elements. Out of the midnight darkness, the
blazing sun has burst through; he has beheld the gods of the underworld and of
heaven, and has petitioned the latter in their actual presence … When morning
comes, he is clothed in the Garment of Heaven … and placed on a pedestal before
the goddess as an embodiment of the Sun-god, and honored by the reassembled
congregation as a god” (ibid., 42).
64 Robert M. Grant, in attempting to find a Jewish precedent for the kiss,
writes as follows: “Should we wish to trace this practice back behind Christianity
we should encounter a great deal of difficulty. Many later commentators cite pas-
sages in Philo’s Questions on Exodus which in their opinion proved that it came from
the synagogue. Now that we have seen Ralph Marcus’s translations of these pas-
sages, we can see that they have nothing to do with the subject. There is no evi-
dence for a Jewish origin of the practice. Perhaps, as Hoffmann suggests, it was a
unique contribution made by the Christian Church itself” (“The Mystery of Mar-
riage,” 139. On the other hand, the pattern for the “embrace” described in Logion
22 of Thomas was already to be found in the embrace of the Cherubim in the Tem-
ple.
112 A GREAT MYSTERY
Mark which may actually depict his methods of working, as he practiced the
“mystery of the Kingdom” with the disciples in private:
And there followed him a certain young man having a linen cloth cast
about his naked body, and the young men (who had come to arrest Je-
sus) laid hold of him, and he left the linen cloth and fled from them na-
ked (Mark 14:51–52).
Morton Smith, a well-known historian dealing with the period, has at-
tempted to connect this episode with a recently discovered fragment of a
letter written by Clement of Alexandria, containing additional verses which
are alleged to have once followed Mark 10:34 as part of an “expanded ver-
sion” of Mark, describing the raising of Lazarus in the following manner:
And going hence, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the
tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth
his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon
him, loved him, and began to beseech him that he might be with him.
And going out of the tomb they came to the house of the youth, for he
was rich. And after six days, Jesus told him what to do, and in the eve-
ning the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body.
And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery
of the Kingdom of God.65
Though most scholars reject Smith’s speculation as to what the mys-
tery itself might have been,66 it is generally agreed that the fragment was
actually written by Clement (A.D. 150–215), and that it is a part of an apoc-
ryphal version of Mark which circulated during the early second century.
Thus it may contain genuine recollections of Jesus’ methods of working
with his disciples, especially since it adds nothing of dubious value to what
is already contained in Mark 14.
65 Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel (New York, 1973), 16–17. His scholarly ar-
guments are laid out in much greater detail in Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel
of Mark (Cambridge, MA, 1973).
66 He argues that it describes the “esoteric baptism of certain disciples, singly
and at night, perhaps with erotic aspects” (V. P. Furnish, “Mark, Secret Gospel of,”
in IDB, 5:573). Smith himself speculates that the mystery involved “ancient erotic
magic, by which (Jesus’) followers were enabled … to eat his body and drink his
blood and be joined with him, not only because possessed by his Spirit, but also in
physical union” (The Secret Gospel, 140). Though the suggested homosexual activity
is highly suspect, Smith may just have caught a glimpse of the truth, namely, that
Jesus’ union with his disciples was a nuptial union of sorts.
Nevertheless, the disciples “continued daily in the Temple,” even after

the Resurrection (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46; 3:1–3); Paul likewise attended the
ordinary Temple feasts (Acts 20:16; 26:21) and performed the necessary
purifications in preparation for them (Acts 21:26). Thus it must be con-
cluded that the Temple still held its traditional significance for the first
Christians, except that its promises of union with God’s Wisdom were
about to be fulfilled by the “Lord of the Temple” in person (Mal 3:1; Matt
9:2). Indeed, he had just disclosed his identity to the apostles on a “moun-
tain apart” (Matt 17:1; Mark 9:2), an act which was necessary until such time
as he could physically claim his House from the Jews. But its Holy of Ho-
lies was still the promised “Bridechamber” in which the “Bridegroom” of
Israel would claim his “Bride” (John 3:29; Matt 9:15). The anticipated
“Wedding Feast” (Matt 22:1–14; Luke 12:36; 14:7–11) was in fact still ad-
umbrated there by the Embracing Cherubim (Heb 9:5. cf. b. Yoma 54a), and
the “Marriage of the Lamb” to which they referred would soon take place
in its heavenly counterpart (Rev 19:7–9; 21:2).
Just how the disciples understood the everyday rites of the Jewish
Temple67 is further hinted at in various of Paul’s epistles. In 2 Corinthians,
for example, he speaks of having “ascended” to the third of the Three
Heavens,68 where he heard words which he was forbidden to repeat (12:1–
4). Alan Segal has recently demonstrated that this is early evidence of a rite
which medieval Kabbalists would call the “ascent to the Merkabah”
(Throne of God), recapturing Isaiah’s experience in the Temple (Isa 6).69
This is undoubtedly where Paul believed that he too had been spiritually
“transformed into the image of the Lord” while “beholding God’s glory”
(2 Cor 3:18), and where believers would one day receive a totality of God’s
fulness (Eph 3:19; Col 2:9–10). Even Jesus had promised that those of his
disciples who were “pure in heart” would “see God” (Matt 5:8), a vision
which traditionally belonged to the Temple (Ps 24:3–6).70
The most complete New Testament conception of the Christian Tem-
ple cultus is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which for years was as-
cribed to Paul, but which is now considered to be the product of some
67 Compare Philo’s “higher” understanding of the “everyday rites” of the
Temple, pp. 51–52, above.

68 Jean Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity (London, 1964), 15, 174–79.
69 Paul the Convert (New Haven, 1990), 34–71.
70 The Masoretic reading, “Face (or Presence, panim) of Jacob” in fact refers to
“the Face of the God of Jacob,” as the LXX translation verifies. See Mitchell Da-
hood, Psalms I, Anchor Bible (Garden City, 1965), 152.
114 A GREAT MYSTERY
“Deutero-Pauline” author or school. Yet its considerable differences from

the authenticated writings of Paul may possibly be explained by the fact that
its author is discussing a very limited subject, one concerned with providing
a context for Christianity’s continuing belief in the authority of the Temple,
rather than with the usual Pauline problems of faith and the Law.
Significantly, in the letter to the Hebrews we are immediately plunged
into a Wisdom milieu, for it begins by describing Jesus as “the brightness of
(God’s) glory and the express image of his person.” This of course reminds
us that the Jewish “Wisdom” was also an “unblemished mirror of the active
power of God, and an image of his goodness” (Wis 7:26).
But the author also recognizes the mysterious Cherubim in the Holy
of Holies, “concerning which things,” he says. “this is not the proper time
to speak in detail” (Heb 9:5; see p. 5, above). The sevenfold contents of the
Adyton (pp. 56–58, above) are again enumerated, this time including the
golden censer, the ark, the pot of manna, Aaron’s rod, the tables of the law,
and the two Cherubim. The continuing prohibition against “speaking out
the sacred mysteries to the uninitiated” (Philo) is still apparent, explaining
why the New Testament never discusses these ritual objects with any speci-
ficity. We will in fact read little more about them in any source until after
the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jews, which seems
to have released later commentators from their punctilious observance of
secrecy. Nevertheless, the veiled reference in Hebrews to what the Talmud-
ists would speak of openly (b. Yoma 54a; Baba Batra 99a) indicates the kind
of reverence which our Christian author still felt for the Temple and its se-
cret symbols.
It has thus far been impossible to determine the real author of He-
brews, but he appears to have been a second generation Christian (Heb
2:3), and one well acquainted with the allegorical language of Hellenism. In
fact, the whole epistle is a commentary in “Philonic” fashion on the Temple
Cult, with special emphasis on the ancient priesthood of Melchizedec and
its new High Priest, Jesus (Ps 110; Gen 14). In contrast to the “carnal ordi-
nances” of the Aaronic priesthood (Heb 9:10), he alone has restored the
priesthood which brings eternal life to the world (7:17).
The dating of Hebrews has been fixed anywhere between the years just
prior to the destruction of the Temple (A.D. 70) and the year 95, when
Clement of Rome quoted from it. Reminiscent of Stephen’s view of the
Jewish cult’s obsolescence (Acts 7:44–50), it suggests that the older sacri-
fices were now in question, since they could never open the veil (Heb 9:8)
or allow the Israelites to pass through to their “heavenly Rest” (3:18). But
Jesus had now entered “into heaven itself” (9:24), and he would take his
followers with him (10:19–20), giving the Temple a newly “spiritualized”

and “cosmic” value.
Nevertheless, the traditional address of the Epistle, “To the Hebrews”
(dating from at least the last quarter of the second century), indicates that its
readers were still thought of as “Temple pilgrims,” for the best explanation
of the enigmatic title is still the one advanced by Carl Siegfried over a cen-
tury ago,71 i.e., participants in a spiritualizing Temple-cult, who saw themselves as
Abraham’s heirs, and who were engaging in a cultic “journey” through the
wilderness in search of God.72 This is in fact how the Epistle views its
71 See p. 42 above.
72 Ernst Käsemann, Das wandernde Gottesvolk (Göttingen, 1961), 27, explains
that “cultic thought plays a greater role in Hebrews than an any other New Testa-
ment writing.” As it moves towards 12:18ff, the entire action is conceived as a “cul-
tic assembly” approaching Mt. Sinai to receive a living theophany (cf. Philo, On the
Decalogue, 44). “Ye are come unto (proseleluthate) Mt. Sion” (Heb 11:22) indicates that
the entire “cultic assembly” is drawing near (proserchesthai), just “as the High Priest
approaches the altar, to perform the sacrifice” (30–31). The verb proserchomai has
the same cultic meaning throughout Hebrews (10:1, 22; 11:6; 4:16; 7:25) (ibid., 31).
The word “proselyte” (from the perfect form of proserchomai) has the equivalent
cultic force in contemporary Hellenism. It occurs in the Isis-cult, for instance, as a
technical expression for those forming an association with the Temple (Apuleius,
Metamorphoses, 11:26); the Latin translation, advena (= religiosus, therepeutes), means
“one who has crossed over, approached” and become a “pious worshipper” (see
Reitzenstein, Hellenistische Mysterienreligionen, 19, 193–94). A synonym for “Hebrew”
is Proselutos; Abraham was considered such before the completion of his migration
to a new existence to be “suckled by the breasts of Sarah” (Ginzberg, Legends of the
Jews, 5:291; 1:263), i.e., Philo’s symbol for “Wisdom” (Questions on Genesis, 4.110–
46). (Compare the Odes of Solomon, 19, which speaks of being fed with milk from the
“breasts of God.”) The Zohar considered the gerim (= proselutoi) to be “wanderers”
approaching Mt. Sinai to participate in the mystery of Shekhinah, i.e., the Sacred
Marriage. The proselutoi in LXX Leviticus 19:34 (“you were strangers in the land of
Egypt”) were also wanderers lost in the material world, who had yet to be circum-
cised and enter the covenant ceremony on Sinai (quoted in M. H. Pope, “Prose-
lyte,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 3:927–8). These were indeed identical with
the “cultic wanderers” which Hellenistic Jews appear to have understood by the
term Hebraioi (see p. 43, above). Philo (On the Migration of Abraham, 20–23) explains
that Abraham was the first “Hebrew” because he was the first “pilgrim” in search
of the true God, and the prototype of all true “Hebrews” in the Hellenistic Temple
Mystery. His spiritual seed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (2:10; 11:18) are still called
“aliens and pilgrims” (xenoi kai parepidēmoi) in search of a heavenly goal (11:13). First
Peter 1:1 also uses the term parepidēmoi (KJV “strangers”) to refer to the whole
116 A GREAT MYSTERY
readers, who as the New Israel had “progressed” as far as the veil of the
Temple, and are now ready to follow Jesus, the new High Priest, into the
Holy of Holies and the presence of God (9:8; 10:19–20; 12:22–24). In the
words of R. M. Grant, the writer sees the Church as “the new people of
God … on a pilgrimage towards the promised land … a heavenly abode
into which Jesus, after offering himself once and for all, had entered.”73
It would be wrong, however, to suppose that a “spiritual” exegesis
such as this invalidated the need for a literal Temple, any more than Philo’s
“allegories” invalidated the Temple cultus during his own lifetime. Indeed,
the author acknowledges that there were still “priests who offer gifts ac-
cording to the Law, and who serve as the copies (hypodeigmati) and shadows
(skia) of the heavenly reality” (Heb 8:4–5), for they continued to enter the
“holy places made with hands,” which “are antitypes (antitypa) of the true”
(9:24; cf. 8:4). Thus for him, the Jerusalem Temple appears to have re-
mained a functioning symbol of the heavenly Holy of Holies,74 hence ser-
vice therein was a living metaphor for the service which Christ was per-
forming in the actual presence of God.
Christians could now enter heaven together with Christ, i.e., “through
the veil, that is, his flesh (dia tou katapetesmatos, tout’ esti, tes sarkos)” (Heb
10:20). This point is very crucial. Traditionally, no one had been allowed to
enter the Holy of Holies except the High Priest. The author of Hebrews,
however, in order to preserve as much of the existing Temple symbolism as
possible, seized upon the ingenious device of allegorizing the “veil” as
Christ’s own flesh, so that the initiate who “puts on Christ” (cf. 2 Cor 6:15;
Gal 3:28) penetrates the curtain in union with him. This is essentially the same
argument advanced by Paul in Romans (3:25), where Christ is the “place”
where man and God are “reconciled,” i.e., the new hilasterion (“mercy
seat”).75
Church as it was dispersed through Asia Minor; Eusebius resubstitutes Hebraioi for
parepidēmoi when he describes this Petrine epistle (Church History, 111.4.2).
73 A Historic Introduction to the New Testament (New York, 1972), 219.
74 Compare Matthew 16:19: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall have
been bound in heaven.”

75 T. W. Manson notes that for Paul, Jesus personally became the new “Mercy
Seat” (“whom God hath set forth to be a hilasterion through faith in his blood”), i.e.,
“the place where God shows mercy to men.” “HILASTERION,” Journal of Theologi-
cal Studies 46 (1945): 1–10. This undoubtedly refers to Jesus’ own body, in which
Christians claim to have union with God.
In the present case, however, the hilasterion is replaced by the “veil,”

which (like Wisdom’s “limit” or horos), regulates all movement between the
upper and lower worlds.76 A variation of the same idea can also be seen in
the early third century Excerpta ex Theodoto, 26:1–2, which states that one
must put on the “Name of the Son,” who is “the Door,” before entering
the Holy of Holies. Since the “Door” was Christ’s “flesh,” it would appear
that the “Name” was a symbol of sacrifice and the candidate’s willingness to
emulate it, which is why Paul insisted that he bore the marks of the Cruci-
fixion on his own body:
If we suffer with him … we may also be glorified together (Rom 8:17).
I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live (Gal 2:20).
That I might have the fellowship of his sufferings, being made con-
formable to is death … that I might attain the resurrection of the dead
(Phil 3:10–11).
Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the
life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body (2 Cor 4:10).
From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the
marks of the Lord Jesus. (Gal 6:17).
The author of Hebrews—whoever he was—repeats essentially the same
explanation:
It was clearly fitting that God … in bringing many sons to glory, make
the leader who delivers them perfect through suffering … For since he
himself has passed the test of suffering, he is able to help them who are
meeting their test now (Heb 2:10, 18, NEB).
Thus, to enter the Holy of Holies “by the blood of Jesus … by his flesh”
meant that one must “die” with Christ in order to live with him (cf. Rom
6:8). In this way, the Embracing Cherubim might also have symbolized
76 As “wife” and “receptive principle,” Wisdom is the one who receives and
passes on the flow of divine “images” from above. Like the Cherubim—to which
Philo likens her—she stands at the “limit” (horos) between the divine world and the
cosmos, “regulating” (dioikei) all movement between the upper and lower worlds.
Compare Wisdom 7:24; 8:1, 3; see David Winston, Wisdom of Solomon, 60, 190; also
E. R. Goodenough, By Light, Light (New Haven, 1935), 25.
118 A GREAT MYSTERY
God’s selfless love for Israel, or the sacrificial devotion that unites the
whole membership of Christ’s “Flesh,” i.e., the Church.77
The idea that Christ is the “Door” through which one enters heaven
had widespread currency in the early Church. Strack and Billerbeck (Kom-
mentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 1:458) see a reference to
it already in Matthew 7:7 (“Knock, and it shall be opened unto you”). John
10:7–9 also claims that Christ is the “Door of the sheep”; and Matthew
7:13–14 directs the believer to “enter in at the strait gate which leads unto
life.” Carsten Colpe (in TDNT, 8:473) and Joachim Jeremias (in ibid., 3:179)
both see Psalm 118:19–20 as the ultimate source of these images: “Open to
me the gates of righteousness; I will go in there, and I will praise the Lord;
the gate of the Lord into which the righteous shall enter.” Modern com-
mentators understand this to refer specifically to the Eastern Gate of the
Temple (cf. Ezek 43:1–5), i.e., the one which was opened to admit the pro-
cession of Temple pilgrims into the Holy Place on feast days (Ps 24:3, 7–9).
Thus we are again dealing with a traditional rite of the Temple and the
Christian’s newly won access into the once-forbidden Sanctuary.78
But passage through the veil in union with Jesus, goes back to an even
more fundamental precedent in the Jewish Temple itself. As we already
learned from Philo, when the High Priest put on his cosmic robes and en-
tered the Holy of Holies, the whole world went in with him (On the Life of
Moses, 2.133–35). This explains why the individual’s passage through the veil
is never described as a solitary act, for the Church is Christ’s flesh—that
which he “wears” when he enters the Adyton—just as Philo’s Logos
“wore” the cosmos, and the High Priest “wore” the world. Thus, individu-
als who comprised the Church were indistinguishable from their Bride-
groom and High Priest, who took them through the veil as part of his own
body.
Most writers therefore stipulated that “if some are of the tribe of the
priesthood (cf. Heb 7), they will be able to go within the veil with the High
Priest” (Gospel of Philip 85:1–5). Indeed, the initiate must be “one” with Je-
sus before he can pass into the Kingdom: “When you make the two one …
77 “The body of Christ … is the point from which the dying and rising again,
which began with Christ, passes over to the elect who are united with him.” Albert
Schweitzer, The Mysticism of the Apostle Paul (New York, 1931), 118.
78 An alternative reading of Hebrews 10:20 has been suggested by G. W. Bu-
chanan, which takes tout’ estin, tēs sarkos (“that is, his flesh”) to refer to the “way”
through the veil, rather than the “veil” itself. In either case, the initiate’s solidarity
with the sacrifice of Christ’s flesh is still required (Hebrews, Anchor Bible, 168).
when you make eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a
foot in place of a foot … when you make the male and the female into a
single one … then shall you enter the Kingdom” (Gospel of Thomas, Log. 22).
We are also reminded that one must have put on the “Wedding Garment”
which is Christ (cf. Gal 3:28) before being allowed into the Wedding Feast
(Matt 22:11–14), for the participant could never hope to enter the Holy of
Holies alone.
Here, then, the writer has brought together an extraordinary range of
symbols with which to describe the Christian’s passage through the veil of
the Temple. Christ’s “flesh,” first of all, is the sacrifice that opens the way
into the Holy of Holies and cleanses the participants, and participation in
that “flesh” means the sharing of Christ’s sacrifice. His “flesh” is also the site of
unification, either as the “veil,” the “door,” or the “mercy seat.” Other
“Pauline” works describe marriage to Christ as the way in which the Bride-
groom and the Bride are able to pass through as one. This was characterized
by God’s redeeming love, as depicted by the embrace of the sacred Cheru-
bim (cf. Heb 9:5).
The similarity between this “spiritualizing” exegesis of the Temple cult
and the older Wisdom Mystery is obvious. In both, the “Hebrew” pilgrim is
seen as a “wanderer and exile” in search of a heavenly home. The Sacred
Marriage with Wisdom, which was Philo’s ultimate goal (On the Cherubim),
now became union with the “veil” of Christ’s “flesh,” followed by entry
into God’s presence (Heb 12:22) and the sharing of his glory (2:10). “Sanc-
tification” and divine “sonship” are the result, according to the pattern set
by God’s Son (vv. 10–11), who, like Wisdom, is the “brightness of God’s
glory and the image of his person” (1:3).
Led by a new “Joshua” (4:8), the “Hebrew” wanderers (2:7–4:8) are
once again “strangers and pilgrims” seeking a heavenly city (11:13–16), just
as Philo’s “Hebrews” were “seekers after heavenly things” and the gifts of
the “Promised Land” (On the Migration of Abraham, 28). “Each of us,” he
explained in the latter work, “has come into the world as into a foreign city,
in which before birth he had no part, and in this city does but sojourn until
he has exhausted his appointed span of life” (On the Cherubim, 120). Upon
these “sojourners” God will bestow “eternal fountains of free bounties”
(123), and become a Source of joy to them that unite with him through the
“descent of the divine Powers,” i.e., the Embracing Cherubim (106). The
author of Hebrews, in turn, promises Christian sojourners the kind of bless-
ings that God bestowed upon “even Sarah,” who, being “past the age to
conceive,” became the source of a line of “descendants as numerous as the
stars, or as the countless grains of sand on the seashore” (Heb 11:11–12).
120 A GREAT MYSTERY
This “spiritualized” version of the traditional pilgrimage to the Temple

was said by both Philo and the author of Hebrews to belong to the “Mo-
saic” or “Melchizedec” level of the Mystery, in contrast to the ordinary, or
“Aaronic” level.79 Where the ordinary Temple visitor saw only animal sacri-
fices and outward acts of piety, the “Melchizedec” initiate saw a symbolic
quest for a heavenly “rest,” and (in the Wisdom Mystery) deification. The
Christian initiate was therefore promised that he would receive what Christ
himself received. This is indicated by the author’s descriptions of Jesus as
the archēgos (2:10) and prodromos of salvation (6:20). Archegos means literally
the “founder” or “originator” of a process, thus the “first of a series” (KJV
“leader” or “captain”).80 Similarly, the prodromos is the “forerunner”—the
one who precedes his followers and imitators.81 Ernst Käsemann has dem-
onstrated in some detail that these epithets were chosen to characterize Je-
sus as the corporate representative of mankind, in whom perfection is both be-
gun and completed, just as in Col 1:18 he is the “beginning and firstborn
from the dead,” and in Rev 1:8 the alpha and omega, i.e., the “start” and the
“goal” itself.82
The dependence of these expressions on Philo’s archegetes neas anthropon
sporas (“the one who establishes the seed of a new humanity,” On the Migra-
tion of Abraham, 46), is also obvious, for each describes “the relationship of
the forebear to his posterity,” i.e., the one who shows the way to those who
are to come after.83 This means that they too will become perfected as
“sons,” just as he was perfected as “the Son” (2:10). Furthermore, their
close relationship is derived from the fact that “both he who saves and they
who are saved” are descended “from One (ex henos, masc.),” i.e., from God
himself.84 Here again, the primal relationship of man and Wisdom, which
made possible their reunion in the Philonic Mystery, is the basis for the in-
timate communion of “Son” and the other “sons,” who are thereby to be
exalted together.
79See pp. 38 and 42–43, above.

80Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 112.
81 Ibid., 711.
82 Das wandernde Gottesvolk, 80.
83 Ibid., 81.
84 Ibid., 90. “It is entirely beside the point to think of this ‘One’ as Adam or
Abraham, who are not even under discussion. The relationship of ‘Son’ and ‘sons’
in vs. 11 depends simply on the fact that their descent is from God, who alone is
the Father of Jesus.” (ibid.)
We have already seen this “intimate communion” described as a kind

of “Sacred Marriage,” based on the “marriage” of Wisdom and Israel:
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be
joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mys-
tery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church (Eph 5:31–32).
This Ephesian hieros gamos is also clearly based on the same basic pattern
which we found in the Gospel of Thomas:
When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the
outer, and the outer as the inner, and the above as the below, and when
you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will
not be male and the female not be female … then shall you enter the
Kingdom (Log. 22).
The literalness of this intimate spiritual union is emphasized by Paul’s use
of the verb kollaō, which means “to cleave” in both a figurative and a physi-
cal sense. Here he closely follows the concrete Old Testament usage of the
Hebrew verb dabaq, “to cling to, stick to, cleave” (e.g., the “soldering” of
the scales to a breastplate, 1 Kgs 22:34 = 2 Chr 18:33; or the “joining to-
gether” of the wings of the Cherubim over the lid of the Ark, 2 Chr. 3:12),85
as well as its established cultic use in the Psalms to indicate man’s “adher-
ing” to Yahweh and his divine love (hesed).86 Thus, Psalm 63 employs dabaq
to depict the “remarkably high esteem” of the writer for “communion with
God.”87 Later Hebrew authors would also continue to interpret dabaq as a
state of unio mystica, i.e., “adhesion,” or “being joined unto God.”88 Yet this
mystical doctrine, which the Kabbalists referred to as devequth, appears to
have been well-developed by the Second Temple priesthood and its vision
of the Merkabah,89 an ecstatic technique whose aim was already to “ascend”
to God’s Throne and be “intimately” joined to Deity.90 In fact, the Genesis
Rabbah (compiled during the fifth or sixth centuries) describes devequth in
terms of which both Philo and Thomas would have approved: “Great is the
strength of the Prophets who assimilate the form to Him who formed it,”91
85 G. Wallis, “dābhaq,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 3:80.

86 Ibid., 83.
87 H. J. Kraus cited in ibid., 83.
89 Ibid., 42–43.
90 Ibid., 140–42.
91 Theodor edition, p. 256; quoted in Scholem, MTJM, 142. Compare Thomas,
Log. 22: “When an image is joined to an image.”

122 A GREAT MYSTERY
or as the Kabbalists of Abulafia’s school would explain, the human self,

being of divine nature, reunites during mystical communion with the Divine
Nature of God.92
Intertestamental literature shows that the same concrete—even bla-
tantly sexual—understanding of the word kollaō was shared by contempo-
rary Jewish and Christian writers. Tobit 6:18, for example, describes Tobias’
wedding with Sarah with the words, “In his heart he clave (ekollethē) to her.”
Sirach 19:2, says, “The man who cleaves (ho kollomenos) to a prostitute is
reckless”; but also, “Cleave (kolletheti) to him (the Lord)” (2:3). In like man-
ner, Paul describes both connection with a woman and oneness with the
Lord with the verb kollaō: “Know ye not that he who is joined (ho kollo-
menos) to a harlot is one body” (1 Cor 6:16), and “he that is joined (ho kollo-
menos) to the Lord is one Spirit” (v. 17). Spiritual bonds are therefore of the
same nature as sexual union, so much so that there is danger of combining
them illegitimately: “Shall I then take the members of Christ and make
them the members of a harlot?” (1 Cor 1:15). In fact, the verb kollaō (with
the prefix pros) is again used by Paul in Ephesians 5:31–32 when quoting the
LXX of Gen 2:24 to describe both sexual and spiritual unions: “For this
cause shall a man … be joined (proskollethesetai) unto his wife, and they shall
be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the
Church.” This same literal meaning of intimate union was also used in Ga-
latians 3:27–28, to describe the baptismal unification of Christ and the dis-
ciple:
For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on
Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Perhaps even more significant is that the Ephesian “Great Mystery”
also applies to the human husband and wife, whose marriage follows the
pattern of God’s personal image (Gen 1:27–28), as well as the pattern of
Christ’s “marriage” to the Church:
Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as
himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband (Eph 5:33).
The Catholic scholar, Quentin Quesnell, has summarized this reenactment
of the mystery of Christ’s marriage to the Church in human marriages as
follows:

The Church is Christ’s flesh, Christ’s body: the woman is the man’s
flesh, the man’s body … The Genesis text is presented as a conclusion
from this analogy: “Therefore (it is said), a man will leave the father and
the mother and will cleave to his wife, and the two will be ‘into one
flesh’—that is, I say, into Christ and into the Church.” If man and
woman live together according to what this analogy suggests, then the
relationship of Christ and the Church as one flesh … is dramatized,
concretized, sacramentalized into their relationship. The man and
woman enter into (become?) Christ and the Church (his parenthetical
insertion).93
In the same way, we recall that various Jewish commentators had viewed
the Embracing Cherubim not only as symbols of Yahweh’s marriage to Is-
rael, but as a paradigm of human marriage (pp. 19–21, above). Paul could
therefore write in 1 Corinthians that
Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the
man, in the Lord (11:11),
for being “in the Lord” required becoming “man and wife” (Gen 2:24 =
Eph 5:31–33).
John expressed this traditional nuptial imagery in yet another special
way, i.e., by means of a “grafting” simile:
I am the true vine (ampelos alēthinē) … Abide in me, and I in you. As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more
can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches. He
that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit
(John 15:1–8).
Here Jesus is again pictured as Wisdom’s “vine,” inviting all to “build in her
foliage … lodge in her branches” (Sir 14:26) and be “filled with her pro-
duce” (v. 19).94 This metaphor no doubt incorporated other symbolism as
93 “‘Made Themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’ (Mt. 19,12),”

Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 30 (1968): 354. Quesnell adds: “As the Christian man en-
ters into this relationship with his wife … he is entering into, growing up into the
one flesh which is the living body of Christ, the whole Christ—head and members”
(ibid., 355). Finally, he suggests that this is “a step toward inaugurating a world
where all men will love perfectly and fully,” so that the man can “express that fidel-
ity forever” (ibid., 358). Compare 1 Peter 3:7.
94 Compare also Proverbs 9:5, “eat her bread” and “drink her wine.” John 15
may therefore contain a veiled reference to the Eucharist.

124 A GREAT MYSTERY
well, for example, Wisdom’s “Tree of Life” (Prov 3:18), or the image of
Israel as a “Tree” or “Vine.”95
But in the present case, the “Vine” consists of ultimate “Truth”
(alethēia), the word used by Plato and the Greek philosophers to represent
the Divine Reality. In short, it is the supernatural reality and power which
Wisdom brings down from above so that men can be incorporated into it
and share its eternal life, thus “bring forth fruit” (John 15:5), just as in the
Pauline metaphor of the Sacred Marriage:
So you, my friends, have died to the law by becoming identified with the
body of Christ, and accordingly you have found another husband in him
who rose from the dead, so that we may bear fruit for God (Rom 7:4,
NEB).
Paul and John never abandoned this primary nuptial imagery, even when
they developed other forms of union (baptism, Eucharist), for both referred
to Christ as the “Bridegroom” or “Husband” of the Church (Rom 7:4;
2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:31–32; John 3:29). Even the writers of the Synoptic
Gospels, who came chronologically after most of Paul’s epistles, and who
never spoke of baptism or the Eucharist as methods of unifying Jesus and
the communicant, referred to Jesus as the “Bridegroom” of the Church
(Matt 9:15 = Mark 2:19 = Luke 5:34; Matt 25:1–13), an image which re-
mained central even in the dénouement of Revelation (19:7–9; 21:2).96
Ephesians 5, moreover, treats baptism as separate from and prior to the
nuptial union, a scheme which was also preserved in most Gnostic works.97
And as we just saw, the idea of Christ’s marriage to the Church was itself
singled out as the divine model for human married behavior. So important
was this last point that the whole pericope describing the Sacred Marriage
(5:22–33) was conceived as a Haustafel (“rule of conduct”) for human nup-
tials, showing that Marriage, not baptism, was its real subject.
BAPTISM AND THE MYSTERY

Unfortunately, many recent commentators continue to interpret Paul’s
“marriage metaphor” as a symbol of baptism, and nothing more. It is well
R. E. Brown, John XIII–XXI, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1970), 670.
95
See more on the “Marriage of the Lamb,” p. 137, below.

96
97 This is still the case in the Gospel of Philip, where baptism precedes the rite of
the Bridal Chamber (69:14–29). See Eric Segelberg, “The Coptic Gnostic Gospel
According to Philip and Its Sacramental System,” Numen 7 (1960): 189–200. See
“Gnosticism and the Wisdom Mystery,” below.
known that even Paul occasionally made “becoming neither Jew nor Greek
… neither bond nor free … neither male nor female” a synonym for being
“baptized into Christ” (Gal 3:27–28). Moreover, he spoke unambiguously
of “being baptized into one body” in 1 Corinthians 12:13. It is therefore
clear that Paul considered baptism to be an initial step in the overall process
of becoming united to Jesus, and thus of sharing his death, resurrection,
and glorification (Rom 6:3–4).
Even the Gospel of Thomas appears to contain certain motifs which
would be traditionally associated with baptism in the later Church. In Log-
ion 37, for example, Jesus says, “When you undress without being ashamed,
and when you take your clothes and put them under your feet as little chil-
dren and tramp on them, then you will see the Son of the Living One and
you will not fear.” Logion 21 similarly mentions those who “like little chil-
dren” settle in a field and “take off their clothes” in order to “release and
give back” the field to its owner. Stevan L. Davies, following Johnathan Z.
Smith,98 believes that these passages referred specifically to the undressing
and “trampling” of one’s clothes prior to baptism, when the candidate lays
aside the old “garments of skin” which God placed on Adam at the time of
the Fall:
Both the Western and the Eastern Churches associated ritual disrobing
with the primal nudity of Adam and Eve … Old garments were shed as
symbolic of “old” and sinful life and trampled underfoot, an action per-
formed in allusion to Gen. 3:15 when the serpent, sin, is trampled
upon.99
Rabbinical doctrine also held that “before their expulsion from Eden,
Adam and Eve had bodies or garments of light, but that after their expul-
sion they received bodies of flesh, or coverings of skin.”100 Davies therefore
concludes that the “trampling” of one’s clothes (Log. 37) must have been
practiced at the time of baptism as a reversal of the Fall, so that the primal
light could be “begotten” anew (Log. 70) and the original body of light re-
stored (Log. 24), symbolized by the “new clothing.”101
98 The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom (New York, 1983), 117–18, quoting
“The Garments of Shame,” History of Religions 5 (1965): 218–22.

99 S. Davies, Gospel of Thomas, 118.
100 Johnathan Smith, “Garments of Shame,” in S. Davies, Gospel of Thomas, 118;
italics added.
126 A GREAT MYSTERY
Finally, Davies sees the mention of “little children” (Log. 21; cf. Logg.
4, 22 and 42) as references to baptismal rebirth. He particularly reads
Logion 4 (“The man old in his days will not hesitate to ask a boy of seven
days about the place of life, and he will live”) as a Christian adaptation of
Jewish proselyte baptism, which took place seven days after circumcision.
Since the circumcision was considered to be the time of “rebirth,” the
“newborn child” would have been seven days old at the time of baptism.102
This idea, he feels, was somehow translated into Thomasine baptismal prac-
tice.103 And because of these scattered references to “ritual nudity” and “re-
birth,” Davies concludes that Logion 22—with its description of making
Jesus and the disciples one—must also have had baptismal union as its sub-
ject.104
Yet if “becoming children” (Log. 22a) referred primarily to a baptismal
unification with Jesus, then it would appear that the disciples had already
received the rite, for they speak of themselves in the present tense as “being
children” (“They say to Him, Shall we, being children, enter the Kingdom?”).
Jesus, however, reminds them that they have yet to “make the two one …
the male with the female,” an answer which makes little sense if the final
unification has already taken place. However, the language of Thomas is suf-
ficiently vague that we cannot say with confidence whether Logion 22b re-
fers to something the disciples have yet to do, or is an explanatory com-
ment regarding what they have already accomplished. Nevertheless, the
simplest and most natural reading of the passage is that baptism precedes the
Bridal Chamber, as it does in the Gospel of Philip,105 supposing that baptism
was not originally a central feature of the mystery, as it appears to be in Ga-
latians 3:28 and 1 Corinthians 12:13.
Nor does Davies’ exclusively baptismal exegesis adequately explain the
peculiar language of Logion 22b, which speaks of “making eyes in place of
an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot,”
nor does it address the metaphor of “drinking from Jesus’ mouth” in Log-
ion 108. Davies assumes, for example, that 22b must deal with baptism
simply because baptism would result in a “new or restored body” no
102Ibid., 121.
103Ibid., 129–30.
104 Ibid., 120–32.
105 “Baptism is the Holy building. Redemption is the Holy of the Holy. The
Holy of the Holies is the Bridal Chamber” (67:22–30). We shall discuss this later on
in the section on “Gnosticism and the Wisdom Mystery.”
different than “the new or restored image … of the androgynous Adam.”106

This, however, ignores the fundamental importance of the male-female union,
which Paul always recognized as primary:
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be
joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great
mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church (Eph 5:31–32).
Nor does he take into consideration the fact that Jesus considered himself
to be the “Bridegroom” of the Church, and his relationship with her to be
that of a “Wedding” (Matt 25; cf. also Thomas, Log. 75 and 104). Logion
108 Davies likewise assumes to be a metaphor of baptism, because Paul
rather ambiguously appears to do so in 1 Corinthians 12:13 (“We are all
baptized into one body … and have been made to drink unto one
Spirit”).107 But while Paul’s first clause undoubtedly describes baptism,
commentators have long wondered whether the second was synonymous
with it, or if it were a description of something else, for example, the drink-
ing of the Eucharist.
We believe that both passages can most easily be explained by the im-
age of the Embracing Cherubim and the “Sacred Marriage with Wisdom,”
and that baptism—whose primary meaning was originally a cleansing from
sin (Exod 29:4; 40:12; Lev 14:8–9; 15:5–10; 16:4, 24–28; Num 19:7; Ezek
36:25)—was only later reinterpreted (possibly on the analogy of Jewish
proselyte baptism) as a rite of union, or more specifically, as a rite preparatory
to full union with the Savior.
Wayne Meeks, on whose work Davies relies heavily in his chapter enti-
tled “Thomas and Baptism,” also concluded that early Christians in the area
of the Pauline mission “adapted the Adam-Androgyne myth” (cf. Eph
5:31–32) “to the eschatological Sacrament of baptism.”108 But he further
concluded that where baptism is mentioned in connection with the nuptial
myth (“that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water,”
Eph 5:26), it was only as a preparatory ritual for the forthcoming nuptial
(“that he might present her to himself,” v. 27):

107 Ibid., 130, 133–36.
108 “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christi-
anity,” History of Religions 13 (1974): 207.

128 A GREAT MYSTERY
Here it is apparent that the author has taken up a tradition in which bap-
tism is identified with the “purification” and “sanctification” of the
bride-community for her “presentation” to Christ the bridegroom.109
Behind baptism, then, Meeks suspects the existence of an even earlier and
more basic hieros gamos tradition, though he hesitates to confirm his suspi-
cion:
Whether that implies a ritual hieros gamos, of which baptism was only
the preliminary purification, was actually enacted in the Asian congrega-
tion is a question which can hardly be answered by the evidence at
hand.110
Significantly, however, he refers to Ezekiel 16:8 as a possible precursor of
this suspected hieros gamos, as well as to Song of Songs, with its Sacred Mar-
riage between Yahweh and Israel.111 Again, the Cherubim in the Temple
would have provided an even more direct and obvious source (had Meeks
been aware of them).
Finally, the references to “shameless nudity,” which both Meeks and
Davies see as indicative of baptism, relate not primarily to baptism, but to
the state of innocence before the Fall, when “Adam” and “Eve” were still one
and unashamed, and which the union of “Christ” and the “Church” would
restore:
Therefore shall a man … cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh,
and they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed
(Gen 2:24–25; Eph 5:31) … But I speak concerning (the marriage of)
Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32).
Thus we see that “shameless nudity” fits the hieros gamos myth even better
than it does baptism; in fact, since there is not a single unambiguous refer-
ence to baptism anywhere in Thomas, we may conclude that its range of
thought was still primarily that of a Sacred Marriage to Wisdom, and only
secondarily (if at all) that of baptism. By analogy, the same would most
likely be true of the Ephesian “Great Mystery.”
A MULTIPLICATION OF HIEROS GAMOS SYMBOLS

It thus appears that at least three methods of ritual union with the Divine
were recognized in the early Church: first, an older one prefigured by the
109 Ibid., 205–6.

110 Ibid., 206.
Embracing Cherubim in the Temple, which was obviously a kind of “nup-

tial” union (Eph 5:32; Thomas 22b); second, a baptismal one, which origi-
nally reflected the Jewish practice of ritual bathing for cleansing from sin
(1QS III, 4–9) and for proselyte initiation (b. Yebamoth 46a–b).112 Thus by
cleansing the candidate from sin, baptism symbolized the start of a oneness
with Christ (Gal 3:25) and membership in his Body (1 Cor 12:13). A third
symbol of union was that of the communal meal (the Eucharist),113 which
went back to the institution of the Last Supper (Matt 26:26f; Mark 14:22f;
Luke 22:19ff) and the discourse on the Heavenly Bread (John 6),114 though
it had more to do with maintaining the believer’s solidarity with Christ’s
sacrifice in his own life of service (1 Cor 10:16).
This multiplication of symbols signifying oneness with Christ was particu-
larly needed if one were to take the blessings of the Gospel to the Gentiles,
who had no access to the Temple, and whose “marriage” to the Savior
could only be completed after death. We might especially detect an attempt
on the part of Paul—now laboring in the Gentile mission—to demytholo-
gize the “nuptial mystery” in the Temple to suit the needs of non-Jews who
had never been in the Sanctuary, or had never heard of Israel’s “marriage”
to Yahweh. Indeed, he did the same with the rite of circumcision, which he
now sought to understand in a purely spiritual sense (“circumcise the fore-
skin of your heart”; Deut 10:16; cf. Phil 3:3). The same was also true of
Paul’s view of the sacrificial cult, which even in Jewish tradition availed
nothing unless it was morally conditioned by works of repentance.115 In-
deed, as early as 1 Samuel, enlightened Israelites had recognized that “to
obey” was better than “to sacrifice,” and “to hearken” better than the “fat
of rams” (15:22). The Qumran Community (ca. 200 B.C.—A.D. 70), also
112 “Some have … disputed whether this rite was practiced early enough to
have influenced the origin of Christian baptism. It is now generally agreed however,
that the references in Epictetus, the Sibylline Oracles, and the Mishnah enable us,
with some confidence, to date the beginnings of the practice not later than the first
century A.D.” W. F. Flemington, “Baptism,” in IDB, 1:348.
113 The communal meal, which Paul calls koinonia, was itself a “participation or
sharing” in the flesh and blood of Christ: “The cup of blessing, which we bless, is it
not the koinonia of the blood of Christ; the bread which we break, is it not the
koinonia of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body, for
we are all partakers of that one bread,” 1 Cor 10:16–17). See also pp. 106–7, above.
114 “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no
life in you.”
115 W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (Philadelphia, 1980), 257.
130 A GREAT MYSTERY
believed that through works of “truth, righteousness, justice, loving-

kindness and humility” it could “atone for sin by the practice of justice, and
by suffering the sorrows of affliction,” without the use of the Temple (1QS
VIII, lff)—though it steadfastly looked forward to its eventual restoration
(cf. the Qumran “Temple Scroll”).
Paul’s attempt to “spiritualize” the Jewish Temple-cult was thus clearly
anticipated by Judaism itself, and it quite naturally appears to have condi-
tioned his baptismal adaptation of the nuptial mystery, which even Jesus
had been obliged to practice outside of the Temple, and thus could have
been entered into anywhere where Jesus happened to be. And since baptis-
mal purification was already considered to be necessary for new converts to
the Church (Matt 28:19), it is only logical that this preliminary step eventually
came to be looked on as a part of the mystery of union itself.
Indeed, if the mystery of baptism were the sole meaning of Ephesians
5:22–33, then the attempt to make of it a model for human marriages
would make little sense. As Wayne Meeks points out, “the marriage of
Christ and the Church can hardly have been made simultaneously the pro-
totype for both marriage and baptism.”116 We therefore reject the suggestion
of Morton Smith that the subject of the mystery described in Ephesians
5:32, and as practiced in secret by Jesus and the disciples, was simply bap-
tism.117
THE EPHESIAN “GREAT MYSTERY”

Other commentators, however, have recognized that Paul’s real object in
Ephesians 5:22–33 was to demonstrate the fact that Christ’s marriage to the
Church and human marriages follow the same heavenly pattern, and are subject
to the same rules of behavior. In particular, he viewed the earthly union as a
symbol of the heavenly, even a necessary step towards realizing it. “Here
the ‘mystery’ is the revelation of the nature of human marriage, the union of
two persons into one flesh, as declared in the story of its institution. And
the writer tells us that in his view it is realized fully and perfectly only in the
union of Christ and the Church. This is the hieros gamos … the tran-
scendental bridal, of which marriage is a shadow and an allegory.’’118
This important relationship between type and antitype was also the
source of the Gnostic theology of the Bridal Chamber, where human mar-
116 Meeks, “Image of the Androgyne,” 205; our emphasis.

117 Clement of Alexandria and the Secret Gospel of Mark, 178.
118 Francis W. Beare, in Interpreter’s Bible, 10:726.
riages were celebrated as the “lesser mystery” which activated the “greater
mystery” of union with Christ; for as Paul understood it, “the mystery of
the union of man and wife into one flesh is of far reaching importance, and
clearly points beyond itself toward some transcendental, eternal reality. ‘I
for my part take it to be a symbol of the union of Christ and the
Church.’”119
J. Paul Sampley, in his detailed study of Ephesians 5:22–33, also makes
a strong case for believing that Paul’s “Great Mystery” was indeed a nuptial
mystery, and one which involved many of the elements of which we have
already spoken. He refers, for instance, to the striking dependence of Paul’s
language on the description of the marriage of Adam and Eve in LXX
Genesis 2:24. The entire conception of Christ’s union with the Church to
form a single “body” (sōma, Eph 5:30) is in fact derived from the image of
Adam and Eve “cleaving together” (proskollethesetai) to form one “flesh” (v.
32); this explains why Paul can say that “no man ever hated his own flesh”
(v. 29), for Christ’s love of the Church is also the love of his own body (v.
30).120 Since this imagery appears elsewhere in the writings of Paul—even
where there is a different context—Sampley concludes that the language
must have been drawn from “a convention in the early Church,” which at
one time was widely understood, but which orthodoxy had since forgot-
ten.121 In 1 Corinthians 6:15–17, for example, when discussing the sin of
fornication, the author likens a man and a woman who unite sexually to the
“Body of Christ.” To establish his parallel, he simply remarks that “he who
is joined (ho kollomenos) to a harlot is one body … but he who is joined (ho
kollomenos) to the Lord is one Spirit.” As his authority, he notes that God
himself (speaking of Adam and Eve’s first intercourse) commanded that
“Two shall become one flesh” (v. 16; cf. Gen 2:24). The terse and laconic
argument suggests that Paul took for granted his reader’s prior acquaintance
with the tradition of applying Genesis 2:24 to both human copulation and
the “marriage” of Christ to the Church, and that no further elaboration was
required.
Other evidence of a “linguistic convention” dealing with hierogamy ap-
pears to be the special use which Paul makes of the verb paristēmi (“pre-
sent”) in Ephesians 5:27, when he speaks of Christ “cleansing” the bride, so
that he might “present her to himself a glorious Church, without spot.”
119 Ibid., 727.

120 “And the Two Shall Become One Flesh” (Cambridge, 1971), 90.
121 Ibid., 79.
132 A GREAT MYSTERY
Several passages from Paul’s other epistles (Col 1:21–22; 2 Cor 11:2) pre-
cede the mystery of union with the same verb, combined with similar adjec-
tives of purity and holiness. This again suggests that “the early Church had
a widespread convention in which the verb paristēmi functioned as a hieros
gamos of Christ and the Church”:122
You he hath reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present
you holy and unblameable and unreproachable in his sight (Col 1:21–
22).
For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a
chaste virgin to Christ (2 Cor 11:2).
“The similarities in each of the three letters,” as Sampley observes, “are
clear enough to indicate that the common tradition is shared by all three.123
Paul employed a variety of other Old Testament marriage-traditions, as
well, with which to describe Christ’s union with the Church. The bride’s
“purification” in the above passages, for example, recalls the long segment
in Ezekiel 16:8–14, describing Yahweh’s hieros gamos with Israel, in which he
cleanses and washes his intended spouse before the wedding. S. N. Kramer
has recently collected a number of Mesopotamian and Sumerian hieros gamos
texts, which prove that these “washing and adornment” procedures tradi-
tionally preceded Sacred Marriages throughout the Near East.124 Israelite law
especially required that the bride be without “spot” or “blemish” (amomos;
Eph 5:27); momos ouk estin en soi; LXX Song of Songs 4:7), for such an im-
perfection would preclude the possibility of even approaching the veil or the
altar (Lev 21:23; m. Ketuboth, 7:7). Thus Eph 1:4 informs us that the Church
was preexistently destined to be made “holy and spotless” (amomos) as a
prerequisite for union with her Bridegroom. This requirement is especially
important, because it again shows that purification traditionally preceded the
nuptial mystery, and was originally separate from it, as in the case of bap-
tism, which Gentile Christians later assimilated to the Sacred Marriage itself
(pp. 129–30, above).
Being rendered “spotless” was in fact part of a whole complex of ideas
associated with “sanctification by marriage.” Rabbinic tradition especially
understood the word kadesh (“sanctify”) to mean “marriage to a wife”—i.e.,
Ibid., 137.
122
Ibid., 137.
123
124 From The Sacred Marriage Rite, quoted in Sampley, “And the Two Shall Become
One,” 44.
“separate her to oneself”—thereby making her a “consecrated object” in

the eyes of other men. Paul’s use of hagiazō in Ephesians 5:26, according to
Sampley, also means both “betroth” and “consecrate,” again signifying “to
set apart as wife,” i.e., as a portion of one’s own flesh (vv. 28–29).125 Here
we are again reminded of Hosea’s imagery of “the Redeemer, uniting him-
self to what is unholy to make it holy.”126
Other Old Testament motifs relating to Yahweh’s marriage to Israel,
which Paul now applies to Christ and the Church, include the following:
1. An admonition in v. 33 that “every man love his wife as himself.”
This appears at first glance to be simply drawn from Leviticus 19:18 (“love
thy neighbor as thyself”). But the LXX of Song of Songs (1:9, 15; 2:2, 10,
13; 4:1, 7; 5:2; 6:4) shows that a bride was commonly known as hē plēsion
mou, “my neighbor,” a nuptial convention which also found its way into
several Tannaitic writings.127 Since writers as early as 4 Ezra had begun to
relate Song of Songs to Yahweh’s espousal to Israel, Paul’s use of the
phrase (“so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies; he that loves his
wife loves himself”) takes on special meaning, particularly when applied to
Christ’s love for the Church (v. 29).
2. The pointed reference in Ephesians 5:25–27 to the “gloriousness”
(endoxos) of the Bride. Paul’s language in this case is derived from the Royal
Epithalamion which is contained in Psalm 45 (LXX 44). Verse 11 depicts
her great beauty, while verses 13–14 call attention to her rich attire. Her
“glory” (kavod) in verse 13 is translated by the LXX as pasa hē doxa (“all her
glory”); similarly, Ephesians 5:27 says that the Church shall be endoxos (“glo-
rious”).128 It is most important to note, however, that (as in Ezekiel 16:14),
this “splendor” is bestowed—and solely by the Husband.129 Psalm 45:11 thus
commands her to recognize the King as her “Lord” (cf. Eph 5:21–22). The
Midrash on Psalms, on the other hand, identifies Israel as his “Queen,”
though canonical Psalm 45 lacks such a declaration.
Thus we see that Paul’s “Great Mystery” in Ephesians 5 includes a
number of specific hieros gamos and marriage traditions drawn from Genesis
2, Song of Songs, Ezekiel, and the LXX of Psalm 45, showing clearly that
125 Sampley, “And the Two Shall Become One,” 42–43.

126 Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1980),
165.
127 Sampley, “And the Two Shall Become One,” 30–31.
128 Ibid., 51.
129 Ibid., 40–41.
134 A GREAT MYSTERY
the intended subject is Christ’s Sacred Marriage to the Church, and not bap-
tism.
Many of the esoteric traditions concerning “Adam” and “Eve” as
heavenly partners in a hieros gamos were doubtless suppressed by the later
Church during its controversies with Gnosticism.130 Nevertheless, writers
like the author of 2 Clement were obviously aware of them, since they like-
wise interpreted the language of Genesis 1 and 2 as referring to the “spiri-
tual” marriage of Christ and the Church. The remarkable book Baruch,
written by Justin (or Justinus),131 also knew a tradition in which the nuptials
of “Adam” and “Eve” symbolized the union of the Demiurge (“Elohim”)
and his feminine counterpart (“Eden”), from which the “mystery of creativ-
ity and reproduction” was derived.132 For Justin, the love of the human
Adam and Eve served as “a kind of seal and memorial of their love, and an
eternal symbol of the marriage of Elohim and Eden” (Hippolytus, Refuta-
tions, 5.26; our emphasis). Nothing is known of Justin himself, though
Cleveland Coxe believed that he was “contemporary with St. Peter and St.
Paul,”133 while Hans Jonas claims simply that Baruch is “older” than the
Gospel of Truth (ca. A.D. 140),134 i.e., roughly contemporary with 2 Clement.
In any case, the symbolism in Baruch suggests that the relationship of
Adam and Eve in Gen 2:24 was already employed near the end of the first
century to represent the marital union of heavenly entities—even that of
the Creator and his “female counterpart.” But since this never occurs in the
Old Testament,135 many scholars feel that the use of Genesis 2:24 to sym-
bolize Christ’s marriage to the Church was a creation of Paul himself:136
Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not
sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of
him that was to come (Rom 5:14).
But arguments which we shall present when we discuss the Church’s Hex-
aemeron doctrine (see “The Great Mystery and the Preexistent Church,”
Compare Sampley, ibid., 52.

130
In Hippolytus, Refutations, 5.26–27.

131
132 R. M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (London, 1959), 18.
133 In Ante-Nicene Fathers (Roberts and Donaldson, editors), 5:69.
134 The Gnostic Religion (Boston, 1963), 191 notes.
135 M. Barth quotes H. Schlier (Christus und die Kirche im Epheserbrief, 1930, 107)
as observing that the Old Testament never applies Genesis 2:24 to Yahweh and his
People. Ephesians, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1974), 4–6, 728, notes.
below) suggest that Paul received his idea of an archetypal relationship be-
tween human and divine marriages ready-made.
Markus Barth, as late as 1974, still argued that the available sources are
“somewhat murky from which other scholars have reconstructed a full-
blown allegorical ‘tradition’ that is supposedly recognizable ‘behind’ Eph.
5.”137 We believe, however, that the situation has changed dramatically with
the rediscovery of the Embracing Cherubim and the various meanings
which were attached to them, for we now have a common symbol which
ties together a number of previously independent ideas in a relationship
which can hardly have escaped the attention of early Jews and Christians:
a. God’s own Image is “male and female” (Gen 1:27).
b. The First Pair, Adam and Eve, were created in God’s Image, and
united in marriage according to the same pattern (Gen 1:28; 2:24).
c. The covenant between Yahweh and Israel is also described as that
of a “male” and a “female,” i.e., a “Husband” and a “Wife” (Hos 2:16, 20;
Isa 54:5; Jer. 2:2; Ezek 16:8; etc.).
d. Yahweh’s surrogate—his mediating “Wisdom”—and her “lovers”
were also related by means of a “sexual” union (Sir 51:13–30; Wis 8:2, 9, 16;
Philo, On the Cherubim, 40–51, 106; Gospel of Thomas, Logg. 22, 104).
e. A common symbol for all of these unions was the Embracing
Cherubim (Philo, On the Cherubim, 27–29; Questions on Genesis, 1.57; Questions
on Exodus, 2.62; On Drunkenness, 30; b. Yoma 54a; b. Baba Batra 99a; Tosefta,
Yebamoth 8:4; Zohar III:7a; 296a).
f. Christ and the Church were also united in “marriage” (Matt 25; Rom
7:4; 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:31–32; Rev 19:7–9; 21:2). Since Christ replaced
Yahweh as Israel’s “Husband,” and the Church replaced Israel as his
“Bride,” the symbolism of the Embracing Cherubim must also have been
applied to them.
This helps to explain why Paul could speak of Adam’s marriage to Eve,
Christ’s marriage to the Church, and man’s marriage to a wife as forms of the same
“Great Mystery” (Eph 5:31–33), for all follow the same heavenly pattern,
and all became equivalent through their common denominator, the symbol-
ism of the Embracing Cherubim. This is also why the Temple Mystery in
Hebrews 9:5 was still presided over by the statues in the Holy of Holies,
and why the Church Fathers would continued to apply their meaning to the
wedding of Christ and the Church (see “The Post-New Testament Wisdom
Mystery,” below).
137 Ibid., 728.

136 A GREAT MYSTERY
But perhaps most illuminating of all is the way in which the entire
New Testament culminates in a heavenly vision of the Feast of Tabernacles
and a revelation of the Sacred Marriage, which is taking place behind the
opened veil. In John 7, we saw Jesus as the traditional source of “Water”
and “Spirit,” which issued forth on the Feast of Tabernacles (vv. 2, 37–39);
and in John 8 we saw him revealed as the traditional “Light of the world,”
or the divine “glory” which entered from the Mount of Olives in the east
(cf. 1:14 with 8:1–2, 23). The new Johannine Feast of Tabernacles, as de-
scribed in the Book of Revelation, now takes place in seven magnificent
scenes (Rev 4:2–11; 5:8–14; 7:9–17; 11:15–19; 14:1–5; 15:2–4; 19:1–8).138
In the first three, we see the Throne of God, just as Ezekiel had seen it
(Ezek 1), and also the numerous angelic figures and Saints engaged in wor-
ship (Dan 7). But in the fourth scene, the veil of the heavenly Temple is
suddenly removed, so that we (like the pilgrims assembled in the ancient
forecourt) are able to behold the mysterious Ark of the Covenant:
And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his
temple the ark of the testament (Rev 11:19).
Finally, in the last scene of all, we see the marriage of Christ and the
Church, corresponding to the marriage of Yahweh and Israel, symbolized in
the Jerusalem Temple by the Embracing Cherubim:
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of
many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia:
for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and
give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife
hath made herself ready (Rev 19:6–7).
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God
out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev 21:2).
The new Temple would henceforth consist solely of God and his people,
now made one by their Sacred Marriage (Rev 3:12 and 21:22), thereby “col-
lapsing” the heavenly and the earthly into a single reality, as we read in the
Gospel of Thomas.139 For here, too, as Henri Corbin explains,
138R. J. McKelvey, The New Temple, the Church, in the New Testament (Oxford,
1969), 162–70; following the analysis of Alfred Edersheim, The Temple (Grand Rap-
ids, 1978), 140–41.
139 Compare Stevan L. Davies’ statement, pp. 98–99, above.
The temporal boundaries between the present and future are abolished,
and the glories of the future eschatological state, conceived as a restora-
tion of the primitive paradisal condition, “are experienced as a reality in
the present.” In the same way that the Jewish mystics wished to experi-
ence a visio Dei by way of anticipation, the Johannine community experi-
enced a visio Christi in its celebration of the liturgical mystery.140
This new exegesis gave a greatly expanded meaning to the ordinary
Temple cult, for salvation was now concerned not only with the annual
cleansing the Temple-sancta from pollution, but with bringing the heavenly
world together with the earthly world, thereby transcending the “carnal or-
dinances” of the Aaronic cultus (Heb 7:15–17). In particular, it offered a
“Melchizedec” priesthood gift of eternal life (v. 16) through “At-One-
Ment” (henosis) with the Divine (pp. 3 and 82–83, above), a theme which
was central to both John’s doctrine of “spiritual indwelling” and Paul’s doc-
trine of “spiritual cleavage” (pp. 108–9, above).
Nothing could better explain how the death of one—even Christ—
could bring about the salvation of others. There have been many attempts
in Scripture, as well as in the popular literature, to explain the mechanism of
Christ’s sacrifice by using the imagery of the Aaronic “blood sacrifices” and
“scapegoats.” This language was doubtless retained by early evangelists in
order to appeal to the comprehension of Christ’s Jewish audience. Thus the
crucified Christ was variously described as a “ransom” for captive men
(Matt 20:28; 1 Tim 2:6), an “advocate” arguing man’s case before the Father
(1 John 2:1), a sacrificial “victim” whose blood “washes” sin from the
wicked (Heb 9:13–14), a “propitiation” satisfying God’s demand for justice
(KJV Rom 3:25), a “Paschal Lamb” offered for Israel’s Passover (John
1:29), a “penal substitute” who is punished in place of the guilty (Luther,
Calvin), or a “commercial transaction” designed to “buy” humanity from
Satan’s grasp (Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa). Even the Savior occasionally
accommodated the understanding of his Jewish listeners by declaring that
he would “shed his blood” for the sins of mankind (Matt 26:28). Yet if
these explanations were to be understood literally, his crucifixion would
have been little more than a continuation of the old “carnal” sacrifices (Heb
7:16).
140 Temple and Contemplation (London, 1986), 336, quoting D. E. Aune, The Cultic
Setting of Realized Eschatology in Early Christianity (Leiden, 1972), 102.

138 A GREAT MYSTERY
Yet as Jesus himself took great pains to explain, he was no “sacrificial

victim” at all, but one who voluntarily laid down his life and took it up again, in
order to show that he possessed the power of resurrection and eternal life:
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall
the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth
(Matt 12:40).
I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me,
but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power
to take it up again (John 10:17–18).
Thus he could prove that it was he who had created life (John 1:3–4), hence
the one who could re-create it: “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25).
And by performing this great miracle, he would “draw men unto him,” and
offer them his eternal life (12:32), again, not by “penal substitution,” or by
ritual “blood-letting,” but by sharing his resurrection with his partners.
Indeed, Christ now looked upon his Bride as “his own body” (Eph
5:28–30), which was made “holy and without blemish” (v. 27). John further
explained that the glory which the Father had given to the Son would be
shared directly with the disciples, thanks to the Father’s “pneumatic in-
dwelling” in them, and their spiritual oneness with him (John 17:5, 22).
But the greatest advance of Christ’s teaching over the old sacrificial
cultus was that it no longer relied on the offering of “substitute victims,”
but on the sacrifice of self (John 10:17–18), for the believer’s baptism “into
Christ” demanded that he too be willing to participate in Christ’s crucifixion
(Matt 10:38; Rom 6:3–6), i.e., to emulate his gift of self in the service of oth-
ers. Indeed, by participating in Christ’s Eternal Sacrifice—which had origi-
nated in the heavens (Rev 13:8)—the disciple was promised that he might
be glorified with Christ (Rom 6:5; 8:17; 2 Cor 1:5; Phil 3:10–11; Matt 16:24),
and have a share in the superabundant life which increases the more it is given to
others (John 6:5–14; cf. 4:31–34). This gift of what science would call “nega-
tive entropy” lay at the very heart of the “Theopathetic Mystery,” or the
disciple’s willingness to participate in the Divine Suffering which turns into
Life, and is never depleted. W. D. Davies thus believed that the center of
Paul’s theology lay in the disciple’s “participation in the life, death and res-
urrection of Jesus Christ;”141 and Albert Schweitzer defined the true “Body
of Christ” as “the point at which the dying and rising again, which began
141 Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, xxvii.

with Christ, passes over to the elect.”142 The British Theosophist, Annie
Besant, likewise agreed that “there is no substitution of Him for them, but
the taking of their lives into His, and the passing of His life into them.”143
John’s Jesus therefore demanded that each true believer “eat his flesh and
drink his blood,” i.e., internalize his sacrifice, in order that he might become
fully one with him (John 6:56). This alone would make henosis with Christ a
living reality and make proper use of the gift of grace in order to qualify for a
satisfactory judgment and reward (Matt 16:27; Rom 2:6; 1 Cor 3:11–15; 2 Cor
5:10; etc.).
DEIFICATION
The earliest Christians went on to teach that the ultimate result of becom-
ing fully one with Christ was that one became “Christ’s own flesh” (Eph
5:28–32), and received “all of the divine fulness” which dwelt in him (Eph
3:19; Col 2:9–10). This made him a “sharer (koinonos)” of the “very being of
God (theas physeos)” (2 Pet 1:4, NEB) and transformed him into the very
“image of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:19). When Christ returns, we shall therefore
be “like him” (1 John 3:2) and have “bodies like his glorious body” (Phil
3:21). Many early writers in fact used John 10:34 (“You are gods, and all of
you are sons of the Most High”) as a proof-text to show that believers
would be deified (Irenaeus, Theophilus of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria,
Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, etc.),144 just as the Jewish writer,
Philo, had said (pp. 63, 68, above) Thus originated the widely attested pa-
tristic saying, “God became man so that man could become god” (Clement of Alex-
andria, Athanasius, Basil of Cesaria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Pseudo-
Dionysus, St. Augustine, and many others).
This, however. could only be achieved by the grace of God, when
“Christ pours out the Spirit of the Father to unite and bring into union God
and man, bringing down God to man through the Spirit, and taking up man to
God through his Incarnation, and bestowing incorruptibility on us through
union with himself (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.1.1). Hippolytus, the Bishop of
Portus in the third century, summarized this “Great Mystery” of union with
the divine by promising that
142 The Mysticism of the Apostle Paul, 118.

143 Esoteric Christianity, 152–53.
144 G. W. H. Lampe, quoted in H. Cunliffe-Jones, A History of Christian Doctrines
(Philadelphia, 1980), 150.

140 A GREAT MYSTERY
Thou shalt be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir with Christ, no

longer endowed by lusts or passions, and never again wasted by disease,
for thou hast become God … Whatever it is consistent with God to im-
part, these God has promised to bestow upon thee, because thou hast
been deified, and begotten unto immortality … And provided thou
obeyest his solemn injunctions, and becomest a faithful follower of Him
who is good, then shalt thou resemble Him, insomuch as thou shalt
have honor conferred upon thee by Him. For the Deity by condescen-
sion does not diminish aught of the dignity of His divine perfection,
having made thee even God to his glory (Refutation of Heresies, 10.30).
One of the recently discovered texts from Nag Hammadi describes the re-
sulting oneness with God and deification as “a process of extension, as the
Father extends himself to those whom he loves, so that those who came from
him might become him as well” (Tripartite Tractate, 73.23–28). Origen therefore
admonished that “men should escape from being men, and hasten to become
gods” (Commentary on John, 29.27, 29), though he cautioned that this was al-
ways the work of God, never of man, being a process through which “hu-
man and divine nature begin to be woven together, so that by fellowship with
divinity human nature might become divine” (Against Celsus, 3.28).
4 THE GREAT MYSTERY AND THE PREEXIS-
TENT CHURCH
CHRIST AND THE CHURCH AS THE PREEXISTENT MALE AND FEMALE

We must now examine the New Testament “Great Mystery” in light of the
Adam speculations which were connected with Christ’s preexistent “mar-
riage” to the Church (pp. 134–35, above). Here again, the Cherubim may
have helped to shape the Church’s perception of a universal marriage para-
digm by tying together the divine male-female pattern of Genesis 1:27 and
2:24 with the pattern of syzygies (married pairs) which were believed to gov-
ern the sexes throughout nature. These included the patterns of God’s own
“bisexuality” (Gen 1:27), the unified sexuality of the original Adam and
Eve, and the divine order of human marriage which men and women were
required to take upon themselves. But it also included Yahweh’s “marriage”
to Israel, Christ’s “marriage” to the Church, the preexistent love of the
Heavenly Man for his “Bride,” the Heavenly Community, and sexual rela-
tionships within the angelic world, a now-forgotten aspect of early Judaeo-
Christian tradition which was once revered and perpetuated by the Gnostics
and the Kabbalists. Inevitably, a number of early writers and thinkers would
see behind these various syzygetic symbols a cosmic sexuality whose arche-
typal examples were Christ and the Church, whose love for each other was
a manifestation of the divine and universal passion which drives the worlds
at all levels, both earthly and heavenly.
One of Jesus’ special “Wisdom” titles was archē, “the Beginning” (see
pp. 99–100, above). Jean Daniélou has carefully examined the history of this
expression in early Christian writings and shown that it was a genuine teach-
ing of the primitive Community.1 Clement of Alexandria, writing near the
end of the second century, records at least twice that “the Son is archē,”2 i.e.,
1 Theology of Jewish Christianity (London, 1964, hereafter TJC), 166–72.

2 Prophetic Fragments, 4.1 (in Daniélou, TJC, 166).
141
142 A GREAT MYSTERY
the “First-begotten,” or “the Beginning” of God’s creations.3 The same, he

notes, was “also called ‘Wisdom’ by the prophets,” as well as “Torah” and
“Logos.”4 As his source, he mentions the Kerygmata Petrou (“Preaching of
Peter”), a missing work from around A.D. 100,5 not to be confused with an
Ebionite work of the same title. This one identifies Wisdom as the “True
Prophet” and contains an original, non-Gnostic “male-female” syzygy-
theory.6 Theophilus of Antioch, around 150, repeated the claim that the
Word was archē, “emitted by God with his own Wisdom before all things,”7
as did Justin Martyr, who stated clearly that “Wisdom was begotten as archē,
before all his creatures,”8 being “an angel,” a “rational Power,” “the Son
Wisdom,” the “Logos,” and the “Glory.”9
This identification of the Word as the “Beginning” of God’s creations
dominated the early patristic period, and was summed up by Origen at the
start of the third century, as follows: “’In the beginning, God made heaven
and earth.’ What is the Beginning (archē), if not our Savior and Lord, Jesus
Christ, the first-born of all creatures?”10 “He is called ‘the Beginning’ in so
far as he is Wisdom. 11 This is the same “angelomorphic” Christology12 that
3 Miscellanies, 6.7.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 6.5 and 7
6 The latter work is found In Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, New Testament
Apocrypha (Philadelphia, 1963), 2:102–27. See H. J. Schoeps’ remarks in Le Origini

dello Gnosticismo, U. Bianchi, ed. (Leiden, 1967), 532–33, where he explains his rea-
sons for believing that Ebionism was an anti-Gnostic, rather than a Gnostic, move-
ment.
7 Theophilus to Autolycus, 2.10.
8 Dialogue with Trypho, 61 and 62.
9 Ibid., 61.
10 Homily on Genesis, 1.1.
11 Commentary on John, 1.19 (designated “22” in vol. 10 of Roberts and
Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Buffalo, 1885–96).

12 Daniélou has demonstrated in great detail that Christians applied terminol-
ogy derived from the Jewish concept of “angels” to Christ and the Spirit right up to
the fourth century, though mostly in Jewish-Christian circles (TJC, 116–46). But
Justin, too, in his Dialogue with Trypho, refers to Jesus as “the Angel of Great Coun-
sel” (126:1–2), as well as “the Angel of the Lord” (ibid., 55:10; 126:4–5). An excel-
lent summary of this “angelomorphic Christology” can be found in Richard Lon-
genecker’s The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity (Grand Rapids, 1981), 26–32. See
also Margaret Barker, The Great Angel (Louisville, 1992), especially pp. 194–207; also
Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (Leiden, 1977), 220–233, where he describes the
THE GREAT MYSTERY AND THE PREEXISTENT CHURCH 143
exerted such a powerful influence on the Arians, who opposed the doctrine
of Trinitarianism at the Council of Nicaea in 325.13 Yet, as we have already
seen, it was derived from Old Testament Wisdom traditions which divided
the sevenfold Light-Stream into various classes of “angels.”14 Thus it appears
to have been an important ingredient of Christian Sophiology from the very
start.
We find another example of this “angelomorphic” Wisdom Christol-
ogy in the Church’s early Hexaemeron doctrine, in which Christ is called
hēmera (“Day”)—another way of saying that he was the “Beginning,” i.e.,
the “First Day” of God’s creations (Gen 1:1). It then described the mem-
bers of the preexistent Church as the hexaēmerai (“Six Days”) which fol-
lowed. A special form of this would appear in 2 Clement (p. 152, below),
where Christ is described as the preexistent “Male” and the Church as the
preexistent “Female” who comprised a heavenly syzygy before Creation and
were destined to be reunited in the eschaton.15
THE HEXAEMERON
Daniélou finds the ultimate source of Christ’s title “Day” in the use of Old
Testament prophecies concerning the “Day of Yahweh” to describe the
advent of Jesus. He also refers to Old Testament passages which equate
“light” and “day” (e.g., Gen 1:5). Eusebius also quotes a certain Marcellus
of Ancyra (4th cent.), who claimed to have preserved a logion of Jesus an-
nouncing himself as both “the Day” and the “Morning Star.”16 This is simi-
lar to the tradition contained in John 8:12 and 9:5, where Jesus says, “I am
the light of the world”17—“Light” being the equivalent of “Day.”
Further evidence that the “Word” and “Beginning” was called “Day”
comes from Clement, who in his Miscellanies interpreted Genesis 2:4 (“This
is the book of the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were
created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens”) as
a reference to the Word and his creative activity. Thus he argued that
“angelic christology” of the Church Fathers which made Christ the “Second
Power.”
13 Compare Daniélou, TJC, 129.
14 See the Jewish “angelology” which was frequently associated with the Light-
Stream, pp. 58–59, above.

15 Compare Daniélou, TJC, 121–23, 166–72, 299–301, 303–4.
16 Eusebius, Against Marcellus, 1.2.
17 Danielou, TJC, 169.
144 A GREAT MYSTERY
“In the day which God made,” i.e., in and by which God made “all
things,” and “without which not even one thing was made” (John 1:3), de-
notes the operation of the Son … who is called “Day” (6.16; our emphasis).
This apparently derives from Philo’s statement in the Allegorical Interpretation
that the phrase, “This is the ‘day’ (hēmera),” refers to the “book” or “reason”
(logos) “by which God made heaven and earth” (1.19–21).
Sources for the notion that the hexaēmerai (“Six Days”) of Genesis 1 re-
ferred to the creation of the preexistent Church are several. First of all,
Christianity adapted the late Jewish belief in a heptad of seven archangels,
whose leader was either Raphael or Michael (1 Enoch 20; T. Levi 8:1–2; Tob
12:15; 4QS1 38–40; compare also Rev 1:4, 20; 3:1; 4:5; 8:2, 6), to describe
the six archangels who were led by the Logos-Christ, making seven archan-
gels in all.
Hippolytus, for example, understood Ezekiel’s vision of the six men
and “the man clothed in linen”—who marked the righteous with a tau
(Ezek 9:2–4)—to be a description of these six archangels plus the Word
(Commentary on Daniel, 4.57). Their total number of seven is again related to
the tradition of Wisdom’s “seven pillars” (Prov 9:1), or Philo’s seven-fold
Light-Stream, though in the latter’s simplified “angelology” only the Logos
and the Embracing Cherubim are specifically described as “angels.” Never-
theless, it was a widespread belief at the time that the seven archangels were
fashioned out of the fire of God’s Garment, thus relating them directly to
the components of the seven “fiery rivers” which emanated from God’s
Throne (see pp. 55–58, above). Such an idea may even have contributed to
the subsequent development of the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanation.
The best-known Christianized version of these seven archangels—
now presided over by the Logos-Christ—is found in the Shepherd of Hermas,
perhaps the most widely read book in the entire Church between the sec-
ond and fourth centuries, having found its way even into the Codex Sinaiticus
as “scripture”:
Didst thou see the six men and the glorious and mighty man in the
midst of them that walked about the Tower (the Church) and rejected
the stones from the building?... The glorious man is the Son of God,
and those six men are the glorious angels who guard him on the right
and on the left (S.9.12:7–8).
In another passage, they are described as the six “holy angels of God that
were created first of all (protoi ktisthentes), and to whom the Lord delivered
all his Creation to increase and build it” (V.3.4:1–2). For this reason they
have been called the “Protoctist (first created) Angels.” Clement of Alexan-
dria also spoke of these “protoctist angels,” but they are seven in number,
and the Logos is not specifically named as being among them (Fragments,
56:6). Pseudo-Cyprian, on the other hand, in a very ancient document enti-
tled On the Hundredfold, Sixtyfold and Thirtyfold, simply makes the Son one of
the seven “protoctists”:
When the Lord created the angels from fire to the number of seven, he
determined to make one of them his Son. He it is whom Isaiah declares
to be the Lord Sabaoth. We see that there remained then six angels who
had been created with the Son” (216).18
Since these protoctists were the first created of all God’s works, it was
inevitable that a parallel be drawn between them and the first creation-
account in Genesis. Pseudo-Cyprian thus goes on to relate his account of
the six protoctist angels to the six days of Creation (Gen 1), and telling us
that God ceased to create thereafter. This is in fact the earliest surviving
identification of the six angels with the Hexaemeron, and it agrees essentially
with the witness of Papias (of whom we shall speak presently), though
Papias preferred to describe the Hexaemeron as “Christ and the Church,”
instead of “protoctist angels.”
Pseudo-Cyprian then tells us that God “blessed” the seventh day (Gen
2:2–3)—the day to be imitated by all who would cease from sin—
suggesting that he was extending his understanding of the “days of Crea-
tion” to agree with yet another tradition, this one identifying Christ as the
“Sabbath Day” or “Day of Rest.”19 Thus, we read that “the Seventh Day is
‘the Rest,’ which prepares us by the cessation of sin for the Primordial Day,
which is truly Repose, which is also the creation of the true light and the
gnosis which shines upon us” (Clement, Miscellanies, 6.16).
Actually, there would be no contradiction in calling Christ both “Be-
ginning” and “Sabbath,” for as the “Sabbath Day” he was also uniquely
qualified to be the “Primordial Day.” In fact, the Christians soon decided
that the true “Primordial Day” was not the Jewish Sabbath, but the “Lord’s
Day,” the eighth day of the week (Rev 1:10; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:l–2)—which
is a repetition of the first—hence the return of the original “Primordial
Day.” From Genesis 2:2–3, then, it would have been natural to go on and
read verse 4 as a description of the “operation of the Son … who is called
18 Quoted by Daniélou (TJC, 122–3) from Richard Reitzenstein, “Eine früh-
christliche Schrift von den dreierlei Früchten,” Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissen-
schaft 15 (1914): 82. Daniélou claims that this is the earliest of all references to the
Protoctists.
19 Ibid., 122–23.
146 A GREAT MYSTERY
‘Day,’” just as Clement stated. Such speculation was in fact the source of
the Gnostic idea that the Hebdomad (“The Seven”) referred to solely as the
realm of the “powers and principalities”—i.e., the “angels” who rule over
the planetary “seven heavens”—whereas the Ogdoad (“The Eighth”) was the
realm of the truly Divine.
Yet we still need to ask just how these “protoctist angels”—including
“the Word”—became so closely identified with the Preexistent Church and
the Savior. That the Hexaemeron was indeed understood in this fashion is
not only affirmed by Pseudo-Cyprian, but also by the ancient Fragments of
Papias, who tells us that “the work of the Six Days (the Hexaemeron) referred
specifically to Christ and the Church.”20 This information he claimed to
have received directly from the Elders, i.e., from those who had personally
spoken with the Apostles:
I will not hesitate to set down for thy benefit, along with the interpreta-
tions, all that I have carefully learnt and carefully recalled from the Eld-
ers, guaranteeing its truth … If anyone chanced to come who had actu-
ally been a follower of the Elders, I would inquire as to the discourses
of the Elders, what Andrew or what Peter said, or what Philip, or what
Thomas or James, or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s
disciples … For I did not think that things out of books could profit me
so much as the utterances of a voice that liveth and abideth.21
Anastasius Sinaites affirms that the same view had been held by Philo, “the
contemporary of the Apostles,” as well as by men like Pantaenus and Am-
monius, and indeed, by “the more ancient expositors of the Churches” in
general. So that there be no mistake, he too affirmed that the “sayings about
Paradise (Gen. 1)” referred to the “Church and Christ.”22
These “ancient expositors,” says Anastasius, also included Clement of
Alexandria. Of him, we further read in Eusebius’ Church History that “in the
20 Papias, Fragments, 9 (in Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1:155);
Fragments, 12, in J. B. Lightfoot, ed., The Apostolic Fathers (Grand Rapids, 1956), 269.
This is also quoted in Daniélou, TJC, 299.
21 Papias, Fragments, 1 (Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1:153), 3
(Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, 263–64); Danielou, TJC, 47. Later commentators have
tended to discount the claim that Papias was actually a “hearer of John” (Encyclo-
pedia Britannica, 14th ed., loc. cit.), though his “nearness in spirit to the actual Chris-
tianity of the subapostolic age” should be taken more seriously than Eusebius did,
for Eusebius had already had begun to doubt what Papias reported concerning the
earlier apostolic traditions (ibid.).
22 Papias, Fragments 12 and 13 (in Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, 269).
first book of the Miscellanies (1.1.11) he shows … that he himself is very

close to the traditions of the Apostles; and he promises to write a commen-
tary on Genesis” (5.13:8–9). As fulfillment of that promise, his Fragments
“do indeed consist largely of commentaries on Genesis.” The “heavens and
the waters” stood for the “pure powers,” while the “heavens and the earth”
signified the heavenly and earthly things, that is, the spiritual and carnal realities
(3:1–3). Finally, the “Beginning” (archē) is the Son (4:1).23
Clement also includes a discussion of the “protoctist angels” (51:2;
56:7; 57:1),24 i.e., the angels “who are called days” (56:1). Since Anastasius
especially listed Clement as one who understood the “six days” to be a de-
scription of the preexistent Church, we have yet another witness that the
latter was somehow considered to be synonymous with the protoctist an-
gels.
We should note that Jewish apocalyptic already viewed the angels
above and the congregation on earth as parts of a single, eternal Commu-
nity. In the Qumran fragment known as the “Angelic Liturgy” we thus learn
that the angels surrounding God’s Throne pronounced their celestial liturgy
together with the earthly covenanters as they recited their benedictions in
the desert (cf. Num 6:24–27). This agrees with a belief in Jewish folklore
that whenever Israel performs sacred worship, her devotions are accompa-
nied by a divine service on the part of the angels.25 The basis of such belief
was the doctrine of the Qumran Community’s preexistence and common
lot with the angels, which were established together before the world began:
If mortal men keep faith with Thee, behold Thou crownest their heads
with glory everlasting. All of these things Thou didst establish in Thy
wisdom. Thou didst appoint all Thy works before creating them: the
host of Thy Spirits and the Congregation of Thy Holy Ones, the heav-
ens and all their hosts and the earth and all it brings forth … For Thou
hast established them from before eternity (1QH 13:7–10).
The earthly Congregation is therefore but the visible part of an Eternal
Planting, whose roots are in the heavens:
Thou hast set me beside a fountain in an arid land, beside a spring; in
the desert, beside an oasis; like one of those evergreen trees—fir or pine
or cypress—planted together to Thy glory, which, hidden ’midst other
trees—trees that stand beside water—are fed by a secret spring, and
23 Daniélou, TJC, 300.

24 Ibid., 300.
25 See T. H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (Garden City, NY, 1976), 285–86.
148 A GREAT MYSTERY
which put forth blossom unfading upon an eternal trunk, striking firm
roots to the stream; a tree whose stem is exposed to living waters, and
whose stalk lies beside a perpetual fount (1QH 8:4 ff).
Thus it was the destiny of the righteous from before Creation to
share the lot of Thy Holy Ones, that he may watch before Thee with the
everlasting Host, together with Thy Spirits of Holiness, and be renewed
with all that is, and with all that know, in a common rejoicing” (1QH
11:11–14).
“In a common rejoicing” is rendered by T. H. Gaster as “with … the choir
invisible” and explained as yet another reference to the belief that the
earthly “sons of God” pray in concert with their spiritual counterparts, the
angels (bene ha’el), “emulating what their heavenly archetypes did at the first
dayspring,” when the “Sons of God” and the “Morning Stars” burst into
song (Job 38:7).26
It is well known that these heavenly bene ha’el numbered seventy in Ca-
naanite myth; hence seventy was undoubtedly the number of the bene ha’el
amongst the original Hebrews. This number further influenced the Hebrew
concept of the Ideal Community, which also numbered seventy (cf. Exod
1:5). There were also seventy nations, ruled over by seventy “Sons of God,”
according to immemorial Israelite belief (cf. Gen 10; Clementine Homilies
18:4; also the statement in the Jewish Passover Haggadah). Nevertheless, the
number seventy-two sometimes appears in later traditions, especially those
influenced by Babylonian culture. Thus, the Clementine Recognitions states that
God “divided the nations into seventy-two parts, and over these hath ap-
pointed angels as princes” (2:4). One even finds the number seventy-one in
the Mul Apin, the classical Babylonian treatise on the constellations.27 Fi-
nally, the number seven, to which we have extensively referred, is closely
related to the seventy stars or constellations, being the number of the move-
able planets which govern the rest.
The idea that the “seventy (or seventy-two) bene ha’el” are somehow re-
lated to the earthly “sons of God”—and are in fact their celestial arche-
types—can still be detected in the Jewish legend of the Thirty-Six Righteous
Tzaddikim, i.e., Jews created by God to wander over the face of the earth to
succor mankind. This is of course half of the total number of seventy-two,
Ibid., 187, 250, 130.

26
See Eric Burrows, “The Number Seventy in Semitic,” Orientalia 5 (1936):

27
389–408.
and is obviously part of a larger legend, which states that God created an
equal number of men and angels: “He created seventy-two saints; thirty-six
He placed in heaven to always be beside Him to plead for their erring
brothers on earth, and thirty-six He scattered over the earth.”28 There is, in
short, a Heavenly Race, part of which remains above, and which corre-
sponds to the race on earth, or the fleshly embodiments of its angelic
brethren.
This close connection between angels and men was taken for granted
in the Old Testament, where visiting angels always have anthropomor-
phic appearances (Gen 18:2; 19:1; 32:23; Judg 13:10; etc.). They are even
capable of having sexual intercourse with humans and of impregnating
them (Gen 6:1–4). First Enoch in fact claims that “men were created exactly
like the angels to the intent that they should continue pure and righteous,
and death, which destroys everything, could not have taken hold of them”
(69:10–11). Philo also taught that the souls of men and the angels were
identical, save that the angels have not yet “fallen” and become entangled in
matter:
But there were other souls, called demons in philosophy and angels in
Scripture, who, dwelling in the higher parts, were never entangled by
love of the earthly (On Dreams, 1:22).
“Joseph’s Prayer” (preserved in Origen’s Commentary on John, 2.25) accord-
ingly identifies Jacob as “an angel of God and a primeval spirit, the first-
born of all creations; and like me were Abraham and Isaac created before
any other works of God.” Here, at last, we have a precise statement of the
belief that the souls of the pious were to be counted among the protoctist
angels. “Joseph’s Prayer,” Origen further informs us, was an “apocryphal
work … current among the Hebrews” (i.e., prior to A.D. 231), and one of
which he obviously approved. Hence, it undoubtedly reflects the same kind
of thinking which had enabled the students of the Hexaemeron to identify
the “first-created angels” with the preexistent Church.
It is also significant in this connection that the Ascension of Isaiah speaks
of the descent of the “Angel of the Christian Church” (3:15), who was a
preexistent form of the ekklesia. This is similar to the “Old Woman” who is
described as the “Angel” of the preexistent Church in Hermas. In fact, if we
were to return to this latter work for a closer examination, we should find
that the protoctist “angels” are themselves identified with the Church in
28 In Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 5:23.

150 A GREAT MYSTERY
several important ways. To begin with, the preexistent Son—who is one of

the angels (S.9.12:7–8)—is identified with the Holy Spirit (S.5.6:2); but the
Church is also identified with the Spirit (“the Holy Spirit which spoke with
thee in the form of the Church”; S.9.1:1). What these surprising correspon-
dences suggest is that there was already a spiritual corporeity between Christ
and his Church before the earth was created, held together by the indwelling
Holy Spirit.
Next, the angels are predestined to become parts of Christ here on earth,
for they cannot enter into the Church without first “putting on” the Son
(S.9.12:7–8). The same is true of men, who without the angels (and there-
fore without the Son) cannot be integrated into a heavenly Church
(V.2.2:7). But those who enter in “with the angels” will eventually be incor-
porated into her timeless fabric (S.9.25, 27). This reminds us of Paul’s
statement that Christ is the “chief cornerstone” of the Church, to which the
apostles and members also belong (Eph 2:20–22).
To these male angels must also be added the seven “virtues” (female an-
gels), an expression obviously borrowed from Philo’s circle of thought (pp.
47–49, above). The Shepherd’s night with virgines subintroductae (“secret vir-
gins,” S.9.10:6–11:8) symbolized his union with these seven “virtues,”
hence with the Spirit,29 for being “clothed” in a “garment of the Holy
Spirit” (whose divided portions were represented severally by the maid-
ens)30 was necessary for entrance into the angelic church (S.9.24–25).
Both of these groups of angels stood along side of Christ in the pri-
mordial structure of the Church (cf. “the six young men that came with the
Church,” V.3.2:5). That the “first created angels” (V.3.4) were in fact identi-
cal to the Church is further emphasized by a parallel statement that it was
the Church who was “created before all things” (V.2.4); it was in fact for
her alone that all else was later framed (ibid.).
Though there is lack of precision in Hermas as to what was “first cre-
ated” (i.e., preexistent) and what was “presently” being incorporated into
the Church, the picture of her timeless, eternal edifice—existing from be-
fore Creation, and whose “chief cornerstone” was the Word—is quite clear.
It is likewise clear that the “angels” were part of the preexistent Church
29Heinrich Schlier, Der Brief an die Epheser (Düsseldorf, 1957), 270.

30 See pp. 205–6, below. These “virgins” were undoubtedly related to the
Valentinian “angels,” i.e., those individual portions of the Holy Spirit which were
destined to reunite with the “images” or “souls” of the devout (Irenaeus, Against
Hersies, 1.4.5). We shall discuss the “angels” and “images” in more detail later on
(see “Gnosticism and the Wisdom Mystery,” below).
from the very “beginning,” Christ, “the archē,” being one of the “protoctist
angels,” according to the Church’s early Wisdom Christology.
Finally, another parallel with the Hexaemeron’s interpretation of Genesis
1 is brought out in Hermas by the reference to the Church “built upon the
waters,” as at the time of Creation (Gen 1:2, 6–10), and being sustained by
the “Word of the Almighty and Glorious Name,” i.e., Christ. Here, “the
waters” represent both the waters of baptism and the power of the Spirit
(cf. John 7:38–39). Again, Christ is accompanied by the “six young men”
who are “the holy angels of God, who were first created, and to whom the
Lord handed over his whole creation, that they might build up and rule
over it” (V.3.3:3–4:1), namely the Church.
THE HEAVENLY MAN AND THE HEAVENLY COMMUNITY

The identification of the “Six Days” of Creation with the spiritual creation
of the preexistent Church was further supported by the widespread apoca-
lyptic belief in two spiritual entities, the Heavenly Man and the Heavenly
Community, who had known each other from before the physical Creation.
R. G. Hamerton-Kelly has recently demonstrated in great detail that
the entire New Testament generally rests upon this basic assumption. Paul’s
theology (the earliest of the canonical record), for instance, is based
throughout on the belief that Christ and the Church preexisted together
before Creation:
The passages we have examined have shown that Paul believed in two
pre-existent entities, Christ and the Church. The forms in which he ex-
pressed this belief were taken from Jewish apocalyptic, Jewish Wisdom
speculation, and a Hellenistic-Jewish mysticism which is present in the
writings of Philo … The eschatologically pre-existent entities were iden-
tified with items that were believed, in the traditions from which they
came, to have existed before the world.31
Christians in fact already belonged to this heavenly Church (Gal 4:26; 1 Cor
3:5–17) because they were “chosen” ante-mortally and foreordained to
membership in it (Rom 8:28–30; Eph 1:4; 2 Tim 1:9). Though Hamerton-
Kelly is cautious in defining just what constituted “preexistence” in the
mind of early Christians, he is forced to admit that passages like Romans
8:30 (“those whom he foreordained he also called”) imply that “the elect
31 Pre-Existence, Wisdom, and the Son of Man; a Study of the Idea of Pre-existence in the
New Testament (Cambridge, 1973), 152.

152 A GREAT MYSTERY
really existed when the choice was made.32 This literal understanding of pre-
existence was in fact part of the general apocalyptic understanding, as it
occurs, for example, in 1 Enoch 38:1–5, or 62:7–8, 14–15, where “the idea of
the solidarity of the redeemer with his own is expressed as the pre-existence
[sic] of the community of the righteous with the Son of Man”:33
For the Son of Man was concealed from the beginning, and the Most
High preserved him in the presence of his power. Then he revealed him
to the holy and elect ones. The congregation of the holy ones shall be
planted, and all the elect ones shall stand before him on that day
(1 Enoch 62:7–8).
Jesus also alluded to this preexistent, heavenly Community when he
declared, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), since it origi-
nated “out of the world … before the world was” (17:5–6). The disciples,
too, “are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (v. 16), having
been “chosen in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4; 2 Thess
2:13).
Hamerton-Kelly sums up this early Christian view of preexistence by
concluding that “Jewish apocalyptic (was) the dominant conceptual frame-
work of earliest Christianity,” and that “apocalyptic teaches the real pre-
existence [sic] of entities to be revealed in the end,” i.e., “Christ and the
Church.”34 Transformed into the esoteric symbolism of the Hexaemeron tra-
dition, the “days” of the Creation-account were “no longer interpreted in
their literal sense, but in a hidden one,” and made to stand for these pre-
existent realities, “which in a mysterious way existed before the material
world.”35
Perhaps the most explicit description of the Preexistent Church and
man’s descent from it is to be found in the Ephesian “Great Mystery” itself.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church … for we
are members of his body, formed of his flesh and of his bones. For this
cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his
wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a Great Mystery, but I
speak concerning Christ and the Church (Eph 5:25, 30–32).
32 Ibid., 155; our emphasis.

33 Ibid., 222. The author always spells “pre-existence” with a hyphen.
34 Ibid., 276, 278, 271.
35 Adapted from Daniélou, TJC, 299.
What is particularly significant here is the fact that most early manuscripts
of verse 30 contain the added words, “from his flesh and from his bones,” show-
ing that Christ and the Church already comprised a single corporeity in the
preexistence.36 Second Clement, a work from the early second century, also
shows that Genesis 1:27 was understood to be a reference to the preexistent
creation of Christ and the Church, making “Adam” a symbol for Christ,
and “Eve” a symbol for the Church:
If we will do the will of our Father God, we shall be members of the
first Church, the spiritual … that which was created before the sun and
moon … I think not that ye are ignorant that the living Church is the
body of Christ, for the Scripture says, “God created man, male and fe-
male.” The male is Christ, the female the Church. And the Books and
the Apostles plainly declare that the Church existeth not now for the
first time but hath been from the beginning; for she was spiritual, as our
Jesus also was spiritual, but was manifested in the last days that He
might save us. Now the Church, being spiritual, was manifested in the
flesh of Christ, thereby showing that if any of us guard her in the flesh
and defile her not, he shall receive her again in the Holy Spirit” (14).
This enabled exponents of the Hexaemeron doctrine to describe the subse-
quent verses in Genesis 2:22–24 as the “marital” reunion of “Adam and
Eve,” i.e., as an event of “recognition and reunion based on a preexistent
oneness.” This, again, referred secretly to Christ and the Church, whose
soteriological “marriage” was in fact the “reunion of originally consubstan-
tial beings.”37 Hamerton-Kelly finds further evidences of Paul’s belief in the
preexistent association of Christ and the Church in Romans 8:28–30; 1 Co-
rinthians 3:5–17; Galatians 4:26; Ephesians 1:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:13;
2 Timithy 1:9; etc.,38 culminating in Christ’s present “marriage” to the
Church (Eph 5:31–32; Rom 7:4; 2 Cor 11:2).
This Pauline doctrine of Christ’s preexistent “espousal” to the Church
belongs to what R. A. Batey calls “a widespread nuptial myth,” once
“common to early Christianity, Judaism and the Mysteries,” and which
served as a “central core” around which “gnostic accretions later gath-
36 E.g., Codices Sinaiticus, Claramontanus, Boernerianus, Porfirianus, Pseudo-
Athos, most Antioch mss., the Latin and Syriac Versions; Irenaeus, Jerome, etc. See
Markus Barth, Ephesians, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1974), 721.
37 Ibid., 724.
38 Q.v. in Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence.
154 A GREAT MYSTERY
ered.”39 J. Paul Sampley has also pointed out that Paul’s language presup-
poses the reader’s acquaintance with this common marriage myth. Thus, “in
2 Cor 11 and Eph 5 the historian is allowed a glimpse into a popular specu-
lation that may have been much more pervasive than the extant early Chris-
tian literature indicates.”40 This agrees fully with the general apocalyptic be-
lief that “the chosen One, the Son of Man, is inseparable from the commu-
nity of Saints … (B)oth are hidden in God, and both are manifest eschata-
logically.’’41 But for the Christian, they have appeared on earth as Christ and
the Church, and their relationship is described in terms of the “marriage” of
“Adam and Eve,” according to a traditional Hexaemeron exegesis of Genesis.
But how did Christians first come to view the “Adam” and “Eve” of
Genesis 1:27 and 2:23–24 as descriptions of the preexistent Christ and the
Church?
W. D. Davies has demonstrated at some length that the early rabbis
were acquainted with a closely related concept, which taught that the future
generations of mankind were already contained in Adam.42 We already
noted that Clement of Alexandria understood Genesis 2:4 to refer to the
creative work of Christ, “the Day” (“in the Day that the LORD God made
the earth and the heavens”). Certain rabbis, however, understood the same
passage to refer to the generations of Adam’s future posterity (“these are
the generations of the heavens and of the earth”).43 This showed that all
men were included within a single common ancestor, and were already one
in him, for “all belong to each and each belongs to all.”44 The Mishnah fur-
ther teaches that “only one man was created in the world, to teach that if
any man has caused a single soul to perish from Israel, Scripture imputes it
to him as though he had caused a whole world to perish; and if any man
saves a single soul alive for Israel, Scripture imputes it to him as though he
had saved alive a whole world” (m. Sanhedrin 4:5).
39 “Jewish Gnosticism and the ‘Hieros Gamos’ of Eph. V, 21–33,” New Testa-
ment Studies 10 (1963–64): 121–27.
40 “And the Two Shall Become One Flesh”; A Study of Traditions in Ephesians 5:21–33
(Cambridge, 1971), 83.

41 Daniélou, TJC, 310; our emphasis.
42 Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (Philadelphia, 1980), 44–57.
43 Genesis Rabbah, 24:1ff; Aboth d. R. Nathan I (in W. D. Davies, Paul and Rab-
binic Judaism (Philadelphia, 1980), 54, notes); see also Strack and Billerbeck, Kommen-
tar zum Neuen Testament (Munich, 1924), 2:174.
44 Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 53.
We further note that Adam was created out of dust gathered from all
parts of the earth,45 which may be another way of asserting the universality
and equality of man, he having been formed without regional bias or preju-
dice.46 “Because of this cosmopolitan physical structure of Adam, it follows
that a man from the East and a man from the West were of the same mate-
rial formation and therefore one.”47 Thus, Adam “stands for the real unity
of mankind in virtue of his creation,” making him “the basis for love, equal-
ity and peace among men.”48
According to these rabbinical theories, then, the First Man represented
an entire Community; and it is interesting to note that this Urmensch was
said to have possessed gigantic size, so that his limbs extended from one
end of the world to the other.49 But we have not yet answered our question
completely, for 2 Clement represents the Church not as a gigantic “male,”
but as a “woman” (14). We must therefore recall that the divided sexes per-
tain only to the separated Christ and his Church, as they presently exist on
earth (see pp. 46–48 above). Preexistently, they were a single corporeity, a male-
female unity (“neither male nor female”), in whose image the prelapsarian
Adam was created (Philo, On the Creation of the World, 134). Second Clement
then describes the restoration of the pre-Fall Adam: “When the two shall be
one, and the outside as the inside … neither male nor female, then the King-
dom of God will arrive” (12). But the Gospel of Thomas explains that being
“neither male nor female” (Log. 22) actually means being male (Log. 114). This
restored “maleness,” however, is not an earthly “maleness”—which is actu-
ally female—but a reconstitution of the Heavenly Adam, who was one with the
Savior, and therefore male in a divine sense.
This distinction between the fallen “Adam” (who is female) and the re-
stored “Adam” (who is male) also occurs in Gnostic texts, which reflect a
growing anti-Jewish bias in parts of the Church. In one of them we read
that “when we were Hebrews we were orphans, and had only our mother,
but when we became Christians we had both father and mother” (Gospel of
45 B. Sanhedrin 38a; Genesis Rabba 8; Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, 3.19; see also Strack
and Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament (Munich, 1926), 3:479; Davies, op.
cit., 53.
46 Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 53. There were naturally some who claimed
that Adam’s “head” came from Israel, “the most exalted of all lands” (ibid., 54).
47 Ibid., 54.
48 Ibid., 55.
49 Beginning with R. Eliezer (A.D. 100), in the Pesiqta Rabbati, 115a. See Da-
vies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 45; Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar, 3:325.
156 A GREAT MYSTERY
Philip 52:21–24). Such texts accordingly describe earthly generation (Gen 1:28)
as the “work of the female,” as opposed to being newly begotten as a “perfect
Man” through union with Christ (Eph 4:13). (We shall again have occasion
to return to this “male-vs.-female” imagery when we discuss the Gnostic
Bridal chamber and its nuptial mystery.)
These, then, were some of the historical influences that went into the
designation of Christ and the Church as the preexistent “Male” and “Fe-
male,” and who were said to have enjoyed a close relationship before the
time of Creation. This is most important for our study because their con-
substantiality, separation, and reunion constituted the basic pattern which gov-
erned early Christian soteriology, far more than most commentators have
hitherto recognized.
To summarize: Christianity’s early conception of the Logos as one of
the seven “protoctist” angels who comprised the preexistent ekklesia ap-
pears to have been derived from a Jewish heptad of archangels (reduced by
Philo to a sevenfold Light-Stream), as well as from apocalyptic traditions of
a preexistent Heavenly Man and his Heavenly Community. These were
identified in the Christian Hexaemeron as the “Primal Adam” of Genesis 1.
Genesis 1:27 therefore referred to the spiritual creation of Christ and the
Church—perfectly united as the archetypal “Adam” and “Eve”—whereas
Genesis 2:22–24 referred to their separation and subsequent reunion, the
latter being the decisive event in man’s salvation. This is even now becom-
ing manifest in history, and will only be completed when the preexistent
partners are eternally reunited in the eschaton.
Subsidiary contributions to this Hexaemeron tradition were the identifi-
cation of the “angels” with the preexistent souls, and the rabbinic idea of a
Primal Adam, in whom all future men were contained at the time of
Creation.
We must now return to the last-mentioned speculation, to show just
how Jesus—the Wisdom-Logos—came to possess the necessary divine Im-
age which would restore man to his prelapsarian perfection, thus giving him
the divine stature which God intended him to possess at the time of his
creation.
JESUS AS THE RESTORER OF THE DIVINE IMAGE TO FALLEN MAN

At the time of Paul, as we just saw, both rabbis and early Christians shared
a belief that the initial Creation had inaugurated a time of harmony and per-
fection, when Adam received the divine Image and enjoyed the peace and
happiness that God intended for him (cf. Philo, On the Creation of the World,
139). The rabbis further taught that six things were subsequently lost becase
of Adam’s Fall: the earth’s fruitfulness, the fruit fulness of the trees, the
clarity of the atmosphere, the glory of Adam’s appearance, his immortality,
and the magnitude of his form.50 The Messianic Age, however, would re-
store these things to their pristine blessedness. Fourth Ezra accordingly
opined that “the world shall return to its first silence seven days, as it was at
the beginning, so that no man is left,” after which “the age that is not yet
awake shall be aroused, and that which is corruptible shall perish” (7:30–32;
cf. 2 Baruch 3:7). The Messianic Age, in short, would be a return to the be-
ginning (“Endzeit = Urzeit”).51 C. F. Burney has argued that the Gospel-
writers saw the beginning of this restoration already in the events of Christ’s
birth. Note, for example, Luke 1:35, where the Spirit repeats its original
creative act (Gen 1:2) by “overshadowing” Mary; also the Prologue to John,
with its obvious parallels to Genesis 1.52 Davies also sees similar parallels in
the writings of Paul between the creation of the original Adam and the new
creation in Christ: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircum-
cision availeth, but a new creation” (Gal 6:15). Thus, “if any man be in
Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away, behold, all things
have become new” (2 Cor 5:17; cf. also Rom 8:22f).53
Since the advent of Christ was to be a repetition of the original Crea-
tion, it was inevitable that Paul should come to look upon Jesus as the
“Second” or “Last Adam,” replacing the “First Adam,” in whom all men
had fallen (1 Cor 15:22, 45; Rom 5:12–13). Developing these rabbinic
speculations still further, Paul suggested that those who already enjoyed a
natural unity in Adam can look forward to a spiritual unity in Christ. But
instead of being animated by a natural spirit (the nephesh), they would hence-
forth be animated by the Holy Spirit, or the principle of supernatural life
(Rom 8:11; 1 Cor 12:6–13).54
In union with the “Last” or “New Adam,” then, men will be able to
attain the true humanity which God had intended from the very beginning.
Thus, we read in Romans 8:28–30 of man’s preexistent choosing and fore-
ordination to be “conformed to the image of (God’s) son” (v. 29). This was
God’s plan at the time of Creation, when he created the Heavenly Adam in
his own Image—an Image which was unfortunately diminished and com-
50 Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 39. See Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar,
3:250, for examples.

51 Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 39. “Endtime = Beginning Time.”
52 The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford, 1922), 43–44.
53 Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 40.
54 Ibid., 57.
158 A GREAT MYSTERY
promised by the Fall.55 Now Christ—as the Logos-Wisdom and divine

eikōn—has made this original, pristine Image available once more. He is in
fact the True Adam, i.e., the restored, resurrected Man.56 Significantly, how-
ever, he was “Man” both before and after his Resurrection, proving his es-
sential Humanity, as well as his Divinity, which are identical in Paul’s es-
chatological anthropology.
Hints of this Pauline doctrine appeared in the Priestly account in
Genesis, with its exalted view of God’s original design for man (“In the Old
Testament, the theomorphic understanding of man is more important than the
anthropomorphic view of God.”).57 But to realize this divine potential, fallen
man needs to be reunited with the intended Image in its purity. Paul there-
fore transferred traditional Jewish ascriptions of Adam’s excellence before
the Fall to Christ, in whom mankind would at last reclaim his true nature,58
promising that “we all, with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory of
the Lord, shall be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as
by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18).
This early conception of Christ as the prelapsarian “Image of God”
had also appeared in the Wisdom books, further informed by the preexis-
tence doctrine of Jewish apocalyptic. In Job 15:7–8, for instance, there is a
reference to the widespread myth of a preexistent Urmensch (Primal Man),
who was a kind of demi-god, and who had enjoyed an ante-mortal access to
the Council in Heaven. Philo developed this theme when he described the
spiritual “First Adam”—or Adam prior to the Fall—who had no part in
corruptible things, and who bore the image of God (Allegorical Interpretation,
1.31). Christ’s titles, “prototokos (First Born) of many brethren” (Rom 8:29),
and “prototokos (First Born) from the dead” (Col 1:18), likewise appear to
have been based on Wisdom expressions meaning the “First Created”
(LXX Prov 8:22; Wis 7:22; Philo, On Agriculture, 51; On the Confusion of
55 Gerhard von Rad suggests that although the divine Image was transmitted to
Seth (Gen 5:3), the “steady decline from the long lives of the earliest patriarchs (P)
has the theological implication of a degeneration of man’s original powers and di-
vinely given habitus” (in TDNT, 2:392).
56 Robin Scroggs, The Last Adam (Oxford, 1966), 101.
57 Ibid., 101–2; our emphasis. The quotation is from J. Behm, “morphē, morphō,
morphōsis, metamorphō,” in TDNT, 4:749. Ezekiel’s vision of God’s glory (p. 60,
above) was also seen by Philo as a “mirror” of the divine image, which was also
clearly “anthropomorphic,” and which von Rad calls the “locus classicus for the imago
doctrine in Gen 1:26.” Old Testament Theology (New York, 1962), 1:146.
58 Scroggs, Last Adam, 100.
Tongues, 146).59 For this reason, he would logically serve as the “New
Adam” (Rom 5:15–19; 1 Cor 15:21, 47), or the “first man” to be re-created
after death. And since it was his image after which the First Adam had been
formed (On the Creation of the World, 134; Col 3:10),60 it would be his image
after which the redeemed would be reformed (Rom 8:29). Thus Paul could
say, “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image
of the heavenly” (1 Cor 15:49), for he was both the “image of God” (Wis
7:26; 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3), and the “glory of God” (Wis 7:25; 2 Cor
3:7–4:6; Phil 3:21), as well as the “Spirit of Life” (1 Cor 15:45), who—like
Wisdom—creates and renews (Wis 6:18–19; 7:22; 8:1, 13; 9:1–2, 17–19;
Rom 8:11; 1 Cor 15:45).
But this rapprochement would not be possible were it not for man’s pri-
mal kinship with this vital Spirit. This preternatural kinship was already re-
ferred to in the Wisdom of Solomon:
There is immortality in kinship (syngeneia) with Wisdom … I was, indeed,
a child well-endowed, having a noble soul fall to my lot; or rather, being
born noble, I entered an undefiled body (8:17, 19–20).
It was also found in the writings of Philo, who wrote that man’s soul origi-
nated as a “fragment” or “ray” of Wisdom (On the Creation of the World,
146).61 This further helps us to see how Jesus—the New Testament “Wis-
dom”—could stand in an intimate relationship to both Man and God, for
he was depicted as consubstantial with man before Creation (Eph 1:4), as
well as divine (John 1:1; Phil 2:6). Thus we read in most of the earliest
manuscripts of Ephesians 5:30 the additional words that
We are members of his body, and of his flesh, and of his bones, from his
flesh and from his bones,
suggesting that we were once part of Christ’s preexistent Body (see pp.
155–56, above).
Some scholars hold that the additional words in verse 30 are part of
the original text,62 while others claim on philological grounds that they are
an interpolation.63 “In any case,” Martin Dibelius observed, “they represent
59See p 13, above.

60See pp. 46–47 above. See also Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism,47–48.
61 See p. 46, above.
62 E.g., Bengel, Holzhauser, Harless, Bisping, Hofmann, Klöpper, Wohlenberg,
Haupt, Dibelius, etc. See Schlier, Brief an die Epheser, 261, notes.
63 Schlier, Brief an die Epheser, 261; Barth, Ephesians, 724.
160 A GREAT MYSTERY
the opinion, if not the words, of the author.’’64 That “opinion,” according
to Heinrich Schlier, was that there once preexisted “a syzygy consisting of
Christ and the Church,” which was followed by “the effective realization of
that heavenly syzygy in an earthly syzygy.”65 The ultimate reality behind the
Ephesian Sacred Marriage was therefore a spiritual corporeity, allegorically
described in Genesis 1:27 as the heavenly “Male-Female” (the “Primal
Adam”), the “male” being the preexistent Christ, and the “female” being
the preexistent Church.
Furthermore, the preexistent Church was the “Body (soma) of the pre-
existent Christ,” as we read in 2 Clement.66 This preexistent syzygy then ap-
peared in the world as an earthly syzygy, consisting of the Holy Spirit (“the
Male”) which animates the present “Body of Christ” (“the Female”). Its
copy, the “Adam” of Genesis 1:27, was likewise created as a syzygy—male
and female in perfect unity—adumbrating the future oneness of Christ and
his Church. Finally, these divine syzygies were replicated in human indi-
viduals, each being a syzygy consisting of a “portion” of the Holy Spirit67
and a physical body (1 Cor 6:19), and coming into existence when incorpo-
rated into the Church of Life.68
Thus we arrive at the following scheme, which Schlier believes to be
the basis of the Ephesian Sacred Marriage:69
1-THE PREEXISTENT BODY OF CHRIST (Eph 5:30)
The Preexistent Christ plus the Preexistent Church
↓
2-THE MANIFEST BODY OF CHRIST (1 Cor 12:13)
The Holy Spirit plus the Church
↓
3-THE INDIVIDUAL (1 Cor 6:19)
A portion of the Holy Spirit plus an Individual Body
64 Quoted in Schlier, Brief an die Epheser, 261, notes.

65 Schlier, Brief an die Epheser, 269.
66 See p. 152, above. This primal couple was sometimes referred to as an arseno-
thelys (“man-woman”), because of their ideal unity. Paul’s “Primal Adam” was like-
wise created “neither male nor female,” but a perfect harmony.
67 Compare the Gnostic “angels,” which were individualized portions of the
Holy Spirit (p. 150, above, and note 30; also pp. 273, 302–3, below).
68 Schlier, Brief an die Epheser, 268 and notes.
69 Ibid., 268–69.
This scheme was evidently meant to be understood in “onion” fashion—

where peeling away the outer layer (the human individual) reveals another
syzygy within (the “Manifest Body of Christ”), and still deeper within that,
the “Preexistent Body of Christ.” In any case, Paul certainly believed that
each syzygy had a preexistent counterpart, which in time gave rise to the
Gnostic idea that material reality is but a foreign “encrustation” around an
earlier, more fundamental spiritual reality, each with a heavenly syzygy at its
heart.70
The relationship between the “Preexistent Christ” and the “Holy
Spirit” was probably based on Paul’s statement that “the Lord is the Spirit”
(2 Cor 3:17), or others which functionally identify the Holy Spirit with the
Spirit of Christ (1 Cor 12:3; Rom 8:9; Gal 4:6; Phil 1:19; Rom 1:4; 1 Cor
15:45).71 Otherwise, the New Testament has little to say concerning the on-
tological relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Christ. In
some sense, however, Christ is generally thought to be acting through the
Holy Spirit: “I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you” (John
14:18). Thus, Paul can say that it is the Holy Spirit who animates the Body
of Christ, and who effectively represents Christ’s personal immanence in
the world (1 Cor 12).
THE “GREAT MYSTERY” AND THE COSMIC BODY OF CHRIST

This notion of the Church as Christ’s “flesh” is also found in the Colossian
picture of the cosmos as a form and extension of the Church (“He is before
all things … the head of the body, the Church,” Col 1:17–18). It is also his
goal in the fulness of times to regather “all things in one, in Christ” (Eph
1:20). Here, according to Hamerton-Kelly, the author conceives of the en-
tire cosmos as “the mythological body of the preexistent Church.”72 It was
of course understood that the Church had a preexistent state, for which a
pristine, harmonious world had been created.73 That harmony, according to
70 Compare Gershom Scholem’s statement that “the hieros gamos, the ‘sacred
union’ of the King and Queen, the Celestial Bridegroom and the Celestial Bride, to
name a few of the symbols, is the central fact in the whole chain of divine manifes-
tations in the hidden world. In God there is a union of the active and the passive,
procreation and conception, from which all mundane life and bliss are derived”
(MTJM, 227).
71 Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Downer’s Grove, IL, 1981), 570–71.
73 The Semitic nations generally believed that the original models of earthly
things preexisted in heaven. William Albright, FSAC, 177; Mircea Eliade, The Myth
162 A GREAT MYSTERY
Hellenistic thought, was fractured at the time of the Fall. The redemption
of the cosmos was an attempt to restore that harmony by virtue of the uni-
fying power of the Sacred Marriage:
Having made peace through the blood of his Cross, by him to reconcile
all things to himself … whether they be things in earth or things in
heaven. And you, that were sometimes alienated and enemies … he hath
now reconciled in the body of his flesh … to present (paristēmi)74 you
holy and unblameable and unreproachable in his sight (vv. 20–22).
Modern form-criticism suggests that this Colossian passage contains
an interpolation of an earlier Hymn or “liturgical piece”75 based on the Hel-
lenistic-Jewish idea that the Logos was the omnipresent spirit-medium in
which creation took place, and that the matter with which he clothed him-
self was to be thought of as his cosmic “body.” It also agrees with the rab-
binic doctrine that important spiritual entities preexisted before Creation,
including the Garden of Eden, the original state of the world before the
Fall,76 but which is presently clothed in material substance.
The Wisdom literature, which we have already examined, further
taught that the Wisdom/Logos was coextensive with the universe which he
created: “Alone, I compassed the circuit of heaven. And in the depths of
the abyss I walked. Over the waves of the sea, and over all the earth” (Sir
24:5–6). “For the Spirit of the Lord fills the world, and holds all things to-
gether” (Wis 1:7). Thus Wisdom “stretches in might from pole to pole and
effectively orders all things” (8:1), pervading the Cosmos through and
of the Eternal Return (Princeton, 1954), 7–8. The Prophets taught that the heavenly
world contained the preexistent things, which chosen seers were able to see it and
observe (Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence, 16). Even Exodus describes a heavenly
Temple, whose pattern Moses was to copy for the Tabernacle in the Wilderness
(25:9; cf. 2 Baruch 4:2–7). In short, “according to the theory held by the ancient
Jews and by the whole of the Semitic nations, everything of real value that from
time to time appears on earth has its existence in heaven … Its manifestation on
earth is merely a transition from concealment to publicity.” Adolph von Harnack,
History of Dogma (New York, 1961), 1:318.
74 See p. 131, above, for the hierogamic significance of paristēmi.
75 Compare James M. Robinson, “A Form-Analysis of Colossians 1:15–20,”
JBL 76 (1957): 220–87.

76 The Jewish Encyclopedia (1905 edition of Funk and Wagnells), 10:183. Also,
the idea that certain things in particular had a prior existence out of the world “has
a long history in the Biblical and early Christian tradition” (Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-
existence, 15). See also Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar, 2:353.
through (Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues, 136; On Planting, 9; On the Migra-

tion of Abraham, 181; On the Change of Names, 28; That God Is Unchangeable, 35–
36; That the Worse Attacks the Better, 90). At the same time, the preexistent
Wisdom-Logos was the paradigmatic pattern for all things (Wis 9:8–9).77
Philo could therefore write that the Logos was both the “place of the arche-
typal ideas and the mediator of Creation,”78 i.e., the “container of the noetic
world,”79 as well as its eikōn or “image” (On the Creation of the World, 20; On
Dreams, 1.62; On the Special Laws, 1.81; 1.96–9; 3.96; On the Cherubim, 27–28;
On Flight and Finding, 12–14; Questions on Exodus, 2.18, 30; Confusion of
Tongues, 62–3).
Most scholars find it probable that these ideas—which also found
their way into the Corpus Hermeticum as the cosmic “Aion-Body” of the Pri-
mal Man (“an entity which includes all existing things within itself, and is
coextensive and, in fact, identical with the cosmos”)80—were assimilated by
the thinkers of contemporary Judaism and had an important influence on
Paul’s idea of Christ’s “Cosmic Body,” which was both the “Body of the
Church” (Col 1:24) and its “head” (kephalē) or “organizer” (vv. 16–18).
As the corporate representative of “Adamic Humanity,” Christ was
also the “head” of the entire Community (Eph 1:22).81 In this connection
we recall “Adam’s” gigantic size (2 Enoch 30:8–9; Sibylline Oracles, 3:24f; Ap-
ostolic Constitutions, 8, 12, 17).82 Philo likewise connected the Primal Man, the
Logos and Adam with a heavenly race of “pneumatics” (On the Confusion of
Tongues, 46; Questions on Genesis, 1.18; On Planting, 32ff),83 all possessing
Adam’s cosmic dimensions (On the Special Laws, 1.210ff). Taking advantage
of the metaphorical sense of kephalē (“head”) and soma (“body”)—which
had already been used in the Septuagint to depict a leader and his group
(Judg 10:18; 11:8–11; 2 Sam 22:44; 1 Kgs 20:12; Isa 7:8–9; Dan 2:38)—he
could speak of the universe as the “body” of the Logos, and the latter is the
77 D. Winston, Wisdom of Solomon, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1974), 59.
78 Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence, 175, notes; our emphasis.
80 Ibid., 173. According to Ernst Käsemann, Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen
(Göttingen, 1964), 40–42, the idea of the “Primal-Man-Redeemer” (Urmensch-

Erlöser) appears here in its Hellenistic-Jewish form, in which Wisdom, Logos and
Anthropos (Primal Man) are identified.
82 See pp. 154–55, above.
83 This undoubtedly forshadowed the Gnostic concept of a “Sethian” race of
spiritual men.
164 A GREAT MYSTERY
“head,” the two comprising a pleroma or “fulness” (Questions on Genesis, 117).

Thus, when the High Priest put on his robes, covered with cosmic symbols,
Philo said that he was like the Logos, who clothed himself with the material
creation. As a result, when he went into the Holy of Holies to sacrifice, the
whole world went in with him (On the Life of Moses, 2,133–5).84
Here we undoubtedly have the foundation for the notion that Christ
“bore” the burden of the world and its sins when he made his final sacri-
fice, taking it with him when he penetrated the Holy of Holies and entered
the celestial realms. But when Christ and the Church are made fully one,
both partners will share the same attributes and the same divine fulness:85
For in him dwells all the fulness of Godhood (plērōma tēs theotetos) liter-
ally, and you are filled (peplērōmenoi) in him (Col 2:9–10).
John would also make this the basis for his doctrine of glorification through
union with Christ:
For we have received his fulness, grace for grace (John 1:16).
That they may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee … And
the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them (John 17:21–22).
This act of spiritual union (henosis) was also described by Paul, who stated
that “he who cleaves (ho kollemenos)86 to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor 6:17),
and that the “Male” and “Female” who “cleave together” (proskollethesetai)
are “one flesh” (Eph 5:31). In this way, whatever the “Male” was, the “Fe-
male” would be, “with the inner as the outer, and the above as the below”
(Gospel of Thomas, Logg. 108, 22).
At the time when these important passages were written, the Embrac-
ing Cherubim in the Holy of Holies (Heb 9:5) still served as the official
symbols of the “Great Mystery,” or God’s soteriological “marriage” to Is-
rael (b. Yoma 54a). Thus they prefigured the ultimate meaning of the Pauline
and Johannine concepts of “spiritual cleavage” and “unification,” which
English writers of the thirteenth century would serendipitously describe as
“Atonement” or “At-One-Ment” with Christ.87 And when the world be-
84See p. 118, above.

85Compare pp. 107–10, above.
86 Compare the use of the Hebrew verb dabaq and the Greek verb kollaō, pp.
70–71, 121–22 and 130, above.

87 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “atonement” could mean either
“to reconcile” or “to make physically and spiritually one” (see the articles on “At
One” and “Atone”). Its only use in the KJV New Testament occurs in Romans
came one with the Divine, there would be “no place but God” (Philo, Ques-
tions on Exodus, 2.40), for the entire world would be divinized.88
This was the chief goal of the Temple, whose Logos/High Priest used
to “wear” the cosmos as his robe, and where believers still went to be “mar-
ried” to the Logos/Wisdom. Christians of course now recognized the
Logos/ Wisdom to be Jesus, finally come in his original identity as Yahweh,
El’s mediating Son and Satrap, and the God of the Old Testament.89 Yet
the “Great Mystery” of henosis with Christ/Yahweh would continue to be
described in terms of the Jewish Wisdom Mystery—which insisted that the
Father communicated with the earth through Mediators—showing how
important its underlying premises were for the development of Christian
soteriology, and how consistently these premises endured throughout the
early centuries of the Church.
We now need to examine other writings of the early Church to see
how the memory of this Temple Mystery was preserved after the time of
the Apostles, and how the symbolism of the Embracing Cherubim survived
as one of its central images.
5:11, “by whom we have now received the atonement ” (for katallagē, or “reconcilia-
tion”), although the Pauline and Johannine ideas of “making spiritually one” were
also suggested by “at-one-ment.” Unfortunately, “atonement” was also used to
translate the Hebrew verb kipper (as in Yom Kippur, “Day of Atonement”), which
literally means “to cleanse,” or “to purify” (i.e., with shed blood). Thus “atone”
eventually came to have the modern meaning of “to pay a penalty” or “to make
amends,” thereby concealing the real value of Christ’s sacrifice, which was to make
available to the disciples the power of his resurrection through spiritual henosis with
himself.
88 Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:20. For “divinization,” see also pp. 39, 44, 78–
79, above.
89 Deuteronomy 32:8–9, original version. See Margaret Barker, The Great Angel,
4–10; also our pp. 26 and 88, above.

5 THE POST-NEW TESTAMENT WISDOM MYS-
TERY
THE “GREAT MYSTERY” AS RITUAL

Was Paul’s “Great Mystery” a literal “mystery,” which was formally enacted,
or simply a figure of speech referring to man’s salvation?
The popular “Mithraic Liturgy” of the day was widely described as a
“mystery” (476), meaning “an initiation involving one’s “co-initiate” (synmys-
tēs).1 The Latin Church also translated the word “mystery” as sacramentum,
i.e., as a ritual act. And as Morton Smith has recently shown, the word mystē-
rion widely meant a “secret process” or “rite” in the contemporary Judaism
of Paul.2
Though Paul also used mysterion to mean simply a “divine secret,” there
are instances when he clearly did not. In 2 Thessalonians 2:7, for instance,
he refers to the “mystery” as a hidden process, “working” to bring about
the coming of the Evil One. Similarly, in Colossians 1:26f, “the mystery is
not a secret, but a process, christos en humin, i.e., the indwelling and working
of Christ in the baptized.”3 Thus, in 1 Corinthians 4:1, Paul speaks of him-
self as a “steward” (oikonomous) of the mysteries, especially in connection
with the “work” of unifying Christ and the Church (3:23).
Even the words raz and sôd, which the LXX interpreted as mystērion,
were commonly used by Jewish authors to refer to an actual rite, especially
circumcision. The Tanhuma Hayye Sarah, 4, for example, puns on Proverbs
31:24, “she makes sadyn” (linen garments), with the words, “this is the cir-
cumcision of which it is said, “The mystery (sôd) of the Lord is given to
those who fear him” (Ps 25:14). A contributing element, Smith believes,
1Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and the Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge,
MA, 1973), 181.
2 Ibid., 180.
3 Ibid.
167
168 A GREAT MYSTERY
was the fact that sadyn were especially initiation garments.4 More impor-
tantly, both sôd and raz appear in the Hekalot Rabbati as the magical technique
by which one is prepared to ascend to the Merkabah (27:1; 28:3; 29:1, 2, 4;
etc.).5 Here, we are obviously back in the milieu of the Temple and Isaiah’s
vision of God’s throne (Isa 6). Similarly, the Christian’s ascent and session
with Christ on the right hand of God are described by Paul as the potential
climax and consequence of the “mystery” which is “Christ in you” (Col
1:27; 3:l–4).6
Judaism itself was considered by the Greeks to be a “mystery religion”
(Plutarch, Questiones Conviviales, 17.6), because of its perceived similarity to
the Eleusinian mysteries.7 Philo, in fact used the word “mystery” to refer to
the traditional ceremonies of Judaism.8 The Wayyikra Rabbah, for example,
identifies the secret name of Yahweh as the “mystery of Israel” with which
Moses killed the Egyptian (32:4). The Shemot Rabbah similarly defines the
whole magical praxis with which Elisha worked: “You practiced the myster-
ies of God when you gave me a son, so now practice the mysteries of God
and raise him from the dead” (19:1).9
The rabbis also understood the word “mystery” to refer to a rite of
“covenant” or “initiation,” based on Psalm 25:14: “The secret of the Lord
(sôd yhwh) is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant.”
Aquila in turn translated sôd as aporrēton (something officially kept secret);
but Theodotion gave mystērion for it, thus equating the “covenant” (circum-
cision) with the “mystery.” Rabbinic literature in fact took Psalm 25:14 to
refer specifically to the Jewish rite of circumcision.10
A sermon on Genesis 17:1–2 in the Tanhuma (Lek, 20–27) declares that
the “mystery” of circumcision is necessary for eternal happiness. A parallel
4Ibid.
5Ibid., 181.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 E. R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (New York, 1956),
6:206–16; H. A. Wolfson, Philo (Cambridge, MA, 1947), 1:43; Smith, Clement of Al-
exandria, 181.
9 Smith, Clement of Alexandria, 181.
10 Ibid., 181–82. See also Tanhuma on Genesis 17:2: “What is this mystery
which he revealed to those who fear him? This is the rite of circumcision” (Lek 19).
Aquila changed the homily beginning with verse 1 (“do what I say and you shall be
perfect”) to “you shall be telios,” the technical term for those who have been initi-
ated into a mystery.
THE POST-NEW TESTAMENT WISDOM MYSTERY 169
version (ed. Buber) says that it was given in order that Abraham might be
made like God, and that its performance is all that prevents the world from
returning to chaos.11 The Shemot Rabbah 19:5–7 adds that none who lack the
“seal” of circumcision will be admitted into the Kingdom. For this reason,
the rabbis spoke of entry into Judaism via circumcision both as a “mystery”
and as an “initiation” into the world to come.12 This also found its way into
the New Testament, where baptism replaced circumcision, and became the
new form of the “seal” (sphragida, Rom 4:11; Rev 7:2; 9:4), though the “seal”
for a time alternated between circumcision and baptism.13
These examples all show that in the language of the day mysterion was
indeed understood to be a rite, as well as a divine secret. The Pauline mission
even came to interpret the rite of baptism as an anticipatory form of the
Mystery itself, which proleptically united the “male” and the “female” as one
(Gal 3:28), even though baptism was originally an act of cleansing, designed
to prepare the sinner for the coming nuptial.14 Now, however, Paul sug-
gested that an assurance of the promised “mystery of Christ in you” (Col
1:27) could be experienced already through the preliminary rite of bap-
tism:15
Ye are complete in him … in whom ye are circumcised with the circum-
cision made without hands, in putting off the body of sins of the flesh
by the circumcision of Christ; buried with him in baptism, wherein ye are
risen with him through the faith of the operation of God who hath
raised him from the dead (Col 2:10–12).
Yet even after the destruction of the Temple, when baptism survived as the
sole rite of union, the original idea of “marriage to Christ” persisted, and
found its way into the Bridal Chamber rites of certain later Christians.16
Smith himself notes that Mark 4:11 speaks of Christians to whom the mys-
tery has been “taught” (edideske), rather than “given” (edōken), showing that
the writer did not automatically think of their baptism as the sole form of
11 Ibid., 182.
12 Ibid., 183.
13 Compare Matthew 22:11–13, where the lack of the “wedding garment” pre-
cludes entry into the Kingdom, pp. 163–64 above.

15 Compare Smith, Clement of Alexandria, 179: “To this mystery” (of baptism)
“the writer compares the spiritual union effected by physical intercourse in mar-
riage, and he finds a reference to both of these mysteries in Gen. 2:24.”
16 See “Gnosticism and the Wisdom Mystery,” below.
170 A GREAT MYSTERY
the mystery.17 Thus his suggestion that baptism finally became such a
“commonplace” that “there was a corresponding growth of secret teachings
which professed to reveal something more,”18 seems unnecessary and con-
trived. Indeed, the practice of keeping secret the real Temple Mystery had
long existed throughout Jewish Wisdom circles:
This is a divine mystery, and its lesson is for the initiated who are wor-
thy to receive the holiest secret … The sacred revelation is not for oth-
ers (Philo, On the Cherubim, 42).
It is not permitted to speak out the sacred mysteries to the uninitiated
until after they have been purified with the proper purification … To
declare the Mysteries to the uninitiated would mean the destruction of
the laws of the most sacred mystery (Fragments of Philo Judaeus, 69).
Its concealment of the Cherubic Mystery was therefore an ancient tradition,
and not the result of imagining possible “secret teachings” beyond the
“commonplace” of baptism. As a matter of fact, it would be difficult to find
anything in the New Testament which indicates that baptism was ever hid-
den by the early Church. Indeed, such secrecy did not occur until the third
century, when catechumens began to be instructed and baptized in pri-
vate,19 perhaps in imitation of the Hellenistic Mysteries, but more likely to
protect them against persecution during those dangerous years.
One should especially note that the words of Philo which we just
quoted demand that the “mysteries” be kept from the uninitiated “until after
they have been purified with the proper purification.” This is consistent with the
Jewish custom of placing a seven-day waiting period between circumcision
and participation in the Passover Meal, which became a Christian symbol of
union with Christ, namely a meal of Communion.20 Once again it appears
that purification preceded the true mystery: “That he might sanctify and
17Ibid., 183. Thus he is obliged to suppose that edideske was a “scribal error”
for edōken.
18 Ibid., 183–4.
19 See Hugo Rahner, “The Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries,” Eranos
Jahrbuch 1944, in The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks (Princeton, 1955),
365.
20 Pesahim 8.8, ’Eduyyot 5.2 (in Smith, Clement of Alexandria, 1845). Compare also
Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (Philadelphia, 1977), for the most
definitive modern discussion of the relationship between Passover and the ritual
meal of Communion (1 Cor 10:16–17).
cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to
himself a glorious Church” (Eph 5:26–27).
Clearer still is the stipulation in Matthew that acceptance into the
Wedding Feast must be prefaced by the obtaining a Wedding Garment:
And when the King came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which
had not on a Wedding Garment. And he said to him, Friend, how co-
mest thou in hither not having a Wedding Garment? ... Then said the
King to the servants, Bind him hand and foot and take him away and
cast him into outer darkness (22:11–13).
The way to obtain a “Wedding Garment,” according to Paul, was by being
baptized: “Baptized into union with him, you have all put on Christ as a
garment (enēdusasthē)” (Gal 3:27–28). We have already commented on the
assimilation of baptism to the nuptial union in the Galatian passage: “For as
many of you as have been baptized into Christ … (are) neither male nor
female.”21 But in the Matthean version, obtaining the “garment” comes be-
fore being made “neither male nor female.” The most reasonable explana-
tion for this apparent contradiction is that Paul came to understand the
“mystery” of Christ as the entire soteriological process, beginning with bap-
tism, and ending with nuptial unification. Baptism would thus have stood on
the pars pro toto principle for the finished mystery, just as “justification by
faith” stood for the entire sequence of “faith, repentance, baptism and re-
ceipt of the Spirit,” or the traditional requirements for “Being-in-Christ.”22
Using the first step of a series to signify the rest thus appears to have been
characteristic of Paul’s homiletic methods, and in the present case, it agrees
perfectly with the sacramental sequence leading from “baptism” to the
“Bridal Chamber” which the Gnostics claimed to have received ready-made
from the Jerusalem Church (Gospel of Philip 69:14–29).23

22 Compare Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of the Apostle Paul (New York,
1931), 206–7: “That righteousness comes directly from faith cannot be meant by
Paul in the strictest sense … All the blessings of redemption which the believer
possesses flow from the being-in-Christ … beginning at baptism … The complete
expression, ‘Righteousness, in consequence of faith, through the being-in-Christ’ is
too awkward to be constantly employed in the course of an argument … Thus the
expression ‘righteousness by faith’” (our emphasis). “Faith,” in short, is a short-
hand “motto” which stands for an entire process, and which must be carried to its
completion in the mystery of “being-in-Christ.”
23 This was still the case in the Gospel of Philip, where baptism precedes the rite
of the Bridal Chamber (69:14–29).

172 A GREAT MYSTERY
What further evidence do we have of a literal mystery which was prac-

ticed by the early Christians to bring about their soteriological “marriage to
Christ?” We have already examined several hints which are contained in the
New Testament concerning such a rite. But the writers who followed the
authors of canonical Scripture also managed to document and verify this
“Great Mystery” in some detail, and it is to them that we now turn.
JOSEPH AND ASENETH

Before tuning to the post-New Testament Mystery itself, however, we
should take a brief look at the Jewish romance entitled Joseph and Aseneth.
This was once thought to be a Christian work, because of its references to
such matters as the “bread of life,” the “cup of immortality,” and the
“ointment of incorruption”24 Today, it is believed that its origins lay some-
where in the Jewish colonies of northern Egypt, sometime between 100
B.C. and A.D. 117.25 In any case, it doubtless reflects the ideas of certain
Jews who would eventually join the Church, bringing with them points of
view which would in time be considered “Jewish Christian.”
Nor is it considered any longer to a be a “Gnostic” work, but rather a
Jewish “Wisdom” book,26 which nevertheless illustrates an important “mys-
tical trajectory” leading from Jewish apocalyptic to “proto-Gnosticism.”27
At the same time, it connects the light-mysticism of both the Temple and
the Qumran Hymns to the thought-world behind the Johannine doctrines of
“Light,” the “Water of Life” and the “Heavenly Bread”—all themes which
agreed with the intellectual milieu of the Jewish-Christian Odes of Solomon.
These we shall examine shortly.
Best of all, Joseph and Aseneth gives us a contemporary picture of the
way in which the Great Mystery had been viewed by certain Jewish converts
24 Randall D. Chesnutt, “Joseph and Aseneth,” in ABD, 3:971. Specifically, he
cites the following passages: 8:5–7, 9; 15:5; 16:16; 19:5; 21:21.

25 Chr. Burchard, “Joseph and Aseneth,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed.
Charlesworth, 2:187–88.
26 According to Marc Philenenko, Joseph et Aséneth, texts critique et notes (Leiden,
1968), 89–90, and Dietrich Sänger, Antikes Judentum und die Mysterien (Tübingen,
1980), 149–90, this work was based on a Jewish mystery in which the Logos
(= Wisdom) saves men by uniting them to himself. See Burchard, “Joseph and
Aseneth,” 193. Burchard likewise acknowledges that the author of this work “may
have been an addict to sapiential theology or mysticism or both” (ibid., 194, his
emphasis).
27 J. H. Charlesworth, “Odes of Solomon,” in IDB, 5:638.
to the Church. Here we see a romantic hero, who represents the Logos-
Wisdom, “embracing” and “marrying” a penitent sinner, thereby filling her
with the gift of eternal life; this was symbolized by a meal of “honey-comb”
representing “heavenly manna.” Significantly, this “heavenly manna” was
kept in the Ark of the Covenant directly beneath the Embracing Cherubim,
who traditionally typified man’s union with the Divine, as exemplified by
the Wisdom Mystery:
… the Holy of Holies, which contained the golden censer, and the ark
of the covenant … in which was the golden pot of manna … and over it
the cherubim of glory (Heb 9:3–5).
Honey-comb was also a traditional gift of Wisdom (Philo, Who Is the Heir?
191), symbolizing her supernatural power (Sir 24:20). Thus it was filled with
the “spirit of life” (Jos. Asen., 16:14), and was synonymous with the “bread
of life” (16:16), which Philo equated with “heavenly manna” (On the Change
of Names, 259–60). The close relationship between “manna” and Joseph’s
“honey-comb” is further suggested by the fact that the manna which Israel
had received in the wilderness was “white, and the taste of it was like wafers
made with honey” (Exod 16:31). John, however, like the author of Joseph
and Aseneth, claimed that the Logos-Wisdom had provided a new and inde-
structible kind of manna, which (like the manna supernaturally preserved
over the Sabbath)28 was everlasting and filled with the power of immortal-
ity:
This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers
did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for
ever (John 6:58).
For us, perhaps, the most striking feature of Joseph and Aseneth is the
soteriological embrace which again unites the protagonists, just like the em-
brace of the Cherubim in the Temple:
And Joseph put his arms around (Aseneth), and Aseneth (put hers)
around Joseph, and they kissed (aspazomai) each other for a long time,
and both came to life in the spirit. And Joseph kissed Aseneth and gave
her the spirit of life, and kissed her the second time and gave her the
spirit of wisdom, and he kissed her the third time and gave her the spirit
of truth (19:10–11; trans. Chr. Burchard).
28 Exodus 16:22–24.
174 A GREAT MYSTERY
In this example, Joseph appears to represent the same type of Wisdom-

figure whom we found earlier in the Gospel of Thomas.29 Philonenko at one
time believed that the work had been based on “a mythological pattern of
Gnostic extraction, in which Aseneth represented the mythic figure of Wis-
dom, falling into error, and Joseph the divine Logos who comes to ransom
her by uniting himself with her.”30 But Aseneth’s “fall” and Joseph’s “Lo-
gos” character can be just as easily understood as features derived from the
Wisdom tradition, for the premise that man is an isolated “fragment” or
“ray” broken off from the Light—who needs to be rejoined to the Light in
order to be saved—was common to both Gnosticism and Sophiology. The
figure of Aseneth, of course, belongs to an earlier stage of the tradition than
the Gnostic “Sophia,” hence appears in the present work chiefly as a sym-
bol of the the Old Testament “Bride” (Jos. Asen., 4:1), who is destined to
rejoin her “Bridegroom” in the Last Days:
Courage, Aseneth, chaste virgin. For behold, your name was written in
the book of the living in heaven; in the beginning of the book, as the
very first of all, your name was written by my finger, and it will not be
erased forever. Behold, from today, you will be renewed and formed
anew and made alive again … Behold, I have given you today to Joseph
for a bride, and he himself will be your bridegroom for ever (15:5–6).
Dieter Sänger thus sees the kiss which Joseph and Aseneth exchange in
19:10–11 as a traditional “Wisdom-Kiss,”31 which bestows the same gifts
described in the Gospel of Thomas (Log. 108), and which are equivalent to
eating the honey-comb and receiving Wisdom’s power in the present
work.32
Sometimes it is impossible to decide whether aspazomai (which gener-
ally means “to proffer a greeting”) should be translated as “kiss,” or “em-
brace,” or both. In the Gospel of Truth (43:34), for example, it has been ren-
dered either as “the kiss” (McRae) or “the embrace(s)” (Grobel).33 Both
belong to the same ritual context, however, and are therefore frequently
29 See Burchard, “Joseph and Aseneth,” 194; also Sänger, Antikes Judentum und
die Mysterien, 191–208.
30 Quoted in Burchard, “Joseph and Aseneth,” 189.
31 Sänger, Antikes Judentum, 205ff.
32 Ibid., 181, 208, n.75: “She already has obtained life, wisdom and truth from
the eating of the heavenly manna in 16:15; but in 19:11 this is said openly for the
first time (so to say, systematized).”
33 See “Gnosticism and the Great Mystery,” below.
combined in works of the period, e.g.,, “Embrace one another with a holy
kiss” (philēma hagion; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; etc.).
The idea that a kiss could transfer pneumatic power was widespread in
antiquity. As Gustav Stählin points out in Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament, kissing was thought to “convey the soul,” and thus establish
“inward living fellow-ship … by the transferring and intermingling of psy-
chai.”34 It therefore enjoyed wide cultic use as a method of spiritual healing,
receiving a new member into a sacred brotherhood, or “sharing the sanctity
and mana of the deities with whom one was brought into contact,” either
symbolically or realistically.35 We also find the sacred kiss employed this way
in the Old Testament, where God “breathes” the breath of life into the
nostrils of lifeless man (Gen 2:7), or in 2 Kings 4:34, where Elisha put his
mouth upon the mouth of a dead boy in order to restore him to life. The
LXX of 1 Kings 17:2 also added to Elijah’s life-giving embrace a sacred kiss
(“he breathed into the boy”).36 The same thing is hinted at in Ezekiel 37:9:
“Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that
they may live.” And we note that Jesus likewise “breathed” on his disciples,
as a means of imparting the Holy Ghost to them (John 20:22).
Paradoxically, Jewish tradition sometimes attributed the opposite result
to the divine kiss, for it was by such that God. received back the souls of
various well-known heroes. According to legend, God took Moses’ life with
a kiss on the mouth (Deut. Rabbah, 11:10). Similar traditions say the same
thing about Aaron, Miriam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.37 Yet these late ac-
counts are probably variations of the more general belief that the righteous
would be granted immortal life by God’s kiss. Thus, the Seder Eliyyahu Rab-
bah, 17 (ed. M. Friedmann)38 states that “God will embrace (the Israelites)
and kiss them and bring them into the life of the world to come.”
It will thus be seen that the embrace and kiss which Joseph and Ase-
neth exchange in our Jewish romance belonged to a widespread tradition
attributing miraculous results to the sacred embrace between human beings
and the Divine, as prefigured by the Embracing Cherubim. During the
years preceding A.D. 70, and while the Temple was still standing, it was
undoubtedly known to all Temple-going Jews, though they managed to
34 “phileō,” in TDNT, 9:l19.

35 Ibid., 122–24.
36 See footnote 53, pp. 105–6, above.
37 References in TDNT, 9:127.
38 In Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und
Midrasch (Munich, 1926), 3:847.

176 A GREAT MYSTERY
keep it a secret from the world. Joseph and Aseneth in fact appears to be yet
another example of communion with the Divine as experienced generally in
the Sanctuary, though cast in figurative language which most educated Jews
would have understood as veiled references to events in the Holy of Holies.
Communion with the Divine—which was in fact the basic premise of
the Wisdom Mystery—also took a special form of its own in Joseph and Ase-
neth, where the conversion of a Gentile to Judaism bestowed a communal
type of holiness on the initiate. Here, again, we see a kind of mystical
“sancta contagion” (pp. 66–68, 79, above), where Israel as a whole is said to
enjoy direct communion with God and to be able to impart her resulting
holiness to others who commune with her. The same idea may have influ-
enced Paul’s advice to the wives of unbelievers, who were told that they
should remain with their spouses because of their edifying influence:
Let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the
wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband (1 Cor 7:13–
14).
There are, of course, the traditional warnings that no one will be wel-
comed into the faith without first renouncing his old gods (Jos. Asen.,
10:12–13; 11:7–9; 12:4–5; etc.). And true repentance, together with a perfect
commitment to the God of Israel, is thereafter expected (11:10–11; 11:18;
15:7–8; etc.). But once these requirements have been met, the candidate is
ready to be accepted into the Community of Israel and to share its common
legacy of light and eternal life:
Lord God of my father Israel,
the Most High, the Powerful One of Jacob,
who gave life to all (things)
and called (them) from the darkness to the light,
and from the error to the truth,
and from the death to the life;
you, Lord, bless this virgin,
and renew her by your spirit:
and form her anew by your bidden hand,
and make her alive again by your life,
and let her eat your bread of life,
and drink your cup of blessing,
and number her among your people
that you have chosen before all (things) came into being, and let her
enter your rest which you have prepared for your chosen ones, and live
in your eternal life for ever (and) ever (Jos. Asen., 8:9).
Thus the Jews shared a life which was inherently divine, just as the Qumran
sectaries believed that they worshipped in common with the angels (see pp.
81–82, above):
So Jews live in close relationship with God, and with the angels, whose
life they share; but they remain apart from non-Jews, with whom they
may coexist but must not mingle … Relationship with God implies that
Jews enjoy all the privileges that come with divine childhood, leading
some sort of angelic existence. Practically, as the example of Aseneth
shows, that means fullness of life, supernatural beauty, wisdom, com-
fortable living, and divine protection … It assures supernatural insight
into things divine … A similar thing is the “inner light” which gives su-
pernatural eyesight to Joseph (6:6).39
In analogy with the biblical Creation account, which the Israelites experi-
enced regularly in the Temple (see pp. 74–75, above), the convert who had
joined with them could also pass from chaos into order, and from death
into life (12:1–2; 15:12; 27:10). Aseneth, moreover, is promised that her
hieros gamos with the Logos-Joseph will produce a special race of men, in
whom “many nations will take refuge with the Lord God, the Most High”
(19:5). Having been visited by one who was a “first-born son of God” (6:3;
13:13; 18:11; 21:4; 23:10)—even “a god” (18:9)—she had herself become a
“daughter of the Most High” (21:4), suggesting that she had been “newly
begotten” by the same kind of soteriological “marriage” to the Divine
which John and Paul describe in the New Testament. But at the same time,
she had become Joseph’s personal wife for all eternity:
By his power he confirmed me
and brought me to the God of the ages
and to the chief of the house of the Most High,
and gave me to eat of bread of life,
and to drink a cup of wisdom,
and I became his bride for ever and ever (Jos. Asen., 21:21).
And though some have denied that Joseph’s epithet, “a firstborn son of
God,” means anything more than “one who has been saved,”40 there are
others who see it as a typical designation for a “Redeemer” figure.41 This
would agree with Joseph’s role as God’s Logos, as well as with the general
idea—which survived in Ebionite Christianity—that Wisdom had dwelt
39. Burchard, “Joseph and Aseneth,” 191.

40 So ibid.
41 Ibid.
178 A GREAT MYSTERY
many times in various Old Testament heroes and was indeed the same Wis-
dom who would eventually appear as Jesus Christ (see p. 90, above). Such
men had been made “prophets and friends of God” by the “indwelling” of
God’s Wisdom (Wis 7:27), and were certainly seen as much more than or-
dinary men who had received a few of Wisdom’s supernatural qualities.42
Though the immediate reason for writing Joseph and Aseneth may have
been an attempt to deal with the problems of Jews living in Egypt, espe-
cially the questions of table-fellowship and conversion,43 it more generally
reflects the Temple-based concept of man’s henosis with the Divine and how
the mundane could be transformed into the heavenly through by means of
a hieros gamos with God’s mediating Logos. For this reason, Joseph and Aseneth
provides valuable documentation concerning the mystical soteriology of
certain influential Jews who were roughly contemporaneous with Jesus. In
the present case, seeing God’s Logos/Wisdom embodied in a figure like
Joseph—who had actually saved many ancient Egyptians from death—
would have had special relevance for later Egyptian Jews. But in the next
section we will see how Jewish converts to the Church in Jerusalem and
Syria viewed the Wisdom/Logos, whom they believed to be embodied in
the figure of Jesus Christ, and who enacted the same rite of henosis with his
disciples in a Christianized version of the Wisdom Mystery.
THE ODES OF SOLOMON

These important early Christian poems were first discovered in 1812 and
published in an editio princeps by Rendell Harris in 1909. Various initial opin-
ions as to their character include a “first-century Christian hymn book”
(Harris), a “Jewish psalter,” later redacted by Christians (Harnack), and a
work which both antedated and helped to inspire the Gospel of John
(Bultmann). Others have claimed that they were a “second century Gnostic
work” (K. Rudolph), a “collection of songs” for a Christian baptismal ser-
vice (Bernard), or the composition of a first-century Essene (M. Testuz).44
Most today would probably agree that the work is of Jewish-Christian
provenance, composed by Jewish converts to the Church,45 who brought
with them the the same range of ideas which we saw in Joseph and Aseneth
and in the Gospel of Thomas.
42 Ibid.
43 Chesnutt, “Joseph and Aseneth,” 970.
44 All discussed in Charlesworth, “Solomon, Odes of,” in ABD, 6:114.
45 Ibid.
Nevertheless, J. H. Charlesworth, one of the leading contemporary au-

thorities on the Odes of Solomon, has concluded that this beautiful collection
of poetry served as a “tributary to Gnosticism which flow(ed) from Jewish
apocalyptical mysticism … to the full-blown Gnosticism of the second cen-
tury. The Odes are not ‘heretical’—such a word is anachronistic at this time
in the development of Christian thought—but rather a Jewish Christian
hymn-book of the first century.”46 Thus they were definitely not Gnostic,
and were in fact very close to the Johannine literature, though they con-
tained elements of early Christian thought which would provide favorite
themes for Gnostic speculation.47
The striking similarity of the language in the Odes to that of the Qum-
ran Hodayoth (1QH, “Hymn-Scroll”) is also very noticeable (“God’s plant-
ing,” “living water,” “light” versus “darkness,” “crowns,” “the sun,” etc.), as
well as the manner of praising God (“I thank thee, O Lord, because thou
hast…,” etc.). We will also discover important links with the Wisdom litera-
ture (Wisdom’s “River,” “Wisdom’s Light,” the mystery of “union,” “im-
46 “The Odes of Solomon—Not Gnostic,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 31 (1969):

362.
47 These assessments have also caused other scholars to find evidence in the
Odes of an important doctrinal “trajectory”—to use the expression of Robinson

and Koester in their Trajectories Through Early Christianity (Philadelphia, 1971),
7–14— which led from the Jewish-inspired milieu of Primitive Christianity towards
eventual Gnosticism. These included the apocalyptic categories of preexistence,
man’s search for his heavenly home, eschatology = protology, deification, and the
basic pattern of the Wisdom Mystery. At the same time, as Robinson and Koester
point out, another “bifurcating trajectory” was taking shape which would lead out
of Christianity’s originally “amorphous milieu” towards an “orthodoxy” consisting
of “dialectic theology” and “Constantine Christianity.” This involved the decline of
eschatology, the delay of the parousia, and the general replacement of Semitic cul-
tural values by the culture of the antique world (ibid., 16). This largely “Gentile”
movement would in time completely eliminate apocalyptic values from Western
Christianity and establish itself as the only legitimate “orthodoxy.” Yet modern
research has uncovered enough of the original literary production of the early
Church to show that this retrospective forcing of history into the Procrustean Bed
of “orthodoxy” has greatly distorted the truth. “Orthodoxy’s” notion of a single
“straight-line development” from the New Testament to modern Christianity, in
particular, has only produced “an apology for the history of the Church, freed from
the implications of defection implicit in the critical reconstructions” (ibid., 16), and
it shows that we must consider the documents and values of apocalyptic Christian-
ity if we would gain an accurate picture of the original Church.
180 A GREAT MYSTERY
ages,” “faces,” “illumination,” etc.), and with the Temple, all showing that
the author still venerated the Sanctuary at Jerusalem.
The Odes of Solomon have turned out to be a particularly valuable wit-
ness for the continuing concern of Jewish Christians for the rites of the
Temple. In this, they remain very close to the Gospel of Thomas, which dealt
largely with a Christianized version of the Wisdom Mystery.48 The Odes
have been dated by Charlesworth anywhere between A.D. 30 and 150, most
probably around A.D. 100.49 Rendel Harris would place them even earlier,
“soon after A.D. 70.”50 Now that we have read Stevan Davies’ important
study of the Gospel of Thomas and his reasons for dating that work between
A.D. 50 and 70, we are inclined to accept Harris’ earlier date for the Odes,
especially because they make use of the identical Wisdom-themes. Even
more importantly, the Odes speak as if the Temple had just been destroyed,
and they express the author’s concern over the immanent prospect of re-
storing it somewhere outside of Jerusalem:
No man, O God, changes thy holy place; and it is not possible that he
should change it and put it in another place, because he has no power
over it. For thy Sanctuary was designed before thou didst make special
places. The old one should not be changed by those which are inferior
to it (Ode 4).
Here, according to Harris, “some change in the value of the Sanctuary
at Jerusalem is threatened at the hands of men.”51 This does not refer to the
physical destruction of the building by the Romans, however, for if the
building itself was temporarily missing, it was only because God himself had
willed it (cf. 2 Baruch 7:1–8:5; Josephus, Wars, 5.1.3).52 More likely, our Ode
refers to a suggestion within the Community that the Temple be rebuilt in a
new place, as in the cases of the Samaritan Temple at Gerizim, the Egyptian
Temple at Aswan, and most particularly, the Temple of Onias at Leontopo-
lis, which von Harnack saw as the precipitating factor in the eventual decen-
The Gospel of Thomas directs that “wherever you have come, you will go to
48
James the Righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being” (Log. 12).
This has been understood as an indication that the source of Thomas was the
Jewish-Christian Community which was led by James the Just (Acts 21:18).
49 See his “Odes of Solomon” in the IDB, 5:637.
50 Odes and Psalms of Solomon (Cambridge, 1909), 58.
51 Ibid., 54.
52 Ibid., 55.
tralization of Jewish religion.53 The author of the Odes thus expresses his
indignation at the very thought, and declares his allegiance to the old Jerusa-
lem Temple and its traditional location.
The Odist’s firm conviction was that the Temple had come from
heaven and would always be necessary and valid. This is quite different
from the opinion expressed in the Epistle of Barnabas, which suggests that
the Temple has already been done away with by the “new law of our Lord
Jesus” (ch. 2). In chapter 16 he further criticizes certain “wretched men”
who had placed their trust in an earthly Temple, rather than in the “spiritual
Temple” which is “within us.” The Odist, of course, is quite willing to
“spiritualize” the Temple sacrifices (Ode 20), or (like Paul) to see a “higher”
meaning for the rite of circumcision (Ode 11:3). But “he is not prepared to
say that the old Sanctuary was to pass away.”54 Indeed, like the Qumran
Community (which was also deprived temporarily of its physical Temple),
he looks forward to a time when the Sanctuary will be restored in its preex-
istent glory, and in Jerusalem, where God had always intended it to be. This
agrees with the Ebionite view that Jerusalem was the only true “house of
God” on the earth,55 being the eternal Mount Zion, or navel of the earth,
and the primal site where even the heavenly Temple will eventually become
visible on earth.56
Moreover, the Temple is the place where man is meant to receive fel-
lowship with God. The same Ode which established the primacy of the
Temple at Jerusalem goes on to explain that
53 History of Dogma, 1:69; quoted in Harris, Odes and Psalms, 58.

54 Ibid., 59.
55 Quoted in ibid., 58.
56 See, for example, Bereshith Rabbah, 20: “Seven things were created before the
world: Torah, Gehenna, Eden, the Merkabah Throne, the Temple, Repentence, and
the Name of Messiah.” Rabbi Meir, in Pirqe Avot, 6:10, also says that God’s “five
possessions” are Torah, Heaven and Earth, Abraham, Israel, and the Temple. He
proves the case of the Temple from Exodus 15:17 (“The place, O Lord, which
thou hast made for Thee to dwell in”) and Psalm 78:54 (“And he brought them to
the border of his Sanctuary, even to this mountain, which his right hand pos-
sessed”). In these passages, the Temple is seen as an eternal entity, manifest in both
heaven and earth.
182 A GREAT MYSTERY
Thou hast given us thy fellowship. It is not that thou wast in need of us,
but that we were in need of thee (Ode 4, Harris).57
The author of 2 Maccabees makes the same point, i.e., that while God
needs no earthly house, the Temple was provided for the sake of man’s
“fellowship” with him, or (in the words of Harris) “communion by means
of a Holy Place”:58
Thou, O Lord of the Universe, who in thyself hast need of nothing,
wast well pleased that a Sanctuary of thy habitation be set up among us
(14:35).
The theme of fellowship with God in the Temple is very important in
the Odes of Solomon. Here the probable influence of the Embracing Cheru-
bim as traditional symbols of “Yahweh’s love for Israel” (b. Yoma 54a) be-
comes especially evident, for the method of gaining “communion by means
of a “Holy Place” is also by an embrace and a kiss, precisely as it was in Joseph
and Aseneth, and in the Gospel of Thomas:
And Immortal Life59 embraced me,
And kissed me.
And from that is the Spirit which is within me.
And it cannot die because it is life (Ode 28:7–8).
Like the arm of the bridegroom over the bride,
So is my yoke over those who know me (42:8).
The last Ode begins by saying that “I extended (peshtet) my hands and ap-
proached my Lord, For the extension (mutkha, meaning properly “grasp” or
“clasp”) of my hands is his sign … And I shall hide myself from those who
possessed (ekhidin, “grasp by the hand”) me not” (vv. 1–3). Ode 3 adds that
“His members are with Him” (i.e., united to Him). “On them do I hang,
and He loves (hbb, the Semitic root for “hug” or “embrace”) me” (Harris,
v. 2).60 Thus, soteriological “fellowship” with Christ is established, with a
concomitant sharing of power:
57 All quotations from this point on are from the Charlesworth translation,
unless noted otherwise: The Odes of Solomon (Missoula, MT, 1977).

58 Harris, Odes and Psalms, 83.
59 Charlesworth’s “immortal life” should obviously be emended to “Immortal
Life.”
60 The Syriac interpretations were made by Dr. Hugh Nibley, of Brigham
Young University.
I have been united to Him, because the lover has found the Beloved;
Because I love Him that is the Son, I shall become a son (Harris: the
Son).
Indeed, he who is joined to Him who is immortal
Truly shall become immortal (3:7–8).
The theme of “fellowship” with the Lord is again taken up on Ode 21, to-
gether with the motifs of oneness with Christ (“I myself acquired mem-
bers”), union with the light, and regeneration:
And I put off darkness
And put on Light.
And even I myself acquired members. In them there was no sickness
or affliction or suffering.
And abundantly helpful to me was the thought of the Lord,
And His everlasting fellowship (21:3–5).
The initiate’s hieros gamos with light is one of the major themes of the
Odes:
The Lord … possessed me by His light (11:11).
And He has caused His knowledge to abound in me,
Because the mouth of the Lord is the True Word (cf. Gospel of Thomas,
Log. 108).
And the entrance of his light (Ode 12:3).
Elsewhere, the Odist says that the Lord “penetrated me by the Word” (12:9,
Harris); in Ode 33, the “Perfect Virgin” (= Wisdom) says, “I will enter into
you … and make you wise in the ways of truth” (v. 8; cf. Wis 7:27–28).
Odes 7:14; 10:1, 6; 11:19; 12:3, 7; 36:1; 40:4; 41:4, 6, further deal with
the general theme of the unio mystica with light and its effect on the recipi-
ent. As Moses’ face was filled with light when he descended from the top of
Sinai (= Holy of Holies), so the faces of the initiated shine with God’s re-
flected glory:
And let our faces shine in His light (41:6).
My face rejoices in His exaltation,
And my spirit exults in his love,
And my nature shines in Him (40:4).
The beholder in fact becomes light (21:3, 6), for those begotten of light
emerge as “shining fruit”:
Their branches were sprouting,
184 A GREAT MYSTERY
And their fruits were shining (11:16c).

That this all took place in the Temple is further indicated by a refer-
ence to the bridal pair’s “House”:
As the bridal feast is spread out by the bridal pair’s house,
So is my love by those who believe in me (Ode 42:9).
This is in fact what the righteous will experience in the restored Temple in
the last days, according to the Life of Adam and Eve:
And again they will build the house of God; and in the last times the
house of God will be exalted greater than of old … And thereafter God
will dwell with men on earth in visible form; and the righteous will begin
to shine … and the just shall shine like the sun of old (29:7, 9).
This union of the worshipper with the Light further connects the Odes of
Solomon with the milieus of the Gospel of Thomas and the Wisdom Mystery,
where the “River of Wisdom” or “Light Stream” flowed specifically into the
Temple to be made accessible to the initiate, who came to receive God’s
shining “effluence” (aporroia; cf. Wis 7:25). Those united with the Light will
then “be raised from darkness into light” (Testament of Abraham, B7), just as
Joseph was sent to “deliver his bride from darkness and lead her into the
light” in Joseph and Aseneth (15:13).61
The effluence of Light was of course Wisdom herself, who in the
Christian Odes has been recognized as Jesus Christ, the “Word of God”:
To the blessed ones the joy is from the heart,
And light from Him who dwells in them;
And the Word from the truth who is self-originate (32:1–2).
Like Wisdom in the Old Testament Wisdom-books, he stands at the way-
side, inviting all to come and unite with him:
O you sons of men, return,
And you their daughters, come.
And learn the ways of that Corrupter,
And approach me.
And I will enter into you…
And make you wise in the ways of truth (33:6–8).
61 Charlesworth, Odes, 57.

At long last, God “has allowed Him to appear to them that are His own”
(7:12; cf. John 1:11), so that they might recognize the One who created all
things:
It is he who made the earth broad,
And placed the waters in the sea.
He expanded the heavens,
And fixed the stars.
And He fixed the Creation and set it up,
Then He rested from His works.
And created things run according to their courses
And work their works,
For they can neither cease nor fail (16:10–13).
As the power who made the Sun (16:16), and the “reservoir of light” which
illuminates the day (v. 15), he is himself an “effulgence of everlasting light
… fairer than the sun … compared to the light of day, more radiant” (Wis
7:26, 29):
As the sun is joy to them who seek its daybreak,
So is my joy in the Lord.
Because He is my Sun,
And His rays have lifted me up;
And His light has dismissed all darkness from my face (15:1–3).
For a Great Day has shined upon us,
And wonderful is He who has given to us of His glory …
And let our faces shine in His light (41:4, 6).
In these passages we are reminded of the “watchers for the morning” (Ps
130:6), whose practice may also be reflected in the newly translated Qumran
“Temple Scroll” (columns 30–31).62
Another name for Wisdom’s “effluence” (aporroia) was the “Holy
Spirit”:
Our spirits praise the Holy Spirit.
62 See Morton Smith, “The Case of the Gilded Staircase,” Biblical Archeology Re-
view 10 (Sept./Oct. 1984): 5, 50–55. This deals with God’s commandment that a
staircase to the roof of the Temple be built and covered with gold, presumably to
symbolize the presence of Yahweh, indicated by the light of the rising sun (cf. Ezek
8:16). See pp. 51–58, above.
186 A GREAT MYSTERY
For there went forth a stream (aporroia even in the Coptic version)
and it became a river great and broad.
Indeed it carried away everything,
and it shattered and brought it to the Temple…
Then all the thirsty upon the earth drank,
And thirst was relieved and quenched.
For from the Most High the drink was given (6:7–12).
These verses appropriately combine the image of Ezekiel’s Temple—
with its flow of life-giving waters (Ezek 47)—and the “River of Wisdom”
(Sir 24:25ff), which arises with God and “waters” the Temple, explaining
why the author of the latter work began his search for Wisdom “in front of
the Temple” (51:13–14). As in Philo’s Wisdom Mystery, the “stream” of the
Holy Spirit originated above, but was dispensed to men from the earthly
Sanctuary by means of their hieros gamos with the Light:
And the Lord renewed me with His garment,
And possessed me with His light.
And from above He gives me immortal rest,
And I become like the land that blossoms and rejoices in its fruits
(11:11–12).
Once again we encounter the basic theme of “bearing fruit” through “mar-
riage” to the Savior (Rom 7:4). The image of “fruitfulness” in fact domi-
nates many of the Odes of Solomon (1:5; 4:4; 7:1; 8:7; 11:16, 23; 14:6–7; 11:2;
38:17–18):
And I gave my knowledge generously
And my resurrection through my love.
And I sowed my fruits in hearts,
And transformed them through myself.
And they received my blessing and lived,
And they were gathered to me and were saved,
Because they became my members,
And I was their Head (17:13–16).
All of the traditional Sacred Marriage themes are here: becoming One
with Jesus; the “sowing” of virtues and divine “fruits” by means of “sexual”
union; the sharing of immortal life; and the imparting of light and knowl-
edge. But these end-results are usually summed up by the Odist with the
characteristic expression “rest” (26:3; 28:3; 35:1; etc.):
From above He gives me immortal rest (11:12).

I love the Beloved and I myself love Him,
And where His rest is, there also am I (3:5).
Recline upon His rest (20:8).
And come all you thirsty and take a drink,
And rest beside the fountain of the Lord (30:2).
And He went with me and caused me to rest (38:4).
The idea of “rest” derives ultimately from Exodus 33:11ff, when the Lord
spoke to Moses “face to face” and promised that “My Presence shall go
with thee, and I will give thee rest” (v. 14). This odd expression (whatever its
original meaning) had a definite cultic significance by the time of Late Juda-
ism and Christianity. In Hebrews, for example, the whole action moves to-
wards katapausis (3:7ff), or the “rest” which the Israelites were denied be-
cause of their sinfulness (Ps 95:11). As the text makes clear, this “rest” was
also synonymous with the “heavenly city” which lay at the end of the jour-
ney (Heb 11:13–16), a journey which led (cultically speaking) through the
veil into the Holy of Holies (10:19–20), or the Bridal Chamber. There it was
that the Israelites saw the Embracing Cherubim as a sign of God’s “Face”
(pp. 9–10, above). As we shall see later on, the Gospel of Truth (ca. A.D. 140)
still referred to the “partaking of God’s Face by means of the embraces,”
and again describes it as a “rest” (41:28–34). In Clement’s Excerpta ex
Theodoto, the union with Jesus in the Holy of Holies is likewise called a “ful-
ness and joy” and a “rest” (65:2); and Günther Bornkam has shown that the
Sacred Marriage of the Church to the “True Man” in the Acts of Thomas is
characterized as “joy and peace,” as the Bridegroom “rests” upon the head
of the Bride, and her steady “gazing” at him symbolizes the “completion of
the initiation” and the “mystery of the hieros gamos.”63 Thus it will be seen
that the word “rest” had a distinctly sexual connotation in the literature of
the period, as it undoubtedly does in the Odes of Solomon, having become
virtually synonymous with the consummation of the hieros gamos and the
cessation of desire which follows.
63 In Hennecke-Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, (Philadelphia, 1964;

hereafter NTAp), 2:432. In the same way, “beholding the Face of God” (thea theou)
had been the means of uniting with God in the Hellenized Jewish mystery. See pp.
60–62 and 113–14, above.
188 A GREAT MYSTERY
THE SACRED MARRIAGE OF THE “POWERS” IN THE ODES OF SOLO-

MON
The same embracing “powers,” which “unite” and “bring forth fruit” in
Philo’s On the Cherubim (27) also appear to stand behind passages in the Odes
of Solomon. Philo’s “Powers” had included the Logos/Son, who passed
through a feminine intermediary called “Knowledge,” and eventually gave
rise to the world (On Drunkenness, 30; pp. 14–15, above). The Odist, how-
ever, describes the Logos as if it were “milk” from the “breasts of God”
(Ode 19). J. H. Bernard has gathered evidence showing that the representa-
tion of the Logos in this manner was quite common in the writings of the
early Church,64 and we encounter it in several other Odes as well (4:10;
8:14; 9:1–4; 35:5).
The image of the Father’s “breasts” goes back to Old Testament pas-
sages such as Hosea 9:14 and Psalm 131:2, in which scholars have detected
memories of Israel’s former belief in feminine deities.65 Even the memory
of their sacred marriages is preserved, for in Ode 19, the Virgin acquires
“great power” by receiving the Father’s “milk” and “bearing the Son”:
A cup of milk was offered to me,
And I drank it in the sweetness of the Lord’s kindness.
The Son is the cup,
And the Father is He who is milked;
And the Holy Spirit is She who milked Him.
Because His breasts were full,
And it was undesirable that His milk should be ineffectually released,
The Holy Spirit opened Her bosom
And mixed the milk of the two breasts of the Father.
Then She gave the mixture to the generation without their knowing,
And those who received it are in the perfection of the right hand.
The womb of the Virgin took it
64 Quoted in Charlesworth, Odes, 44. Clement of Alexandria (Paedegogus, 1.6),
for example, says that the Logos is the “milk” by which Christ’s “babes” are nour-
ished (in Harris, Odes and Psalms, 145).
65 See Phyllis Trible, “God, Nature of, in the OT,” in IDB, 5:368–69. Accord-
ing to Ginzberg (Legends of the Jews, 1:263; 5:291), Abraham migrated to his new
home in order to be “suckled by the breasts of Sarah,” i.e., Philo’s symbol for Wis-
dom.
And she received the conception and gave birth…

And she labored and bore the Son but without pain…
She brought forth like a strong man with desire
And she bore according to the manifestation,
And she acquired according to the Great Power (19:1–10).66
Here, the “milk” of the “Lord’s kindness” is the same Logos-Wisdom
whom the Wisdom writers called the “River of Wisdom.” Both flowed
from the Father through the Mother, who is Philo’s “Knowledge,” or the
Odist’s “Holy Spirit.” Because God’s “breasts are full,” she “opened her
bosom” and “milked Him,” i.e., received his effluence. Then her earthly
surrogate—the Virgin Mary—bore the son “according to the manifesta-
tion” (i.e., “the flesh”), her travail being “according to the Great Power”
who operated within her.
These figures correspond generally to the traditional marriage of the
“powers” in the Philonic Mystery. The Odist’s “Holy Spirit” is the feminine
aspect of the Divine, corresponding to Philo’s “Knowledge” (On Drunken-
ness, 8:30); but the “milk-Logos” is the “Invisible Presence” in the Light-
Stream, i.e., the seminal Logos, appropriately referred to by Hellenistic writ-
ers as the logos spermatikos,67 or the “causative” aspect of the Light-Stream.
What is sown in her from above was then placed into earthly wombs (Ode
19:6; Philo, On the Cherubim, 42–50), for the Mother must be impregnated
by God before she can impregnate those who seek after her.68
The title “Power” appears commonly in Jewish and early Christian
writings as a “surrogate for God,”69 for example, the “Glory” who is seated
66 This last line is Charlesworth’s alternative translation, given on p. 84 of his

Odes.
67 Zeno’s famous expression, well-known to Stoicism, corresponds to the
regulatory role of Wisdom (“She stretches in might from pole to pole and effec-
tively orders things,” Wis 8:1). Because of its causative effect, the logos spermatikos
was honored in Hermetic writings under the image of the phallus; Hermes, its em-
bodiment, was therefore represented ithyphallically in Greek art (H. Kleinknecht,
“legō,” in TDNT, 4:85, 87). See also Philo, On Dreams, 1.200, which notes the erotic
character of the creative Logos. The Gnostics made frequent use of the concept of
the logos spermatikos.
68 See pp. 43, 54, above. Philo developed this theme in his Questions on Genesis
(4.110–46), where Isaac marries Rebecca as a surrogate for Wisdom and receives
the blessings of union with Wisdom through her.
190 A GREAT MYSTERY
on the heavenly Throne (Mark 14:62; Acts 8:10),70 or the Embracing

Cherubim who “mirror” God’s active influence in the world (Philo, On the
Decalogue, 104–5). It is in fact the kind of heavenly union which they sym-
bolize that enables the Virgin to acquire her offspring “according to the
Great Power” (Ode 19:10).
The uniting of the Embracing Cherubim also seems to stand behind
the cooperative alliance of the “reservoir of light” and the “reservoir of
darkness,” which “by their acceptance one for another … complete the
beauty of God” (Ode 16:14–16). For Philo, the union of the Cherubim had
suggested the “revolutions of the whole heaven,” rotating harmoniously as
a Unity (Philo, On the Cherubim, 21–26).71 This, and several references to the
connubial oneness of the Lord’s members as a “harp” (Odes 6:1–2; 14:8;
26:3), resemble Philo’s vision of Wisdom’s lovers united in “fellowship and
concord,” like a “lyre formed of unlike strings” by “reciprocity and combi-
nation” (On the Cherubim, 110):
As the wind moves through the harp
And the strings speak,
So the Spirit of the Lord speaks through my members
And I speak through His love.
And He destroys whatever is alien,
And everything is of the Lord (Ode 6:1–3).
The Odist’s description of the Holy Spirit as a “Mother” appears to
have been of Jewish-Christian provenance (cf. the Gospel of the Hebrews: “My
Mother, the Holy Spirit, took me by one of my hairs and carried me away
on to the great mountain, Tabor”).72 This is another link with the Wisdom
tradition, where Wisdom is said to be both “Bride” (Wis 8:3) and “Mother”
(On Dreams, 1.92, 99; On the Posterity of Cain, 63), as well as with the Embrac-
ing Cherubim, who are “Father” and “Mother” in conjugal union (On
70“Power” (dynamis) was a synonym for God’s Glory in contemporary Jewish

sources. The apocalyptists made geburah or dynamis an “appelation or metonym of
the ‘Divine Glory’.” G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism (New York,
1960), 67. The “Dynamis” was also the Divine Glory in the Hekhaloth tracts. In
the Visions of Ezekiel, for example, the “Dynamis” is what one sees when one as-
cends to the highest heaven and has a vision of God’s “Appearance on the
Throne” (ibid., 68). “Metatron,” the “Second Power” in heaven, was also a secret
name for the “Dynamis” (ibid., 69).
71 Compare Charlesworth, Odes, 72–73.
72 In Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 1:164.
Drunkenness, 30). It also provides the starting point for the Gnostic view of
Wisdom as the “Mother” of angels and the souls of men.73
THE HOLY OF HOLIES AS A “GARDEN OF FRUITFULNESS” IN THE

ODES
The result of man’s union with Jesus-Wisdom, as we have already seen, is
the “bringing forth of much fruit” (Rom 7:4):
As is the course of anger over wickedness,
So is the course of joy over the Beloved;
And brings in of its fruit unhindered (Ode 7:1).
The traditional place for “bringing forth fruit” was the Temple. Thus in
Ode 11 the writer draws attention to the special location where “the Lord
possessed me by His light” (v. 11), after which “my eyes were enlightened
… and (the Lord) took me to his Paradise” (v. 16):
And I beheld blooming and fruit-bearing trees,
And self-grown was their crown.
Their branches were sprouting And their fruits were shining.
From an immortal land were their roots.
And a river of gladness was irrigating them.
And round about them is the land of eternal life.
Then I worshipped the Lord because of His magnificence (vv. 16a–17).
The “river of gladness” which waters the “trees of eternity” was of course
in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:10). But in contemporary writings, “the
Garden of Eden is the Holy of Holies and the dwelling of the Lord” (Jubi-
lees 8:19).74 There it is that everything is once again filled with fruitfulness
and fertility:
Indeed, there is much room in Thy Paradise.
And there is nothing in it which is barren,
But everything is filled with fruit (Ode 11:23).
This agrees with rabbinic descriptions of the Holy of Holies as the “couch”
where the Shekhinah was married to the Lord, producing fruitfulness in the
earth (p. 19, above):
73 First Apocalypse of James 34:3–8; Teaching of Sylvanus 91:14–20; Gospel of Philip

52:21–24; 63:30–32; etc. See our chapter 6, “Gnosticism and the Great Mystery,”
below.
192 A GREAT MYSTERY
“Behold his couch which is Solomon’s” (Song of Songs 3:7) … Just as

this couch serves fruitfulness and multiplication (piryah w’ ribyah),75 even
so the Sanctuary. Everything that was in it was fruitful and multiplied
(Tamhuma Numbers, Buber Recension, 33).
The idea that the interior of the Sanctuary symbolized Paradise, com-
plete with exuberant greenery, was also reflected in the traditional practice
of decorating the altar with green boughs during the annual rite of Water
Libation,76 and the use of lavish botanical decoration on items like the Ta-
ble of the Shewbread77 and the bases of the layers,78 all of which was said to
have contributed an almost tropical sense of fertility to the place. Theodore
Reik has made the penetrating suggestion that the leafy booths in which the
faithful dwelt during the autumn Temple Pilgrimage were also a cultic
“stage-setting” inherited from prehistoric times, whose original Sitz im Leben
was the primal “forest,” where men were initiated into the mysteries of
death and resurrection.79 The Temple itself was even said to be like a forest
(1 Kgs 7:2), again, because “everything in it … was fruitful and multiplied.80
Talmudic legend had it that these decorations miraculously brought forth
fruit, which provided nourishment for the priests.81 All of this agrees with
the Eden-like greenery which is invariably connected with the hieros gamos in
Sumerian and Akkadian texts82 and is even suggested in Canaanite accounts
of Baal’s nuptials with Anath, which made “the rain to fall and the wadis to
flow with honey” (I AB iii:3ff). The fact that this takes place in a place
where “the Most High … uncovered my innermost being towards Him,”
and was “possessed … by His light” (Ode 11:2, 11), strongly suggests that
here too we are speaking of a hieros gamos in the Temple, where the Lord
appears “like the sun” and “enlightens” the Odist’s eyes (vv. 13–14), filling
him with a “vision of the invisible,” and giving him “instruction” in the
knowledge of God (Philo, Questions on Exodus, 2.41, 52).
75 This expression commonly meant procreation. See R. Patai, Man and Temple
(London, 1947), 90.

76 Ibid., 25–26.
77 R. Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (New York, 1967), 308–9.
78 Ibid., 305.
79 Pagan Rites in Judaism (New York, 1964), 21.
80 Tanhuma Numbers, 33; Numbers Rabbah, 11:3; b. Yoma 39b (in Patai, Man and
Temple, 90).
81 Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 309.
82 See S. N. Kramer, The Sacred Marriage Rite (Bloomington, 1969), esp. 49–84,
100–103.
The language of Ode 11 is also close to that of the Qumran Hymns,

(compare the Odist’s description of the Saints as a pre-existent Community
of “fruitbearing trees,” whose crown is “self-grown,” and whose “roots are
from an immortal land,” with 1QH 8:4–11, which speaks of the Commu-
nity as “a Mystery … a tree fed from a secret spring”). Also note Ode 13:7–
10, which tells us that the “Congregation of Thy Holy Ones has been estab-
lished from before eternity.” This fruitfulness is especially connected with
the Abrahamic promise of posterity (Gen 12:2; 15:5), as we read in the
scroll known as the “Damascus Document”:
Before they were established, He knew their works … And He knows
the years of their existence and the number and exact epoch of all of
them that come into being in eternity … And in all of them He raised
for Himself men called by name in order to leave a remnant for the land
and to fill the universe with their seed (CD 2:7ff; translated by Chaim
Rabin).
This is the same promise made by Paul in Galatians, where he connects the
fruitfulness which comes from the baptismal hieros gamos with the spiritual
“seed” of Abraham:
Baptized into union with Christ Jesus, you have all put on Christ as a
garment … There is no … male and female; for you are all one in Christ
Jesus. If you thus belong to Christ, you are the issue of Abraham, and so
heirs by promise (Gal 3:27–29).
The Odist, for his part, remembers that the promise of the Abrahamic
covenant to the seed of Israel has now been fulfilled in Christ:
And that I might not nullify the promises to the posterity of the
patriarchs,
To whom I was promised for the salvation of their offspring
(Ode 31:13).
As in Galatians, this is accomplished by union with Christ, i.e., by “putting
on” Christ as a “garment of light”:
And the Lord renewed me with his garment,
And possessed me by his light (Ode 11: 11).
Yet we are undoubtedly to think here of the original form of the hieros gamos
in the Temple, rather than of its later, baptismal form (Gal 3:28), for the
Odes make no mention anywhere of the usual Christian sacraments. As
Rendel Harris points out, “of sacraments, the Odes do not seem to know
194 A GREAT MYSTERY
much. The only direction in which we could look for a reference to Bap-
tism would be (i) the Living Water, (ii) the allusions to the Seal.”83
Yet the “Living Water,” in his opinion, yields no legitimate compari-
son with baptism because of its general connection in the Odes with a gen-
eral “outpouring” of God’s spiritual Presence. Indeed, as we have seen, this
is roughly synonymous in the Odes with the entire “effluence” (aporroia) of
Wisdom which flows into the Temple.
As for the “Seal,” we have several references in the Odes to a kind of
sign, with which the Lord’s Holy Ones have been specially marked:
Because Thy seal is known
And Thy creatures are known to it.
And Thy hosts possess it,
And the elect archangels are clothed with it (4:7–8).
That this does not refer to baptism is clearly evident from the fact that Ode
23 speaks of a mysterious “letter” from heaven which is marked with the
Seal, and which causes the angelic powers to let it pass by unmolested (“But
it escaped from their fingers; and they were afraid of it and of the seal
which was upon it;” v. 8). Ode 8 even says that the Lord set his “seal” upon
the faces of His people before Creation:
And before they existed,
I recognized them;
And imprinted a seal on their faces (v. 13).
Harris therefore concludes that “there does not seem to be any definite al-
lusion to Baptism” in the Odes of Solomon.84 Charlesworth concurs that the
“Living Water” (especially in its “milk” or “milk and honey” form) should
not be understood baptismally.85 Harris further cautions us concerning the
bread and wine: “As to the Eucharist, I can find no allusion whatever; there
are no references to the religious use of bread and wine; the writers of the
Odes seem to prefer milk and honey; but they are not spoken of sacramen-
tally, but mystically and allegorically.”86
These last two characterizations, of course, fall entirely within the
provenance of the Wisdom Mystery, where one receives from the Temple
the “milk and honey” anticipated in the “Promised Land,” namely Wisdom
83 Odes and Psalms, 77.

84 Ibid.
85 Odes, 24–25, esp. n. 18.
86 Odes and Psalms, 79; our emphasis.
(On the Migration of Abraham, 28; cf. Heb 11:10, 13–16; 12:22–24). Indeed,
the same Ode which extols the Jerusalem Temple (4:1–3) goes on to invite
all to come and receive from “Thy bountiful springs which abundantly sup-
ply us with milk and honey” (v. 10); the same are described in Ode 30 as a
fountain of water “sweeter than honey”:
Fill for yourselves water from the living fountain of the Lord,
Because it has been opened for you.
And come all you thirsty and take a drink,
And rest beside the fountain of the Lord.
Because it is pleasing and sparkling,
And perpetually refreshes the self.
For much sweeter is its water than honey (vv. 1–4).
Here again the fructifying source is “the lips of the Lord” (30:5), just
as it was in the Gospel of Thomas (“whoever drinks from my mouth”):87
And speaking waters touched my lips
From the fountain of the Lord generously.
And so I drank and became intoxicated,
From the living water that does not die (11:6–7).
As part of the hieros gamos with Wisdom (vv. 11–12), this “water” produces
“divine drunkenness,” or “possession by the Spirit” (Philo, On Flight and
Finding, 166; On Giants, 47; etc.). Without doubt, the Odist would also have
included within this symbol of “Living Water” the Gospel itself.
CHRIST AS THE MIRROR OF WISDOM AND IMAGE OF GOD IN THE

ODES
One of the most striking and characteristic metaphors of the Wisdom Mys-
tery, and one which the Odist was undoubtedly acquainted with, is the de-
scription of Christ (Wisdom) as a “Mirror”:
Behold, the Lord is our mirror.
Open your eyes and see them in Him.
And learn the manner of your face…
And wipe the paint from your face
And love His holiness and put it on (13:13).
87 Logion 108.
196 A GREAT MYSTERY
This important fragment already contains one of the main elements of the
Gnostic Bridal Chamber rite, namely, beholding God “as in a mirror”
(2 Cor 3:18), and being conformed to the image which one finds there.
Again, it is a form of hieros gamos (“love his holiness and put it on”) and
shows an unmistakable dependence on the Wisdom literature, where Wis-
dom is the “unblemished mirror of the active Power of God” (Wis 7:26)—
or “Powers of God” (Questions on Genesis, 1.57)88—designed to reflect the
divine Image to the soul of the Temple pilgrim.
We also saw that the roughly contemporary 2 Clement spoke of Jesus as
the “mirror” of God’s Face (36). Second Corinthians likewise tells us that
God’s glory shines in the “face of Jesus Christ” (4:6); in fact, the Excerpta ex
Theodoto—a full century later—would still refer to Jesus as the “Face of the
Father” (cf. Ode 25:4). Such examples show that the concept of Jesus-
Wisdom as the “mirror” or “face” of God was widespread in the early
Church and that it preserved still older notions from the Wisdom Mystery,
teaching that Wisdom herself was the “mirror” in which one could behold a
vision of the invisible God.
Pseudo-Cyprian’s treatise, De Montibus Sina et Sion (i.e., the Temple)
similarly describes Christ as the “Unspotted Mirror of the Father.”89 In the
same book, we are told that the same idea could be found in an “Epistle of
John” (presently lost), and that it was also described “by Solomon” in the
Wisdom of Solomon. Pseudo-Cyprian then explains that the Father and the
Son see each other by reflection and that we too may observe Jesus “in our-
selves,” as one sees himself in water or in a mirror:
And even we who believe in Him see Christ in us as in a mirror, as He
Himself instructs and advises us in the Epistle of His disciple John to
the people: “See me in yourselves in the same way as any one of you
sees himself in water or in a mirror”; and so he confirmed the saying of
Solomon about Himself, that “he is the unspotted mirror of the
Father.”90
In the present Ode, the initiate is instructed to behold the image of the
Lord “as in a mirror” and thereby “learn the manner” of his own face, at
the same time wiping the “paint” (Harris: the “filth”) from it, putting on in
its place the Lord’s holiness. This agrees with Paul’s statement that “behold-
See pp. 59–60, above.

88
Quoted in Harris, Odes and Psalms, 107. “On Mt. Sinai and Mr. Zion” obvi-
89
ously refers to the Temple.

90 Ibid.
ing as in a glass the glory of the Lord we are changed into the same image
from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18). James, in a more homiletic mood, con-
demns the foolish man who “beholds his natural image in a glass” but
“goes his way and immediately forgets what he saw” (1:23–24), i.e., makes
no attempt to conform his life to Christ. The apocryphal Acts of John (sec-
ond or third century) describes a similar process.
Thus, in chapters 28 and 29, we read how the Apostle compares his
newly painted portrait with his image in a mirror, saying that
(it is) Jesus who paints us all from life for himself, who knows the
shapes and forms and figures and dispositions and types of our souls.
And those are the colors which I tell you to paint with: faith in God,
knowledge, reverence, kindness, fellowship, mildness, goodness, broth-
erly love, purity, sincerity, tranquility, fearlessness, cheerfulness, dignity,
and the whole band of colors which portray your soul and raise up your
members … In brief, when a full set of mixtures of such colors has
come together into your soul, it will present it to our Lord Jesus Christ
undismayed and undamaged and rounded in form.91
Clearly, the intended idea is that the individual must consciously strive to
conform his own image to the image of God, which he sees reflected in the
“mirror” of Jesus/Wisdom—he who is the Image of the Father (Heb 1:3;
John 14:9). God‘s own Image was in fact sent in the form of the Son so
that we should have a divine “likeness” which we can “put on”:
He became like me that I might receive Him.
In form He was considered like me that I might put Him on (Ode 7:4).
These striking references to Jesus as Wisdom’s “mirror” are yet an-
other important link between the Wisdom Mystery—in which Philo saw the
articles in the Holy of Holies as a means of moral instruction and fellow-
ship with the Divine—and the Gnostic Bridal Chamber rite, where “the
mysteries of the truth are revealed as types and images” (Gospel of Philip,
84:20–21). Indeed, all three are based on the identical principle that
The likeness of that which is below
Is that which is above (Ode 34:4).
As we shall see later on, the Gnostics for this very reason constructed “mir-
rored Bridal Chambers” in which the initiate might receive the earthly
91 In Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 2:221.

198 A GREAT MYSTERY
reflections of Wisdom’s Light, just as the Philonic initiate had done in the
former Temple (see “Gnosticism and the Wisdom Mystery,” below).
The special Temple-provenance of this mirror symbolism is further
indicated by the Odist’s reference to his readers as mystery-initiates (mystaie),
clearly based on Philo’s description of the initiates in his own Temple-
Mystery (“Open your ears, mystaie, and hear the holiest of mysteries,” Alle-
gorical Interpretation, 3.219):
Open your ears,
And I shall speak to you (9:1).
Keep my Mystery, you who are kept by it;
Keep my Faith, you who are kept by it (8:10).
J. H. Bernard believed that this verse reflected the disciplina arcani of the
Primitive Church and cited a possible connection with a warning contained
in Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogic Lectures: “Guard the mystery for Him who
gives the reward.”92 Charlesworth rejected this suggestion on the grounds
that Cyril’s fifth-century lectures deal only with baptism, as well as the fact
that the Odes frequently admonish the reader to proclaim the Gospel to the
whole world (e.g., Ode 7:26).93 Yet we have seen that the Temple Mystery
had finally been coalesced with baptism in the Gentile Church, and that the
kind of secrecy associated with the Temple and the Embracing Cherubim
became widespread in the form of baptism in third-century Christianity.
The Gospel kerygma, on the other hand, was never to be kept secret. Jesus
could therefore caution his disciples that “I tell my mysteries to those who
are worthy of my mysteries” (Gospel of Thomas, Log. 62), as well as admonish
them that “What thou shalt hear in thine ears … that preach from your
housetops” (Log. 33). In the same manner, the New Testament Synoptics at
first warn, “Give not that which is holy to the dogs” (Matt 7:6), and then
command, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations” (28:19).
Also connected with the Temple in a general way are the Odist’s refer-
ences to sacrifice, though in a “spiritualized” form (Ode 20:1–5). His allu-
sions to the “wheel” (Ode 23:11) and the “chariot” (38:1) are probably de-
rived from Merkabah mysticism,94 early descriptions of which can also be
found in the Qumran “Angelic Liturgy” (4QS 1), and in 1 Enoch 14:8–25.95
92 In Charlesworth, Odes, 43.

93 Ibid.
94 Ibid., 96.
95 G. Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1974), 11, 13.
These kinds of speculation on the Throne-Vision (Ezek 1:26) date back to

the period of the Second Temple96 and have obvious connections with the
Sanctuary, for example, the ubiquitous concern with the “pargod” (= parok-
het), or veil, which generally separates the “One who sits on the Throne”
from other parts of the Merkabah.97 Obviously, this is an idealized version
of the veil in the earthly Temple.
Mention of the priesthood (“I am a priest of the Lord, and Him I
serve as a priest”; Ode. 20:1) also establishes the provenance of the Temple.
The motif of being crowned, on the other hand (1:1–2; 5:12; 9:8; 17:1;
20:7–8; etc.), appears to be closer to the New Testament “victor’s crown”
or “wreath” than to the priestly nezer of the Old Testament. Charlesworth
connects it with the Qumran doctrine that the reward of the “sons of light”
is a crown of glory and a garment of majesty in eternal light” (1QS 4:7–8).98
Jean Daniélou, however, believes that the “wreathed-crown” was a Jewish-
Christian adaptation of the crown worn by Jews during the Feast of Taber-
nacles, and therefore directly connected with the Temple:
It was laid down that they should celebrate the Feast dwelling in booths,
wearing crowns on their heads, and holding leafy branches and boughs
of willow (Jubilees 16:30).99
Finally, the putting on of a holy garment (Odes 11:11; 23:1–3; 25:8) seems
to reflect the rabbinic doctrine that Adam and Eve were given an integu-
ment of skin when they lost their original bodies of light during the Fall;
now their pristine light-body is restored through union with Christ in the
form of a white or luminous “garment”:
I stripped off (folly) and cast it from me, and the Lord renewed me with
his raiment …
And possessed me by His light (Ode 11:9–11).100
This is very close to the doctrine contained in the “Hymn of the Pearl”
(Acts of Thomas), which says that the heavenly soul leaves its “Robe” behind
when it comes to earth, but receives it again after the successful completion

97 Scholem, Kabbalah, 18.
98 Odes, 103.
99 Theology of Jewish Christianity (London, 1964; hereafter TJC), 328.
100 Quoted in ibid., 326. See also Harris, Odes, 66–70.
200 A GREAT MYSTERY
of its earthly mission.101 In the latter case, the “Robe” is additionally de-
scribed as a mirror-reflection of the individual’s true nature:
Suddenly when I saw myself over against it, the (splendid robe) became
like me, as my reflection in a mirror (112:76).
This suggests that “the Robe” was widely regarded as a symbol of the di-
vine nature which the initiate attains through conformity to the divine Im-
age; Hamerton-Kelly sees it as a development of the thought expressed in 2
Corinthians 3:18, which says that “we … beholding as in a mirror the glory
of the Lord are changed into the same image,” i.e., the “image of the high
God.”102
The foregoing features of the Jewish Christian Odes of Solomon clearly
demonstrate a derivation from the Old Testament Wisdom Mystery and the
symbolism of the Temple, still dominated by the theme of Wisdom’s hieros
gamos with the initiate. As in the Gospel of Thomas, the imagery of the em-
brace within the veil is applied to the relationship of Jesus and the Christian,
but on a direct and personal level (“And Immortal Life embraced me, and
kissed me. And from that is the Spirit which is within me”). Again, Sonship
and immortality are the result (“I have been united to Him, because the
lover has found the Beloved. Because I love Him that is a Son, I shall become
a son. Indeed, he who is joined to Him who is immortal truly shall become
immortal”). As in the Gospel of Thomas, the divine Image and the image of
the individual are merged together as One (“He became like me that I might
receive Him. In form He was considered like me that I might put Him on”).
As in the Wisdom of Solomon, this is accomplished by means of a “divine
reflection” in Wisdom’s “mirror” (“Behold, the Lord is our mirror. Open
your eyes and see them in Him, and learn the manner of your face”).
We are of course left to conjecture just how much of the Odes consists
of anachronistic symbolism surviving from earlier practices, and how much
reflects contemporary cultic observances in the early Church. We will, how-
ever, discover that other important groups in second-century Christianity
performed actual rites of the very same sort, suggesting the possibility that
the Odes of Solomon do in fact describe an extant liturgical worship, still based
on the Jewish Temple, albeit in a Christianized form. Behind it we indeed
perceive the memory of a “Fellowship Embrace” involving someone repre-
senting the Lord and the initiate (“And I put off darkness, and put on light
101 In Hennecke-Schneemetcher-Wilson, NTAp, 2:498–504.

102 Pre-Existence (Cambridge, 1973), 146 and notes.
… And His everlasting fellowship”). What does appear certain is that the
Odes come from a Jewish-Christian writer who still looked upon the Temple
as a necessary institution, and one which was still valid in his eyes. For that
reason, we feel that they are an important witness to the survival of the Je-
rusalem Temple cult in certain segments of Christianity and one which
would contribute significantly to the Gnostic “Bridal Chamber” rites, or
even to the mysterious ritual described in the late first century Didache, to
which we now turn.
A “WORLDLY MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH” IN THE DIDACHE

The full title of this short treatise, discovered by Philotheos Bryennios in
1873, is “The Teaching (Didache) of the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles.”
The main bulk of the work has been dated from around the end of the first
century, or even (by J. P. Andet and S. Giet) from before A.D. 70, since
specific sections on the “Two Ways,” including the eschatological teaching,
the prayers, and the “Short Apocalypse” at the end probably go back to the
early days of the Jerusalem Church.103 Undoubtedly, it was subjected to fur-
ther internal development before it reached its present form, perhaps some-
time in the mid-second century.104 Generally speaking, it is a compendium
of moral and practical instruction, dealing with the opposing paths leading
to life or death, baptism, prayer, fasting, the Eucharist, the agape-meal, and
the treatment of various offices in the Church, such as apostles, prophets,
bishops, and deacons.
In spite of its name, most scholars are agreed that the provenance of
the Didache was the original community of Jewish Christians, i.e., those Jews
who were first converted to Christianity, prior to the growth of the “Gen-
tile” movement which led to Latin “orthodoxy.”105 This “Jewish Christian-
ity” had not yet evolved into the Ebionism which is documented in the
Kerygmata Petrou and the Clementine literature; instead, it remains character-
ized by a continuing use of Semitic thought-forms, such as the doctrine of
103 R. A. Kraft, “Apostolic Fathers,” in IDB, 5:36.

104 Jean Daniélou, TJC, 30. “In its original form,” he concludes, “it dates back
to the first community at Jerusalem, though it was no doubt developed after A.D.
70 in a Syrian community. Finally, the extant version has undergone some touching
up later than the second century.” J. R. Michaels, “Apostolic Fathers,” in The Inter-
national Standard Bible Encyclopedia, (Grand Rapids, 1979), 1:207, suggests “a date of
composition in the 2nd cent.”
105 Daniélou, TJC, 28–30. Compare also 2–5.
202 A GREAT MYSTERY
the Two Ways (reminiscent of the Qumran doctrine of Light and Dark-
ness), the use of living water for baptism, prayer thrice daily, the “taberna-
cling” of the Name, the Aramaic expression, Maran atha, and the belief in
prophets, all of which are found liberally in the Didache. This suggests a pos-
sible affinity between the present work and the Essenes, who according to
Josephus also practiced prophetism in the first century A.D. 106
According to P. D. Scott-Moncrieff, bishops and deacons were origi-
nally subordinate to apostles and prophets, though “the ‘prophet’ alone was
allowed to have a fixed abode … The first fruits of the community were his
by right. He spoke in ecstasy, and presided at the agape.”107 Yet we are never
quite sure just what is meant by the word “prophet” in the Didache, which
seems generally to refer to itinerant preachers or ministers. Indeed, we also
read in the nearly contemporary Shepherd of Hermas (M. 11:7ff) that “proph-
ets” often traveled about providing spiritual counsel:
When the man who hath the divine Spirit cometh unto an assembly of
righteous men, who have faith in a divine Spirit, and intercession is
made to God by the gathering of those men, then the angel of the pro-
phetic Spirit, who is attached to him, filleth the man, and the man, being
filled with the Holy Spirit, speaketh to the multitude, according as the
Lord willeth.” (See also Hermas, S.9.25:2; 15:4; V.3.5:1.).
The Didache similarly notes that the prophet is one who “increases right-
eousness and knowledge of the Lord” (11:2). Some have argued that the
designation “prophet” referred to the charismatic gift possessed by such
individuals, rather than to a ministerial calling. Jean Daniélou, however, was
convinced that prophets, elders, teachers, deacons, and bishops were both
ministerial and charismatic callings in the Primitive Church, and were or-
dained at the hand of the apostles.108 Yet neither the Didache nor the Shep-
herd of Hermas ever gives us a more exact definition of the word “prophet.”
In chapter 11, the Didache tells us how to distinguish a true prophet
from a false: “Let every apostle that cometh unto you be received as of the
Lord … But if he remain three days, he is a false prophet” (vv. 4–5). This
cautionary note was probably added to guard against unscrupulous repre-
sentatives of the Church living off the hospitality of its members. (See also
vv. 6 and 12, which warn against “prophets” who ask for money.)
106 Ibid., 29–30.

107 “Coptic Church,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York, 1912),
7:114.
108 Daniélou, TCJ, 350, notes.
Chapter 15:1 further indicates that “prophets” could be bishops: “Ap-

point for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord … for they
perform unto you the services of prophets and teachers.” However, it adds
that “prophets” functioned in some sort of priestly capacity (“Every first
fruit, therefore … thou shalt give to the prophets, for they are your High
Priests”; 15:3). Rendel Harris therefore concluded that the “prophet’s” ac-
tions “were only justified because they were done to expound some mys-
tery.”109 This suggests that we must search for some precedent associated
with the “mystery” in the Temple for the origin and explanation of the
“prophetic” calling in the Didache:
Every prophet proved true, if he performs unto a worldly mystery of the
Church (poion eis mystērion kosmikon ekklēsias), and yet teaches you not to
do all that he himself does, shall not be judged by you. He has his judg-
ment in the presence of God, for in the same way did the prophets of
old (11:11).
Certainly, the “prophet’s” right to receive “first-fruits” (13:3) was originally
a right associated with the Temple. Yet the enigmatic passage in 11:11 raises
more questions than it answers, for when we read that the “worldly mystery
of the Church” resembled a “mystery” performed by “prophets of old,” we
are obliged to ask just which prophets the author means. Does he mean
prophets like Isaiah, Ezekiel, or Jeremiah? If so, we are unaware of any
“mystery” which might have been performed by these individuals. Or is it
more likely that he refers to prophets who in some way had come to typify
the Wisdom Mystery, e.g., Hosea, whose marriage to a prostitute prefigured
Yahweh’s love for Israel, or the various Patriarchs, whom Philo depicted as
“Hebrews” in search of God’s Sophia, or even Moses, the archetypal High
Priest, who went to the top of Mt. Sinai to “unite” God and Israel, and who
was said in the Zohar to have had intercourse with the Shekhinah?110
The statement in 13:3, “for they are your High Priests,” would appear
to favor the latter alternative, and suggests that the cryptic “mystery” re-
ferred to in Didache 11:11 was some form of the Wisdom Mystery and that
it still involved behavior which was prefigured by the Embracing Cherubim
in the Sanctuary. Indeed, it is clear that its performance by certain undisci-
plined “prophets” had become the occasion for moral criticism, since the
members of the Church are enjoined not to judge them: “For in the same
way did the prophets of old.” In short, our “prophet” was known to have
109 The Teaching of the Apostles (London, 1887), 72; our emphasis.
204 A GREAT MYSTERY
taken part in some kind of ritual, which by ordinary moral standards could
appear questionable, yet might be excused when properly performed, be-
cause it expressed a great truth.
LICENTIOUS AGAPE FEASTS AND THE DIDACHE

A. Cleveland Coxe, the editor of the American edition of the Ante-Nicene
Fathers,111 suggests that this questionable behavior had something to do with
the agape-feasts of the early Church (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1
Thess 5:26; 1 Pet 2:4–22), which are also discussed in the Didache (9–10).
These ancient communion-meals (koinōnia) appear to have followed the
pattern of the Jewish Passover as a means of gaining fellowship and sharing
one’s goods with the poor (Acts 1:14; 2:1, 44; 4:32; 6:lff). Jude 12 calls them
agapai, (KJV “feasts of charity”; RSV, NEB, i.e., “Love-feasts”), and they
were at first associated with the celebration of the Eucharist (Acts 2:44, 46;
Didache 10:lff). Unfortunately, certain abuses had begun to creep into the
agape-meals, as Paul and Jude indicate (1 Cor 11:21–22; Jude 12). Peter like-
wise refers to the “blots” (spiloi) and “blemishes” (mōmoi) who desecrated
these feasts (2 Pet 2:13); Peter and Jude more specifically hint at the sexual
nature of their transgressions (Jude 8–16; 1 Pet 2:4–22). Since the embrace
and kiss exchanged between Jesus and the initiate in the original Wisdom
Mystery was the probable source of the well-known agape-kiss (Gospel of
Thomas, Log. 22, 108; Ode 28:7),112 there would indeed have been occasion
for dishonest persons to interject licentious behavior into some of its later
forms.
The Gospel of Philip explains that the Savior’s kiss was passed between
the members of the community in order to share his grace:
Those who are begotten by Him … are nourished … from the mouth
… For it is by a kiss that the perfect conceive and give birth. For that
reason, we also kiss one another. We receive the conception from the
grace which is in each other (58:28–59:6).
Marvin H. Pope, on the other hand, associates the suspected licentious be-
havior with the widespread “mortuary-meals” of the antique world, includ-
ing the Canaanite marzeah and the Greek thiasos or symposion, during which
“wake-like” carousing and sexual activity were supposed to have a sympa-
111 Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, 1885–96, hereafter ANF) 7:380–81.

thetic effect on the revival of the dead.113 While we believe that the Jewish
traditions already mentioned provide adequate precedents for the agape-feast
and whatever abuses it may have suffered, it is nevertheless true that
second- and third-century writers frequently reported the kind of wholesale
licentiousness at Christian “meals” which were associated with pagan mor-
tuary-celebrations (Tertullian, Apology, 7, 8; Minucius Felix, Octavius, 337–
38).
The latter included nocturnal drinking bouts and rioting, reminiscent
of the old Semitic *Marzih,114 and the sort of orgies hinted at in Song of
Songs 2:4–5 and 5:1.115 The Christian agape-feasts during these later years
may of course have simply decayed from within and succumbed to the dis-
solute influence of pagan counterparts, for example, the notorious Mayurea-
festival (cf. the warnings in Genesis Rabbah 20:8; Leviticus Rabbah 5:3; Numbers
Rabbah 10:3), which even featured wife-swapping.116 In any case, such
abuses suggest that a susceptibility to promiscuous behavior plagued the
agape-feast from the start, and the author of the Didache may have been try-
ing to avoid this when he cautioned against the sins of the flesh (chs. 2–3).
VIRGINES SUBINTRODUCTAE AND THE DIDACHE

Günther Bornkam117 and Jean Daniélou118 have both suggested that the
“worldly mystery of the Church” was a kind of “spiritual marriage” repre-
senting “in an earthly copy the heavenly mystery of the marriage between
Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32).119 Daniélou sees this as an allusion to
“spiritual unions which existed in Jewish Christianity between prophet-
apostles and a sister.”120 These are briefly described in the Shepherd of Hermas
(S.9.10:6–11:8), and possibly even in 1 Cor 7:36ff,121 and they were generally
113 Song of Songs, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1977), 226–27; see also 210–
29.
Ibid., 210–21.
114
Ibid., 221–23.
115
116 Ibid., 217–18.
117 “mystārion, myeō,” in TDNT, 4:824–25.
118 TJC, 351–52.
119 Bornkam, “mystārion, myeō,” 825.
120 Daniélou, TJC, 351. See also A. Adam, “Erwägungen zur Herkunft der Di-
dache,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 68 (1957): 1–47.

121 Some commentators believe that “Paul is describing a kind of ‘spiritual
marriage’ in which a couple lives together without sex relations.” Wm. Orr and
James Walther, 1 Corinthians, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1976), 223. J. C.
206 A GREAT MYSTERY
supposed to symbolize the Great Mystery of which Paul speaks in Ephe-

sians 5.
In the first-mentioned work (from the middle of the second century),
the writer tells us how he was left by the Shepherd to spend the night with
twelve beautiful virgins. Asking where he might sleep, he receives the fol-
lowing answer:
With us thou shalt sleep, like a brother, not like a man, for thou art our
brother and in the future we shall serve thee, for we love thee dearly.
He then goes on to describe how
she who seemed to be their leader began to kiss and embrace me; and
the others seeing her embrace me, they too began to kiss me, and to
lead me around the tower (= the Church), and to sport with me … And
I stayed the night with them, and I slept by the side of the tower. For
the virgins spread their linen on the ground, and made me lie down in
the midst of them, and they did nothing else but pray; and I prayed with
them without ceasing … Then the Shepherd appeared and said, “Thou
hast not done anything ignominious?” “Ask him thyself,” they replied. I
said to him, “I was glad to spend the night with them.” “On what did
you sup?” he said. “Sir, I supped on the words of the Lord the whole
night through,” said I (Shepherd of Hermas, S.9.11).
Such “sisters” were traditionally called virgines subintroductae (“secret vir-
gins”), though it has been suggested that some sort of coitus reservatus may
have been engaged in with some of them,122 as in the case of the
Manichaeans, who called the practice karezza.123 The rationale given in Her-
mas for this strange relationship was that the candidate for salvation needed
to enter into “marriage” with the Holy Spirit, whose “garment” was subdi-
vided into individual portions—called Christ’s “angels”—and who were
thought of as individualized “holy spirits” or divine “powers” (S.9.13). The
virgines subintroductae were the earthly symbols of these “holy spirits,” and a
spiritual “marriage” to one of them was the individual’s method of receiv-
ing his own portion of the “holy spirit” or “angel.”
“Marriage” between the individual’s flesh and an individual “holy
spirit” was the believer’s personal contribution toward the Church’s collec-
Hurd, Jr. (The Origin of 1 Corinthians, New York, 1965, 169–82) gives a detailed ac-
count of this ancient practice.
122 Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman (New York, 1958), 145.
123 Ibid., 145–46.
tive “marriage” to Christ.124 In this way, the Church as a whole was pro-
gressively reunited with the “Spirit of the Preexistent Christ” or “Holy
Spirit” (S.5.5:2; 6:5; 9.1:1). Hermas’s “angels” were also described as “vir-
tues” (as in the writings of Philo), or divine “names,” meaning the individu-
alized “attributes” of the Savior.125 This remarkable explanation was in real-
ity a magnified view of the general process by which the spiritual marriage of
Christ and the Church was enacted one couple at a time, symbolized in the
Shepherd of Hermas by “spiritual” syzygies between the men and virgins of the
local community, and it corresponded in principle to Quentin Quesnell’s
explanation of how men and women become Christ and the Church when
they unite in marriage (pp. 122–23, above).
The theoretical basis for such relationships was once again the fact
that heavenly and earthly marriages both follow the same eternal pattern
and exemplify the same “Great Mystery.” This principle would also govern
the Gnostic Bridal Chamber rite, of which we shall have more to say
shortly. Thus, the Marcosians were said to “prepare a nuptial couch and
perform a mystic rite … affirming that what they do is a spiritual marriage
after the likeness of unions above” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.21.3), and
which acted as their ritual “catalyst.”
DIRECT “MARRIAGE” TO CHRIST IN THE DIDACHE?

There are of course other possible explanations for the enigmatic “mystery”
referred to in Didache 11. The bestowal of purity through direct marriage to
the Divine, for instance, was well-known in Judaism, even before the time
of Philo:
According to a tradition found most clearly in Ezekiel 16 and 23, Israel
was defiled … before Yahweh took her. The wilderness was the court-
ship period or honeymoon, the crossing of the Sea of Reeds was the
cleansing bath before marriage. The covenant was an undeserved gift of
Yahweh from the outset, its aim the purification of the sullied bride by
love in marriage. So Hosea is said to be an image of the Redeemer, unit-
ing himself to what was unholy, in order to make it holy.126
124 See pp. 149–50 and 160–61, above.

125 See detailed analysis in H. Schlier, Der Brief an die Epheser (Düsseldorf, 1957),
270; also pp. 163–64, above.
126 Francis I. Anderson and David Noel Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible (Gar-
den City, NY, 1980), 165.

208 A GREAT MYSTERY
Thus began a series of divine Redeemer-figures, who symbolically wedded

“fallen” women in order to provide them with their saving grace. Hosea
and Gomer (Hos 1–3), Simon Magus and Helen,127 Jesus and Mary Magda-
lene (whom the Western Church traditionally claimed was a prostitute),128
Thomas and the Hebrew flute-player;129 even Sabbatai Zevi and his prosti-
tute wife, Sarah,130 all fit into this ancient pattern. As a “Redeemer” and
“Prophet” (Acts 4:22), Jesus’ relationship with the “fallen” Mary Magdalene
may therefore have been the basis for the “mystery of the Church” in
Didache.131
We cannot doubt that the Primitive Church was well aware of Christ’s
paradigmatic relationship with Mary Magdalene, because their intimate as-
sociation was tacitly acknowledged in the New Testament (e.g., John 20:14–
18).132 In the same way, the early Gospel of Thomas (ca. A.D. 50–70) depicted
127 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1:23.

128 E. P. Blair, “Mary,” in IDB, 3:289. Scripture gives no warrant for this as-
sumption, hence her reputation may have been blackened simply to make her con-
form to this tradition. According to several apocryphal books, Jesus was actually
married to Mary Magdalene; see the Gospel of Philip 59:8–11; 63:34–36; The Gospel
According to Mary, in NTAp, ed. Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, 1:344.
129 Acts of Thomas, 4–16. See the comments of Günther Bornkam, in
Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 2:432.

130 See Scholem, Kabbalah, 249.
131 The Gospel of Peter, 50, says that Mary came to the tomb on Easter morning
“because she had not done what women customarily did for their beloved de-
parted.” Western tradition identified Mary with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Mar-
tha, at whose home Jesus spent so much time (Luke 10:38–42; John 11:1–12:8).
The Gospel of Philip twice says that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene (his
koinonos, or wife; 59:8–9; 63:32–33) and kissed her often on the mouth (63:35–36).
The Gospel According to Mary (in Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 1:343–
44) makes her his favorite of all womankind. In the Pistis Sophia, Peter complains
because Mary gets more attention from the Savior than the disciples; she is prom-
ised a heavenly throne higher than those of the apostles (ch. 96), told that she is
blessed above all women on earth (ch. 19), called “Mary the Beautiful” (ch. 24), and
in ch. 138 she kisses Jesus. The same preference of Jesus for Mary Magdalene is
reflected in various Nag Hammadi treatises, such as the Sophia of Jesus Christ and the
Dialogue of the Redeemer. The last of these names three woman-followers of Jesus, but
they are all well-known variants of Mary (Maria, Mariham and Marihamme).
132 Both Mark 16:9–11 and John 20:14–18 make Mary the first person to
whom the risen Lord appeared after his crucifixion. Matthew 28:9–10 includes the
“other Mary,” as well. Luke 24:16 says that she and several other women were the
first to hear of the Resurrection from an angel.
Jesus as preparing to “wed” Mary in order to make her “male,” i.e., to re-
store her fallen and incomplete “femaleness” to a perfect and complete
state of “maleness”:
Since Peter said to them, Let Mary go out from among us, because
women are not worthy of the Life, Jesus said, See, I shall lead her, so
that I will make her male, that she too may become a living Spirit, re-
sembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will en-
ter the Kingdom (Log. 114; cf. Log. 22).
“Becoming male,” of course, depended on becoming “one” with the Re-
deemer, as we have already learned.133 Generally, this rite was thought of as
a purely spiritual kind of union, as reflected in the symbolic “embrace” of
Logion 22 and the Odes of Solomon (28:7–8). That some Christians, however,
often reenacted the embrace in literal fashion, is shown by the fragment
known as the Greater Questions of Mary, preserved in the fourth century
Panarion of Epiphanius:
They assert that he (Jesus) gave her (Mary Magdalene) a revelation, tak-
ing her aside to a mountain and praying; and he brought forth from his
side a woman and began to unite with her, and so, foresooth, swallow-
ing his effluent, he showed that “we must so do, that we may live” and
how when Mary fell to the ground abashed, he raised her up and said to
her, “Why didst thou doubt, O thou of little faith?”134
Epiphanius adds that the sect which produced this surprising tale had de-
picted Jesus as the revealer of “obscene practices” (aischrourgia), which con-
stituted their mystery of redemption (Panarion, 26.8.1).135 We cannot tell
how old these rites might have been, or when their embrace came to be
represented as a blatantly sexual act.136 Nevertheless, the Greater Questions of
Mary appears be another witness to a tradition which began much earlier, as
suggested by Irenaeus’ statement concerning the Marcosians (Against Here-
sies, 1.21:3). Thus it is entirely possible that an early form of Epiphanius’s
133 See pp. 67–68 above.

134 In Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 1:339. The act of “taking a
woman from his side” refers to Genesis 2:24 and the consubstantiality of Christ
and the Church before their mortal separation. By sexually reuniting with the
woman, their consubstantiality will be reestablished.
135 See ibid., 338.
136 The “swallowing of effluent,” on the other hand, indicates the attempt to
“spiritualize” the sexual act by defeating the work of the Demiurge through avoid-
ance of procreation.
210 A GREAT MYSTERY
sexual rite coincided with the “mystery” alluded to in Didache 11. Markus, a
late second-century disciple of Valentinus, and the founder of the Marco-
sians, was in fact said to have personally bestowed the gifts of prophecy
upon his female followers by similar means:137
It appears probable enough that this man possesses a demon as his fa-
miliar spirit, by means of whom he seems able to prophesy, and enables
as many as he counts worthy to be partakers of his grace themselves to
prophesy … “I am eager to make thee a partaker of my grace, since the
Father of all doth continually behold thy angel before His face. Now the
place of thy mightiness is among us; it behooves us to become one. Re-
ceive fruit from me and by me the gift of grace. Adorn thyself as a bride
who is expecting her bridegroom, that thou mayest be what I am and I
what thou art. Establish the germ of light in thy Bridal Chamber. Re-
ceive from me a spouse, and become receptive of him, while thou art
received by him. Behold grace has descended upon thee, open thy
mouth and prophesy” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.13.3).
Here we again encounter the theme of “becoming one” with a Redeemer-
figure138 and the theme of the “prophetic” calling combined in a single in-
dividual, who employed literal ritual union as a means of bestowing the
“germ of light” upon woman initiates. As in the Gospel of Thomas and the
137“Declaring that he alone was the matrix and receptacle of the Sige” (the fe-
male counterpart of the highest God), “inasmuch as he was ‘only-begotten’”
(1.14.1). Sige (“Silence”), or Ennoia, was in the Valentinian system the female aspect
of the “perfect, preexistent Aeon,” or the eternal, unbegotten Source of all things.
She was also called “Grace,” and was said to have descended upon Markus “in the
form of a woman” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.14.1), making him a divine em-
bodiment of what we have come to recognize as a form of “Wisdom.” This was of
course similar to the New Testament claim that Jesus was the “Wisdom of God”
(1 Cor 1:24). There may also be some connection between the idea that Markus
received Sige in the “form of a woman” and the Zoharic legend that Moses had
intercourse with Shekhinah, resulting in his illumination and deification (see
Scholem, MTJM, 200).
138 Compare this censorious opinion of Irenaeus about a “familiar spirit by
means of whom he seems able to prophesy” with the Shepherd of Hermas, M.11:7ff:
“Then the angel of the prophetic Spirit, who is attached to him, filleth this man,
and the man speaketh.” Obviously, this explanation of the prophetic gift (based on
Wis 7:27: “She (Wisdom) enters into holy souls and renders them friends of God
and prophets”) was known to both the Valentinians and the writer of Hermas, and
may have been an important element in the “worldly mystery” of the prophets in
Didache 11.
Questions of Mary, this mystic fusion made the recipient “the same” as the
Redeemer, and bestowed “light” or “life” upon the candidate. One of the
gifts of the “light” was “prophecy” (Wis 7:27), suggesting that we have in
Markus’ overtly sexual rite the same kind of mystery which is referred to in
Didache 11: “For in the same way did the prophets of old.”
Unfortunately, we have no further details with which to provide a de-
finitive answer. That the “mystery,” however, involved some “question-
able” sort of behavior, which modern Christians have long-since repressed,
seems beyond dispute. As Rendel Harris reminds us in his edition of this
work,
The contingency which the Teaching contemplates is the recurrence of
similar eccentric conduct on the part of new prophets … The gift of
prophecy had passed over from the Jews to the Christians. Many sym-
bolic actions must have been performed in the early days of the Church
of which no record has come down to us.139
As possible further examples he cites Justin Martyr, who in his Dialogue with
Trypho (134) reproaches “polygamy,” saying that Jacob’s conduct—as well
as that of the other Patriarchs—was justified solely because it was part of a
“great mystery” (megalon mystērion).140 Justin further explains that the nuptial
of Jacob was a type of action which would be consummated by Christ, Leah
being the “Synagogue” and Rachel the “Gentile Church.” Irenaeus also
claims that Hosea’s intercourse with the prostitute Gomer was justified as
“a worldly mystery of Christ and the Church. Indeed, he argues, “the same
thing holds true of the marriage of Moses”:
For this reason did Hosea the prophet take “a wife of whoredoms.”
And from men of this stamp it will be God’s good pleasure to take out a
Church which shall be sanctified by fellowship with his Son, just as the
woman was sanctified by intercourse with the prophet. And for this rea-
son, Paul declares that the wife is sanctified by the believing husband
(l Cor 7:14) … Thus too did Moses also take to wife an Ethiopian
woman, whom he thus made an Israelitish one … For this reason, by
means of the marriage of Moses, was shown forth the marriage of the
Word, and by means of the Ethiopian bride, the Church taken from
among the Gentiles was made manifest (Against Heresies, 4.20.12)
139The Teaching of the Apostles, 73.

140The same term used by Paul to describe the union of male and female as a
symbol of Christ’s marriage to the Church (Eph 5:32).
212 A GREAT MYSTERY
Justin’s Dialogue (94) even justifies Moses’ “graven image” of the serpent,
though there was a law prohibiting it, because it was constructed as a lesson
of salvation (John 3:14). He then suggests that the same allowance be made
concerning “a further mystery,”141 though he does not tell us what this
might be. From his words, however, it is clear that there was once a tradi-
tion in the early Church that certain otherwise “illegitimate” actions might
be justified if they expounded the mystery of Christ’s marriage to the
Church. Such was apparently the “worldly mystery” of the Didache, which
was designed to portray the “heavenly mystery” of redemption—just as the
Gnostic “lesser mystery” of carnal union portrayed the “greater mystery” of
union with Christ. Indeed, the Apostle Paul laid down the same principle
when he said that “a man shall … be joined to his wife, and they two shall
be one flesh … but I speak concerning Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:30–
31).
We must leave our discussion of the “worldly mystery”142 in Didache
11:11 on this tentative note. Suggested interpretations have included the
licentious behavior that took place during agape-feasts, “spiritual” cohabita-
tion with virgines subintroductae, ritual “polygamy” (perhaps congress with a
woman other than one’s legal wife?), ritual “embraces” and “kisses,” or
even sexual unions between a hierophant and initiate. Behind them all,
however, we still perceive the central symbolism of the Embracing Cheru-
bim, representing the union of Wisdom/Christ and the worshipper, going
all the way back to Ezekiel’s image of Yahweh “spreading his skirt” over
Israel and “covering her nakedness” in order to bind her to him in a re-
demptive covenant.
THE GREAT MYSTERY IN THE WRITINGS OF CLEMENT AND ORIGEN

Writing around A.D. 200, the very “orthodox” Clement of Alexandria—
who was head of the local school of catechumens—left us some vivid rec-
ollections of the Christian Temple-cultus and its “Great Mystery,” save that
141Harris’ words; in The Teaching of the Apostles, 72.

142Harris adds that “worldly” or “cosmic mystery” was also a rabbinic expres-
sion. b. Hagigah 13 thus deals with the secret knowledge of the Beginning (cf. also
m. Hagiga 2:1) and the need to keep Ezekiel’s Merkabah mysteries secret: “Rabbi
Abuhu says from this, ‘The lambs are for thy clothing’ (Prov 27:26). Do not read it
‘lambs’ but the ‘secret things,’ meaning the things that are the Mystery of the Cosmos,
let them be as a garment unto them.” Maimonides (Hilkuth yesod ha-torah, 2.18) also
says of this, “keep it a secret (‘let them be as a garment to them’), and do not dis-
cuss it before many people.”
the true Temple is now the human soul (Miscellanies, 7.6), and “passage
through the veil” is the journey of the soul after death, as it leaves the world
of the senses and enters the world of the intellect (ibid., 5.6).143 In contrast
to the Gnostics—some of whom continued to construct “Bridal Cham-
bers” or “Holies of Holies” of their own—Clement represented the Chris-
tian Temple as Man himself (especially the Community of the Church). Ac-
cordingly, he described the layout of the old Temple, with its symbolic fur-
niture and fittings, solely in order to direct men’s minds to the “spiritual”
world into which they now hoped to enter. But the basic pattern of this
new interpretation was still the ancient Wisdom Mystery, where union with
the Logos/Wisdom was the ultimate goal, and man’s deification through
illumination by the Heavenly Light was the central theme:
Hail, O light! For in us, buried in darkness, shut up in the shadow of
death, light has shone forth from heaven, purer than the sun, sweeter
than life here below. That light is eternal life; and whatever partakes of it
lives. But night fears the light, and hiding itself in terror, gives place to
the day of the Lord. Sleepless light is now over all, and the west has
given credence to the east. For this was the meaning of the new crea-
tion. For “the Sun of Righteousness” who drives His chariot over all,
pervades equally all humanity, like “His Father, who makes His sun rise
on all men” and distills on them the dew of the truth. He has changed
sunset into sunrise, and through the cross brought death to life; and
having wrenched man from destruction, He has raised him to the skies,
transplanting mortality into immortality and translating earth to heaven,
He, the husbandman of God, having bestowed on us the truly great, di-
vine, and inalienable inheritance of the Father, deifying man by heavenly
teaching, putting His laws into our minds and writing on our hearts
(Protrepticus 2.88.114; in Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 2.23).
Clement in fact gave this “authentic” Temple teaching the title “True Gno-
sis,” to distinguish it from what he considered the “False Gnosis” (Misc.,
6.7), and which he describes in some detail in the third book of his Miscella-
nies. But he affirmed that he received the “True Gnosis” from the Apostles
themselves:
And the gnosis itself is that which has descended by transmission to a
few, having been imparted unwritten by the apostles (Misc., 6.7).
143 Clement and Origen both say that the real Christian bōmos (“altar”) is the
human heart. H. Leonard Pass, “Altar (Christian),” in Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics, 1:338.
214 A GREAT MYSTERY
This “True Gnosis” had especially to do with God’s “first-begotten

Son,” who “is called Wisdom by all the prophets” (6.7), and whose role in
salvation (like that of the Philonic Wisdom) was set forth symbolically by
the “mystic meaning of the Tabernacle and its furniture” (5.6). Before pro-
ceeding further, however, he quotes a line from Plato as a note of caution:
“Cast your eyes around, and see that none of the uninitiated listen.” Then
he goes on to explain that knowledge of God, though inaccessible to the
minds of ordinary people, is revealed through the “Son” (Wisdom), who “is
said to be the Father’s Face” (5.6), i.e., the one who makes visible the Fa-
ther’s character to those who “walk in the Spirit.” For this purpose, he
adds, “the sacerdotal service is concealed within the veil” (5.6). In short, the
contents of the Holy of Holies were provided in order that those who had
faith might have a means of instruction in the nature of God, just as we
learned earlier from Philo (p. 64, above).
Turning now to the Cherubim, he reminds us that certain commenta-
tors held the fabled pair to represent the interaction of the “two hemi-
spheres” (cf. Philo, On the Cherubim, 27; On the Decalogue, 104), united as one
by “the repose which dwells wth the adoring spirits” (Misc., 5.6). Though
God generally forbade the making of such images, their “face” symbolically
represented the “rational soul” (i.e., the unitary state); their wings signifying
“the Powers of the Right and the Left,”144 while the “voice” issuing from
between the two was the “delightsome glory” which they continuously con-
template (ibid.). But Clement suddenly interrupts himself: “Let it suffice
that the mystic interpretation has advanced so far,” evidently thinking it
best to conceal further information from outsiders (5.6). The reason is that
“my Mystery is to me and the sons of my house,” as it says in a certain
“gospel” (5.10). This Mystery is in fact equivalent to “uncovering the lid of
the Ark” (5.10), which implies that something ordinarily hidden in the
Temple was revealed to the initiated, just as it was in the Philonic Mystery,
with its “secret objects made manifest to the sight” (p. 38, above). Actually,
however, this was no different than the regular feasts of Pilgrimage, when
the Embracing Cherubim had been shown to all worthy Temple worship-
pers (b. Yoma, 54a).
144 Compare Irenaeus, Against Heresies: The Demiurge created all hylic and psy-
chic substances, “for it was he who discriminated these two kinds of existence
hitherto confused, and made corporeal from incorporeal substances, fashioned
things heavenly and earthly, and became the Framer of things material and animal,
of those of the right and those on the left, of the light and the heavy, of those tend-
ing upward as well as tending downward” (1.5.2).
Yet such objects, according to Clement, were really “enigmas” and

“symbols of Christ,” (Misc., 5.6), who is none other than “the monogenes and
Wisdom-Logos” (7.2; Excerpta ex Theodoto, 7),145 i.e., the one who reveals the
“Face of the Father” to both angels (ibid.,10–12) and the “pure in heart”
(Misc., 7.3). Now, in spite of his hesitation to discuss this mystery any fur-
ther, he goes on to describe how those who entered the Holy of Holies
with the Savior had affixed to their persons the name of YHWH, showing
that they and YHWH/Christ had become spiritually one:
I am the Door, which means that you who are the superior seed will
come up to the boundary where I am. And when (I) enter in, the seed
also enters in with (me), brought in together through the Door (Excerpta
ex Theodoto, 26.2–7).
For Clement, this referred to both the “Levite” (the High Priest) and
the “True Gnostic” (5.6). The “Levite,” he explains, used to put on a special
tunic before entering the Adyton; the “Gnostic” instead puts on the tunic
of the “Gnostic Word”—i.e., Christ—that “bright array of glory” and the
“ineffable inheritance of that spiritual and perfect man ‘which eye hath not
seen nor ear heard’.” This now permits him to “distinguish the objects of
the intellect from the things of sense” (5.6); and he is rewarded with direct
contemplation of the “true Only Begotten, the express image of the glory
of the universal King and Almighty Father” (7.3). Thus “replenished with
insatiable contemplation, face to face” (5.6), he is counted among the blessed
“who have seen the Lord” (4.22), for the goal of the “True Gnostic” is to
become “one who saw and understood.”146
Furthermore, this was accomplished by means of
embracing the divine vision, not in mirrors or by means of mirrors, but in the
transcendentally clear and absolutely pure insatiable vision which is the
privilege of intensely loving souls. Such is the vision attainable by the
“pure in heart” (Matt 5:8). This is the function of the true Gnostic, who
has been perfected, to have converse with the Great High Priest (Jesus),
being made like the Lord (2 Cor 3:18) up to the measure of his capacity
(7.3).
145 All quotations from Clement’s Excerpta ex Theodoto are drawn from one of
its “traditional” sections, reflecting Clement’s own knowledge of the Temple, not
from those which reflect Theodotion’s views. See Robert P. Casey, The Excerpta ex
Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria, Studies and Documents 1 (London, 1943), 30.
146 R. Wagner, Die Gnosis von Alexandrien (Stuttgart, n.d. [1968]), 121–23.
216 A GREAT MYSTERY
Thus it seems that Clement was aware of certain Christians who employed
real mirrors in their Bridal Chamber rites (the Valentinians?). His “Gnos-
tic,” by contrast, was “impressed by the seal of perfect contemplation, ac-
cording to God’s own Image,” i.e., his Only-begotten (7.3). Such a vision
“surpasses in grandeur of contemplation all ordinary mysteries” (7.3), be-
cause one who has made the “service of God” his “soul’s continual study”
has already begun to be “assimilated to God” (7.l), becoming filled with
“Gnostic power” and the ability to perceive the “secrets veiled in the
Truth.” Indeed, he can say that he has directly learned the divine mysteries
from God’s Only-begotten Son (7.l):
This is the Teacher who trains the Gnostic by mysteries, and the be-
liever in good hopes, and the hard of heart by corrective disciplines
(7.2).147
These “True Gnostics,” who obeyed the injunction to “behold God and his
secrets” (4.26), and who had been trained in the Mysteries by Christ him-
self, were the first disciples, especially Thomas, Philip, and Matthias.148 As
evidence of the Savior’s special revelation to Thomas, Clement quotes John
20:27: “Place your fingers on the nail points.” And to document the Lord’s
special confidence in Philip, he quotes John 1:45; 6:5; 12:21; and 14:8, the
latter passage specifically mentioning Philip’s desire to be shown the Father.
Yet Christ’s answer to him had been, “Have I been so long time with you,
and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father” (v. 9). Concerning Matthias, however, canonical Scripture says
very little, except that he was chosen to fill the vacancy in the Twelve left by
Judas (Acts 1:23). Nevertheless, there was a widespread “occult tradition” in
the early Church that Matthias was the source of most of the so-called
“Gnostic” wisdom, though there was in fact “only one doctrine of all the
apostles”:
147 These distinctions probably corresponded to both the well-known division
of men into pneumatic, psychic, and hylic natures, as well as to Clement’s distinction
between the three grades of Christians, whose “degrees of glory in Heaven corre-
spond to the dignities of the Church below” (6.13).
148 Wagner, Die Gnosis, 109.
So far as the sects are concerned, they are named after the names of
their founders … although they also boast that they present the views of
Matthias.149
These, then, were the first “True Gnostics,” who had seen and compre-
hended everything. Clement elsewhere lists them as “James, Peter, John,
Paul, and the rest of the apostles” (6.8). He also says of them that, thanks to
their vision of God, they were destined to become divine (theoi) (7.l), or
even that they had already become “gods” in their own right:
“God stood in the congregation of the gods; he judgeth in the midst of
the gods” (Ps 82:1). Who are they? Those that are superior to pleasure,
who rise above the passions, who know what they do—the Gnostics,
who are greater than the world. “I said, Ye are gods; and all sons of the
Most High.” To whom speaks the Lord? To those who reject as far as
possible all that is of man (2.20).
On this wise it is possible for the Gnostic already to have become God
… In the contemplative life, then, one in worshipping God attends to
himself, and through his own spotless purification beholds the holy
God holily; for self-control being present, surveying and contemplating
itself uninterruptedly, is as far as possible assimilated to God (4.23).
As in the Philonic Mystery, this “assimilation to God” depended on
one’s prior kinship with the Divine. This is based on the fact that the Logos
is essentially related to man, being the very principle of the life within each
individual:
In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and that
which came into existence in him was life, and life is the Lord (Excerpta
ex Theodoto, 19.2).
Man therefore has the “seed of election” within himself, placed there by the
Logos, which is therefore able to “unite in faith the genera which appear to
be divided” (Excerpta ex Theodoto, 1.3). When the Savior came to reveal him-
self and the Truth, he thus needed only to rouse and activate the spark,
rendering active the divine principle—the “seed”—which was already latent
in elect souls (ibid., 2–3).150
Speaking of the Logos, Clement now says that he differs from God
only “by circumspection, and not in essence (kata perigraphēn kai ou
149 K. Rudolph and R. Wilson, Gnosis (San Francisco, 1983), 17. Quoting O.
Stählin, Clemens von Alexandrien, Gesammelte Werke, 5:11, who cites Clement himself.
150 Casey, The Excerpta ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria, 25–26.
218 A GREAT MYSTERY
kat’ousian,” 19.1), that is to say that the “ultimate reality is capable of ‘ra-
tional’ distinction (perigraphēn), but not of ‘substantial’ distinction.”151 This
would also appear to include man, who may become truly one with the Son
and the Father (cf. John 17:20–23). In short, the Logos serves as a unifying
and mediating link between the Divine and man. “This is entirely consistent
with Clement’s tendency to cover as much ground as possible with his doc-
trine of the Logos, describing by it not only the constitution of the God-
head but the whole relationship of God and man.’’152 Thus, Clement
regarded the individualities, God, Christ, and man, as images reflected
from a glass darkly, and in the last analysis there was room in his phi-
losophy for but one Mind, variously exhibited in man, in the incarnation,
in the inspired utterances of the prophets, in the rational connection of
things, and in the vision of God.153
Clement explicates this spiritual continuum between God, the Logos,
and man by means of the following “angelology”:
At the top is the Father, upon whose face the angels gaze; but not even
they are permitted a direct vision of God; the “face” of God is the Son
(Exc. 10–12). Next to him come seven angels, hoi prototoktistoi (the
Protoctists) … (who) stand at the border154 of the Godhead (Exc. 10.3–
4). Below them are the archangels and angels having their own spheres
of activity, and after them mankind.155
Thus, the angels who inspire the prophets (Exc. 5.2; 24.1) were influenced
by the “Protoctists,” who in turn received their vision directly from the Lo-
gos, or the “Face of God.” In this fashion, the “’Light” is dispensed
through a descending hierarchy of angelic beings to man, who is instructed
and inspired to advance back up through the ascending ranks, until he fi-
nally joins the “Protoctists” in the contemplation of God’s “Face.”156 This
151Ibid., 30.
152Ibid., 29.
153 Ibid., 30; punctuation and italics added.
154 See p. 136, above, and n. 23, p. 29, concerning Wisdom’s function as the
“limit” and the “control” separating the worldly from the divine regions.
155 Casey, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 30.
156 As we shall see later on, when we discuss Kabbalism and the Great Mystery, this
doctrine of Clement remarkably anticipates the ascent of the mystic through the
descending “rungs” of the “Sephirotic Ladder.”
results in an “approximation of the divine Mind” and a direct “vision of

God” (Fragments, 57).157
This, according to Clement, is the “mystic meaning of the Tabernacle
and its furniture” (Miscellanies, 5.6), in whose mystery the “True Gnostic”
replaces the Levite, and who gains personal access to the Logos and his
Light by means of the hidden “enigmas” and “symbols of Christ.” At the
same time, the Lord and Logos has descended “by his sufferings” into the
world of thought (kosmos noetos), represented by the “sacerdotal service con-
cealed within the veil” (5.6). In this way, what is “known” conveys knowl-
edge to the “knower,” whose senses have been sufficiently purified to ap-
prehend it. In short, the Light from above is made available to those of like
nature by means of the symbols in the Holy of Holies, including the Em-
bracing Cherubim, whose very etymology signifies (in Clement’s mind) di-
rect and complete cognition of the Divine:
And the things recorded of the sacred Ark signify the properties of the
world of thought, which is hidden and closed to many … And the name
Cherubim meant “fulness of knowledge” (episteme polle) (5.6).
Thus (as in the Wisdom Mystery), “mind is drawn to Mind,” since “the es-
sence of an intelligible being results in an uninterrupted process of admix-
ture”:
For assimilation to God, as far as we can, is preserving the mind in its
relation to the same things. And this is the relation of mind as mind …
Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of
light (4.22).
Clement calls this “the restoration of what is the truly perfect nobleness of
relationship to the fulness of Christ, and that which perfectly depends on
our perfection” (4.21). Thanks to this unobstructed assimilation of like na-
tures, the “True Gnostic” becomes a “temple of God” (4.21), and is “re-
newed through the Covenant” (4.23). Now “recreated” and “harmonized,”
he returns into that undivided state of “mind” and “tranquillity of soul”
which is no longer distraught by conflicting desires and perturbations:
Accordingly, that Pythagorean saying was mystically uttered respecting
us, “that man ought to become one,” for the High Priest himself is one,
God being one in the immutable state of the perpetual flow … And
man, when deified purely into a passionless state, becomes a unit …
And those who, according to the Gnostic life, draw God towards them,
157 Ibid., 30.

220 A GREAT MYSTERY
imperceptibly bring themselves to God: for he who reverences God rever-

ences himself (4.23).
Thus Clement unmistakeably takes us back into the provenance of the
Philonic Mystery, with its goal of restoring the divine unitary state. The role
played by the Temple in initiating this Mystery is also evident both from his
use of the Embracing Cherubim as symbols of divine oneness (“the repose
that dwells within the adoring spirits158 … [and] the harmony of the “two
hemispheres”),159 as well as from his reference to the traditional “renewal of
the Covenant.” His debt to Philo is further suggested by his drawing again
upon the image of Rebecca as a symbol of God’s “glory” and “virgin incor-
ruptibility”:
That purity in body and soul which the Gnostic partakes of, the all-wise
Moses indicated by employing repetition in describing the incorruptibil-
ity of body and soul in the person of Rebecca, thus: “Now the virgin
was fair, and man had not known her” (Gen 24: 16). And Rebecca in-
terpreted means “glory of God,” and the glory of God is immortality
(4.25).
Rebecca, of course, was one of Philo’s favorite symbols for Wisdom,
and the Embracing Cherubim depicted the soul’s “consorting” with her,
according to his treatise, On the Cherubim (49–50). Another reference to the
Temple is Clement’s application of the imagery of Hebrews 11 to the “True
Gnostic.” Like a “pilgrim” passing through the veil into the Heavenly City
and God’s Presence (Heb 10:19–20; 11:16; 12:22–24), the “True Gnostic”
is “a stranger and sojourner on earth” looking for his celestial home (Miscel-
lanies, 4. 26; Gen 23:4; Ps 39:12; Heb 11:13).
Finally, though Clement rigorously avoids discussing the mystery of
the Cherubim in any detail (“let it suffice that the mystic interpretation has
advanced so far”), he allows us one fleeting glimpse of another possible
meaning which might be attached to them:
Marriage, then, as a sacred image, must be kept pure from those things
which defile it (Miscellanies, 2.23).
But what does he mean by “marriage … as a sacred image”? We im-
mediately think of the statement in the Tosefta which says that “He who
does not marry thereby diminishes the image of God” (Yebamoth 8:4).
Though Clement appears to be speaking about the practical moral issues
158 An obvious reference to their “loving” or “embracing” attitude.

159 See Philo, On the Cherubim, 21–24.
which are inevitably encountered in marriage (as Paul does in the “Hausta-
fel” of Eph 5:22–33), he too is aware of some higher meaning which must
be attached to the nuptial union, and which the reader is presumed to un-
derstand. Indeed, the whole next book of the Miscellanies (which follows
immediately) deals with various “false” meanings attached to marriage by
such groups as the Valentinians, which proves that he is cognizant of the
kind of mystical import which others have been applying to the nuptial rela-
tionship.
One of these “false” interpretations of marriage was the growing prac-
tice of celibacy, which many were justifying by quoting Matthew 19:12
(“and some have made eunuchs of themselves for the Kingdom of
Heaven’s sake”). In reply, he unhesitatingly explains that this reference to
“eunuchs” has been taken out of context, for Jesus meant only that one
shall not remarry after losing a wife (Miscellanies, 3:6). Quentin Quesnel thus
suggests that the original meaning of the Matthean passage was that “the
word about the eternal fidelity of marriage, as enumerated in verse 9 and as
given as background in vv. 3–8 is mysterious, beyond human power to un-
derstand, intelligible only to those to whom God will reveal it; only to those
‘to whom it is given’.”160 This true meaning, Quesnell argues, was given by
Paul in Ephesians 5:22–31, where marriage is said to be a “Great Mystery”
uniting both man and wife and Christ and the Church, according to the same
heavenly paradigm.161 Within this larger context, the saying about the
“eunuch” does not enjoin celibacy at all, but indicates that man must re-
main true to a wife forever, even after she has been temporarily removed
from him.162 If Quesnell’s analysis is correct (and the context of the
Matthean pericope supports him), Clement may also have had some similar
regard for marriage as a “sacred symbol” of future unions that will embody
160 Quesnell, “‘Made Themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven,’ (Mt.
19,12),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30 (1968): 346.

161 Ibid., 353–57.
162 “Such a man must in marriage take the risk of staking all he has and is on
one person, becoming one flesh with her. And this means that in his fidelity and
determination to continue to express that fidelity forever, he also takes the risk that
if he and his wife have to separate, he will be left with the rest of his life pledged
with loyalty to the one who is not even there. To continue this loyal and perfect
love, even when the love is not returned, is effectively to make oneself a eunuch, a
person incapable of marriage for the rest of one’s life. The world will not under-
stand this. And it cannot make any sense except as a step toward inaugurating a
world where all men will love perfectly and fully” (ibid., 358).
222 A GREAT MYSTERY
full and perfect love. Unfortunately, Clement personally tended to show an

almost encratic distaste for the physical side of marriage:
A man who marries for the sake of begetting children must practice
continence so that it is not desire he feels for his wife, whom he ought
to love, and that he may beget children with a chaste and controlled will
(Miscellanies, 3.7).
Thus one ought, he says, even in marriage, to live as if “a stranger and pil-
grim” on earth (3.14), “seeking above all to unite in spirit and soul with the
Logos,” so that “there is neither male nor female among you” (Gal 3:28).
“For the soul leaves this physical form in which male and female are distin-
guished, and being neither the one nor the other changes into Unity” (3.13).
This, of course (as Philo had also declared), was the central object of the
traditional Wisdom Mystery, where God “consorts with the soul” in order
to turn it back to a “virgin” again.
In any event, it would appear that Clement’s “uncompromising Pla-
tonism’’163 tended to see the ultimate significance of marriage not in the
physical union (though he gives it grudging recognition) but in the union of
the couple with God through their sacramental “marriage” to the Logos-
Wisdom:
In the Christian Platonism of Clement, man shared in the divine life by
his possession of a mind akin to the divine Logos. The way to this un-
ion was through intellectual and moral discipline, confirmed and
strengthened by the sacraments.164
As in the Philonic Mystery, this “intellectual” union was achieved through
thea theou, or seeing God:
Just as the different orders of angels interact, so man is influenced by
the Logos and his advance involves both a refinement of nature and an
increase of knowledge and perception. The result is an approximation of
the divine mind, an understanding of the universe, and a share in the vi-
sion of God.165
As Clement suggested in the section of the Miscellanies dealing with the
“mystic meaning of the Tabernacle” (5.6), the display of the Cherubim was
one of the “secrets” which confirmed and strengthened this vision of God,
and helped to “approximate” the mind of God (Fragments, 57). As a result,
163 Casey, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 10.

164 Ibid., 37–38.
165 Ibid., 30.
While all “gaze on” the supreme Administrator of the universe … he pi-
lots all in safety according to the Father’s will … till in the end the great
High Priest is reached … As, then, the remotest particle of iron is drawn
by the influence of the magnet … so also through the attraction of the
Holy Spirit the virtuous are adapted to the highest mansion, and others
in their order even to the last mansion, but they that are wicked from
weakness … neither keep hold themselves nor are held by another, but
collapse and fall to the ground.166
Thus Clement gave a cosmic meaning to the “beholding of God” in the
Tabernacle, and applied it to the soul’s becoming one with him through the
Logos, as it penetrated the “second veil of the universe,” i.e., the intelligible
world (kosmos noētos), or the veil of the Holy of Holies (Heb 9:3):
Now the soul, stripped by the power of him who has knowledge, as if it
had become a body of the Power (sōma tēs dynameos),167 passes into the
spiritual realm and becomes now truly rational and high-priestly, so that
it might now be animated, so to speak, directly by the Logos … But
where is then a right judgment of Scripture and doctrine for that soul
which has become pure, and where it is granted to see God “face to
face”? Thus, having transcended the angelic teaching168 and the Name
taught in Scripture, it comes to knowledge and comprehension of the
facts. It is no longer a bride but has become a Logos and rests with the
bridegroom, together with the First-Called and First-Created169 … The
work of power is that man becomes the bearer of God, being controlled
directly by the Lord and becoming, as it were, his Body (Excerpta ex
Theodoto, 27.36).
Clement thus places the meaning of the Sacred Marriage or “sacerdotal ser-
vice concealed within the veil” higher than the “angelic teaching” contained
in the Old Testament, since it leads to becoming one with the Logos. This,
of course, was scarcely different than Philo’s mystery of God’s “concourse
with the soul” through Wisdom, which also strove to reunite the soul with
the Wisdom-Logos in its pristine, unitary state. It further agrees with the
traditional Wisdom Mystery, in which the Wisdom-Logos “enters into holy
166 From the Miscellanies; quoted from Casey, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 31.
167 “From one point of view the human soul can be regarded as the body of
the divine Power, the Logos, but from another the soul is vitalized through contact
with the Logos and becomes high-priestly through its association with him, the
great high priest” (Casey, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 125).
168 Cf. Galatians 3:19–20.
169 The Protoctists.
224 A GREAT MYSTERY
souls and makes them friends of God and prophets” (Wis 7:27). Thus we
see that Clement’s entire conception of the “True Gnosis” was grounded in
the fundamentals of the Great Mystery, though he refuses, in the end, to
give us additional details concerning its more intimate aspects:
Now I pass over other things in silence (Miscellanies, 7.3).
THE CHERUBIM AS “SERAPHIM”

According to Clement’s description of the Cherubim, the two “golden fig-
ures” were said to have had “each six wings” (Miscellanies, 5.6). This is very
curious, for Ezekiel’s “living creatures” (hayyoth) had “each four wings”
(Ezek 1:6), while the Cherubim in Solomon’s Temple had only two (1 Kgs
6:24, 27). It therefore appears that Clement was actually thinking of the pas-
sage in Isaiah which describes the Seraphim above God’s Throne (“Above
it stood the Seraphim, each one had six wings … And one cried to the
other, and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts,” 6:2–3). This would
be an easy mistake to make, however, since the Cherubim and Seraphim
were both familiar orders of angels (Cherubim, Seraphim and Ophanim,
1 Enoch 61:10), and might have been considered as a single category by sec-
ond and third century Christians, who were already somewhat removed
from the angelology of apocalyptic Judaism.
In any case, Clement’s pupil, Origen (A.D. 185–242), seems to have
made the same mistake, for in his De principiis, he declares that “these beings
which, according to the prophets, are called either ‘living things’ or ‘lives’
(hayyoth) are the two Seraphim of Isaiah, “which are described as having
each six wings, and calling to one another, and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy is
the Lord of Hosts” (1.3.4). Moreover, in apparent agreement with contem-
porary Elkasaite and Valentinian syzygy-theory, he indicates that
My Hebrew master used to say that these two Seraphim … were to be
understood of the only-begotten Son of God and the Holy Spirit (ibid).
Thus, he takes the two “Seraphim” to be members of the Trinity (1.3.5),
which is a significant advance over the angelic “Powers” who merely flank
the invisible Logos in the writings of Philo (Questions on Exodus, 2.68). This
interpretation (which also figured in the Arian controversy at Nicaea) was
nevertheless found by Jerome to be “detestable” and in conflict with Trini-
tarian ideas of the Godhead, since the Seraphim were traditionally known as
created beings (Commentary on Isaiah, 3.6.2).
That Origen’s symbolism, however, did in fact pertain to the Cheru-
bim in the Holy of Holies, and not to the Seraphim, is further indicated by
the fact that he applies the Septuagint version of Habakkuk 3:2 to them:
Thou shalt be known between the two living creatures.

In this form, the passage becomes a perfect parallel to Exodus 25:22, which
says that
I will commune with thee from … between the two Cherubim,
Thus God would be found between the two “living creatures”—the hayyoth
or Cherubim—in the Holy of Holies.
Yet even Philo once referred to the “Seraphim” as “Powers” (dynameis;
That God Is Unchangeable, 9), a term ordinarily applied to the Cherubim,
whose full name he gives as the “Royal and Creative Powers” (On the Life of
Moses, 2.99; Questions on Exodus, 2.62).170 Origen seems to confirm this iden-
tification when he says in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans171 that
the Cherubim “also” represent the Son and the Holy Spirit, just as the Sera-
phim do in De principiis. Hence we must conclude that these two classes of
angels had become equivalent in the minds of second- and third-century
Christians, such as Clement and Origen. In fact, Irenaeus (in the Demonstra-
tio) used both titles, “Cherubim” and “Seraphim,” together to represent the
Word and Wisdom, respectively.172
Origen, by making the created “Powers” represent members of the
Trinity, shows that he had one foot in the old Wisdom tradition and an-
other in the evolving Trinitarianism of the Catholic Church. Thus, though
he did not hesitate to affirm that the Son was eternally generated from the
Father, and in this respect equal to him in divine nature (ousia),173 he never-
theless claimed that the Son had a substantial reality (hypokeimenon) of his
own,174 consisting of the identical incorporeal substance (“thought, will,
hypostatic Word”),175 but with an “individual” (perigraphē)176 existence as a
“Power”:
170 See Daniélou, TJC, 137.

173 Jean Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture (London, 1973), 376.
This is the second volume of his three-volume “History of Early Christianity Be-
fore the Council of Nicaea,” of which the previously quoted Theology of Jewish Chris-
tianity is the first.
174 Daniélou, Gospel Message, 377.
175 Ibid., 378–79.
176 I.e., “self-contained” and “circumscribed” within himself. Compare Liddell
and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1940), 1370.

226 A GREAT MYSTERY
And again, in order that the Logos be acknowledged as having a perigra-

phe177 of his own, being such as to have individual existence, (Scripture)
refers to “Powers,” not simply to “Power…” And in this sense, certain
rational divine beings are named “Powers,” of which the highest and
best was Christ, who is called not only “Wisdom of God,” but also
“Power of God…” Yet Christ is to be conceived as existing “in the be-
ginning” with His own substantial reality (Commentary on John, 1.39).178
Thus we have an incipient kind of “Trinitarianism,” which sought to con-
firm the full and eternal co-existence of Father and Son, while acknowledg-
ing (in the old Wisdom language) the “self-contained” and personal nature
of the “Power” (dynamis), who was still referred to as “Word” or “Wisdom”:
We must say that the Power of God is delimited (peperasmenē ), and ac-
knowledge a perigraphe in him. If the divine Power were infinite, it could
not be known, for the infinite is by nature incomprehensible (De prin-
cipiis, 2.9.1).179
Origen therefore maintains a distinction between God the Father, who is
“God in himself” (autotheos), and the “First-born of all creation,” who is the
Son (Col 1:15), and who cannot be called ho theos, but only theos (“not the
God but only god”):180
The Word was with God (ho logos en pros TON THEON) and the Word
was god (kai THEOS en ho logos) (John 1:1).
Origen in fact adduces Ps 50:1 to show that there were many who could be
called “gods”:
(Christ) is more honorable than the rest of the gods beside him (of whom
God is the God, as it is said: “The Lord, the God of gods, has spoken,
and called the world”) … Thus God is true God, and the gods are mod-
eled after him as images (eikones) of the prototype. But again, of these
many images the Archetypal Image is the Logos who is with God (Com-
mentary on John, 2.2. our emphasis).181
Because of his mediating position with God, the Logos communicates
“divinization” to all other theoi,182 whom Origen refers to as logikoi (“rational
177 This time used as a noun, i.e., “an individuality.”

180 Ibid., 382.
181 Quoted in ibid.
182 Ibid., 382–3.
beings”), because of their sharing of the Logos-nature. Origen, in those

works which affirm the preexistence of man (De principiis, 1.8.3; Homily on
Genesis, 15.5; Against Celsus, 5.29),183 states that human souls are also logikoi
(De principiis, 2.9.6) and therefore capable of being restored to a divine con-
dition at the final “consummation” (apokatastasis), even of becoming gods in
their own right.
Yet since the Logos is an intermediary between the Primal Unity and
these multiple beings, he is necessarily “both One and Many,”184 a fact
which Clement had also proposed a generation or so earlier:
The Son is not absolutely one as a monad, nor is he many as a number
of parts, but he is one as being all things … That is why he is called the
Alpha and Omega (Miscellanies, 4.25).
This of course was a restatement of the principle already found in Philo that
God, “though indeed One, has two Powers,” whose symbols were the
Cherubim (On the Cherubim, 27). This kind of “multiplicity within unity” also
accords with the pluralistic creative role of Wisdom in the Wisdom books:
This kind of unity belongs to the Son in his role as Wisdom: “Every-
thing has been created in accordance with Wisdom and with the arche-
types of the system of the thoughts that are in him (Commentary on John,
1.12.)
We must also assume that Origen was acquainted with Philo’s statements
concerning the male-female nature of the Cherubim and the two “Powers,”
though he makes no specific mention of it. Daniélou, however, feels justi-
fied in relating both authors’ concepts of the two “Powers” to the male-
female pair, “Christ-and-the-Holy-Spirit,” which we encounter in an Elka-
saite myth of the giant angels.185 He even sees a generic relationship be-
tween the “Powers” and the Valentinian syzygy of “Christ-and-the-Holy-
Spirit,” which was likewise male and female, and whose “common fruit”
descended into the earthly Jesus (Hippolytus, Refutations, 6.31).186 In all of
these examples, the Holy Spirit is feminine, a doctrine which, as Daniélou
says, “has a Semitic stamp. The Spirit is regarded as a feminine being, be-
cause ruah in Hebrew is feminine, a feature which recurs in the Gospel of the
Hebrews, also a Jewish Christian work … But these different schemes”
183 Ibid., 418. See also his 415–25 for a general discussion.
184 Ibid., 385.
185 Recorded by Hippolytus, in his Elenchos, 9.13.
186 In Daniélou, TJC, 140.
228 A GREAT MYSTERY
(involving the “two Seraphim and the two Cherubim”) “are all only varia-
tions on the same basic theme, of which the Elkasaite teaching is probably
the oldest surviving evidence.”187 “Oldest,” that is, if we ignore the male-
female Cherubim in the Temple, which (as Philo informs us) were the
original model in the Second Temple of God’s dual “Powers,” and doubt-
less the source of all representations of divine syzygies in the Church.
Origen goes on to suggest that the same Logos-Wisdom that de-
scended into the earthly Jesus can also dwell in human logikoi, so that they
too can become logoi (“Logoses”), or “seeds of Christ’s body.” Christ in fact
“has the entire human race, indeed, the whole of Creation, as his body, and
each of us is a member thereof, each according to his title.”188 Thus, Origen
arrives at something analogous to Schlier’s picture of the Ephesian Sacred
Marriage, where the heavenly syzygy, “Christ (or Holy Spirit) plus Preexis-
tent Church,” also dwells in each individual,189 except that the male-female
roles have been reversed. As in the Wisdom Mystery, deification results.
Origen can therefore refer to the individual logoi as “Christs” (christoi),
formed after God’s own Image (Commentary on John, 6.3).
Origen also speaks of a Sacred Marriage between Christ and the
Church (Commentary on Matthew, 14.17). The Bridegroom is described by him
as “Light,” an attribution already popularized by the Wisdom literature:
According to John, “God is Light.” The only-begotten Son, therefore, is
the glory of this Light, proceeding inseparably from God himself, as
brightness does from light, and illuminating the whole of creation (De
Principiis, 1.2.7).
Since the principle Light of the universe is the sun, it was only natural for
Origen to characterize Christ in this manner, i.e., as the One from whom all
other heavenly bodies derive their light. Thus,
The Church, the Bride, (presents) an analogy to the moon and stars; and
the disciples have a light, which is their own or borrowed from the true
Sun (Commentary on John, 1.24).
187 Ibid., 140. We must bear in mind here that Daniélou uses the term “Jewish
Christianity” to designate the original Semitic character of the first Christianity,

which is quite distinct from the usual meaning of “Jewish Christian” (as employed,
for example, by H. J. Schoeps) to designate Ebionism.
188 Quoted in Wagner, Die Gnosis, 168–69.
189 See pp. 180–81, above.
Those who “are irradiated by Christ and receive his beams” are made “dis-
ciples of the first-born Light.” By becoming one with him, they are deliv-
ered from bondage to corruption, and are made “lights of the world” (1.24),
with a share in the “true Life”:
It is clear that the principle of that Life which is pure and unmixed with
any other element, resides in Him who is the first-born of all Creation,
taking from which those who have a share in Christ live the life which is
the true Life (1.27).
Those who possess the “true Life” are permanently illuminated by the spiri-
tual “Light of the world, which is the genuine Light, as distinguished from
the light of sense” (1.27, 24). This “true Light” illuminates “not bodies, but
the incorporeal intellect, to the end that each of us, enlightened as by the
sun, may be able to distinguish the rest of the things of the mind” (1.24).
The result (as in Philo’s version of the Wisdom Mystery) is that “mind ap-
prehends mind,” for a “fragment” or “ray” of Wisdom lives in every soul,
or (as Origen puts is), “the soul of the sun” exists in every body (1.17).190
Thus, the disciple is drawn back through Christ to the spiritual realms of
Light from whence he came,191 beholding in vision what only the True
Light, the purified intellect, can perceive. As in Clement’s “True Gnosis,”
Origen sees that this lofty spiritual vision was symbolized by the furnishings
of the Holy of Holies:
There were two Cherubim in the Holy of Holies (d ebir), a word which
the translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek failed to render satisfac-
torily. Some, failing to do justice to the language, render it “the Tem-
ple”; but it is more sacred than the Temple. Now, everything about the
house was made golden, for a sign that the mind which is made perfect
estimates accurately the things perceived by the intellect … In this
Temple are also windows, placed obliquely and out of sight, so that the
illumination of the divine light may enter for salvation, and—why
should I go into particulars?—that the body of Christ, the Church, may
be found having the plan of the spiritual house and Temple of God. As
I said before, we require that Wisdom which is hidden in a mystery, and
which he alone can apprehend who is able to say, “But we have the
mind of Christ” … To enter into these details is not in accordance with
our present subject. What has been said may suffice to let us understand
how “He spake about the Temple of his Body” (Commentary on John,
10.25).
190 Quoted in Wagner, Die Gnosis, 165.

191 Ibid., 166.
230 A GREAT MYSTERY
In the following section, Origen makes it clear that this “spiritual

house,” in which the “perfected mind” receives the “divine Light,” is the
same House prophesied by Isaiah for the Last Days (Isa 60):
I will glorify the house of my glory … Thy gates shall open continually;
they shall not be shut day or night … The glory of Lebanon shall come
into them with cypress, and pine, and cedar, along with those who will
glorify my Holy Place … Thy walls shall be called salvation, and thy
gates sculpture. And the sun shall no longer be to them for light by day,
nor shall the rising of the moon give light to them by night, but Christ
shall be to thee an everlasting light and thy God thy glory (Commentary on
John, 10.26).
The Isaianic eschatological Temple has in fact become the Body of Christ,
i.e., the united flesh of Christ and the Church, and the veil of the Holy of Holies
is where the embrace of fusion and entry takes place.192 The laconic refer-
ence to the Cherubim and the Holy of Holies—which are “more sacred
than the Temple” (10.25)—suggests that the divine illumination (symbol-
ized by the ubiquitous gold) occurs as a kind of Sacred Marriage between
the Bridegroom of Light and the Beholder, which the Greeks called thea
theou, or pure intellectual perception of the Divine. In this radically spiritual-
ized version of the old Temple Mystery, salvation is still equivalent to union
with the Light, as perceived by those who have the “mind of Christ,” and
which alone reveals the true meaning of the cult-symbols. Thus, Origen
promises, “when that which is perfect is come, then the faith which is in
part will be done away with. As with knowledge, so with faith, that which is
through sight is much better, if I may say so, than that which is through a
glass and in an enigma” (Commentary on John, 10.27).193
This unobstructed vision, enjoyed by both Clement’s “True Gnostic”
and Origen’s “purified intellect,” has all the elements of what the medieval
Church would call the “Beatific Vision.” In mystical Christianity this was
also generally accompanied by some form of henosis (fusion) or theosis (deifi-
cation), technical terms which entered the literature of the Middle Ages
192 Compare also the Excerpta ex Theodoto (26.1–2), where Christ is called the
“Door” to the spiritual Temple.

193 Is this reference to seeing “through a glass” related to Clement’s disparag-
ing remark about “embracing the divine vision in mirrors or by means of mirrors”
(Miscellanies, 7.3)? If so, it would seem to indicate that both men had in mind a spiri-
tual mystery which had its physical counterpart in related practices amongst their
contemporaries.
through the writings of Dionysius Areopagiticus in the late fifth century.194

But as we have repeatedly seen, the roots of this unio mystica were already
present in the Wisdom Mystery, as understood by writers like Philo and the
author of the Gospel of Thomas, describing their own experiences in the
Temple. Just as the latter taught the initiate to say we are “sons of the Light
and of the Living Father” (Log. 50), Origen taught that the truly enlight-
ened soul would take its place among the angelic ranks as bearers of
Christ’s Light:
In place of the angels who “fell,” you will rise up, and the mystery which
we revealed to them will be revealed to you … You have become “light
of the world.” You will take the place of that other one and become
“Lucifer” (Light Bearer). One of the stars who fell from heaven was
Lucifer. You, however, if you are of “Abraham’s Seed” will be counted
amongst the stars of heaven (Ezekiel Homily, 13.2).
This was always the destiny of those who belonged to Christ, and were
therefore inheritors of the Abrahamic covenant (Gal 3:29). In this way, the
promise to Abraham that his posterity would be “numberless as the stars”
was turned into actual deification as stars, as stated two or three centuries ear-
lier in 1 Enoch:
Ye shall shine as the lights of heaven, ye shall shine and ye shall be seen,
and the portals of heaven shall be opened to you … Ye shall become
companions of the host of heaven (104:2, 6).195
But even more precisely, Origen says in his Commentary on John,
For whom one is no longer a liar, but is in fact in the Truth, he is no
longer a man; but to him and to those like him God speaks: “I have said
you are gods and all sons of the Highest,” and to these the words will not
apply: “You will, however, die like men.”196
194 See Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (New York, n.d [1948]), 96; also Encyclopedia
Britannica, 14th ed., article, “Mysticism” (esp. the section on “Dionysius Areopagiti-
cus”).
195 See also 4 Ezra: “Their face is destined to shine as the sun … and they are
destined to be made like the light of the stars” (7:97). But this also depends upon
their prior divine endowment; thus 1 Enoch 43:2–4 indicates that the stars are the
prototypes of the “Holy Ones who dwell in earth” (translated by E. Isaac, in The
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. Charlesworth, 33).
196 Quoted in Wagner, Die Gnosis, 174. Origen also dares to say that “when we
are perfect in becoming ‘sons of God,’ that partial becoming ‘sons of God’ will be
232 A GREAT MYSTERY
SECRECY IN THE “TRUE GNOSIS” OF CLEMENT AND ORIGEN

It is obvious from the writings of both Clement and Origen that the tradi-
tional symbolism of the Cherubim and passage through the veil had contin-
ued to exert an enormous influence on early Christians. At the same time, it
is fairly clear that both writers attached an increasingly “spiritual” meaning
to the subject of the Temple. According to Jean Daniélou, Clement now
interprets the “ascent of the Gnostic soul in terms of exegesis of the High
Priest’s entry into the Holy of Holies … The High Priest is the Gnostic...
The Gnostic in his turn puts off (his) body in the course of his ascent, when
‘he enters within the second veil, that is, through the intelligible world…’
The ‘naked soul’ can then penetrate into the spiritual world, and be moved
directly by the Logos.”197 Origen likewise makes the mystery of the Cheru-
bim and the Holy of Holies an allegory of the Beatific Vision as achieved by
the “purified intellect.” The usual conclusion drawn from all of this is that
the original Wisdom Mystery had simply become a description of the soul’s
progress through the worlds—a poetic metaphor—and that nothing remains of
the original cultic practices or liturgical observances.
It is indeed true that the Jerusalem Temple had disappeared from his-
tory in A.D. 70 and that whatever recollection people had of its rites had to
be transformed into new cultic dress, as we saw in the case of baptism.
This, even while the Temple was still standing, had become for Gentile
converts a substitute means of “marriage to Christ” (Gal 3:28), as well as a
“cleansing bath” given prior to the Wedding (Eph 5:26–27). And when bap-
tismal union became a secret rite during the third and fourth centuries,
Syriac catechumens were given special lamps inscribed in Greek (written
from right to left): “Light of Christ, which shines for all,”198 reminding us of
the Parable of the Ten Virgins, and the lamps which they brought to the
Wedding Feast (Matt 25). Such lamps undoubtedly symbolized the light that
was engendered in the candidate through his union with the Divine,199 mak-
ing him a “son of the Light,” one of the code-names given to those profi-
cient in the Christian Mysteries.
done away with,” i.e., we shall in actual fact become fully “sons of God,” deified
beings (in ibid., 174).
197 Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 452.
198 Eugenia Nitowski, lecture at the Middle East Center, University of Utah,
March 4, 1981.
199 Cf. Exodus 34:29, 35; Revelation 21:23.
Yet we must not forget that even while the Second Temple was still
standing, its rites had already been given a “higher meaning” by Philo, who
perceived a “Melchizedec” or “Mosaic” Mystery behind the ordinary
“Aaronic” Mystery. Thus, the writing of highly allegorical exegeses—such
as those proposed by Clement and Origen—does not automatically mean
that there was no real mystery behind them, as there most certainly was in
the case of the Gnostics and their “Bridal Chamber” rites. One also thinks
of contemporary Jewish Merkabah-mystics who still practiced ritual ascents
to the Throne of God, even after the Temple was gone.200 Origen in fact is
known of have been aware of esoteric practices in Judaism during his own
lifetime, practices which dealt with this very subject.201 Furthermore, it was
about the same time that the Church began to interpret Song of Songs in
the same manner as the Jews.202 Thus, many literal methods of enacting the
Sacred Marriage between Wisdom and the Church may still have existed
during both Clement’s and Origen’s careers, though we have admittedly no
proof that these men were personally involved with any of them.
Still, it is significant that both Clement and Origen maintained a delib-
erate cloak of secrecy when speaking of the symbols in the former Temple,
as if they were still venerated in the same way. Thus we might recall the following
statements from our foregoing discussion:
And the gnosis itself is that which has descended by transmission to a
few, having been imparted unwritten by the Apostles (Clement, Miscella-
nies, 6.7).
Cast your eyes around and see that none of the uninitiated listen (6.6).
The sacerdotal service is concealed within the veil (6.6).
Let it suffice that the mystic interpretation has advanced so far (6.6).
My mystery is to me and to the sons of my house (5.10).
This is the Teacher who trains the Gnostic by mysteries … Thence is his
providence in private (7.2).
Now, I pass over other things in silence (7.3).
Why should I go into particulars (Origen, Commentary on John, 10.25).
200 See Scholem’s MTJM, 40–79, for a historical overview of the Merkabah tra-
dition.
201 Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition, 36–42.
202 Ibid., 39.
234 A GREAT MYSTERY
To enter into these details is not in accordance with our present subject
(10.25).
Daniélou in fact devotes an entire section in his Gospel Message and Hellenistic
Culture to “The Secret Doctrines” of Origen. “Hard work and application,”
he tells us, “are necessary in order to discover the ‘secret things’ (apor-
rēta).”203 Similarly, there is an extensive “concealment of secret mysteries
(apporēta mystēria)” in even the New Testament, according to Origen. Such
secrets, which were transmitted by Christ to the Apostles, can only be
passed to the “sons of Light” (Commentary on John, 2.28),204 i.e., to those ade-
quately schooled in the mysteries. Often, Origen interrupts some discourse
or other to observe that “there are many mysterious (mustka, ‘concealed’)
things which one might say on the subject, but to which the saying applies:
‘It is good to conceal the treasures of a King’.”205 The “Exodus” out of
“Egypt” (which Philo saw as the heart of the Mosaic Temple pilgrimage),
and the soul’s journey through the veil (which the Church saw as the culmi-
nation of the Temple-experience), were especially singled out as secret doc-
trines by Origen, symbolizing for him the initiate’s release from material
bondage and passage into Heaven:
Who can be found sufficiently advanced, sufficiently initiated into the
divine secrets, to enumerate the stopping-places on this journey, this as-
cent of the soul? (Homily on Numbers, 27.4).206
Such teaching, Daniélou concluded, was “esoteric in character, not to be
communicated to all Christians; it is contained in Scripture, but it consti-
tuted a special dimension of the sacred writings, accessible only to him who
has the key.”207
But where, we might ask, did those advanced enough to receive these
esoteric doctrines learn of them? And in what way? Was there any “cultic”
performance connected with them, as it definitely was at the time of Philo?
Unfortunately, we cannot answer these questions to our complete satisfac-
tion, though it is remarkable that both Clement and Origen kept referring
back to the Embracing Cherubim in the Holy of Holies (b. Yoma 54a) as
symbols of their “True Gnosis.” This “True Gnosis,” however, was now
203 Ibid., 465.

204 Ibid., 466.
205 Ibid., 467. The quote is from Tobit 12:7.
206 Ibid., 468.
207 Ibid., 469.
unfolding for most believers in the “spiritual Temple” of Christ’s Body, i.e.,
within the united flesh of Christ and the Church. There it was that the “pure
in heart saw God” in a “transcendentally clear and absolutely pure insatiable
vision,” and were filled with Divine Light, and were thereby “assimilated to
God,” i.e., deified (Clement of Alexandria).208
EBIONITE SYZYGIES AND THE SYMBOLISM OF THE CHERUBIM

Just how pervasive and persistent this male-female symbolism was, even in
the Primitive Church, may be further seen from the fact that the very con-
servative Ebionites—those Christian “Judaizers” who remained in Jerusa-
lem until the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70209—had a similar view of
God’s bisexual Powers (syzygies), which agrees with both Philo’s “male-

209 In the Gentile wing of the Church, inspiration from the Holy Ghost was
necessarily left to charismatic means; “as the original Hellenists and Paul after them
began to ‘witness,’ their witness found acceptance, and the fact of the matter was
that communities of believers came to exist without benefit of the Twelve … To
account for this fact, an adjustment in the concept of apostleship was necessary.”
Lucetta Mowry, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early Church (Notre Dame, 1962), 70.
This also included a religion which was deprived of access to the Jewish Temple
(pp. 132–33, above). Peter, on the other hand, though he accepted Paul’s universal-
ism, broke with Paul when James pressed his special claims for respecting their
ancestral Jewish faith (F.V. Filson, “Peter,” in IDB, 3:756). His loyalty to both Jews
and Gentiles who were “called by the Lord” nevertheless enabled him to bridge
whatever differences existed between Aramaic and Greek-speaking Christians in
the Jerusalem Community, though James finally succeeded him as leader there
(Acts 21:18; Gal 2:12). The Jewish-Christian Clementine writings are partly based on
traditions handed down by James, the first “bishop” of Jerusalem, and the defender
of the conservative Jewish values already in retreat before the spreading influence
of Paul’s Gentile Church. The James-group ultimately fled to Pella during the Jew-
ish revolt, where it eventually disappeared from view. The influence of this so-
called “Judaizing” wing of the Church, however, continued for many years. We
should not, therefore, dismiss it out of hand as irrelevant or innately “foreign” to
the values of authentic Christianity. In fact, as late as the second Fall of Jerusalem
in 135, most Christians still considered themselves to be simply “non-conformist
Jews.” Even at the end of the second century there survived an active Jewish-
Christianity which claimed that Matthew’s Gospel was the only true Gospel, and
which was bitterly critical of Paul’'s “Gentile Christianity.” The writings of Hege-
sippus, Theophilus, and Irenaeus were still permeated by the continuing attitudes of
the synagogue.
236 A GREAT MYSTERY
female Cherubim” and the later Gnostic doctrine of the divine “male-
female Aeons” through whom God carries out the work of Creation. These
we shall discuss more fully in the next section of our study.
H. J. Schoeps, during the Messina Colloquium on Gnostic Origins,
quoted from an early theory of A. Hilgenfeld (formulated already in the
middle of the last century), which suggested that the aim of this Ebionite
syzygy-doctrine was to reconcile the “Gnostic” view of God’s male-female
nature with the “orthodox” monism of Judaism and Christianity:
The truth of gnostic dualism is supposed to be subsumed in Jewish-
Christian monism … The contradiction in the physical-ethical world,
like the contrast between right and wrong in human life, which gnosti-
cism associates with two divine, primordial principles, is traced back by
the syzygy-theory to God himself, who in spite of his unity, brought
forth all created things in opposites, and ordained dualism, and caused the
world-law of syzygies to unfold as historical personalities.210
Schoeps then demonstrated how this syzygy-doctrine dominated the Keryg-
mata Petrou and the pseudo-Clementine writings—those important Jewish-
Christian productions which date from the second and early third centuries.
Wisdom, whose name in the Clementina is the “True Prophet,” is thus de-
scribed as a heavenly entity who dwells in holy men, enabling them to
prophesy, and who, together with his feminine counterpart, “Female
Prophecy,” forms a male-female syzygy:
But a companion was created along with him, a female nature, much
differing from him as quality from substance, as the moon from the sun,
as fire from light. She, as the Female ruling the present world as his
like,211 was entrusted to be the first prophetess … But the other, as the
Son of Man, prophesies better things to the world to come as a male
(Clementine Homilies, 3.22).
As the “ruling Female” presiding over the present world, “Female Proph-
ecy” appears to be related to the fallen “Wisdom” of Valentinian myth. In
fact, she performs the same task of providing bodies for the “seed” of the
Male which Sophia’s son, the Jewish Demiurge, does in the teachings of the
Valentinians:
210 “Judenchristentum und Gnosis,” in Le Origini dello Gnosticismo, ed. Ugo Bi-
anchi (Leiden, 1967), 533–34.

211 Compare the Valentinian-Gnostic Gospel of Philip 52:21–24: “When we were
Hebrews, we were orphans, and had only our mother, but when we became Chris-
tians, we had both father and mother.”
The Male is wholly truth, the Female is wholly falsehood … For the
Female, surrounding the white seed of the Male with her own blood, as
with red fire, sustains her own weakness with the extraneous supports
of bones, and, pleased with the temporary flower of the flesh, and sport-
ing the strength of her judgment with short pleasures, leads the greater
part into fornication, and thus deprives them of the coming excellent
Bridegroom (Homilies, 3.27).
It is the “coming excellent Bridegroom,” however, who will restore “Fe-
male Prophecy” to her unitary state, by filling her with the same “Holy
Spirit” which he himself embodies (Clementine Recognitions, 1.45),212 and
which (according to the Clementina generally) is the male “Wisdom,” or the
“Chrism” derived from the Tree of Life (1.46). Thus Schoeps proposes to
explain how the traditional Wisdom-based concept of “making the female
male” through “marital” union (cf. Gospel of Thomas, Log. 114) made its way
into the Homilies and Recognitions, with their “in no way Gnostic disdain of the
‘female’ sexual principle,”213 or the spiritually unattached genders presently
found in nature.
This Ebionite syzygy-doctrine first appeared in the Kerygmata Petrou (ca.
A.D. 200),214 which explains that God, though himself a Unity, allowed all
manifested things to arise in opposites, subject to a biological dualism.215
Thus was the “True Prophet” created with his female companion. She it
was who proclaimed her prophecies to “those born of woman,” i.e., to
those of the world.216 The Apostle Paul was said to have been her mouth-
piece; according to the Homilies, he taught the existence of separate gods, in
opposition to “true” monotheism.217 “Female Prophecy” also taught the
212 Compare the chart on pp. 163–64, above, where the preexistent Christ is
the Holy Spirit, as opposed to the “female” earthly Church.

213 In Bianchi, “Judenchristentum,” 528–29. Italics added to stress the fact that
this idea has a history of its own, apart from Gnosticism.

214 However, this is a different Kerygmata Petrou than the one mentioned by
Clement in the Miscellanies, 6.5.54.

215 Schoeps, in Bianchi, , “Judenchristentum,” 532–53.
216 Kerygmata Petrou, 3.22 (in Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 2:117).
217 Kerygmata Petrou, 1.1 (in NTAp, 2:111). See also Clementine Homilies, 8.16. In
the Clementina, Peter’s enemy is Simon the Magician (Acts 8), who appears
throughout to have been a thinly disguised portrayal of Paul (see Jean Daniélou,
TJC, 63).
238 A GREAT MYSTERY
“false” doctrine (presumably shared by Paul) that “she herself will be dei-
fied,” since there are “many gods” (cf. 1 Cor 8:5).218
Although we possess the Kerygmata Petrou in only fragmentary form,
and find no scriptural refutation there of “Paul’s dualistic theology,” the
closely related Homilies contain a clear explanation of how this apparent du-
alism arose. God’s Wisdom, it says, though seemingly separate from him-
self,
was that which he rejoiced with as with his own Spirit. It is united as soul to
God, but is extended by Him, as his hand, fashioning the universe. On
this account also, one man was male, and from him also went forth the female.
And being a unity, generically, it is yet a duality, for by expansion and
contraction the unity is thought to be a duality (Homilies, 16.12).219
Karl Schubart, also speaking at the Messina Colloquium, suggested
that Pharisaic Judaism may have known an analogous syzygy-theory, which it
likewise opposed to the dualistic mythology of Gnosticism and which later
emerged very clearly in the Sepher Yetzirah (third to sixth centuries):220
The Holy One, praised be He, created a counterpart to everything
which He made … And thus such counter-pairs are normal.221
This also helps to explain how the Church’s early Hexaemeron speculation222
was able to imagine such a close relationship between the human syzygy,
“Adam-and-Eve,” and the heavenly syzygy, “Christ-and-the-Church,” for
according to Jewish-Christian belief the same “True-Prophet” dwelled in
both the Primal Adam and in Jesus, and it consisted of the same archetypal
male-female syzygy. Though the “True Prophet changed its forms and names
from the beginning of the world” (Clementine Homilies, 3.20), it bore the per-
fect “image of God” when it entered Jesus. Yet both Adam and Jesus,
“who is called ‘Christ’ by a certain excellent rite of religion” (i.e., anointing),
“were filled with the identical ‘spiritual oil’ from the Tree of Life,” namely
218Kerygmata Petrou, 3.23 (in NTAp, 2:117).

219In Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 8:315.
220 According to Scholem, Kabbalah, 27.
221 In Bianchi, “Judenchristentum,” 536–37. Schubart believes that the Mishna
may refer to this doctrine in the famous passage forbidding certain esoteric specula-
tions in public. (Hagigah 2:1).
222 See p. 146 ff, above.
Wisdom, or the Holy Spirit (1.45–46),223 and it “breathed of the divinity of

Him who made him” (8.20).
The idea that Jesus was an incarnation of the “True Prophet” or “Wis-
dom” led to the “adoptionist” Christology of the Ebionites, who claimed
that the “power” by which Jesus was anointed at the time of his baptism
was a form of the Wisdom/Holy Ghost. Though it had partially dwelt in
other great heroes of Israel—such as Adam and the patriarchs—making
them “friends of God and prophets” (Wis 7:27), it had come in its complete
syzygetic form when it entered Jesus (Clementine Homilies, 3:20). Thus even this
Jewish “adoptionist” tradition presupposes that a truly Divine Presence
dwelt in Jesus, much like the “name” which entered Yahweh’s “Angel”
(Exod 22:21), or the “divine glory” and “divine fulness” of John and Paul,
both of which could enter and deify men. In fact, if other men would
equally fulfill the demands of the Law, they too could receive this “Power,”
and become “Christs” (Hippolytus, Refutations, 7:34).
Thus the Primal Adam (before the Fall) was generically related to
Christ, by virtue of the same heavenly syzygy which dwelt in them both. Unfor-
tunately, after the Fall, the earthly Adam lost his divine completeness and
became the “antitype” of Christ. Yet after the “True Prophet” reappeared
in his completeness in Jesus of Nazareth, he became the “Wedding-
Garment” which could be worn by his Bride, the Church (Clementine Recogni-
tions, 4.35). Thus would be reconstituted the primal male-female “Adam” in
his pristine form.
A similar syzygy-doctrine involving the male and female aspects of
Wisdom is found in the writings of the Elkasaites, another branch of Ebio-
nite Christianity. According to Hippolytus, the contents of their “Sacred
Book” were delivered by an “angel” of enormous height:
And there is also a female with him … whose measurement … is ac-
cording to the (gigantic) standards already mentioned. And the Male is
the Son of God, but the Female is called Holy Spirit (Refutations, 9.13
[ANF edition, 9.8]).
Here the Holy Spirit is assigned the female role, in contrast to the male
“Holy Spirit” of the Clementina. This agrees, however, with the Valentinian
custom of calling the Heavenly Mother the “Holy Spirit” (Gospel of Philip
63:30–32; 69:4–7, trans. Wilson; 70:22–25; etc.). Schlier, on the other hand,
would find the Clementine doctrine of a male Holy Spirit closer to the
223 The Holy Spirit is equated with Wisdom in 1.39, and performs the same
task of purifying and endowing mortals with immortality.

240 A GREAT MYSTERY
“normative” Christian view, which he sees behind the syzygy-pattern of the

Ephesian “Great Mystery” (pp. 160–62, above). Actually, these Elkasaite
“male” and “female” angels were but complementary aspects of each other,
emanating from the same monistic reality; to this extent, they would have
agreed with Philo’s view of God’s “Powers,” as symbolized by the male-
female Cherubim:
While God is indeed One, his highest and chiefest Powers are two … of
these two Powers … the Cherubim are symbols … These unmixed
Powers are mingled and united (On the Cherubim, 27–29).
It also agrees with the traditional Wisdom conception of the God who be-
gat “Wisdom” as his creative “Agent” or “Bride,” and in whose image the
Primal Adam was created. It was from this “monistic” Adam that the fe-
male, Eve, was later derived (Clementine Homilies, 16.12). Thus, those Jewish-
Christians who were known as “Ebionites” had a traditional view of God’s
male-female “Powers” parallel to Philo’s male-female Cherubim, signifying
that even the God of monotheism appeared naturally in bisexual division,
after which image the sexuality of created beings was patterned, a view
roughly parallel to, but in no way dependent upon, Gnosticism.
LATE DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TEMPLE MYSTERY IN “ORTHODOX”

CIRCLES
We have already spoken of the denial of Temple-access to Christianity’s
Gentile converts (pp. 133–34, above), since non-Jews were traditionally ex-
cluded from entry into its sacred precincts (Acts 21:28–29). Yet for some
years after the Resurrection, Jesus’ Jewish disciples “continued daily in the
Temple.” This included Paul, who undertook the required purifications in
preparation for the Temple pilgrimage, and who attended the Passover in
Jerusalem on a regular basis.224 Paul’s Gentile converts, on the other hand,
had to content themselves with a proleptic foretaste of their eventual union
with the Savior, symbolized by their “baptism into Christ” (Gal 3:27–28).
For such, the Temple—which was in any case destroyed in A.D. 70—could
have had little personal value. Thus many early church writers (as we have
just seen) turned their attention away from the physical edifice toward the
Heavenly Temple, of which the earthly Temple had been the effective cult-
site (Heb 8:4–5; 9:11, 24). Jewish Christians, however, continued to hope
for the rebuilding of a physical Temple in Jerusalem, as we saw in the Odes
224 See pp. 113–14, above.

of Solomon (pp. 184–85, above). But others, like the martyr Stephen, appear
to have rejected altogether the idea of a physical Sanctuary, arguing that no
earthly building could ever again claim to possess permanent value (Acts
7:48–50).
Today, it is commonly supposed that this rejection of a “Temple built
with hands” was inspired by the Qumran belief that God’s “true Temple”
was the “spiritual Temple,” i.e., the Community of Believers, who were op-
erating in lieu of the “polluted” Jerusalem Temple (1QS VIII, 5–10). But
this was only a temporary arrangement, for (as the Temple Scroll makes abun-
dantly clear) the Qumran sectaries also looked forward to rebuilding the
physical Temple as the center for the coming eschaton; and the same was
undoubtedly true on many early Christians. Bertil Gärtner in fact comments
that
the fact that the “house” in 1 Pet ii 5 is said to be spiritual does not
mean that it is less real than the Jerusalem temple; it stresses the new
level on which the temple and its cultus have been placed through the
person and the works of Jesus.225
It is also to be noted that many formal characteristics of the old Tem-
ple and its rites remained as “relics” in the liturgy and buildings of Catholi-
cism. Chapels were still constructed on a tripartite plan,226 with an “atrium”
or “forecourt” in the front, a main section or “nave” (hekhal) in the middle,
and a “Sanctuary” (d ebir, or “Holy of Holies”) at the rear, set off by a barrier
(the former “veil”). This was where the priests continued to offer the “sac-
rifice” of the Mass. The congregation was still viewed as an ecclesia peregrinans
making its pilgrimage through the cultic wilderness, beginning with baptism
and unction in the “outer precincts.” On certain occasions this led to the
“Stations of the Cross” through which the participant personally identified
himself with the Savior and his sacrifice. The ancient “Paschal Vigil” was
also seen as a “Passover Journey” leading from death into life, accompanied
by the reading of the Creation story, and the lighting of candles to represent
the fiat lux (“let there be light!”), followed by a recounting of the Exodus as
a parable of man’s progress toward salvation.
As we shall presently learn from Cyril of Jerusalem’s fourth-century
account, the “Chrism of Salvation” was still applied to the candidates’ ears,
225 The Temple and the Community in the New Testament (Cambridge, 1965), 73,
notes.
226 Corresponding to the three parts of the Jerusalem Temple and the three
stages of man’s spiritual progress. See pp. 82–84, above; also 43, 113–14.
242 A GREAT MYSTERY
nostrils, and breast to impart eternal life (see below). The altar was also still
present, with its seven candles (the Menorah), oil, myrrh, incense, hymns,
and Tri-Sanctus, all accompanying the priest’s entry into the the inner
shrine (or Holy of Holies). Even the sunburst around the monstrance (the
vessel containing the Divine Presence) reminds us once again of Wisdom’s
Light-Stream, with which the communicant had come to have “commun-
ion.” This was further enhanced by means of the “unleavened bread” of the
Eucharist. Medieval paintings also show the Lord extending his right hand
through the veil which separated heaven and earth, greeting the soul of the
dead, and drawing him back into eternal life. Such conspicuous survivals of
Temple worship and the “Great Mystery” indeed suggest that early Chris-
tians by no means viewed the Temple as “obsolete,” as we have so often
been told.
Yet Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lectures on the Mysteries (ca. A.D. 349) show
how Gentile “orthodoxy” tended more and more to transform Christian-
ity’s original Temple-worship into an elaborate baptismal rite. Nevertheless,
we still recognize in Cyril’s “baptismal” mystery much that originally be-
longed to the Sanctuary and the Holy of Holies. To prepare the candidate
for entry into the “Inner Chamber,” he was first stripped and immersed in
water 2.4); this, we are told, was a “symbolic enactment” of his personal
participation in Christ’s Crucifixion (cf. Rom 6:3), even as the latter “re-
ceived the nails in his hands and feet” (2.5). Next, the candidate was
anointed with oil placed “on the forehead and sense organs” to “quicken
the soul” (3.3). This anointing also included “the ears, to have ear quick to
hear the divine mysteries. Then the nostrils, that … you may say, ‘We are
the incense offered by Christ to God’.” This was followed by oil on the
breast, or the “putting on the breastplate of justice,” that you “might with-
stand the wiles of the Devil” (3.4). A white garment representing the Spirit
was then put on the subject (1.10; 4.8); Satan was rebuked with “upraised
right arm” (I:4), opening the way for him to return to the Garden of Eden,
from whence he had earlier been banished (1.9). Along the way, he had to
“pass through fire and water,” sometimes with the loss of life (5.17). At the
conclusion of the rite, the candidate extended his hand to receive the Bread
of Communion:
Coming up to receive … make your left hand a throne for the right (for
it is to receive a King), and cupping your palm, so receive the Body of
Christ (5.21).
All of these things were now done away from the Temple, though the
memory the Heavenly Sanctuary—where the true service was still thought
to take place—would continue to loom in the background and inform
Christian soteriology for centuries to come. The last traces of the old “jour-
ney through the wilderness” in fact still emerged in such late literary classics
as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the medieval Everyman plays, which again
showed the “New Israelite” working his way toward the Heavenly City
(Heb 11:13–16; 12:22–24). Significantly, the legend of the Wandering Jew
showed just the opposite, namely the “Old Israelite” who habitually came
short of “rest” (Heb 4:1) because he would not accept Christ as his Messiah
and High Priest.
6 GNOSTICISM AND THE WISDOM MYSTERY
INTRODUCTION
One of Christianity’s greatest unsolved mysteries is the origin of the
Church’s ancient branch known as “Gnosticism,” a branch which at one
time far exceeded “orthodoxy” in numbers and influence. It is almost uni-
versally recognized that Gnosticism had significant roots in Judaism, while
at the same time being markedly anti-Jewish. This seeming contradiction
has puzzled scholars for well over a century, and has caused many to search
for Gnosticism’s characteristic ingredients outside of the Judaeo-Christian
sphere. Yet exactly the same thing could be said of Christianity itself, for it
also originated in the beliefs of the Old Testament, yet repudiated them as
insufficient versions of the full truth. We shall in fact attempt to demon-
strate that Gnosticism developed almost entirely amongst Christian intellec-
tuals who were trying to reconcile the nature of Christ—whom the New
Testament identified as the God of the Old Testament and the Son of the
“Unknown Father”—with an ignorant Yahweh who declared himself to be
the sole god anywhere (Isa 45:5), and a god without familial ties. At the same
time, this Jewish Yahweh gave a lesser gospel to the world (Gal 3:19–20),
and created a physical world full of sorrow and death, which Christ alone
could rectify and redeem from its suffering.
We shall also try to explain their intellectual method of integrating
every known fact of science and religion into a single, comprehensive point
of view—not unlike the “Grand Unification Theories” (GUTS) or “Theory
of Everything” (TOE) proposed by modern physicists—hoping thereby to
explain how a single Divine Reality unfolded into the manifold world of
gods and material phenomena. They began by equating the Light-Stream in
the Temple with the Logos-River of the Stoics, describing how it flowed
from the Transcendent God into the planetary spheres, and thence into the
world of particulars, taking on an increasingly inferior quality the farther it
was removed from its Source. And by correlating the Hellenistic notion of
the “Three Natures”—pneumatic, psychic, and hylic—with the New Testa-
ment’s “Three Degrees of Glory,” they found that they could explain how
245
246 A GREAT MYSTERY
the “Wisdom/Logos” first appeared to the Jews as a cruel god of war and
the author of corrupt matter, but later as the revealer of the “True God”
and the means of escaping to a higher plane of existence.
Unfortunately, many Gnostics correlated the Greek notion that “the
body is a tomb” (sōma = sēma) with Paul’s statement that “to be carnally
minded is death” (Rom 8:6), thus arriving at a systematic theology which
increasingly deprecated the flesh. Yet the earliest Gnostics retained the
more balanced view of Scripture that the body needs only to be disciplined
in order to be truly spiritual. Others continued to view the Resurrection as a
literal event, rather than an “illusion” designed to elude the powers who
sought to perpetuate the soul’s imprisonment in matter. The first Valentini-
ans were in fact praised for their “warm approval of marriage.” Such facts
demonstrate that the “heterodox” positions of Gnosticism vis à vis those of
the “Great Church” were largely a matter of readjustment and evolution,
rather than the importation of “apostate” doctrines from outside of Judaeo-
Christian tradition.
Each “new” theologouemon of Gnosticism thus turns out to be a re-
sponse to some perceived tension between the values inherited from Juda-
ism and the newer insights of Jesus, though they were frequently explicated
with the help of contemporary learning. As in the case of Philo, Gnosti-
cism’s values were drawn entirely from Scripture, even when the language
of Hellenism or of Oriental syncretism was employed. Thus Gnosticism
worked from the same Gospels as did the other Christians, there being no
“Gnostic Gospels” in the true sense of the word, but rather “Gnostic medi-
tations” or “commentaries” on the orthodox books used by the rest of the
Church.1 The Gnostics thus claimed to base their doctrines on the very
same authorities as “orthodoxy,” and in many cases to have preserved what
others had already begun to forget. For this reason, we shall discover that Gnosti-
cism frequently helps us to discover the original forms of Christ’s Gospel,
rather than “heretical” departures therefrom. This is especially clear where
1R. McLain Wilson, Gnosis and the New Testament (Oxford, 1968), 88; George
W. McRae, “The Gospel of Truth,” in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed.
James M. Robinson (New York, 1977), 37; Kendrick Grobel, The Gospel of Truth
(New York, 1960), 20–21; Birger A. Pearson, in ABD, 4:948–49. Though the
Gnostics sometimes called their works “gospels,” they were never “gospels” in the
true sense of the word, for they contained no presentations of the life of Jesus, and
seldom contained collections of his sayings. Instead, they were generally attempts
to interpret and synthesize his teachings in an “intellectual” and comprehensive
manner, hoping to reveal their ultimate significance.
GNOSTICISM AND THE WISDOM MYSTERY 247
the Gnostics claimed to have received doctrines which contradict their later
positions, e.g., the doctrine of felix culpa, which taught that Adam’s Fall into
mortality was a “blessed sin” and an upward step for mankind, deliberately
willed by God as a training event for the preexistent soul. Such an idea
would never have been thought of by those who had theological grounds
for rejecting the flesh, hence must have been derived from an earlier and
more traditionally “scriptural” point of view.
We shall especially attempt to demonstrate that Gnosticism was a con-
tinuing and logical development of Wisdom’s Light-Stream and the way in
which it unfolded into the events of Creation and became available to men
in the Temple. As the governing force that “effectively orders all things”
(Wis 8:1) it was the bearer of God’s attributes to the world; and as “the im-
age of God’s goodness” and the “mirror of his active power” (ibid., 25–26)
it was the equivalent of the New Testament “Holy Ghost,” i.e., the pneu-
matic vehicle which mediates the divine fulness to others (pp. 106–10, above).
Thus the Gnostics referred to the mysterious realm of light between God
and the world as the Pleroma (the “fulness”), for within it were to be found
the totality of his divine qualities and the basic patterns which govern the
cosmos. Hence by “dissecting” the Pleroma, one might hope to discover
the hidden nature of the Divine. A Gnostic “cross-section” of the Pleroma
in fact revealed the same syzygetic prototypes which governed the sexes on
earth—in particular, the Divine Tetrad of “Father-Mother-Son-and-
Daughter” (pp. 15–16, above)—verifying the statement in Genesis that
“God created man in his own image, male and female.” In short, the “Divine
Fulness” was found to consist of successive generations of sexual pairs, and the
Gnostics believed that it was a breakdown in this ideal pattern which caused
the loss of Eden’s wholeness and the Fall of the First Couple.
But just as Philo thought of the Light-Stream as a “Royal Road” along
which men could reascend toward God (pp. 42–43, 83–84, above), the
Gnostics saw it as the means of rejoining the Supreme Source to its phe-
nomenal creations, thereby enabling them to reclaim their pristine images
and be reintegrated into the Perfect Light. As in the older Wisdom Mystery,
this was accomplished by means of spiritual henosis, or the reunion of the
Divine with its earthly antitypes. Thus the New Testament “Great Mystery”
became the “Bridal Chamber” rite of the Valentinians and the Marcosians,
through which were catalyzed the “marriages” of Christ and the Church,
the Divine and the Secular, and the Husband and Wife, all following the
same syzygetic pattern as depicted by the Embracing Cherubim. After the
destruction of the Temple, however, human marriages would replace the
248 A GREAT MYSTERY
images in the Holy of Holies, thus providing the “cherubic” image with
which to activate the others.
GNOSTICISM AND THE HEXAEMERON

One of the chief concerns of most Gnostic writings was the series of events
which are described in the early chapters of Genesis. We have already seen
how Old Testament writers depicted the light emanating from God’s
Throne as a series of fiery “rivers,” commonly seven in number, becoming
the seven planetary spheres as they descend toward earth (pp. 54ff, above).
We also saw how various Jews and early Christians saw these seven compo-
nents of the light as “angelic” beings, while other saw them as the seven days
of creation. Thus came into being the doctrine of the Hexameron, or the
preexistent spiritual creation, which included the “first created angels” (the
protoctists), a special version of which was Christ and the preexistent Church
(pp. 144–45, above). Different Gnostic schools dissected this sevenfold Light-
Stream in their own individual ways, but basically sought to demonstrate
that the material world had emanated in all of its particulars from a single
Source of Light, representing what many have called a polytheistic monotheism,
or a basic “Oneness” from which all “Multiplicity” unfolds. While this was
not to suggest that all things are part of God (as in Far Eastern metaphys-
ics), it did imply that a single divine fulness activates and operates through all of
God’s mediators, even within the “angels” and lesser “gods” who share his
power. Thus, while there is but one Supreme God, he works through many
divine beings who comprise a hierarchy of deified “powers” and “princi-
palities,” indiscriminately referred to by the New Testament as archai,
exousai, or dynameis (Rom 8:38; Col 1:16; 1 Pet 3:22; etc.).
It is especially important to note how the original bene ha’el of Israelite
theology survived in monotheism in the form of “angels” (LXX Deut
32:80), later described as secondary “lights” and “powers” by apocalyptic
Judaism. In 1 Enoch’s calendrical system, for example, these became the
controlling “angels” who had charge of the various portions of the year;
and the Gnostics imagined their descent into time and space as the annual
procession of months and days, resulting in a Pleroma of three hundred and
sixty “lights.” The Sethians placed at their head the “Four Luminaries”
(Armozel, Oriel, Daveithei and Eleleth), i.e., the four cherubim who governed
God’s “glory” in Ezekiel 1. These in turn became the “Days of Creation,”
plus the Day of Rest, according to the Hexaemeron tradition.
Bentley Layton has conveniently diagrammed the “devolution” of this

light into the images and archetypes of the material world.2 Here we are
able to watch the Light-Stream as it divides into dual genders (the Divine Im-
age of Gen 1:27), triads (the three degrees of glory), quartets (periods of sa-
cred history), heptads (the planetary angels and days of creation), tens (emana-
tions of the Word, e.g., the Ten Commandments), twelves (the Twelve
Tribes, the Apostles, the stages of the Zodiac), and finally thirties, seventies
and three-hundred-sixties (the constellations and the elements of time and
space), giving us a kind of “Unified Field” from which one might derive all
earthly phenomena. Indeed, it became an “exploded diagram” of God’s
“fulness” as it directs the physical creation from within, and a “blueprint”
for the lower worlds of matter.
We must especially take note of its first unfolding, or the division of
“the One” into dual genders. Here we have the origin of the divine syzygetic
pattern, according to which all things would emerge as male-female pairs.
Every plant and every animal thus had its sexual counterpart, even the par-
ticles within the atom, which are similarly divided into negative and positive
partners. At its very heart lay the conviction that all divine powers have their
consorts and were the models for all subsequent couplings. The Fall, on the
other hand, was explained as the result of the Wisdom/Logos having lost
his female partner, who in her isolation became the “Fallen Sophia” and the
Creatrix of the material world. Again, a hieros gamos between the Fallen
Sophia and her pleromatic Male Counterpart would be the means of restor-
ing the primal pattern and the perfection of the Light World. But this reun-
ion must first be initiated on earth by the marriages of the men and women
who call Sophia their “Mother” and who would claim the Savior as the “Fa-
ther” of their salvation, for as Quentin Quesnell explained, the man and the
woman through marriage become the basic units of Christ and the Church
(pp. 125–27, above). We shall describe these events in more detail later on,
but mention them here in order to establish the basic relationship between
the older Wisdom Mystery and its later Gnostic forms.
THE ORIGIN OF THE GNOSTIC DEMIURGE

The typical Gnostic derogation of the Old Testament Creator to the rank of
an inferior Demiurge, who created a material world, and then sought to
perpetuate man’s “enslavement” to it by means of sexual reproduction,
2 As they appear in the Apocryphon of John; see his The Gnostic Scriptures (Garden
City, NY, 1987), 12–13.

250 A GREAT MYSTERY
probably began with the fact that certain Christians believed in a God above
him, a being sarcastically referred to by Origen’s arch-foe, Celsus, as a
“super-celestial God,” one higher than the Jewish Yahweh:
Celsus … alleges that certain “Christians, having misunderstood the
works of Plato, loudly boast of a ‘super-celestial’ God, thus ascending
beyond the heaven of the Jews” (Origen, Against Celsus, 6.19).
Origen’s response was that the prophets themselves (who were indeed
much older than Plato) spoke of a “super-celestial place” beyond the ordinary
heavens, for example, the author of Psalm 48:4; who exclaimed,
Praise God, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens,
let them praise the Lord!
Thus it would appear that Origen saw nothing in such a belief which con-
tradicted the older traditions of Christianity and the Bible, including what
he believed to have been the traditions of the “prophets.”
Some writers, of course, believed that Jesus himself was a worshipper
of the Jewish Yahweh, whom they referred to as the “God of our fathers”
(Acts 3:13; 5:30; 22:14), i.e., the traditional “God of Israel” (Matt 15:31;
Luke 1:68; Acts 13:17). Yet it is not clear whether or not it was Yahweh to
whom the Gospel writers referred as Christ’s “Father” (Rom 15:6; 1 Cor
1:9; 2 Cor 1:30—or even as man’s “Father” (Luke 11:2; 2 Cor 6:18; Gal 1:4;
4:4–7)—for Jesus not once calls him “Yahweh” (= “Lord,” i.e., Adonai), but
rather “El” (Matt 21:6; Mark 15:3), or even “Abba,” the Aramaic word for
“Daddy” (Mark 14:36), and he taught his disciples to do the same (Rom
8:15; Gal 4:6).3 Norman Perrin has in fact shown that the name “Abba” was
never used for Yahweh,4 hence Jesus must have had good reason for doing
so. No doubt the main reason for this was that the New Testament fre-
quently identifies Jesus himself as Yahweh.
Yahweh’s title, “LORD” (used in place of “YHWH” when spoken
aloud) was always translated in the Greek Septuagint as kyrios, and this is
traditionally applied to Jesus throughout the New Testament: “The Lord,
Jesus Christ (kyrios Iēsous Christus). Thus, “to an early Christian accustomed
to reading the OT, the word ‘Lord,’ when used of Jesus, would suggest his
3D. E. Aune adds that the name “Abba” stands behind all of the early re-
corded prayers of the disciples to the Father, and explains his grammatical reasons
for so concluding (In The International Standard Bible Enclyclopedia, 1:3.)
4 Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York, 1967), 41.
identification with the God of the OT.”5 Richard Longenecker also calls
attention to the “name” given to Jesus in Phil 2:9–11: “God has highly ex-
alted him and given him the name which is above every name,” for it is “the
name at which every knee shall bow,” confessing that “Jesus Christ is Lord”
(kyrios) (Rom 14:11 = Isa 45:23), i.e., the vocal equivalent of “Yahweh.”6
Thus, Joel 2:32 predicts that salvation would come to those who “call on
the name of Yahweh,” the same name which Paul applied to Christ (Rom
10:13). Jean Daniélou therefore concludes that the title “Lord” (which was
equivalent to both “name” and kyrios), when used of Christ, was equal to
the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) itself.7 Longenecker8 thus proposes that the
epithet “Lord” served as a “terminological bridge” to the use of the title
“God” for Jesus in John 1:1; 20:28;9 Rom 9:5;10 2 Thess 1:12; Titus 2:13 and
2 Pet 1:1.
R. E. Brown also cites considerable evidence in both rabbinical and
Septuagint sources that the Old Testament name “I AM” (Heb ’ehyeh,
Greek ego eimi)11 had long been recognized as the equivalent of Yahweh, and
5 S. E. Johnson, “Lord (Christ),” in IDB, 3:151. Joseph Fitzmyer agrees that

“in using kyrios of both Yahweh and Jesus … Luke continues the sense of the title
already being used in the early Christian communities, which in some sense re-
garded Jesus as on a level with Yahweh.” Luke I–IX, Anchor Bible (Garden City,
NY, 1981), 203. At the same time, Luke appears to have looked on Jesus as the Son
of Yahweh (Acts 3:13), showing that the problem which bothered believers at Ni-
caea was already felt in second- and third-generation Christianity.
6 The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity (Grand Rapids, 1981), 128. The
“Name” (shem) was generally supposed to be the Tetragrammaton, YHWH.

7 TJC, 148.
8 Richard Longnecker, Christology of Early Jewish Christianity (Grand Rapids,
1981), 136.
9 R. E. Brown also writes that the use of kyrios for Jesus would naturally lead
to the application of theos (God) to him, since theos was the common Septuagint
name for Yahweh. Jesus, God and Man (Milwaukee, 1967), 29. He also refers to other
New Testament passages such as 1 John 5:20; Hebrews 1:8; 2 Peter 1:1; Romans
9:5 and Titus 2:13.
10 Though the punctuation and meaning of Romans 9:5 has long been debated,
the clear majority of ancient commentators held that Christ was being identified
with God (“Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever!”) E. Stauffer, “theos,” in
TDNT, 3:105. Guthrie also points out that the word “blessed” would be in the
wrong position for a normal doxology (“Christ, who is over all. God (be) blessed
for ever!) New Testament Theology (Downer’s Grove, IL, 1981), 339–40.
11 See Exodus 3:14.
252 A GREAT MYSTERY
that it was so understood by the gospel writers who applied it to Jesus.12

John 8:24, 28, 58 and 13:19 also applies the absolute form of the verb ’ehyeh
to Jesus (“before Abraham was, I AM”). This was further emphasized when
the revelatory formula, “Be not afraid, It is I,” was spoken to the frightened
apostles during a storm (John 6:20; Matt 14:27), Yahweh being the Israelite
God of the Storm (Ezek 38:9; Nah 1:3). Mark 14:62 therefore equates “I
AM” directly with the “Son of Man,” a title which Jesus often used of him-
self.13
Other specific identifications of Christ and the Old Testament Yah-
weh include Isaiah 40:3 (“Prepare ye the way of Yahweh”) and Matthew 3:3
= Mark 1:3 = Luke 3:4 = John 1:23 (“Prepare ye the way of the Lord” [i.e.,
Jesus]); Joel 2:3 (“Whosoever shall call on the name of Yahweh shall be
delivered”) and Romans 10:13 = Acts 2:21 (“Whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord [Jesus Christ] shall be saved”); Psalms 110:1 (“Yahweh
said unto my lord”) and Mark 12:35–37 = Matthew 22:41–45 (“How say
the scribes that Christ is the son of David … for David himself calleth him
lord.”14 Christ is also said to be the Creator who made heaven and earth,15
the “Rock” (Yahweh) who led Israel through the Red Sea (1 Cor 10:4), and
the “Stone” refused by the builders.16 He is also called “Savior” throughout
the New Testament—an epithet reserved strictly for Yahweh in the Old
Testament (Judg 3:9; Isa 45:15). He is likewise the Church’s “Redeemer”
(go’el, Job 19:25; Isa 43:3; etc.), and the one who judges and forgives sin—
another of Yahweh’s exclusive prerogatives (Gen 15:14; 1 Chr 16:33; Ps
96:13; Isa 43:25). Thus it is Jesus to whom “every knee shall bow … and
every tongue confess,” just as it was to the God of the Old Testament
(Rom 14:11 = Isa 45:21–23).
12 John I–XII, 533–38; also C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel
(Cambridge, 1970), 94.

13 E.g., Matt 9:6; 10:23; Mark 2:10; 13:26; Luke 5:24; 18:8; etc.
14 It is clear here that this New Testament “Lord” is understood to be the same
as the Old Testament “LORD.” Unfortunately, English translations of the New

Testament “Lord,” even when it is the equivalent of YHWH, do not spell it with
small capitals (“LORD”), as they do throughout the Old Testament. The KJV of
Mark 12:36, however, correctly gives “LORD” for YHWH, since it is a quotation
from the Old Testament, but falls back to the customary “Lord” in 12:37.
15 Compare Genesis 1:1 with John 1:3; Ephesians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 4:6; Co-
lossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2–3.

16 Compare Psalm 118:22 and Acts 4:11.
How, then, could the Gnostics come to look upon Yahweh as a god
who was less than their own Jesus Christ? Here we must recall that the nor-
mal theology of Paul included two divine beings:
To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things,17 and one
Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Cor 8:6).
In short, Jesus Christ had a Father above him, one whose mysterious pres-
ence within himself gave him his redemptive power:
God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself (2 Cor 5:19).
John likewise believed that Christ had a Father of his own, but one whom
the Jews no longer recognized:
Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomso-
ever the Son will reveal him (Matt 11:27; Luke 10:22; John 14:7).
Morton Smith therefore concluded that it was Jesus alone who “revealed
the hitherto unknown Father,”18 in contrast to the Old Testament God, who
had repeatedly revealed himself to the prophets and was already well
known.19 The earliest Christians in fact believed that it was none other than
Jesus Christ, the Son of the Unknown Father, who had appeared to the patri-
archs as the “God of Israel” throughout her early history:
For if you had understood what has been written by the prophets, you
would not have denied that He was God, Son of the only, unbegotten,
unutterable God.20 For Moses says somewhere in Exodus the following:
“The Lord spoke to Moses, and said to him, I am the Lord, and I ap-
peared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, being their God; and my
name I revealed not to them, and I established my covenant with them”
(Exod 6:2ff). And thus again he says, “A man wrestled with Jacob”
(Gen 32:24, 30), and asserts it was God; narrating what Jacob said, “I
have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” And it is recorded
that he called the place where He wrestled with him, the Face of God.
17 It is always presupposed that the Father is the one who wills and brings
about creation through his Son. The Son is therefore his Creative Agent, but he is the
“Creator” (Heb 1:1–2).
18 The Secret Gospel (New York, 1973), 112; our emphasis.
19 For this reason, John states that “No man hath seen God at any time,” not
referring to Yahweh—who was repeatedly seen of many—but to the “Unknown

Father,” he “whom the Son hath declared” (John 1:18).
20 In his Second Apology, Justin adds, “To the Father of all … there is no name
given” (6).
254 A GREAT MYSTERY
And Moses says that God appeared also to Abraham near the oak in
Mamre, when he was sitting near his tent at mid-day (Dialogue With Try-
pho, 126).
Justin also notes several other instances where the Son spoke or appeared in
the Old Testament as “God,”21 and goes on to preface his next chapter
with the explicit comment, “These passages of scripture do not apply to the
Father, but to the Word” (i.e., the Son).
Continuing, he turns to the subject of Yahweh’s mysterious “Father,”
the so-called “Unbegotten God”:
These and other such sayings are recorded by the Lawgiver and by the
prophets; and I suppose that I have stated sufficiently, that wherever
God says, “God went up from Abraham,” or “The Lord spoke to
Moses,” and “the Lord came down to behold the tower which the sons
of men had built,” or when “God shut Noah into the Ark,” you must
not imagine that the Unbegotten God Himself came down or went up
from any place. For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither has
come to any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, nor rises up, but remains in
His own place, wherever that is, quick to behold and quick to hear …
Therefore neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any man, saw the
Father and ineffable Lord of all, and also of Christ, but saw Him who was
according to His will His Son, being God, and the Angel22 because He
ministered to His will; whom also it pleased Him to be born man by the
Virgin; who also was fire when He conversed with Moses from the bush
(Dialogue, 127).
In short, the Old Testament “Yahweh” was the Son of still another Deity, the
“Ineffable Father,” who remains in his own high heaven, quite unknown to
the Jews. Maintaining a strict numerical distinction between the two, Justin
explains that the “Ineffable God” is the Old Testament “Lord’s” own Lord:
When Scripture says: “The Lord rained fire from the Lord out of
Heaven,” the prophetic word indicates that there were two in number:
One upon earth, who, it says, descended to behold the cry of Sodom;
Another in Heaven, who is also Lord of the Lord on earth, as He is Father
21 Genesis 7:16; 12:5; 18:22; 19:24; Exodus 6:29; Numbers 11:23; Deuteron-
omy 32:21; Psalms 24:7; 110:1.

22 The LXX of Isa 9:6 has megales boules aggelos (“great Angel of Counsel”),
which was another source of the Son’s “angelomorphic Christology” (see pp. 145–
54, above).
and God; the cause of His power and His being Lord and God (ibid.,
129).23
Eusebius also explained that while Christ was the well-known God of the
Old Testament, he had been so “adorned by the Father” (Church History,
1.3); who had at the same time remained an enigma to the ancients (ibid.,
1.2). The Jewish Christians, however, explained that the Father was the
mysterious “High God” (Elyon), who “chose his Son, who is also called
Lord, to rule over the Israelites as his special portion” (Clementine Homilies,
18.4).24
Oddly enough, however, the Old Testament God did not appear to
know anything about his mysterious Father, for in Isaiah he arrogantly
boasts that
I am Yahweh, and there is none else, there is no God beside me (45:5).
Ye are my witnesses, saith Yahweh, and my servant whom I have cho-
sen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: be-
fore me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me (Isa
43:10).
Neither did the Jews who worshipped him know anything of his Father’s
existence:
Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye nei-
ther know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have
known my Father also (John 8:19).
It is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God:
Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know
him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his say-
ing (John 8:54–55).
Even more significant was the fact that this ignorant creator-god had pro-
duced a world of “thorns and thistles” (Gen 3:18), a world full of pain and
suffering, and had given the Jews a powerless Law of Moses with which to
hopefully extricate themselves from it:
23 He also comments that “when Scripture records that God said in the begin-
ning, ‘Behold, Adam has become like one of Us’,” the plural number was to be
taken literally (Dialogue, 129).
24 The source of this passage was the Hebrew original of Deuteronomy 32:8–9.
See note 24, p. 13, above.

256 A GREAT MYSTERY
For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for

the weakness and unprofitableness thereof. For the law made nothing
perfect (Heb 7:18–19).
The Law of course taught proper moral principles, and told men how they
should live in the world. But it gave them no power with which to over-
come their natural impulses:
Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and
good … but I am carnal, sold under sin … To will is present with me;
but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I
would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do … I find then
a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me … O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death? (Rom 7:12–24).
Even worse, it condemned them to death, for leaving them powerless to
keep each one of its commandments without exception, it left them short of perfec-
tion:
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he
is guilty of all (Jas 2:10).
For I testify again to every man that is circumcised (i.e., hopes to live by
the Law of Moses), that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is be-
come of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law;
ye are fallen from grace (Gal 5:3–4).
The Law of Moses thus destroyed, instead of saving. Salvation would be-
come possible only through the Spirit of Christ, which gives men quickening
power and begets new lives in them:
I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except
the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the
commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For with-
out the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when
the commandment came, sin revived, and I died (Rom 7:7–8).
For the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life (2 Cor 3:5).
The Law of Moses was at best a “lesser law,” whose elementary principles
prepared men for Christ’s saving power, at which time they would no
longer require the tutelage of the Old Testament:
But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the
faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster (Gal
3:23–25).
Meanwhile, without hope of salvation by means of a spiritual “new
begetting,” the Jews remained under bondage to the material elements:
Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the ele-
ments of the world … For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the
one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the
bondwoman (i.e., the Jew) was born after the flesh; but he of the free-
woman (i.e., the Christian) was by promise (Gal 4:3, 22).
Their Law had in fact been revealed by one of God’s “angels,” rather than
by God himself:
Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added to make wrong-doing a
legal offense, until the seed should come to whom the promise was
made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator (i.e.,
Moses). Now a mediator is not needed for a party acting alone, and
“God is one” (Gal 3:19–20, partly NEB).
Clearly, then, the Law came not from the Father—who is “One”—but
from the “angels,” who were of a lower supernatural order. John even went
so far as to claim that the source of Judaism’s present inspiration was the
Devil:
Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I
proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he
sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot
hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your fa-
ther ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in
the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he
speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it (John 8:42–44).
Indeed, even the Old Testament makes the surprising statement that the
Jewish God was the one who had created darkness and evil:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I
Yahweh do all these things (Isa 45:7).
In the increasingly pessimistic and “spiritualizing” milieu of contemporary
apocalypticism, this seemed to explain to many Christians why the Jewish
God’s first commandment had been to “Multiply and replenish the earth”
(Gen 1:28), for in this way he might capture and enslave the preexistent
souls in the murkiness of matter. Thus blinded and enfeebled, they would
no longer remember their true spiritual nature, nor would they wish to re-
258 A GREAT MYSTERY
turn to the light whence they came, for those who are “carnal” have neither
the ability nor the desire to please the Transcendent Father:
For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they
that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally
minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because
the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of
God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot
please God (Rom 8:5–8).
Paul’s statement was no doubt misunderstood by many of his read-
ers—as it still is today—who were convinced that all things “carnal” are
intrinsically evil, and that the “spiritual” alone is truly good. No doubt Paul
had intended simply to point out that the flesh by itself—without the
enlightenment of God’s Spirit—inevitably leads men into error. But for
many who lived in the Hellenized world of the Savior, the body was seen as
the major source of all concupiscence and death (sōma = sēma), and Yah-
weh’s creation had been the sole source of such an existence. Thus we ar-
rive at the picture of a Jewish God who is already partially demonized, mak-
ing him the author of everything which conduces to sin and suffering, quite
in contrast to the redemptive power of Christ, who came to save men from
bondage to the material world and the sphere of death.
How, then, could the Jewish Yahweh have been so different from
Christ, when the New Testament identified them as the very same individ-
ual? The Gnostic answer was indeed brilliant: viewed as an manifestation of
the Johannine Logos, Christ/Yahweh had simply appeared at different
times with differing degrees of glory, just as the Light-Stream of the Wis-
dom/Logos had begun as the Father’s Transcendent Light, then dimmed as
it gave rise to the planetary spheres, and finally emerged in the darkness of
matter, in a highly attenuated form.
But Paul’s Christ also began as a heavenly being, who “emptied” him-
self of his divinity when he assumed the form of a “servant” (Phil 2:6–7).
Jewish Christians likewise thought of Jesus-Wisdom as one who had ap-
peared on earth several times, embodied in various Jewish heroes; but lately
he had come in his complete form as the “True Prophet” (pp. 241–43,
above). “Wisdom” had in fact assumed many different forms throughout its
history, appearing as an “effluence of God’s glory” (Wis 7:25–26), the light
which “enters men and makes them prophets” (7:27), God’s “Only Begot-
ten Son” (7:22), God’s creative companion (Prov 8:22ff), even God’s
“Daughter” (Philo, On Flight and Finding, 50). Philo also believed that Wis-
dom’s varying levels of brilliance corresponded to the three levels of the
Temple, and that men could ascend through them towards union with the
perfect Light (p. 44, above). When this concept reappeared in Christian
theology as the “Three Degrees of Glory,” it offered an immediate explana-
tion for the differing degrees of Christ/Yahweh’s power. The Gnostics ac-
cordingly viewed the Wisdom/Logos as the divine power which activated
both of his forms, at first as the creator of a material and defective world,
then as its Savior and re-creator, revealing at last the full strength and maj-
esty which the Unknown Father had originally invested in him.
Simone Pétrement thus concludes that “the Logos of God directed the
action of the Demiurge without the Demiurge’s knowledge; the Savior him-
self can thus be called Demiurge … (But) the true God is only known to us
thanks to Christ.”25 Elaine Pagels likewise explains that in Valentinian exe-
gesis the creation came about “through the Logos energizing the Demi-
urge.”26 These changes correspond generally to the “condescension” of
Christ in “normative” Christology; but in Gnostic Christology they became
the graded emanations of the Logos/Son, whose divine preexistence was
modified by a remarkable series of lesser manifestations and activities
within the sphere of created matter.
THE FALL OF SOPHIA

But we cannot understand these “lesser” appearances of the Logos/
Wisdom without taking into account the many influences from Israelite
polytheism which went into its creation. These influences had long been
reduced by the official Jewish monotheism to mere “hypostases” or “per-
sonifications” of the One God’s internal “powers.” But they also preserved
memories of discrete male and female deities who had once comprised the
familial pantheons of the ancient Semites. As the Father’s creative agent
(Prov 8:22ff), for example, “Sophia” (the Greek title for “Wisdom”) re-
tained certain masculine qualities, not unlike the Canaanite and Babylonian
“Sons” who had defeated the “monsters of chaos” at the time of creation.27
We also detect traces of several former female deities, such as the Canaanite
Asherah and Anath, who frequently bore the name of hkm, “Wisdom,”28
and who were looked upon as the necessary counterparts of their Husbands
in the management of the Ugaritic cosmos. Significantly, the nouns for
“Wisdom” in both Hebrew and Greek were also feminine, thus causing “her”
25 A Separate God (San Francisco, 1990), 48.

26 The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis (Nashville, 1973), 31.
27 E.g., the legends of Ba‘al and Marduk.
28 See note 12, p. 26, above.
260 A GREAT MYSTERY
to be referred to in common parlance as a “woman” (“Wisdom hath

builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars,” Prov 9:1; “She is an
exhalation from the power of God,” Wis 7:25).
Thanks to the memory of these ancient male and female deities, who
traditionally assisted their Father El29 in Semitic mythology, Philo could
write that “while God is indeed one, his highest and chiefest powers are two.
Of these two potencies … the (male and female) Cherubim are symbols”
(On the Cherubim, 27–29).30 Thus the Father’s “agents” in even monotheism
were still believed to have been male and female, working together to sustain
the economy of the divine world. Indeed, when they worked as one, they
were said to be “male”; but when they were separated, the results became
“female,” i.e., incomplete and lacking in spiritual qualities.31 The Jewish
Christians similarly described the original Logos/Wisdom (the “True
Prophet”) as a perfect syzygy, i.e., as a Male with a Female Companion,
who in his completeness had returned to restore the true Gospel of Moses.
But whenever the Female attempted to work alone, she had appeared as the
“False Prophet,” inspiring the “False Pericopes,” those passages of scrip-
ture which occasionally contradict the “correct” message of the Old Testa-
ment, such as references to more than one God.32
In the system of Simon (active ca. A.D. 41–54)—whom the early
Church Fathers insisted was the first Gnostic—Sophia33 had been the
“Worker” through whom God created the heavens (Ps 136:5). According to
Tertullian, she had anticipated his wishes and obediently descended into
matter in order to carry them out. While doing so, however, she was de-
tained by the very elements which she had created,34 thus producing a
Sophia who was specifically associated with the “fallen” world of matter.
Philo, on the other hand, believed that God had personally created the
Also called ’Il, ’Ilu, An, etc., in various other Semitic dialects.
29
See p. 14, above; our emphasis.

30
31 See pp. 45–50, above. Philo’s use of the categories “male” and “female” may
have gone back to Plato’s concept of the androgynous First Man, as found in the
Symposium. This image of the unified “androgyne” versus the dual sexes found in
nature was probably widely known in Hellenistic circles during Philo’s lifetime. See
Richard A. Baer, Jr., Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female (Leiden, 1970), 87.
32 See pp. 87, 235–40, above.
33 “Sophia” was said to have been the “Thought” (Greek Ennoia) of the Logos.
“Ennoia” was in fact the name which she would later bear in many of the more
advanced Gnostic texts.
34 De Anima, 34.
spiritual part of man—he being of mixed nature, both good and evil—and
left the creation of the physical part to the angelic Powers,35 one of whom
was traditionally said to have been Sophia (Prov 8:22ff).
But Menander († ca. A.D. 80) and Saturnilus (early 2nd century)—
both followers of Simon—soon began to devalue the worth of the material
creation, calling it a “tragic” work, and attributing it wholly to Wisdom’s
“angels.”36 It is further maintained by some writers that Saturnilus (together
with the shadowy figure of Cerinthus) was the first to have pictured the Old
Testament Creator as an inferior angel, thus distinguishing him still further
from the true God, and picturing him as one of the “Protoctists.”37 The
Alexandrian scholar, Basilides, in turn maintained that the Jewish God was
the “Leader” of Sophia’s “inferior angels,” thus reducing him to an almost
demonic level.38 Even this, however, could still be said to agree with Paul’s
statements that YHWH was the author of a “carnal” law (Heb 7:16), which
came forth through the intermediacy of “angels,” rather than from God
himself (Gal 3:19–20).39 Thus it could be concluded that only the feminine
portion of the “Logos/Sophia” had been at work when it instituted the
Gospel of Judaism and created the material world. It was in fact Sophia’s
dissociation from her male counterpart and their male-female completeness
which best accounted for the defective and unbalanced qualities or her
“carnal” products.
“Perfection” was by now considered to be both male and female working
in perfect harmony; whereas “femaleness” was the result of either sex working in
isolation.40 The historical precedents for this view no doubt included the
Jewish ideal of marriage, which stated that men must emulate God’s male-
female image and unite to beget offspring (Gen 1:26–28). Sexual wholeness
and marriage were in fact prerequisites for entry into the Temple (Deut
23:1–2).41 There were also the tragic events in the Garden, which, as Gene-
sis 1:26–27 suggests, were antitypes of the heavenly realities which had pre-
ceded them. Thus, as the male-female oneness of the first couple had been
based on a divine male-female image, it might be reasoned that Yahweh’s
35 On Flight and Finding, 68–70; On the Change of Names, 30–31; On the Confusion of
Tongues, 169–80; On the Creation of the World, 72–75.
36 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.23–24.
37 See pp. 144–45, above, and the account of the Hexaemaron.
38 G. Filoramo, History of Gnosticism (Oxford, 1990), 82.
40 As embodied, for example, in the writings of Philo; note 50, p. 260, above.
262 A GREAT MYSTERY
removal of the woman from the man’s side (2:21–22) was similarly based
on a break in the preexistent oneness of the sexes. In the New Testament
this scheme actually reappeared as the basis for the Ephesian “Great Mys-
tery,” where Christ and the Church had constituted a heavenly syzygy be-
fore the world came into being, but had became separated at the time of
creation. Now their salvation would take place when they are “remarried” in
the eschaton.42
The legend of the “Sons of God” who lusted after the “daughters of
men” also hinted at a cosmic catastrophe which had befallen the heavenly
race, for it gave birth to the wicked generations whom God was obliged to
destroy in the Flood (Gen 6:1–4). There was also the story of the “War in
Heaven,” during which a portion of the spiritual world was cast out and
gave rise to sin (Isa 14:12–15; 1 Enoch 6; Jude 6; etc.). God’s creative power
was thus alienated and damaged, as we saw in the myth of the “Homeless
Wisdom.”43 These considerations all help to explain why the Gnostics be-
lieved that a preexistent tragedy had once taken place in the heavens, during
which the perfect light of the Logos/Wisdom lost some of its brilliance,
and was obliged to appear in history as the incomplete and defective female
Creative Principle.
From this popular and widespread sexual analysis came the Gnostic
myth of the “Fallen Sophia,” who began her career as the “Upper Sophia,”
still joined to a male companion, but ended as the “Lower Sophia,” fallen
and dissociated from a masculine counterpart. But it also gave the Gnostics
an opportunity to correlate the traditions of Judaism and Christianity with
the further insights of Hellenistic science, for example, the Greek notion
that existence comes forth in three graded levels: the pneumatic (or purely
ideal), the psychic (or mental and emotional), and the hylic (or physical and
materialistic). Combined with the view that “maleness” is complete and
spiritual, and that “femaleness” is sensual and incomplete, this produced a
kind of “Unified Field Theory” which could explain a whole range of
graded phenomena in both scripture and history, especially the differences
between the Jewish Creator-god and Christ. It would of course be the reun-
ion of these separated powers through marriage that would restore the
heavens and the universe to their pristine harmony and glory. In particular,
it would be the reunion of the Fallen Sophia and her masculine counter-
42See pp. 153–54, 159–63, above. This also mirrors man’s syggeneia with preex-
istent Wisdom (Wis 8:17–20; Philo, On the Creation of the World, 146).
43 See pp. 24, 90 and 96, above.
part—the “male” Logos—that would restore her and her fallen world to
their intended syzygetic perfection, or as the Christians preferred to say,
“the male Christ” and his “feminine Church.”
THE GNOSTIC PLEROMA

The Gnostics now applied this holistic view of reality to an analysis of the
Divine Fulness—that quintessential outpouring of God’s power which
flowed down as a Light-Stream into the Temple to enervate and control the
physical world.44 This was the same Fulness which the Father bestowed on
his sons in order to make them divine (Col 2:9–10). A dissected “cross-
section” of it would in fact reveal the same structure of syzygetic “male-
female images” which God had originally bestowed on creation. To “receive
the Fulness” therefore meant that individuals must receive the heavenly image of marriage
back into their own lives. We shall thus see that the Valentinian Gnostics
warmly approved of marriage,45 primarily because it was a recreation of
unions above. But it particularly meant that to be “married” to Christ one
had to be married to a spouse, just as Sophia had to be reunited to her mas-
culine Logos.
The “Pleroma” was thus found to have emanated in successive generations
of syzygetic pairs, called “Aeons” in most of the Gnostic literature. As the
Kabbalists would later recall, these Aeons were derived from the same Se-
mitic “Triad” of “Father-Mother-Son” which we encountered at the head
of the Israelite pantheon,46 only extended by the Son and Daughter’s mar-
riage into a “Tetrad” of “Father-Mother-Son-and-Daughter.”47 These “Son
and Daughter” marriages were frequently repeated in many Gnostic sys-
tems, giving rise to three or four generations of male-female deities, for the
basic meaning of the “Tetrad” was not simply that there was a typical family
of four at the head of the pantheon, but rather that the parental model was to be
continually imitated by its offspring, thereby producing an ongoing genealogical
process throughout time.
44See the summary on pp. 81–83, above.

45Henry Chadwick, in Alexandrian Christianity, ed. J. E. L. Oulton and H.
Chadwick (Philadelphia, 1954), 10.
46 See page 15, above.
47 See the section on “The Kabbalstic Mystery,” below.
264 A GREAT MYSTERY
The prototypes of these familial Tetrads can be clearly seen through-

out the ancient Near East,48 for example, in the Egyptian Primal Pair, Shu
and Tefnut, who gave birth to the Creative Pair, Geb and Nut, the gods of
earth and sky; or in ancient Sumer, where the gods who represented heaven,
earth, sea and air were arranged into successive pairs of male and female
deities. In Babylon, the same deities reappeared with Semiticized names. At
the very beginning was Apsu and Tiamat (the sweet and salt waters), whose
coupling gave rise to all of the others. Chief among these were the Father,
An, and his consort Antu; after them followed numerous subsidiary pairs of
gods and goddesses who controlled the various processes of the cosmos.
These included Enlil, the Lord of the storm and the Tablets of Destiny,
whose consort was Ninlil; also Ea, the god of wisdom, and his consort,
Ninki. And there was also Sin, the moon-god and father of the sun, who
was married to Ningal, the goddess of reeds and fertility. Best known in the
West were Tammuz and Ishtar (derived from the Sumerian Dumuzi and
Inanna), whose love resurrected the dead husband after his death in the
underworld.49 Their story was later transferred to Marduk, the Babylonian
creator and restorer of life, after his own death and resurrection through his
marriage to Sarpanit.
The same essential story is paralleled by accounts in other Near East-
ern cultures which describe the death, resurrection, and marriage of divine
couples like Osiris and Isis, Adonis and Aphrodite, or Attis and Cybele,
whose basic pattern has now been admitted by even doubters like Henri
Frankfort, who long insisted that “differences” between the various re-
gional versions far outweighed their “similarities.”50 After an exhaustive
consideration of the ancient sources, T. N. D. Mettinger also comes to the
48 See R. Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (New York, 1967), 164–70. The elaboration
of the basic Tetrad into increasing numbers of generations was also paralleled by
many Gnostics in creating various versions of the structure of the Pleroma. This
elaboration can be clearly seen in the late Semitic paganism documented by Philo
Byblis between A.D. 64 and 141, and which Conrad L’Heureux believes to have
been determinative in the writings of the Gnostics. “There can be no doubt that
these materials are related,” Rank among the Canaanite Gods (Missoula, 1979), 32.
49 S. N. Kramer, who for some years doubted that Tammuz was actually resur-
rected from the underworld through his wife’s ministrations, has now admitted—
thanks to the discovery of previously missing parts of the Sumerian text—that this
was indeed the case. See his “Dumuzi’s Annual Resurrection: An Important Cor-
rection to Inanna’s Descent,” BASOR 183 (1966): 31.
50 Kingship and the Gods (Chicago, 1948), 287.
conclusion that the originals would have had the same general meaning that
Christians saw in the story of death and new life.51
Closer to Israel, of course, was the Canaanite “Tetrad” of Father El,
his wife, Asherah, and their Son and Daughter, Baal and Anath. Again, it
was the latter couple’s marriage which brought about the Son’s resurrection
and the rebirth of nature each spring. Monotheistic Judaism was very suc-
cessful in suppressing any hint of a comparable marriage between Yahweh
and a consort,52 but there is evidence that he too had been a married god
who died and was resurrected,53 a marriage that was effectively concealed by
“allegorizing” it as the “marriage” of God and Israel. It may well be that
Song of Songs preserves memories of this ancient marriage, now hidden
behind the symbolic figures of “Solomon” and his “Shulamite Bride.”54
Indeed, William Albright had demonstrated on linguistic grounds that the
Song had direct counterparts in the Ugaritic literature, which are at least a
thousand years older than it is in its present form.55 This suggests that it
originated in the same Canaanite background which was “retribalized” as
“Israelite culture” during the early Iron-age, and would thus have been part
of Israel’s own tradition at one time.56
51 See his The Riddle of Resurrection (Stockholm, 2001), 148–54.

52 Now documented by Iron-age finds at Kuntillat Ajrud, in the Sinai Desert,
and at Kirbhet el-Qom, near Hebron. See the discussion in the third edition of
Patai’s The Hebrew Goddess (1990), 300–301. Asherah was at first the wife of El, but
during the Monarchy, Yahweh seems to have taken over his place in the pantheon,
along with his wife. This is a difficult problem which has not yet been solved to the
general satisfaction of scholars.
53 E.g., Ezekiel 8:12–16, where Yahweh has departed from the earth, and is be-
ing lamented as “a Tammuz” by weeping women at the door of the Temple. His
return is then welcomed by the symbolism of the rising sun on the day of equinox.
See pp. 51–55, above.
54 A view especially promoted by T. J. Meek, “Canticles and the Tammus
Cult,” American Journal of Semitic Literature 39 (1922–23): 1–14.

55 “Archaic Survivals in the Text of Canticles,” in Hebrew and Semitic Studies Pre-
sented to Godfry Rolles Driver, ed. Winston Thomas and W. D. McHardy (Oxford,
1963).
56 “We now see the emergence of Israel as a complex phenomenon involving,
first, the arrival of new peoples in the central hills from a variety of sources, includ-
ing especially the collapsing cities of the Egypto-Canaanite empire, and second, the
gradual process of ethnic self-identification.” P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., “The Origins of
Ancient Israelite Religion,” in The Rise of Ancient Israel, ed. Hershel Shanks (Wash-
ington, DC, 1992, 131–32). Also, William Dever: “Most of the early Israelites, or
266 A GREAT MYSTERY
But the Canaanite/Proto-Israelite Tetrad57 was eventually enlarged

into Sanchuniathon’s late-Phoenician theogony, now consisting of four suc-
cessive generations of deities,58 with El and Baal being preceded by
Ouranos, the god of the heavens, and he by his Father, Eliun—a name no
doubt derived from Elyon (“The Highest”), one of El’s traditional epithets.
Why these “older” generations were added to the basic Canaanite Tetrad
remains unclear, but they appear to have been influenced by Hesiod’s
theogony, and/or the well-known Hurro-Hittite theogony, as illustrated by
Conrad L’Heureux (here shown without their female members);59 these in
turn were remarkably similar to the theogonies which we find in the typical
Gnostic Pleroma, according to the researches of Hans-Martin Schenke:
Hesiod Hurrian Sanchuniathon Gnostic60
Alala Eliun Pro-Father
Uranos Anu Uranos Father
Kronos Kumarbi El-Kronos Christos
Zeus Storm-God Zeus (Baal-Hadad) Savior
Schenke traces the Gnostic succession back to an original two generations
of Father-Mother-and-Son, which by “reduplication” (Verdoppelung) gave
rise to an entire sequence of “begettings.”61 In the resulting Tetrad, as de-
scribed in the Apocalypse of John, Bently Layton would place after “Christos”
proto-Israelites, were indigenous Canaanites” (“How to Tell a Canaanite from an

Israelite,” in ibid., 149). See also Dever’s Recent Archeological Discoveries and Biblical
Research (Seattle, 1990), and his comprehensive review article “Israel, History of
(Archaeology and the Israelite ‘Conquest’),” in ABD, 3:546–58; also, Niels Peter
Lemche, “Israel, History of (Premonarchic Period),” in ABD, 3:536–45, discussing
Israel’s premonarchial history from the same point of view (both 1992).
57 Conrad L’Heureux has recently noted that the Ugaritic records describe only
the two generations of El and Baal, and were not as yet extended into the genera-
tions listed by Sanchuniathon. See his Rank among the Canaanite Gods, 43. See also p.
15, above, for more on the original Semitic Triad, and note 24, p. 36.
58 Ca. 600 B.C. This date was assigned by Wm. F. Albright, on linguistic
grounds, though Otto Eissfeldt would place Sanchuniathon in the second millen-
nium B.C. See the discussion of L’Heureux, Rank among the Canaanite Gods, 41.
59 Ibid., 32. He also observes that “there can be no doubt that these materials
are related” (ibid.)

60 Taken from H.-M. Schenke, “Nag Hamadi Studien III,” Zeitschrift für
Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 14 (1962): 353. Schenke, however, believes that the
original form of this succession was the primal Triad of Father-Mother-Son.
61 Ibid., 354, 355.
the “Four Luminaries,” or the “four-faced” Cherubim who stood at the

head of Ezekiel’s Light-Stream.62 These in turn became the archetypes of
the four epochs of Gnostic history—the first three being antediluvian (i.e.,
the first, the second, and the third to ninth generations of mankind), and
the last being the world after Noah.63 Thus, even the material cosmos will
be seen to have emerged from images found in the Divine Fulness, or the
intermediate world of light.
The Gnostics may also have wished to work into this “Unified Field
Equation” the Heliopolitan succession of Atum/Re, Shu-Tefnut, Geb-Nut,
and the sibling pairs, Osiris-Isis and Seth-Nephthys—or even Plato’s fa-
mous list of primal deities, which also included a “Craftsman-Demiurge.”64
The result was a universal picture of the Pleroma which accounted for a
surprising number of historical and religious phenomena, and which at the
same time agreed with the biblical picture of man’s origin and progress
through the world. In short, the ancient Light-Stream of Ezekiel and the
Wisdom writers—later developed into a coherent metaphysic by Philo—
evolved into the New Testament “Fulness,” and finally into the Gnostic
“Pleroma,” becoming in the process an “Intermediate World of Light”
which linked the Transcendent to the Earthly, and which contained the
eternal images and attributes which God desired to impress upon his physi-
cal creation.65 But it also explained the tragic events which befell that crea-
tion, and which necessitated its eventual redemption.
62In Ezekiel 1; see pp. 248–49, above.

63The Gnostic Scriptures (Garden City, NY, 1987), 15.
64 Philo had already claimed that the Greeks derived their wisdom from the
Mosaic revelation. It is significant in this regard that the original Hebrew version of
Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (ca. 1000 B.C.) exactly parallels Philo’s account in the Critias:
When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance … he set the bounds
of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But Yahweh’s portion
was his people, Jacob the lot of his inheritance (Deut. 32:8–9, recently discovered at
Qumran).
The gods distributed the whole earth by regions … They apportioned to each his
own righteous allotment … Then the gods received diverse districts as their portions
and reigned over them (Critias, 109b–c).
65 One cannot fail to see that such ideas helped to create the doctrines of Neo-
Platonism, though these were actually based on Judaeo-Christian religious tradition,

which only used philosophy to better explain them.
268 A GREAT MYSTERY
It is not our purpose, however, to discuss “Gnosticism” per se,66 but

rather to account for its development from the traditions of the Temple
and the Light-Stream. Nor are we concerned with cataloguing the variety of
“myths” which the Gnostics produced. Actually, these were not “myths” at
all, for they were not derived from independent religious sources, nor did
they represent “foreign” cultural traditions which had somehow been
grafted onto Christianity.67 Instead, they were “mathematical” constructs,
deliberately designed to explain the mysterious events which took place
within the biblical Pleroma, using “personified characters” instead of alge-
braic symbols. We read, for instance, of dramatis personae with names like
Ennoia (“Thought”), Bythos (“Depth”), Sige (“Silence”), Barbelo (“God Is
Four”[?]), Logos (“Word”), Sophia (“Wisdom”), Aletheia (“Truth”), and Zoe
(“Life”), none of which were considered to be ontic beings with indepen-
dent existences, though they accounted for the structure of God’s actual
family (cf. Eph 3:14–15). In this, they bore striking resemblances to the
gods and goddesses of Semitic prehistory, and would have been the arche-
typal patterns (or “Celestial DNA”) which gave rise to such beings in the
proto-Israelite pantheon. What we actually find in the Gnostic Pleroma,
then, are abstract symbols for the divine attributes and interactions which comprise
God’s New Testament “Fulness,” and which he promised to bestow on others
through the process of “spiritual begetting.” In short, they were what the
Gnostics discovered when they “dissected” the Divine Nature and revealed
what it was that bore God’s power and deity to his new sons and daughters.
A great many individuals, however, have been fooled by the plethora
of unfamiliar names and personifications which they find in Gnostic texts,
and have frequently concluded that these must have come from some “for-
eign” source having little to do with legitimate Christianity. But the Gnos-
tics were not the inheritors of exotic religious traditions, but rather scholars
and exegetes who attempted to understand the New Testament in a logical
and comprehensive way, and thus to be able to correlate it with all of the
66 The Gnostics never in fact claimed to belong to anything called “Gnosti-

cism,” this being a later designation imposed on it by outsiders. “Gnosticism” was
instead a particular way of viewing Scripture, one which its followers avowed was
strictly based on Christian doctrine, but one which was divided into many different
“sects,” as was so-called “orthodoxy.”
67 Gnosticism’s occasional appeal to outside traditions was only to support and
verify its own doctrines and to prove that they were “universal.” In this, the Gnos-
tic method resembled the method of Philo, who used Greek learning to support his
Jewish ideas.
religious and scientific phenomena which they perceived throughout his-

tory, especially the “Lesser Law” of Judaism and its relationship to the
“Fuller Law” of Christ.
The following version of the Gnostic Pleroma is fairly standard and
will serve to typify how the Gnostics generally thought about the preexis-
tence, prehistory, and earthly career of mankind, as well as Christ’s redeem-
ing work to save it from its fallen condition.
In its simplest form (as found in The Exegesis of the Soul), the originally
“virgin” (i.e., sexually complete)68 power in the Pleroma fell into matter and
separated itself into masculine and feminine portions; the latter became a
prostitute and prayed to the Father for help. After being baptized and puri-
fied, her masculine counterpart—who was actually her Brother, the First-
Born Son—was sent to her. Their marriage in the Bridal Chamber reunited
them as a “virginal” and “androgynous” Unity, symbolized by the marriages
of earthly husbands and wives; then they returned to heaven, regenerated by
the Father’s grace.
The Valentinians explained this basic scheme with additional details
which made it still more comprehensive. They began by explaining how the
“One God,” who had existed by himself before time, divided into male and
female polarities, through which he initiated the dynamic process of crea-
tion. These archetypal poles were the “Propator” (or Father of All) and “Si-
lence” (the Mother of All), which in turn gave birth to a Son and Daughter
called “Intelligence” and “Reality.” Thus originated the Primal Tetrad of
“Father-Mother-Son-and-Daughter.” But “Reality,” driven by an insatiable
urge to create, broke away from “Intelligence” and was exiled from the
Pleroma. Her passions became matter (the hylic elements), and her repen-
tance the psychic souls, whereas her vision of the Savior (an embodiment of
“Intelligence”) bestowed a “weak” pneumatic nature on them. The psychic
souls were then given “formation” and “education” amidst the hylic ele-
ments. Their perfection will be completed when the pneumatic Savior
“strengthens” and regathers their pneumatic portions to himself (lrenaeus,
Against Heresies, 1.1.1–8.5). Meanwhile, their education amongst the hylic
elements would serve as a “school-master to bring them unto Christ” (Gal
3:24). In the Gospel of Philip this was expressed with the saying, “When we
were Hebrews we had only our mother, but when we became Christians we
had both father and mother” (52:22–25).

270 A GREAT MYSTERY
Their restoration (apokatastasis) to their original oneness with Christ

will be the great “Wedding Feast” promised by Scripture, and it will take
place in the Heavenly “Bridal Chamber,” prefigured below by the rejoining
of human “Adams” and “Eves” in the earthly Bridal Chamber, i.e., the Je-
rusalem Temple:
When Eve was in Adam death did not exist. When she was separated
from him death came into being. If he enters again and attains his for-
mer self, death will be no more (Gospel of Philip 68:23–27).
If the woman had not separated from the man, she would not die with
the man. His separation become the beginning of death. Because of this
Christ came to repair the separation which was from the beginning, and
again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the
separation and unite them. But the woman is united to her husband in
the Bridal Chamber. Indeed, those who have united in the Bridal
Chamber will no longer be separated (ibid., 70:9–20).
It will thus be seen that the pneumatic and psychic principles which presently
operate in the world are but extensions of either complete or incomplete sexual
principles which originated in the Divine, and that the marriages of their
earthly antitypes are but stages in their ongoing reunion and salvation.
Using the “mythological” names which the Valentinians devised for
these abstract sexual principles, the early Church Father, Irenaeus, recounts
how Bythos, a “Perfect Unity” of Propator and Sige (Father and Mother), gave
rise to Nous (“Intelligence”) and Aletheia (“Reality”), which was also a “Per-
fect Unity” (i.e., Son and Daughter). Nous further devolved into the Logos
(the “Word”), and Aletheia into Zoe (“Life”); Zoe in turn divided into thirty
male-female “Aeons,” who were God’s creative “attributes.”69 Sophia
(“Wisdom”) was the final manifestation of the devolving Female Principle
(Sige→Aletheia→Zoe→Sophia), falling into matter as the earthly Church,
while the Savior was the final manifestation of the devolving Masculine
Principle (Propater→Nous→Logos→Christos), both united and incarnate
in the perfect flesh of Christ. This of course presupposes that Jesus himself
had been a married individual, as we read in the Gospel of Philip:
69 E.g., “Man,” “Mingling,” “Undecaying,” “Pleasure,” “Blending,” “Happi-
ness,” “Faith,” “Ancestral,” “Ecclesiastical,” etc. These “attributes” correspond

roughly to the “Sephiroth” from which the Kabbalistic world was created (see “The
Kabbalistic Great Mystery,” below). It is also said that the number “thirty” repre-
sents the “hidden” years of the Logos prior to his public mission (e.g., the “preexis-
tent” career of Christ, corresponding to his thirty earthly years).
And the wife (koinōnos) of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ
loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the
mouth (63:32–36).
Indeed, earthly marriage was considered by them to be the reflection of the
heavenly marriage in the Pleroma and also to be the “catalyst” for the hu-
man couple’s soteriological “marriage” to Christ. (This we shall detail in the
following section when we discuss “The Gnostic Bridal Chamber.”)
The so-called “Sethian” Gnostics developed this analysis still further,
hoping to explain how the male and female characteristics of God became
attached to both “Adam and Eve” and “Christ and the Church,” and in
such a way that the marriage of the human pair could symbolize and “cata-
lyze” the marriage of the heavenly pair. Thus we read in the Apocryphon of
John that the “Father of the All” began his creative work by emitting his
Female Principle, Barbelo, and that they together begot five androgynous
sets of divine attributes: “Thought,” “Foreknowledge,” “Love,” “Indestruc-
tibility,” and “Truth” (4:10–6:10). These “attributes” flowed into their Son,
the “Thrice Male,” or “Self-Originate” (Autogenes)—meaning the Father’s
self-replicating nature—or the uncreated power which continues forever by
means of posterity (7:15–30).
The Son’s luminous “attributes” had four “Faces,” corresponding to
the four Cherubim at the head of the “Light-Stream” (Ezek 1:10; 1 Enoch 9,
40, 71; Rev 4:6–7); these were the “Four Luminaries” (Armozel, Oriel, Davei-
thei, Eleleth), found chiefly in documents of “Sethian” provenance. Armozel
contained the preexistent Christ and Adam (Autogenes and Adamas),70 while
Oriel contained the preexistent Seth, and Daveithei his preexistent posterity
(the preexistent Church). Thus all were in possession of the same “likeness
and image” which the Father gave to Adam (cf. Gen 5:3 and 1:26).
In this way was created the “True Race” of Immortals, i.e., the preexis-
tent spirits of the patriarchs and the Saints, including those who would re-
pent and be glorified at a later date. Eleleth, however, contained certain souls
who would be slow to be converted (Apocryphon of John, 8:28–9:24). The
seed of Cain, on the other hand, would be begotten by the future Demiurge
(ibid., 10:27–28, 34) and therefore would possess his “darkened” (i.e., psy-
chic) power (11:7–15). This appears to have been deduced from Genesis 4:1,
where Eve states: “I have gotten a man from Yahweh.”
It was at this point that Sophia (who was the last emanation in Eleleth)
wished to create without the help of her Consort (Apocryphon of John, 9:25–
70 Who in the Exegesis of the Soul were preexistently brothers (132:9–10).

272 A GREAT MYSTERY
35). The result of her one-sided effort was Ialdabaoth, the Demiurge (10:1–
19), who unknowingly received some of his Mother’s pneumatic power
(10:20–21; 13:26–28), thereby supposing himself to be the “One True God”
(11:15–22; cf. Isa 43:10). Yet because he was mostly “darkness,” he diluted
her power, causing it to become “weak” (Apocryphon of John, 11:10–15). In its
“weakened” (i.e., psychic) form, it was shared with the Demiurge’s seven an-
gels (12:4–10), who used it to create the Hebdomad, or the seven “planetary
spheres” (11:22–35; 12:25–26).71 But when Sophia saw how her pneumatic
power had been “diminished” (13:14–17), she implored the Pleroma to res-
cue it. Her heavenly Consort (the Savior) responded by raising her to an
“intermediate” place (i.e., Judaism), where she could rest until her “defi-
ciency” was corrected (13:33–14:13). Then he set about to lure Ialdabaoth
into relinquishing Sophia’s imprisoned light by placing it in human flesh; this
he would later rescue by means of the Atonement.
To set this daring plan into motion, the voice of the “Father-Mother”
reached down to Ialdabaoth, revealing that a god higher than himself exists
(14:14–15), at the same time disclosing his image in human form (14:21–24;
15:8–9).72 When Ialdabaoth and his angels saw his wonderful image reflected
on the waters, they immediately began to create a man after its “likeness”
(15:1–3), clothing it with their own psychic characteristics (15:13–18:2) and
the hylic elements of matter (18:2–19:1). This psychic-hylic creature, however,
remained “inactive and motionless” (19:13–14) until Ialdabaoth was tricked
into blowing his spirit into its face (19:23–25),73 not realizing that this was
71These were symbolized by the seven-branched Menorah in the Temple.

72Compare the human appearance of God’s “glory” in Ezekiel 1:26–27.
73 There was also a tradition in Late Judaism that the original Adam was at first
a worm-like creature who crept on the earth and could not stand upright until God
breathed his soul into him. See Filoramo, History of Gnosticism, 92, 221. Gershom
Scholem connects this tradition with the legend of the Golem, who was made of
the clay, and had to be awakened with magical commands using the Sacred Name.
“Die Vorstellung von Golem,” Eranos Jahrbuch 22 (1953): 240ff. Louis Ginzberg
also makes mention of such a tradition: “When God was about to put a soul into
Adam’s clod-like body, He said: At what point shall I breathe the soul into him?”
This tradition may have been extant when the Gnostics produced their great syn-
thesis of religious knowledge. For instance, R. Johanan b. Haninah, an Amora who
flourished in the third century, opined that during the first twelve hours of Adam’s
existence he had remained lifeless (b. Sanhedrin 38b), an idea based on Psalm 139:16,
which refers to his body as a golem. The idea that holy men might also create golems
is developed in Sanhedrin 65b (Scholem, Kabbalah, 351).
in fact some of Sophia’s “weak” pneumatic power. Thus “Adam” received a

pneumatic spirit of his own, and became more intelligent than the angels
(19:32–20:5). But because he was “free from sin,” they became jealous of
their intended victim, and imprisoned him in “the lowest region of matter,”
where they hoped to subjugate him and capture his pneumatic light for them-
selves (20:6–14). But the Father-Mother sent him a helper, called Epinoia (a
personal manifestation of the “Beneficent Spirit,” 20:15–16), who could
teach him concerning the true source of his pneumatic element and show him
the way back to heaven (20:23). Thus Sophia’s “deficiency” would be cor-
rected, and her “seed,” the race of Seth, restored to its “fulness” (21:20–21,
27–28).
The Demiurge next attempted to imprison the newborn Adam and the
indwelling Epinoia in carnal mortality, so that he could control the coveted
pneumatic elements (20:25–21:16). Thus he placed Adam in the seductive
luxury of Paradise, where the “Tree of Life” would maintain him in slothful
indolence (21:16–25). But Epinoia enlightened him by means of the “Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil,” which taught him of his divine potential
and “awakened his thinking” (22:3–8; 21:16); indeed, it was the Savior him-
self who ordained that Adam should eat of the fruit of this Tree (22:9),
communicating his will through Epinoia (22:28–32):
It was I (Christ) who brought about that they ate … The Serpent taught
them to eat from wickedness and lust … that Adam might be useful to
him. But Adam knew that he was disobedient, due to the light that was
in him, which corrected him in his thinking (Apocryphon of John 22:3–18).
The powers thought that it was by their own power and will that they
(caused Adam to partake), but the Holy Spirit was accomplishing every-
thing through them as it wished (Gospel of Philip 55:14–19).
The Demiurge and his angels then sought to remove Epinoia74 from Adam
and take her for themselves, but she skillfully eluded them (22:28–32). They
were able, however, to obtain an earthly “Eve” from his rib, one which
possessed the likeness of Epinoia (22:34–36). The real Epinoia then taught
Adam to recognize in his wife this image of his true spiritual self (“he rec-
ognized his counter-image,” 23:9), it being his personal allotment of Christ’s
Spirit (referred to by the Valentinians as the “angel”). It is this “angel”
74At this point, it seems that Epinoia (actually the Holy Spirit) and Adam’s own
pneumatic spirit are one and the same. Cf. 1 Corinthians 6:17: “He who cleaves to
the Lord is one Spirit.”
274 A GREAT MYSTERY
which men receive when they marry a wife in the Bridal Chamber (“they
will send him his Consort,” 23:14–15), meaning that the earthly union
“catalyzes” a spiritual union with the Savior (Eph 5:31–32).
In short, when the psychic man marries a spouse (Epinoia’s “image”), he
receives the pneumatic nature which she symbolizes, and is made complete.
This explains why the Gnostics supposed that marrying a wife in the
Earthly Bridal Chamber would simultaneously “marry” them to the pneu-
matic Christ in the Heavenly Bridal Chamber, and in the process restore
God’s Male-Female Image75 at all levels, corporate and personal, heavenly and
earthly. That the Gnostics deemed this procedure to be vitally necessary for
their salvation suggests that such a doctrine had previously existed in the
Primitive Church. This was undoubtedly the ancient tradition which
Heinrich Schlier detected behind the Pauline “Great Mystery” (pp. 159–61,
above), according to which the preexistent spirits of the Church had once
been “consubstantial” with the preexistent “Bridegroom,” and must again
be reunited to him—one couple at a time—thus reconstituting the heavenly
“Body of Christ.”
THE GNOSTIC BRIDAL CHAMBER

As long as the Jerusalem Temple was still standing Christians could imagine
that the embrace of the Cherubim symbolized Christ’s “marriage” to the
Church, as well as the marriages of their earthly antitypes. Paul character-
ized this sacred paradigm as the Ephesian “Great Mystery,” wherein the
“marriage” of Christ and the Church was paralleled by the marriages of
men and women (Eph 5:31–33). In 1 Corinthians 11:11 he further opined
that “the man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man,
in the Lord,” i.e., when spiritually united to the Savior.
We already saw how the early Gospel of Thomas referred to the “mar-
riage” of Jesus/Wisdom and the disciples as “the two becoming one, so that
the male is no longer male, and the female is no longer female” (Log. 22).76
This union was depicted as a sacred embrace (“When you place eyes in the
place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of
a foot, and an image in the place of an image”), no doubt patterned after
the Embracing Cherubim in the Holy of Holies, the latter being referred to
as a “Bridal Chamber” (Log. 104). This is undoubtedly what Matthew’s Je-
sus was speaking of when he asked, “Can the children of the Bridal Chamber
75 Genesis 1:26–27.
mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with them?” (Matt 9:15), and what
John the Baptist meant when he declared that Jesus was the “Bridegroom”
(John 3:29), and he the “friend” of the Bridegroom.
Such an embrace and “marital union” was still recalled by the late first
(or early second) century Odes of Solomon, which tell how “Immortal Life
embraced me and kissed me” and how “the arm of the Bridegroom over
the Bride” yokes them together; the result was that “He who is joined to
him who is immortal truly shall become immortal.”77 After the Temple was
destroyed in A.D. 70, many Christians felt it necessary to construct Bridal
Chambers of their own, where similar “marriages” could be enacted. The
Marcosians,78 for example, were said to
construct a Bridal Chamber (numphon) and perform a mystical rite with
those who are being initiated, pronouncing certain invocations, and they
affirm that it is a spiritual marriage that is celebrated by them, after the
likeness of the unions above (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.21.3).
Nymphon is also the word which the Gospel of Philip would use to depict the
Jerusalem Holy of Holies (69:24–25), where Christ and the Church were
simultaneously united with the unions of human couples.79 Marcus, their
leader, in fact characterized their ritual embraces with the same kind of lan-
guage which Philo had used to describe the Embracing Cherubim, or God’s
male-female “powers,” as they united in the Temple:
And these Powers, being simultaneously clasped in each other’s em-
brace, do sound the glory of Him by whom they were produced
(Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.14.7).

78 A late second century Valentinian sect.
79 See the complete quotations on pp. 269–70, above. Though there is no evi-
dence that couples were actually married inside of the Jerusalem Temple, the Mish-
nah records that it was on the Feast of Tabernacles that men traditionally chose
their brides (Ta‘anit 4:8). Josephus (Antiquities 15.11.5) adds that the pure then
“came in together with their wives.” The medieval traveler, Estori ben Moses, further
quoted from a Rabbi ben Hyrkanus to the effect that Solomon had provided two
gates of entry, one for mourners, and the other for married couples. Deuteronomy
23:1–2 in fact barred access to the Temple to those who were sexually imperfect,
suggesting that one had to be married before being allowed inside, and that the act of
henosis which the Cherubim depicted then provided spiritual witness of their hoped
for union with YHWH. As we shall see, however, the Gnostics appear to have ac-
tually married couples inside of their “Bridal Chambers,” since Hebrews 10:19–20
declares that Christians should have personal access to the Holy of Holies.
276 A GREAT MYSTERY
Though he multiplies their number to seven (the original number of compo-

nents in the Philonic Light-Stream), they are “simultaneously enclasped” in
imitation of the divine unions in the Pleroma (which he refers to as the
“Heavenly Womb”), and from whence come the souls of infants, who cry
“in praise of God” as they are born (ibid., 1.14.8).
Hippolytus also records that the Simonians (another late second-
century Gnostic group) engaged in sacred embraces to promote the mar-
riage of Christ and the Church:
Indeed, they count themselves blessed because of this union, and say it
is perfect love and the Holy of Holies (Refutations, 6.19.5).
Irenaeus, however, claimed that these embraces were not very spiritual, be-
cause some of the females became pregnant (Against Heresies, 1.6.3).80 In-
deed, early Christians were often accused of immoral behavior.81 Justin
Martyr, on the other hand, felt obliged to protest that promiscuous inter-
course “is not one of our mysteries” (First Apology, 29). Schenke likewise
believes that the ritual embrace in the Valentinian Bridal Chamber was only
symbolic and culminated in a simple kiss:82
For it is by a kiss that the perfect conceive and give birth. For this rea-
son we also kiss one another. We receive conception from the grace
which is in one another (Gospel of Philip 59:2–5).
Another second century text which depicts these ritual embraces and
their soteriological effect is the Gospel of Truth:
They cling to his head, which is a repose for them. And they hold them-
selves to him so that, as it were, they receive from his face something
like kisses (46:28–34. trans. Bently Layton).
They possess his head which is a rest for them, and they hold on close
to him, as though to say that they have participated in his face by means
of kisses (ibid., trans. George W. McRae).
80This may have been polemic, however, since (as Bousset observed long ago)
the reporter no longer understood the true meaning of the rite, and viewed it as a
deception practiced on unwary females. Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, 316; quoted in R.
M. Grant, “The Mystery of Marriage in the Gospel of Philip,”Vigiliae Christianae 15
(1961): 133.
82 “Das Evangelium nach Philippus,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 84 (January,
1959): 5.
Though this was also a Valentinian “Gnostic” production, it was still “in-
comparably closer to normative Christianity than that of Valentinius’ later
disciples, who much more than he were influenced by syncretism.83 Thus
we are probably reading of a rite which belonged to the authentic traditions
of the early Church.84 Kendrick Grobel’s translation suggests that this was
not merely the embrace of Christ and the Church, but the embrace of a
husband and wife inside of the Bridal Chamber, through which they united
themselves to Christ’s “Face”:
Theirs is His head, which becomes a repose for them, and they are en-
clasped as they approach Him, so that they have partaken of His face by
means of the embraces (46:28–34).
This reading again supports the Valentinian notion that one’s soteriological
union with Christ is “catalyzed” by the union of the man and woman in the
Bridal Chamber.
We earlier saw that this mystery of spiritual fusion was also depicted in
the “orthodox” epistle, 2 Clement (dating from the second century), which
likewise stipulated that men shall enter the kingdom “when the two shall be
one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female” (12).85 In-
deed, this important idea would still be quoted verbatim by Christian writers
in the Middle Ages (e.g., in the Tractatus Aureus Hermetis)86 as the hidden
secret of alchemy, a secret going all of the way back to the Gospel of Thomas
and Paul’s “Great Mystery.” But the most important use of this archetypal
83 Karl Heussi, quoted in Kendrick Grobel, The Gospel of Truth (New York,
1960), 15.
84 Kendrick Grobel places the composition of the Gospel of Truth at around
A.D. 150 (Gospel of Truth, 28), that is to say, about the same time that W. C. van
Unnik supposes Philip to have been written. George W. MacRae proposes “the
middle or second half of the second century,” in The Nag Hammadi Library in Eng-
lish, 37, although van Unnik suggests a date as early as A.D. 140–145, due to the
“primitiveness” of its Valentinianism. Jung Codex (London, 1955), 54, 97–104. In
any case, it too had to have been in existence prior to A.D. 180, when Irenaeus
disapprovingly spoke of it (Against Heresies, 3.11.9). Like the Gospel of Philip, the Gos-
pel of Truth remains relatively free of late Gnostic fantasies. It makes, for example,
no mention of Wisdom’s fall from the Pleroma (though the figure of Plane, or “Er-
ror,” may be an early form of her in maturing Valentinian doctrine, Grobel, 24).
86 Thomas’s “the above as the below” and “the outer as the inner” became the
Tractate’s “superius/inferius” and “externis/internis.”

278 A GREAT MYSTERY
embrace would be made in the second century Gospel of Philip,87 to which we

have already alluded several times. Here we find a graded sequence of ordi-
nances, beginning with the “cleansing bath” of baptism, leading through a
87 The opinions of early commentators concerning the date of the Gospel of

Philip vary considerably. Henri-Charles Puech fixed it generally during the second
or early third centuries, because of its Valentinian associations (in Hennecke-
Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 1:278). R. McLain Wilson favored the second cen-
tury, because “in Philip the Gnostic system has not yet dissipated into fantasy as in
some other later texts” (Gospel of Philip, 3–4). It in fact retains numerous points of
contact with the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, though we cannot make too
much of this, since even “the Gnosics remained fairly close to the ‘orthodox’
Church down to about 180” (ibid., 4). The author of Philip obviously considered
himself to be a Christian (52:21–24; 75:30–36), and one who recognized the Apos-
tolic tradition (62:7ff); Valentinus, according to Tertullian, was even considered for
a bishop’s seat in the Roman Church. W. C. van Unnik maintains that Valentinus
was himself the author of Philip, which would necessarily place its composition
around A.D. 140–145 (The Jung Codex, 54, 97–104.). Andrew K. Helmbold, in con-
sidering both the relatively undeveloped state of Philip’s Valentinianism and the
book’s own insistence that it is a “Christian” work, concludes that “it would be
difficult to make this claim after the time of Irenaeus” (ca. A.D. 180) “Gnosticim,”
in Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia, 1:688). Just as the previous concensus that the Gospel of
Thomas was a “Gnostic” work from “ca. A.D. 140” has now been shown to be un-
warranted (thanks to its lingering associations with the Wisdom tradition), it would
appear that many conceptions in the Gospel of Philip once thought to be “Gnostic”
are likewise of an earlier theological provenance. Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the
Egyptian Gnostics (New York, 1960), even believes that Philip came from early
Jewish-Christian circles (ibid., 225), though Valentinus had begun to make his own
novel use of some of them. It therefore seems prudent to choose a somewhat ear-
lier date for Philip than Wesley Isenberg’s “second half of the second century” (in
The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 131), just as Davies chose an earlier date for the
Gospel of Thomas. In fact, both contain the same traditional Wisdom themes of
“Union with Light” in the Bridal Chamber, “putting on the Divine Image,” and the
restoration of Adam’s archetypal “maleness,” as well as the Christian apocalyptic
themes of the preexistent Church, Adam and Eve as surrogates for Christ and the
Church, and the use of human marriage as a soteriological sacrament. Thus we are
inclined to accept van Unnik’s original estimate of a date around A.D. 140 for the
composition of the Gospel of Philip, though we must of course allow for the possibil-
ity that various additions or reworkings of the text occurred before it was commit-
ted to the hand of the copyist at Nag Hammadi in the early fourth century.
“resurrection” and something called “the redemption,”88 and culminating in

the rite of the Bridal Chamber:
Baptism has the resurrection and the redemption. The redemption [is to
hasten into] the Bridal Chamber; but the Bridal Chamber is supreme …
You will not find [anything like] it (Gospel of Philip 69:25–27).89
In the Bridal Chamber one again finds the earthly “images” of marriage
which catalyze the heavenly “marriage” with the Savior and a return to the
perfect state of the Beginning:
Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and im-
ages. One will not receive truth in any other way. There is a rebirth and
an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary that they must rise again
through the image … The image must rise again through the image. The
Bridegroom and the image must enter through the image into the truth;
this is the restoration (apokatastasis, 67:9–18).90
In fact, one must take on the image of the heavenly Bridegroom and his
Bride through one’s own earthly marriage:
If one does not become a bridegroom or a bride (one) will not be able
to see the Bridegroom or the Bride (ibid., 82:24–26).
This “Great Mystery” was understood quite literally by the Valentini-
ans, being both “a reenactment of the archetypal situation”91 and its “cata-
lyst.” Thus it was at once a real human marriage and an indispensable “fore-
taste and assurance of ultimate union with an angelic, heavenly counter-
88 The “Redemption” may possibly refer to salvation from “spiritual death”
(“at-one-ment” with God), as opposed to salvation from “mortal death” (resurrec-

tion). See Eric Segelberg’s “The Coptic-Gnostic Gospel according to Philip and Its
Sacramental System” Numen 7 (1960): 189–200. These appear to correspond to the
following sacramental system: “The Lord did everything in a mystery: a baptism
and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption (apolytrōsis) and a bridal chamber”
(Gospel of Philip 67:27–30).
89 Using Schenke’s suggestions for filling the lacunae. See R. McLain Wilson,
The Gospel of Philip (London, 1962, 140–141).

90 For apokatastasis Wilson gives “the final consummation and restoration of all
things” (ibid., 129).

91 Andrew Helmbold, The Nag Hammadi Gnostic Texts and the Bible (Grand Rap-
ids, 1967), 70.

280 A GREAT MYSTERY
part.”92 “The object in view was evidently to anticipate the final union … at
the end of time, realizing it in the sacrament.”93 Thus the “Lesser Mystery”
of human love led to the “Greater Mystery” of union with Christ.
The Gospel of Philip further tells us that the Bridal Chamber where this
union took place was eikonikos (65:11–12), a word which is usually trans-
lated as “mirrored” or “mirror-like.” According to the Greek-English Diction-
ary of Liddell and Scott, eikonikos can also have the additional nuance of
“simulated,” a meaning which comes out clearly in the following passage:
This is the man created ‘according to the image’ (eikonikos), i.e., ‘created
by simulating the reflected image’ (72:14).
This reminds us again of Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians:
We all reflect as in a mirror the glory of the Lord; thus we are trans-
formed into his image from glory to glory (3:18).
We also recall how the Wisdom writers and Philo described the contents in
the Holy of Holies as “mirrors” of God’s glory (Wis 7:25–27; Philo, Ques-
tions on Genesis, 1.57; Who Is the Heir?, 112; etc.), designed to reflect God’s
image to the beholder and to fill his mind with its “multitudinous light,”
thereby rejoining the light of the soul to the light which comes from God.94
The “Final Document” issued by the 1966 Messina Colloquium on Gnosticism
therefore defined the goal of Gnostic worship as
(bringing together) the divine identity of the knower (the Gnostic), the
known (the divine substance of one’s transcendent self), and the means by
which one knows (gnosis as an important divine faculty to be awakened
and actualized).95
How this took place will be the subject of the next section.
92Isenberg, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 1977 edition, 131. See also
Wilson, who agrees that a real marriage took place, which was “the earthly counter-
part of the final union in the Pleroma” (Gospel of Philip, 121). There “the sacred
marriage of the Aeons” (Christ and the Church) “provided the model for earthly
activity, and the Valentinian sacrament of the bridal chamber was in some sense a
foretaste of the final bliss” (ibid., 96).
93 Kurt Rudolph and R. McL. Wilson, Gnosis: the Nature and History of Gnosticism
(San Francisco, 1983), 245.

95 In Bianchi, Le Origini dello Gnosticismo, xxvii.
THE MYSTERY OF THE BRIDAL CHAMBER

In a very important paper, which appeared in 1980, Jorunn Buckley pro-
vided a valuable summary of the actual process by which salvation took
place in the Valentinian Bridal Chamber.96 We believe that if one adds her
indispensable analysis to Philo’s interpretation of the Sacred Marriage in the
Holy of Holies,97 and these to Stevan L. Davies’ study of the Gospel of Tho-
mas,98 one will obtain a very clear picture of the “Great Mystery” as it once
existed in early Judaism and Primitive Christianity.
Buckley begins by quoting the author’s belief (already encountered in
the Gospel of Thomas, Log. 77) that
Truth, which existed since the beginning is sown everywhere. And many
see it as it is sown, but few are they who see it as it is reaped (Gospel of
Philip 55:19–22).99
This is because men in their present worldly state are blind and dissimilar to
the Truth. But they must attain a state of “divinity” while yet in the world if
they would attain it after death. Indeed,
it is not possible for anyone to see anything of the things that actually
exist unless one becomes like them … But you saw something in that place
and you became those things. What you see you shall become (61:27–38; our
emphasis).
Buckley summarizes the philosophical implications of these statements as
follows:
Like influences the like. The next step, however, the acquisition of di-
vine identity, seems to require that the distinction between subject and
object be abolished. So there may, in effect, be no difference between
subject and object, simply because the usual separation of the world and
the aeon no longer holds. If identification with the divine is thus ob-
tained, while the believer remains in the flesh, this identification enables
him to behave as if he had already left this world.100
This process she conveniently epitomizes with the following short formula:
“identification of knower-known-means of knowledge,”101 which in effect says that
96 “A Cult-Mystery in the Gospel of Philip,” JBL 99 (1980): 569–81.

97 See pp. 38 ff, above.
99 Buckley, “Cult-Mystery,” 571.
100 Ibid., 571.
101 Ibid., 570. Compare the Messina statement on p. 280, above.
282 A GREAT MYSTERY
the merging of the initiate’s image with the image of God takes place by
means of a third image—the means of knowledge—which is common to
them both102 and which will inform and direct their “mystical fusion.”
Buckley finds that the required means of knowledge in the Gospel of Philip
was the “mirrored (eikonikos) Bridal Chamber” (65:11–12).103 Though its
blatantly sexual images were considered by the world to be a “defilement of
the form,” they were nevertheless indispensable, for through them, one was
introduced to the “undefiled relationship” of Christ and the Church
(64:35ff):
What is the resurrection? The image must rise again through the image.
The Bridegroom and the image must enter through the image into the
Truth (67:14–18).
Acquiring the proper image in the Bridal Chamber, then, while yet in the
flesh, was the sacramental means of assuring one of “full identity with the
divine entity,”104 even “the transition from being a Christian to becoming
Christ” (67:26–27):105
You saw something in that place and you became those things. You saw
the Spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You
saw the Father, you shall become Father (61:27–31).
For this purpose, the Holy of Holies (or “Bridal Chamber”) was
opened to us who are below, in order that we should go in to the secret
of the Truth … But we shall to in through despised symbols and weak-
nesses (85:11–15, trans. Wilson).
The “despised symbols” are of course “marriage in the world,” whose im-
age is a “defilement” of the True. But it is through them that one will merge
102 Davies referred to this common link as a spatial metaphor: “This image of
God can be recaptured temporally … or discerned cognitively … and possibly even

apprehended spatially, although it is not clear how one might spatially apprehend
such an Image. Nevertheless, one may anticipate such a spatial metaphor.” The
Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom (New York, 1983), 69. We believe that the
Embracing Cherubim—which he seems to have been unaware of, though he clearly
“anticipated” them—were the “spatial metaphor” which linked the viewer to the
image of the Divine.
104 Ibid.
105 Ibid.; our emphasis.
one’s own image with the Divine Image. This is why the Gospel of Philip in-
sists that
No one shall be able to see the Bridegroom and the Bride unless one be-
comes a bridegroom or a bride (82:24–26, trans. Wilson; our emphasis).
Marriage in the Bridal Chamber thus turns out to be the third link in
Buckley’s formula, “identification of knower-known-means of knowledge,” i.e., the
catalyst and the governing paradigm which actualizes the merging of the
initiate’s image with the Image of God (Gen 1:26).
We have preferred to use Wilson’s translation at this point, because his
expression, “despised symbols,” graphically indicates that the author of Philip
was still thinking of the symbolism of the Embracing Cherubim (or as the
author of Gospel of Truth calls them, “the embraces”). Whether or not actual
statues had been resupplied for use in second-century “Bridal Chambers,”
we cannot say; but their symbolism certainly did. This symbolism may even have
been re-created by the participants themselves, as reflected in mirrors, in order to pro-
vide the necessary image which would bring about the identification of their
own images with the “image” of the Divine. (This will be discussed in the
following section.)
Buckley thus continues: “The third element, the means of knowledge, has
now become visible. Going through the ‘lowly and weak image’” (i.e., Wil-
son’s “despised symbols” of earthly marriage) “the believer acquires the
pure union … The Gospel’s own insistent claim to the effect that types and
images are needed to reach salvation, ought to be taken literally. Only
through cultic means may the triple identification occur between knower-
known-means of knowledge.”106
In conclusion, “the Gospel of Philip challenges the long-lived definition
of Gnosticism which rests solely on the individual’s theoretical insight,”107
or that knowledge per se automatically releases the soul from its bondage to
matter. Rather, as she points out, “correct cultic application of (the Gnos-
tic’s) knowledge abolishes any distinctions between this world and the be-
yond. By practice, the knowledgeable one simply turns earth into
heaven.”108 In this way, “the full-fledged Gnostic in Gos. Phil. transforms
106 Ibid., 573. Compare the Gospel of Thomas, Log. 22, where the image of the
believer becomes one with the Image of God.
108 Ibid.
284 A GREAT MYSTERY
himself into a unified, resurrected being in the bridal chamber.”109 By “be-

ing joined to the Truth” he actually becomes the Truth (84:13).
But to make this possible, the inaccessible, heavenly Truth must first
be transformed into “types and images” (67:9–12) which the Gnostic can
apprehend; next, he must transform himself into a form which corresponds
to these “types and images” (union with a wife). Finally, “the distance be-
tween the two is bridged by being turned into communicating transformations so
that the Gnostic can meet with the Truth in the ritual action of the sacra-
ment.”110
One of the great advantages of Raphael Patai’s research111 is now ob-
vious, for we are finally able to understand precisely what these “types and
images of the Truth” in the Temple were, namely, the heavenly marriage sym-
bolized by the embracing Cherubim. To this the Gnostic and his wife conformed
in their own “Bridal Chambers,” in order to sacramentally coadunate
“knower-known-means of knowledge.” This also explains Stevan Davies’ “spatial
metaphor,” through which “an image is brought together in place of an
image” (Gospel of Thomas, Log. 22). Thus we at last understand why Philo
opined that “the beginning and end of happiness is to be able to see God”
(Questions on Exodus, 2.41), for without this “means of knowledge” (Buck-
ley), one has no means of becoming identified with the known. Philo there-
fore explains that
When God willed to send down the image of living excellence from
heaven to earth in pity for our race, that it should not lose its share of
the better lot, he constructs as a symbol of the Truth the holy tabernacle
and its contents to be a representation and copy of Wisdom (Who Is the
Heir? 1l2).
We also understand why the Holy of Holies was called a “mirrored Bridal
Chamber” (Gospel of Philip 65: 12), for Wisdom—whose “mirrors” were the
Cherubim (Questions on Genesis, 1.57)—was herself the “unblemished mirror
of the Power of God,” and an “image of his goodness” (Wis 7:26). We also
recall that the Cherubim were symbols of God’s uniting “Powers,” one of
which was actually named “Goodness” (On the Cherubim, 27). Thus, there
can be little doubt that the embrace depicted by the statues was the mirror in
which one beheld the “image of the Truth.” This is why the Gospel of Philip
tells us that
109 Ibid., 579.

When we were begotten we were united. None shall be able to see him-
self either in water (baptism?) or in a mirror without light. Nor again will
you be able to see in the light without water or a mirror (69:9–11).
THE MIRRORED BRIDAL CHAMBER

We must however consider the possibility that plastic statues as figurative
“mirrors” of God’s image (Davies’ “spatial metaphor”) completely disap-
peared after the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, and that they were
replaced by actual mirrors on the walls of certain Bridal Chambers (“the mir-
rored Bridal Chamber,” Gospel of Philip 65:12). The principle of the rite
would of course have remained the same: one “saw” God reflected in the
image of the Cherubic Embrace, whether it originated from statues, or was
recreated by the participants themselves:
So in that place you see everything and do not see yourselves, but in that
place you do see yourself … and what you see you shall become (Gospel
of Philip 62:22–35).
This rather obscure passage seems to say that the man and wife saw
their own reflection as they embraced. At the same time, they were given to
understand that this was no longer a personal image, but an image of the Truth.
Moreover, there is a reference in Clement of Alexandria’s Miscellanies to cer-
tain “false Gnostics,” who “embrace the divine vision … in mirrors or by
means of mirrors” (7.3; see also below), indicating that the idea of Wisdom
as a “mirror of the Power of God” had now been transformed into a physi-
cal means of reflection (“nor will you be able to see in light without water
or a mirror,” Gospel of Philip 69:10–11). Thus, Buckley’s “means of knowl-
edge” may have become the “mirrored reflection” of the participants in the
Bridal Chamber, which once again united the “image of the knower” with the
“image of the known.”
We find similar information about the “mirrored Bridal Chamber” in
the Nag Hammadi treatise entitled the Tripartite Tractate, which MacRae
identifies as “Valentinian,”112 though Harold W. Attridge and Elaine Pagels
attribute it partly to the influence of Heracleon.113 There, we learn that the
members of the Perfect Man
112 “Nag Hammadi,” in IDB, 5:617.

113 In The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 54. They refer to Heracleon as “a
western Valentinian.” Again, it is the Son and the Church who are to be reunited
and restored to the Father, who first engendered them as a unity. Instead of the fall
of Wisdom, however, it deals with the devolving Logos, who “falls” according to
286 A GREAT MYSTERY
needed a place of instruction, which is in the places which are prepared,

so that they, like mirrors, might receive from these forms resembling the
images and archetypes, until all the members of the body of the Church
are in a single place and receive the restoration at one time (123:11–20).
Here again, the Bridal Chamber “reflects” the necessary forms for unitary
redemption, becoming a “place of instruction” where one sees the Truth in
sexual “images and archetypes.”
In the roughly contemporary Acts of Andrew,114 which is said to be en-
cratitic rather than Gnostic,115 the author makes the surprising statement
that
I hold those blessed who have heard … as in a mirror the mysteries of
their own nature, for whose sake all things were created (15).116
This again suggests that the author was aware of some traditional process
through which one beheld the Truth by reflective means, “as in a mirror.”
Max Pulver compares this to Pseudo-Cyprian’s statement that believers may
behold the Savior “in yourselves as one beholds himself in water or in a
mirror.”117 This he further explains by saying that
When a man looks into his magic mirror he sees not only himself but
also the Lord or the Spirit. We are reminded of 1 Corinthians 13:12:
“For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face.”118
In other words, by seeing oneself in the “mirror” of the Bridal Chamber,
one sees an image of the Divine; the two images are merged, and the attrib-
utes of the one are transferred to the other.119
the Father’s will in order to dwell in the Demiurge and to bring forth the Creation:
“The Logos uses him (the Archon, Demiurge, “god,” “king,” etc.) as a hand, to
beautify and work on the things below” (100:27–33). The Savior and his “Army”
also descend from the Logos after being begotten in him by the light of the
Pleroma, which restores his perfection. The Savior is therefore clearly related to the
Old Testament Creator-god, but in a more perfect form.
114 Quispel dates this work to “before A.D. 200.” See his translation in Vigiliae
Christianae 10 (1956): 142. M. Hornschuh (in Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson,

NTAp 2:396) dates it to “the interval between c. 170 and c. 200.”
115 See Hornschuh, in ibid., 2:395.
116 Ibid., 2:414.
117 “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion,” in The Mysteries; Papers from the Er-
anos Yearbooks (Princeton, 1955), 190. Cf. Gospel of Philip 69:11.

118 Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance,” 190.
The same metaphorical reference to images of the Divine “seen in

mirrors” is contained in a cryptic allusion to the former Temple itself,
found in the third century Acts of John,120 where the Savior leads the Apos-
tles in a sacred “round-dance”:
He told us to form a circle, holding one another’s hands, and himself in
the middle, and said, “Answer Amen to me” (94).
He explains that he is a “mirror” to them; and they even “reflect” his words
back to him with their assenting “amens”:
“I have no temple,
and I have temples”—“Amen.”
“I am a light to you
who see me”—“Amen.”
“I am a mirror to you
who know me”—“Amen.”
“And when you have seen what I do,
keep silent about my mysteries” (95:25–96:30; our emphasis).
Again, the following temple-related phenomena are deliberately brought
back together: temple, light, mirror, mystery. This, as Pulver explains, made pos-
sible the “fusion of the mystes with his mystery god”121 and provided entry
into “mystical union, or henosis,” with him.122 That this was another form of
the disciple’s soteriological “marriage” to the Savior is clearly indicated by
the use of the word “rest,” when Jesus-Wisdom says,
Being moved towards Wisdom, You have me as a couch; rest in me
(96:37).123
For he who hears me shall be united with this race and shall no longer
be what he now is, but shall be above them as I am now … If you hear
me, you also shall be as I am (100).
119 Pulver goes so far as to suggest that God’s suffering is transferred to man
by this same mirror-process: “Paul uses this mystery image, but does not know or
else does not acknowledge the transferrence of the suffering from God to man”
(ibid., 190).
120 In Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 2:230ff.
121 Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance,” 189.
122 Ibid.
123 For the symbolic meaning of “rest” as a form of the hieros gamos, see p. 187,
above.
288 A GREAT MYSTERY
Nevertheless, the Church soon forgot the meaning of this mystery, though
as late as the fourth century, Jesus’ “round-dance” was still considered to
have been an authentic, early rite of initiation:
That is, Christ was held to have delivered a secret initiation to his disci-
ples, and above all to John. This belief which was widespread outside
the orthodox church, accounts for the bitterness, with which the Second
Council of Nicaea attacked the Acts of St. John.124
The third-century Acts of Thomas similarly describes Christ’s hieros gamos
with a Hebrew “flute-girl,” upon whom “rests the majestic effulgence (re-
flected light)125 of kings,” symbolizing his union with a “daughter of light”:
Her chamber is full of light …
Twelve in number are they who serve before her
and are subject to her, Having their gaze and look toward the
bridegroom, That by the sight of him they may be enlightened;
And for ever shall be with him in eternal joy,
And they shall be at that marriage …
Of which the eternal ones are accounted worthy.
And they shall put on royal robes
And be arrayed in splendid raiment,
And both shall be in joy and exaltation
And they shall glorify the Father of the All,
When proud light they received (6–7).126
Several themes previously encountered in the Wisdom Mystery are brought
together again: a didactic vision of reflected Light in the form of a hieros
gamos; thea theou, or visual union with the Light; and the putting on of a gar-
ment made of light (cf. Odes of Solomon: “The Lord renewed me with his
garment, and possessed me with his light”). But in the same Acts of Thomas
(112), the eschatological robe which the initiate receives after returning to
“His Father’s house” is again likened to a “reflection in a mirror”:
But suddenly, when I saw it over against me,
The splendid robe became like me, as my reflection in a mirror.
I saw it wholly in me,
And in it I saw myself quite apart from myself.
So that we were two in distinction
124Ibid., 173.
125G. Scholem, “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der kabbalistischen Konzeption
der Schechinah,” Eranos Jahrbuch 21 (1953): 74, gives “Abglanz.”
126 In Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, NTAp, 2:445–46.
And again one in a single form,

And the treasurers too
Who had brought it to me, I saw in like manner,
That they were two of a single form,
For one sign of the King was impressed upon them,
His who restored to me through them …
My splendid robe
Gleaming in glorious colors …
And the likeness of the King of Kings
Was completely embroidered all over it (112).
Once again, the identification of “knower-known-means of knowledge” has oc-
curred by means of a mirrored reflection. The “sign of the King” (or the
“likeness of the King of Kings”) is obviously the Divine Image which is to
be merged with the image of the initiate (“We were two in distinction and
again one in a single form”)—seen “as my reflection in a mirror.”
Gershom Scholem also compares these “mirror” passages from vari-
ous Christian apocrypha to the Shekhinah’s role as the “Light of Perfect
Life” in the Book Bahir.127 From this we learn that the Shekhinah—now
seen as God’s “Lower Wisdom”128—is yet another “reflection (Abglanz) of
the hidden Primal Light” (Bahir, 98).129 Again, we recognize traditional ele-
ments derived from Wisdom’s description as “an effluence of everlasting
light, an unblemished mirror of the active power of God, and an image of
his goodness” (Wis 7:26). Similarly, as Scholem points out, the “Lower
Shekhinah” (called Malkuth by the Kabbalists)130 is a reflection of the divine
Light, “seen in a dark mirror” (cf. 1 Cor 13:12), as she breaks into varie-
gated beams to become the light of the material creation.131 It was this
“Lower Shekhinah” who dwelt continually with Israel, sharing her exile on
earth:
She dwelled continually with Israel since the erection of the “Tent of
Dwelling,” as it says in Ex. 25:8: They shall build me a sanctuary, that I
127 Section 88; in his “Zur Entwicklungsgechichte,” 74; see also his translation,
Das Buch Bahir (Leipzig, 1923), 95–96.

128 Compare the “Lower Sophia,” p. 262, above.
129 “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte,” 73; also Das Buch Bahir, 107.
130 Meaning “Kingdom,” i.e., that portion of the Divine which reaches out of
heaven and enters material creation.

131 “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte,” 83–84.
290 A GREAT MYSTERY
may dwell in their midst. As long as Israel is worthy, Shekhinah will stay
with her (Joseph Gikatilla).132
In short, even the Shekhinah—who was a Jewish form of the Holy Spirit—
was once deemed to be a “mirror of God,” who would remain “below” as
long as Israel was worthy or her.133 Her function as a “mirror” must have
been widespread in early Jewish and Christian circles, for we find echoes of
it throughout the literature of both faiths—even as late as the Middle
Ages—when authors like the Dutch mystic, Jan van Ruysbroek (ca. 1350),
still taught that
(the soul) can behold God in the mirror of the Spirit … We contemplate
what we are and are what we contemplate; for our essence, without los-
ing any of its proper personality, is united to the divine truth, which re-
spects the distinction.”134
In the Gospel of Philip, however, “becoming what we contemplate” is
expressed in quite daring fashion:
But you saw something in that place, and you became those things. You
saw the Spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ.
You saw the Father, you shall become Father. So in this place you see
everything and do not see yourself, but in that place you do see your-
self—and what you see you shall become (61:27–35).
Thus we must conclude that “divinization” (theōsis, theopoieisthai) was one of
the goals of the Gnostic Bridal Chamber, just as it was in the older Wisdom
tradition,135 Jewish apocalyptic,136 and Primitive Christianity,137 for union
with the Divine and “divine sonship” also made the candidate divine:
A horse begets a horse, a man begets man, a god begets god. So it is
with the bridegrooms and the bride (75:25–28).
Being married, the candidate sees his own married image, is filled with the
Father’s married image (Gen 1:26), and becomes Christ and the Father, or
what the Apocryphon of John calls Autogenes—“the Self-Existent Divine
In ibid., 86.
132
Compare the passage from b. Baba Bathra, 99a, p. 18, above.

133
134 Quoted by Dennis de Rougemont, in Love in the Western World (Garden City,
NY, 1957), 159.

135 See Philo’s Questions on Exodus, 2.39–40, p. 67, above.
136 See the evidence from Qumran, pp. 78–80, above.
137 See pp. 139–40, above.
Fulness”—which perennially comes forth as eternal generations of “Father,

Mother and Son” (9:10–11). The Gospel of Philip refers to this indwelling
“Divine Fulness” as
the one who is within them all. But that which is within them all is the fulness.
Beyond it there is nothing else within it. This is that of which they say,
“That which is above them” (Gospel of Philip 68:12–17).
And just as the Father’s indwelling fulness made Jesus a god (John 14:10), it
will make the Gnostic divine. Thus the creators of the Nag Hammadi li-
brary approvingly added The Teachings of Sylvanus (a non-Gnostic work) to
their collection, for it corroborated the traditional primitive Christian doc-
trine that
Christ, who has exalted man, became like God, not in order that he
might bring God down to man, but that man might become like God
(111:8–13; our emphasis).
This is what God has given to the human race, so that … every man
might be chosen before all the angels and the archangels (115:30–35).
THE HIEROGRAMIC IMAGE OF THE FATHER

The classic image of God’s “Powers” as a male-female syzygy—the Em-
bracing Cherubim in the Jerusalem Holy of Holies—reappears most
graphically in several of the Gnostic works in the Nag Hammadi library, for
example, in the Trimorphic Protennoia, a “Barbelo-Gnostic” treatise from
shortly after A.D. 200.138 Here, God’s Wisdom is called Protennoia (“Primal
Thought”). As an emanation of the “Unknown First Principle”139 she ap-
pears both as “the Voice” (the Father), “the Sound” (the Mother) and “the
Word” (the Son). But as the “Spirit of Creation” (36:4–10), she likewise
emerges as a male-female syzygy (42:8), whose Cherubim-like attributes are
remarkably well-preserved:
I am androgynous. I am both Mother and Father since I copulate with
myself. I copulate with myself and with those who love me (45:1–5).
This corresponds exactly to what we learned about the Embracing
Cherubim, who also represented the union of God’s male-female “Powers,”
as well as the soteriological union of God and Man. Thus, God’s Protennoia
138 John D. Turner, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 461.

139 Equivalent to Autogenes, the “Self-Existent Diving Fulness,” in the Apoca-
lypse of John, 307.
292 A GREAT MYSTERY
is first of all the self-fertilizing “womb that gives shape to the All by giving
birth to the Light” (45:6–8). But those who “long for her” (45:22–23) are
invited to “partake of the mystery of knowledge and become a light in
Light” (48:33–35) by “putting on” her shining glory (49:31–32). In this way,
they too will “become gloriously glorious, the way you first were when you
were light” (45:18–20). In short, by means of a hieros gamos with God’s Pro-
tennoia, the unitary state of “light dwelling in Light” may be reconstituted
(36:26–33). The resulting unitaries are now called “Sons of the Light”
(41:15–20), for they have “heard the mysteries” (40:36–37) and have been
made to “shine again” (41:30–42:2).
The hieros gamos of God and Man is also described in the tractate called
Asclepius, a Hermetic writing apparently included in the Nag Hammadi col-
lection because of its insights into the mystery of overcoming duality and
returning to the unitary state:140
The restoration of the nature of the pious ones who are good will take
place in a period of time that never had a beginning. For the will of God
has no beginning, even as his nature (74:7–13).
Once again, the restoration is depicted graphically in terms of the Embrac-
ing Cherubim:
And if you wish to see the reality of this mystery, then you should see
the wonderful representation of the intercourse that takes place between
the male and the female. For when the semen reaches the climax, it
leaps forth. In that moment the female receives the strength of the male;
the male for his part receives the strength of the female, while the se-
men does this … If it happens in the presence of those who do not un-
derstand the reality, it is laughable and unbelievable. And moreover they
are holy mysteries (65:15–35).
Deification again appears to be one of the results, since the restoration of
the unitary state is accompanied by an exchange of divine “strengths” be-
tween the male and female.
Just where this “holy mystery” occurred we are not told, but it is said
to have been imparted by no less than the famous Hermes Trismagistus,
who once explained that “the Good One created the world in his own im-
age through the union of Zeus and his Female” (74:31–75:25). In the same
way, man creates “gods” by the same sexual means:
140 James Brashler, Peter Dirkse, Douglas M. Parrott, in ibid., 330.

For just as the Father, the Lord of the Universe, creates gods, in this
way too, this mortal, earthly living creature, the one who is not like God,
also himself creates gods … Not only is he god, but he also creates gods
(68:25–34).
In this case, however, the sometime Gnostic devaluation of the Old Testa-
ment God as an “Ialdabaoth” is no longer apparent, for the creation is
again described as a positive event. Thus “man on earth creates gods ac-
cording to (man’s) likeness,” just as God creates souls after God’s likeness
(69:22–27). This time, God’s purpose for instituting the earthly process was
that man should gain knowledge, restrain his passions (67:25–27), and di-
rect his steps towards immortality (67:29–30). And with the acquisition of
knowledge, human beings become better than the gods, for they have be-
come both mortal and immortal:141
And it happened this way because of the will of God that men be better
than the gods, since indeed the gods are immortal, but men alone are
both immortal and mortal. Therefore man had become akin to the gods,
and they know the affairs of each other with certainty. The gods know
the things of men, and men know the things of the gods (67:34–68:11).
This is a secret, however, and a “matter of communion between the gods
and men,” about which too much should not be said, “since we are divine
and are introducing holy matters” (68:16–22).
The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, a Nag Hammadi text which equates
Jesus with Seth and his “perfect Race,” also speaks of a “wedding of truth,
and a repose of incorruption” (67:5–11). This also takes place in a Bridal
Chamber, prefiguring the heavenly Pleroma, where the hieros gamos with the
Savior takes place simultaneously:
It also happened in the places under heaven for their reconciliation …
Those who assumed the form of my image will assume the form of my
word. Indeed, these will come forth in light forever, and in friendship
with each other in the spirit, since they have known in every respect and
indivisibly that which is one (67:19–68:12).
The “form of my image” again refers to the “marriage” of the soul and the
“Son of the Majesty” in the Pleroma, for that is
where the wedding and the wedding robe is, the new one and not the
old, nor does it perish. For it is a new and perfect bridal chamber of the
141 Ibid., 330. Compare Genesis 3:22: “Behold, the man is become as one of
us, to know good from evil.”

294 A GREAT MYSTERY
heavens … an undefiled mystery … which does not perish … They who

were not afraid before me … will pass by every gate without fear and
will be perfected in the Third Glory (57:9–58:13).
Many of these texts also describe the Sacred Kiss which accompanied
the hieros gamos, and which we first encountered in the Gospel of Thomas
(“Whosoever drinks from my mouth shall become as I am,” Log. 108):
His offspring, the things which exist, being innumerable, illimitable and
inseparable, have, like kisses, come forth from the Son of the Father, like
kisses because of the multitude of those who kiss one another with a
good, insatiable thought, the kiss being a unity, though it involves many
(Tripartite Tractate 58:19–29).
And he kissed my mouth. He took hold of me, saying, My Beloved! Be-
hold, I shall reveal to you those things that neither the heavens nor the
archons have known … Am I not alive? Because I am a father, do I not
have power for everything? ... Understand and know everything, that
you may come forth just as I am … But now, stretch out your hand.
Now, take hold of me (Second Apocalypse of James, 56:14–-57:11).
This last text, also from the Nag Hammadi library, records a revelation
which James (the brother of Jesus) has just received from the resurrected
Lord. Significantly, it makes use of a Jewish-Christian tradition which
closely tied the leader of the Jerusalem Community to the Temple,142 de-
scribing him as
an escort guiding the Gnostic through the heavenly door, the “illumina-
tor” and “redeemer,” i.e., the one who leads the initiate through the veil
into the “Holy of Holies.”143
This text appears to be a continuation of the First Apocalypse of James, in
which the resurrected Jesus also embraces and kisses his brother, prior to
revealing the secret words of immortality:
And the Lord appeared to him. Then he stopped his prayer and embraced
him. He kissed him, saying, “Rabbi, I have found you! I have heard of
your sufferings which you endured. And I have been much distressed.”
… The Lord said, “James, do not be concerned … I am he who was
within me.144 Never have I suffered in any way, nor have I been dis-
tressed … Now, since you are a just man of God, you have embraced and
142 Recorded by Hegesippus; see Charles W. Hedrick, in ibid., 269.

143 Hedrick, in ibid.
144 Another reference to Autogenes, or the “Self-Existent Divine Fulness.”
kissed me … James, behold, I shall reveal to you your redemption. When

you are seized, and you undergo these sufferings, a multitude (of ar-
chons) will arm themselves against you that they may seize you … Not
only do they demand toll, but they also take away souls by theft. When
you come into these powers, one of them who is their guard will say to
you, “Who are you and where are you from?” You say to them, “I am a
Son, and I am from the Father.” He will say to you, “What sort of son
are you, and to what other do you belong?” You say to him, “I am from
the Preexistent Father, and a son of the Preexistent One’ … When he
says to you, “Where will you go?” you are to say to him, “To the place
from which I have come, there shall I return.” And if you say these
things, you will escape their attack (31:2–34:20).
Most of these are themes which we have already seen in the Gospel of
Thomas—another Jewish-Christian text which exalted “James the Just”—i.e.,
the sacred embrace and kiss (Logg. 22, 108), the revelation of the hidden
things (Log. 108), and the special words which Jesus teaches the initiate to
say to the guards as he seeks to enter heaven:
If they say to you, “Who are you?,” say, “We are His Sons and we are
the elect of the Living Father” (Log. 50).
As in the Gospel of Thomas, these later texts from Nag Hammadi also base
their soteriology on the premise that the initiate originally came from the
Light and that salvation consists of returning to it, thereby reestablishing
the preexistent unity which he once enjoyed with the Wisdom-Logos. Thus,
the introduction to the entire Nag Hammadi library—The Prayer of the Apos-
tle Paul—begins by stating that the initiate originally came forth from the
Savior:
My Redeemer, redeem me, for I am yours; from you have I come forth
(1A:3–6).
This text no doubt bears the name of “Paul” because of its association with
the belief contained in the “gloss” to Eph 5:30: “We are members of his
body, formed of his flesh and bones, from his flesh and from his bones,” i.e.,
from the preexistent Body of Christ.145 Based on the same belief, the Tri-
morphic Protennoia then goes on to explain that the world came into existence
when the “Heavenly Adam” (the preexistent Body of Christ) was separated
into two halves, i.e., into male and female:
145 See pp. 152–53, above.

296 A GREAT MYSTERY
This Aeon (the world) that is was completed in this fashion, and it was
estimated, and it was short, for it was a finger that released a finger, and
a joint that was separated from a joint (42:33–43:4).
Their original oneness will be reconstituted when the two halves are
brought back together again, like the “rib” that was taken from the side of
the man:
Enter through the rib whence you came, and hide yourself from the
beasts (the passions) (The Interpretation of Knowledge, 10:34–36).
The rejoining of these once common parts was described in the Gospel of
Thomas as another sacred embrace which reunited
eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place
of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness (Log. 22).
The restored “unitary” was then ready to enter the kingdom, for the
“members” of the “Perfect Man” were back together again (Tripartite Trac-
tate 123:4–15). No one will in fact be able to see the King as long as he re-
mains “naked” (Gospel of Philip 65:25–26), i.e., without his Heavenly Partner,
whom he acquired through union with a wife in the Bridal Chamber.
The Exegesis of the Soul, perhaps written around A.D. 200,146 specifically
describes the restoration of the “Perfect Man” as a hieros gamos, or the reun-
ion of male and female partners:
From heaven the Father sent (the soul) her man, who is her brother, the
first-born. Then the bridegroom came down to the bride. She gave up
her former prostitution and cleansed herself of the pollutions of the
adultress, and she was renewed so as to be a bride. She cleansed herself
in the bridal chamber and she filled it with perfume; she sat in it waiting
for the true bridegroom … But then the bridegroom, according to the
Father’s will, came down to her into the bridal chamber … But once
they unite with one another they become a single life … For they were
originally joined to one another when they were with the Father … This
marriage has brought them back together again and the soul has been
joined to her true love, her real master (132:7–133:9).
This will be the soteriological “marriage” which is the effective source of
“rejuvenation” and eternal life:
Now it is fitting that the soul regenerate herself and become again as she
formerly was. The soul then moves of her own accord. And she re-
146 William C. Robinson, Jr., in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 190.
ceived the divine nature from the Father for her rejuvenation, so that
she might be restored to the place where she originally had been. This is
the resurrection from the dead (134:6–12).
In some texts, the Sacred Marriage is described as a form of “spiritual
indwelling” (John 14:10), which results when “Life” lives in perfect union
with his “Bride”:
My God and my Father, who saved me from this dead hope, who made
me alive through a mystery of what he wills … Bring me from a tomb
alive … Because I am alive in you, your grace is alive in me (Second Apoca-
lypse of James 62:16–20; our emphasis).
And I ascended to the Vitality as I sought it, and I joined it in entering
in. And I saw an eternal, intellectual, undivided motion that pertains to
all the formless powers147 … I know the One who exists in me (Allogenes
60:19–61:7).
In short, when the “One who is Light” dwells in marital fusion with the
soul of the initiate, they become “the same” (Dialogue of the Savior 136:23),
just as the prophet Hosea described the union of the Holy with the Unholy
in order to make them both holy:
Now that I have known thee, I have mixed myself with the Immutable.
I have armed myself with an armor of light. I have become light (The
Gospel of the Egyptians 66:27–67:4).
Having seen the light that surrounded me and the God that was in me, I
have become divine (Allogenes 52:10–12).
In many of these treatises the symbolism of the Embracing Cherubim is
still very much alive, and in some cases (e.g., the Trimorphic Protennoia and
Asclepius) exact and literal. But it remains as ever always the image of the
“Father-Mother” (Gen 1:26–7) which informs them, and which the man
and wife must take upon themselves in the Bridal Chamber in order to be-
come divine.
147 Compare Philo’s vision of the Cherubim as representing the harmonious

motion of the planets (pp. 57–60, above), as well as Clement of Alexandria’s refer-
ence to the Cherubim as the two “hemispheres” in divine interaction (pp. 219–20,
above).
298 A GREAT MYSTERY
GNOSTIC REVERSAL OF THE LAW OF MARRIAGE

In all of the foregoing examples of the Gnostic “Great Mystery,” human
marriage was still seen as a positive step toward restoring the Primal One-
ness of God and Man, even where the masculine aspect of the Wis-
dom/Logos was reduced to the rank of “inferior Demiurge,” and its femi-
nine aspect to the rank of “Fallen” or “Lower Sophia.” Some Gnostics,
however, went so far as to completely denigrate human marriage, deeming
it to be a deliberate temptation on the part of the Demiurge to entice men
into casting their seed into future generations of flesh, thereby keeping their
souls entrapped in matter for the benefit of the Demiurge and his angels.
This may, however, have begun already in certain “orthodox” factions
of the Church, which deemed marriage to be fit only for the present age,
and which would eventually give rise to the Catholic elevation of celibacy
and monasticism over family life. Judaism, on the other hand, has always
remained remarkably consistent in showing respect for God’s first com-
mandment to be “fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Gen 1:28).
Indeed, in all the rabbinic literature cited by Strack and Billerbeck there is
mention of but one celibate Jew, Ben Azzai, who was indeed described as a
hypocrite who failed to live up to his own view of the holiness of matri-
mony.148 Even the purported evidence of Essene celibacy is at best incon-
sistent, since the Dead Sea Scrolls generally commend marriage and since
burials of women and children have been found at Qumran.149 Thus, Millar
Burrows notes,
[It is a] fact that marriage and family life are contemplated as normal in
the Rule of the Congregation … It is not yet possible to go beyond the
tentative conclusion … that the sect probably included both communi-
ties of celibates and settlements of families. At any rate, the Rule of the
Community assumes that there will be families in the Community of
“the Last Days.”150
It is also significant that the traditional Nazirite, who viewed his career as a
special call to sanctity, vowed only to (a) avoid alcoholic drink, (b) leave his
hair uncut, and (c) avoid the presence of the dead (Num 6).151 The strict
rules of sexual avoidance in the area of the Temple likewise had only to do
148 Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (Munich, 1922),
1:807.
149 Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1955), 233.
150 Millar Burrows, More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1958), 383.
151 J. C. Rylaarsdaam, “Nazirite,” in IDB, 3:526.
with ritual cleanliness, not celibacy; in fact, it was generally accepted by Ha-
lakhah that the Pentateuchal laws of purity applied specifically to priests,
entry into the Temple, and the eating of holy things,152 and in no way rec-
ommended asceticism as a separate and special way of life for those who
wished to make a profession of religion. Finally, the Alexandrian “Thera-
peutae,” who actually did practice asceticism and celibacy during the first
century B.C. (Philo, On the Contemplative Life, 8.65–68), appear to have been
a syncretistic sect which combined Judaism with Neo-pythagorean and
Egyptian religion (especially the Serapis cult). So little is known about them,
however, that even Eusebius (Church History, 2.7) supposed them to have
been Christian monks. In any case, it is clear that they found no warrant for
their celibate life style in the Jewish portion of their background.
The evidence concerning Christianity in the New Testament is simi-
larly in favor of marriage, in spite of dogmatic assertions to the contrary.
Jesus himself clearly reiterated God’s first commandment (Matt 19:5), as did
Paul the Apostle (1 Cor 6:16). We have already seen that the celebrated ref-
erence to “eunuchs” (Matt 19:12), when read in context, teaches only that
one must not remarry after putting away a wife for adultery (vv. 9–12).153
Paul similarly recommends that persons do not remarry after the loss of a
spouse, but remain agamos (“unmarried”), even as he (1 Cor 7:8). The word
agamos can mean either “never married” or “de-married,”154 but in the pre-
sent context it must signify “de-married” since Paul uses it three verses later
to refer to women who have separated from their husbands (“But if she de-
part, let her remain agamos, or be reconciled to her husband”). On the other
hand, he says in verse 25 that he has no commandment whatsoever from
the Lord concerning “virgins” (parthenoi). Even the famous passage suppos-
edly recommending “virginity” (1 Cor 7:1) should be read not as a statement
of Paul’s own belief, but as a restatement of the question he is about to an-
swer:
152 G. Alon, quoted by Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll (Jerusalem, 1983), 1:277.
153 See p. 221, above. Even the concession “for adultery” is probably not
original with Jesus, since it does not appear in the same passage in Luke 16:18 or
Mark 10:11. See also Wm. Albright and C. S. Mann, Matthew, Anchor Bible (Garden
City, NY, 1971), 226: “Commentators have generally taken the position that these
words are not part of the saying as originally uttered, but are a community regula-
tion later inserted in the text. It is certainly inconsistent with v. 6.”
154 Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 4.
300 A GREAT MYSTERY
With reference to the matter about which you wrote: is it good for a
man not to have sexual relations with a woman?155
His answer, of course, was that in view of the temptation to immorality, all
men and women should be married. This is undoubtedly what he sought to
express in the notorious passage which supposedly displays Paul’s “con-
tempt” for marriage: “It is better to marry than to burn,” i.e., it is better to
remarry than to suffer with uncontrollable lust (v. 9).156
There is very good evidence in the New Testament that Paul himself
was once married. Thus, his words in 1 Corinthians 9:5 (“Do we not have
the right to be accompanied by adelphēn gunaika like the other apostles?”)
probably refer to his own wife, since gunē would be redundant if it meant
merely “women,” especially as it comes after adelphe (“sisters”).157 Indeed,
“the verb and object in this verse form a special idiom, gunaika periagein,
meaning in classical Greek “to have a wife”;158 thus the NEB translation,
“Have I no right to take a Christian wife about with me, like the rest of the
apostles?”
Clement, who knew Greek well, also specifically understood gune to
mean “wife” (Miscellanies, 3.6.53); and both Eusebius (Church History, 3.36)
and Ignatius (Epistle to the Philadelphians) listed Paul among the Apostles who
“lived in marriage.” Clement (Miscellanies, 3.6.53) and Origen (Homily on Ro-
mans, 1.1) even believed that Paul’s wife lived at Philippi, and was the one
whom he addressed as syzygos (“partner”) in Philippians 4:3. It was in fact
not until the fourth century that Jerome finally translated gunē as mulier
(“woman”), instead of uxor (“wife”) in his Vulgate, permanently fixing the
idea of unmarried females in the Apostolic circle in Catholic tradition.159
Basil (On the Resurrection, 1), though himself an ascetic, still accepted as fact
that all of the Apostles were married; this would of course have included
Peter (cf. Mark 1:30; 1 Pet 5:13), of whom Clement said, “We are told that
155 Translation by W. F. Orr and J. A. Walther, I Corinthians, Anchor Bible
(Garden City, NY, 1976), 205. J. Massyngberde Ford, “Levirate Marriage in St. Paul
(1 Cor VII),” New Testament Studies 10 (1963–64): 362, also argues that this is the
question, rather than the answer.
156 Clement of Alexandria also attests to this interpretation: “It is of second
marriage that the apostle says, ‘If you burn, marry”’ (Miscellanies, 3.1.4).
157 See William Phipps, Was Jesus Married? (New York, 1970), 99. The following
five footnotes are also derived from this excellent summary.

158 J. B. Bauer, “Uxores Circumducere,” Biblische Zeitschrift 3 (1959): 94–102.
159 See also Albert Oepke, “gunē,” in TDNT, 1:776–88; The Jerome Biblical Com-
mentary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968), 2, 267.

the blessed Peter, when he beheld his wife on the way to her execution,
rejoiced on account of her call and her homeward journey” (Miscellanies,
7.11.63). Similarly, the “Western” textual tradition of Acts 1:12–14 states
that the “wives and children” of the Apostles were present in a Jerusalem
“Upper Room” after the Crucifixion,160 a reading which is increasingly ac-
cepted by modern authorities.161 Luke 8:2–3 likewise mentions the gun-
aikes—including Mary Magdalene—who traveled with and provided for
Jesus and the Twelve. It is therefore natural that the Epistles expected mar-
riage of bishops, elders, deacons, and the like (1 Tim 3:2, 5; Titus 1:6; Rom
16:3; 1 Cor 7:2; etc.), and that some forty of the earliest Popes were mar-
ried.162
The Presbyterian scholar William Phipps has recently argued that Jesus
was himself married.163 As an adult member of the Jewish community, he
would have been obliged to obey the first commandment, or to have be-
come an object of scorn and disgrace. Jesus in fact claimed to submit to
every law which he taught to others, even where the necessity for one such
as himself might not have been immediately apparent (e.g., baptism: “Suffer
it to be so; for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness,” Matt 3:15).
He was likewise said to have been “tempted in all points, like we are” (Heb
4:15), never hesitating to associate throughout his ministry with the fair sex
(Luke 7:36–50; Mark 14:3–9; John 4:7–30; 12:1–8; etc.). In John 11:5 it is
clearly stated that he had an intimate companionship with Mary and Mar-
tha,164 with whom he may have traveled from northern Palestine to Judea,
staying for a while with their brother Lazarus at Bethany.165 According to
Tertullian, these women were constantly attending him (On the Flesh, 7).
From at least the second century, it was conjectured that the two Marys
may have been the same person; thus, Mary the sister of Martha and Mary
Magdalene were widely viewed as a composite figure,166 a tradition carried
160 Phipps, Was Jesus Married? 100.

161 Kirsopp Lake and H. J. Cadbury, in The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. F. J.
Foakes-Jackson (London, 1933), 4, 10, 11; G. W. H. Lampe, “Acts,” in Peake’s
Commentary on the Bible (London, 1962), 887.
162 John A. O’Brien, “Why Priests Marry,” Christian Century 87 (1970): 417.
163 See note 157, page 300, above.
165 Ibid., 65, 207–8. Also compare Luke 17:11 with the section beginning at
9:1, including the first mention of Jesus and the sisters in 10:38–42.
302 A GREAT MYSTERY
on to this day by the Roman Church.167 Indeed, Mary Magdalene was her-
self associated with Jesus throughout his career, being the one who per-
formed the tasks connected with his burial—tasks normally assigned to the
immediate family. She was also the one to whom Jesus first appeared after
his Resurrection (John 20:14–18), showing that she was in a real sense more
important to him than the disciples. Since we have no information about
Jesus’ life between the ages of 12 and 30 (the period when betrothal and
marriage took place in Jewish culture), Phipps argues that it was simply
taken for granted by the writers of the New Testament that Jesus con-
formed to the mores of his time, a view indeed accepted by even Gnostic
writers during the mid-second century (p. 270, above).
It was shown in an earlier section that Paul viewed human marriage
both as a personal obligation and a symbol of Christ’s marriage to the
Church. We also noted an ancient custom in which the marriage of a holy
prophet to a fallen woman symbolized God’s redemptive “marriage” to his
“Lost Sheep,” as in the cases of Simon Magus and Hosea (pp. 207–8,
above). Thus Jesus may indeed have had a wife of his own, such as the
“fallen” Mary Magdalene, whose reputation was appropriately blackened by
his followers to make her appear as the traditional symbol of “Fallen Is-
rael,” or Christ’s soteriological “wife.”
Yet paradoxically, the very fact that human marriage could represent
divine “marriage” eventually made it possible to reduce the value of the
former in favor of the latter, i.e., to negate the mere “symbol” in favor of
the “spiritual reality” to which it referred.
There are in fact two instances in the New Testament where either
exegetical uncertainly or textual corruption make it appear that this process
had already begun in the Primitive Church, repudiating human marriage in
deference to some “higher” ideal.
First of all, there is the famous statement in Luke 20 contrasting hu-
man marriage with eternal life:
The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage; but they
which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrec-
tion from the dead neither marry, nor are given in marriage, for they are
equal to the angels, and are the children of God (20:34–36).
This immediately, however, strikes us as being in direct contradiction to
Jesus’ warm endorsement of the first commandment in Matthew 19:5–6:
167 Hugh T. Pope, “Mary Magdalene,”Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1910).

For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to
his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. What therefore God hath
joined, let not man put asunder.
Moreover, we note that the Lukan passage appears in significantly different
form in the earlier Gospel of Mark:
For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given
in marriage, but are as the angels which are in heaven (12:25).
In this unquestionably older version, it is merely stated that one cannot enter
into marriage after the resurrection, a view which is in fact preserved in the
second century Gospel of Philip in the following manner:
If anyone becomes a son of the bridal chamber, he will receive the light.
If anyone does not receive it while he is in this world, he will not receive
it in the other place (86:4–7; trans. Wilson).
In the context of Philip, becoming a “son of the Bridal Chamber” (cf.
Matt 9:15) meant to be “married” to the Savior. Nevertheless, this could
only be brought about by means of a sacramental union with a spouse (“no
one will be able to see the Bridegroom and the Bride unless one becomes a
bridegroom or a bride,” 82:24–26). The Valentinians (to whom this gospel
belonged) therefore claimed that to be “like the angels” specifically meant
to be married, i.e., in the unitary state,168 for though this ultimately referred
to the marriage of the soul and its “consort,” the image of the latter could
only be found in the initiate’s own husband or wife.169
This Valentinian exegesis of Luke 20:34–36 is at least consistent with
Jesus’ reference to the disciples as “sons of the Bridal Chamber” (meaning
that they have been “married” to him), while insisting that they must also
enter into human marriage (Matt 19:5–6). Thus, the “angelic” state does not
preclude the necessity of human marriage, any more than Philo’s “unitary”
state precluded the obligation of marriage for the Jews. Likewise, if we ac-
cept the Gospel of Thomas as a genuine early sayings-collection of the Savior,
we must reconcile its doctrine of “marriage” to Jesus-Wisdom with the
Church’s official insistence on human marriage, just as Paul did in his “Great
Mystery” (Eph 5:22–33).
168 Grant, “The Mystery of Marriage in the Gospel of Philip,” 132. “Literally
the gospels say that there is no marrying in heaven, but the Valentinians under-
stood that being like or equal to the angels … was really marriage. Such a heavenly,
spiritual union will be a Pleroma or Fulness of Joy and Rest.”
169 See pp. 273–74, above.
304 A GREAT MYSTERY
We shall even find an analogous relationship between divine and

earthly unions in the Zohar, which taught that a man’s soul will not be
united with him after death unless it is first “completed” by earthly marriage
(III:7a, 296a).170 In fact, the Church itself must have believed something
very similar, for one of its favorite scriptures, the Book of Enoch (quoted no
less than 128 times in the New Testament),171 claimed that the resurrection-
state would be a continuation of marriage:
And then all the righteous ones will escape and become the living ones,
until they multiply and beget tens of hundreds (1 Enoch 10:17; trans.
R. H. Charles and M. A. Knibb).
Here, “the living ones” refers to those who have attained eternal life
(cf. 10:10), and is the idiom employed in the Gospel of Thomas to designate
those who have been made immortal by the Wisdom Mystery (“These are
the secret words which the Living Jesus spake … Whoever finds the mean-
ing of these words will not taste death … and he will live,” Intro., and
Logg. 1, 4). That they will nevertheless continue to “beget” (1 Enoch 10:17))
suggests that they must also enter into ordinary marriage. If Jesus accepted
this as Scripture (as did the Church for several centuries),172 he too may
have envisioned “eternal life” as a continuation of marriage, and may have
interpreted the expression “as the angels” to mean male and female in con-
tinuing unity, as well as in unity with himself:
For the man is not without woman nor the woman without the man, in
the Lord (1 Cor 11:11).
Indeed, it is said in 1 Peter 3:7 that redeemed Christians will be “co-heirs
(synkleronomoi) of the grace of life,” i.e., married both to each other and to
Christ in the hereafter.
Though later Christians were loathe to imagine that an earthly condi-
tion such as marriage could endure into eternity, we should remember that
physical existence was given eternal meaning once and for all through
See “The Kabbalistic Great Mystery,” below.

170
See the introduction to R. H. Charles’ edition of The Book of Enoch (London,

171
1913), xcv–xcix. See also Charles F. Potter’s Did Jesus Write This Book? (New York,
1965), passim, which explains the many instances of dependency in the New Tes-
tament on the Book of Enoch.
172 St. Augustine said that the Church excluded 1 Enoch from the canon after
many centuries solely because it purported to speak of the preexistence, a doctrine

which the Church finally forbade at the Council of Constantinople in 553.
Christ’s own Incarnation and Resurrection, as well as by the promise of

man’s resurrection. To say, then, that the supreme experience of earthly
marriage had no enduring significance would rob God’s first command-
ment of its divine dignity and reduce his Male-Female Image (Gen 1:27) to
a kind of aberration:
Celibate son and virgin mother, conceiving not by human intercourse,
but by the Holy Ghost … They leave in a weird limbo of silence and
obscurity the crucial process of human generation. Is the limbo ob-
scene—a terrible and loathsome wilderness whose passage had to be
endured by a reluctantly incarnate God? ... The impulse of an asceticism
which was no essential part of the Christian Gospel has been incessantly
at work to diminish the virtue of the Incarnation. The process began
early with the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, which was intended to exalt
the deity of Jesus by enshrouding him in miracles—as though the fact of
his mortal birth were not miracle enough!—till we have reached at last
the complicated refinements of the Immaculate Conception.173
The fact is that in none of Jesus’ authentic teaching do we find any evidence
that he had disavowed the traditional Jewish regard for lawful sexual un-
ion.174 On the other hand, if we take seriously the New Testament’s de-
scription of his resurrection-body (Luke 24:39; John 20:27)—after which
man’s own resurrection-body is to be fashioned (Phil 3:21)—we must at-
tribute enduring physical qualities to the divine resurrection-state, which for
the Christians who read the Book of Enoch undoubtedly included marriage.
A second ambiguity found in the New Testament concerning the
worth of human marriage is Paul’s hesitation to commend it to the Corin-
thians “in view of the shortness of the times” (1 Cor 7:29ff). This passage
has been variously thought to demonstrate Paul’s “contempt” for marriage,
a “conciliatory attitude” towards converts who were involved in a local as-
cetic trend, or even the personal care of one who had recently suffered the
173 J. Middleton Murry, Adam and Eve (London, 1944), 95–96, 108. Quoted in
Phipps, Was Jesus Married? 191.
174 Several early manuscripts of Luke 20:34–35 have “The sons of this age pro-
create and are born, but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and
to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they
cannot die any more” (see S. Gilmour, “Luke,” in Interpreter’s Bible, 8:354). In other
words, humanity procreates and is born in this life, but need not do so in order to
continue in the next, for he can no longer die. As for the marriage state, it can be
concluded that those who are worthy to be resurrected will not wait to enter mar-
riage in the next world, just as stated in the Markan parallel.
306 A GREAT MYSTERY
loss of his own spouse (Eusebius, Church History, 3.30). Nevertheless, these
interpretations actually raise more questions than they answer.
To begin with, since Paul expressly commands marriage to all (1 Cor
7:2)—even stressing the legitimacy of sexual pleasure (vv. 3–5)—under
what circumstances does he now appear to contradict himself and to extol
the unmarried state (v. 33)? Was he perhaps referring to a situation similar
to that of the so-called “eunuch,” whom Jesus had told to avoid remarriage
after putting away a wife (Matt 19:9–12)? This might indeed be suggested by
verse 27, which essentially repeats the Savior’s advice in such cases: “Art
thou bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife?
Seek not a wife.”
Again, who is the “virgin” who “cares for the things of the Lord”
more than a married wife? (v. 34). Or the man who has such a “virgin”? (v.
36). Many commentators believe that these verses refer to fathers with un-
married daughters, while others see the practice of men living with virgines
subintroductae (pp. 210–12, above), a practice which was already becoming
widespread by the second century.175
Actually, 1 Corinthians 7:32–34 is the only passage which unambigu-
ously appears to exalt the unmarried condition:
There is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried
woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in
body and in spirit, but she that is married careth for the things of the
world, how she may please her husband.
Yet as it now stands, this statement can scarcely be reconciled with the rest
of Paul’s teaching on the subject. The usual justification for these anoma-
lous verses is that (1)Paul is now old and widowed and is too tired to feel
any desire for remarriage; indeed, in verse 40 he recommends “abiding” as
one is; and (2) the “distress of the eschatological Messianic woes” is about
to break loose,176 making married life impractical. The latter conclusion,
however, is never fully explained, for why married couples would be less
able to face the rigors of the eschaton than the unmarried is never dis-
closed.
What is clear, though, is that in its present state of preservation, the
entire last half of 1 Corinthians 7 (vv. 25–40) is remarkably different from
175See note 121, p. 205, above, for J. C. Hurd’s summary of the practice and
the comments of Orr and Walther. Compare also C. S. C. Williams, “I and II Co-
rinthians,” in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible (1962 ed.), 958.
176 Williams, “I and II Corinthians,” 958.
the rest of Paul’s writing on the subject of marriage, especially in Ephesians

5:22–33,177 which places human marriage on a par with Christ’s marriage to
the Church. In fact, it is even different from the first half of the same chap-
ter, which (when properly translated) agrees perfectly with Jesus’ teaching in
Matthew 19:3–12, except that Paul is even more permissive regarding the
possibility of remarriage after losing a spouse (1 Cor 7:8–9).
As we just noted, however, the fact that human marriage was taken to
symbolize the marriage of Christ and the Church soon made it possible for
some to abandon the practice of human union altogether in favor of the
spiritual “reality” to which it pointed. The latter in fact turned out to have
much greater emotional appeal for some of the Church’s Hellenized mem-
bers, who traditionally viewed the body as vile and ephemeral.
This was indeed the philosophy of second-century writers like Justin,
who sought to convince Trypho the Jew that death came to the “Virgin
Eve” because of carnal intercourse, whereas the “Virgin Mary” was made
pregnant by the Logos (Dialogue with Trypho, 100). His disciple Tatian later
founded the Encratites (“those who practice self-control”), based on a gen-
eral prohibition of sexual intercourse as a form of depravity (Irenaeus,
Against Heresies, 1.28). All of this was justified by the prevailing idealism of
Plato and the Stoics, and by a growing Neo-Platonist ethic which identified
virtue with asceticism.
We saw similar influences at work in the allegories of Philo, who was
nevertheless too Jewish to repudiate God’s command to multiply and re-
plenish the earth. Tatian, however, went so far now as to suggest that it was
Adam, not God, who ordained marriage (Diatessaron; gloss on Matt 19:5).
His hatred of sex, not surprisingly, found expression in his picture of Jesus
177 The most famous of Ephesians’ modern commentators, Markus Barth and
Heinrich Schlier, both argue for Paul’s authorship of the Epistle; see Ephesians, An-
chor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1974), 1–3, 36–50; Der Brief an die Epheser (Düssel-
dorf, 1957), 22–28, respectively. This opinion is also shared by Robert M. Grant, A
Historical Introduction to the New Testament (New York, 1972); Adolph von Harnack,
“Die Adresse des Epheserbriefes des Paulus,” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften 37 (1910): 696–709; and many others (Abbott, Asting,
Gaugler, Haupt, Hort, Klijn, Michaelis, Percy, Robinson, A. Robert and A. Feuillet,
Roller, Sanders, Schille, Schmidt, Scott, Westcott, Zahn (in Barth, Ephesians, 38).
Another large group argues for its composition by someone following Paul’s in-
structions, or an earlier text: Albertz, Benoit, Cerfaux, Goguel, Harrison, Holtz-
mann, Murphy-O’Connor, Wagenführer, etc. (in ibid.).
308 A GREAT MYSTERY
as the “paradigm of virginity,”178 an ideal which spread rapidly throughout

the early Church, finding particularly fertile ground in Syriac Christianity
and in such forms of Gnosticism as Manichaeism and Catharism.
His new movement was soon joined by other Christians, such as Ori-
gen (who castrated himself to avoid sexual temptation) and Tertullian (who
taught that woman was the “Devil’s Door,” On the Apparel of Women, 1.1),
and who succeeded in turning Jesus into a “Bridegroom of Pure Spiritual-
ity”—the sole legitimate object of Christian longing—and once and for all
replaced physical lust with intangible, heavenly joys.
Song of Songs also enjoyed great vogue as an allegory of Christ’s spiri-
tual union with the Church wherever this anti-sexual attitude prevailed. This
interpretation took root amongst Christians sometime around A.D. 200,
with Hippolytus’ now partly lost commentary on the famous Old Testa-
ment love-song, though it remained for the prudish Origen to popularize it
during the mid-third century.179 Nevertheless, Origen demanded that any
literal understanding of eroticism in Song of Songs be eliminated and inter-
preted in Platonic fashion as purely “spiritual love.” This work in time be-
came a favorite text of those who abandoned the world and retired to clois-
ters in order to enjoy the “heavenly love” of Christ.
The effect of this Christian Platonism was also felt by the Gnostics.
Though some of them still tolerated human marriage as a sacramental
means of actualizing their “marriages” to the Savior (pp. 286–90, above),
the rest came to look upon earthly union as a transient and fugitive profli-
gacy, indeed, the very tool employed by the evil Powers to extend the tyr-
anny of matter over the soul.
Part of the reason for this was the Church’s growing bias against Juda-
ism and the Old Testament Law. Armed with an incomplete understanding
of Paul’s doctrine that only the man Jesus had been able to keep the Law in
its entirety (and for that reason only his righteousness could suffice to justify
men; Rom 5:18–19), many Christians condemned the Law itself as a faulty
instrument of salvation,180 even attacking the God who revealed it.181 Since

179 See Marvin Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1977),
114ff.
Paul never condemned the Law, per se, but rather man’s inability to keep the
180
Law, which was actually “just and holy” (Rom 7:10–14). God in his mercy therefore
sent his Son, who alone was righteous enough to keep the Law, that men might be
joined to him and share that righteousness (2 Cor 5:17–21). At the same time, the
the prevailing opinion of Late Hellenism agreed that physical existence was
evil, the Old Testament Creator could now be blamed for originating the
cosmos and for giving the command to multiply and replenish the earth by
sexual means. Thus there developed amongst the Gnostics a marked “anti-
cosmism,” characterized by a hatred of Judaism, its God, the Old Testa-
ment Law, and the physical creation, all of which were considered to be
parts of a conspiracy designed to keep men’s spiritual substance from re-
turning to the Light where it belonged:
For no one who is under the Law will be able to look up to the Truth,
for they will not be able to serve two masters. For the defilement of the
Law is manifest; but undefilement belongs to the light. The Law com-
mands one to take a husband or to take a wife, and to beget, to multiply
like the sand of the sea. But passion which is a delight to them con-
strains the souls of those who are begotten in this place, those who de-
file and those who are defiled, in order that the Law might be fulfilled
through them (The Testimony of the Truth, 29:22–30:11).
Nevertheless, the image of sexual union as the sacramental symbol of
the soul’s reunion with the Light continued to have a special fascination for
the Gnostics, even for those Gnostics who viewed sexuality as an abomina-
tion. Thus, the author of the Greater Questions of Mary could still claim that
the sexual act had redemptive value (“We must so do in order that we may
live,” pp. 214–15, above), though he simultaneously frustrated its natural use
by practicing a perverted form of birth control, designed to prevent the
further imprisonment of souls in bodies. A new form of Gnosticism thus
came into being (the so-called “Libertine Gnosticism”), which sought to
exhaust the physical powers of sex through the destructive enjoyment of its
own impulses, so that only the “spiritualized archetype” to which it pointed
remained, namely the heavenly union with the Light. This was justified in-
tellectually with the claim that Christ had set the Christian free from the
literal demands of the Law (“Ye are not under the Law, but under grace,”
Rom 6:14).182 The Gnostic was therefore at liberty to abuse his own body
Crucifixion and Resurrection demonstrated the Son’s power, with which the be-
liever was to become one in “marriage.”
181 This of course presupposes that these same Christians believed in the exis-
tence of another God, who was higher than Yahweh, and without whom there
could have been no possibility of relegating the latter to a subordinate position.
182 This was the doctrine of antinomianism, i.e., that the spiritually perfect were
no longer subject to ordinary laws. Even the Valentinians appear to have had an
310 A GREAT MYSTERY
with impunity, in order to liberate its sexual energies (the imprisoned light)
without producing issue.
The German scholar, Leonhard Fendt, some years ago (1922) de-
scribed a number of the sects which practiced these “libertine” rites.183 The
Phibionites, for example, made it a practice to offer up their own semen as
a sort of “Eucharist” in place of the bread and wine. Following a ritual meal
(patterned after 1 Cor 11:23ff), the husbands said to their wives, “Arise, and
perform the agape with thy brother.” The sexes thereupon exchanged part-
ners and engaged in promiscuous intercourse, practicing coitus interruptus so
that the semen was caught in the hand. This they offered to heaven, saying:
“We present thee with this gift, the body of Christ.”
Epiphanius, who preserved this account for us (Panarion, 26.4.1), says
that the celebrants then ate the effluent, repeating that it was “Christ’s Body
and the Passover (pascha), for whose sake our bodies also suffer (paschei),184
and who are obliged to acknowledge the suffering of Christ.” In much the
same way, they collected the menstrual blood of the women and consumed
it as a common meal, affirming that “it is the blood of Christ.”185 Here we
again see how Gnosticism repudiated traditional Jewish values, for semen
and menstrual blood were among the most “unclean” of all objects and
elite “inner circle” which (in sharp contrast to their usual “warm approval of mar-
riage,” Clement, Miscellanies, 3.1.1) were said by Irenaeus to “fearlessly practice eve-
rything that is forbidden,” maintaining that “carnal things should be allowed to the
carnal nature, while spiritual things are provided for the spiritual” (Against Heresies,
1.6.3). Such elitists “highly exalt themselves, and claim to be the perfect and the
elect seed … They themselves have grace as their own special possession, which
has descended from above by means of an unspeakable and indescribable copula-
tion, and by this means more will be given them. They maintain, therefore, that in
every way it is always necessary for them to practice the mystery of copulation …
using these very words: ‘Whosoever is in the world and does not unite with a
woman is not of the truth; but whosoever is of the world and has intercourse with
a woman shall not attain to the truth’.” In short, ordinary men were obliged to live
by the Law, but those who were under grace were free to ignore the restrictions of
common morality. See also Werner Foerster, Gnosis (Oxford, 1972), 2:313.
183 Gnostische Mysterien (Munich, 1922).
184 The relationship of the Passover to Christ’s passion here is obviously based
on a folk etymology: in this case, pascha = paschei.

185 Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 3–4. One should bear in mind that the “Female”
was believed to “surround the white seed of the Male with her own blood, as with
red fire” (Clementine Homilies, 3.27). Thus the menstrual blood was thought to be a
positive contribution to the process of conception.
hence the object of the most intense taboos. On the other hand, Jacob Mil-
grom has argued that these substances were dangerous precisely because
they represented the forces of life, which was why they could harm or de-
stroy when handled improperly.186 It therefore followed that the anti-Jewish
Gnostics saw in them special powers from above, which must be reclaimed
from the processes of reproduction and used strictly for their “spiritual”
value.
It further happened that if impregnation resulted, the fetus was ritually
aborted, ground up with honey and spices, and eaten by the celebrants.187
Epiphanius tells us that this was done to outwit the “Archon of Lust,” who
sought to trick men into reproducing their wretched race (26.5.6). Else-
where, he added that “if it should prove that the soul had borne a son, it is
kept back until it is in a position to receive its children back to itself”
(26.13.3), i.e., to reclaim the lost pneumatic substance of the parent.
Both of these statements allude to the Gnostic belief that the powers
of procreation are in fact heavenly powers (ano dynameis), i.e., spiritual ele-
ments stolen from the Higher Wisdom (Barbelo) and imprisoned by the
Demiurge in semen and blood, in order to maintain his cosmic creation.
Thus, “the seed is good, but the work of procreation evil; for the seed is the
power of the All-Mother, while the work is the power of the Ruler of this
world, carried out with stolen property.”188 It was therefore the aim of the
Gnostic to say at the end of his life, “I have sown no children for the Ar-
chon, but I have uprooted his roots, and I have collected the members that
were scattered” (26.13.2). In this way, he believed that he had retrieved
(sullego) Barbelo’s stolen property from its involvement in the processes of
procreation and would be able to return it to its proper owner. In fact, the
Nicolaitans (another name for the Phibionites?) held that Barbelo herself
worked tirelessly to rob the Archons of their seed by appearing to them in
the form of a beautiful woman, “that by doing so she may receive again her
own power that was inseminated into these various beings” (25.2.4).189
186 Leviticus 1–16, Anchor Bible (New York, 1991), 766–68.

187 This may provide a clue to the origin of similar practices in medieval witch-
craft.
188Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 6.
189This may have been a form of the Jewish belief that Lilith (the evil counter-
part of the Shekhinah) often appeared to men to rob them of their seed, as well as a
prototype of the medieval succubus, who visited men by night to cause nocturnal
pollutions.
312 A GREAT MYSTERY
Nevertheless, just why the Phibionites called Barbelo’s stolen “power”

the “Passover,” or “Body of Christ,” was not precisely explained by
Epiphanius. Fendt believed that this was due to the fact that the Christian
Eucharist and the Phibionite “sperm-sacrifice” began separately as secret
“cult-meals,” during which the celebrants invoked their respective deities in
order to help them perform their heavenly work. In the case of the Chris-
tians, this was the sharing of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice; in the case of
Phibionites, this was the sullegein of Barbelo’s lost powers. The Phibionite
sperm-meal, however, was more than an imitation of Barbelo’s activity, for
those who consumed it believed that they were actually Barbelo’s scattered
members and that they desperately needed to reclaim the pneumatic sub-
stances which they consumed. Thus when certain Christians, who were fa-
miliar with the Phibionites, compared the Eucharist in their own Commun-
ion with the Phibionite sperm-meal, some of them were impressed enough
by the latter to take it up as a “superior” vehicle for their own Christian
worship.190
This assimilation, Fendt calculated, took place some time around A.D.
200.191 What the meal may have been like before that, he believed, could be
determined from material preserved in 2 Jeu (from ca. A.D. 200), which
describes a prototype meal of semen and blood, with the explanation that
“We have known the True Knowledge, and pray to the True God” (C.
Schmidt, Koptisch-gnostische Schriften, I. 304). Later in the century, the same
practice was mentioned in the Pistis Sophia (Schmidt edition, 351, 14ff), this
time with the words, “We believe in Esau and Jacob” (see also Irenaeus,
Against Heresies, 1.31.1), suggesting the presence of a Jewish component.192
But since the sperm-meal was itself essentially unaltered, Fendt concluded
that it must have been the original form of the rite and that it received its
Eucharistic character only through assimilation to Christian values.
Fendt in fact suggested that one might learn something about the
Eucharist by examining those features which most interested the Phibio-
nites. Particularly, he noted that the Eucharist must have been from very
early times connected with the agape-kiss and that both had originated side
by side in communal gatherings designed to promote the love and unifica-
190 Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 10–12. Fendt also offers a psychological explana-
tion for the Eucharistic formula, “We present thee with this gift, the Body of
Christ,” which he believed was originally a pre-Christian “sperm-meal” celebrating
an Asiatic-Egyptian Mother-goddess.
191 Ibid., 13.
192 Ibid., 13–14.
tion of Christ’s members.193 Thus, the fourth-century Phibionite formula,

“Perform the agape with thy brother,” appears to be a genuine relic of early
Christian practice, in which the congregation was united by bread and a
holy kiss, and sanctified as “God’s People.”194 The Phibionite-Christians at
the same time replaced the brotherly kiss with their own explicit horrendum
and sacrum, against which the original agape now seemed a pale and ineffec-
tual shadow.195
But while Fendt may have accounted for some of the formal relation-
ships between these Christian and Phibionite practices (liturgical structure
and language), their organic relationship may have been deeper than even
he realized.
To begin with, the basic connection between the Sacred Kiss and the
Mystery of Sexual Union was probably part of the Primitive Christian agape
from the start (pp. 174–75, above). The communion of bread and wine was
also a recognized form of union with the Divine. Thus the Phibionite
sperm-sacrifice and the Eucharist were already varieties of the same Wis-
dom Mystery, long before Gnostic “innovations” took place.
Furthermore, Phibionite doctrine was assuredly related to Christian
belief since the former’s “Barbelo” was none other than the ancient “Wis-
dom,” and thus indigenous to both traditions. Though she may have been
further modified by contemporary Mother-goddess cults, she was essen-
tially related to Christ in the same way that Wisdom was related to him in
the Valentinian system, namely that both were “mediators” who emanated
from the Unknown Father, a fact that even Epiphanius acknowledges in his
summary of Phibionite mythology:
In the eighth heaven (above Ialdabaoth’s Hebdomad) is the female power
who is called Barbelo and the Father of the Universe, its Lord, who is
also called Autopater (“Self Father”), and another one, Christ, who
brought himself to birth, and this Christ is the one who descended and
showed men this knowledge, whom they also call Jesus (Panarion,
26.10.4).
The Phibionites thus revered the same “Father-Mother-and-Son” wor-
shipped by other Gnostics, and whom they likewise explained as emana-
tions from Autopater, the “Self-Existent.” Thus Christ and Barbelo were
Aeons in the same traditional hierarchy of Light. And though Epiphanius
193 Ibid., 18.

194 Ibid.
195 Ibid., 19, 11.
314 A GREAT MYSTERY
does not supply us with details, it is obvious that Barbelo had subsequently
“fallen” into matter, for her power was being regathered in the form of the
souls imprisoned in semen (26.10.9–10). It was Christ’s role to unite spiritu-
ally with these fallen souls during Gnostic intercourse, which at the same
time released Barbelo’s powers from the ritual sperm-meal. The Phibionite
males then identified themselves with Christ by uniting sexually with the
various women of the group in order to assist them in overcoming the Ar-
chons:196
Be one with me, that I may present you to the Archon (26.9.6).
When each had successfully united with the required number of women
(corresponding to the number of Archons who sought to bar his passage
into heaven), he boastfully declared,
I am Christ, for I have descended from above through the names of the
365 Archons (26.9.9).
The Phibionite could then claim that his sperm contained not only the
Mother’s recovered power, but also Christ’s male power, hence it was the
Body of Christ, “in which all things—even male and female—are recon-
ciled” (cf. Gal 3:28; Col 1:18–28).
This explanation has the advantage of agreeing with the known facts
of Gnostic soteriology, but it also vindicates Epiphanius’ details concerning
the nature and purpose of the sperm-cult, which Kurt Rudolph has recently
dismissed as being “exaggerated” and an imaginary product of the re-
porter’s own concupiscence.197 2 Jeu and the Pistis Sophia further verify his
account; and other early authors refer to similar “obscene practices”
amongst the Christians of the day, such as Minucius Felix, who around
A.D. 210 admitted that the Church was sometimes accused of being a religio
libidinum, in which members worshipped the virile member during secret,
nocturnal rites—even eating their own children! He also describes the same
“incestuous lust” displayed by Phibionites during their “fellowship meals”
Compare the Gospel of Philip 65:1–26: “As for the unclean spirits (= ar-
196
chons), there are males among them and there are females. The males are they
which unite with the souls who inhabit a female form, but the females are they
which are mingled with those in a male form … But none shall be able to escape
them since they detain him (the soul) if he does not receive a male power or a fe-
male power—the bridegroom and the bride. One receives them from the mirrored
Bridal Chamber.”
197 Gnosis, 249.
(agape), when all indulged in indiscriminate sexual intercourse (Octavius, 9).

Origen was in fact obliged around A.D. 248 to defend even the majority
Christians against the charge that they “offered up an infant in sacrifice and
partook of its flesh,” enjoying promiscuous coition during their meetings in
the darkness (Against Celsus, 6.27). Even Clement of Alexandria mentions
these “obscene meals”—which he revealingly says are not worthy of being
called an “agape” (Miscellanies, 3.2)—though he ascribes them specifically to
the Carpocratians, who were widely known to have been involved in sexual
deviancy.
In another passage, Clement expresses his disgust that such groups
would refer to their Aphrodite pandemos (sexual love) as a “mystical com-
munion,” when it was only “common sexual intercourse” (Miscellanies,
3.4). Perhaps the most interesting report of all, however, is that of Hippoly-
tus (Refutations, 6.19), who recorded that the Simonians called their inde-
scriminate copulation the “Holy of Holies”—an obvious recollection of the
connection between Christianity and the imagery of the Embracing Cheru-
bim in the Temple.
That both Clement and Hippolytus (ca. A.D. 210–230) were thinking
of practices like those of the Phibionites is further shown by the fact that
Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 1.31) and Justin (Apology, 10.29) both character-
ized them with the technical expression, solvere opera hysterae (“destroying the
work of the Female”)—i.e., the work of the Fallen Wisdom and her Demi-
urge—which was the imprisonment of souls in bodies. Accordingly, the
“Female’s” defeat was equivalent to restoring the light of the Higher Wis-
dom, as in the Phibionite sullegein.198 Thus, we have good reason (contra Ru-
dolph) to take Epiphanius’ report concerning the Phibionite agape seriously.
The latter’s Panarion (26.11.1) also shows that some Gnostics resorted
to ritual masturbation in order to thwart the process of procreation. They
used as supporting texts both Acts 20:34 (“These hands were sufficient, not
only for me, but for those with me”) and Ephesians 4:28 (“Working with
your own hands, that you may have something to share with those who
have nothing”). There were also those who employed homosexual union
for the same purpose (26.11.8; 13.1); and there were Gnostic women who
copulated and fornicated constantly, but “never proceeded with actual in-
tercourse … so far as to conceive.” These were admiringly called “virgins”
(12.11.10), perhaps recalling the Philonic principle that ordinary intercourse
198 See Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 12–17.

316 A GREAT MYSTERY
makes women out of virgins, but “intercourse with God” (i.e., ritual inter-
course) turns them back into “virgins” again.199
Fendt describes still other Gnostic versions of Mystic Communion in
which a Serpent was venerated as a symbol of the Logos.200 The so-called
Ophites (“Serpent-worshippers”) and Naassenes (from Hebrew nahaš, or
“snake”) believed that the Serpent who instructed Adam and Eve in the
Garden was none other than Wisdom. After her “fall,” she became the
sleeping dragon in the depths of the sea, out of whom the physical creation
proceeded. In this legend (in Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.30.3), we recognize
four more themes from traditional Judaism and early Christianity: (1) the
account of Creation, when God’s Spirit (the Wisdom/Logos) rested upon
the face of the waters; (2) the concept of the Cosmos as the Body of the
Logos; (3) the Old Testament conception of the watery deep as a chaos
monster (Leviathan); and (4) the prophecy that the Son of Man would some
day be “lifted up” like Moses’ “Brass Serpent” in the Wilderness (John
3:14). These themes were ingeniously combined in Ophite theology with
the belief that Wisdom could still be found in ordinary serpents. This was
of course rendered more plausible by the Gnostic reversal of Old Testa-
ment values, which reduced Yahweh to the rank of Demiurge, but dignified
the Serpent as the Unknown Father’s special envoy.201 Thus, the Ophites
prepared their Eucharist by allowing a snake to thrash about in the bread,202
undoubtedly to impart Wisdom’s presence to the sacred repast. At the same
time, they performed the agape by kissing the serpent’s mouth, showing
again that (for some Christians, at least) the agape was a form of union with
Wisdom. In this way, they were able to commune with the “Serpent-
Power” of the Logos, quoting as legitimation Luke 22:19: “This is my body
which is given for you.”203

200 Gnostische Mysterien, 25.
201 Compare also ibid., 25–26. We must reject, however, Fendt’s suggestion
that the Asiatic Magna Mater lies behind this imagery. It may well have been drawn
upon for additional corroboration, but the original elements of this symbolism are
all to be found in the Bible. See also pp. 273–74, above, for the Gnostic legend of
the Serpent’s role in illuminating mankind.
202 Fendt believes that the absence of wine in this ceremony corresponds to an
early form of the Eucharist, in which bread only was specified. See Acts 2:46; Acts
of Thomas, 27, 49, 50.
203 Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 28. We must again disagree with Kurt Rudolph
(Gnosis, 247) that the Ophite Serpent-Eucharist had nothing essential to do with
Fendt also discusses an Ebionite form of the Eucharist which em-

ployed bread and water in place of the customary bread and wine (Panarion,
30.16).204 Von Harnack was of the opinion that the first Christians were
commanded merely to celebrate a sacred meal together, as in the Lukan
tradition, which fails to specify what drink shall accompany the bread (Luke
22:19–20). Only after the Gnostics began to object to the use of alcohol did
the Church counter by specifying that wine be included in the Eucharist—
largely in opposition to the Gnostics’ use of water.205
There were other Christians, who like the Gnostics, were forbidden
the use of alcohol and regularly used different substances in its place. Thus,
we read in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho (117) that any solid or liquid might be
substituted for the bread or wine.206 Even the parallel tradition which took
the use of wine for granted (based on the Last Supper) did not attach par-
ticular significance to the wine per se.207 Irenaeus, on the other hand, ob-
jected heartily to the omission of wine from the Eucharist, arguing that the
mixture of wine and water, prior to being presented to the communicants,
specifically symbolized the union of God and man (Against Heresies, 5.1.3).208
Christianity, but was a continuation of Greek and Hellenistic cults like that at
Eleusis and that of Sabazios.
204 Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 29 ff.
205 Ibid., 36.
206 Ibid., 30 and 78.
207 Ibid., 36.
208 Russian churches explained the mystery of water and wine as the mystery of
God and Humanity uniting at the Incarnation, when the Mother of God was im-
pregnated to produce the Savior. Psalm 45 was recited as a kind of epithalamium
(“Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen,” etc.), preceded by the words,
“Blessed is the union of the Holy Ones (hagia), always, now and forever from ages
of ages.” The Jacobites used to say, “Mingle, O Lord God, this water with the wine,
just as thou didst unite thy Godhood with our own humanity.” The Armenians, as
they mingled the two, proclaimed, “Let the Holy Ghost come upon thee and let the
power of the Most High overshadow thee.” Nestorian Churches carried the sym-
bolism even into the kneeding of the Eucharist dough, which was partly formed
into phallic shapes (kaprana, melka, “King”), and partly into the shape of cups (mel-
kaita, “Queen”), both of which were then united and thoroughly mixed. Ethel
Drower, Water into Wine (London, 1956), 62–64, 66, 68, 75, 76–77, 78; also The
Secret Adam (Oxford, 1960), 52, 69, 76, 79, 91, also note 63. The “Pouring out” of
water was itself associated with fertility rites; see Patai, Man and Temple (New York,
1969), 36–7; also Genesis Rabbah 78:16; 1 Samuel 7:3–10; Tosefta, Sukkoth 3:18;
Zechariah 14:17–18.
318 A GREAT MYSTERY
This is significant for us because it shows once again that certain early
Christians interpreted the Eucharist as a hieros gamos symbol, similar to the
symbolic mixing of wine and water at the autumn rite of Water Libation.209
Irenaeus’ reason for preferring wine in the Communion therefore supports
our contention that some sort of Sacred Marriage stood behind the Eucha-
rist from the beginning, representing the union of Christ and the Church.
The Gnostics, however, insisted that pure water was even holier than
wine, and therefore an appropriate symbol for the divine element in the
mystery of union. In this, they were supported by the Mandaeans, whose
Mambuha-Communion exclusively employed water,210 for to them the “liv-
ing water” represented the Heavenly Jordan, or the realm of Light.211
A similar water-Eucharist can be found in the Pistis Sophia (Schmidt
edition, 243ff), which describes the forgiveness of sin by calling down the
“Powers” (dynameis) from the Father’s Treasury of Light into the bread and
water, providing for the expungment of errors committed by the assem-
bly.212 This resembles the use of semen in the Phibionite sullegein, for the
powerful liquid with its imprisoned “light” also set one free from the do-
minion of the Demiurge.
In these late versions of the Eucharist, semen and water are roughly
equivalent as bearers of light,213 showing perhaps that water was an even
more basic and primitive symbol of the Divine than wine. One thinks in
this connection of the frequent use of water as a symbol of the Spirit at
Qumran, e.g., in the Hymn Scroll, with its obvious recollection of the tradi-
tional “River of Wisdom” (Sir 24:25–30):
And all the rivers of Eden shall water the boughs (of the eternal Plant-
ing), and it shall become a mighty forest … and it shall be a well-spring
of light and an eternal unfailing fountain (1QH VI, 16–17).
In fact, 2 Jeu follows the epiclēsis (Invocation) with an explanation that the
wine of the Eucharist turns into the water of life, i.e., the water of baptism,
209 See Patai, Man and Temple, the chapter entitled “The Ritual of the Water Li-
bation,” 24ff.
210 Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 32.
211 Ibid., 32.
212 Ibid., 33–4.
213 Ibid., 35.
at the moment of blessing,214 showing clearly that water had a higher sig-
nificance than the wine itself.
Behind such rites Fendt detects what must be the most archaic symbol
of all for divine power, namely water, which appears to have been the natu-
ral and essential medium of Christian cult-mysticism from the very start.
Whether one drank it or was immersed in it, it was the mediator of heavenly
life, the source of gnosis, forgiveness, salvation, and divinization.215 Water,
in short, was the symbol par excellence for the Light, or the heavenly “ef-
fluence” which we first encountered in the Wisdom Mystery, and the ele-
ment to which the initiate was traditionally “married” in the Temple. The
Gnostic’s sacrament of semen obviously belonged to the same tradition. It
too was divine Light, or “water of life,” because it bore the logos spermatikos
which had descended from above to animate Creation. According to the
Libertine Gnostics, it too had to be freed from its entrapment in the physi-
cal world by sexual means, first by awakening it, then by preventing it from
being diverted into procreation. As Jacques Lecarrière poetically observes in
his slender but perceptive essay, The Gnostics,216
And so we see that in the very depths of corporeal darkness, in the
world of ash and mud that is each human body, only an all-embracing
asceticism or the effusion of erotic desire and the ecstatic cult of women
can revive the flickering spark we keep within us. Just as the ash at the
heart of a dying fire glows red, being the burnt-out stars of matter which
has been consumed and, by the same token, ultimately saved, so for the
Gnostic, the mental embers that glow red in the ashes of the body,
when liberated and saved through gnosis, are the sure sign that his path
will one day lead him to the circle of stars.
Gnostic groups survived as late as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
All of them—including the Bogumils and the Cathars of Provence—now
believed that the “Perfect” should either avoid sexual fulfillment, or employ
it as a means of exhausting itself. As Denis de Rougemont has recently
shown,217 the Catharist Troubadours adopted the latter stratagem as their
secret cult practice, choosing to serve some idealized “beloved,” who nec-
214 Schmidt edition, 309. Conversely, the water of baptism is identical to the
“first sacrifice” (Schmidt edition, 245, 15ff). The Acts of Thomas likewise makes bap-
tism a part of the water-Eucharist (121). See Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 35–36, 79.
215 Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, 36.
216 English translation (New York, 1977), 95.
217 Love in the Western World.
320 A GREAT MYSTERY
essarily remained unattainable. Thus, sexual ardor was kept tormentingly

alive, though never allowed to find satisfaction in the world. The same au-
thor has further argued that the romance of Tristan and Iseult was informed
by the same Gnostic hatred of the world, and the realization that true spiri-
tual union could only be consummated in death. Perhaps this reflects in a
final, strange way the fact that genuine love was considered at one time to
be eternal, and to endure beyond the grave:
ki ‘azzah kammewet ‘ahavah.
For Love is strong as Death (Song of Songs 8:6).218
GNOSTICISM AS A DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIGHT-STREAM

It should now be clear that Gnosticism, far from being “foreign” to Christi-
anity, was a natural development of indigenous Christian beliefs—many of
them since forgotten—and it therefore offers welcome corroboration of
their existence prior to being eliminated by so-called “orthodoxy.” As James
M. Robinson notes in his introduction to The Nag Hammadi Library, “Chris-
tian Gnosticism emerged as a reaffirmation, though in different terms, of
the original stance of transcendence central to the very beginnings of
Christianity” (p. 4). Simone Pétrement—the leading modern proponent of a
Christian origin for Gnosticism—also comes to the conclusion that
the progressive formation of Gnosticism can be depicted by considering
the development of a branch of Christianity, the Pauline, Johannine branch.
It seemed to me that Gnosticism gradually took shape, by a series of
stages, beginning with the Gnosticizing tendencies one finds in the New
Testament, up to the moment when Gnosticism properly so-called ap-
peared at the beginning of the second century (our emphasis).219
Elaine Pagels likewise adduces considerable evidence to show that the
Gnostics based their theology largely on the works of John and Paul, whose
writings they considered to be their basic scripture.220 Even the Church Fa-
218See Marvin H. Pope’s interpretation in Song of Songs, 229, 668–69.

219A Separate God: The Christian Origins of Gnosticism (San Francisco, 1990), 482.
220 The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis (Nashville, 1973); The Gnostic Paul
(Philadelphia, 1975). In her more recent The Gnostic Gospels (New York, 1979), she
writes: “If we go back to the earliest sources of Christian tradition— the sayings of
Jesus (although scholars disagree on the question of which sayings are genuinely
authentic), we can see how both gnostic and orthodox forms of Christianity could
emerge as variant interpretations of the teaching and significance of Christ” (148).
thers were unanimously agreed that Gnosticism developed entirely within

Christianity and was therefore a uniquely “Christian heresy.”
The original “transcendence” of which Robinson speaks had to do
primarily with the Church’s apocalyptic world-view, according to which the
Earthly had fallen from the Heavenly during a cosmic catastrophe, wrench-
ing apart the male-female relationship which had existed between Christ and
his preexistent Church. The Church, however, was still linked to her in-
tended Spouse by a Light-Stream which terminated in the Jerusalem Tem-
ple, but was visible only to those whose mystical vision was suitably awak-
ened. There it waited to reveal itself to the fallen Community and reunite its
members to Christ. This in turn became the basic pattern of Gnostic salva-
tion.
Robinson’s “different terms,” on the other hand, reflected the dualistic
barrier which had emerged between the heavens and the world of the Jew-
ish God, who now believed himself to be the only deity, and who gave the
people of Moses an “inferior law” with which to bind them to his fallen
creation.
Thus it will be seen that the claims of the Gnostics may be largely
traced to Christianity’s own claims, though occasionally carried to logical
extremes through intellectual virtuosity. Their derogatory view of Judaism
was in fact but a consequence of Christianity’s belief that it possessed a more
complete version of God’s Law, one which had earlier been given to the pa-
triarchs (Matt 19:8; Gal 3:8), but had been simplified at the time of Moses
to manage the unruly worshippers of the Golden Calf.221 Scholars who have
recently argued that Gnosticism originated within Jewish circles will thus see
that their view is at least partly true, though its Jewish roots had first to un-
dergo a Christian “correction” before they could become identifiably
221 As Leo Schaya writes in The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah (Baltimore,
1975), “the original Tablets of the Law emanated from the Tree of Life … (But)
Israel, by worshipping the Golden Calf ‘was judged unworthy of benefitting from
them.’ Therefore, Moses, following the divine command, gave the people other
Tables, ‘which came from the side of the Tree of Good and Evil.’ The first Tables
… were the light and doctrine of the Messiah, the outpouring of universal deliver-
ance, the source of eternal life on earth. The second Tables represented the indirect
or ‘fragmented’ manifestation of the light” (quoting from the Zohar). Gershom
Scholem, On the Kabbalah (New York, 1965), 69–70, gives the following references
for this doctrine: Zohar I:26b; II:117b; III:124b; 153a; 255a; Tikkun Zohar, 56, 60;
Zohar Hadash 106c. See also 4 Ezra 14:4–6, which states that God gave two sets of
Torah on Sinai, one for the people, and one for the elite.
322 A GREAT MYSTERY
“Gnostic.” In the process, the Jewish “heresy” of Two Powers in

Heaven,222 as well as the belief in a hypostatic Logos/Wisdom, evolved into
the Christian “Father and Son,” and their “angels” into the “Aeons” of the
Gnostic Pleroma—now explicated with the help of a developing Neo-
Platonism and a growing trend toward asceticism.
The Gnostics also preserved the soteriological scheme of the Jewish
Temple, which taught that men could be redeemed through a hieros gamos
with their Source (the Wisdom Mystery), making them “one flesh” with the
Divine. This hieros gamos survived in the New Testament as Paul’s “Great
Mystery,” which likewise consisted of Christ/Wisdom’s “marrage” to his
people. In the Gospel of John this became the doctrine of “spiritual in-
dwelling,” explaining the mechanism of the Atonement as man’s “At-One-
Ment” (henosis) with the Divine, as opposed to the legalisms of the Mosaic
Law. These two expressions of the Wisdom Mystery in turn became the
“Bridal Chamber” of the Gnostics, teaching once again that the mystery of
sexual union was the sacrament which “catalyzed” the mystery of union
with Christ. Thus the “Bridal Chamber” became an affirmation of the
Judaeo-Christian marriage doctrine, which in its own way verified the belief
of the first Christians, who had not yet elevated celibacy over normal mar-
riage. Even the antinomian rites of later Gnostics still showed the paradig-
matic importance of the marriage bond, which they employed in their curi-
ously perverted way in order to control the life force which it contained.
Most significant, perhaps, was the manner in which the Gnostics pre-
served the ancient theology of the Light-Stream. Philo had earlier described
how Temple pilgrims were “inseminated” by the divine virtues which it
carried to the earth; and the New Testament writers saw it as the “Light” of
God’s Spirit, mediating his divine attributes and powers to mankind—even
a “fulness of Godhood” (plērōma tēs theotētos, Col 2:9). Thus the Light-Stream
led to the Church’s concept of the “Divine Fulness,” and the “Divine Ful-
ness” to the Gnostic Pleroma, with its archetypal patterns of deity. Its theo-
logians now dissected and analyzed these patterns in an attempt to lay bare
a “Unified Field” which might explain both contemporary science and relig-
ion. In the process, they rediscovered within its luminous structure the
same Familial Images which had given rise to the generations, and saw in its
heavenly history the archetypal paradigm of humanity’s own Fall, sexual
isolation, and marital restoration. Thus would be reconstituted the male-

female completeness of the Pleroma, both Man and Woman, and Christ and the
Church.
It is most remarkable how the Gnostic Pleroma carried on this ancient
tradition of the light-world and its preexistent images, reaching all the way
back to the Semitic doctrine of the Heavenly Archetypes. Thus we read in
the Babylonian Enuma elish the Father’s command to his Son: “A likeness of
what (Marduk) made in heaven, let him make on earth” (VI:112), showing
that “the configuration of the sky corresponds to the phenomena of the
earth,”223 and that “our own life is but a particular form of the universal
life.”224 The Preacher also explained that “What has been is what will be …
for there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9)—even the Temple
(Exod 25:9) and the events of history.225 Indeed, as Mircea Eliade has care-
fully demonstrated, most primitive men understood reality to be “a function
of the imitation of a celestial archetype,”226 and Franz Cumont was able to
trace its Semitic formulations all the way back through “the first twenty or
thirty centuries of Mesopotamian history.”227
Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend find these preexistent
archetypes even farther back in the Neolithic period and show that the
mathematical precision needed to detect and quantify their heavenly
movements was available by at least 4000 B.C. According to these scholars,
the entire “Protopythagorean” world believed that the soul came from a
celestial fire, but fell to earth as a result of the disruption known as the
“Precession of the Equinoxes,” during which the human spirits were
ejected from their luminous home via the Milky Way. This ubiquitous tradi-
tion gave rise to such myths as the Hindu “Churning of the Milky Sea,” the
“Cosmic Drilling” of Horus and Seth, the Icelandic “Amlodhi and his
Spinning Top,” the Mesopotamian “Stirring of the Apsu before Ea,” and
the Platonic Demiurge, with his great “Mill of Time”—all corresponding to
the celestial rotation of the stars.228
This widespread doctrine will therefore be seen to be much older than
even the Zoroastrian menak and getik (“heavenly archetype” and “earthly

225 Compare Isaiah 14:12–15 with 14:4, 16–22, also with Ezekiel 28:12–19 and
Daniel 11:36–39, 45. In each of these instances, Satan’s attack on the Mountain of
the Lord is the pattern for similar attacks by earthly kings.
226 The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton, 1954), 5.
227 Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (New York, 1960), 6.
228 See their Hamlet’s Mill (Boston, 1977).
324 A GREAT MYSTERY
antitype”), which many have claimed to be the source of Gnostic dualism.

But according to Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin, these Zoroastrian ideas
were themselves “essentially Semitic and astral,”229 showing that their ori-
gins were indeed much older than their reputed appearance in the sixth cen-
tury B.C., having originated no doubt within the thought world of the
proto-Semites. Edwin Yamauchi has in fact shown that the major sources
of Zoroastrian theology were compiled much too late to have had any in-
fluence on the development of Gnosticism,230 and probably belonged to a
general Near Eastern tradition of immemorial antiquity.
We accordingly believe that Gnosticism was hardly the result of out-
side influences grafted onto Christianity, or even of unidentified “Jewish”
influences previously unknown, but rather the survival of an ancient and
enduring belief in man’s origin in the heavens and his eventual reunion with
his Source. This tradition was handed down for millennia by the ancestors
of Israel and the Primitive Church, though it has been obscured by the re-
cent “orthodoxy” of both factions. Yet the same tradition was serendipi-
tously explained once again by the English word, “Atonement,” being the
real meaning of salvation, or “At-One-Ment” with the Divine. Symbolized
at one time by the Embracing Cherubim, this remained the central function
of the Temple and the Gnostic “Bridal Chamber,” where Man and God
were made “one flesh” (Eph 5:31–32), or as Paul expressed it elsewhere,
“one Spirit” (1 Cor 6:17). Thus the Divine Fulness was directly shared with
believers; and the Gnostic Pleroma offered an “exploded view” of the con-
tinuous process by which God “extends himself to those whom he loves, so
that those who came from him might become him as well” (Tripartite Tractate,
73:23–28).
229 Symbols and Values in Zoroastrianism (New York, 1966), 98.

230 Pre-Christian Gnosticism (Grand Rapids, 1973).
7 THE GREAT MYSTERY IN THE MIDDLE AGES
THE KABBALISTIC GREAT MYSTERY

We have now returned to the point at which we began our study, i.e., at the
original Jewish conception of human marriage as a sacred and divine obliga-
tion and a reflection of God’s own image, holy and worthy of veneration
for its own sake. Most importantly, it was charged with great soteriological
power when one became united to the Divine Reality which it symbolized.
After the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, pious Jews continued
to search for visions of God’s “Face” or “image” in private, the object be-
ing to see what Isaiah and others had seen in the Temple (Isa 6:1ff), or even
in exile (Ezek 1:4–26; Dan 7:9–14). How this tradition of communion with
God passed down to medieval Jewish mystics is still largely unknown, but
thanks to the indefatigable researches of Gershom Scholem, it has at least
become certain that its origin and roots lay in the mystical traditions of the
Second Temple.
After the Temple disappeared, these traditions went mostly under-
ground, resurfacing here and there in scattered mystical treatises, until they
eventually emerged into the full light of day in the writings of the German
Hasidim (ca. 1150–1250). They reached their greatest flowering, however, in
the writings of the Spanish “Kabbalists,” especially in the thirteenth-century
book known as the Zohar (“the Splendor”), of which we shall have more to
say presently. “Kabbalah” in fact means “the Transmission,” i.e., “the Tra-
dition” which was handed down from the immemorial past, and whose his-
tory Scholem has summarized as follows:
Subterranean but effective, and occasionally still traceable, connections
exist between these later mystics and the groups which produced a large
proportion of the pseudepigrapha and apocalypses of the first century
before and after Christ. Subsequently a great deal of this unrecognized
tradition made its way to later generations independent of, and often in
isolation from the schools and academies of the Talmudic teachers. We
know that in the period of the Second Temple an esoteric doctrine was
already taught in Pharisaic circles. The first chapter of Genesis, the story
of Creation (Ma’aseh Bereshit ), and the first chapter of Ezekiel, the vision
325
326 A GREAT MYSTERY
of God’s throne-chariot (merkabah), were the favorite subjects of discus-

sion and interpretation which it was apparently considered inadvisable
to make public … It seems probable, however, that speculation did not
remain restricted to commentaries on the Biblical text. The hayyoth, the
“living creatures,” and other objects of Ezekiel’s vision were conceived
as angels who form an angelologic hierarchy at the Celestial Court …
One thing remains certain: the main subjects of the later Merkabah mys-
ticism already occupy a central position in this oldest esoteric literature,
best represented by the Book of Enoch. The combination of apocalyp-
tic with theosophy and cosmogony is emphasized almost to excess:
“Not only have the seers perceived the celestial hosts, heaven with its
angels, but the whole of this apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic literature
is shot through with a chain of new revelations concerning the hidden
glory of the great Majesty, its throne, its palace … the celestial spheres
towering up one over the other, paradise, hell, and the containers of the
souls” (MTJM, 42).
These were the visions experienced by such prophets as Enoch (1 Enoch
14), Abraham (Apocalypse of Abraham and The Testament of Abraham)1 and Ezra
(4 Ezra; The Greek Apocalypse of Ezra; Vision of Ezra; Quotations of Ezra; the
Revelation of Ezra, etc.),2 and which appear to have become part of an oral
tradition paralleling the more familiar traditions of the rabbis and the Tal-
mud.3 These were already the subject of esoteric speculation during the
Second Temple period, and the Mishna (Hagigah 2:1) gave them the name
of ma’aseh merkabah, referring to the vision of God’s glory seated on his
Cherubic Throne (the merkabah). The same traditions were also treated ex-
tensively in the Qumran literature, where we read about the angels sur-
rounding God’s Throne, and how to enter into communion with them (pp.
75–82, above). The late Jewish version of Enoch known as 3 Enoch gives us
an especially rich account of the prophet Enoch’s ascent to the merkabah
and what he saw there,4 though it was obviously based on the earlier pseu-
depigrapha known as 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch, the first of which contains mate-
rial from approximately 160 B.C.
1In James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City,
NY, 1985), 1:681–705.
2 Also in ibid., 1:517–604).
3 D. S. Russell, Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, 1964), 173–
74.
4 3 Enoch, or the Hebrew Book of Enoch, ed. Hugo Odeberg (New York, 1973).
This book is generally dated to approximately the sixth or seventh centuries of our
era.
THE GREAT MYSTERY IN THE MIDDLE AGES 327
From the fourth century on, and possibly even earlier,5 we encounter a
growing number of treatises describing the world of the merkabah—very
similar to the structure of the Gnostic Pleroma—with graduated levels, dif-
ferent orders of angels, and special rituals designed to facilitate communica-
tion with the Great Being seated on the merkabah. The best known of these
descriptions are contained in the Lesser Hekhaloth and the Greater Hekhaloth
(the hekhaloth being the “palaces” or “mansions”6 which surround the
Heavenly Throne). The Greater Hekhaloth also contains the oldest known
description of “God’s Body” (the shi’ur komah), which is generally depicted
in gigantic terms (“Great is our Lord, and mighty is his power,” Ps 147:5).
First Enoch in fact characterized him as “infinite” (“I have seen the measure
of the height of the Lord, without dimension and without shape, which has
no end,” 13:8). But in order to ascend to the merkabah, one had to reveal the
“secret names of God” to the angelic doorkeepers. The one who gave them
correctly was admitted through a Forecourt called pardes, “the Garden of
God” (cf. Rev 2:7), after which the hekhaloth themselves began. Here we are
obviously speaking of something based on the structure of the Temple,
whose own hekhal stood between the Forecourt and the Holy of Holies.
Here the visitor became aware of the Tri-Sanctus (“Holy, Holy, Holy”) as it
was sung by the angelic choir, just as Isaiah had heard it centuries before
(Isa 6:3).
God’s shape, however, was based primarily on descriptions of the “Be-
loved” found in Song of Songs (5:11–16), showing that the mystics still
thought of God in sexual terms. We already noted that the German hasidim
referred to him as the keruv meyuhad (“Special Cherub”),7 an obvious refer-
ence to the Embracing Cherubim in the Second Temple. He was also said
to be an “emanation of God’s Glory” (i.e., Wisdom), containing two con-
trasting attributes, “holiness” and “sovereignty,” just as Philo had described
God’s male and female powers in the Holy of Holies (“While God is one, his
highest and chiefest powers are two, even goodness and sovereignty,” On
the Cherubim, 27–28).8 That God indeed had a Feminine Counterpart, with
whom he engaged in marital relations, is frequently commented on by the
Kabbalists, being one of the longest-lived traditions of Israelite religion,
though it was by now interpreted in monotheistic fashion as the union of
5 G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York, 1965), 374.
6 Cf. John 14:2, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”
7 See p. 10, above.
8 See also p. 14, above.
328 A GREAT MYSTERY
his divine “attributes” (see “The Secret of a King,” below). As we saw ear-
lier, these had also found their way into the Gnostic systems of male and
female “Aeons,” those divine “emanations” who were likewise in sexual con-
junction and who mediated the Transcendent to the Worldly.
Jewish Merkabah mysticism also depicted the link between God and
man as a River of Light emanating from the “Special Cherub” on the heav-
enly Throne. Philo had imagined it entering the Temple as a sevenfold
“Light-Stream,” where it became visible in the Holy of Holies as the Em-
bracing Cherubim and the articles within the Ark (pp. 57ff, above). In the
fully blown Kabbalism of the Zohar and Isaac Luria, this Light-Stream
would become a series of unfolding sexual polarities, called the “Sephirotic
Tree,” or God’s devolving male-female attributes (sephiroth), again in sexual
conjunction. Together, they comprised the preexistent prototype of man
(Adam Kadmon) or a cosmic representation of God’s male-female image (Gen
1:26–27). With its roots in heaven, Adam Kadmon joined God’s Transcen-
dent Unity (En Sof ) to his multiform creations by means of internal pro-
creations, corresponding roughly to the male-female gods of ancient Israel.
In the words of Gershom Scholem:
(This) hieros gamos, the “sacred union” of the King and Queen, the Celes-
tial Bridegroom and the Celestial Bride, to name a few of the symbols, is
the central fact in the whole chain of divine manifestations in the hidden
world. In God there is a union of the active and the passive, procreation
and conception, from which all mundane life and bliss are derived …
One of the images employed to describe the unfolding of the Sefiroth
pictures them … as the offspring of mystical procreation, in which the
first ray of divine light is also the primeval germ of creation; for its ray
which emerges from Nothing (i.e., God beyond human understanding)
is, as it were, sown into the “celestial mother,” i.e., into the divine Intel-
lect, out of whose womb the Sefiroth spring forth, as King and Queen,
son and daughter. Dimly we perceive behind these mystical images the
male and female gods of antiquity, anathema as they were to the pious
Kabbalist.9
And because man’s existence begins at the lower end of this divine chain,
his own sexual life is a continuation of the divine sexual life, which further
explains why both Paul and the Gnostics could link the “Lesser Mystery” of
human union with the “Great Mystery” of divine union.10 It also explains
Scholem, MTJM, 227.

9
10In Paul’s case, however, the “divine union” is no longer the polytheistic
original, but the allegorized version, i.e., union of God and Israel, or Christ and the
why the Kabbalists viewed their personal relations with their wives as “cata-
lysts” and sacramental reenactments of the heavenly Great Mystery.
But before we describe this Kabbalistic hieros gamos in detail, let us
briefly examine the divine sexual life within the earlier schemes of the sephi-
roth. Just as Christian Hexaemeron speculation had derived the earthly Church
from a preexistent corporeity consisting of Christ and the Church—
betrothed to each other from before Creation—so did the Kabbalist derive
the souls of men from a wedded prototype in the heavens (the “Body” of
Adam Kadmon). In the Sepher Yetzirah (“Book of Creation”), written per-
haps between the third and sixth centuries,11 these attributes were simply
described as primordial “numbers,” ten in all, which together with the
twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet were the elements out of which
the world was created. Because they came from God, they also represented
progressive stages of his devolution, similar to the angelic intermediaries
through which Wisdom’s Light-Stream descended into matter.12
In the Book Bahir (Sepher ha-Bahir), containing material from the gaonic
period (seventh to eleventh centuries), these primordial “attributes” were
known as middoth, variously described as “Knowledge,” “Fruitfulness,”
“Righteousness,” etc., all intertwining, recombining, and eventually “crystal-
lizing” into matter. The Bahir also related these middoth to the Gnostic
Aeons and pictured them as an organism of light, arranged into descending
potencies, with its roots in heaven and its branches in the world.13
By the time of the Zohar (written ca. 1290 by a Spanish Kabbalist
named Moses de Leon), the sephiroth were clearly visualized as God’s sexual
attributes (like the Aeons in the Gnostic Pleroma), constituting a sort of
“inner merkabah” within Ezekiel’s “outer merkabah.”14 These sexual attrib-
utes were also thought of as the beginning stages of divine revelation, as En
Sof (the Absolute) emerged from his Unknowable Root, much like the
shoots of a growing tree emerging from the depths of the earth. It was in
fact this “Sephirothic Tree” whose mature branches formed the skeleton of
the created universe. Yet En Sof was not only the Root of the Cosmic Tree,
Church, though it is still symbolized by the concomitant unions of husbands and

wives.
12 Ibid., 76–77.
13 Compare the Qumran hymn, 1QH VIII, 4ff, on p. 147, above.
14 Scholem, MTJM., 207.
330 A GREAT MYSTERY
but its Sap;15 thus it served both as prototype and living core, sustaining all
things because of the power of the sephiroth circulating within.16
In the system of Isaac Luria (1534–1572), the sephiroth were also
thought of as the divine “names” or “attributes” which God emanated in
order to organize and create the world. At the top stood Kether, the “Su-
preme Crown,” or the “abyss” through which En Sof must penetrate in or-
der to begin his process of devolution. Some mystics called it the “Realm of
Nothingness,” into which En Sof must first “empty” himself at the start of
his dialectical unfolding, for “every time the status of a thing is altered, the
abyss of nothingness is crossed, and for a fleeting mystical moment be-
comes visible” (Rabbi Joseph ben Shalom of Barcelona).17 Kether was also
the upper “womb” from which the other sephiroth would emerge.18 It
formed a “trinity” with the next two sephiroth, namely Hokhmah (“Wisdom”)
and Binah (“Intelligence”), which were male and female, respectively. From
the sexual union of the latter issued the seven lower sephiroth, corresponding
to the seven days of creation,19 which in the Christian Hexaemeron were ei-
ther the Protoctist Angels of the preexistent Church,20 or the seven plane-
tary spheres (Prov 9:1).
At the head of the lower sephiroth stood Hesed (“Loving Mercy”) and
Din (“Stern Judgment”), whose intercourse was moderated by Tifereth
(“Beauty”)—also called Rahamin (“Compassion”). A last pair, Netsah (“Em-
brace”) and Hod (“Majesty”) came together in Yesod (“Foundation”), other-
wise described as “the Phallus,” through which the last sephirah, Malkuth
(“Kingdom”)—a synonym for the Shekhinah—receives the “seed” as it
flows into creation.
These ten sephiroth were no less than the stages of God’s descent into the liv-
ing cosmos, manifested as a series of male-female polarities and potencies, each
in sexual conjunction and each giving birth to the next in a continuous crea-
tive process. According to legend, however, there came about a “shattering
of the vessels” within this preexistent process, perhaps related to the an-
cient story of the War in Heaven, during which a portion of Adam Kadmon’s
light was lost (“a part of God separated from himself”); these “scattered
Ibid., 214.
15
Ibid., 214–15.
16
17 Ibid., 217. He lived ca. 1300. Compare also Philippians 2:7, and
Christ/Wisdom’s kenosis.
18 Ibid., 217.
19 Ibid., 220.
sparks” were the individual souls of Israel. Previously, God had been in
union with his Shekhinah, and heaven and earth were One. As explained by
another thirteenth-century Kabbalist, Joseph Gikatila, this Oneness had
existed at the beginning of Creation; when the channels between the higher
and lower regions were open, and God filled everything from above to be-
low. But when Adam sinned, the order of things became disorder, and the
unity of heaven and earth was broken.21
The Shekhinah (or Malkuth)—who of all the sephiroth was the only one
who actually descended into the material world—was now characterized as
God’s “Bride,” i.e., the lost and earthly “female counterpart” of God.22
Now she is described as the Knesseth Israel, or the spiritual substance of the
Earthly Community,23 much like the Church, who is also Christ’s “Bride” in
the Christian and Gnostic systems. The reintegration of the exiled “sparks”
with God would take place as individual Kabbalists and their wives “re-
ascended” the “rungs” of the sephiroth, which (like Philo’s “Royal Road”)
provided a “Ladder of Ascent” (sullam ha-‘aliyah), each step corresponding
to some virtue which must be incorporated into their personal lives. The
final “rung” will be Devequth, or complete “adhesion” to God.24
Thus the Kabbalists described the continuous process whereby the In-
finite God (En Sof ) differentiates himself into phenomenal attributes and
brings about creation, a process which Scholem characterizes with Shelly’s
famous lines:
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
Today, the Shekhinah (or spiritual principle of mankind) lies “exiled” from
God. But the duty of Israel is to mend this separation through mitswoth (reli-
gious acts enjoined by Torah), and through special kawwanoth (“intentions”
or “mental concentrations”), dedicating each act to the restoration of the
harmony which should exist between Man and God. This restoration is
known as tikkun, and its aim is to bring about “perfection above and below,
so that all the worlds shall be united in one bond.”25 Thus, as Isaac the
Blind (ca. 1200) explained it, the most basic kawwanah of all was

22 Ibid., 229.
23 Ibid., 213.
24 See pp. 70–71, above, and the discussion of the verb dabaq, from which the
noun devequth is derived.

332 A GREAT MYSTERY
to conjoin God in his “letters” and to bind the ten sephiroth in Him …
conjoining him mentally in his true structure.26
This principle of tikkun was of utmost importance for the Kabbalist,
for not only does the lower world get its spiritual direction from above, but
the spiritual activities above are reciprocally influenced by conditions below.
This undoubtedly went back to the idea, already expressed in the Talmud,
that the embrace of the Cherubim depended upon Israel’s own behavior
(p. 7, above); when Israel was righteous, God’s “Powers” came together;
when Israel was unrighteous, they turned away from each other. Even
God’s unity, then, suffers when men are given to sin, a concept which may
ultimately be a reflection of the statement found in Isa 63:9: “In all their
affliction he was afflicted.” In the Zohar, this reciprocity was tersely ex-
pressed with the epigram, “The impulse from below calls forth the impulse
from above” (I:164a).
THE KABBALISTIC SACRED MARRIAGE

Ascent up the “ladder” of the sephiroth had first of all to be accompanied by
the mystic’s conformity to God’s male-female image, or as the Zohar suc-
cinctly puts it,
God’s Presence cleaves to the man, but thanks only to his union with a wife
(I:50a).
This again goes back to the traditional Jewish belief that
He who does not marry thereby diminishes the image of his Maker …
Man and woman are therefore commanded to marry and beget children,
for it is written, “Male and Female created he them” (Tosefta, Yebamoth
8:4 and 6:6).
The pious Kabbalist was accordingly expected to do his own part in bring-
ing about God’s unity by living with a wife in sexual harmony, so that the
“Lesser Mystery” of human union could promote the “Greater Mystery” of
spiritual union, and the process of tikkun could proceed.
Thus the Kabbalist viewed earthly sex as an imitation of the sexual life
in the sephiroth. Unlike “orthodox” Christians, who during the Middle Ages
almost completely devalued human sexuality, Jewish Kabbalists rejected
asceticism and continued to respect and obey God’s first commandment
(Gen 1:28), not only as a concession to biological necessity, but as the most
26 Scholem, Kabbalah, 175.

sacred of mysteries in its own right. In the words of Gershom Sholem, the
Kabbalist confidently believed that “every true marriage is a symbolic reali-
zation of the union of God and the Shekhinah”:27
When is a man called complete in his resemblance to the Supernal?
When he couples with his Spouse in oneness, joy and pleasure, and a
son and a daughter issue from him and his female … He is complete
(here) below after the pattern of the Supernal Holy Name … A man
who does not want to complete the Holy Name below in this manner, it
were better for him that he were not created, because he has no part in
the Holy Name. And when he dies and his soul leaves him, it does not
unite with him at all because he has diminished the image of his Maker
(Zohar, III:7a; trans. by Raphael Patai).
In this manner, the image of the Archetypal Man (Adam Kadmon) would be
reconstituted, and eternal life made possible for the united couple, who
themselves became a “Perfect Man.”
This was generally explained in terms of the myth found in Genesis
2:24–28, which Paul made the basis for his own “Great Mystery” (Eph
5:30–33):
The female was extended on her side and she cleaved to the side of the
male until she was separated from him. Then she was brought together
with him face to face. When they came together, they appear in reality
to be only one body. From this we learn that the male alone appears to
be only half a body … When they come together as one, however, they
appear really to be one body. This is so. Moreover, when the male cou-
ples with the female they actually become one body,28 and all the worlds
are joyful because they receive blessing from the complete body. This is
the secret contained in the verse (Exod 20:11): “Therefore the Lord
blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it;” for on it were all things found
to constitute the one complete body, the Matrona (Shekhinah) cleaving
to the King to form one body. Therefore are blessings ushered in that
day. We learn from this that he who remains without a wife, so that he
is not both male and female, is counted only half a body. No blessing
rests on anything that is blemished or lacking;29 it is found only in that

28 Compare 1 Corinthians 6:16–17; Ephesians 5:30–33.
29 Compare Deuteronomy 21:1: “He that is wounded in the testicles or hath
his privy member cut off shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.” Sexual
union was thus considered even in the Old Testament to be necessary for obtaining
the blessings of the Lord.
334 A GREAT MYSTERY
which is complete, in something whole and undivided. A thing which is

divided cannot endure forever, nor will it ever receive blessing (Zohar,
III:296a; trans. Patai).
This conjugal union constituted the central core of the Kabbalistic Sa-
cred Marriage rite, details of which are found scattered through various
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treatises. The earliest reference to it ap-
peared already in the Talmud, which states that Torah scholars used to per-
form marital intercourse each Friday (Ketubbot 62b), in order to welcome the
Sabbath and to initiate the hieros gamos of God and his Shekhinah.30 Later
Kabbalists, ever respectful of tradition, followed suit by scheduling their
own domestic rites so as to take place at the same time.
Starting on Friday afternoon, those living in Safed and Jerusalem used
to dress in white and go into the fields (an “Exodus” into the desert?) to
greet the “Sabbath Bride” (Shekhinah), who was now called the “Ecclesia of
Israel,”31 a term which shows the close relationship between the “Commu-
nity of Israel” and Christ’s “Church” (ekklesia), for both considered them-
selves to be “Brides” of God. After the joyous meeting—marked by songs32
and prayer—a family ritual began at home. The family members now
marched around the table with bundles of myrtle (cf. the lulabs used in the
former Temple), praising the housewife as the image of the Heavenly
Mother.33 The evening meal was then begun as a wedding feast in honor of
the King and his Shekhinah, and the great Wedding-Hymn of Isaac Luria—
“like the hymn of a mystery religion”34—was sung, describing in intimate
detail the Sacred Marriage of the Heavenly Father and Mother:
I sing in hymns to enter the gates of the field of apples of holy ones.35 A
new table we lay for her, a beautiful candelabra sheds its light on us.
Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 140.

30
Ibid., 142.
31
32 The most popular has always been Solomon Alkabez’ famous Lekha dodi:
“Go my Beloved, to meet the Bride, let us receive the face of the Sabbath.” Song of
Songs was also intoned as an epithalamion for God and the Shekhinah, a custom
which probably throws light on the inclusion of that book in the Old Testament.
33 Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 142.
34 Ibid., 143.
35 Scholem explains “the field” as a reference to the “feminine principle of the
universe,” while the “apple trees” are Shekhinah herself “as the expression of all
other sefiroth or holy orchards, which flow into her and exert their influence
through her” (ibid., 140). The holy field is of course “fertilized” during the Sacred
Marriage, resulting in the production of souls (ibid., 140).
Between left and right the Bride approaches in holy jewels and festive
garments.36 Her husband embraces her in her foundation (yesod, or sex-
ual organs), gives her fulfillment, squeezes out his strength. Torments
and cries are past. Now there are new faces and souls and spirits …
Bridesmen, go forth and prepare the bride … to beget souls and new
spirits … She has seventy crowns,37 but above her is the King that all
may be crowned in the Holy of Holies.38
The special reference to the “Holy of Holies” immediately betrays the
Temple-provenance of the rite; indeed, it has been said that the Jewish
home (rather than the synagogue) was the true successor to the Temple,
which otherwise ceased to exist after A.D. 70.39 This connection with the
former Temple is further demonstrated by a line in Luria’s hymn, directing
that the Shekhinah “be surrounded by six Sabbath Loaves, connected on
every side with the Heavenly Sanctuary.” Here one thinks of the Shewbread
in the Jerusalem Temple, as well as the Holy of Holies where God’s hieros
gamos with his Shekhinah took place, now reenacted by the earthly union of
the Kabbalist and his wife. Thus, the role of the Embracing Cherubim
passed on to the pious couple in their “Domestic Temple,” and the bodies
of the mystic and his wife became a “living chariot” (merkabah) for the
Shekhinah, just “like the Holy Beasts which carry the Throne of honor.”40 In
short, through a process of mystical assimilation, the husband and wife be-
came the Embracing Cherubim, and God’s spiritual Presence came to dwell be-
tween them, just as he had done in Exodus 25:22 (see pp. 20–21, above).
Thus we have a general Sacred Marriage feast which took place simul-
taneously on three different levels: the “Lesser Mystery” of human union,
the “Greater Mystery” from which human souls are derived, and the union
of God and Israel. That the Kabbalistic feast was still held in honor of the
Shekhinah—who was none other than Sophia in a thinly disguised form—is
36 Compare Exodus 11:1–2, and our discussion of the jewels and raiment “bor-
rowed” from the Egyptians as Sacred Marriage ornament (pp. 30–32, above).
37 Undoubtedly a remnant of the ancient belief that El and Asherah had sev-
enty “sons of God,” or “stars of morning,” in Canaanite mythology (Ras Shamra

Tablets, IV AB, i.3–4); also the ideal number in Israelite myth for the preexistent
community and the earthly family (Exod 1:5).
38 Translation in Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 143–44.
39 Personal statement by Jacob Milgrom.
40 Y’hiel Mikhael Epstein, Seder T’fillah Derekh Y’share (Offenbach, 1791), 10b,
23b, 24b, quoted in the third edition of Patai’s The Hebrew Goddess (Detroit, 1990),
186. All other quotations from this work are from the first edition.
336 A GREAT MYSTERY
further evidence of its origin in the Temple, for as we read in the Apostolic
Constitutions (which Goodenough considered to be a fragment of Jewish
liturgy), it was for Sophia that Temple-feasts were appointed in the first
place, “that we might come unto the remembrance of that Wisdom which
was created by Thee”—she who was “Creatrix and dispenser of Provi-
dence, and the one to whom God spoke when he said, ‘Let us make man in
our image.’”41
The Sacred Marriage of God and his Shekhinah continued to be the
goal of Jewish worship until the most recent of times. During the sixteenth
century, Isaac Luria recommended that all of the sacred commandments be
observed with the express intent (kawwanah) of bringing about their heav-
enly unification. In his Sefer ha-Kawwanot (“Book of Intentions”), for exam-
ple, he proposes that during prayer
one must be careful always to say before everything, “For the unifica-
tion of the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, in fear and trembling
and awe, in the name of all Israel,” as one must always unite the male and the
female.42
These Lurianic kawwanot were soon repeated in prayer books everywhere.
Thus an Ashkenazic version, printed in Frankfort in 1697, specifies that “if
a man prepares his body for the performance of a commandment, he
should say explicitly that he does it for the unification of the Holy One,
blessed be He, and His Shekhinah.” As an example, it mentions the wearing
of the tzitzit-fringes on the undergarment (tallit qatan), which makes of one’s
body “a vehicle for the Shekhinah, after the manner of the Holy Beasts who
support the Throne of Glory” (Ezek 1).43
These special kawwanot—referred to as “unifications” (yihudim)—have
continued to appear in Hasidic, Sepharidic, and Oriental Jewish prayer-
books to the present day. Some direct attention to the wearing of the
prayer-shawl (which also has tzitzit-fringes) and the use of the phylacteries,
which are strapped to the head and the left hand during prayer, again for
the purpose of bringing God and his Shekhinah together.44 One Viennese
example, “according to Sephardic custom,” specifies that the two phylacter-
ies be visualized as the “brains” of God and his Female, “so that the Bride-
41By Light, Light (New Haven, 1935), 343.

42 Quoted in Raphael Patai, The Seed of Abraham: Jews and Arabs in Contact and
Conflict (Salt Lake City, 1986), 26.
43 In ibid., 27
44 Ibid., 28–29.
groom (may) embrace the Bride,” i.e., become “tied together” by means of
the leather thongs!45 Theodor Reik also notes that Ashkenazic Jews of his
acquaintance recalled these nuptials when winding the straps of the phylac-
teries about the hand by reciting the following words from Hosea:
And I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and
in loving kindness, and in mercies; I will even betroth thee unto me in
faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord (2:4, 19).46
These tiny bits of otherwise forgotten tradition show that the Community
of Israel is still to be identified with the Shekhinah as the “Bride” of Yah-
weh, just as was Gomer of old.
Another prayer book of Sephardic provenance recommends that the
yihudim formula be recited on other liturgical occasions, such as the sanctifi-
cation of the new moon, the New Year tashlikh ceremony, the preparation
for the kappara-rite, the eve of Yom Kippur, the making of lulabs for the Feast
of Tabernacles, and before entering the Sukkoth-booth, etc. In the latter
instance, the following is to be recited:
Be it the will from before You, O Lord, my God and the God of my fa-
thers, that You let Your Shekhinah rest among us, and spread over us
the booth of Your peace, by virtue of the commandment of the Sukkah
which we fulfill to unite the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He, and
His Shekhinah, in fear and trembling, to unite the Yah with the Weh in
complete union, in the name of all Israel.47
A song for the same feast directs the worshipper’s thoughts to “the Holy of
Holies, paved with love.” Another (composed for the seventh day) petitions
that “love arise between them (God and the Shekhinah), and kiss us with the
kisses of your mouth” (Song of Songs, 1:2),48 re-creating, as it were, an an-
cient hieros gamos in the Temple. The Song of Songs is also recited after the
Passover Seder-meal, according to Sephardic instruction, to relate that feast
to God’s Union with his Female.
The special connection between the Sacred Marriage and the tzitzit-
fringes may reach back into prehistory. W. Robertson Smith theorized that
they were originally related to the Arabian “fur tunic” worn by the faithful
45 Ibid., 29.
46 Pagan Rites in Judaism (New York, 1964), 109–10.
47 In Patai, Seed of Abraham, 30.
48 In ibid., 30.
338 A GREAT MYSTERY
in front of the Ka‘ba, cut from the hides of sacred animals.49 Theodor Reik
would trace them to the fleece of the ram, which presumably had totemic
significance for certain Hebrew tribes.50 On the same theory, the leather
phylacteries might be derived from the Divine Bull, representing the horn
on the head and the hoof of the foreleg, connected by strips of hide.51 The
wearing of both articles, then, would signify the putting on of divine power, as
symbolized by the sacred animal, now seen as the “living garment of the
god.”52 Indeed, the Sifre says that he who wears the fringes “receives the
Lord” (115); similarly, the windings of the phylacteries are said to form the
letters of God’s Name.53 Thus the wearer himself becomes divine, invested
with the same power which Jesus felt go out of him when a sick woman
touched the “hem” of his garment (Mark 5:30).
THE SECRET OF A KING

The unification of God and his Shekhinah is an especially important kaw-
wanah to be observed during human procreation, referred to by certain
Kabbalists as the “Secret of a King.” This, as we just saw, was to take place
precisely at midnight, to coincide with the heavenly nuptials of the King
and his Bride. Raphael Patai has summarized the teaching of the Zohar on
this important point as follows:
If the wife conceives at that hour, the earthly father and mother of the
child can be sure that it will receive a soul from the Above, one of those
pure souls that are procreated in the divine copulation of the King and
Matronit. When a pious earthly couple perform the act, by doing so they
set in motion all the generative forces of the mythic-mystical universe.
The human sexual act causes the King to emit his seminal fluid from his
divine male genital, and thus to fertilize the Matronit who thereupon
gives birth to human souls and angels.54
Thus we have another clear instance of the ancient principle of “dual pater-
nity” (pp. 44–45, above). Further details of the conjugal act within the sephi-
49Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, 3rd ed. (London, 1927), 436ff.
50Reik, Pagan Rites, 141, 148; compare Genesis 22:13; Exodus 25:5; Joshua 6:5;
etc. Thus the four tzitzit would correspond to the four legs of the animal.
51 Reik, Pagan Rites, 140–41.
52 Ibid., 145, 148.
53 Ibid., 105.
54 Hebrew Goddess, 195–96.
roth, prior to passing the divine “seed” to the earthly parents, are contained
in an Aramaic prayer composed especially for the Sabbath Eve ritual:
Be it the will of the Ancient One, the Most High One, and the Most Se-
cret One, and the Most Hidden of All, that the supernal Dew be drawn
from Him to fill the heart of the Small Face and to fall upon the Or-
chard of Holy Apples, in radiance of face, in pleasure and joy for all.55
This affirms that human marriage is vitalized by the procreative power of
God, who is the literal Father of Souls (cf. Heb 12:9; Acts 12:28), and the
spiritual Ancestor of the Human Race. In fact, the Shekhinah herself (as we
noted earlier) is also present during the legitimate act (Zohar I:50a; b. Sotah,
17a). Thus, as the man and wife unite, the King unites with the Queen, and
all the participants merge indistinguishably in a common hieros gamos:
The absconditus sponsus enters the body of the woman and is joined with
the abscondita sponsa. This is also true of the reverse side of the process,
so that the two spirits are melted together and are interchanged continu-
ally between body and body … In that indistinguishable state which
arises it may be said almost that the male is with the female neither male
nor female, at least they are both or neither. So is man affirmed to be
composed of the world above, which is male, and of the female world
below. The same is true of the woman.56
This echoes the Zohar (I:50a), which adds that the Shekhinah “cleaves
to the man, but thanks only to his own union with his wife.” Philo also de-
clared that Isaac united with Sophia in the person of his wife (note 36, p. 34,
above). Union with Shekhinah was in fact so important—being equivalent to
union with God—that whenever a Torah-scholar returned from a trip, it
was incumbent upon him to “procure nuptial gratification to the wife of his
heart” in order that the Shekhinah would again establish herself in their
home (ibid).
But the act should especially be repeated at midnight on the Eve of the
Sabbath, so that holy offspring will be born to the parents, should impreg-
nation occur. Such offspring, who received the best souls, were called “sons
55 In Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 265.

56 A. E. Waite, The Holy Kabbalah (New Hyde Park, NY, 1960), 381. Gershom
Scholem says of Waite that his work “is distinguished by real insight into the world
of Kabbalism” (MTJM, 212), though his historical and philological discussions are
virtually worthless.
340 A GREAT MYSTERY
of the King.”57 This secret of drawing the best souls into children was al-
ready hinted at by Origen, who in Contra Celsus (5:29) wrote that
it is good to keep close the Secret of a King (Tob 12:7), in order that the
doctrine of the entrance of souls into bodies not be thrown before the com-
mon understanding, nor what is holy be given to the dogs, nor pearls
before swine.
Waite also sees this mystery in the Kabbalah, for he says that “the Secret of
Divine Generation is however a Secret of the Doctrine” (i.e., Kabbalism),
“and is reserved for the initiated therein; it is apparently they alone who
draw down the holy souls which are the fruit of the union between God
and His Shekhinah.”58
We also recall the passage in the Wisdom of Solomon, which describes
the descent of these souls into bodies as follows:
I was, indeed, a child well-endowed, having a noble soul fall to my lot,
or rather, being noble, I entered an undefiled body (8:19–20).
Medieval Jews, when practicing this “Secret of a King,” dedicated their
procreative power to “the completion of his Holy Name” on earth. The
Zohar several times informs us that the secret meaning of the four letters in
the Holy Name is “Father-Mother-Son-Daughter,”59 i.e., the familial male-
female paradigm, which is to be replicated through the begetting of human
offspring. Extending the “Holy Name” by means of sons and daughters of
one’s own is in fact the ultimate goal of the “Royal Secret,” and the highest
form of honor which one can pay to God.
We need not be disturbed by the apparent discrepancy between the
idea of the soul’s preexistence60 and its creation simultaneously with the pro-
duction of a body, for the Kabbalistic practitioners of the Sacred Marriage
were merely adapting the traditional belief in human preexistence to a mys-
57 Waite, The Holy Kabbalah, 388. Waite bases this on Zohar III:78a, which in
fact shows that they are descended from the “King,” though without using this
precise title. It also says that they are of the house of David, “that they may inherit
the holy kingdom, he and his sons, for all generations.”
58 Waite, The Holy Kabbalah, 388.
59 The “Name” being “YHWH.” In Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 162.
60 See 4 Ezra 4:33ff; b. Yebamoth 62a; b. Sifre, 143b; 2 Baruch 23:5; 2 Enoch 23:4;
58:5; etc. The preexistent souls were said to dwell in a chamber called the guf or
araboth prior to their entrance into women’s wombs. The Bereshith Rabbah even says
that God took counsel with them before creating the world (8:8). See also Scholem,
MTJM, 239–43.
tagogic rite, without undue concern for the problem of time. Indeed, the
“Secret of a King” had not only to do with the “Royal” origin of the soul,
but with its deliberate selection by parents, who for that purpose had been
initiated into the mystery of dual paternity, which took place both above
and below in response to the divine sexual impulse during the Sabbath Eve
hieros gamos.
Finally, we must not overlook what both Jews and early Christians un-
doubtedly discovered empirically, that God “sows” happiness in men
through their pious union with their wives. Since marriage was ordained by
God for man’s joy and fulfillment, it was only natural to expect that the
Holy Spirit would dwell with those who lived in compliance with God’s
Image, as depicted by the Embracing Cherubim in the Temple. Perhaps this
explains why Philo likened the two Cherubim to the spheres of heaven, one
moving harmoniously within the other (On the Cherubim, 21–26), for (as
Louis Ginzberg adds) it was said in “old Jewish sources” that the “Har-
mony of the Spheres” began to resound during the first lawful intercourse
of Adam and Eve.61 Philo therefore concluded his book On the Cherubim
with the advice that his readers become a “fit house,” where “one can ex-
pect the descent of the divine Powers; joined in commonality of daily life
and board with virtue-loving souls, they will sow within them the action of
happiness, even as they gave Abraham and Isaac the most perfect thank-
offering for their stay with them” (98, 106).
The Congregation of Beth-El, founded in 1740 in Jerusalem, was one
of the very last to have practiced the Kabbalistic Sacred Marriage in a sys-
tematic way. According to their belief, the King and Queen shared in the
pleasure of the men’s unions with their wives. The covenant of the Congre-
gation therefore read as follows:
The Lord in His desire for the repentance of the flock caused us, the
youngest of the flock, to be inspired to band together as one person for
the sake of unifying the Holy One, blessed be He and his Shekhinah, to
give pleasure to our Creator … to love one another with a spiritual and
bodily love, and all this only to give pleasure to our Creator by a cleav-
ing of spirit and unity, the only exception being that each of us shall
have his wife separate unto himself.62
61 Legends of the Jews, 5:39.

62 Quoted by Herbert Weiner, 9½ Mystics (New York, 1969), 94–95.
342 A GREAT MYSTERY
CATHOLIC MYSTICISM AND THE SACRED MARRIAGE

Medieval Christianity, though forced by biological necessity to defend the
legitimacy of human unions, exhibited a growing predilection for asceticism
and “spiritual marriage” to the Savior. To bring this about, Christian mys-
tics developed interior disciplines of their own, hoping thereby to recapture
the unitive experience, or even to behold the Beatific Vision, which was a
visual kind of hieros gamos with the Divine. Thus the re-creation of the Tem-
ple Mystery (and what the Hellenists called thea theou) continued to define
much of the Christian mysticism which we are about to discuss.
The seeds of the asceticism which in time became the sine qua non for
spiritual attainment in Christianity can perhaps be traced back as far as Ho-
sea’s allegorization of hierogamy, which replaced the unions of gods and
goddesses with the “marriage” of Yahweh and Israel. By assigning a
“higher” meaning to the latter, the repudiation of natural marriage became
inevitable. Attempts to further spiritualize this allegorical “marriage” pro-
duced figurative accounts of the “wooing” of Lady Wisdom. There was also
the influence of the Jewish Rechabites, who at the time of Jeremiah lived in
the desert in order to avoid the corruption of city life (Jer 35:2–18). Hel-
lenized Jews who lived in Egypt were similarly influenced by the monastic
practices which flourished around them during the centuries prior to Christ.
We hear, for example, of ascetics in the Fayoum as early as 340 B.C. and of
pagan Egyptian cults (Isis and Serapis) which commonly practiced renuncia-
tion of the world. Sir Flinders Petrie thus describes celibate recluses in the
Serapion at Memphis in 170 B.C. and again in A.D. 211.63
The Greek schools at Alexandria further exacerbated the obvious dif-
ferences between the worldly and the divine. Like their predecessors, the
Platonists, the Stoics, and the Pythagoreans, they taught that perfection
comes only to one who overcomes his physical self and turns to the Divine
Reality.64 Thus we recall the platonizing allegories of Philo, which viewed
physical copulation as the “work of the senses,” whereas spiritual union was
seen as a means of escaping the worldly and reestablishing the soul’s one-
ness with the purely intellectual. Such philosophical veneration of the “oth-
erworldly” may even have had an effect on some Essenes, who reportedly
preferred the celibate life.65 It is, however, certain that it influenced the Jew-
63 Egypt and Israel (London, 1923), 133–34.

64 Margaret Smith, The Way of the Mystics (New York, 1978), 11.
ish Therapeutae, who allied themselves syncretically with certain Hellenized

Egyptian cults, especially those with a Neo-Pythagorean background.
No Jews, however, at any time denied the legitimacy of God’s com-
mandment to marry, and in fact continued to employ its imagery in a posi-
tive manner, as, for example, Philo’s use of the unions of the Patriarchs and
their wives to symbolize Wisdom’s union with the soul. Indeed, Philo be-
lieved in the historicity of the Patriarchs, though perceiving in them two lev-
els of meaning, a worldly and a spiritual, just as Paul’s “Great Mystery” de-
picted the union of the sexes (Eph 5:28, 31, 33) as well as the union of
Christ and the Church (vv. 30, 32). Medieval Christianity, on the other
hand, was ready to exploit the debasement of human sexuality in favor of
purely “spiritualized” hierogamy and the rarified anti-worldliness of
celibacy.
This ascetic philosophy especially left its mark on Egyptian Christian-
ity. The second-century Emperor Hadrian was thus convinced that Egyp-
tian Christians partly worshipped Serapis,66 though Eusebius believed that
the Therapeutae had been Christian monks, so similar were their practices
(Church History, 2.17). Just how these practices passed on to monastic Chris-
tianity is presently unknown; but the trials and persecutions of Christ’s fol-
lowers in Egypt, beginning in the second century (including the first organ-
ized attack upon the Church by Emperor Decius in A.D. 250), appear to
have driven many of the religious into the deserts for refuge. In any case, by
A.D. 300 there were numerous monks and ascetics living in the area, fol-
lowing the model of the Alexandrian theologian and self-castrator, Origen.
Paul of Thebes (a contemporary of Origen) is the first of these anchorites
whose name has come down to us, and he is reputed to have been the
founder of eremitic monasticism.
His pupil St. Anthony (born ca. 250) gathered other solitaries together
to practice the regular subjugation of the flesh in search of spiritual attain-
ment. He was in fact the one who is supposed to have first reduced monas-
ticism to a system.67 His younger contemporary, Pachomius (born A.D.
292), originated the cenobitic form of monasticism, where monks lived to-
gether in groups under a superior. From A.D. 320 to the beginning of the
next century, this system of ascetic life grew to include as many as fifty-
thousand practitioners in Upper Egypt alone.68
66 W. Phipps, Was Jesus Married? (New York, 1970), 162.

67 Smith, Way of the Mystics, 13–14.
68 Ibid., 15.
344 A GREAT MYSTERY
Though the New Testament condemned celibacy as a heresy in no un-

certain terms (1 Tim 4:1–5), it seems that retiring to the desert for contem-
plation in times of spiritual stress was practiced even by Paul (Gal 1:17), just
as it had been by Jesus (Matt 4:1ff; Luke 4:1ff). The idea of withdrawing
into the desert for the ritual hag or hadj (Exod 3:18, Lev 23:41–43, and the
Pilgrimage to Mecca) may in fact have been determined by an ancient belief
that only in the uninhabited places could one fully commune with God,
undisturbed by civilization and its sinful luxury. Thus, Narcissus, Bishop of
Jerusalem, during the late second century, is known to have given up his
ecclesiastical duties and to have retired into the desert where he practiced
his austerities undisturbed. We find Syrian documents in the third century
indicating that the custom was also becoming widespread there. Eusebius,
too, mentions the proliferation of these Syrian ascetics during his lifetime.69
It was Hilarion (born ca. 290) who brought the eremitic type of mo-
nasticism from Egypt to Syria, where he had been converted by St. An-
thony. One of his most famous followers was Jerome, who built a monas-
tery near Bethlehem in A.D. 385. Syrian ascetics tended to be even more
extreme than the Egyptians. The famous “pillar-hermits” (stylites), for ex-
ample, made their first appearance in Syria before becoming popular in
Egypt, and it was in Syria that the Encratites found their most congenial
home. Typical of the Syrian attitude was the statement of Ignatius, the sec-
ond Bishop of Antioch, who in the second century declared that nothing
but Christ could ever again stir him to desire (Eusebius, Church History,
3.36).
Montanism, with a similar policy of asceticism, also began in Asia Mi-
nor during the late second century. Some time around A.D. 358, Basil the
Great took the cenobitic form of monasticism to Greece, where he was
joined by Gregory of Nazianzus in establishing colonies of monks who
sought immortality through mortification of the flesh and union with the
Divine. Midnight was Basil’s favorite time to “be alone with God”—the
same time chosen by Jewish Kabbalists for their marital communion with
Yahweh. Gregory characteristically notes that such unions made men
“strangers to earthly desire and full of the calm of divine love … plunged
into ineffable delights.”70
Monasticism also spread eastward into Mesopotamia and Persia. An
Egyptian pearl-fisher named Mar Awgen († A.D. 363), who had lived with
69 Ibid., 19.
70 Ibid., 25.
the monks of Pachomius, founded a monastery near Nisibis which special-

ized in eremitical asceticism. From there, monasticism progressed as far as
India, probably aided by the influence of Manichaeism, whose Gnostic ten-
dencies likewise favored fleshly renunciation as a means of regathering the
“scattered light” to God.71 By the fifth century, the whole area from Edessa
to the Indus River was filled with so-called hesychastae, “Silent Ones,” who
(in the words of Thomas of Marga) sought the “completion of their natures
through a bond with the invisible Creator,” whose image was reflected in
the “intellectual mirror of the heart.” Those who see by the “light of its
glorious rays” receive the gift of the Holy Spirit which “dawns upon the
souls of holy men,” and makes them immortal,72 the very gifts bestowed by
union with Wisdom in Philo’s mystery.
The major theoretical influences on these early pioneers of monasti-
cism were the writings of Clement and Origen, which we discussed earlier.73
Clement’s “True Gnostic,” as we recall, taught that God was the Ultimate
Reality, and that union with him should be the sole object of man’s desire.
Thus the early ascetics of the Church systematically rejected human mar-
riage in order to enter into intellectual fusion with him and the deification
which it promised.
Basil the Great’s mysticism was especially indebted to the teaching of
Origen, whose spiritualized version of the Wisdom Mystery was the model
for his own writings on the subject:
By His illumination … He makes them spiritual by fellowship with
Himself. Just as bright and transparent bodies, on contact with a ray of
light, themselves become translucent, and emit a fresh radiance from
themselves, so souls wherein the Divine Spirit dwells, being illuminated
thereby, themselves become spiritual and give forth grace to others.
Hence comes to them unending joy, abiding in God, being made like
unto God, and, which is highest of all, being made God (De Spiritu
Sancto, 9.23).
His companion, Gregory of Nazianzus, similarly claimed that men’s souls
could enter into intellectual fusion with God, who is “Wisdom and Light,”
since they themselves possess a fragment of the Divine Nature. Man was
deliberately created in the Image of God, he wrote, so that “like could be-
71 See the section entitled “The Wisdom Mystery in Medieval Gnosticism,” be-
low.
72 Ibid., 27, 30, 32–3.
346 A GREAT MYSTERY
hold like.” First, however, the soul must purify itself as far as possible by
withdrawing from the world,
so that by means of that likeness, it may be able to apprehend that to
which it is like, placing itself like a mirror beneath the purity of God, so
that it can mold itself upon the Archetypal Beauty, by its fellowship
therewith and its vision thereof (De Virginitate, 100.11).
By such fellowship with God’s “mirrored” reflection, the purified soul
would attain its true “virginity,” or “union with the incorruptible Godhead”
(ibid.), reminding us again of Philo’s “virgin” state, where the soul becomes
“male” or “unitary” through “marriage” to the Incorruptible (pp. 46–48,
above):
What greater praise of Virginity can there be than to be shown through
these things as in a manner deifying those who are partakers of its pure
Mysteries, so that they become sharers of the glory of the One true
Holy and Blameless God, being made akin to Him by their purity and
incorruptibility? (De Virginitate, 100.5).
Radiant “in fellowship with the true Light” (100.11), the soul is then joined
to her immortal Bridegroom in Mystic Marriage and bears the fruit of her
love for the “True Wisdom, who is God” (100.20). What God extended
from himself in the first place, he now draws back to himself and becomes
one with it, “like being joined to its like” (De Anima et Resurrectione).
The fourth-century Egyptian monk, Macarius, like the Gnostics and
their “Upper” and “Lower Wisdoms,” believed that God was both tran-
scendent and immanent. Not only does he dwell in the height, which no
man can see; but
If you seek God in the depth, you will find Him there. If you seek him
in the fire, you will find Him there also. He is everywhere, both under
the earth and above the heavens and with us too (Homilies, 12.10, 12).
It is very likely that Macarius had access to material from the Gospel of Tho-
mas when he penned these words, for that earlier work likewise taught that
God (through his Wisdom) is
the Light which is above them all; I am in all things; all things came
forth from me, and all things reached me. Cleave a piece of wood and I
am there; lift up the stone and you will find me there … Whosoever is
near me is near to the fire (Logg. 77, 82).74
He too believed in the innate kinship of God and the soul, which made
possible man’s “marriage” to the Divine. But first,
The soul that desires to live with God in rest and eternal light … must
be slain and die to the world and be rapt away into another life and to
an intercourse that is divine … into the city of the Light of the Godhead
(Macarius, Homilies, 1.8).
As Philo’s Questions on Exodus made clear, the place where this “divine inter-
course” takes place is the top of “Mt. Sinai” (2.39–40), or the Holy of
Holies—also called “the City” (the figure of speech adopted by the author
of Hebrews to designate the area behind the veil of the Temple, 10:19–22;
11:13–16)—i.e., “Zion” and the “Church of the Firstborn” (12:22). There,
the languishing soul basks in the “Light of the Godhead,” is “possessed by
nothing but its desire for God,” and “sets aside all other things for the sake
of the heavenly Bridegroom, whom it now receives, at rest in His fervent
and ineffable love” (Homilies, 4.4):
The soul, thus rapt away and inflamed by the fire of love, is granted the
heavenly Vision, where the soul, with no veil between, gazes on the
heavenly Bridegroom face to face, in unclouded Light, having commun-
ion with Him in full assurance, and thus is made worthy of eternal life
… For when the soul … is joined and commingled with the Holy Spirit
by that secret communion, and being united with the Spirit is deemed
worthy to become Spirit itself, then it becomes all Light, all eye, all
spirit, all joy, all rest, all exaltation, all heartfelt love, all goodness and
loving-kindness (10.4; 17.10).
Here, as in the Temple-exegeses of Clement and Origen, as well as in
the Mystical Marriages of Basil and Gregory, the familiar themes of the
Wisdom Mystery reappear, and the soul again passes through the parted veil
into the Holy of Holies, where it has union “face to face” with its Heavenly
Bridegroom. Once more it experiences thea theou, or “Beholding the Face
of God,” is filled with God’s Light, and receives a share of his Glory. Its
74 One of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (OP 1:24–31), found in Egypt in 1897, con-
tains the same saying, showing that it was available there in the early years of the
Church. See J. Finegan, Hidden Records of the Life of Jesus (Philadelphia, 1969), 196–
97.
348 A GREAT MYSTERY
image is once again made a “mirror” of God’s image, making it “virgin” and
“like God.” In fact it becomes God.
It was Dionysus the Aeropagite who in the late fifth century popular-
ized the technical terms henosis (fusion), and theosis (deification), with which
to describe these mystical attainments. Like his predecessors, he tells us
how the soul enters into the “Holy of Holies,” where the veil has been up-
lifted, and gazes “face to face” upon the Divine. As God welcomes it with
his heavenly embrace, it enters into “abiding union with the Beloved.”75
The two are assimilated like images in a mirror, reflecting the Primal Light
and the Heavenly Ray to those who come after it.76 Thus, for Dionysus,
union again meant deification:
God Himself deigned to come to us with outstretched arms … and by
union with Him to assimilate, like as by fire, things that have been made
one … God bestows Deification itself by giving a faculty for it to those
that are Deified … With understanding power He gives Himself for the
Deification of those that turn to Him (Ecclesiastical Hierarchy;77 Divine
Names, 7.5).
THE SACRED EMBRACE AND THE STIGMATA

Mystical Marriage to the Divine remained as one of the important goals of
the ascetic life throughout medieval Christianity. Drawing largely upon the
imagery in Song of Songs, its writers commonly referred to Christ as the
Sponsus (Bridegroom) and the Church (or the Soul) as the Sponsa (Bride).
Song of Songs itself was interpreted as a spiritual drama depicting the vari-
ous mystical states leading to henosis and theosis. The sexual element in these
Mystical Marriages of course remained quite obvious, even offensive, to
some:
I remember well I once heard a religious man give a very excellent ser-
mon, the greater part of which was about these caresses of the Spouse
with God; but the sermon caused great laughing among the audience;
and everything he said was taken in such bad part … that I was aston-
ished.78
75Smith, Way of the Mystics, 81.

76The Heavenly Hierarchy, trans. by John Parker (London, 1897), 14.
77 Parker edition, 76.
78 St. Teresa of Avila, Conceptus, I, quoted by M. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bi-
ble (Garden City, NY, 1977), 187.

These words were penned by no less than St. Teresa of Avila (1515–1582),
who was perhaps better than any other acquainted with the underlying
eroticism of the Mystic Marriage. Giovanni Bernini’s famous statue of her
in the church of St. Maria della Vittoria in Rome thus shows her in a state
of transfigured ecstasy, receiving the darts of love from her Sponsus, an ec-
stasy which is vividly described in the numerous paeans of love which she
composed to her Bridegroom:
Now my Lord, I ask you nothing else in this life but to “kiss me with
the kisses of your mouth” (Song of Songs, 1:2), and this in such a way
that I should not be able, even though I wished, to withdraw myself
from this union and friendship (Conceptus, III).
Often when the soul least expects it, our Lord calls her suddenly. She
hears very distinctly that her God calls her … She trembles and utters
plaints. She feels that an ineffable wound has been dealt her, and that
wound is so precious in her sight that she would like it never to heal.
She knows that her divine Spouse is near her, although He does not let
her enjoy his adorable presence, and She cannot help complaining to
Him in words of love. In this pain she relishes a pleasure incomparably
greater than in the Orison of Quietude … The voice of the Well-
Beloved causes in the soul such transports that she is consumed by de-
sire … For what greater happiness could she wish? To this I do not
know what to answer; but I am certain that the pain penetrates down to
the very bottom of the bowels, and it seems that they are being torn
away when the heavenly Spouse withdraws the arrow with which He has
transpierced them.79
The intermingling of pleasure and pain which Teresa describes during
the act of spiritual love was a subject frequently addressed by women mys-
tics. Marie de l’Incarnation (1599–1672), for example, exclaimed to her di-
vine Spouse:
O my Love … Have you no pity on the torments that I suffer? Alas!
Alas! My beauty! My Life! Instead of healing my pain, you take pleasure
in it. Come, let me embrace you and die in your sacred arms.80
Particularly associated with these ecstatic yet painful experiences of di-
vine love was the granting of the stigmata, or Christ’s Sacred Wounds, show-
ing perhaps more graphically than anything else that the recipient had be-
come truly one with the crucified Lord. Such a doctrine was already
79 Quoted by B. Z. Goldberg, The Sacred Fire (New York, 1930), 197–98.

80 Quoted in Ibid., 197.
350 A GREAT MYSTERY
adumbrated in the New Testament. Paul especially taught that one can
completely know Christ only through “fellowship with his suffering” (Phil
3:10). Peter similarly declared that Christ left us an example that we should
“suffer like as he did” (1 Pet 3:10). Paul therefore claimed that he personally
had been “crucified with Christ” (Gal 1:20), in order that he might “live
with Christ” (Rom 6:6–8).81 In fact, he may have referred to his own stig-
mata, since he speaks of “bearing in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus”
(2 Cor 4:10–11). In another epistle he also writes, “I bear in my body the
marks of the Lord Jesus” (Gal 6:14, 17). Since Christ “married” himself to
the Church by means of his supreme Sacrifice (Eph 5:24), it is only natural
that the Bride be willing to receive her Spouse by intimately sharing his suf-
ferings on the Cross:
Like a Bridegroom Christ went forth from his chamber, he went out
with a presage of his nuptials into the field of the world … He came to
the marriage bed of the Cross, and there, in mounting it, he consum-
mated his marriage. And when he perceived the sighs of the creature, he
lovingly gave himself up to the torment in the place of his bride … and
he joined the woman to himself forever (Augustine, Sermo suppositus,
120.8).
St. Veronica in 1697 received her own “marks of the Lord Jesus” on the
“marriage bed of the Cross” during the ecstasy of the divine Embrace:
O God! O God! Such were the raptures of divine love which consumed
me that I can neither speak nor write of my burning desire. “Thou shalt
be wounded as I am wounded with five wounds,” said the Divine Voice
… “O Spouse of my heart, my one and only love, crucify me with thy
self … Thou didst suffer and wast nailed to the Cross for love of me,
vouchsafe that I may suffer and be crucified for love of Thee.”82
The Blessed Osanna Andreasi in 1476 also told how the wounds of Jesus’
hands and feet were transferred to her during the embrace of love:
“My Spouse, beloved Spouse, fear not the pain; the more thou dost suf-
fer On earth the nearer shalt thou be to My Heart in heaven.” Lo! From
the … red Wounds there darted forth forked flambent rays which
pierced through, like the thrust of white hot daggers, her feet and hands.
81See also the discussion of deification and the sharing of Christ’s sacrifice, p.
139, above.
82 Quoted by Montague Summers, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (London,
1950), 152.
She swooned. half-dead moaning pitiously, “like the lament of the tur-
tledove.”83
During this intimate sharing of Christ’s Sacrifice—called the “theopathetic
state” by Delacroix84—the soul “becomes God by participation” (St. John of
the Cross).85 Thus, St. Teresa declared that during the act of Mystic Mar-
riage the Virgin Mary said to her Son, “Let thy bride be crucified with
Thee”:
In an instant, I saw five brilliant rays of light dart forth from the Five
Sacred Wounds … Four of them appeared in the form of great pointed
nails, whilst the fifth was a spear-head of gleaming gold … but this,
lancing upon me, pierced my heart through and through, and the four
sharp nails of fire stabbed through my hands and feet. I felt a fearful ag-
ony of pain, but with the pain I clearly saw and was conscious that I was
wholly transformed into God.86
Well into the late Middle Ages, then, it appears that the ancient doc-
trine of deification by means of union with Wisdom—and in particular,
union with his suffering on the Cross—was still widely remembered. St.
Teresa thus claims that during stigmatization “the soul is entirely trans-
formed into the image of its Creator—it seems more God than soul.”
Other famous contemplatives also characterized this state of fusion as deifi-
cation, during which one becomes the “instrument” or “medium” of God
(Blessed Henry Suso, 1300–1365),87 “swimming in the Godhead like a fish
in water” (St. Mechthild of Hackeborn, ca. 1240). Then one is “literally ab-
sorbed in God” and transformed into the Uncreated Essence itself (Johann
Tauler, 1300–1361).88
The stages leading to this Mystic Marriage and deification have been
generally classified by students of Christian mysticism as follows:
83 In ibid., 154. Note the reference to the “turtledove” in Song 2:12.

84 Études d’histoire et de psychologie du mysticism (Paris, 1908); quoted in Summers,
Physical Phenomena, 177.
85 In ibid., 177. Compare again Albert Schweitzer’s statement that “the Body
of Christ … is the point from which the dying and rising again, which began with
Christ, passes over to the elect who are united with him”—The Mysticism of the Apos-
tle Paul (New York, 1931), 118—in short, those who are willing to share his sacri-
fice.
86 The Seventh Mansion, quoted in Summers, Physical Phenomena, 153.
87 See ibid., 177.
88 In ibid.
352 A GREAT MYSTERY
1-Awakening of the self to consciousness of Divine Reality, 2-Purgation

of the self, 3-Illumination (thea theou, or preliminary receipt of Divine
Light), 4-“The Dark Night of the Soul” (the destruction of selfishness,
or “spiritual crucifixion”), 5-Final Union, divinization.89
These appear, moreover, to correspond very closely to the traditional Chris-
tian stages of salvation, i.e.,
1-Faith in Christ, 2-Repentance, 3-Fecundation by water and Spirit
(John 3:5); “Putting on Christ” (1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:27), 4-“Dying with
Christ” (crucifixion of the “Old Man”; Rom 6:5–6, 5-Resurrection with
Christ, receipt of the Divine Fulness (John 17: 22; Eph 3:19), the com-
pleted Sacred Marriage (Rev 19, 21).
We will discover later on that they also resemble the various stages of the
alchemical Sacred Marriage, which was one of the forms in which the Wis-
dom Mystery survived until relatively late in Christian history:
1-Preparation, purification of the adept, 2-Union and dissolution of op-
posites (“marriage”), 3-Nigredo (death, putrifaction), 4-Resurrection as
the “Philosopher’s Stone” (the “whiteness,” or eternal life and God-
hood). (See “The Alchemical Sacred Marriage,” below.)
Thus we can only assume that a common thread of belief ran through all of
these transformations of the hieros gamos theme, in which Union with the
Divine made possible the immortality and even the deification of the soul
after death.
89 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (New York, 1948), 160–70. She stresses the fact
that Christian mysticism does not include the further stage of self-annihilation and
absorption into God to which Far-Eastern mysticism usually leads. The Christian
mystic never looses his own identity, even though some writers occasionally appear
to imply it with their excessive language. Christian mysticism in fact never advances
beyond the Johannine doctrine of spiritual indwelling: “I pray for them which shall
believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in
me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us … And the glory which thou
gavest me I have given them” (John 17:21–22), or the Judaeo-Pauline doctrine of
dabhaq and kollao (“spiritual cleavage to God,” pp. 70–71, 122, above). The same is
generally true of Jewish Kabbalism and of Moslem Sufism, as well.
THE VIRGIN MARY AS A WISDOM FIGURE IN THE SACRED MARRIAGE

Other mystics—mostly men—entered into union with the Divine through
the mediation of the Virgin Mary, just as intertestamental heroes enjoyed
spiritual union with God through his feminine Wisdom (pp. 33 ff, above).
A special Mariological interpretation of the Sacred Marriage existed as
early as the fourth century, when writers like Ephraem, Ambrose,
Epiphanius, and Peter Chrysologos applied the text of Song of Songs to
Mary’s heavenly nuptials with God, from which the Son was derived.90
They may have been encouraged in this by the fact that several contempo-
rary feasts of the Virgin employed lessons from Song of Songs, suggesting
that it was she whose Mystic Marriage was being described.91
One of the special passages in Song of Songs which seems to have
been used in support of this understanding of Mary was Song 3:6 (“Who is
this ascending from the steppe?”), which some exegetes saw as evidence for
Mary’s Assumption into heaven, showing “that heavenly Queen and heav-
enly Spouse … has been lifted up to the courts of heaven with the divine
Bridegroom.”92
Marvin Pope sees as precedents for such an interpretation the many
“love goddesses and fertility rites of the ancient Near East” whose tradi-
tions probably went into the original creation of Song of Songs93 and which
later contributed to the deification of Mary. Specifically, he notes certain
striking affinities between the “Black Beauty” of Song 1:5, the Indian god-
dess Kali, the “Black Goddess” of the Hittites, the “Black Aphrodite,” the
“Black Demeter” of Phigalia, the “Swarthy Artemis” or Diana of Ephesus,
the goddesses Isis, Athena, and many others who were represented ubiqui-
tously by black stones (including the Black Stone in the Ka‘aba, at Mecca,
and the black Madonnas of Christian Europe). These are a few of the “ran-
dom bits and pieces,” he argues, that went into a common tradition which
reached from Western Asia to India in the East, linking Near Eastern pre-
90 Paschal P. Parente, “The Canticle of Canticles in Mystical Theology,” Catho-

lic Biblical Quarterly 6 (1944): 146; quoted in Pope, Song of Songs, 185: “What other
soul was there who could in all truth have claimed to have celebrated the mystic
nuptials with God except Mary the Immaculate, the Mother of God?”
91 Pope, Song of Songs, 185.
92 Roland E. Murphy, “The Canticle of Canticles and the Virgin Mary,” Carme-
lus 1 (1954):18–28; quoted in Pope, Song of Songs.

93 Pope, Song of Songs, 191.
354 A GREAT MYSTERY
history with Song of Songs and the medieval cult of Mariolatry.94 Thus the
Virgin Mary was still called Regina Coeli by the Latin Church, just as her Se-
mitic predecessor, the “Queen of Heaven” (Jer 7:18; 44:17), had been.
But this common tradition again relates Mary’s role as God’s “Bride”
and Mother of Christ to the Jewish figure of Wisdom, she who was both
God’s “Bride” (Wis 8:3), and a veritable Mother-goddess, soon to be de-
clared Theotokos (“Bearer of God”) by the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431).
Beginning in the twelfth century, another Marian interpretation of
Song of Songs and the Sacred Marriage began to gain prominence in the
writings of Rupert de Dentz, Denis the Carthusian, Cornelius à Lapide,
Nigidius, etc., again arguing that Mary’s relationship with God was the ideal
example of the Church’s relationship with Christ. Thus Roland E. Murphy
speaks of the “Marian aspect of the Church,”95 and P. Alfonso Rivera
claims that the bridal symbolism in Song of Songs applies to Mary as the
“individualized collective object” to which the poem refers.96 Mary, in other
words, is the one whom the description of “the Bride” fits in a special and
singular way, being the “noblest example of what is described collectively,”
i.e., the Church.
This “ecclesiological” version of Mary was again one of Wisdom’s
special characteristics, who in the Wisdom of Sirach was already identified
with her people “Jacob” (24:8, 12), and in rabbinic Judaism was personified
as the “Community of Israel.” In Gnostic Christianity she likewise became
the Preexistent Church. The “ecclesiological” Motherhood of Mary was
also recognized by several of the early Church Fathers, for example, Origen,
who considered her to be the “Mother of all Christians,” applying to her
the words of Jesus, “Woman, behold thy son,” and (when addressing the
“beloved disciple”), “Behold your mother” (John 19:26–27; 20:2).97 Her
“perpetual Virginity,” on the other hand, appears to have been an attempt
to show that her “maternal fecundity” was inexhaustible, similar to those of
her predecessor, Anath, who was also called btlt, or “Virgin,” in the Ras
Shamra texts. Thus she became known as the “New Eve”—the one
through whom Christians are saved—and a complement to the title, “New
Ibid., 191.
94
Murphy, “Canticle of Canticles,” quoted in Pope, Song of Songs, 189.

95
96 “Sentido mariologico del Cantar de los Cantos,” Ephimerides Mariologicae,
1:437–68; 2:25–42 (1951, 1952); summarized in Pope, Song of Songs, 189.

97 Commentary on John, 1.6.
Adam,” which was given to Christ (1 Cor 15:45).98 The Odes of Solomon also
described the Church as the “Perfect Virgin,” the one who “will enter into
you” and “make you wise in the ways of Truth” (33), just as Lady Wisdom
in the Wisdom of Solomon (7:27). Indeed, Joan Chamberlain Engelsman,
one of the scholars who has recently studied Mary’s ecclesiological Wis-
dom-background, feels that the Church “as preexistent Wisdom has not yet
received enough recognition,”99 an omission which we too should like to
correct.
As we noted earlier, the Church’s early Hexaemeron doctrine and
2 Clement’s exegesis of Genesis 1:27 both clearly identified the Church as
Christ’s pre-existent Bride, hence the basis for Paul‘s “Great Mystery,”
where Adam and Eve are also symbols of the preexistent Christ and the
Church (Eph 5:30–33, long version).100 Since the Wisdom-writers had also
designated men’s souls as “fragments” or “rays” of Wisdom’s Light, it was
natural for the Gnostics to designate the Church herself as a form of Wis-
dom. Schlier’s analysis of the syzygy-pattern at the heart of Paul’s “Great
Mystery” (pp. 160–61, above) likewise derives the Church from a preexis-
tent corporeity of the masculine Wisdom and his Heavenly Bride, whom
the Gnostics later turned into the the preexistent syzygy, “Christos” and
“Sophia,” i.e., the syzygy from which Christ and the earthly Church are de-
scended.
The Mariological view of the Church as a Mother101 and Heavenly
Bride thus had its roots in the traditional figure of Wisdom, who was devel-
oped by Gnostics into the Mother of angels and the Church, just like the
Hebrew goddesses who were turned into angels and “hypostases.”102
98 See also Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 100; Irenaeus, Against Heresies,
3:22.4; Odes of Solomon, 19.

99 The Feminine Dimension of the Divine (Philadelphia, 1979), 133.
100 See p. 144 ff, above.
101 This theme has also been developed by Joseph Conrad Plumpe, Mater Ec-
clesia: An Inquiry into the Concept of the Church as Mother in Early Christianity (Washing-
ton, 1943).
102 Methodius (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins, 8.5) specifically designates the
Church as “a power … whom the prophets … have called sometimes Jerusalem,

sometimes a bride, sometimes Mount Zion, and sometimes the Temple and Taber-
nacle of God,” all of which remind us of Wis 7:27: “the one who enters holy souls
and makes them friends of God,” as well as the language of Philo. See Engelsman,
Feminine Dimension, 134–35.
356 A GREAT MYSTERY
In view of Mary’s many Wisdom and goddess-parallels, then, it is

hardly surprising that medieval mystics applied Song of Songs to their own
Marian intercourse with the Divine. As a “bridge between God and man”
(Proclus), Mary—like Wisdom before her—entered into mediating union
with her lovers in order to bring them closer to her Son. During the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, what amounted to a brand-new religion of “Mari-
olatry” erupted throughout Christendom, producing an independent litera-
ture devoted to the passionate love of knights and mystics for Christ’s di-
vine Mother. About 1230, for example, a French prior, Gaultier de Coincy,
gathered dozens of contemporary Mary legends into a poem of over 30,000
lines, describing all manner of amorous and adventurous relationships be-
tween Mary and her worshippers. Typical of these tales was the monk who
was cured of an illness by sucking milk from her breast during an intimate
moment.103 The love of such worshippers for her often surpassed even
their love for Christ. Caesarius of Hesterbach (ca. 1230) was thus persuaded
by Satan to deny Christ, but could not be prevailed on to renounce Mary.
The same monk on another occasion heard a brother praying to Christ,
“Lord, free me from this temptation, or I will complain of thee to Thy
Mother!”104 In short, Mary became to Christ what Christ-Wisdom was to
the Father, i.e., his Intermediary, through whom he dealt with mankind.
Typical of these love-relationships with the Virgin was the case of
Henry Suso (fourteenth century), who referred to Mary as the heavenly
“Wife” and “Empress of his heart”:
Should I be the husband of a Queen, my soul would find pride in it; but
now you are the Empress of my heart … You are the love whom my
heart loves; for you I have spurned all earthly love.105
St. Bernard (twelfth century) likewise sang of his intimate spiritual relations
with the Virgin. She frequently came to him, as he tells us, in amorous vi-
sions, and during their ensuing passionate embrace he would cry out to her,
“My Love! My Love! Let me ever love Thee from the depths of my
heart!”106
Even later mystics continued to search for God through intimate love-
unions with the Blessed Virgin. A brother of the King of Hungary, for ex-
ample, is said to have been ready to marry a certain noble woman for politi-
103 Henry Adams, Mont St. Michel and Chartres (Boston, 1926), 258.
104 G. C. Coulton, From St. Francis to Dante (London, 1908), 119.
105 Quoted in Goldberg, Sacred Fire, 199.
106 In ibid., 199.
cal reasons. One night, however, while praying the words, “How beautiful
art thou, and how fair” (Song 1:16), Mary appeared to him as a lady of sur-
passing loveliness, saying,
If indeed I am as beautiful and fair as thou sayest, why dost thou aban-
don me for another bride? Know, then, that if thou wilt break off this
marriage, I will be thy Spouse, and thou shalt inherit the Kingdom of
Heaven, where I am Queen.” This prince thereupon fell down in wor-
ship before her and went away that very night to devote the rest of his
life to her as an anchorite, finally dying amidst songs of angelic choirs.107
Yet these same lovers of Mary sometimes approached Mary’s Son in a
feminine role, since the “female” soul (like the soul in the Wisdom Mystery)
was capable of intimate union only with the masculine Logos. St. Bernard, for
example, not only sought the Virgin as his love-object, but spoke of his in-
timate relationship with Christ as a bride uniting with her Bridegroom:
Suddenly the Bridegroom is present and gives assent to (the soul’s) peti-
tion; He gives her the kiss asked, of which the fullness of breasts is wit-
ness; For so great is the efficacy of this Holy Kiss, that the Bride on re-
ceiving it conceives the swelling breasts rich with milk being the
evidence.108
This alternation of the sexes, wherein the soul has intercourse with
Christ as a “female,” or with Mary as a “male,” is another of the traditional
hallmarks of the ancient Wisdom tradition, where the initiate wooed Lady
Wisdom as a male or was impregnated by God’s seed as a female (p. 34,
above). But as some could reach God solely through Mary; Montague
Summers explains that
a Vision or the Presence of Our Lady is necessary to the fulfillment of
the Mystical Marriage, since the Son will not give Himself in wedlock
without the consent and approval of His Mother, and the Mother must
be present at the marriage of Her Son.109
As an example, he mentions St. Gemma Galgani (b. 1878), who sought first
of all to become one with Mary, in order that “her heart could be one with
the heart of Jesus.” After that espousal, Jesus appeared to her in the form of
an infant in his Mother’s arms; the Mother, taking a ring from his finger,
then gave it to Gemma, thus solemnizing their union. St. Catherine of Si-
107 In Summers, Physical Phenomena, 73.

108 In Goldberg, Sacred Fire, 200.
109 Physical Phenomena, 72.
358 A GREAT MYSTERY
enna (ca. 1364) was also espoused in this manner to Christ by the Virgin.
Male mystics, on the other hand, sought divine union directly with Mary
herself, as in the case of St. Hermann of Steinfeld, who was greeted by the
Virgin as a “Joseph,” the name of her earthly Spouse.110
The tradition of Wisdom’s bisexual nature in even medieval Christianity
has recently been traced by Phyllis Trible to the Old Testament and the
numerous feminine characteristics attributed therein to Yahweh.111 His
“compassion,” she notes, was commonly described by a word based on the
Hebrew root rhm (“womb”).112 Other “uteral” language was placed in Yah-
weh’s mouth by various prophets, including Jeremiah, who characteristically
wrote that “My inner parts yearn for him; I will surely have motherly com-
passion on him” (31:20). In these and similar passages, Trible explains, “di-
vine mercy is analogous to the womb of a mother.”113 God was also said to
have breasts (Hos 9:14; Ps 131:2), and to be able to hyl (“give birth,” Deut
32:18; Job 38:29; Isa 42:14). In short, he was a being with female as well as
masculine traits, who goes into labor, gives birth, has a womb, suckles Is-
rael, and gives comfort like a mother (Isa 66:7–14; Num 11:12). Even in the
Old Testament, then, the Divine already consisted of both male and female
attributes, which, when they reappeared in medieval Christianity, made pos-
sible the mystic’s alternate devotion to a masculine Christ or to his feminine
Mother, both as surrogates for divine union with the Father.
There were some medieval God-seekers who worshipped the Divine
Feminine simply in the form of an unnamed goddess-figure. St. Francis of
Assisi thus addressed his yearning to a female personification whom he
called “Lady Poverty,” but who can hardly have been anyone but a personi-
fication of the Virgin:
Yes, I am thinking of taking a wife more beautiful, more rich, more pure
than you could ever imagine.” She was Lady Poverty, as he called her.
She became his bride, his ideal; to her he swore faith and love, and
throughout his life his thoughts were devoted to her. Often in his vi-
sions, his bride descended from heaven to join her spouse. He would
then welcome her in his arms, kiss her gently, and show her all the
Ibid., 72, 94.

110
“God, Nature of, in the Old Testament” in IDB, 5: 368–69.

111
112 Exodus 34:6; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalms 78:38; 86:15; 103:8; 111:4; Isaiah
49:15; 69:14; Jeremiah 12:15; 30:18; Hosea 1:6–7; 2:1, 4, 19, 23; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2.
113 Trible, “God,” 368.
delicate attentions that the ardent lover showers on the object of his de-
sire.114
Francis’ follower, Jacopone da Todi, likewise extolled “Lady Poverty” as his
lover, in whose arms he longed to dwell:
O Poverty, high Wisdom! to be subject to nothing, and by despising all
to possess all created things. God will not lodge in a narrow heart; and it
is as great as thy love. Poverty has so ample a bosom that Deity Itself
may lodge therein.115
In both instances it would seem that the archetypal Wisdom Mystery had
survived in a purely abstract fashion, divorced from all personalities, but
preserving in a remarkable way the immemorial recollection of the divine
goddess who formerly ruled over the hearts of men, and who still entered
into intimate unions with them, in order to bestow upon them the heavenly
gifts of wisdom and immortality, even her deity.
THE WISDOM MYSTERY IN MEDIEVAL GNOSTICISM

That branch of the Church known as “Gnosticism,” and which was eventu-
ally rejected by so-called “orthodoxy” as heretical, did not die out com-
pletely after the victory of Nicaea and the Hellenized Creeds, but retired to
the East, where it passed through such metamorphoses as Manichaeism and
Paulicianism, reemerging finally in the West in a form known as “Ca-
tharism.” There it found the new spirit of Mariolatry congenial to its own
idealization of femininity, giving rise in the process to both the Troubadour
movement, with its poetic praises of the Unattainable Woman, and the “in-
tellectual love” of Dante Alighieri for Beatrice. In order to understand Ca-
tharism, however, we must first cast a look at those intermediate forms of
Gnosticism which had made their home in the East and which were in their
own way developments of the familiar Wisdom Mystery.
It is generally thought that Catharism (from the Greek word katharos,
“pure”) originated amongst the neo-Manichaean sects of Asia Minor, espe-
cially the Bogomils of Dalmatia and Bulgaria, and that it later reached the
West through Italy, Germany, and Hungary.116 Its progress is difficult to
date with accuracy, but it is known that the Bulgarian Bogomils came into
114 Quoted in Goldberg, Sacred Fire, 202.

115 Quoted in Underhill, Mysticism, 207, n. 3.
116 Edmond Holmes, The Holy Heretics (London, 1948), 25.
360 A GREAT MYSTERY
being during the middle of the tenth century,117 perhaps under the influence
of the so-called “Paulicians,” who had migrated into Asia Minor from Ar-
menia around 872.118 It may also have exerted its influence through
Manichaean outposts in fourth century Gaul and Spain,119 having reached
even North Africa, where St. Augustine had been a Manichaean for a num-
ber of years.
The Paulicians supposedly had their origins in Syria and showed a
predilection for the teachings of the Apostle Paul. Their doctrine embodied
a form of dualism which they either borrowed from the Manichaeans or
brought with them from their original Palestinian homeland. The resulting
Bogomil movement seems also to have found a ready soil in Italy, where
Pope Gregory the Great (ca. 600) was obliged to contend with so many
Gnostic sects that he found it necessary to exhort the Italian bishops to
take strict measures against them.120 It is worth remembering that Northern
Italy was also home to the Arians and the heretical Waldensians, the latter
being sometimes connected with the Cathars.
Manichaeism developed in Mesopotamia during the third century, in
an area long saturated with heterogeneous religious influences. Among
these were the indigenous Babylonian cults, which survived well into the
Christian era; a strong Jewish presence, established at the time of the Baby-
lonian Exile (597 B.C.); and Zoroastrianism, brought in by Persian rulers
(539 B.C.). These were joined by Alexandrian Hellenism (late fourth century
B.C.) in bringing intellectual clarity to their philosophical writings, as well as
imparting a Platonizing influence on them.
In the second century of our own era, Syriac Christianity also pene-
trated the area through centers at Edessa and Nisibis, bringing with it the
strongly encratitic form of worship typified by the Acts of Thomas. This was
accompanied by Marcionite theology, with its denigration of the Old Tes-
tament Demiurge, as well as sundry Jewish and Jewish-Christian sects, in-
cluding the early Mandaeans, who had been driven out of Jerusalem during
its destruction a century earlier. Most important of all, we must mention the
growing influence of sundry Western Gnostics, among whom was the Syr-
117 Ibid., 374.

118 Ibid.
119 Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis (San Francisco, 1983), 331.
120 Holmes, Holy Heretics, 26.
ian Bardaisan, who lived at the court of Abgan IX in Edessa from 179 to
266.121
Bardaisan’s theology was based on a cosmic dualism between the God
of Light and the Darkness (hylē). At the time of the Fall, the primeval ele-
ments of light, wind, fire, and water became mingled with hylē, giving rise to
the material world. Only Christ, the pure “Word of Thought” and “Power
of the First God,” can bring order to this confusion of pneumatic, psychic, and
hylic substances and release the pneumatic souls of men. These, Bardaisan
taught, will then be restored in the Bridal Chamber to a spiritual oneness
with God.122
This form of Gnosticism helped to prepare the ground for
Manichaeism, whose founder, Mani, was born in A.D. 216 in the vicinity of
Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Persian capital on the Tigris. Mani’s father belonged
to a Jewish-Christian baptizing sect known as the Elkasaites, claiming de-
scent from the Syrian prophet, Elkasai, who was active around A.D. 100
and whose basic syzygy-theory we have already mentioned (p. 227, above).
According to this Jewish-Christian tradition, the transcendent “One God”
causes all things—including his own Presence in the world—to exist as
pairs of male and female opposites. This male-female Presence was clearly re-
lated to the bisexual Wisdom—whose masculine counterpart was the “True
Prophet” that descended upon Jesus at the time of his baptism. Since the
human soul is also a “fragment” from the same Wisdom, it follows that it
too has a heavenly counterpart, called the “angel” by the Valentinians, or
the syzygos (“consort” or “twin”) by the Manichaeans. This part of Mani’s
background has now been confirmed by the recent discovery of the Co-
logne Mani-Codex,123 which frequently refers to the syzygos as a sort of
“guardian angel,” or that portion of the Light Spirit which has been allotted
to the individual for his personal redemption. Kurt Rudolph thus views
Manichaeism as a system with a “Christian-gnostic tenor,” mediated
through the “Syrian-Mesopotamian environment of a heretical-gnostic Jew-
ish Christianity,”124 and related still farther back to the Jewish “baptizers”
who lived along the banks of the Jordan before the time of Christ.125
121 Rudolph, Gnosis, 327.

122 Ibid., 328–29.
123 The Cologne Mani-Codex, “Concerning the Origin of His Body,” trans. Ron
Cameron and Arthur J. Dewey (Missoula, MT, 1979), 14.

125 John Turner has described “the numerous baptismal sects that populated
Syria and Palestine, especially along the Jordan valley, in the period 200 B.C.E.–300
362 A GREAT MYSTERY
When Mani was twelve years old, his own syzygos appeared to him and
assured him that it would henceforth become his protector and assistant.
Mani later recognized this experience as an endowment by the Holy Spirit
or Paraclete (cf. John 16:17ff), whose vessel he now considered himself to
be. On the 19th of April, 290—at the age of twenty-four—he believed that
he had a call from God to be an “Apostle of Light.” His subsequent mis-
sionary efforts were enormously successful, spreading during his own life
time as far as India in the East, and Syria and Egypt in the West. By the
fourth century, the Manichaean Church stretched all the way from the At-
lantic to the Indian Ocean and deep into Central Asia.126
Manichaeism, according to Hans Jonas127 and Kurt Rudolph,128 be-
came one of the world’s greatest independent religions, standing alongside
of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam as history’s “most monumental single
embodiment of the gnostic religious principle.129 Mani’s Christology and
eschatology, however, appear to have been basically Christian-Gnostic, with
the familiar “docetic” Jesus and the usual scheme of “cosmic exile” and
“regathering.” In fact, Mani declared himself to be “an Apostle of Jesus
Christ through the will of God, the Father of Truth, from whom I also was
born.”130 Thus, while Mani drew material from several religions in order to
C.E: the Essenes/Dead Sea sect, the pre-Christian Nasorenes, the Ebionites,
Pauline and Johannine Christians, Naasenes, Valentinians/Marcosians, Elkasaites,
Sabeans, Dositheans, Masbotheans, Gorothenians, Hemero-baptists, Mandeans,
and the groups behind the Odes of Solomon, Acts of Thomas, Pseudo-Clementines,
Justin’s Baruch, etc; cf. J. Thomas, Le mouvement baptiste en Palestine et Syrie (Gem-
bloux, 1935). These baptismal rites, often representing a spiritualizing protest
against a failing or extinct sacrificial temple cultus (so Thomas), are mostly descen-
dants of ancient Mesopotamian New Year enthronement rituals in which the king,
stripped of his regalia, symbolically undergoes a struggle with the dark waters of
chaos, cries for aid, is raised up and nourished by water or food, absolved and
strengthened by a divine oracle, enthroned, enrobed, and acclaimed as king, acquir-
ing radiance and authority.” “Sethian Gnosticism: a Literary History,” in Nag Ham-
madi Gnosticism and Early Christianity, ed. Harold Attridge, Charles Hedrick and
Robert Hodgeson, Jr. (Peabody, MA, 1986), 68–69.
126 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1963), 207.
127 Ibid., 206.
128 Rudolph,Gnosis, 326–27, 329.
129 Jonas, Gnostic Religion, 207–8.
130 Cologne Mani-Codex, 53. Rudolph adds that the form of Manichaeism con-
tained in the Christian-Gnostic flavored Coptic texts found at Medinet Madi (Mid-
dle Egypt) in 1930—the most famous of which is the Kephalaia (“Chapters”)—and
appeal to their various factions, he was actually attempting to express the

basic system of dualism which he perceived to be essential to all of them.
Indeed, his own system was eclectically designed to suit nearly everyone.
Accordingly, he had no esoteric doctrine for the elite, but laid out his mes-
sage plainly for everyone to see, which perhaps explains why it was still alive
and intellectually stimulating at the time of the Bogomils and the Cathars.
Mani’s “Universal Gnostic System,” however, differed in one signifi-
cant respect from the usual Gnostic-Christian dualism, which generally
taught that Darkness and Evil were the result of God’s Light being attenu-
ated as it flowed away from its Source. Mani instead accepted the Zurvanite
principle of eternally preexisting Good and Evil Principles. Nevertheless,
his cosmogony and soteriology had much in common with the other sys-
tems, for he too believed that the Light was presently imprisoned in the
Darkness, and will be redeemed when it is drawn back to its native element
by the “Mind of Light” (the nous)—apparently another form of the ancient
“Logos-Wisdom.”
During the first stage of this process, Darkness (hyle) comes to the
border of Light and fights against it, resulting in an admixture of the two
principles. To meet this challenge, God creates the “Great Spirit”
(“Sophia”), who gives rise to the “Mother of the Living.” The latter then
brings forth the Primal Man, with his accompanying Pentad of fire, wood,
water, light, and ether, also called his “Garments” or his “Living Soul.” But
when Primal Man descends to repel the Darkness, he allows himself to be
vanquished, so that his fivefold “Living Soul” can be left in the underworld
to serve as “bait” for catching the Darkness.
In a second stage, God sends a “Living Spirit” (similar to the Persian
Mithra) to awaken Primal Man. He successfully draws him back to the
Light, though his fivefold “Living Soul” is now in the clutches of the ar-
chons. At this point, “Living Spirit” sets into motion the process which will
eventually rescue Primal Man’s “Living Soul,” at the same time creating a
Cosmos from its dispersed particles.131 These will play a positive role in
God’s overall scheme, since they will protect the various parts of the uni-
published by Carl Schmidt in Neue Originalquellen des Manichaismus aus Ägypten (Stutt-
gart, 1933), is probably the closest to Mani’s own original Manichaean teaching
(ibid., 334).
131 According to Jonas, the “Living Spirit” is the Manichaean equivalent to the
Gnostic Demiurge (Gnostic Religion, 230).

364 A GREAT MYSTERY
verse, especially the Sun and the Moon, and serve to guide mankind back to
the Heavenly Light.
In a third stage, an envoy called “the God of the Realm of Light”
comes to dwell in the sun, and begins to purify the scattered particles of
“Living Soul.” To direct their regathering, he creates a “Pillar of Glory”—
also called the “Perfect Man” because he is an androgynous restoration of
Primal Man—to which the liberated particles can successfully be drawn.
Visible in the form of the Milky Way, he guides them safely towards the
moon, then to the sun, and finally to the “New Aeon,” or the Upper Spiri-
tual World.132
Meanwhile, the “Pillar of Glory” shows himself in his naked androgy-
nous form to the archons, who spill their seed on the ground, giving rise to
the plants and animals, which henceforth become prisons for the remaining
particles of light. They also copy God’s image and fashion bodies in which
to incarcerate the souls of Adam and Eve, hoping that they and their prog-
eny will devour and retain the other captive sparks. But God sends “Jesus
Splendor” (the preexistent Christ) to enlighten them concerning their true
nature. As their instructor, he summons “Mind of Light” (the divine Nous),
who enters into human souls and leads them back to their place of origin.
“Jesus the King” (the earthly Christ) finally appears to judge the world, con-
suming it with fire and purifying the last particles of trapped light.133
The role of mankind in this redemptive process is simply to break the
cycle of procreation and the further imprisonment of light. The Elect were
of course expected to abide strictly by this ascetic rule; but the great mass of
believers (the “Hearers,” or “Soldiers”) were asked only to care for the
needs of the Elect until such time as they too (in a future incarnation) might
join their ranks. The “Sinners,” on the other hand, fell eagerly into the plans
of the archons, living like beasts, destined in the end to fall into eternal
Darkness.
We immediately recognize in this grand scheme several elements from
the traditional Gnostic Wisdom-Mystery: the various stages of divine “ema-
nation” and “regathering” which constitute cosmogenesis and salvation; the
archontic creation of Adam and Eve from God’s Image (pp. 272–75,
above); the loss of the archon’s seed at the sight of the naked Perfect
This may ultimately be a reflection of the Hindu Pitriyana, or “Path of the

132
Fathers,” which guided men’s souls from the earth to the celestial regions via the
Milky Way, the Sun, and the Moon.
133 Rudolph, Gnosis, 337–39.
Man;134 the reconstitution of Primal Man from the reassembled sparks of

Light; the Primal Triad of Father-Mother-Son; the Primal Man and his five-
fold Pentad of Living Soul (much like the Valentinian Savior and his com-
pany of “angels,” whose individual forms would still be called angelicus in the
Catharist version);135 three graded levels of the “Logos-Wisdom”; and 7-
three levels of human beings, corresponding to the pneumatics, psychics, and
hylics of the West. Yet even more central to the entire Gnostic tradition was
the saving of the fallen souls through the “Great Mystery” of union with
the “Mind of Light,” followed by their deification and regathering into
God’s Body:
At the end, when the cosmos is dissolved, this same Thought of Life
shall gather himself in and shall form his Soul (i.e., Self) in the shape of
the Lost Image. His net is his Living Spirit, for with his Spirit he shall
catch the Light and the Life that is in all things and build it into his own
body (Kephalaia, 5; trans. Jonas).
How much of this doctrine may have come from the Iranian fravashi
(the soul’s heavenly counterpart or “guardian angel“), and how much from
the Valentinian “angel,” we cannot say; but the angelic “light-double” ap-
pears almost everywhere throughout the gnosticising area, even as far east
as Persia.136 It was also of considerable importance to the Mandaeans, who
likewise sought to regather the scattered souls and their preexistent coun-
terparts (the mabda dmutha) into the heavenly body of Adam Kadmon. Sig-
nificantly, this also took place by means of a spiritual hieros gamos, called the
masiqta.137 Thus, the souls of the dead and “the spirits of light which govern
them” were brought back together as a Mystical Body, called the “Light
Body of Primal Man,” which “swells like a pregnant woman” as it is per-
fected by the Father.138
134 Hypostasis of the Archons, 89:19–30; On the Origin of the World, 111:8–28;
114:27–115:3; 116:11–117:15.
135 Henry Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism (Boulder, 1978), 34.
136 Ibid., passim, esp. 13–34.
137 E. S. Drower calls this a “creation of the Secret Adam, limb by limb, in the
primal vastness of the cosmic Womb, the Mother,” the words “Father” and
“Mother” being used of the two cosmic Powers during the “sacred marriage.” The
Secret Adam (Oxford, 1960), 74.
138 Ibid., 83–84. A. V. Williams Jackson, Researches in Manichaeism (New York,
1965), 255–65, gives a more detailed account of the same myth.

366 A GREAT MYSTERY
This Mandaean symbolism also has obvious ties to the Wisdom Mys-
tery, with its goal of regathering Wisdom’s scattered “rays” and making
them “pregnant” with divine “Virtues.” Yet in the Manichaean texts—
perhaps due to their extremely ascetic tone—the sexual metaphor is not as
conspicuous. Nevertheless, the same theoretical basis which we found in
the Philonic and Gnostic versions of the Mystery are still apparent in both.
In Manichaeism, for example, man’s soul, “as a part of the light (i.e., God),
is the element to be saved; and the saving element is the ‘spirit’ (nous, or
pneuma).”139 These come into union when the latter “enters all men who are
to be saved,” either by revelation and gnosis,140 or even by a special rite,
whose purpose was to endow a person with the gift of the redeeming Spirit.
This special rite is described in chapter 10 of the Kephalaia as the
“laying-on-of-hands,” which ordained the elect person as part of the
Manichaean inner circle.141 At the same time, it bestowed the “Spirit of
Light” upon him.142 It was also understood that at the moment of death his
personal “Form of Light” (spirit-double) would appear to him and console
him with a kiss, offering him its right hand. This he venerated as his feminine
Savior, also called the Daena, or “the Maiden who guides him.”143 The Sa-
cred Marriage character of their reunion is further indicated in the Cologne
Mani-Codex by the fact that the spirit-double is called syzygos (“consort,”
18;12–13; 20;4–5; 23:4–5). The result of their mystic “marriage” was “Rest”
(anapausis), symbolizing the completed hieros gamos in the traditional Wisdom
Mystery (12:4–5; 43:1–2; see pp. 191–93, above).
The reunion of the soul with its feminine “Light-Form” thus reminds
us once again of the older Wisdom literature, where the latter frequently
appeared as “Lady Wisdom.” Thus, the same concept probably stood at the
heart of the oldest Manichaean theology; Kurt Rudolph in fact believes that
the Coptic Manichaeica (containing the above-quoted Kephalaia) “comes clos-
est to the original system.”144 The familiar “Kiss of Love”—now found in
both Manichaean and Catharist ritual—was also part of the earlier Wisdom
Mystery (pp. 103, 173–75, 182, above), and was perhaps mediated to them
through Bardaisan’s “Bridal Chamber” rite (pp. 360–61, above).

140 Ibid.
141 Ibid., 342.
142 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 85, 74.
143 Ibid., 85. Corbin (Man of Light, 34–35, 148, n. 41) particularly draws the par-
allel between the Daena and the Valentinian “angel.”

Theodore bar Khoni’s account of Manichaean salvation (Book of Scho-

lia, ca. A.D. 792) also contains a late version of the mystic “union at the
veil,” involving Primal Man and the “Mother of the Living” (Wisdom). This
encounter (which also served as the prototype of man’s salvation) took
place when the “Mother’s” hypostatized “Call” put on Man’s hypostatized
“Answer.” Like the Jewish Logos-Wisdom, these were personifications of
the spoken “Word,” and appear to have been connected with a ritual ex-
change of questions and answers in an initiation ceremony. A. V. Williams
Jackson connects this mystical “putting on” to Paul’s baptismal hieros gamos,
where the saving element was also said to be “put on” like a garment:
Through faith you are all sons of God in union with Christ Jesus. Bap-
tized into union with him, you have all put on Christ as a garment.
There is no such thing as Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male and fe-
male; for you are all one person (Eph. 5:31–32) in Christ Jesus (Gal.
3:27–28; see also Eph. 4:24; Col. 3: 10).
Paul’s verb enduo (“to put on”) literally means “to dress.” The Manichaean
version similarly uses the Syriac verb l ebash, the same verb used in the
Peshitta of Colossians 3:10 and Ephesians 4:24 to indicate the mystery of
union with the Savior (“Ye have put on [l ebash] the new man”). That a hieros
gamos was also intended in the Manichaean rite is further suggested by the
Cologne Mani-Codex, which equates “Rest” with the putting on of the
“Garment” (87.4–5). Bar Khoni’s mystery of union concluded as the
“Mother of the Living” led the saved through the “Door” which separates
the Light from the Darkness145—another reflection of the goddess Wis-
dom, who regulates all movement through the horos-limit (p. 24, above).
The Manichaeans especially described their relationship to her as “Sons of
the Widow,” no doubt because she had become the “Fallen Mother” with-
out a Spouse, or the seed of the “Fallen Sophia” who hoped to receive
Christ as the “Father” of their salvation (p. 269, above).
Hegemonius (Acta Archelai, 7.4–5) also describes how the Father’s
“Living Spirit” descended to the “Door,” extended its right hand to the
candidate, and drew him back into the Light. “On this account, the
Manichaeans, if they meet each other, give their right hands as a sign of
145 Williams Jackson, Researches in Manichaeism, 229–32; 259–63. “Call” and

“Answer” seem to be personifications of a ritual question and response at the
“Door” separating the two worlds and will be repeated by each man as he enters
heaven (Jonas, Gnostic Religion, 223).
368 A GREAT MYSTERY
having been saved from the Darkness.”146 St. Augustine, who was well ac-
quainted with the Manichaeans, identified the “Living Spirit” as the Holy
Ghost,147 she whom the intertestamental Wisdom-books characterized as
“Lady Wisdom,” and certain Gnostic-Christians as the “Mother of men and
angels.”
Williams Jackson believes that the Manichaean “Mother of the Living”
was the same Wisdom (Sophia) who appeared in the other Gnostic sys-
tems.148 This, however, requires some qualification, since the Bogomils,
through whom Manichaean doctrine is presumed to have passed to the Ca-
tharists, thought of the “Living Spirit” primarily as the Holy Ghost and saw
their redemption as a “spiritual baptism” along the lines found in John’s
Gospel.149 This Catharist Holy Ghost, however, came to the individual in
much the same way that it came to the Valentinians, i.e., as an individual-
ized “guardian spirit” or “angel”:
The Holy Ghost was regarded as being, next to Jesus, the chief of all the
celestial spirits; but the Catharists also applied the epithet holy to each of
the guardian spirits of the celestial souls. When the souls of men have
accomplished their penitential work, the guardian spirits, who had
watched over them in heaven, are restored to them, and each of these
spirits becomes the Paraclete or Consoler of the soul to which it is at-
tached, as long as the latter has to remain on earth.150
There can be little doubt, however, that the feminine “Savior” who reunites
herself to the souls of dying Manichaeans and Cathars with a kiss was ulti-
mately a form of God’s feminine Wisdom, identified by most Jews and Chris-
tians as the Holy Spirit, or the divine “surrogate” through whom one at-
tained perfect oneness with Christ and the Father (pp. 23 ff, above). It is
146 Ibid., 265. See also pp. 181–82, above. Several Manichaean texts refer to the
symbolic extension of the right hand with which to lead the initiate through the
Door into the Light (Williams Jackson, Researches in Manichaeism, 265, n. 26). Even
St. Augustine, who was a Manichaean for a while, alluded to this rite when he says
“May the right hand of Light protect you!” (Epist. Man. Fund. 62.13). Hans Jonas
connects this ritual hand clasp with the question-and-answer ritual at the Door
(= the horos, or veil). See his Gnostic Religion, 222–23).
147 Williams Jackson, Researches in Manichaeism, 289.
148 Ibid., 321.
149 Rudolph, Gnosis, 374–75. See also pp. 106–10, above, for John’s doctrine of
spiritual henosis with the Divine, or “spiritual indwelling.”

150 Holmes, Holy Heretics, 8.
she who stood behind the Catharist Troubadour’s “Lady,” and who was too
“lofty” to attain while in this world.
SEXUAL RITES AMONGST THE CATHARS?

It is generally believed that faithful Cathars were divided into two groups,
the “Believers” (Credentes or Imperfecti) and the “Perfect” (Perfecti).151 The
former, being too weak to comply with the strict renunciation of the world
demanded of the Perfecti, were allowed to marry, living pretty much like
other Christians, procreating their kind in the usual family setting. The Per-
fecti, however, claimed to abstain completely from owning property, com-
municating with worldly persons, lying, shedding blood, eating flesh, and
(above all), engaging in sexual intercourse—even in marriage. Only those
who had mastered these strict rules could receive the Consolamentum, or the
ritual union which rejoined the soul to its “syzygy” (“Guardian Spirit”), and
who would remain its “Comforter” or “Consoler” throughout life.152 This
Consolamentum, in contrast to ordinary sexual relations, consisted mainly of a
chaste prayer, a covenant to renounce all worldly activities, the laying-on-of-
hands to unite the candidate with the Holy Spirit, and the Kiss of Peace,
exchanged between the assembled Perfecti.
Yet the opposing of this mystical union to ordinary marriage may have
been more apparent than real, much like the Catharist-inspired custom of
“Courtly Adultery” or “Love of the Lady,” which the Troubadours claimed
to oppose to “marriage in the flesh.”153 Thus,
To an uninitiated reader of Provençal poems and Arthurian romances,
Tristan was no doubt guilty of committing adultery, but at the same
time the fault took on the aspect of a splendid experience more magnifi-
cent than morality. What for the Manichaeans was a dramatic expression
of the struggle between faith and the world thereupon became for such
a reader an ambiguous and searing “poesy” … What had hitherto been a
“fault” now became—in symbol—something mystically virtuous.154
151 We should also add a third group, the “Non-Believers,” as did the
Manichaeans, who likewise spoke of three groups: the “Elect,” the “Hearers” (i.e.,
“Believers”), and the “Sinners” (Non-Believers), an obvious parallel to the Chris-
tian pneumatics, psychics, and hylics (also sarkiks, or “fleshly men”). See Jonas, Gnostic
Religion, 232.
152 See Holmes, Holy Heretics, 10–11.
153 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 286.
154 Ibid., 287.
370 A GREAT MYSTERY
This again reflects the preoccupation of the Libertine Gnostics with various
forms of sexual expression which were no longer truly “sexual,” but rather
deviant forms of sex—i.e., sex used against itself—generally consisting of un-
natural vices, employed as substitutes for marriage. It therefore comes as no
surprise to learn that even the Perfecti were sometimes accused of immoral
rites.
Indeed, to the Catholics it seemed that the Cathars cared far too little
for chastity as bodily disciplines. So long as it did not lead to the con-
ception of children, they positively seemed to encourage sexual inter-
course or at least not to discourage it—a complete reversal of the
Catholic view.155
This of course makes it impossible for us to decide whether the Cathars
were truly ascetic, or whether they believed that their spirituality gave them
immunity from sin. The medieval writer, Pierre de Vaux-Cernay, in fact
declared in his Hystoria Albigenses156 that the Cathars believed it impossible
to sin with any part of the body below the navel—the same antinomian
attitude held by the Phibionites. As a result, they were suspected of all
manner of unnatural practices, a rumor they themselves encouraged by
claiming that “casual debauchery” was preferable to marriage, “because
marriage was a more serious affair, an official regularization of a wicked
thing.”157
One special Cathar practice to which we must call attention was asag,
or the ritual trial undergone by a knight, who had to pass an entire night
naked with his Lady without giving in to temptation.158 The important thing
to note here is that asag was not merely a proof of continence, but “was
meant to fuel desire to paroxysm,” much like “like the Tantric preparation
for magical coitus.”159 R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz refers to this deliberately
cultivated passion as “the Great Desire which unites body with spirit well
beyond the union of bodies in the Little Desire,”160 being a state of “spiri-
tual ecstasy” fed by the sublimated lust of the carnal “Lesser Mysteries.”
Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge, 1947), 152.

155
1561:17, ed. Guaben and Lyon (Paris, 1926); quoted in Runciman, Medieval
Manichee, 182.
157 Ibid., 152.
158 C. Fauriel, Histoire de la poesie provençale (Paris, 1846); quoted by Julius Evola,
The Metaphysics of Sex (New York, 1983), 309.

159 Evola, Metaphysics of Sex, 309.
160 Adam l’homme rouge (Paris: 1927), quoted by Evola, Metaphysics of Sex, 233.
Thus, erotic love, roused by a real woman, could be used as an “initiatory

process” to spiritually unite the lover with “the glorious Woman of the
mind,”161 i.e., the “occult force of Womanhood,”162 whom we again recog-
nize as Sophia, the ancient goddess of the Wisdom Mystery.
This practice was remarkably like that of liaisons with virgines subintro-
ductae, during which a “brother” spent the night with his “virgin,” engaging
in kisses and various “sports” (pp. 206–8, above), perhaps even engaging in
coitus reservatus. The Catharist asag also suggests some kind of symbolic fon-
dling, for as one of their poets said, “He knows nothing of donnoi” (“Love’s
Vassalage,” called domnei in Provençal) “who wants fully to possess his
lady.”163 This practice of first arousing, then transmuting, sexual desire—
without the emission of seed—corresponds to what the Persians called ka-
rezza and may have been brought to the West in the train of those
Manichaean influences which gave birth to Catharism.164 Yet whether or
not karezza was an official practice, “the ideal of the Troubadour was at
least to gaze upon and worship the unveiled form of his lady,”165 an ideal
“love” not entirely unlike the vision of Lady Wisdom during thea theou in the
Jewish Temple.166
Thus the Cathars may have had unknown rites of their own, which
employed the “Lesser Mystery” of sex as a “catalyst” for initiating the
“Great Mystery” of union with Wisdom, thereby explaining the frequent
accusations of immorality brought against them. The most lasting of these
accusations was undoubtedly the designation “Bougres” (the French form
of “Bulgars”), describing not only their historic ties to the Bulgarian Bo-
gomils, but the unnatural sex practices supposedly rife amongst them. The
name “Bougre” has in fact been anglicized as “bugger,” and it was certainly
justified in the case of those Troubadours who were notoriously homosex-
ual, e.g., Arnaut Daniel, who (along with the Tuscan Guido Guinicelli) was
condemned to the “sodomite’s circle” in Dante’s Purgatorio (Canto 26). Thus
Catharist dualism, which sought to eradicate the propagation of the species,
was often suspected of relying on the same vice for attaining its goal. This
again explains why the Cathars “disapprove(ed) of marriage far more than
of casual sexual intercourse, for the latter represents merely one isolated sin,
161 See “The Intellectual Wisdom Mystery of Dante Alighieri,” below.

162 Evola, Metaphysics of Sex, 195. Our capitalization of “Womanhood.”
163 A. Watts, Nature, Man and Woman (New York, 1958), 146.
164 Ibid., 145–47.
165 Ibid., 146.
166 Ibid., 147. Watts, however, gives the Latin form, theoria.
372 A GREAT MYSTERY
while the former is a state of sin. Similarly, sexual intercourse of an unnatu-

ral type, by removing any risk of procreating children, was preferable to
normal intercourse between man and woman.”167 The Troubadours in fact
referred to their “Lady” as mi dons (= mi dominus, “My Lord”), as did the
Andalusian and Arabic poets who imitated them and who likewise were
notoriously homosexual.168 Such practices may have begun amongst the
Messalians, who dwelled in the area around Edessa, where the pre-Bogomil
“Paulicians” originated.169 According to Psellus (De operatione Daemonium)
they already had an initiation ceremony embodying the kind of acts which
gave their successors their sinister name and reputation, and the same kind
of practice which has sometimes been connected with the mysterious Tem-
plars, to whom we now turn.
TEMPLAR GNOSTICISM?
Did the Templars have anything to do with propagating Gnostic influences
to the West, particularly in a homosexual form? Such vice would indeed be
another example of “ritual sex-avoidance” for the purpose of “spiritualiz-
ing” love, as it was practiced amongst the Libertine Gnostics. We are not,
of course, speaking so much of the personal deviancy of various Templar
leaders—such as Jacques de Molay, another whose sodomy was well
known170—but to what has been called “the formalization of the homosexual
availability of all Templars to each other on demand,” i.e., a doctrinal re-
quirement for avoiding natural intercourse with women.171 The notorious
“Scatological Kiss” which was part of the Templars’ initiation ceremony
would also seem to be an “avoidance” rite designed to repudiate the “Sa-
167Runciman, Medieval Manichee, 176.

168Op. cit., 95 [uncertain reference, ed. note].
169 Runciman, Medieval Manichee, 177–78; see also his pp. 21–25 for a summary
history of the Messalian, Paulician and Bogomil connection. It is worth noting that
the Paulician influence was still alive in France in 1022, where so-called
“Popelicians” were condemned to be burnt at Orleans for their heretical practices.
Thomas Wright, George Witt, and Sir James Tennett, [G. Legman], The Guilt of the
Templars (New York, 1966), 250.
170 G. Legman, quoted in Wright, Witt, and Tennett, Guilt of the Templars, 107–
8.
171 Ibid., 109; our emphasis. The seal of the Templars, which shows two
knights riding horseback, one behind the other, was popularly interpreted to show
the Devil “seducing” a Templar from behind (ibid., 109, 155).
cred Kiss” of ordinary Christians, a kiss which had been part of the original
Wisdom Mystery.
The Gnostic provenance of Templar belief has long been asserted by a
number of scholars.172 Such claims generally begin with the observation that
the Templars were obliged to deny the “orthodox” Christian God and the
Cross, reflecting the Gnostic conviction that the Jesus who died on the
Cross was not the Heavenly Christ, but merely his earthly shell. These
claims were also based on the fact that the androgynous god of the Tem-
plars was popularly referred to as “Baphomet,” a name which has been ex-
plained as a term of derision derived from “Mahomet,” that is to say the
“heathen” deity eschewed by ordinary Christians, and with whom the Tem-
plars had become acquainted during their lengthy stay in the Near East.173
Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, on the other hand, noticed that surviving
representations of Baphomet greatly resembled Gnostic statues brought back
from Palestine, especially those connected with Valentinian, Ophite, and
Nessarine rites.174 In this connection, we must mention the remarkable dis-
covery made by Hugh Schonfield that “Baphomet in Hebrew characters
produced b-ph-w-m-t, which by Atbash converted immediately into s-w-ph-y-’a
(Sophia), the Greek word for Wisdom.”175 “Atbash” was a special cipher
used in Jeremiah, the Talmud, the Midrash, and various Kabbalistic writings
to conceal the identity of individuals who were the objects of prophecy and
it operated by substituting for the original letters the letters of the alphabet
in reverse order.176 “So this centuries-old secret was for the first time thus
revealed,” writes Schonfield; indeed, most of the known figures which re-
semble Baphomet seem to offer androgynous links between the Templar
172 The “latest and clearest” statement on the Gnosticism of the Templars is
said to be that of John Charpentier, L’Ordre des Templiers (Paris, 1945); see Wright,
Witt, and Tennett, Guilt of the Templars, 20.
173 G. Legman. quoted in Wright, Witt, and Tennett, Guilt of the Templars, 85.
This author notes that until recently the English dialect word for an “idol” or “oc-
cult charm” was a “Mahomet” or “mommet.” That “Baphomet” was derived from
Islamic worship per se (as some have suggested) is of course impossible, since no
androgynous deity was ever connected with the religion of Mohammed.
174 Mysterium Baphometis revelatum, Fundgraben des Orients vol. 6 (Vienna,
1818); quoted by Wright, Witt, and Tennett, Guilt of the Templars, 267–68; also 20.
G. Legman’s interpretation of Baphomet as the Greek baphe metius (“Baptism of
Wisdom”), however, seems artificial and contrived.
175 The Essene Odyssey (Longmead, Saftsbury, Dorset, 1984), 164.
176 B. J. Roberts, “Athbash,” in IDB, 1:306–7. Here it is spelled “Athbash.”
374 A GREAT MYSTERY
deity and the Gnostic “Wisdom,” who was also male and female in one, a con-
ception which we have followed all the way from its early appearance in the
Philonic Mystery (pp. 45ff, above).
Baphomet (if this explanation is correct) would thus be a late survival of
the principle adumbrated by the united Cherubim in the Temple, i.e., the
reconstitution of the Divine Male-Female Image: “When you make the
male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and
the female not be female” (Gospel of Thomas, Log. 22; Gal 3:28; 2 Clement 12).
The Chronicles of St. Denis in fact describe the Templar god as a male-female
idol with two beards, one on the masculine face, and the other representing
the female pubic hair.177 Such a statue was actually turned over to the com-
missioners who were investigating the Templar scandal, and it appears to
have been hermaphrodite, with “two faces and a silver beard.”178
An English Templar, Stephan de Staplebridge, however, acknowledged
that there were two grades of Templars, the first outwardly agreeing with
the Catholic faith, but the second strictly “contrary thereto.”179 This coin-
cides once again with the Catharist and Gnostic practice of accepting initi-
ates secretly into their unorthodox higher teachings, while maintaining their
“orthodoxy” before the unsuspecting. To the candidate who attained this
upper level of initiation, the Templars’ mysterious rites were then privately
disclosed, rites which were said to “make the earth produce and the trees to
blossom”180—well-known metaphors for the blessings of the ancient Mys-
teries, as this beautiful fragment from Aeschylus illustrates:
Chaste Heaven yearns to embrace the Earth; deep longing seizes Earth
to unite with him. Torrents of rain pour down from the silent Sky; the
Earth conceives and bears mankind the verdant grasses and Demeter’s
gentle fruits. The Nuptial Shower awakens the forest’s blossoming
springtide; all that comes from me (Aeschylus, Fragment 44).
Just how this may have related to the proposed rites of buggery, which the
Templars are said to have espoused, is difficult to determine; yet it is obvi-
ous that without some lofty belief of their own they would hardly have
risked death at the hands of the Inquisition by persisting in their secret
177 G. Legman, in Wright, Witt, and Tennett, Guilt of the Templars, 93.
178 Ibid., 94.
179 Ibid., 273–74.
180 Legman, in ibid., 34.
practices.181 Yet we must remember that so-called “orthodoxy” was never

the only version of Christian belief, even at its very beginning, and repre-
sentatives of Christianity’s great gnosticizing branch were still alive and ac-
tive throughout Asia and Europe at the time when the Templars sought to
keep open the pilgrimage routes to the Jerusalem Temple for the sake of
their heavenly vision, whatever that vision might have been.
THE INTELLECTUAL WISDOM MYSTERY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI

Of much loftier spirituality was the intellectually conceived Lady-Worship
of the Italian poet, Dante Alighieri (1265–3121), and the school which fol-
lowed him. As we learn from his celebrated Vita Nuova, his youthful and
unrequited love for the unapproachable Beatrice caused him early in life to
experience a profound rebirth of spirit and a creative fervor almost un-
matched in the rest of the world’s romantic literature. Thanks to his vision-
ary encounter, Dante and his followers succeeded in transforming Beatrice’s
image into the symbol of the Ideal Woman who dwells amongst the angels,
no longer human, but transformed into a Divine Force capable of raising
her lovers to the celestial heights inhabited by God’s elect.182
The literary fictions with which they accomplished this transformation
appear to have been inherited ready-made from the Troubadours and
amounted to a deliberate evocation of some “Lady of the Mind” (as Dante
called her), one who was endowed with an autonomous reality apart from
the earthly woman who inspired her. Thus Beatrice became for Dante a
heavenly “Initiatrix” into the Mystery of Divine Love and an embodiment
of the “occult force of Womanhood” (pp. 370–71, above). Dante’s vision
must also be counted among the important sources behind Goethe’s image
181 Ibid., 133–34. Henry Charles Lea, History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages,
(New York, 1888), is the leading English-speaking exponent of the opposite view,
namely, that the Templars were entirely innocent of the charges to which so many
of them confessed. The same opinion (written by a Catholic author) is found in the
Encyclopedia Brittanica, 14th ed. (article, “Templars”). But as Legman points out, Lea
“challenges or overlooks” the dozens of the Templars who “kept their faith and the
secret of their initiation … and died … screaming, yet silent as to the questions
hammered at them.” Hans Prutz, Geheimlehre und Geheimstatuten des Tempelherren-
Ordens (Berlin, 1899) also refutes this kind of apologetic and argues that the Tem-
plars were truly guilty of a dualist and obscene heresy embodying “Catharist” ele-
ments (see Legman, in Wright, Witt, and Tennett, Guilt of the Templars, 133, 161–63).
182 Umberto Cosmo, A Handbook to Dante Studies (New York, n.d., probably
1947), 39–40.
376 A GREAT MYSTERY
of the “Eternal Feminine,” that sublime image which draws man’s spirit
onward and upward until it reaches its divine potential:
Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan (Faust II, conclusion). (The Eternal
Feminine draws us onward).
Yet as Julius Evola points out in his perceptive study, The Metaphysics of
Sex, Dante’s noble “Woman” was none other than the goddess Sophia of
the ancient Wisdom Mystery. Thus the various women celebrated by these
Italian “worshippers of love”—whatever the names assigned to them—
were but “one single woman, an image of ‘Blessed Wisdom’ or Gnosis, an im-
age of the principle of enlightenment, salvation and transcendental under-
standing.”183 She was, in short, the feminine aspect of God, in whom man finds
his missing Higher Self, and the force that causes love to burn within him
until the soul is reunited with its Divine Source.
Still, this lofty worship began on a physical plane. Though viewed as
sacred, it was aroused by a real woman. Guido Cavalcante (1250–1300), one
of Dante’s predecessors in the worship of love, thus describes how one’s
beloved is transformed into a virtual Redemptress and Savior by perceiving
her higher nature, a nature whose origin was amongst the stars:
I seem to see such a beautiful woman coming out of her lips that my
mind cannot understand her, and it seems that at once another woman
of new beauty is born of her, in which a star is moving, and says, “Your
salvation has appeared.”
To receive a heavenly greeting from this mysterious “New Woman”—who
is the Divine Feminine residing in every earthly woman—is the true goal of
love, according to Dante’s Vita Nuova. When the man perceives her, she
provokes in him a spiritual crisis, which enables him (if he is strong enough)
to destroy his old self (“initiatic death”) and to seek for that part of life “be-
yond which one cannot go if one wishes to return” (ibid). Quoting Caval-
cante again, the poet is reborn and transfigured by “Love’s Image,” as it
acts upon the “potential intellect” (the nous),184 which in ordinary men lies
183 Metaphysics of Sex, 194–95; our emphasis. See also Lizette Andrews Fischer,
The Mystic Vision of the Grail Legend and in the Divine Comedy (New York, 1967), who
argues that Dante’s Ideal Woman is the symbol of transubstantiation, “by which
God continues to dwell with men,” a “type and pledge of the heavenly,” a “vision”
and a “sacramental mirror” of which we shall see one day “face to face” (ibid.,
116). These were, of course, the archerypal functions of Wisdom.
dormant. “You pass through my eyes to my heart,” he says, “and awaken

the intellect that was formerly useless.”
This was in fact the very process described by Philo, who spoke of the
fragmented human nous being restored to wholeness by an erotic vision of
Wisdom in the Temple (pp. 40ff, above). Dante further says of it,
Behold, the God who is stronger than I, and who approaching will gov-
ern me (Vita Nuova).
Thus a rebirth of the soul begins to take place, initiated by Eternal Woman-
hood through the spiritual ecstasy which she provokes. Simultaneously, it is
drawn out of its earthly “lodging” and hastens on toward “ontological
perfection.”185
The stage of “initiatic death” which the arrows of love initially pro-
duced was called the mors osculi (kiss of death) by Giordano Bruno (Erorici
furiori, II.1.47). It was important because it symbolized the death out of
which everlasting life will come once the spirit is released from its earthly
shell and reunited with God’s feminine aspect—the Essence of Love. This
is a process which we will again encounter in medieval alchemy, called ni-
gredo, or the “blackness” of death. But the Higher Unity which arises trium-
phantly out of death is all light. Dante’s school often depicted this Higher
Unity with the image of the hermetic Rebis (see below), who was the redeemed
male and female aspects of Deity rejoined through marital fusion: “Love, you have
made us one instead of two, with higher virtue through wedlock.”186 Cecco
d’Ascoli even likened this experience to Paul’s ascent into the Third Heaven
in Second Corinthians (12:1–4):
I am transformed into the Third Heaven in this Woman, so that I know
not who I was. Wherefore I feel more blessed every hour. My intellect
took form from Her as her eyes showed me salvation, as I looked at the
virtue in her countenance. Therefore I am She.187
Dante, too, reiterates this daring assertion of redemptive, fusion with the
Feminine Divine:
This Woman who spiritually was made one thing together with my soul
(Vita Nuova).
185 Ibid., 197.

186 Ibid., 197–98.
187 Ibid., 198.
378 A GREAT MYSTERY
Thus love becomes the power of immortality, for lovers are “those who die
not,” but live in “another century of joy and glory” because they have been
initiated into God’s Eternal Life (Giacomo di Baisieux).188
THE PERFECT MAN AS REBIS

The intellectual love described by Dante, Cavalcante, and Giordano found
its ideal symbol in the figure of the Male-Female Rebis, or Hermaphrodite,
which represented for certain members of their school the goal of spiritual
fusion and the transcending of duality.189
The history of the so-called Rebis (“dual-nature”) is virtually lost in the
mists of time. Plato long ago spoke of a “spherical Hermaphrodite,” or pre-
existent “Original Man,” who was male and female in one. At the time of
creation, he was separated into divided genders, which have longed ever
since to regain their wholeness through love and sexual union (Symposium,
189c–193d). Philo’s generic “First Man” was also bisexual before the Fall
(On the Creation of the World, 151–52). Being preternarually complete, he was
able to devote himself without distraction to spiritual matters and to God
(Allegorical Interpretation, 2.74; Special Laws, 1.9; Questions on Genesis, 3.48).
Alchemists often identified the Hermaphrodite or Rebis with the god
Mercury (Hermes), who was the Unifying Spirit, or the logos spermatikos who
permeates and sustains creation. He is also the “Christ-Anthropos” who is
scattered throughout the universe, and whose reconstitution was one of the
aims of spiritual alchemy.190 This appears to be a reflection of Ephesians
2:17–22, which states that Christ’s work is to “break down the dividing wall
of hostility” that divides mankind, and to “create in himself one new Man
in place of two.”
Primitive cultures have perennially expressed this “unity-within-
duality” by means of various theriomorphic images, especially the conjuga-
tion of ophidian deities, for instance, the Sumero-Babylonian caduceus (ca.
2600 B.C.), which shows entwined serpents in sexual union as a sign of
their divine wholeness and healing power. Similar pairs of divine serpents in
188 Ibid., 198. Evola refers to this as “‘salvation’ achieved through the awaken-
ing and renovation of the inner power of being,” which “ensures participation in
everlasting initiatory life.” Compare Dante’s redemptive male-female fusion with
the Zohar, III:7a; III:296a, quoted above, p. 21.
189 See the frontispiece to this book.
190 Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis (Princeton, 1970), 6–17; J. E. Circlot, A
Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Synge (New York 1962), xxix, 170, 198–99.
ritual conjugation have been found throughout the rest of the world, de-
picted in objects as diverse as Celtic crosses, the Aztec Coatlique’s “serpent-
skirt,” the snake-bodice of the Greek Gorgon, Egyptian coins depicting Isis
with intertwining snakes, Pompeian murals honoring Ceres, decorations on
Chinese Shang and Chou pottery, ancient Elamite sculpture, and paleolithic
cave-drawings, all inspired no doubt by the sacred awe which men felt at
the sight of these dreaded animals copulating—animals whose bite can
cause death, but who were annually “resurrected” when they sloughed off
their old skin and reemerged anew.
Even unpaired serpents symbolized Deity in much of the ancient
world. We think immediately of the Egyptian Uraeus, which was a form of
Ra’s “Sacred Eye,” or the power of the High-God. Even the Israelites once
worshipped Yahweh in the form of a serpent (2 Kgs 18:4); for this reason,
Christ was symbolized as an “uplifted serpent” on the Cross (John 3:14; cf.
Num 21:5–9). Yahweh was in fact still shown a century or two before the
Common Era as an “Anguipede,” i.e., an ithyphallic being with two ser-
pents for legs,191 suggesting his male-female attributes and their sexual po-
tency. Thus, the way was prepared for medieval Europe to recognize the
ancient image of copulating serpents as a symbol of God’s uniting male-
female “Powers,” corresponding very closely to the imagery of the Embrac-
ing Cherubim in the Jerusalem Holy of Holies.
The Rebis may in fact have originated in the Far East as a pair of
copulating serpents who became fused together in the form of a hermaph-
rodite. The most famous European copy of this fabulous “Two-in-One”
(see the frontispiece to this book) shows it holding aloft the age-old creative
symbols of the compass and square and can be traced all the way back to
China, where it symbolized the legendary couple, Fu Hsih and Nü Kua, the
semi-divine and serpent-like beings who established the human race when
the earth first emerged from chaos. They too hold aloft the compass and
square as symbols of their male and female creative powers; furthermore,
they were shown as a “Two-in-One” in a ritual embrace (see figure 1, fol-
lowing page).
191 See Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image (Princeton, 1974), fig. 274, for sev-
eral illustrations and a description of these curious objects. Hermes (the god associ-
ated with the alchemical Hermaphrodite) was often shown in the same ithyphallic
state.
380 A GREAT MYSTERY
Figure 1: SOURCES OF THE “REBIS”: (a) Sumerian Caduceus (ca. 2600

B.C.). (b) lndian Nagakals (Serpent Deities) Intertwined. (c) Late Babylo-
nian serpent-deities united as One. (d) Chinese Fu Hsih and Nu Kila (the
Creator Couple), united as intertwined serpents, and holding aloft the com-
pass and square. (e–g) Second-century Han tomb reliefs, also holding the
compass, square and quipu. (h) Seventh-century T'ang Dynasty Fu Hsih
and Nu Küa. (i) Alchemical serpents uniting to represent Eternity. (j) The
European “Rebis,” also holding aloft the compass and square, with uniting
serpents at their feet. (See also the frontispiece of this book.)
The Chinese Sinologist, Wen I-To, believes that Fu Hsih and Nü Kua
were originally totem animals with ophidian tails, belonging to the indige-
nous primitive tribes of East Asia; Jean Przyluski has shown that they were
especially connected with the sun. They also represented the Cosmic Moun-
tain that supports the sky and were closely associated with the Great Bear as
it rotates about the polar axis of the earth. They are usually shown resting
upon a single foot, or tail, which is perhaps why a limping dance has been
an important part of their worship, designed, it would seem, to produce
thunder and rain.192 Fu Hsih is the best-known of all these “unipeds.” From
the very start, he was closely associated with divine wisdom, being the one
who taught men to reckon with knotted cords and to use the famous Tri-
grams. These would later become the basis for the Hexagrams of the I
Ching and their system of divination. He is first referred to in literary
sources from about the fourth century B.C. During the Former Han Period
(ca. 2nd cent. B.C.), his wife began to appear with him in various artistic
representations; there they are generally seated together, facing one another,
and holding aloft their famous symbols of creation.193 From around the
time of Christ, however, and for reasons unknown, they are shown with
intertwining tails, depicting a creative embrace, perhaps under the influence
of Indian nagakals (intertwining serpent deities), whose own form was de-
rived from the Sumero-Babylonian caduceus.194 Sir Mark Aurel Stein discov-
ered an exceptionally fine seventh-century example of Fu Hsih and Nü Kua
in the caves of Ch’ien-fo-Tung (in the Taklamakan Desert), where the an-
cient Silk Road entered northern China from the West.195 Again, they are
shown in their serpentine embrace, conspicuously displaying the sacred
compass and square, closely corresponding to the hermetic Rebis, even
down to their cosmic sun and moon symbols in the background.
192 “Etudes Indienne et chinoises; Les Unipeds,” Melanges Chinoise at Bouddhiques
2 (1933): 307–32; Wen I-To is quoted in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in
China (Cambridge, 1954), 1:263.
193 Needham, Science and Civilisation, 1:163–4. See also Carl Whiting Bishop,
“The Geographical Factor in the Development of Chinese Civilization,” The Geo-

graphical Review 12 (1922): 19–41, esp. 26; Balaji Mundkur, The Cult of the Serpent (Al-
bany, 1983), 175; Donald Mackenzie, Myths of China and Japan (Boston, 1977), 275–
77.
194 Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilisation (New York,
1946), 73–74.
195 See Stein’s Innermost Asia (Oxford, 1928), 2:707; Smithsonian Magazine, (May
1977): 95–103, contains a general account of Sir Aurel Stein’s expedition.

382 A GREAT MYSTERY
A degree of uncertainty, however, surrounds the question of how and

when the compass and square became so intimately associated with these
creative demigods, for the earliest accounts of their contribution to the arts
of civilization mention only the invention of the Trigrams and the knotted
cord, or quipu.196
Without question, the compass and square were already well known to
the early Chinese (as they indeed were nearly everywhere else),197 for the
universal male and female principles which they represented (yang and yin)
were associated even in the I Ching with heaven and earth, which were said
to be “round” and “square,” respectively:
Ch’ien is heaven. It is round. It is the ruler, the father, jade, metal, etc …
K’un is the earth, the mother … the level … and black soil, etc … (Ap-
pendix 5, chapter 11, “Remarks on Certain Trigrams”).
K’un is further described in the body of the I Ching as “strength, square, and
great” (1:2). James Legge’s translation appends to this the observation that
“the earth itself, according to the Chinese conception of it, (was) a great
cube.” Moreover, the yin-elements of wind and wood were symbolized by
the sun-Trigram, which also connoted the instruments for measuring
squareness:
Sun suggests the idea of wood, of wind, of the oldest daughter, of a
plumb-line, of a carpenter’s square (Appendix 5, Chapter 18, “Remarks
on Certain Trigrams”).
The Ch’ien-fo-Tung picture of Fu Hsih and Nü Kua also appears to show
the carpenter’s square and plumb-line together, though the artwork is
somewhat defective at this point.
The Huai-nan Tzu of Liu An († 122 B.C.) summarizes this ancient
symbolism as follows:
The way of Heaven (ch’ien) is termed Circular, and the way of Earth
(k’un) Square … The Square governs Darkness (Yin) and a round figure
governs Brightness (Yang) (chapter 3).
Significantly, however, the I Ching itself—a book whose roots go back
into the Ch’un Period (ca. 720–474 B.C.)—describes Fu Hsih simply as the
revealer of the eight Trigrams (“Great Appendix, 11.7.11) and the knotted
cord (11.7.23). Even as late as the second century A.D., artwork on a tomb-
196 Donald Mackenzie, Myths of China, 275–77.

197 In Egypt, for example, they were the “amulets of Orisis.”
shrine at Wu Liang shows Fu Hsih and Nü Kua with only a square and a
quipu,198 suggesting that the compass and square as a pair were not inevitably
associated with the divine couple. A famous T-shaped banner which cov-
ered the Lady of Tai’s coffin around 186 B.C. even shows Fu Hsih alone,
with neither compass nor square, though he is flanked on both sides by the
appropriate sun and moon symbols.199 A stone carving from Hsih Chin
about the same time shows Fu Hsih and Nü Kua together again, holding
the sun and moon symbols, but this time without compass or square. Yet
an impressed brick from the Eastern Han Period (ca. 100 B.C.) shows them
with both compass and square, as well as the sun and moon symbols, but
without the intertwined tails that were to become the antecedents of the
hermaphroditic Rebis.
There is also another striking problem associated with these ancient
demi-gods, namely, the assignment of the compass or square to a specific
sex; indeed, our illustrations appear to be inconsistent on this point. Many
of the Chinese examples, for instance, show Fu Hsih holding the feminine
square, while Nü Kua, his wife, holds the masculine compass. Yet the European
Rebis reversed this symbolism, placing the compass in the hand of the male
and the square in the hand of the female.200 At the same time, the sun and
moon (whenever shown) are always associated with male and the female,
respectively. This is also the case with the medieval Rebis, whose masculine
half has the compass and the sun, and whose feminine half has the square
and the moon. We also note that in all of these illustrations, including the
one from Europe, the compass appears on the left side, and the square on
the right, regardless of who holds them.
How are we to explain these anomalies? It would seem that the use of
the sun and moon symbols may actually be older than that of the compass
and square, hence already fixed in relation to the male and the female. The
compass and square, on the other hand, are shown in a fixed position with
respect to the one who is about to receive them. S. Madhihassan explains this “rit-
ual” arrangement by analyzing a second-century Han Period grave-
decoration, where Fu Hsih hands his square to a woman, and Nü Kua of-
fers her compass to a male. Presumably, these recipients will then commu-
198 Needham, Science and Civilisation, 1:464. Needham, however, identifies the
quipu in another volume of the same book as “a pair of compasses” (1956, 2:210).
199 Needham, Science and Civilisation (1976), 5.3.21–23.
200 S. Mahdihassan, “Dualistic Symbolism, Alchemical and Masonic,” Iqbal Re-
view (1963): 55–78.

384 A GREAT MYSTERY
nicate them to a person in the tomb, acting as mediating links, much as Wis-
dom mediated God’s light to man and a photographic negative transfers a
positive image to a print:
The soul can be separated and serve as the positive or Yang element.
The body is inert matter which can be processed until it becomes soul-
like when it behaves as the negative of the Yin half … According to
Philo, “the soul can so dominate the body that the latter shows forth an
imitation of the powers of the soul.”201
Alternatively, one might suspect that foreign models have somehow
influenced the Chinese use of these architect’s symbols, causing the mascu-
line Fu Hsih to hold the square, and the feminine Nü Kua to hold the com-
pass. This would have been in direct opposition to the traditional Yin-Yang
view of “round” and “square” as female and male features, even though the
feminine Yin was still associated with earth, and the masculine Yang with the
sky.202 R. B. Blakney further also notes that Chinese mystics, while asserting
the ascendancy of the masculine yang over the feminine yin in the patriarchal
society of China, acknowledged that the soft and yielding yin always prevails
in the end over what is rigid and strong. Thus, Poem 6 of the Tao Te Ching
praises the “Mystic Female” because she inevitably overcomes the “Male,”
just as water inevitably wears away stone. This notion, he theorizes, may go
back to a time when the Chinese had a prehistoric matriarchy, whose linger-
ing influence led to the philosophy of “Yinism” and the mystical worship of
the “Mother.”203 As we shall see later on, Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism
also reversed the roles assigned to the male and female genders during Tan-
tric copulation, the female being active in the former, and the female passive
in the latter.204 This hints at an active exchange of ideas between the various
cultures of the Far East, in the process of which they were often reexam-
ined in novel contexts and with new connections.
201Ibid., 63, 58–59.

202As we shall see, Tantric Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism also reversed the
roles assigned to the male and female genders in Tantric copulation. See “Possible
Survivals of the Wisdom Mystery in the Far East,” below.
203 R. B. Blakney, The Way of Life: Lao Tzu (New York, 1955), 25.
204 See “Possible Survivals of the Wisdom Mystery in the Far East,” below.
Also Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition (Garden City, NY, 1970), 200–1, for
the reversal of roles between the sexes.
YIN AND YANG, THE REBIS, AND ALCHEMY

Just how the figure of the “Two-in-One,” or “Rebis,” representing the mys-
tical marriage of divine male and female principles, was transmitted to the
West, is presently lost in the mists of time. But it is certain that it was
somehow blended with the many other Near Eastern and European ver-
sions of the Wisdom Mystery to produce one of the more striking symbols
of the alchemist’s “Great Mystery,” which was the production of “gold” (i.e.,
Eternal Life) from the dross of phenomenal existence and its many painful
sets of opposites.
Many students of the subject believe that the kind of alchemy to which
we are referring originated in China, perhaps as early as the sixth century
B.C. From the very start, it aimed at prolonging life (macrobiotics) through
the manipulation of the Yin and Yang, those universal opposites whose in-
teraction produces the phenomena of nature.
According to Taoism,205 phenomenal existence in all its variety comes
from the separation of the single cosmic Unity, called Tao, into pairs of op-
posites:
Tao the undivided, Great One, gives rise to two opposite principles,
Darkness and Light, yin and yang. These are at first thought of only as
forces of nature apart from man. Later, the sexual polarities, and others
as well, are derived from them. From yin comes K’un, the receptive
feminine principle; from yang comes Ch’ien, the creative masculine Prin-
ciple; from yin comes ming, life; from yang, hsing or essence.206
By balancing these opposing forces with the proper mystic practices,
the ego can be freed from the stresses of phenomenonality, and again re-
gain the harmony of the Tao. Because the soul is itself light, it can become
part of the “Great Light” and realize its intrinsic immortality. Yet unlike the
Hindu Vedantin, the Taoist never loses his personal identity, for the idea of
personality is preserved in a transfigured form, always bearing the “traces”
of its experience in the world.207 In Neo-Taoism, this was symbolized as the
blossoming of the mysterious “Golden Flower,” an image not unlike that of
205 One must however distinguish between the original, philosophical Taoism
and the “religious Taoism” of the modern Chinese masses, which is largely an as-
sortment of magical practices unrelated to what we are discussing.
206 Richard Wilhelm and C. G. Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower (New York,
1950), 73.
207 Ibid., 18.
386 A GREAT MYSTERY
Figure 2: SOURCES OF ALCHEMICAL AND MASONIC SYMBOLISM,

(a) Taoist Yin-Yang Symbol. (b) Hindu Lingam and Yoni Symbols in con-
junction. (c) The Ouroboros: The end is the beginning. (d) Graeco-Egyptian
Ouroboros; hen to punta. “The one is the all.” (e) Alchemlcal Sacred Mar-
riage (Albert of Villanova). (f) The Marriage of the King and Queen.
(g) Passing through the Negredo (death). (h) Resurrection: “The Secret of a
King” (“Here is born the Emperor of all Honor. None higher than he can be
born”). (i) Tibetan yab-yum. The active Buddha coupling with his passive
Wisdom (Prajna). (j) Eighteenth-century Tibetan yab-yum diagram.
(k) Hindu Tantric union; the feminine/active Shakti resuscitating the mas-
culine/passive Shiva. (l) Tantric Mantra with interpenetrating male and fe-
male triangles. (m) The Masonic Second Degree (note the sun and moon
symbols, i.e., the Compass and Square). (n) The Masonic Third Degree
(note the resurrected Sun-Being). (o) Masonic Emblem containing the Se-
cret Name of God. (p) The Masonic Royal Arch Degree; perfect union per-
mits passage through the veil.
the medieval alchemist’s “Mystic Rose,” representing the attainment of

eternal life within the soul of the adept.
The opposition and harmonization of these universal Yin and Yang
principles were well developed by the third century B.C.208 Their first pro-
ponents, however, seem to have advocated the ascendancy of Yin over
Yang. Indeed, the characteristics of the Wise Man were initially associated
with the “Mystic Female” (see p. 395, below), not unlike the Western Wis-
dom. Even the Tao was for a long time described as a “Mother” and the
ideal state as that of a “Woman.”209 In the more intellectual atmosphere of
the philosophers, however, both the feminine and masculine forces were
called into balanced interplay and remained so throughout the further de-
velopment of Chinese civilization. The familiar Taoist emblem of Yin and
Yang in the act of interpenetrating one another visually expresses the ideal
balance which maintains the higher Unity of the Tao (see figure 2, above).
A further refinement of Yin and Yang was the interaction of the “Five
Elements” (earth, wood, metal, fire, and water). Of all the metals, however,
Chinese alchemists prized cinnabar (mercuric sulfide) the most, and it had
long been used as a pigment on prehistoric burial ornaments because of its
blood-red, “life-giving” color. This was also the substance which could be
transmuted into gold, the symbol of immortality; hence, by at least 133
B.C., the search for ways to make gold became an important goal of al-
chemical research. More important still, by eating cinnabar, it was believed
that one could see the Immortals in P’eng-lai, and learn from them the se-
crets of longevity.210
During the early years of our own era, these theories developed into
the Neo-Taoist “Interior Gods Hygiene School,”211 which claimed that the
microcosm of man was a theater for the same divine forces which govern
the universe, hence these could be controlled by the proper manipulation of
the body’s internal Yin and Yang. A similar interest in the “macrobiotic”
control of these universal principles was beginning to appear at about the
same time in the West. This is all the more remarkable because efforts by
Western “proto-chemists” had previously been limited to gaining chemical
knowledge for strictly practical purposes.212 Suddenly, however, a new kind
208 R. B. Blakeney, Way of Life, 24.

209 Ibid., 25.
210 Holmes Welch, Taoism: The Parting of the Way (Boston, 1957), 99–100.
211 Ibid., 105–12.
212 Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.4.355.
388 A GREAT MYSTERY
of “philosophical alchemy,” initiated by Bolus of Mendes and the Physika

kai Mystika of pseudo-Democritus (second century B.C.), began to speak of
“marrying” the divine principles in various minerals, which like the gods
unite, die, are resurrected and transformed into “Gold,” the symbol of the
Unitive State and Immortality.213
Although the recipes of these new alchemists were ostensibly designed
to change baser metals into gold, a closer examination shows that their
authors—like the Chinese alchemists—were actually interested in the spiri-
tual technique of soteriology.214 On the other hand, the Chinese, who had
previously shown little interest in fertility rites,215 began to engage in sexual
practices designed to produce eternal life, practices very much like those of
the Gnostics, who hoped to stimulate the trapped light in the semen and
return it to its Source. Thus we are led to the inevitable conclusion that a
reciprocal exchange of ideas had recently begun to take place between East
and West. We shall later comment on the possible influence of the Wisdom
Mystery upon Chinese sexual practices; for now, we are interested chiefly in
the effect which Chinese alchemy had upon the “proto-chemistry” of the
West.
Joseph Needham, in his magisterial study, Science and Civilisation of
China—now approaching a dozen very large volumes—has made a detailed
study of this important cultural exchange; much of what follows is based
upon his carefully documented research.
Needham begins by calling attention to the quick succession of dates
linking the first fully documented alchemist in China (Tsou Yen, ca. 350–
270 B.C.) and the first Western alchemist, the Graeco-Egyptian Bolus of
Mendes (ca. 175 B.C.).216 Significantly, Bolus’ successor, pseudo-
Democritus, claimed that his teacher had been “Ostanes the Persian,”
which suggests that these Hellenized Egyptians got their science through
some Eastern conduit, such as the geographical link that had been forged
when Alexander the Great united Sogdia, Bactria, the Indus Valley, Parthia,
Media, Anatolia, Palestine, and the Nile Valley into a single L-shaped block,
reaching as far as the Chinese mountains in the East. The famous “Magi”
spoken of by later writers in the West (cf. Matt 2:1) probably came from the
213 Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas (Chicago, 1982), 2:301–5.

214 Ibid., 302.
215 Needham, Science and Civilisation, 5.4.361, n. d.
216 Ibid., 324–28.
central portion of this enormous block, and our Ostanes (ca. 485–465 B.C)
appears to have been one of them.
Ostanes and his “Magi” dealt in all sorts of divination and astral
lore.217 Since they also worshipped the Zoroastrian’s dual principles of
Mazda and Ahriman (Light and Darkness), they were undoubtedly sympa-
thetic to the concept of Yin and Yang which came into their area from
China. During the last three centuries before Christ they in fact became a
veritable clearinghouse for the magical arts of the peoples surrounding
them, dubbed by Needham the “Mazdean Diaspora.”218 It was also through
this geographical link, Needham argues, that the word chemia (“chemistry”)
reached the West, being the Chinese word for “gold-art” (chin kiem).219 The
word was eventually normalized in the West by Zosimus (third century),220
passing into Arabic as al-kimiya, and finally entering Europe with a flood of
eleventh- and twelfth-century scientific translations of other Arabic texts.221
With it, or course, came a concomitant assortment of color-symbolism,
specialized chemical techniques, and the philosophical theories with which
to explain them, all of which clearly show the basic similarities between
Western and Chinese alchemy.222
We call special attention to the following Chinese and Western con-
cepts: (1) The “Unity-within-Duality” which is achieved through the col-
laboration of the sexes; (2) The idea that one’s End and one’s Beginning are
identical (symbolized by the Ouroborus); and (3) The mystical process of
“distillation.” It may be difficult to say which culture first influenced the
other in these matters, but some degree of reciprocity between them must
be assumed.
1. Both Taoism and Hellenism recognized the idea of a Primal Unity
behind phenomena, based on the essential relatedness of all universal laws
and processes:
The All is One, by it arises everything, and if the All were not One, it
would be nothing at all. The All is One, by it is everything engendered;
the One is the All, and if it did not contain all things, it could not en-
217 Ibid., 336.

218 Ibid., 334.
219 Ibid., 351–55. He also suggests an alternative derivation from Hebrew
hometz or Arabic khamud, both meaning “leaven,” referring to the process of fer-
mentation and color change in chemical reactions (ibid., 351).
220 Ibid., 345.
221 Ibid., 355.
222 Ibid., 355–74.
390 A GREAT MYSTERY
gender them. The Serpent is One, it possesses the Power according to

the Two Symbols (Zosimus and pseudo-Cleopatra).223
There is an Engenderer which was itself not generated. There is a
Changer which is itself unchanging. The Ungenerated can generate gen-
eration. The Unchanging can transform the things that change (Lieh
Tzu’s Book).224
The great “Engenderer” was of course the Tao, which continuously mani-
fests itself in the phenomenal world as Yin and Yang. It was inevitable that
these cosmic opposites be further connected with the division of the sexes,
which Needham refers to as the “ontological sexualization of Yin and
Yang.”225 Alchemists also perceived the “sexual” nature of all chemical reac-
tions. Stated very simply, when two substances are joined in “marital” un-
ion, they give birth to a new one, whose characteristics are derived from the
spiritual qualities of the “parents.” It was especially hoped that the right
balance of male and female elements would lead to the re-establishment of
the Primal Unity, or the Philosopher’s Gold.
This doctrine must have profoundly impressed students in the West,
where the Wisdom Mystery and Sacred Marriage tradition were already well
established, for it found an immediate echo in the writings of its own al-
chemists:
Above, the celestial things, below the terrestrial; by the male and the
female the work is accomplished. Join the male and the female, and you
will find what you are seeking. If the two do not become one, and the
three one, and the whole of the composition one, the result will be
nothing (Aphorisms of Zosimus, and The Philosophical Egg).
It was as symbols of this “Sacred Marriage” of Yin and Yang that Fu Hsih
and Nü Kua came to have such significance for alchemists in the West, ap-
pearing in European illustrations as the hermetic Rebis (see frontispiece).
2. The symbol of the Ouroborus—or the familiar image of the serpent
consuming its own tail (see figure 2)—also received similar recognition in
both the East and the West, signifying “In my end is my beginning,” or the
equivalence of protology and eschatology (see pp. 98–103 above). Jade
Ourobori have been found from as early as the ninth century B.C. in China,
223 In ibid., 359.

224 In ibid.
225 Ibid., 364.
and in Mesopotamia and Egypt from around 2300 B.C.226 These figures
show that both of the cultures which produced them believed in the unity
of time, i.e., in the eternal preexistence and restoration of all things. A
number of double Ourobori have also been found in Arabic alchemical texts
of the 12th century A.D., incorporating the male-female symbolism of Yang
and Yin with that of the time-transcending Ourobos, to signify that when
male and female become perfectly one, time will likewise be collapsed into a
unity.227 Carl Jung and S. Mahdihassan have also connected the Ouroboros
with the uniting couple, Fu Hsih and Nü Kua,228 since they too are serpent-
figures illustrating the principle of male-female “unity-within-duality.”
3. The phenomenon of distillation (doubtless discovered universally by
accident) was viewed with the same metaphysical awe in both East and
West because something “spiritual” appeared to have been born from the
“marriage” of the Yin and Yang in the substances being united. These then
rose “heavenward” when heated (cf. the expression spiritus when used of
alcoholic distillates). The Manichaeans similarly believed in the “salvation of
souls” or the “spirits of light” which would be gathered to the Great Light
and “distilled” out of matter’s darkness in the Last Days.229 So too did me-
dieval alchemists take it as axiomatic that the “Philosopher’s Stone” could
be “distilled” from the proper “marriage” of baser substances, i.e., from
various male and female elements in sexual conjunction.
Needham has also considered the vessels in which these “magical”
changes took place and has shown that phallic and womb-shaped reaction
chambers were preferred by alchemists in both the East and the West, the
configurations of which they believed to be theologically significant.230
Some diffusion can be proved,231 but independent invention is largely at
work here, since chemical vessels were designed to accommodate the same
basic processes which take place universally.
These, then, are a few of the major alchemical motifs which were
probably transmitted through what Needham calls the “Ostanes-
226 Shown in ibid., 382–83 and 375.

227 Ibid., 378.
228 “Dualistic Symbolism; Alchemical and Masonic,” 18; quoted also in
Needham, Science and Civilisation, 5.4.379 See Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy
(Princeton, 1953) 371–72.
229 Needham, Science and Civilisation, 5.4.385.
230 Ibid., 55–102.
231 Ibid., 103–22.
392 A GREAT MYSTERY
Bolus-Pseudo-Democritus-Connection,”232 motifs which are of interest to

us because of their obvious compatibility with the Wisdom Mystery. Before
we leave the subject of these early cultural exchanges, however, we should
note a particularly revealing legend connected with pseudo-Democritus and
his purported teacher, Ostanes, a legend which moreover seems to be con-
nected in some way with the Temple.
It will be recalled that the Gospel of Thomas had described a sacred em-
brace between the candidate for the Wisdom Mystery and the “Living Je-
sus” (who has just died and been resurrected), thereby making them “One.”
This makes it possible for them to “enter the Kingdom” together (see p.
101 above). The very same ritual—at least in its essential points—is pre-
served in the nearly contemporary alchemical writings of pseudo-
Democritus, telling how the author was tormented by his desire to learn
“how substances and nature unite and combine themselves into one.” In
order to accomplish this, he must invoke the shade of his dead master,
Ostanes the Mede, who had died before being able to share his wonderful
secret.233 He is told that the necessary information will be found in a certain
temple; during a sacred feast, a secret door in one of the temple pillars
spontaneously opened to reveal to him the prized knowledge that “One na-
ture is charmed by another nature; one nature conquers another nature; one nature domi-
nates over another nature.”
This appears at first to be another version of the Chinese theory of the
“Five Elements,” in which Yin and Yang combine in various proportions to
produce the different kinds of substances.234 But it is also happens to be a
version of the Sacred Marriage, showing how a Greater Power unites with a
Lesser Power to impart its own characteristics to it. This is in fact an epit-
ome of the Wisdom Mystery, as well as “salvation by grace,” where union
with a “soul-element” transforms a “material-element” into something with
a higher nature. We again recall Mahdihassan’s statement that during the
alchemical hieros gamos the body becomes like the cosmic soul that unites
with it (p. 394, below). Most important of all, however, is the fact that the
secret knowledge which governs this mystery could only be revealed to the
initiate in the Temple by a resurrected master!
Ibid., 387–88.
232
We also recognize in this an early verson of the Masonic legend of Hiram

233
Abiff, which we shall discuss below.

234 Needham, Science and Civilisation, 312, 335.
Another version of this same “Ostanes” story can also be found in the
Arabic Kitab-al-Fusul. Here, as in the Nag Hammadi Three Steles of Seth, there
are three pillars inscribed with the desired knowledge, one in Egyptian, one
in Persian, and one in “Indian,” again emphasizing the continuity of East-
ern hermetic culture with that of the West. These secret inscriptions on mi-
raculous pillars eventually gave rise to the myth of the “Emerald Tablet,”
on which the central secret of chemical knowledge was to be found, accord-
ing to treatises from about the seventh century onwards.235 The main sig-
nificance of these two stories for us is that they show how early adepts per-
ceived the similarity of alchemy—the science of immortality—to the mys-
tery of resurrection and readily assimilated the two, even employing the
same repertory of symbols and legends for both. In the next section, we
shall see how Christian alchemists employed the alchemical “Sacred Mar-
riage” as a means of expressing the New Testament “Great Mystery” in
their own terms.
THE ALCHEMICAL SACRED MARRIAGE

It has been said that Arabic alchemical theory consisted of a mixture of the
Taoist idea of longevity and the Greek concept of “pharmacal potency,”
based on the blending of the four primary qualities (earth, air, fire, water),
which finally replaced the Chinese theory of the “Five Elements” in the
West.236 The Arabs learned this alchemy in centers of Hellenistic learning,
which they occupied soon after the founding of Islam, the main flowering
of which took place between the ninth and eleventh centuries.237 After that,
Western scholars became active translating Arabic treatises on the subject
into Latin. Between 1120 and 1180 a whole avalanche of such works be-
came available in southern Europe; and by 1250, Arabic alchemy stood
generally revealed to the Western world.238
Coming on top of the secrets of Kabbalism (which were also gaining
vogue at the same time), this new knowledge must have seemed a veritable
revelation to European intellectuals, who were already acquainted with the
traditions of the Wisdom Mystery. Zosimus’ own writings in fact claimed
that alchemy was revealed by the fallen angels to the daughters of men
(1 Enoch 7–8), thus presupposing a Judaeo-Christian origin for the new art.
235 Ibid., 335, 373.

236 Ibid., 490.
237 Ibid., 391.
238 Ibid., 402–3.
394 A GREAT MYSTERY
And when they described the sexual union of the archetypal Male and Fe-
male (Aphorisms, p. 400, below), Christian adepts immediately recognized
something close to their own ideas of the Church’s Sacred Marriage to the
Logos. Thus, the science of alchemy, with its forgotten roots in the “mar-
riage” of Yin and Yang, became a vehicle for expressing the “Mystic Mar-
riage” of Christ and the Believer, or the Heavenly with the Earthy.
We can easily see how this ancient alchemy was assimilated to Judaeo-
Christian tradition when we compare Zosimus’ description of the Philoso-
pher’s Stone with that of the medieval alchemists. Zosimus (quoting
Ostanes) had written that there was a “Stone” in the Nile which contained a
miraculous spirit (a “mercuric essence”) capable of transforming base mat-
ter into noble.239 These new adepts quickly took this to refer to none other
than Christ, the “cornerstone” of the Church (Eph 2:20), and the “stone”
cut from the mountain without hands (Dan 2:34).
Yet the identification of Christ and the “Philosopher’s Stone” does not
appear in European texts until the thirteenth century, just after Wolfram’s
account of the Holy Grail as a “Stone of Light.”240 Recent research has in
fact connected Wolfram’s Grail-Stone with contemporary developments in
alchemy,241 specifically hinting at a possible Manichaean origin.242 A similar
source for Zosimus’ “Stone” is suggested by his description of a “mysteri-
ous stranger,” Nikotheus, who knew the secret name of the Light which it
bore; Nikotheus, as it turns out, was one of the Manichaean Church’s spe-
cial prophets.243
This Philosopher’s Stone was further defined as the prima materia
which contains all opposites within itself, resolved back into their Primal
Unity, or the “one nature which conquers all.”244 Whoever possesses it can
produce the eternal metal of the sun, which is gold, i.e., the “one homoge-
nous substance,” just as God is “homogenous” and “one in essence.”245 To
achieve this Primal Unity is to attain eternal life. Here again we recognize
239 Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 295–97.

240 In Raymond Lully’s Codicillus, chapter 1. See Jung, Psychology and Alchemy,
358. Also M. Caron and S. Hutin, The Alchemists (New York, 1961), 70. See “The
Wisdom Mystery and the Holy Grail,” below.
241 Henry and Renée Kahane, The Krater and the Grail: Hermetic Sources of the Par-
zival (Urbana, 1965).

242 See “The Gnostic Character of Wolfram’s Grail Christianity,” below.
243 Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 370–71.
244 Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 43.
245 De circulo quatrato, 45–46; quoted in Mysterium Coniunctionis, 48.
the goal of the ancient Wisdom Mystery, which was to restore the “femi-
nine soul” to its primal “Maleness” through reunion with the Divine. It is
hardly surprising, then, that the central rite of alchemy was also the mystery
of spiritual union with the Logos-power, represented by the “mercuric”
Rebis, who also represented the hermaphroditic unity of “Male” and
“Female.”
At the time of Philo, those initiated into union with the Logos-
Wisdom had been called “Kings,246 and the pathway leading to this union
was called the “Royal Road,” or the “Road to Sophia.”247 The secrets of the
mystery were accordingly referred to as the “Secret of a King,” after Tobit
12:7 (“It is good to keep close the Secret of a King”). Significantly, the al-
chemical Sacred Marriage was also called the marriage of the “King and
Queen” and was appropriately illustrated as a royal couple engaged in ritual
intercourse (see figure 2)—a conception which also appeared in contempo-
rary Kabbalism (p. 328–29, above).
The goal of their royal union—like that of Chinese Yin and Yang—was
the reconciliation of life’s opposites, called the mysterium coniunctionis by Carl
Jung.248 Yet its true purpose was to create eternal life, never the production
of earthly gold. This is most important, for we recall that the Gnostic secret
par excellence was also the union of male and female to create a higher unity
and eternal life:
If the woman had not separated from the man, she would not die with
the man … Christ came, in order that he might remove the separation
which was from the beginning, and again unite the two, that he might
give life to those who died in the separation (Gospel of Philip 70:6–17).
It was also the secret of the Gospel of Thomas, which taught that in order to
achieve eternal life, the male and the female shall become One, “the upper
side as the lower,” and “the outside as the inside” (Log. 22). Remarkably,
this is the exact same formula which appears in the medieval alchemical
tractate, Tractatus Aureus Hermetis, declaring that the Perfect Man is a “qua-
ternario” of superius/inferius and externis/internis, united as One.249 Thus we
return full circle to the very beginnings of the Christian tradition. This is
also demonstrated by the treatise called the Rosarium philosophorum (printed
in 1593 from an earlier source), specifically defining alchemical reactions as
246 Goodenough, By Light, Light, 221.

247 Ibid., 135.
248 Mysterium Coniunctionis, 3–6.
249 In ibid., 11–12.
396 A GREAT MYSTERY
becoming “one New Man” in Christ Jesus “in place of two,” that “so mak-
ing peace, we might reconcile both to God in one Body” (cf. Eph 2:15–
16).250
Still other medieval treatises on the subject saw a reference to the “al-
chemical marriage” in Song of Songs, for example, the Aurora Consurgens,
which says that the familiar lines, “I will go about the city in the streets, and
in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth” (Song 3:2), re-
ferred to the longing of the King to unite with the Queen, so that they
might produce the Philosopher’s Gold, which was the inner secret of Gno-
sis and Immortality.251
This “great work” of achieving eternal life is further described in the
Heliodori Carmina as the “wreath of victory” which the completed soul
brings back with it when it returns to the body after death.252 In most of
these examples this is described with such theoretical clarity that it is im-
possible not to recognize again the essentials of the Wisdom Mystery which
lay at its heart. To have been satisfied with the production of mere earthly
gold would have been to betray the deep secret which lay concealed in the
alchemist’s recipes, and which were in fact coded instructions for the reen-
actment of the spiritual mystery of the soul’s union with Christ.
Generally, there were “three degrees of perfection” which had to be
passed through in order to reach the highest state.253 In the first, the male
and female opposites must be dissolved into a perfect solution. Alchemical
treatises invariably depict this as a man and his wife having sexual inter-
course (see figure 2).254 After this earthly union, the couple dies, passing
into the black nigredo state, i.e., death and putrefaction. From out of this
blackness the immortal elements are “distilled” (i.e., ascend into heaven),
becoming white in the process, because they have been purified and are now
strong enough to resist the ardors of the fire in which they will eventually
dwell. In the third stage, the King is reunited with his Queen in a Royal
hieros gamos—the spiritual counterpart of the union below. Here we again
encounter the ancient distinction between the “Lesser Mystery” of carnal
union and the “Greater Mystery” of heavenly union. From the latter, the
perfection of the “Philosopher’s Stone” is finally born, which has the
250 In ibid., 14.

251 In ibid., 17.
252 In ibid., 9. Cf. the Zohar, III:7a and 296a, pp. 20–21, above.
253 S. K. de Rola, Alchemy: The Secret Art (New York, 1973), 10–12.
254 Ibid., plates 27–28, 37, 41–42.
property of transmuting baser “metals” into “gold,”255 i.e., the transforma-

tion of mortality into eternal life, and “corruption” into “incorruption.”
Later alchemists, however, forgetting the spiritual basis of this doc-
trine, tended increasingly to concern themselves with the desire for ordinary
wealth and power. But the genuine alchemist sought no less than to bridge
the chasm between the earthly and the heavenly (Matt 18:18), uniting every-
thing in a Universal Redemption, and wearing Immortality and Divine Love
as his crown.256 Jacob Boehme, who was indebted to both Kabbalism and
alchemy, specifically insisted that this redemption applied to the human
couple, as well as to Christ and the Church. He therefore taught that the
primal separation of Adam and Eve will be repaired through Jesus Christ,
and that the human man and wife will become one flesh eternally (pp. 269–
70, above). The true purpose of sexual love, in his eyes, was “to help man
and woman integrate internally the complete human image, that is to say the
divine and original image.”257 As Julius Evola summarized this apparently
wide-spread hope,
the two persons washed and stripped naked … give way to the person
who is beyond the two, that is, the Rebis or crowned hermaphrodite,
Sun and Moon together, who “has all power” and is immortal.258
THE WISDOM MYSTERY AND THE HOLY GRAIL

The idea of a Temple, tomb, or alchemical vessel as a “womb” in which the
mystery of fecundation and rebirth takes place has obvious parallels in the
myth of a sacred vessel which dispenses endless fertility and transforms death
into life. This brings us to the medieval legend of the Holy Grail, which had
the character of a “bottomless vessel” filled with spiritual fertility—even
material plenty.
Biblical sources for such a concept include the inexhaustible water of
life which flows forth from the base of the Temple (Ezek 47:1; Joel 3:18;
Zech 14:8; Rev 22:1), the Messianic Banquet at the end of time (Isa 25:6–7),
New Testament references to the cup from which Christ and his disciples
drank wine at the Last Supper, as well as the endless supply of the Bread of
Life (John 6). All these, moreover, were interconnected with the theme of
255 Ibid., 9. See also Evola, Metaphysics of Sex, 256–57.

256 De Rola, Alchemy, 7–8.
257 Franz von Baden, quoted by Mircea Eliade, The Two and the One (New York,
1965).
398 A GREAT MYSTERY
the eschatological Sacred Marriage, or Wedding Feast, when earth is re-

stored to its primal fecundity, and the riches of heaven dispensed freely to
all (Matt 22:4; Rev 19:9).
The water of life was originally thought to well up from beneath the
Eben Shetiyah in the Holy of Holies, in response to the arrival of Yahweh,
the Solar Bridegroom (p. 50, above). This had an early counterpart in the
Sumero-Akkadian myth of the life-giving waters which flowed forth from a
basin underneath the couch at the conclusion of Ningirsu’s Sacred Marriage
to Bau (Cylinder B from Gudea; ca. 2250 B.C.).259 This was similar to the
restored abundance which followed Dumuzi’s hieros gamos with Inanna:
The King, like the sun, shines radiantly by her side. He arranges abun-
dance, lushness, and plenty before him. (Hymn to Inanna; trans. Diane
Wolkstein and S. N. Kramer).
At the river may there be overflow,
In the field may there be rich grain,
In the marshland may the fish and birds make much chatter,
In the canebrake may the old reeds and young reeds grow high,
In the steppe may the mashgut-tree grow high,
In the forests may the deer and the wild goats multiply,
May the orchards produce honey and wine,
In the garden beds may the lettuce and cress grow high,
In the palace may there be long life,
In the Tigris and Euphrates may there be floodwater,
On their banks may the grass grow high, may it fill the meadows,
May the holy queen of vegetation pile high the grain in heaps and
mounds,
My queen, queen of heaven and earth, queen who encompasses heaven
and earth,
May he enjoy long days [at your holy] lap.260
After the ritual copulation of Baal and Anath, the skies also poured down
their life-giving moisture onto the thirsty desert below:
The heavens did rain, and the wadis flowed again with honey (Ras
Shamra Text I AB iii:3ff).
259 Franz Böhl, “Das Menschenopfer bei den alten Sumerern,” Zeitschrift für As-
syriologie 39 (1930): 96.
260 A Sacred Marriage Text, in the British Museum; translated by S. N. Kramer,
in The Sacred Marriage Rite (Bloomington, IN, 1969), 83.

The Israelites similarly viewed the Jerusalem Holy of Holies as the Sacred
Marriage chamber of Yahweh and Israel (see p. 19, above). It is from there
that the waters of life will flow forth once again in fulfillment of their es-
chatological marriage covenant (cf. Ezek 16:8):
And behold, waters of life issued out from under the threshold of the
house eastward … And it shall come to pass that everything that liveth,
which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live (47:1, 9).
The same imagery of life-giving waters welling up from beneath the Temple
also dominates the symbolism of the “molten sea” (1 Kgs 7:23–26), which
doubtless represented the underground Cosmic Ocean (t ehom; cf. “the bless-
ings of the deep [t ehom] that couches beneath”; Gen 49:25).
The Messianic Banquet, too, was connected with the consummation of
Yahweh’s “marriage” to Israel. Already at the conclusion of the covenant
hieros gamos on Mt. Sinai, the Israelites sat down and “ate and drank” (Exod
24:11; 32:6). The Exodus which led to the event was symbolically inter-
preted as a repetition of Yahweh’s victory over the chaos monsters at the
time of Creation (Ps 89:9–10; 87:4; Isa 51:910; Hab. 3:7ff; etc.), and it was
said that their slain bodies would provide the food for the great feast at the
end of time (2 Baruch, 29:4–8). Death itself would be abolished, and re-
placed with eternal plenty:
And on this mountain (= Temple) shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all
peoples and feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things
full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined (Isa 25:6–7).
The Wisdom of Solomon similarly promises a “new creation” in the Last
Days (19:6), with an abundance of imperishable “ambrosial food” (19:21).
Salvation in the New Testament is likewise described as a banquet at which
the fatted calf will be slaughtered and served (Luke 15:23). The marriage of
Christ to the Church was therefore referred to as a “Wedding Feast” (Matt
22:1–14), in which “oxen and fatlings are killed” (v. 4; Luke 12:37). The
earth’s productivity will then be increased ten thousand fold so that no man
will ever hunger again (2 Baruch 29:5–6; 1 Enoch 62:14; 3 Enoch 48:10).
The ultimate spiritualization of this prodigious banquet was Christ’s
promise to provide the heavenly food that causes its partakers to live for-
ever (John 6:50–58). The sacrificial piercing of his crucified body, and the
blood and water that gushed from his side (19:34), were clearly part of the
fulfillment of this promise; these events would later be associated with the
Lance that wounds the old Grail King (“death from sin”) and then restores
him (“resurrection”). The heavenly food, on the other hand, was already
connected by the writers of the Synoptic Gospels with the Cup used to
400 A GREAT MYSTERY
celebrate the Last Supper, and which offered life-giving “communion”

(hieros gamos) with the crucified and resurrected Jesus (Matt 26:27; Mark
14:23–24; Luke 22:20; esp. 1 Cor 10:16). This in fact became the most
popular form of the Grail, and it would continue to provide sustenance for
its keepers, according to most versions of the medieval legend.
Other contributions made by the Bible to the symbolism of the Holy
Grail include the story of Elijah’s inexhaustible supply of meal and oil
(1 Kgs 17:16; cf. also 2 Kgs 4:2–7), which we shall discuss later on in con-
nection with the Masonic “Widow’s Son.”261 We shall also see that Parzival
was considered to be a “Widow’s Son,” suggesting that he too possessed a
vessel of limitless plenty, i.e., the Holy Grail. Jesus’ multiplication of the
Loaves and Fishes (Matt 14:15ff; Mark 6:35ff; Luke 9:12ff; John 6:5ff) was
another prototype of the Grail’s infinite blessings, as was the mysterious
Ark of the Covenant, with its pot of self-replenishing manna and Aaron’s
perpetually budding rod (Exod 16:32–4; Num 17:10). Perhaps the greatest
influence of all, however, was the traditional themes of fertility and spiritual
regeneration inherited from the ancient hieros gamos (Eph 5:31–32), and
which certain scholars claim to have been symbolized by the association of
the phallic Lance and the feminine Cup (see below). At its heart we can also
imagine once again the Embracing Cherubim as symbols of God’s fructify-
ing union with the Church.
In spite of this rich scriptural legacy of pre-Grail symbolism, however,
there was never any Christian tradition attributing special properties to the
Cup used by Christ at the Last Supper or any account of its preservation
after his death. For these, we must look outside of the official teachings of
the Church. In fact, if we begin to trace the actual precedents of the Grail-
Cup back in time, we arrive not at Scripture, but at ancient Celtic models,
which by the twelfth century had evolved into the Percival portion of the
Arthurian legend, and which certain Christian authors felt provided a useful
allegory for the depiction of their mystical vision of divine fertility. By in-
fusing the ready-made Arthurian tale with their own new meaning, they
succeeded in converting an essentially pagan myth about a golden cup with
magic properties into a Holy Grail with spiritual bounties. The quest to dis-
cover its whereabouts they converted into a parable of man’s spiritual
search for God. Thus, the Grail story became once again the story of the
ancient Temple pilgrimage and the blessings which flowed from the Great
Mystery in the Holy of Holies.
261 See “Survivals of the Wisdom Mystery in Freemasonry,” below.

The completed Grail legend concerns a heavenly vessel which made its
first appearance on earth at the time of the Crucifixion. Joseph of Arima-
thea came into possession of it after the Last Supper and used it to catch a
few drops of the Messiah’s blood, from which time forth it became an ob-
ject of legend and veneration.262 Subsidiary episodes relate how Joseph and
his followers brought the Grail to the West of England (usually Glaston-
bury, though there was a parallel legend associated with Fecamp, in France),
where they founded a Church and enshrined the holy object.263
We next hear of the Sacred Cup when King Arthur’s knights set out to
discover its whereabouts, now said to be somewhere in “Muntsalvesche,”
“Carbonek,” or even completely out of the world.264 But before they can
accomplish their task they must undergo various ordeals and perils, which
bar the way to the unspiritual and worldly minded.265 The few who actually
succeed in reaching the Grail (Galahad, Percival, and Bors) find it lodged in
a mysterious castle ruled over by an aged Fisher King, who is wounded in
the genitals (“the thigh”), and whose realm has become a waste. He cannot
recover from his impotence until someone asks him the proper question
and receives the correct answer: “Whom does the Grail serve?” (or “Who
serves the Grail?”). Once these requirements are satisfied, the King and his
domain are healed; but the young Quester takes the King’s place as the new
Ruler. The Grail is then restored to “Sarras” in the East (the site of the
True Temple), where its mysteries can be resumed as they were originally
intended. Galahad ascends into heaven; Percival is the new Grail King, and
Bors returns to Arthur’s court to tell of the miracle.266
Percival and his companions are in fact the new “Temple pilgrims”
who have come to be initiated into union with Christ’s death and resurrec-
tion. The aged Fisher King is a paradigm of the “Old Man” (Rom 6:6) who
must be put to death by participation in the Savior’s Crucifixion; the young
Quester is the model for those who would be restored to eternal life. The
262 John Matthews, At the Table of the Grail, ed. John Matthews (London, 1984),
5–6.
263These stories have been gathered together by George F. Jowett, The Drama
of the Lost Disciples (London, 1975). Jowett apparently believed most of these tales
himself.
264 Most of this material is preserved in Malory’s fifteenth century Le Morte
D’Arthur, which in turn was extracted from the French of Chrêtien de Troyes
(Conte du Graal), which we shall discuss below.
265 Matthews, At the Table., 6.
266 Ibid.
402 A GREAT MYSTERY
Fisher-King is also for Christians the “Fisher of Men,” whose initials, I-X-
Φ-‘-Σ (Iesous Christus Theou Huios Soter, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior”)
were represented by the image of a fish from the earliest times. His loss of
genital potency is healed when someone learns to sacrifice in the service of
God and mankind, thereby restoring the ancient “nuptial” between Christ
and his Church (Rom 7:4). Then the earth blossoms anew, the Temple is
restored in the East, and the life-giving mystery of fecundity and spiritual
transformation is resumed.
As for the mysterious Cup itself, modern researchers, including R. S.
Loomis,267 Helaine Newstead,268 and D. D. F. Owen,269 have uncovered the
Celtic models which were converted into the Grail of medieval legend.
Owen, for example, has carefully shown how legends of semi-divine heroes
in search of a beautiful maiden and her magic cup were gradually converted
into literary productions like the eighth-century Dream of Oengus, or the
eleventh-century Phantom’s Frenzy. These were in turn imported into Wales,
and woven by early twelfth-century cyfarwyddiaid (professional storytellers)
into a composite legend which described a noble youth brought up in re-
mote forests, ignorant of his own identity (The Dream of Macsen Wledig).
While hunting, he dreams of a beautiful girl, and is stricken with love for
her. A wasting sickness comes upon him, and he sets off in search of the
object of his vision. He eventually arrives at King Arthur’s castle, where he
demands and receives aid. He is thus enabled to find the girl, but she can-
not join him, as she is in her father’s power and transformed into a hideous
shape. After overcoming hostile ordeals, the hero returns and kisses her
mouth, changing her into a beautiful woman. She thereupon serves him a
lavish feast; taking a Golden Cup, she asks, “To whom shall it be served?”
(the archetypal Grail question!). The hero’s own identity is finally revealed
by her father, and the couple is united in a royal wedding.270
This popular tale became known as “The Fair Unknown” (Le bel in-
connu), and it circulated widely throughout Anglo-Norman areas by the end
267Arthurian Tradition and Chrêtien de Troyes (New York, 1949); Wales and the Ar-
thurian Legend (Cardiff, 1956); The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol (Cardiff,
1963). Loomis derives the Grail from Bran’s magic drinking horn, and King
Rhydderch’s magic platter, both of which provided endless food and drink and
which became assimilated in French romances as a “graal,” or a “broad and slightly
deep dish” (Helinandus, ca. 1240).
268 Bran the Blessed in Arthurian Romance (New York, 1939).
269 The Evolution of the Grail Legend. (Edinburgh, 1968).
270 Ibid., 82–83; see also 13–15; 32, 35–37, 42, 47.
of the twelfth century, when Chêtien de Troyes (ca. 1180) fashioned it into
the “Percival” section of his Conte du Graal.271 Here the rough Celtic be-
ginnings were finally assimilated to their Christian equivalents Lug’s blaz-
ing spear, for example, becoming the sacred Lance, the god Bran (or per-
haps the King who is “always seated” in The Phantom’s Frenzy) becoming the
“crucified” Fisher King, and the decayed ruins of Caer Seint, where the
Welsh composite was probably put together, becoming the “Wasteland” of
mortality and death.272
But it was not until after Chrêtien that someone first identified the
Golden Cup as the Holy Grail—the vessel supposedly associated with the
life of Christ. Chrêtien’s work in fact attaches no Christian significance to
the fabulous object. This was the achievement of the “First Continuator”
(the anonymous poet who completed Chrêtien’s unfinished manuscript),
who for the first time used the expression “le sainte Graal” in his enlarged
edition.273 Interpolations in five of the ten manuscripts of various other
“Continuators” now claimed that this was the very Cup in which Joseph of
Arimathea caught Christ’s blood before bringing it to England.274 Chrêtien’s
description of Percival’s Good Friday visit to the old hermit, however, did
contain a passing reference to Christ’s Passion—even a description of the
Grail as a “tant sainte chose”—so that the “First Continuator” was encour-
aged to add his own identification of the Grail as a genuine relic of the Cru-
cifixion. This, then, became the form in which Chrêtien’s poem was given
to the world, and in which the magic Cup of Celtic legend became once and
for all an object of Christian piety and veneration.275
Robert de Boron, working from the “First Continuation,” gave us his
own version of the Grail story, entitled Joseph d’Arimathie, in which the Grail
was connected for the first time with the Last Supper. He also introduced
the concept of the Grail as a light-giving object, probably under the influ-
ence of the fourth century apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.276
Another important antecedent for the Holy Grail was the Celtic belief
in magic cauldrons, which could be connected with the Grail in a general
271 Ibid., 146, 156 notes, 201.

272 Ibid., 199–201.
273 Ibid., 167; see Ms. IV, line 1363, “de saint Graal a descovert,” where all other
manuscripts read “un graal trestot descovert.”

274 Ibid., 168–9.
275 Ibid., 171–72.
276 Ibid., 173. In it, the resurrected Jesus appears to Joseph and to the souls in
Hell in a flash of light.

404 A GREAT MYSTERY
way since they too provided mystical rebirth, poetic inspiration, and physi-
cal nourishment. The “Cauldron of Annwn,” for example, was an en-
chanted vessel of “rebirth,” described in The Spoils of Annwn, a part of the
Taleisen tradition. There it was said to be the object of King Arthur’s quest
in the Underworld, where he found it guarded by nine maidens who served
the great goddess Calleah (the Celtic version of Hecate).277 Geoffrey Russell
in 1966 made the fascinating suggestion that Glastonbury had become con-
nected with the Grail legend because Glastonbury Tor was anciently re-
garded as a point of entry into Annwn and its magic cauldron.278 Fieldwork
in 1979 in fact showed that there was once a gigantic maze around the Tor,
perhaps belonging to a Celtic initiatory rite symbolizing the sacred quest for
the goddess who resided at its heart, similar to other mazes in the antique
world.279
The “Cauldron of Ceridwen,” also from the Taliesin Cycle, was an-
other source of poetic inspiration and wisdom. In it, a young goddess
brewed the potion that prepared initiates for her mysteries. But the “Caul-
dron of the Dagda” (the All-Father) was the most famous vessel of all, be-
ing the source of general plenty, as bottomless as Elijah’s oil barrel.280 These
cauldrons doubtless had a general influence on the myth of the Grail as a
source of endless nourishment and fertility, perhaps even shaping the con-
cept of the alchemical hermetic vessels in which the Philosopher’s Stone
was to be prepared. For this reason, nearly all modern researchers admit
that the Celtic “cauldrons’’ were important contributors to the growing pic-
ture of the Grail, and were certainly recognized by Christian authors as hav-
ing powers analogous to the object of their own mystic quest.
The Lance in turn became a natural corollary to the Cauldron, and was
used to represent the Quester’s personal power. Working together, these
two items led to the attainment of eternal life, corresponding generally to
277 Adam McLean, “Alchemical Transmutation in History and Symbol,” in
Matthews, ed., At the Table, 60–61.

278 See Geoffry Ashe, “The Grail and the Golden Age,” in At the Table, 14–15.
The Tor in fact has seven terraces, which appear to have been artificially shaped
into a maze. “Mazes,” “seven-storied mountains,” and “underworld cauldrons” all
belong together, according to the traditional pattern of the “Ziggurat,” or “Temple-
Hill,” with its underground Waters of Life flowing out from the base.
279 Ibid., 15–16.
280 McLean, in ibid., 60–61; Jesse L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (New
York, 1957), 72–96; A. C. L. Brown, Notes on Celtic Cauldrons of Plenty (Boston,

1913).
the powers of the Embracing Cherubim in the ancient Wisdom Mystery.

“Lance and Cup were in truth connected in a symbolic relation long ages
before the institution of Christianity, or the birth of a Celtic tradition,”
writes Jesse L. Weston (whose theories we will discuss more fully later on).
“They are symbols of immemorial antiquity and world wide diffusion, the
Lance, or Spear, representing the Male, the Cup, or Vase, the Female re-
productive energy.”281 Thus the Bleheris and Balin versions of the Gawain
story depicted the Spear carried upright in the Vase, a familiar hieros gamos
symbol illustrating life and reproductive vitality.282 Their association also
continued in the later and more fully Christianized versions of the Grail
legend.283 Indeed, the Lance was usually carried in procession by a boy, and
the Grail by a maiden,284 showing that they were recognized as masculine
and feminine symbols which operated as a pair. For that reason, perhaps,
the spear of the god Lug was associated with the motif of the magic caul-
dron even before the Grail legend took shape, just as they appeared world-
wide in the form of the lingam and yoni, the thunderbolt and bell, the pillar
and hollow, the Yang and Yin—all natural signs of hierogamy and
fecundation.
THE GNOSTIC CHARACTER OF WOLFRAM’S GRAIL CHRISTIANITY

This, then, describes the major Christian, pre-Christian, Celtic, and pagan
sources which Chrêtien’s “First Continuator” and Robert de Boron brought
together and Christianized for the first time around A.D. 1180. From then
on, the Grail story attracted more and more Christian material to itself,
“drawing on an almost inexhaustible fund of tales, pious and profane,
Christian apocrypha and matters of Britain”285 until it became a virtual alle-
gory depicting the Christianity of its new poets. Yet the reason why some of
these authors—for example Wolfram von Eschenbach—professed a
somewhat peculiar and novel kind of Christianity, with which they now
invested the legend, or what theological convictions they personally enter-
tained, is still difficult to determine. Indeed, we shall find in Wolfram’s
“Grail Christianity” a variety of heterodox features which appear alongside of
more traditional Catholic themes. Much of what follows is an account of
281 Weston, From Ritual to Romance, 75.

282 Ibid., 75.
283 Ibid.
284 Ibid., 76.
285 Owen, Evolution of the Grail, 173.
406 A GREAT MYSTERY
the various attempts which have been made to isolate and identify these
unique elements, though we must at times be more speculative than certain.
Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (ca. 1200–1212) is certainly the
greatest of all these new versions of the Grail story and is of interest to us
chiefly because it best shows the kind of Christianity to which the Celtic
legends were drawn. Conversely, the Celtic sources are of interest because
they show us what sort of pagan materials the authors of the Christian Grail
story found compatible with their own beliefs, thus helping to identify the
nature of their personal faith.
As we pointed out earlier, “orthodox” Christianity had no story of its
own concerning Joseph of Arimathea or the Grail, either in folk legend or
in art. The Dutch writer, Jacob van Maerlant, in fact as early as 1210 de-
nounced the Grail history as a mass of “lies,” pointing out that the Roman
Church knew nothing whatever of it.286 Indeed, the Christianity depicted in
Wolfram’s Parzival has peculiarities which distinguish it from normative
Christianity. These, significantly, have been described by Trevor Raven-
scroft, Samuel Singer, Rolf Schroder, Hanna Closs, and others, as
Manichaean.287
Wolfram’s “Grail of Light,” for example, is quite different than the
Grail in most other accounts. Chrêtien had thought of it as a platter spa-
cious enough to hold a large fish. Robert de Boron and Chrêtien’s “Con-
tinuators” changed this into a vessel associated with the Crucifixion and the
Last Supper. The prose romance, Perlesvaus (written before 1212), saw it as a
chalice, which changes into a child, and then into a crucified man with a
spear in his side. Another prose account, the Lancelot of ca. 1215 to 1230,
calls it simply “sangkgreal” (sang réal, “royal blood.”), without further details.
In the Queste del Saint Graal it is even a kind of “Beatific Vision,” floating
mysteriously into the hall at King Arthur’s court, inspiring the knights to
continue their spiritual quest. Wolfram, on the other hand, describes the
Grail as a luminous stone, the only Biblical sources for which would appear to
be the “Stone” cut without hands (Dan 2:34), or the “white stone” men-
tioned in Revelation 2:17. This object, furthermore, was clearly associated
286Weston, From Ritual to Romance, 2–3.

287Trevor Ravenscroft, The Cup of Destiny (York Beach, ME, 1982), 34–36;
Samuel Singer, Wolfram und der Gral: Neue Parzival Studien (Bern, 1939); Rolf
Schroder, Die Parzivalfrage (Munich, 1928); Hanna Closs, “The Meeting of the Wa-
ters,” in Matthews, ed., At the Table, 45.
with the Temple, since it was connected with the hidden manna in the Holy
of Holies:
The Ark of the Covenant … wherein was the golden pot that had
manna … (Heb 9:4).
To him that overcometh, I will give to eat of the hidden manna, and will
give to him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, that no
man knoweth saving he that receiveth it (Rev 2:17).
Orthodox Catholicism spoke very little of this “white stone,” though it
recognized Christ as the “Stone cut without hands.” The Manichaeans, on
the other hand, had a very prominent belief in a stone of light similar to Wolf-
ram’s Grail, which they identified with Mithra’s sacrifice to the sun-bull, and
from which came the flood of light that penetrated the dark matter be-
low.288 In Manichaean Christianity, Mithras was equivalent to the archangel
Michael, who attacked the vanquished “Light” (the Manichaean Lucifer)
and released a “stone of light” (the Logos) from his crown. Michael then
formed himself into a vessel to receive it, becoming a repository for the
sun-host (Eucharist) or “Light of Christ.”289 Wolfram’s “stone of light”
thereafter dispensed its wonder-working powers each Good Friday, when a
Holy Wafer was laid upon it by an angel.290
In order to find Wolfram’s Grail, however, the initiate must pass
through three stages of consciousness (like the three grades of humanity in
Primitive Christianity and Gnosticism) and learn to read the “starry script”
or the “mysteries of gnosis.”291 He must then take on himself the wounds
of self-sacrifice in the service of others,292 and “die” in order to be reborn,
knowing that “in Christ, the human soul could become a living vessel of the
spirit,”293 i.e., a “Grail,” just like the Manichaean “Michael.”
The “strangeness” of this Grail-Christianity is further demonstrated by
the fact that Wolfram claims to have gotten his story not from Chrétien
(who he said “had it all wrong”), but from “Kiot the Provençale,” who in
turn learned it from an “Arabic” manuscript written by an author named
288 Compare the Manichaean intermingling of Light and Darkness, pp. 372–73,
above.
289 Ravenscroft, Cup of Destiny, 34–36.
290 Ibid., 9.
291 Ibid., 15, 13, 120.
292 Ibid., 29.
293 Ibid., 31.
408 A GREAT MYSTERY
“Flegetanis,” which he discovered at Toledo.294 The name “Flegetanis” (ac-

cording to Ravenscroft) is Persian for “Starry Script”; but his Jewish iden-
tity is established by the fact that Toledo was a leading center of Kabbalism
during the twelfth century, as well as by Wolfram’s statement that “from Is-
rael’s race he came, and the blood of kings of old times, of Solomon, did he show.”
Flegetanis, who was said to have lived some twelve hundred years before
Christ, had prophesied that the “messenger of the starry vision” (i.e., Jesus)
would one day come from this same Jewish race and that the blood of God
would flow in his veins.295
Flegetanis is further identified by Wolfram as a descendent of Hiram
of Tyre, the builder of Solomon’s Temple (later the “Hiram Abiff” of
Freemasonry). Kiot, who wished to restore the True Temple (the light-filled
body of Jesus), was looking for surviving members of this ancient blood-
line, who might again learn to read the “starry script” and become the
“New Temples” of Christ. Significantly, the names of the surviving mem-
bers of this mysterious bloodline who were worthy enough to be knights of
the Holy Grail appeared supernaturally around the edge of Wolfram’s Grail-
Stone, thus connecting it with both the “white stone” of Revelation 2:17
and the “new name which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it.” The
name thereafter disappeared, so that no one else could read it. We also re-
call that the typical Grail-hero grew up in a remote forest not knowing his
own identity; this he learned only after he had completed his quest for the
Grail, thereby discovering that he was in fact a “Son of the Widow” (see
below), i.e., a rightful descendent of the Heavenly Wisdom and the Primal
Light.
Parzival’s (or Percival’s) own genealogy was derived in various ways
from this “Israelitish” bloodline, according to different versions of the Grail
story. Sometimes he is the descendent of Joseph of Arimathea (Jesus’ un-
cle), and sometimes a grandson or nephew of the Fisher King. Wolfram,
however, carefully traces his lineage all the way back to Adam through Cain,
making no mention whatever of Seth! This is another important indication
of Gnostic influence, for along with their derogation of the Old Testament
Yahweh, certain Gnostics gave special honor to Adam’s first son, “whose
sacrifice the god of this world did not accept, whereas he accepted the
bloody sacrifices of Abel; for the lord of this world delights in blood”
(Hippolytus, Refutations, 5.16.9–10). There were even Gnostics who called
294 Ibid., 136, 141.

295 Ibid., 50, 137–38.
themselves “Cainites” in honor of this archetypal “outcast from the world

of sense,” condemned by an ignorant Demiurge to be a “fugitive and vaga-
bond on earth.” Cain instead became the head of a secret line leading to
Christ, intentionally challenging the values of Jewish and Christian “ortho-
doxy.”296 Wolfram thus tells us that God would one day take upon himself
the form of Adam’s sinful race in order to redeem the “earth” (Cain’s
“grandmother”) which had been stained by the shedding of Abel’s blood.
Kiot picks up the trail of this fabled line in a place called “Anschau,”
where he reads of an ancient hero named “Mazadan” (Ravenscroft: “Mac
Adam”) and the record of his family. This he traces through David and Je-
sus to Parzival, through his mother Herzeleide:
And further the story ran,
How Titurel, the grandsire, left
his Kingdom to Frimutel,
And at length to his son, Amfortas,
the Grail and its heirdom fell;
That his sister was Herzeleide,
and with Gamuret she wed
And bare him for son the hero whose
wanderings ye now have read.
As we mentioned earlier, all three versions of the older Percival story (by
Chrêtien, Robert de Boron, and the anonymous author of Perlesvaus) des-
ignate the hero as a “Son of the Widow,” just like the Masonic Hiram
Abiff.297 Indeed, this is “an image in which we see ourselves reflected as
children of both the exiled Sophia (Wisdom) and Jesus, the son of Mary.”298
In short, “Son of the Widow” is a designation for Parzival’s spiritual blood-
line—or descent from Cain—a meaning attached to it by the Manichaeans
296 Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 94–5.

297 Jessie L. Weston, The Quest for the Holy Grail (London, 1913), 119; From Rit-
ual to Romance, 206–7. She theorizes that the “Widow’s Son” was (1) a folk hero
who grew up in the wilderness ignorant of men, and )2) a mystery-term denoting a
certain grade of initiation. Presumably the two became fused together in the Grail
story, so that Percival, the boorish “son of a Widow,” in time became Parzival, the
“mystery initiate” and “son of the Light.” See also her Legend of Sir Percival (London,
1909), 2:307.
298 Caitlin Matthews, “Sophia, Companion on the Quest,” in Matthews, ed., At
the Table, 124.

410 A GREAT MYSTERY
to show that they belonged to the Light and were capable of receiving it
again as “Living Grails” or “Christs.”299
This, Ravenscroft notes, “is a heresy only to those who are as yet un-
able to distinguish between Christ the Logos and Jesus the man,”300 a dis-
tinction which may be traced back through Gnosticism to the Jewish-
Christian doctrine of the preexistent Logos-power (or “True Prophet”)
which descended upon “Jesus of Nazareth” at the time of his baptism
(p. 239, above). In the same way, these “Living Grails” may themselves re-
ceive the Logos-power and become “Christs,” which is indeed one of the
Grail’s innermost secrets.
Wolfram’s Gnosticizing theology is further betrayed by the aged her-
mit, Treverizent, who tells Parzival that man came into existence the mo-
ment that Lucifer fell from Heaven. Earth then became his Mother, but
fratricide stained her with blood. Now she must be redeemed by the child
of a pure Maiden, whom some have identified as the Gnostic Sophia.301 The
child Jesus was thus purified by the Sophia-Logos when it came to dwell in
him, as it must in all of the Elect.302 Then they too will be restored—like
the Phoenix—to deathless youth, realizing their heavenly lineage and
destiny.
Those whose names magically appear on the edge of the Grail must
however renounce the love of women. The King may of course marry,
since he is a figure of Christ, whose Spouse is the Church. Even the knights
of the Grail and the maidens who attend it may go forth in secret and “have
children who will in turn one day enter the service of the Grail, and so serv-
ing, enhance its company” (Wolfram, Parzifal, 495). This sounds very much
like marriages amongst the ordinary Cathars; though the perfecti were to ab-
stain from matrimony, the Believers were allowed to marry and have fami-
lies so that the faith might be kept alive. The Grail knight’s true love, on the
other hand, is Christ himself. “Of this true Love these sweet tidings tell. He
is a brightly shining light and does not waiver from His love. The man to
whom He gives His love finds bliss in that love” (ibid., 466).

300 Ibid., 146.
301 Ibid., 146–47; see also Matthews, “Sophia, Companion,” 111–22.
THE GRAIL-MAIDEN AS WISDOM AND GUARDIAN OF THE ARK

Caitlin Matthews sees a close parallel between the above-mentioned Sophia
and the “Woman with the Golden Cup” in the Grail legends. She too has
two identities, like the Gnostic Sophia; first, she is the Hag who must re-
ceive the hero’s kiss (hieros gamos) in order to reveal her true nature; then she
becomes the “pure” maiden, restored to her pristine beauty, along with the
revitalized Wasteland.303 In the same way, the Lower Wisdom, when re-
united with her Consort, was restored to her “male” or “unitary” condition
as the Higher Wisdom.
The Grail which she brings with her is her fertilized “womb,” from
which a new mankind will emerge as “Kings and Queens” of creation.304
The Hag is also the Old Eve, through whom men fell, and the beautiful
maiden is the New Eve, or the Mother of those who will become “Christs”
by uniting with the Light.305 Finally, she is our constant companion in the
Mysteries.
Here Caitlin Matthews detects influences inherited from the Jerusalem
Temple, for Jewish Kabbalists, she remarks, had similarly viewed the
Shekhinah—who dwelt above the Ark—as man’s Companion and Guide
during his exile on earth. Brian Cleeve indeed believes that the Ark was one
of the Grail’s most important prototypes, alongside of the Celtic cauldrons,
eventually becoming Christ’s “Cup of Blessing” and the Manichaean “stone
of light”:
In the history of God’s dealings with us, is there any object which could
be regarded as performing the functions of the Grail before Christ? One
object that immediately comes to mind is the Ark of the Covenant. And
following the Ark of the Covenant, there is the Holy of Holies in Solo-
mon’s Temple, or possibly some object within the Holy of Holles, such
as the altar stone.306
303 Matthews, “Sophia, Companion,” 116–17. See also note 182, p. 375, above.
304 Ibid., 118.
305 Compare Origen’s doctrine of becoming “Christs” (Christoi) by reception of
the Logos (pp. 234–35, above). Matthews in fact finds that the present Grail sym-
bolism resulted from the fusion of apocryphal Christian legend with Celtic legend,
according to which the king “would often have to undergo a symbolic remarriage
with a priestess who represented the Goddess for the purpose of the ritual” (Mat-
thews, “Sophia, Companion,” 115).
306 “The World’s Need,” in Matthews, ed., At the Table, 134.
412 A GREAT MYSTERY
Yet while Cleeve comes tantalizingly close to discovering the real secret of
the Holy of Holies, he was apparently unaware of the Embracing Cheru-
bim, which like Miss Weston’s Lance and Cup in sexual juxtaposition repre-
sented Yahweh’s “marriage” to Israel (b. Yoma 54a). Indeed, their hieros ga-
mos is what generated the blessings that flowed from the hidden Sanctuary,
not the altar stone (eben shetiyah), which merely “capped” the waters of life.
It is in fact quite possible that some of the Grail poets had been inspired by
actual memories of the Embracing Cherubim, since Rashi still spoke of
them in the eleventh century, and the author of the Zohar in the thir-
teenth.307
John Matthews, drawing on still another Kabbalistic tradition, comes
even closer to the truth when he observes that after the destruction of the
Temple in A.D. 70 it became necessary to reconstruct a “Spiritual Temple”
which would be activated by man’s union with God, so that initiates might
become “Vessels of Light,” or “Grails,” fashioned after the image of the
uniting Cherubim:
Qabbalistic teaching has it that “the temple has been destroyed, but not
the path of purification, illumination, and union that lay concealed in it.”
For when the perfected soul of mankind “rises like incense from the
golden altar of the heart, and passes through the most inward curtains
of his being to the holy of holies within,” then the two cherubim who
stand guard over the Ark of the Covenant (of the heart) “are united in
the presence of the One, in Whom the soul recognizes its eternal life
and its own union with Him. Henceforth, the soul is called the eternally
‘living’ (hayah), ‘the one and only’ (yehidah),” the perfect. The Light has
come like veritable tongues of fire upon all who reach the center of the
Temple and find there the seat of God in the heart of his Creation.308
The Light, of course, is none other than the Logos-Wisdom, the “Grail
Maiden,” whose symbols and “mirrors” (as we learned at the beginning of
this study) were the Embracing Cherubim. Thus the Grail legend was in a
very real sense a surviving form of the ancient Wisdom Mystery.
307See pp. 8, 18–19, above.

308“Temples of the Grail,” in Matthews, ed., At the Table, 88; our emphasis in
the English passages. His quotes are from Lee Schaya, “The Meaning of the Tem-
ple,” in Sword of Gnosis (Baltimore, 1974), 364–65.
THE GRAIL AS TEMPLE

Thus the image of the Second Temple, together with its Embracing Cheru-
bim, was finally transformed into the Grail Temple, as the juxtaposed Lance
and Cup suggest. Albrecht’s version of the Grail story, Der jüngere Titurel, in
fact traces its origin all the way back to “Solomon’s Temple,” which was
now a mysterious ruin.
Helen Adolf has advanced a special version of this “Grail-as-Temple”
theory in her Visio Pacis: Holy City and Holy Grail.309 She not only expands
the image of the wonder-working Ark to include the Holy of Holies, but
also the Holy City, the ideal “Mt. Sion,” where the Heavenly Citadel will
one day reappear to bless the earth.
The Holy City was of particular interest to contemporary Christians
because the Holy Sepulcher was located there. As the tomb of the risen
Lord, it had taken over the functions of the destroyed Temple, becoming a
“life-giving vessel” to those who sought to liberate it from the Saracens.310
Adolf accordingly theorizes that the Grail in its final form represented the
ruins of the Holy City, and in particular the “glorious but threatened
Tomb” which it contained.311
The ruined Temple and Christ’s Tomb are indeed related concepts, as
Christ himself recognized when he prophesied that he would rebuild the
“Temple” (his dead body) in three days (Matt 26:61; 16:21). Both symbol-
ized the place where mortality puts on immortality, and both possessed
transforming power, as we frequently observe in connection with burial
sites designed to resemble the regenerating womb of the “Great Mother.”
Thus Adolf compares the “Grail-as-Tomb” to Solomon’s Temple as a
source of spiritual fecundity.312
This parallel between Grail and Temple has also been noted by other
writers. Ludwig Uhland in the nineteenth century, and more recently V. T.
Holmes,313 both observed that the Grail Castle was constructed on the plan
of the Jewish Tabernacle in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The pot of “golden
manna” in the Holy of Holies (Heb 9:4), as we earlier noted, especially re-
sembled the heavenly bounties of the Grail, since its “ambrosial food” was
none other than Christ’s shed blood, which Albert of Aix (a contemporary
309 State College, PA, 1960.

310 Ibid., 35.
311 Ibid., 39.
312 Ibid., 135.
414 A GREAT MYSTERY
chronicler) likened to the “hidden manna” and the “white stone” (Rev
2:17).314
THE RITUAL THEORY OF THE HOLY GRAIL

Jesse L. Weston has further hinted at the Gnostic character of Grail-
Christianity in what is perhaps the most famous of all Grail studies, From
Ritual to Romance (1920). Though her so-called “Ritual Theory” of the
Grail’s origin and meaning has recently been contested, due to the un-
bridged historical gaps between her proposed source (the “Naassene Mys-
tery”)315 and the resulting “Grail Mystery,” her intuition that both embodied
the same pattern of fertility-worship and initiation into eternal life is still
widely discussed.
She begins with Hippolytus’ theory that the Naassenes themselves had
already assumed a similarity between the age-old fertility-mysteries of Attis,
Tammuz, Baal, Osiris, Adonis, and the Gnostic mysteries of union;316 the
latter were then assimilated to the former in the Gnostic system of redemp-
tion. This system consisted basically of becoming “wholly male” through
union with the “Virgin Spirit” (Refutations, 5.8.44). Unfortunately, how this
“higher form of the Attis cult”—in which it was presumably known and
practiced by the early Gnostics—was brought to Britain, she has not been
able to explain, though she suggests that British Christianity was “curiously
heterodox” from the very beginning, as indicated by the surprising toler-
ance shown for Mithraism by it and other forms of northern Christianity,
well into the fifth century.317
More poetry than fact, perhaps, is her suggestion that this Gnostic
Christianity and its thinly disguised fertility worship went underground for
nearly a thousand years, “linger(ing) on in the hills and mountains of Wales,
314Quoted in ibid., 66. Text in Migne, Patrologia Latina 166, col. 549.
315Preserved in Hippolytus, Refutations, Book 5.
316 Weston, From Ritual to Romance, 149: “That Christianity might have bor-
rowed from previously existing cults certain signs and symbols, might have acco-
modated itself to already existing Fasts and Feasts, may be, perforce has had to be,
more or less grudgingly admitted; that such a rapprochement should have gone
further, that it should have even been inherent in the very nature of the Faith, that,
to some of the deepest thinkers of old, Christianity should have been held for no
new thing but a fulfillment of the promise enshrined in the Mysteries from the be-
ginning of the world, will be to many a strange and startling thought. Yet so it
was.”
317 Ibid., 170–71.
as Mithraic worship had done in the Alps and Vosges.”318 Its memory, she
believes, can still be detected in certain Grail stories which tell
how aforetime there were maidens dwelling in the hills who brought
forth to the passing traveller food and drink. But King Amangons out-
raged one of these maidens, and took away from her her golden Cup …
As the result the springs dried up, the land became waste, and the court
of the Rich Fisher, which had filled the land with plenty, could no
longer be found. For 1000 years the land lies waste, till, in the days of
King Arthur, his knights find maidens wandering in the woods…
Hearing tales from these maidens about the long-forgotten Cup, Arthur’s
knights began their now famous quest to recover the Grail and restore the
land to its former fertility.319
It is more likely, however, that this charming episode was but another
memory of the Celtic “Cauldron of Plenty.” We must also assume in place
of better evidence that the “Gnostic-tainted Christianity” which did shape
the Grail legend was not incorporated with its Celtic precursors until at least
the time of Chrêtien’s “First Continuator” or Robert de Boron’s Joseph
d’Arimathie, when the assorted influences of the Bogomils, Cathars, Walden-
sians, Templars, Crusaders from the Near East, Jewish Kabbalists, and
Arab mystics were all at their height.
Nevertheless, an awareness of the “Naassene Mystery” and early
Gnosticism helps alert us to those specific features of the Grail legend
which betray the kind of Christianity that probably inspired Wolfram’s ver-
sion of the Parzifal story. To begin with, Miss Weston notes that both were
characterized by their extreme secrecy:
The Grail’s secret must be concealed
And never by any man revealed,
For as soon as this tale is told…
Evil will follow him all his life.320
He who tells it shall have great woe,
For of the Grail it is the sign
That he in pain and ills will pine
Who reveals its secrets to any man.321
318 Ibid., 173.

319 Ibid., 172–73.
321 In ibid., 138.
416 A GREAT MYSTERY
The mystery itself, Miss Weston continues, was characterized by the fact
that its worshipper “partakes of, and becomes one with, his God, receiving
thereby assurance of eternal life.”322 This is of course what took place in the
Gnostic and Wisdom Mysteries and was very different from the Greek mys-
teries, which clearly differentiated between the human and the divine
(“There is one race of men, and another of gods”). The latter unfortunately
became the view of “orthodox” Christianity, with its “unbridgeable gulf”
forever separating man from God. But the Gnostic mysteries perpetuated
the Primitive Christian belief that Man’s Light and God’s Light are preter-
naturally related and can therefore be reunited. Thus, when Wolfram’s Par-
zival intimates that man can himself become a Holy Grail, containing the
same Light which transformed the man Jesus into Christ, Miss Weston sees
the presence of Gnostic soteriology, such as the ancient Naassene docu-
ment contained.
She next compares typical Gnostic and Grail initiations, which were
similar to the Wisdom candidate’s “pilgrimage” through the cultic “wilder-
ness” in search of the Higher Regions (pp. 122–23, above). This is espe-
cially characteristic of the ordeal undergone in the “Perilous Chapel.”323 In
this sinister place—which we immediately recognize as an avatar of Temple
and Tomb—the initiate must encounter and overcome threats of physical
death, equivalent to a spiritual journey through the Underworld. This would
be followed by his victorious ascent into the Third Heaven in search of
eternal life and union with God.324 Miss Weston has in fact been able to
produce a Middle English poem, Owain Miles, or The Purgatory of Saint Patrick,
which describes the same initiatory “death” and “rebirth” which she detects
in the contemporary Grail initiation. In it, the hero, “after purification by
fasting and prayer,” descends “into the Netherworld … passing through the
abodes of the Lost, finally reaching Paradise, and returning to earth after
Three Days, a reformed and rejuvenated character”:325
Then with his monks the Prior anon,
With Crosses and with Gonfanon
Went to that hole forthright,
Through which Knight Owain went below,
There, as of burning fire the glow,
322 Ibid., 141.

323 Ibid., 155, 182.
324 Ibid., 182; 185–86.
325 Ibid., 184–85.
They saw a gleam of light;

And right amidst that beam of light
He came up, Owain, God’s own Knight.
By this knew every man
That he in Paradise had been,
And Purgatory’s pains had seen,
And was a holy man.
Earlier versions of this spiritual initiation, Miss Weston suggests, were
St. Paul’s ascent into the “Third Heaven” (2 Cor 12:1–4), and the Jewish
mystic’s ascent to the Merkabah. We have also seen it in Origen’s and
Clement’s “True Gnosis,” which interpreted the Temple experience as the
soul’s mystic journey through the heavens in search of God. Wilhelm Bous-
set likewise mentions a number of rabbinic journeys into the world beyond,
undertaken at great risk, in search of the secret knowledge needed for eter-
nal life.326
At the very heart of this secret knowledge, Miss Weston believes, was
the initiate‘s “enlightenment into the meaning of Lance and Cup, in their
sexual juxtaposition,” signifying man’s spiritual union with God327—just as
the Embracing Cherubim in the Holy of Holies had once represented the
hieros gamos of the soul and Wisdom in the Philonic mystery (pp. 40–41,
above). Thus, the fertilized Cup became a symbolic source of spiritual
“plenty,” and the initiate became a “Grail” or “vessel of light” in his own
right, which indeed accords with the higher meaning of Wolfram’s Grail
romance.
In summary, it has been said of the Grail legend that “the Fall is our
exile from Paradise; we make a Wasteland of the Garden of Eden. The
quest is our spiritual journey, and the Grail is our return to our sovereign
condition as kings and queens of creation.”328 “The Grail Maiden, the
Shekhinah or Sophia, is a personification of that holy object; she is the Grail
or Ark, the hidden treasure which symbolizes the union of the soul with the
Divine.”329
Through this life-giving union, the “son of the Widow”—that “divine
fragment” who had “extended himself” from the Light—is restored to
oneness with his Heavenly Source, and the King with the wounded “Thigh”
326 “Die Himmelsreise der Seele,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 4; quoted in
From Ritual to Romance, 185.

327 Ibid., 182–83 and n. 14.
328 Matthews, “Sophia, Companion,” 118.
329 Ibid., 125.
418 A GREAT MYSTERY
(both Christ and the initiate) is healed of his earth-bound impotence. He in

fact becomes Christ, the Crucified King with the Sacred Wounds,330 and is
resurrected unto eternal life.
We already saw that this mystic identification of the initiate with Christ
had been symbolically hinted at by Wolfram’s derivation of the Grail
knights from the same bloodline that gave birth to Jesus. But it emboldened
other authors to propose that Jesus had actually had offspring of his own,331
begotten through Mary Magdalene, his koinonos in the Gospel of Philip (p. 277,
above). As Jesus was the earthly counterpart of the preexistent Christus, so
Mary was the earthly counterpart of Sophia, to whom he was preexistently
betrothed.332 Furthermore, as Sophia was the Gnostic “Mother without a
Spouse,” Mary was the “fallen woman” who longed to be reunited with her
Savior (Gospel of Thomas, Log. 114). Their human offspring were the earthly
vessels of this divine lineage. Thus the “Holy Grail” (Saint Gral) turned out
to be Jesus and Mary’s “Royal Blood” (Sang real).333
This theory of Jesus’ “Royal Blood” has been recently revived by Mi-
chael Baigent, Robert Leigh, and Henry Lincoln in their popular book Holy
Blood, Holy Grail,334 which appears to rest on an old tradition that Lazarus,
Mary Magdalene, Martha, Joseph of Arimathea, and several others, were
transported after the Crucifixion to Marseilles, in southern France. While
there, Joseph was supposedly consecrated by Saint Philip and sent to Eng-
land, where he established a Church, while Lazarus and Mary remained in
Gaul, founding one of the royal houses.335
The Marseilles portion of this story is first mentioned in The Life of
Mary Magdalene, composed by Hrabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz
(776–856), and later elaborated in William of Malmesbury’s Antiquities of
330 Ibid., 124.

331 Bob Stewart, “The Grail as a Bodily Vessel,” in Matthews, ed., At the Table,
180–87.
332 Hans-Martin Schenke, introduction to Leipoldt-Schenke, Koptisch-gnostische
Schriften aus der Papyrus Codices von Nag-Hamadi (Hamburg-Bergstedt, 1960), 34. See
also Schlier’s reconstruction of the Ephesian Sacred Marriage, pp. 163–64, above.
333 Compare Helen AdoIf, Visio Pacis, 82. She, however, gives it a purely eu-
charistic meaning.
334 Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York, 1982), 277. This is explained by virtue of
the fact that sang real and Saint Graal were pronounced approximately the same. The
authors also observe that “we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolizes what it
is intended to symbolize unless Jesus was married and had children” (ibid., 383).
335 Ibid., 277–81.
Glastonbury to include the story of Joseph of Arimathea. The longer account

is best known today through the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Varagine, con-
tained in his Life of Saint Mary Magdalene (1270).336 Wolfram’s hint that the
caretakers of the Grail belonged to the same mysterious family that gave
birth to Jesus invited further identification of this bloodline with the pil-
grims who landed at Marseilles, who in turn were seen as the natural family
and descendants of the Savior.
Yet the existence of a spiritual family derived from the Savior was
prophesied long ago in Isaiah 53:10, which Christians generally hold to be a
reference to Christ’s “reborn seed”:
It pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; when his
soul shall make an offering for sin, he shall see his seed.
Mark also spoke of a spiritual family issuing from the Savior, to which Jesus
referred when he declared that
Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sis-
ter, and mother (3:35).
R. G. Hamerton-Kelly believes that Jesus was also hinting at the disciples’
“mysterious divine origin” when he declared “his true kin to be those who
have the same relationship with God as he does.”337 This was probably a
reference to the familial relationship which existed between the preexistent
Christ, the heavenly Church, and the Father before the foundation of the
world (Eph 1:4; 3:14–15), and which became the model for the present rela-
tionship between God and his reborn “sons.” But it was also the meaning
of the Manichaean phrase, “son of the Widow,” indicating the believer’s
heavenly descent from the preexistent Wisdom. In short, God’s present
family is a copy of his preexistent family, a family which was “foreknown,
336 See also George F. Jowett, The Drama of the Lost Disciples, 33, 61–72. Jowett
relies mainly on Caesar Baronius’ Annales Ecclesiastici (1588–1607), who quotes from
an early Acts of the Magdalene. Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament
(Oxford, 1924), 117 also mentions a legend that Mary Magdalene went to Rome,
preserved in “Byzantine chronicles and other late documents.”
337 Pre-Existence, Wisdom and the Son of Man (Cambridge, 1973), 49; our empha-
sis.
420 A GREAT MYSTERY
predestinated and called” by the Savior before Creation.338 Finally, it ex-

plains why Parzifal was called a “Son of the Widow” in the Grail legends.
SURVIVALS OF THE WISDOM MYSTERY IN FREEMASONRY

Many of the traditions of which we have been speaking also managed to
survive in the lore of modern Freemasonry, especially the symbolism of the
restored Temple and the destiny of the “Widow’s Son” to inherit eternal life
through reunion with the Savior in the Holy of Holies.
The compass and square as divine creative symbols (see the discussion
of the “Rebis,” pp. 377ff, above), seems to have penetrated Europe at least
as early as the Gothic Age, when the great cathedrals were being erected.
Thus Christ the “World-Builder” is shown over the main portal of the Ca-
thedral of Santa Croce in Florence (to mention but one of several well-
known examples), holding aloft the workman’s square as a sign of his crea-
tive power. This was not merely a reflection of the pride of the builders,
however, for contemporary alchemical treatises were also making use of the
compass and square as symbols of the male-female powers which accomplish
the “Great Work” of unification and transmutation (pp. 384–93, above).
These two kinds of symbolism were of course related, since the Wisdom
tradition viewed creation and re-creation as essentially the same process.
This is also true of modern Masonic thought, which began to make use of
this archaic religious symbolism when Speculative Masonry replaced Opera-
tive Masonry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
This ancient symbolism is especially noticeable in the ritual conjunc-
tion of the compass and square on the altar during the granting of the first
three “Degrees,” and which some Masonic writers have recognized as a
form of the Sacred Embrace.339 Indeed, when superimposed, they form
interlaced triangles, one of antiquity’s favorite symbols for the hieros gamos.
With the apex upward, the compass represents the phallic “Trinity”; with
the apex down, the square represents the female mons veneris. And with their
bases closed, the intertwined emblems become the sign of the Royal Arch
Degree, the so-called “Solomon’s Seal,” or the “Sign of David,” an ancient
338 Ibid., 154–56. “The idea of the solidarity of the Redeemer and his own is
expressed as the pre-existence [sic] of the community of the righteous with the Son
of Man” (ibid., 222).
339 See George Riley Scott, Phallic Worship (Westpoint, CT, n.d.), 261. One of
Southey’s poems also refers to the Masonic triangle as follows: “Behold the Sacred
Triangle is there, holding an emblem which no tongue can tell” (in ibid.).
“mandala” whose marital significance was familiar even in the Far East (see
figure 2).340
The archaic meaning of this symbolism—coming as it does at the cli-
max of a figurative passage through the three levels of “Solomon’s Tem-
ple”—is highly reminiscent of Philo’s conception of the Temple pilgrimage
as a three-part spiritual journey through the wilderness in search of union
with Wisdom (see p. 122, above). The author of Hebrews likewise viewed
the Temple experience as a re-creation of man’s spiritual quest for Christ
and the Heavenly City (11:13–16).
This archetypal quest was in fact still remembered in the popular
“Mystery-Plays” of the Middle Ages, in which “Everyman” relives his jour-
ney through the world in search of salvation. In a negative way it became
the legend of the Wandering Jew, who was condemned to search endlessly
because he rejected Christ’s offer of “Rest” (Heb 3:10–11). John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress (1675) is perhaps the most famous literary product of this
ancient tradition, which Philo long ago determined to be the real meaning
behind the outward ordinances of the Jerusalem Temple Cult.
The Masons may at one time have had their own Mystery Play, a prac-
tice common among the worker’s guilds of the late Middle Ages, a play
making use of dramatic events which were of particular interest to them-
selves. One of these was presumably transformed into the legend of Hiram
Abiff, the “Widow’s Son,” who (with his two companions) discovered im-
portant secrets buried on Mt. Moriah while working on the construction of
the First Temple; and allowed himself to be killed rather than divulge them
to outsiders:
Such a Masonic play may well have been of an esoteric character, meant
for inner circles only, and transmitted purely by oral tradition, and there-
fore not available in written form. This suggestion of mine is made all
the more plausible by the comment made by a Mr. A. W. Pollard …
making reference to Sir Edmund Chamber’s The Medieval Stage, to the ef-
fect that no such Miracle Play is mentioned, beyond what “seems to
have been a pageant in dumb show rather than a proper miracle play.”341
340 See Giuseppi Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala (London, 1962),
45–47.
Alex Horne, King Solomon’s Temple in the Masonic Tradition (North Hollywood,
341
CA, 1974), 331; our emphasis. This theory first appeared in Robert Race’s “The
Legend of the Third Degree,” British Masonic Miscellany, 9:84–133.
422 A GREAT MYSTERY
The building of an important edifice like the Temple of Solomon, with

a depiction of the obstacles to be overcome while completing the noble
work, would have been an ideal subject for a play presented by guilds of
working masons. It would have been even more appropriate if this could be
associated with the motifs of pilgrimage, sacrifice, and spiritual growth,
which had been part of the original Temple cult. Recent scholars in fact
note striking similarities between the Masonic drama and the general pat-
tern of the original Temple Mystery, especially as it may have been transmit-
ted through the medium of Jewish Kabbalism:
To me it seems reasonable to believe that the core of the drama came
down from Solomon’s day; that it was preserved until medieval times by
Jewish, and especially Kabbalistic, literature; that it found a place among
the traditions of the old builders because it was so intimately related to
the story of the Temple, around which so much of their symbolism re-
volved; that it was inherited by seventeenth-century Masons, in crude
form, and along with a mass of other traditions; that it was elaborated
and given its literary form by the early framers of the ritual; and that it
embodied so wonderfully the idea at the center of the Third Degree.342
To these must of course be added the unofficial Christian and Gnostic tra-
ditions which we described in the previous section. Unfortunately, we have
at present no hard evidence to support such a transmission, especially one
reaching back all the way back to the time of Solomon’s Temple. Neverthe-
less, there are many details in the modern Masonic rite which can be shown
to have actually existed in the original Judaeo-Christian Wisdom Mystery.
The archaic significance of the juxtaposed compass and square, for exam-
ple—like the hermetic Rebis—symbolized the same reunification of “male”
and “female” (God and Man) which we saw in the ancient Wisdom Mys-
tery. The Kabbalists, too, declared this to be the secret meaning of the Tet-
ragrammaton, or “the unification of God’s Name” by reuniting his male and
female aspects (see pp. 19–20, above). Thus the secret Masonic Name of
God (“G”) suddenly appears within the intertwined compass and square,
depicting the begetting of divine attributes and rebirth. This we discover
when the candidate for the Third Degree reenacts the resurrection of
Hiram Abiff:
342 H. L. Haywood, Symbolical Masonry (Kingsport, TN, 1923); quoted in Horne,
King Solomon’s Temple, 282.

Brother, you have on this occasion represented one of the greatest men
that ever lived, and the tragical catastrophe of his death, burial and res-
urrection.
Peter Tompkins explains these ritual words by pointing out that
every man is himself the living, slain and rearisen Christ in his own per-
son … no less than Very God of Very God.343
This shows why Catholicism has so vigorously opposed Freemasonry, for
the Masonic rite implies that man can himself become divine through fu-
sion with the resurrected Christ. Indeed, the resurrected Hiram Abiff is an
obvious metaphor for Jesus, whose embrace gave life to the candidate in
the Ephesian “Great Mystery.” Thus, the compass and square, as they ap-
pear conjointly upon the Masonic altar, inevitably recall the Embracing
Cherubim in the Holy of Holies, and the candidates “marriage” to the Di-
vine,344 somehow remembered across an interval of nearly two millennia. In
fact, an 18th century Masonic Catechism (the Lancashire, or “Lodge of Lights”
Ms.) still asks pointedly,
Q—What did the 2 Cherubims on the ark of the covenant represent?
A—The mystery of the Golden Altar.
The use of the title, “Widow’s Son,” to designate the Masonic initiate
is also very ancient, for as Carl Jung has shown, the Manichaeans held Jesus
to be the exemplary “Son of the Widow”; as his followers, they too distin-
guished themselves as “Children of the Widow.”345 Others called Jesus “the
Orphan,”346 again showing that he was without earthly father, but perhaps
also to show his identification with the “Homeless Wisdom” (pp. 26, 95,
above). In the Aurora Consergens “the Orphan” is also the prima materia which
has not yet mated. His Mother (the “Widow”) was of course the Female
without a Consort—or the Gnostic “Mother” of the scattered “Light-Seed”
who await redemption (pp. 367–68, above). In Christian tradition, the
“Widow” was also the Church who awaits her Bridegroom and salvation
(Isa 54:4; 61:10; Rev 19:17; 21:2). The Jews further identified her with the
Kabbalistic Malkhut (“Kingdom”)—called Almanah (“Widow”) in several
alchemical treatises—as she is the one who receives the “stream of emana-
343 Peter Tompkins, The Magic of Obelisks (New York, 1981), 110.
345 Mysterium Coniunctionis, 17–23.
346 At least as far back as the Carmina Heliodori, an eighth-century Byzantine
writing. See Jung, op. cit., 18 [uncertain reference, ed. note].

424 A GREAT MYSTERY
tion” through the phallus to bring about the creation of the material world
(pp. 330–31, above).
To refer to oneself as a “Son of the Widow,” then, appears to be a
very old practice, most likely derived from Manichaean or Grail sources, to
describe one’s origin and destiny in terms of a heavenly descent from Wis-
dom and the restoration of primal completeness through “marriage” to
Christ. In this sense, the legend of Hiram, “the Widow’s Son,” also signifies
one who remains true to his spiritual identity and quest, even to the abjur-
ing of material existence in exchange for eternal life. Mani’s own martyr-
dom provided a historic precedent for this kind of sacrifice; but since Jesus
was the “Son of the Widow” par excellence, we are reminded that it was his
sacrifice on the Cross that provided the “chief cornerstone” for the con-
struction of the new Temple (Eph 2:20–22; 2 Pet 2:5–8), and which became
the prototype for the reconstructed Masonic “Temple of Solomon.”
It was also an ancient tradition amongst builders that “foundation” or
“completion-sacrifices” be made to ensure the stability of important edi-
fices, in some cases the sacrifice of the builder himself.347 Thus the sacrifice
of the “Widow’s Son,” Hiram, would have carried with it the notion that
the Author of man’s salvation accomplished his work through the giving of
his own life and that the initiate who identifies himself with Hiram-Christ
must do the same by serving his fellow man.
Yet there are still deeper meanings behind the expression “the
Widow’s Son,” which take us back into the provenance of the intertesta-
mental Temple Mystery, the goal of which was to gain immortality through
“fellowship” with the Divine.
Since the biblical account of Hiram Abiff (huram abiv, “Hiram his fa-
ther”; 2 Chr 4:16) tells us only that he was an “able craftsman” (2 Chr 2:11,
14), sent to “discover every device” (LXX architektonesai, to “act as chief
builder”) needed for the construction of the Temple, we must assume that
some of the details in the modern legend were drawn from non-scriptural
sources. After investigating a number of prototypes which might explain
the specific form of the present Hiramic story, Masonic researcher Alex
Horne found it necessary to discard all but three: (1) its possible derivation
from an unknown Mystery Play (already discussed), (2) the “social de-
mands” of general anthropology and folklore” (which need not detain us
here, since these are too vague to yield any positive clues), and (3) the
347 Horne, King Solomon’s Temple, 291.

recently discovered and somewhat bizarre account of Noah’s attempted

resurrection by means of the “five points of fellowship.”
As it turns out, the latter theory and the theory of derivation from a
Mystery Play are not mutually exclusive. J. R. Rylands has in fact suggested
that a Noachic “Miracle-Drama” produced at Wakefield and Newcastle in
the late Middle Ages already contained the “necromantic” events of the
modern Hiram Abiff ritual in a “ludicrous” fashion.348 A purely Masonic
version of this Noah-legend, moreover, was actually discovered in 1936, in
the so-called Graham Ms., a document of probable Scottish origin “not later
than the early seventeenth century.”349 It recounts the thaumeturgic core of
the modern Hiram-legend, this time placed in the personae of Noah and his
three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japeth, who (like Hiram Abiff) were also seek-
ing to recover secret knowledge from their recently deceased father. Horne
further compares this Noachic tale with the parallel legend of Bezaleel, the
Tabernacle builder (Exod 31:2–5), whose two companions after his death
must be deprived of the desired knowledge of holy architecture unless a
quorum of three can somehow be reconstituted to receive it—even by res-
urrecting the dead.
When one compares this story with the present legend of Hiram Abiff
and the rite of the Third Degree, their essential relatedness becomes imme-
diately apparent, for it too involves the revelation of the required secret af-
ter the deceased Noah has been symbolically resurrected.350 Thus, the
seventeenth-century Graham Ms. informs us that
We have it by tradition and yet some reference to Scripture that Shem,
Ham, and Japeth went to their father Noah’s grave to try if they could
find anything about him that would lead them to a veritable secret that this
famous preacher had … Now these three men had already agreed among
themselves that if they did not find the very thing itself, that the first thing
that they did find was to be for them as a secret … So that they came to
the grave, and finding nothing save the dead body almost entirely con-
sumed, they took a grip at a finger and it came away; so from joint to joint;
so to the wrist; and so to the elbow. So they reared up the dead body and
supported it, setting foot to foot, knee to knee, breast to breast, cheek
348 Quoted in Horne, ibid., 342. Compare the thirteenth-century French prose-
account of such events, pp. 439–40, below. This proves that such things were actu-
ally known in the Middle Ages.
349 According to handwriting experts at the British Museum and the English
Public Record Office.

350 Compare Richardson’s Monitor of Free Masonry (Chicago, 1975), 36–38.
426 A GREAT MYSTERY
to cheek, and hand to back, and cried out, “Help, Oh Father” as if they
had said, “O Father of Heaven, help us now, for our earthly father can-
not.” So they laid the dead body down again, not knowing what else to
do. Then one of them said, “There is yet marrow in this bone; and the
second said, “but a dry bone,” and the third said, “it stinketh.” So they
agreed to give it a name, as it is known to Freemasonry to this day…351
Dimly, we recognize in this strange episode the “Saved Savior,” who must
himself be resurrected before he can give life to his disciples.352 But of equal
importance is the ancient idea that their bodies must first be joined by the
“Five Points of Fellowship.” We first encountered these “fellowship
points” in the story of Elijah, who restored life to a slain widow’s son by
stretching himself three times upon the child’s body (note 53, pp. 105–6
above):
O Lord my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with
whom I sojourn, by slaying her son? And he stretched himself upon the
child three times and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord, My God, I
pray to thee, let this child’s soul come unto him again (1 Kgs 17:20–21).
Elisha repeated this process with even more precise “Masonic” details, by
lying upon another woman’s dead son,
mouth upon mouth … eyes upon eyes, and his hands upon his hands…
After this, “the flesh of the child waxed warm” (2 Kgs 4:34–35). Here we
have three of the five “Points of Fellowship.” The same basic form of contact
351Horne, King Solomon’s Temple, 341; Horne’s italics.

352 Richard Reitzenstein, Poimandres (Leipzig, 1904), and Wilhelm Bousset,
Kyrios Christos (Nashville, 1970), especially took this to be a Gnostic idea, ultimately
traceable to the Iranian Gayomart legend, which likewise had a “Redeemed Re-
deemer” who must be saved from his own involvement with matter before he can
save his people. Carston Colpe has now thoroughly discredited these theories in Die
Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (Göttingen, 1961) by demonstrating that their presumed
lines of filiation do not in fact support such a concept. The Iranian sources, fur-
thermore, are much too late to have influenced Christianity in the manner pro-
posed; see Edwin Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism (Grand Rapids, 1973), 30, 70,
96, 103, 165ff. The only “Redeemed Redeemer” who can presently be verified is
the Primal Man of Manichaeism (see pp. 363–64, above), who is now more gener-
ally thought to have been based on the model of Jesus Christ, who also had to be
resurrected from the tomb before he could resurrect others. Others point to man’s
consanguinity with the Wisdom/Logos, who both saves and is saved from material
history.
recurs in the New Testament when Paul restores a young man to life by
“falling upon him and embracing him” (Acts 20:10). The apocryphal ac-
count of a “Young Man’s” resurrection by Jesus (see p. 112, above) may
also contain a faint recollection of such a life-giving embrace (“Jesus
stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, look-
ing upon him, loved him, and began to beseech him that he might be with
him”). Later, we encounter the sacred embrace described in the Seder Eli-
yahu Rabbah (eighth century), during which God promised to raise up the
dead by
lifting them out of the dust, setting them on their feet, and placing them
between his knees and pressing them to him.
It adds, moreover, that the Messiah will be the same “Son of the Widow”
whom Elijah had raised from the dead!353
But the most explicit precedent of all for the Masonic “Points of Fel-
lowship”—as described in the Graham Ms.—was the Sacred Embrace which
Jesus bestowed upon the initiate in the Gospel of Thomas, patterned (as we
saw earlier) after the Embracing Cherubim in the Jerusalem Holy of Holies:
When you make eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a
hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an
image, then shall you enter the Kingdom (Log. 22).
The expression “fellowship,” which so often appears in connection
with these sacred embraces, goes back to Paul’s and Peter’s New Testament
practice of referring to Christ’s union with the disciples as koinonia (“fellow-
ship”), showing that those who hope to obtain eternal life with him must
also be willing to share his life and sufferings in the service of others (pp.
138–39, above):
As ye are sharers (koinōnoi) of the sufferings (of Christ), so shall you also
be of the consolation (2 Cor 1:5–7).
That I might know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fel-
lowship of his sufferings (koinōnian tēs pathēmatōn autou), being con-
formed to his death, that if possible I may obtain the resurrection from
the dead (Phil 3:10–11).
He has given us precious and very great promises that you might be-
come sharers (koinōnoi) of the Divine Nature, having escaped the cor-
ruption that is in the world (2 Pet 1:4).
353 See the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 9.527.

428 A GREAT MYSTERY
Additional embraces depicting this saving “fellowship” were preserved in

the Jewish-Christian Odes of Solomon (“Thou hast given us thy fellowship”
(Ode 4); “And I put off darkness, and put on light. And even I myself ac-
quired members … and his everlasting fellowship” (Ode 21:3–5).354 The
Coptic Gospel of Philip similarly retains the Greek word koinōnia to describe
Mary Magdalene’s redemptive relationship with Christ (59:8–9; 63:33), a
relationship which apocryphal writers understood to be that of “consort” or
“wife.”355 This again reflects the widespread tradition in the Western
Church that Mary was the “fallen” human counterpart of the Church,
whom Jesus had come to redeem, even as Hosea’s wife, Gomer, had been
the counterpart of Yahweh’s fallen “Bride,” the spiritually “dead” Israel
(Hos 1–3). By such fellowship, “the holy united itself to the unholy in order
to make it holy” (Andersen and Freedman),356 i.e., shared its Divine Nature
with its defunct “partner” (koinonos) in order to bring her back to life.
Assimilated by medieval stone-workers to their own “trade legends” of
“Hiram the Temple Builder,” the Noachic version of this Sacred Embrace
supplied the magical element for the completed legend of Hiram Abiff, the
Resurrected Master who passes secret knowledge to his followers, just as
the “Living Jesus” passed “secret words” containing eternal life to his disci-
ples in the Gospel of Thomas:
These are the secret words which the Living Jesus spoke and Didymus
Judas Thomas wrote … Whoever finds the explanation of these words
will not taste death (Introduction and Log. 1).
The imparting of secret knowledge by a supernaturally revived Master
also appeared in the very early alchemical literature. We already saw that
Pseudo-Democritus (first century A.D.) was said to have received the se-
crets of alchemical immortality from his dead teacher, Ostanes (p. 392,
above). The idea of reviving the dead or dying with the sacred embrace of a
living person also makes a surprising appearance in Gustave Flaubert’s
short story, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaler (1875). Here we read how
Julian, whose vocation it was to ferry travelers across the river adjoining his
inn, one day revives a dying Leper by lying against him, thus sharing his body
heat with the expiring Stranger:
See pp. 182–87, above, for the complete texts on the “embrace of fellow-
354
ship” in the Odes of Solomon.

355 See pp. 301ff, above.
356 Hosea, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY, 1980), 165.
“Take off thy clothes, that I may have thy body’s warmth!” Julian
took off his clothes and lay down on the bed again, naked as when he
was born; and he felt the Leper’s skin against his thigh, colder than a
serpent and rough as a file. He tried to hearten him, and the other an-
swered in gasps:
“Ah, I am dying! Come closer, warm me! Not with the hands; no,
with thy whole body!”
Julian stretched himself completely over him, mouth to mouth and
chest on chest.
Then the Leper clasped him, and his eyes suddenly became as bright
as stars; his hair drew out like sunbeams … An abundance of delight, a
superhuman joy flooded into Julian’s soul as he lay swooning; and he
who still clasped him in his arms grew taller, ever taller, until his head
and feet touched the two walls of the hut. The roof flew off, the firma-
ment unrolled—and Julian rose towards the blue spaces, face to face with
Our Lord Jesus, who carried him to heaven (trans. Arthur McDowall;
our emphasis).
One immediately wonders what Flaubert’s sources for this remarkable
account of Christ’s life-giving embrace might have been. Was it deliberately
patterned after the Masonic embrace? Flaubert himself claimed to have de-
rived it from a thirteenth-century stained-glass window in the Cathedral at
Rouen, which depicts the life and adventures of St. Julian. But this window
merely shows St. Julian ferrying a stranger—who turns out to be Christ—
across the river and being rewarded with eternal life.
For the embrace itself, we must turn to a parallel thirteenth-century
prose account of St. Julian’s life, also known to Flaubert in the free version
of Lecointre-Dupont (1830), which disguises Christ as a Leper who must be
saved by contact with a woman’s body—in this case, Julian’s wife! Before
the wife is able to oblige with the necessary embrace, however, the Leper
blesses the couple for their proffered kindness and disappears.357 The fer-
ryman’s wife was of course a figure for the New Testament “Bride of
Christ,” i.e., the Church, she who must be willing to do for others what
Christ is willing to do for her (cf. John 15:13 with 13:38). This, then, must
have been the original form of Julian’s embrace, at least as the anonymous
medieval author understood it, embodying once again the ancient notion
that one can be “warmed” into life by a sacred “sexual” contact:
357 See Benjamin F. Bart and Robert Francis Cook, The Legendary Sources of
Flaubert’s Saint Julien (Toronto, 1977), 134–36.

430 A GREAT MYSTERY
Dame, fet il, il me covenist char de fame por moi eschaufer … Per lui sé ge ça venuz
… (Madame, he said, it is fitting that I have the body of a woman to
warm me … That is why I have come here…).358
Flaubert, however, for reasons of his own, chose to transfer this embrace
directly to Christ and Julian, perhaps in order to produce a more “conven-
tionalized” version of it, such as contemporary Masons were acquainted
with.
The idea of portraying Christ as a “Leper” was also very old, dating at
least to the first quarter of the second century, when Aquila translated
Isaiah 53:4 (“we did esteem him as stricken”) as “we did esteem him as
haphēmenon,” i.e., “leprous.” The same tradition appeared in the Talmud and
Midrash, which describe the expected Messiah as a “Leper” (b. Sanhedrin
98a, 98b; Sepher Zerubbabel).359 But the Old French account may also have
been based on the biblical belief that the sick and dying could be resusci-
tated by means of an intimate embrace, as, for example, when a beautiful
maiden was placed in bed with the ailing King David in order to revive him.
Yet due to his weakened condition, “the king knew her not,” thereby pre-
cipitating a grave crisis in the kingdom, for David must now cease to be
king and make way for a successor. Here again is the idea that sexual union
transfers life. Thus the LXX specifies, “let her excite him and lie with him,”
just as Julian’s wife intended to do for the leprous Christ.
But a more direct connection between the Graham Ms. and the tradi-
tions of the Bible may be found in Eusebius’ fourth-century Church History
(10.4). This time it is the carcass of the bride who is foul and loathsome,
just like the “stinking” dead bones that the Masons hoped to resurrect. Eu-
sebius, however, has added Bezaleel to the names of Solomon, Noah, and
Hiram as archetypal builders and restorers of the Temple—which is in fact
the Church herself (Matt 26:61; Mark 14:58; John 2:19). The Talmud also
assigned special wisdom to the figure of Bezaleel, claiming that he “knew
how to combine the letters by which the heavens and the earth were cre-
ated” (b. Berakoth, 55a). Indeed, he was said to have been filled with God’s
Spirit, as well as with the secret knowledge by which the “heavens were
358 Ibid., 48. It should be noted that Flaubert transformed Julian’s unsuccessful
attempts to warm the cold stranger with his own limbs prior to the intended em-
brace with the wife into the final embrace itself, omitting entirely her role in the
matter. See ibid., 46–47, 135, 151.
359 See Joachim Jeremias, “pais theou,” in TDNT, 5:690; Raphael Patai, The Mes-
siah Texts (New York, 1979), 20, 31–32, 105.

established” and the “depths broken up” (Prov 3: 19–20). Clearly, Bezaleel
was already a well-known figure for the Creator, and so he would be for the
“Hiram Abiff” of the Freemasons.
In the section entitled “Panegyric on the Splendor of Our Affairs,”
Eusebius singles out this symbolic Creator, “Bezaleel,” as the “Chief Archi-
tect” of the restored Temple:
Another Zerubbabel superadding a glory to the Temple of God, much
greater than the former (Church History, 10.4).
This “great glory,” he adds, was foreshadowed by Hiram’s building of the
Temple at Tyre, the original prototype for the Jerusalem Temple. He then
recounts how “Bezaleel” succeeded in raising an eternal edifice which will
never again pass away. The following account is condensed from Eusebius’
rather lengthy text, but we have preserved his characteristic language, in
order to show its “proto-Masonic” allusions (here italicized):
Now the Savior has come to his Holy Hill. Seeing his Bride lying deso-
late upon the ground, he stretches forth his hands and raises up her dead carcass,
causing her to stand upright. She who was assailed by the batteries of her enemies
and left for dead upon the earth becomes a restored Temple, whose chief Cor-
nerstone is the Savior himself. In its Holy of Holies the Spouse reclaims
his Wife—a woman once deserted and rejected—now clothed in glory
and ornaments befitting a royal Bride. Then seeing her promised sons,
she asks, “Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children and
am a Widow?” Yet her promised restoration was inscribed of old on Sacred
Tablets, and is now brought to reality by “Bezaleel,” the new and excel-
lent “Zerubbabel,” our most peaceful “Solomon,” i.e., Jesus Christ, the
Architect of the New Temple. Wonderful and mighty is this work, but
more wonderful than wonders are these archetypes, these renewals of
divine and spiritual buildings in our souls, which the Son of God him-
self framed and fashioned according to his own image, and to which
everywhere and in all respects he imparted the likeness of God (ibid.).
Eusebius then summarizes the overall meaning of his parable as follows:
A kind of intellectual image on earth of those things beyond the vault of
heaven … A Temple of celestial types, a Temple given in symbols and
figures (ibid.).
We are especially struck by his references to the “dead carcass” of the
Church (cf. the Scottish Graham Ms. and its “stinking dead body”), which
432 A GREAT MYSTERY
the Savior now causes to “stand upright” (Graham Ms: “reared up”).360 She
who was “assailed by the batteries of her enemies” also reminds us of the
mortally wounded Hiram Abiff, who was at once a symbol of Christ and
the Christian who aspires to be identified with him. The “restored Temple”
is of course the central goal of Freemasonry, being the “true spiritual
house” which will provide the “way into the truth and the life” (Dumfries
No. 4 Ms., Catechism). Meanwhile, as the Church was formerly a “Widow”
rejected by her Husband (cf. Isa 54:6), her children are still appropriately
called “sons of the Widow,” a common designation for members of the
Masonic Fraternity.
The importance of a “quorum of three” in the stories of Bezaleel and
Noah’s sons may have had a precedent in the Gospel of Thomas, which says:
Where there are three gods, they are gods; where there are two or one, I
am with him (Log. 30).
This rather obscure statement appears to have obvious connections with
Matt 19:20:
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in
the midst of them.
The author of Thomas also seems to have believed that whenever two disci-
ples are united to Christ-Wisdom, all three become gods, for the power of the
Living Jesus is shared with the others through spiritual koinonia. Such a
thought may also stand behind the notion of an obligatory quorum of three
in the Masonic legends, where either Noah’s three sons, or Bezaleel’s two
companions plus himself must be present before secret knowledge can be
shared. One is also reminded of the Mishnaic law forbidding the imparting
of secret knowledge to more than two or three at a time:
The forbidden degrees (Lev 18:6) may not be expounded before three
persons, nor the story of Creation before two, nor the Chariot (Ezek
1:4ff) before one alone, unless he is a Sage who understands of his own
knowledge (Hagigah 2:1).
This restriction to two or three communicants at one time is still observed
in the granting of the Masonic Royal Arch Degree, which stipulates that
three candidates must be present, for it is then that the true name of God is
360 Compare the Seder Eliyahu Rabbah, where God “sets the dead on their feet”
and embraces them.

revealed, as it was anciently known by the three Masters, King Solomon,

Hiram of Tyre, and Hiram Abiff.
It is also claimed by Freemasons that the kind of knowledge so des-
perately sought by Noah’s sons was preserved inside of the Twin Pillars of
the Temple, Jachin and Boaz, “the better to serve as safe repositories for
the archives of Masonry against all conflagrations and inundations” (Official
Iowa Monitor). Yet these have almost certainly been confused with the “Pil-
lars of Enoch,” or “Pillars of Seth.” The latter were described for the first
time by Josephus (Antiquities, 1.2:3), and eventually made their way by
means of the fourteenth-century Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden into Ma-
sonic Tradition. They too were constructed to preserve secret knowledge
from the coming catastrophe of fire and water; Alex Horne has shown that
they were later conflated with the Pillars of Solomon’s Temple, which
thenceforth took over their function as repositories of Masonic lore.361 It is
also worth noting that in the Ostanes legend, which we mentioned earlier,
Pseudo-Democritus found the secret knowledge of his resurrected Master
engraved inside of an ancient pillar.
The recently discovered Nag Hammadi library also contains a tractate
describing Seth’s pillars, entitled The Three Steles of Seth (the number in-
creased to three to symbolize the triadic nature of the God it espouses).
While the Nag Hammadi text was probably unknown to our Masonic
sources—which mention only twin pillars—it may give us some idea of
what early writers believed to have been contained on Seth’s steles.
Josephus claims that this was astronomical knowledge; The Three Steles of Seth
makes it an ecstatic ascent through the heavens, ending in a vision of the
“first eternal, preexistent One” (124:18–25). This, as we showed earlier, was
also Philo’s interpretation of the Temple Mystery; in fact, the Temple was
for him a model of the Cosmos and the place for gaining access to God’s
Presence.
The Nag Hammadi text further describes union with God as the sole
means of becoming divine. Its author—who was “one of the multiplicity
begotten according to the division of all who are really one” (123:6–9)—
prays that Barbelo/Wisdom will again “unite us as thou hast been united …
according to the image of the preexistent One” (123:30–124:5). The result
will be the initiate’s identification with God. This may give us a better idea
of what was traditionally associated with the “Pillars of Seth,” or the “Pillars
361 Horne, King Solomon’s Temple, 235; see also his 221–38.
434 A GREAT MYSTERY
of Enoch” and a faint memory of what was once taught behind the twin
pillars of the Jerusalem Temple.
The same basic doctrine would be found on today’s “Pillars of
Seth”—now replaced by the Pillars of the Masonic Temple—for the mod-
ern Widow’s Son is still encouraged to realize that his destiny is the same as
that of his Resurrected Master. This was of course the heart and core of the
Philonic Temple Mystery, and the real significance of the “Five Points of
Fellowship,” where “like is joined to like” and reanimated in union with the
Logos-Wisdom. In fact, their similarity to the Sacred Embrace in the Gospel
of Thomas is so great that we may with confidence assume that the original
Wisdom Mystery was the ultimate spring from which the whole conception
flowed.
POSSIBLE SURVIVALS OF THE WISDOM MYSTERY IN THE FAR EAST

We have finally to consider the possibility of the influence of the Embrac-
ing Cherubim outside of the Judaeo-Christian cultural sphere. We have al-
ready discussed a possible route by which alchemical ideas were brought
from China to the Near East as early as Alexander the Great’s conquests in
320 B.C.362 In one of the initial volumes of his Science and Civilisation in
China, Joseph Needham also discusses the Silk Trade Route, as well as the
various sea-lanes in use during the first and second centuries of our era, all
of which may have played a significant part in mediating Gnostic, hetero-
dox, and orthodox Jewish and Christian ideas to the Far East.363 Carl W.
Bishop especially calls attention to the role of northwestern China in this
cultural exchange, where travelers from the regions of Bactria, Sogdia, Per-
sia, and elsewhere had entered from the West since time immemorial.364
That such influences were actually shared from an early date is further
demonstrated by the fact that there were living in Alexandria at the height
of its cosmopolitan prominence people who had come from as far off as
India.365 Indeed, the Indian emperor, Asoka, had already sent Buddhist mis-
362Needham, Science and Civilisation, 5.4.387–88.

363Ibid., 1, figure 32, for a map.
364 Ibid., 1:163–64; Carl Whiting Bishop, “The Geographical Factor in the De-
velopment of Chinese Civilization,” Geographical Review 12 (1922): 19–41, esp. 26;

Balaji Mundkur, The Cult of the Serpent, 175; Donald McKenzie, Myths of China and
Japan, 275–77.
365 Dio Chrysostom, Thirty Second Discourse to the People of Alexandria, 36, 40 in
Jack Finegan, Hidden Records in the Life of Jesus (Philadelphia, 1969), 67.
sionaries to Egypt as early as the third century B.C.366 Eusebius, on the

other hand, records that Pantaenus had been on a Christian mission to In-
dia during the second century of our own era. When he arrived, he discov-
ered persons who already knew of Christ, and who were using the Gospel
of Matthew “in Hebrew letters,” supposedly left there by Bartholomew
(Church History, 5.10).367
Jean Daniélou also raises the possibility of early Pythagorean and In-
dian influences upon the Gnostic, Carpocrates,368 who taught the very non-
Jewish doctrine of reincarnation. Origen (Commentary on John, 6.7) adds that
there were even Alexandrian Jews who had begun to entertain this unchar-
acteristic belief.
While most forms of Buddhism did not teach true reincarnation, In-
dian popular religions did, along with assorted theories of emanation, the
threefold division of souls, and the ascent of the spirit after death through
the planetary spheres, all of which would have proven attractive to certain
Jews and Christians in the West. Several authors have in fact found traces
of these ideas in both the Gnostic system of Basilides369 and the
Manichaean Gnosis. We are especially struck with the similarity of the path
taken by the ascending “sparks of light” in the latter—a path leading heav-
enward via the moon, sun, and Milky Way—and the Hindu Pitriyana (“Way
of the Fathers”), as described in the Chandogya Upanishad,370 demonstrating a
clear case of cultural exchange between India and the Near East.
Edward Conze, speaking at the Messina Colloquium on Gnosticism in
1960, called attention to even more specific parallels between Gnosticism
366 Ibid., 67.

367 Ibid., 73.
368 Buddhism teaches the doctrine of anatta (Skt. anatman), or “no-soul.” It
does, however, believe in a causal chain (pratitya samutpada) in which the conditions
that gave rise to the phenomenon of bodily consciousness (namarupa) re-create the
same thing all over again after death if the practitioner has not broken the chain
successfully. Nevertheless, certain forms of Mahayana Buddhism appear to have
taken over Sankara’s Vedantic idea of a Universal Soul. Popular Buddhism likewise
makes little distinction between the phenomenon of bodily consciousness and an
indestructible “soul.”
369 See J. Kennedy, “Buddhist Gnosticism, the System of Basilides,” Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society (1902): 377–415.

370 Compare Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis, 337–38, and Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of
the Upanishads (New York, 1966), 334–36; Kennedy, “Buddhist Gnosticism,” 381.
See also note 131, p. 363 above.
436 A GREAT MYSTERY
and Late Buddhism, this time showing signs of cross-fertilization from

West to East.371 We have not the time to consider his valuable paper in de-
tail, but must mention that both systems recognized (1) Salvation by knowl-
edge (gnosis, jnana), ignorance being the root-cause of evil; (2) Three levels of
spiritual attainment; (3) The critical role of Wisdom (Sophia, Prajna) in cos-
mogenesis and redemption; (4) A difference between the Quiescent God-
head and the active creator-god (Demiurge), and (5) Reunion with God (even
sexual union) as the means of redeeming the initiate from his painful in-
volvement with phenomenality.372
The figure of Wisdom is of special interest to us, since from around
200 B.C. both Buddhism and Judaism spoke of a divine female figure (Pra-
jna), who was both “mother” and “nurse,” a “hypostasis” of the Law (Torah,
Dharma), God’s “Consort,” a dispenser of knowledge, the “food and drink”
of life, and a form of the Supernal Light.373 Like Wisdom in the West, Pra-
jna was a virtual goddess with a creative function. This is particularly true in
the Buddhist Tantric systems. In the Hevjara Tantra, for example, we are
told that “Prajna is called Mother, because it is she who gave birth to the
world.”374
Yet Wisdom’s role in the Tantric creation of the world is so different
from that of ordinary Buddhist thought (where true Wisdom removes the
illusion of the world) that the newer idea must have come from else-
where.375 There was also a radical new departure when the Buddhist Tantras
began to attribute innumerable female consorts to the Buddhas and Bodhi-
sattvas. Significantly, the girls involved in ritual intercourse with Tantric
initiates were also called prajnas (“wisdoms”).376
But what perhaps most distinguished this new movement from the
rest of Indian thought was that Tantrism (like the Gnostic Mystery in the
West) began to view ritual intercourse as an instrument of salvation. Fur-
thermore, this soteriological use of sexual relations was justified by the same
kind of antinomianism which characterized the Gnostic libertines, arguing
371 “Buddhism and Gnosis,” in Origini dello Gnosticismo, ed. Bianchi (Leiden,
1967), 651–67.
372 Conze also describes other similarities which are not as important for our
discussion; see ibid., 652–65.

373 Ibid., 656.
374 Ibid.
375 Ibid., 657.
376 Ibid. They are also known alternately as vidyas (“thoughts”), which corre-
spond roughly to the Gnostic ennoia (“thought, knowledge”).

that the cosmic value of ritual sex was such that it transcended the require-
ments of common morality.
Both the Vedas and the Upanishads had of course long viewed conju-
gal union as a form of hieros gamos, prescribing sexual relations as the appro-
priate kind of sympathetic magic for promoting the fertility of flocks and
fields.377 The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, for example, commended the union
of husband and wife as symbols and promoters of cosmic fertility:
I am the heaven; thou, the earth; her lap is a sacrificial altar; her hairs,
the sacrificial grass; her skin, the soma-press. The two lips of the vulva
are the fire in the middle. Verily, as great as is the world of him who sac-
rifices with the strength-libation, so great is the world of him who prac-
tices sexual intercourse, knowing this (VI 4–20).
Carried out on a group level, such intercourse was thought to have a pro-
found effect on the fertility of the earth. A few Brahmanic texts also per-
ceived ritual union to be a form of the mysterium coniunctionis, in which phe-
nomenal opposites are symbolically reconciled (Aitareya Aranyaka, III:l.6;
Sankhayana Aranyaka, VII 14). Nevertheless, it is not until the event of Tan-
trism that the soteriological value of sexual union for the human soul was
developed. Shortly after the third century, the Tantric iconography of divine
couples in sacred embrace—like the two Cherubim in the Jerusalem Holy
of Holies—appeared for the first time in both Buddhist and Hindu sources.
The most famous examples of this Tantric iconography, showing Pra-
jna (Wisdom) in redemptive union with her male counterpart, are the noto-
rious yab-yum (“Father-Mother”) statues of Tibet (see figure 2), remarkably
like the uniting figures of Fu Hsih and Nü Kua in China a few centuries
earlier.
A simultaneous development of Tantric Hinduism also took place for
the first time, depicting the divine copulation of Brahman’s male-female
counterparts, Shiva and Shakti. Shiva was the one who dreamed things into
existence, and Shakti was the one who gave them phenomenal substance.
Examples were soon to be found everywhere in India, for example, the
erotic carvings in the caves at Elephanta, or the notorious Temple at Khar-
juraho, showing countless depictions of the Divine Intercourse which gives
birth to the worlds—“in play, as it were.”378
It is this same Shakti who also appears in popular religion as “Kali, the
Black Goddess.” Like the Shaivite Shakti, she too is a Cosmic Progenitress
377 Mircea Eliade, Yoga (New York, 1958), 254–59.

378 Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India (New York, 1956), 564.
438 A GREAT MYSTERY
who both creates and destroys. In numerous folk paintings she is shown
straddling the erect phallus of the dead Shiva in a hieros gamos, restoring him
to life as part of the never-ending cycle of birth, death, and recreation.379
More abstract symbols of this soteriological copulation are the lingam
and yoni (or pillar and ring), found together in most worshippers’ homes
even today (see figure 2). The word lingam is probably an ancient Dravidian
term meaning “plow” or “penis,”380 but its soteriological incorporation into
Tantric designs for redemptive purposes (mantras or yantras) was also rela-
tively late, coincidental with the general introduction of Tantric iconogra-
phy into India.
When we consider the great similarity of these Tantric developments
in India and Tibet to the sexual rites of the Near East, it becomes immedi-
ately apparent that some kind of cultural exchange must have taken place
between the two areas. “It is a fact,” writes Edward Conze, “that both Ma-
hayana (the new form of Buddhism) and the Tantras developed in the bor-
der regions of India which were exposed to the impact of Roman, Hellenis-
tic, Iranian, and Chinese civilization, and we also know that the Buddhists
were in close contact with the Thomas Christians in South India and the
Manichaeans in Central Asia.”381
Yet while both the Buddhist and the Hindu Tantrics developed ritual
copulatory techniques remarkably similar to those of the Gnostic Bridal
Chamber, it is strange that the Hindus chose to assign the active role to the
female, while the male was active for the Buddhists. Thus, in Buddhist Tan-
trism, woman is prajna, or yum, static and quiescent, and the male is upaya, or
yab, dynamic and phenomenally active. In Hindu Tantra, on the other hand,
the woman represents the goddess Shakti, active and creative, while the
male represents the god Shiva, quiescent and dreaming. This again suggests
that the various forms of Tantric iconography were traded back and
forth—or even copied from foreign sources—then applied to their respec-
tive systems in an eclectic manner. We also note that Tantric texts first ap-
379 See Philip Rawson, The Art of Tantra (London, 1973), pl. 88.
380 Eliade, Yoga, 352–53.
381 Conze, “Buddhism and Gnosis,” 665. Was Thomasine Christianity espe-
cially acquainted with the Gospel of Thomas? If so, the ritual embrace described in
Logia 22 and 108 may have been partially disseminated through the Thomasine
mission in the East.
pear around A.D. 600,382 though “Tantric” (copulatory) statues were known
as early as A.D. 300.383 But by the time the latter reached Tibet, the goddess
was shown sitting astride the god’s lap, always facing him—a posture quite
unknown elsewhere—further demonstrating a conscious process of selec-
tion and assimilation which must have taken place under the influence of
external models (see figure 2).
Since the Jews were reticent to spread knowledge of their secret rites,
it is most likely that any influence which the Embracing Cherubim may
have had upon Tantric practice was indirect, coming perhaps through the
Gnostic Bridal Chamber rite, which was well-known throughout the Near
East during the early years of the Common Era. G. Tucci has in fact noted
important similarities between Manichaean Gnosticism and Tantra, particu-
larly the idea that the semen generated during sexual relations is identical
with the Divine Light (bodhicitta; pp. 373–75, above).384 The Guhya Samaja
Tantra also says that the goal of ritual intercourse (maithuna) is to stimulate
the internal production of bodhicitta, or “the primal splendor that created the
world.”385 Mircea Eliade also believes that Near Eastern influences helped
form Tibetan myths about the origin of man from the Primordial Light.386
Since the Light was trapped in matter at the time of creation, Tibetan ritual
copulation aimed at suppressing ejaculation so that the Light might be re-
covered, very much like the Phibionite practices which we encountered in
the West (pp. 311–14, above). Alan Watts’ suggestion that the Manichaeans
practiced a form of ritual coitus reservatus called Karezza, which the Crusaders
presumably brought back to Europe as the Catharist art of Courtly Love,387
would also indicate that such a ritual had indeed spread from the Holy Land
as far east as Iran. Unfortunately we are reduced to mere speculation here,
though Karezza was probably known there about the time that Tantric prac-
tices became prevalent in India.
382 Rawson, Art of Tantra, 15; Eliade, Yoga, 400–401, suggests that a few Tantric
texts existed even before the fifth century, but certainly “not before the first centu-
ries of our era.”
383 Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition (Garden City, NY, 1970), 213.
384 “Some Glosses upon Guhyasamaja,” Melanges Bouddhiques et Chinoises 3
(1935): 349ff; quoted in Mircea Eliade, The Two and the One (New York, 1965), 40–
41.
385 Eliade, The Two, 41.
386 Ibid., 41–42.
387 Man and Nature, 145–46.
440 A GREAT MYSTERY
To summarize, Eliade concludes that “we must reckon with possible

Gnostic influences, which could have reached India by way of Iran over the
Northwest frontier.”388 The result there was “a great philosophical and reli-
gious movement” which “assumed the form of a pan-Indian vogue from
the sixth century onward.” Almost overnight, “Tantrism becomes im-
mensely popular, not only among philosophers and theologians, but also
among the actual practitioners of the religious life (ascetics, yogins, etc.),
and its prestige also reaches the ‘popular’ strata.”389
Eliade finally remarks that this new Tantrism bears “more than one
curious parallel” with the “mysterio-sophic current” (i.e., the Wisdom Mys-
tery) of early Christianity, in which the traditions of the Gnostics, Hermetic
doctrines, Graeco-Egyptian alchemy, and the antique mysteries all come
together.390 In short, Eliade’s research suggests that the Judaeo-Christian
Wisdom Mystery was one of the prime influences on the creation of Indian
Tantrism, with its sexual techniques and its colorful iconography.
Among the “curious parallels” mentioned by Eliade, we must espe-
cially call attention to the eclectic manner in which Philo’s Cherubim and
the ritual partners in yab-yum were assigned their philosophical values, sug-
gesting the possible trading of foreign influences. According to Philo,
Cherub “A” represented
The Male: Father, Husband, Begetter, Creator, Reason, Goodness; he
was peaceable, gentle and beneficent.
Cherub “B” was
The Female: Mother, Wife, Bearer, Nurturer, Wisdom, Sovereignty; she
was legislative, chastising and correcting.391
In the Buddhist scheme, we have the following pairs of characteristics:
The Male: Positive, dynamic, instrumental, generative.
The Female: Negative, passive, intuitive-wisdom, bearing.
The Hindus, on the other hand, chose to reverse these philosophical attrib-
utes:
The Male: pure consciousness, passivity.
388Yoga, 202; our emphasis. See also his 206–7.

389Ibid., 200. Eliade gives a detailed summary of the early literature of Tan-
trism in this same work, pp. 309–404.
390 Ibid., 202.
391 See Patai’s list in Hebrew Goddess, 115.
The Female: worldly phenomena, activity.

Agehananda Bharati also comments on the curious significance of pilgrim-
age in these Tantric practices, a tradition long-known to the Semitic nations
in the West. “Although pilgrimage figures importantly in the religions of
India,” he observes, “it never had any canonical status in non-tantric tradi-
tions.”392 Was this important difference also due to influences from the Se-
mitic West? As in the Near East, the center of pilgrimage was considered to
be the seat of a goddess, which the pilgrims ritually circumambulated.393
392 Bharati, Tantric Tradition, 85. He adds that circumambulation of shrines is
still common amongst the non-Aryan peoples of India, “but it is hard to say
whether these autochthonous groups are preserving a pre-Aryan custom or
whether they have simply taken it over from the Hindu ritual” (ibid., 93). In the
latter case, the question would become: where did the Hindu Tantric ritual origi-
nate?
393 Sacred stones were ritually circled by Semitic pilgrims in pre-Islamic times,
even as modern pilgrims circle the Ka‘ba today. Animals were sacrificed to them,
and their blood smeared on the stones. Individuals stroked and kissed them, in
order to bind themselves as closely as possible to the deities represented therein.
Maria Höfner, “Die vorislamitische Religionen Arabiens,” in Die Religionen
Altsyriens, Altarabiens und der Mandäer (Stuttgart, 1970), 359. This must have been a
universal Semitic custom, because we learn from comparative and archaeological
studies that other ancient tribes—including the Hebrews—venerated stones (masse-
both) with similar offerings of blood and fat, and with much embracing and kissing.
H. Ringgren, Israelite Religion (Philadelphia, 1966), 24–25. Some masseboth excavated
in Palestine appear to have been “smoothed as if by the repeated contact of pious
hands” (G. A. Barrois, “Pillar,” in IDB, 3:816), suggestive of the intimate contact
which early Israelites had with such images (Ezek 16:17). Female pilgrims, before
the days of Mohammed, made the circuit of the Black Stone naked (cf. Exod 32:25)
while reciting obscene verses. Patai, Sex and Family Life in the Middle East (Garden
City, NY, 1959), 152. According to W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the
Semites, London, 1927, 687, Palestinian women in the nineteenth century still bared
their breasts while praying. A sacred prostitute was kept for the early Arabs, who
regarded her services as part of the religious observance. Such was the famous
“Kharga” of the Banu ‘Amir tribe, who considered herself to be “one of the pil-
grimage rites” (Patai, Sex and Family Life, 152). There was also in former times an
altar-feast, at which rain was secured by a Sacred Marriage between a god and a
woman who was led to him ceremonially (Minaean Text RES 3306; in Höfner,
“Die vorislamitischen Religionen,” 338; compare Zech 14:17), while the rest of the
women made a circuit of the shrine where he was established (Sabaean Text Ja 735;
in Höfner, “Die vorislamitischen Religionen,” 338). This is not essentially different
than the habit of Moslem pilgrims even today as they approach the Ka‘ba at Mecca,
442 A GREAT MYSTERY
Such sites were also connected with sacrifice. In Hindu Tantra, this was the
sacrifice of Shiva’s Spouse, who had previously been decapitated, and
whose pieces became the pitha, or “resort” of the goddess.394 In Buddhism,
these pithas were the places where one could rise to Buddhahood through
union with one’s Yogini (female partner, or embodiment of Prajna).395 They
are always four in number, sometimes said to represent the four points of
the compass,396 and sometimes the pudenda, the two nipples and the
tongue of the goddess.397 They were also hypostatized by the Buddhists as
private “temples,”398 i.e., spiritual locations where the work of unification
could take place. This naturally included the human body itself, in which
male and female can be brought together as One. It may also be significant
that in the Dravidian South of India, circumambulation of pilgrimage sites
was connected with the worship of the Nagakals (entwining serpent-deities),
whose form was imported from the Sumero-Babylonian caduceus, and which
probably influenced the iconography of the intertwining Fu Hsih and Nü
Kua in China (see figure 1).
The philosophical explanations which we have seen for these various
Tantric phenomena—especially the assigning of symbolic meanings to the
partners of ritual maithuna—all show the same tendency to rationalize estab-
lished ritual techniques, which possessed the character of initiations into a
mythological situation, i.e., the sexual union of Man and God. And though
we cannot presently prove any definite connection between the hierogamy
of the West and maithuna in the East, neither can we dismiss out of hand
the strong impression that what the Embracing Cherubim once represented
in the Jerusalem Temple obtained a wide influence across the Far East dur-
ing the first five or six centuries of the Common Era. In fact, what we seem
to observe is the unfolding of a single mystery-tradition across the entire
Fertile Crescent as far as China, India, and Tibet, showing male and female
chanting the so-called talbiyaht: “Here we come, O Allah, no partner hast thou,”
suggesting that some kind of “espousal” with a god (cf. Jer 2:2) was once part of
the ritual. In fact, the whole purpose of the typical “pilgrimage feast” (Arabic, hajj,
Hebrew hag) appears to have been “espousal” to one’s god, and the obtaining of
the divine blessing which flowed from such a union. We also recall that a hag (KJV
“feast”) was the reason given for Israel’s “pilgrimage” into the desert (Exod 13:6).
394 Bharati, Tantric Tradition, 86, 85.
395 Ibid., 88.
396 Ibid., 89.
397 Ibid., 90.
398 Eliade, Yoga, 198.
Wisdom-figures dispensing their divine gifts through sexual means. If this is

true, then the yab-yum statues of Tibet and the couplings in the caves of
Elephanta may provide a faint reflection of what the Embracing Cherubim
looked like in the Jerusalem Holy of Holies two thousand years ago.
THE TANTRIC SACRED MARRIAGE AND THE TAOIST “GOLDEN

FLOWER”
Tantric copulatory ritual (maithuna) aimed at uniting life’s contraries sexually
in a state of absolute unity (advaja). As in the case of the “ontological sex-
ualization” of Chinese yin and yang, the Hindu Tantric visualized phenome-
nal polarities as manifestations of the passive Shiva and his active Shakti,
whose apparent separation created the illusion of duality and resulted in
human suffering. The goal of the male yogin was therefore to unite the prin-
ciples of Shiva and Shakti within his own body through sexual union with
his female yogini. During the ecstasy of their conjunction, the goddess Shakti
(who sleeps in the form of a serpent [kundalini] at the base of the spine) is
awakened, and rises upward through the spinal column to the top of the
skull, where Shiva dwells, thus becoming one with him. It will therefore be
seen that Shakti is associated with the instinctive and the phenomenal pow-
ers of nature, whereas Shiva is associated with the mental and spiritual.
When these are successfully brought together in the “temple” of the body,
the Shivaite becomes an “androgyne,” or “male-female,” in which all oppo-
sites are reconciled.399
Hindu Tantric sadhana (mystical method) also includes madya (liquor),
mamsa (meat), matsya (fish) and mudra (grain or beans); together with
maithuna, these constitute the “Five M’s” (pancha makara) and are thought of
as offerings to the goddess, as well as the means of providing the necessary
enjoyment for successful Tantric practice. It is said in this connection that
cannahis indica (vijaya) is also used to heighten sexual pleasure.400
Hindus, however, make a distinction between “left-handed” Tantra
(where the “Five M’s” are actually employed) and “right-handed” Tantra,
where substitutes may be used. The latter include various mudras (bodily
399 Eliade, The Two, 117–18; Yoga, 259–67; Sir John Woodroofe (Arthur Ava-
lon), Shakti and Shakta (Madras, 1951), 596–649; Bharati, Tantric Tradition, 263–68.
Bharati’s explanation is by far the most complete and detailed, and should espe-
cially be read in conjunction with his pp. 228–63, which describe the spiritual and
ritual preparation for the final union.
400 Bharati, Tantric Tradition, 251–53.
444 A GREAT MYSTERY
positions), combined with strongly visualized mental images, amounting to

internalized sexual rites.401 A yogin, however, should practice actual maithuna
at least once in his life to bind himself to his yogini; thereafter he can obtain
supreme samapatti (“attainment of oneness”) with her by exercises of a sub-
jective nature.402 Such interior exercises include the achieving of “immobil-
ity of breath, thought and bindu,” i.e., the retention of the life-force con-
tained in the semen; thus, the kundalini can again be awakened and caused
to rise as if the woman were actually present.403
Actual maithuna begins with the dedication of a triangular mantra (cos-
mic “temple-diagram”) on which the candidates will sit. The initiate’s
“Shakti” is then brought in, dressed in a red robe, and purified with water.
He touches her forehead, eyes, nostrils, mouth, arms, and thighs, consecrat-
ing her as a form of the divine Mother. He then engages in ritual copulation
“father-face to mother-face,” i.e., Shiva to Shakti, finally casting his semen as a
sacrificial offering “into the fire,” while visualizing within himself the one-
ness of the god and the goddess.404
Buddhist maithuna, on the other hand, aims at the retention of the se-
men. Indeed, one of the major texts of Buddhist Tantra, the Jnanasiddhi,
says, “Having brought down the ‘thunderbolt’ (symbol of the god) into the
‘lotus’ (symbol of the goddess), he should not let go of the bodhicitta (the
Light within the semen).405 Buddhist maithuna also makes little use of the
other “M’s,” for ritual union by itself is thought to be sufficient for imme-
diately achieving unification with the Divine, this being realized through the
“Father-Mother Oneness” of the initiate and his woman. Yab-yum is there-
fore called the “Short Path” to Enlightenment and is supposed to replace
many lifetimes of ordinary good works and proper thinking. The same pre-
liminaries, however, are observed: the mandala, in whose center the rite is to
take place; the ritual purification; and the proper visualizations to direct the
results.406
At the time of his first initiation, the adept is also given his own yidam
(indwelling feminine deity), the one whom he will later imagine to have
within him when he practices his sadhana. This he carries out in his house-
hold shrine, surrounded by the appropriate ritual articles, such as the bell
401 Eliade, Yoga, 248, 261.

402 Ibid., 261–62.
403 Ibid., 248–49.
404 Bharati, Tantric Tadition, 263–65.
405 Ibid., 296
406 John Blofeld, The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet (New York, 1970), 147–68.
(symbolizing Female Wisdom) and the scepter (symbolizing the Thunder-

bolt, or male potency).407 Bodhicitta is first generated by various mantric
sounds and meditations.408 Seated within his mandala—which is now the
“temple” of his sought-after deity409—he performs yab-yum with his partner,
seeking to realize the reconciliation of life’s polarities. In the process, he
becomes upaya (“means, instrumentality”), and she prajna (“Transcendent
Wisdom”); he is karuna (“Compassion”), she is šunyata (“the Void,” the
non-phenomenal). Together, they merge as a single mahasukha (“Great
Bliss”). As the initiate successfully identifies himself with these primal quali-
ties, the “Body of all the Buddhas” begins to appear at the base of his skull,
whose light-rays finally dissolve into his own being.410 Yet not only are the
poles of phenomenal existence reconciled in this manner, but also phe-
nomenality (Sangsara) and Nirvana, for ultimately All is One (“How can Nir-
vana not be Sangsara, and Sangsara not be Nirvana?” ).411
This form of worship belongs to the Prajnaparamita (“Perfection of
Wisdom”) school, around which Mahayana Buddhism developed just prior
to the time of Christ, and which pictured Ultimate Reality as something
void of antinomies and phenomenal attributes (“neither existence nor non-
existence”). Popular imagination, however, represented this Reality as a
transcendent goddess-figure, in whom all opposites are reconciled as an
unspeakable and ineffable Truth, but which can be directly experienced be-
cause she is everything which is:
She is unstained, and the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source
of light, and from everyone in the triple world she removes darkness …
She is identical with knowledge. She never produces any dharma (object
of sense) because she has forsaken the residues relating to both kinds of
coverings, those produced by defilement and those produced by the
cognizable. Neither does she stop any dharma. Herself unstopped and
unproduced is the Perfection of Wisdom. She is the Mother of the Bo-
dhisattvas (Ashtasahasrika, VII 170–71).
407 Ibid., 182–85.

408 Ibid., 185–88.
409 Ibid., 201, 203–9.
410 Blofeld, Tantric Mysticism, 209–12.
411 The best philosophical surveys of Buddhist Tantra are perhaps those of S.
B. Dasgupta, An Introduction to Tantric Buddhism (Calcutta, 1958), 77–144, and Her-

bert V. Guenther, The Life and Teaching of Naropa (Oxford, 1963), 131–249.
446 A GREAT MYSTERY
Tantric practice in fact aimed at perceiving this divine Wisdom as pure ex-
perience; and since Reality is ultimately non-dual, it can be found in even that
which is worldly and human:
Because the Buddha-cognition is contained in the mass of beings,
Because it is immaculate and non-dual by nature,
Because those who belong to Buddha’s lineage go towards it as their
reward,
Therefore all animate beings have the germ of Buddhahood in them.
The Body of the perfect Buddha irradiates everything,
Its Suchhess (true Reality) is undifferentiated,
And the road to Buddhahood is open to all,
At all times have all living beings the germ of Buddhahood within them.
(Ratnagotnavibhaga, 1.27–28).
This of course means that sexuality can be a direct experience of the divine.
Indeed, by undergoing ritual yab-yum as a noetic event, the psychological
data of “subject” and “object” are merged into a single perception, and trans-
formed into pure “Buddha-cognition,” i.e., non-divided bodhicitta. The initi-
ate who becomes one with this Ultimate Light—both within and without—
is redeemed from mortality, because he already stands at the center of the
Eternal.
It was pointed out earlier that ancient China, though long acquainted
with the Taoist doctrine of yin and yang, never showed an indigenous inter-
est in fertility rites. Nevertheless, from about the second century on—just
about the time when Tantra was evolving in India—Chinese alchemists
suddenly began to employ sexual yoga as a ritual means of providing im-
mortality.
As we noted earlier, Chinese alchemists believed that the processes of
nature were controlled by the mating of male and female principles (yang
and yin), manifest on a phenomenal level as the “Five Elements.” The most
important of these elements was cinnabar (mercuric sulfide), an element
supposedly found in the human body and associated with life because of its
blood-red color. Upon “distillation,” it yielded the mysterious “quick-silver”
(metallic mercury), which alchemists believed could be transmuted into
gold. Or if eaten, it was supposed that it could produce a vision of the Im-
mortals in P’eng-lai and their secrets of eternal life.412
These traditional elements of belief came together during the early
years of the Common Era as the Neo-Taoist “Interior Gods’ Hygiene
412 Holmes Welch, Taoism, 99–100. See note 210, p. 387, above.
School,”413 the aim of which was to regulate the forces controlling the hu-
man body, much as yin and yang controlled the activities of the universe,
thereby leading to longevity (macrobiotics), or even to immortality.
Man’s “interior gods” were presided over by the Triad of the “Three
Ones,” each localized in his own “Field of Cinnabar.” They in turn were
controlled by T’ai I, the “Great One” who lives in the “Field of Cinnabar”
at the top of the head.414 It was the manipulation of these inner “gods”—
associated with the various substances in the body—that provided the ra-
tionale for the sexual “alchemy” which suddenly began to characterize late
Taoism.
The first of these new “alchemical” practices was an erotic rite known
as the “Union of Breaths,” supposedly invented around A.D. 175 by the
“Three Changs,” who were the early governors of the Neo-Taoist Church.
Where they first obtained their idea can only be guessed; but its aim was
remarkably similar to that of Tantric Yoga, namely, to cause the light in the
semen from the lower “Field of Cinnabar” to rise and unite with the vital
essence above, thus forming the “Mysterious Embryo” which would even-
tually develop into a “pure new body.” Thus, when the adept died, his
“pure body” would be released and become immortal.415
The Taoist Church even made sexual alchemy the object of collective
orgies, which scandalized the neighboring Buddhists and Confucians with
their unbridled promiscuity. After joining in a square-dance called the “coil-
ing of the Dragon” (yang) and the “playing of the Tiger” (yin), the partici-
pants retired to private booths to engage in ritual intercourse. Now they
frequently exchanged partners, for the man’s yang (concentrated in the se-
men) was most effectively nourished by the female orgasm. Hence it was
desirable for a man to have relations with as many female partners as possi-
ble, inducing a climax in each, but postponing his own until the last. Thus,
he achieved the maximal internal production of “light” without losing it
prematurely. In the end, he “returned the semen to repair the brain” by
pressing the urethra closed with the finger during ejaculation, forcing the
fluid “up the spinal column” into the Field of Cinnabar in the head.416
413 See pp. 387–88, above.

414 Welch, Taoism, 106–7.
415 Ibid., 109, 113, 121.
416 Ibid., 120–26.
448 A GREAT MYSTERY
This alchemical hieros gamos later became the subject of the famous
treatise entitled The Secret of the Golden Flower.417 It is significant that the Chi-
nese way of writing “Golden Flower” (Chin Hua) involves two characters,
which, when written one above the other, form the word “light” (kuang).
Apparently, this secret symbol was invented in a time of persecution as a
way of veiling the doctrine from outsiders.418 When the yin and yang were
successfully united, the mysterious “Golden Flower” and its light bloomed
within the initiate:419
When one begins to apply this magic, it is as if, in the middle of one’s
being, there were a non-being. When in the course of time the work is
finished, and beyond the body there is another body, it is as if, in the
middle of the non-being, there were a being. Only after a completed
work of a hundred days will the Light be real, then only will it become
spirit-fire. After a hundred days, there develops by itself in the middle of
the Light a point of the true Light-pole (yang). Suddenly there develops
the seed-pearl. It is as if man and woman embraced and a conception
took place.420
This hieros gamos of man’s Inner Light with the universal True Light is
also described as the “Adhering Fire” (Li), or “Bride,” uniting with the
“Abysmal,” or “Eternal Boy”:
If the light of the essence is held permanently, the Abysmal and the Ad-
hering have intercourse spontaneously (i.e., the semen is retained).
When the Abysmal and the Adhering Fire mix, the holy fruit is born.
The ripening of the holy fruit is the effect of the Great Heavenly Cy-
cle.421
Here again, conspicuous elements of light-worship and fertility-magic point
to outside hierogamic influences superimposed on an original Taoist doc-
trine of simple yin and yang. One looks first of all to Persian Zoroastrianism,
with its highly developed light-symbolism, for even in the T’ang Period,
there were a number of Persian temples in China.422 Another probable in-
417See Wilhelm and Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, 5. Though written in
comparatively modern times, it was based on the seventh- or eighth-century doc-
trine of the “Golden Elixer.”
418 Ibid., 9.
419 Chang Chung-Yuan, Creativity and Taoism (New York, 1963), 156.
420 Wilhelm and Jung, Secret, 341, quoting from The Secret of the Golden Flower (3).
421 Ibid., 69, 70.
422 Ibid., 10.
fluence was Nestorian Christianity, which was very influential in China

from the T’ang Period until late in the Middle Ages. Richard Wilhelm in
fact believes that there is “a strong admixture of Nestorian ideas” in the
ritual of the “Golden Flower,”423 particularly the Pauline doctrine of cleav-
age to Christ, who unites all things into one, and is reborn in the initiate as a
new existence.424 The “Eternal Boy” is easily recognizable as the New
Christ, who is “formed within” (Gal 4:19), and who is the true “Bride-
groom” of the soul. Other Nestorian parallels to the “Golden Flower” in-
clude the soul’s rebirth from water and fire; light once again is the “life of
man,” and the eye is the “light of the body.” One even needs “oil for one’s
lamp,” so that it can burn brightly.425 Finally, Gnostic Sacred Marriage tradi-
tions appear to have had an important influence on this Chinese alchemy,
particularly the technique of producing the “inner light” by means of sexual
union.
After these materials were assimilated and transformed into the prac-
tices described in The Secret of the Golden Flower, their symbolism probably
filtered back into Europe in the form of the hermetic Rebis, itself a stylized
version of the ritual unification of yang and yin, the Primal Male and Female,
Heaven and Earth. There they were welcomed back by Westerners already
trained in the symbolism of the Wisdom Mystery. Yet the resemblance of
these Eastern symbols to the Embracing Cherubim in the Jerusalem Tem-
ple remains remarkable. Thus, we might summarize the essential interrelat-
edness of these many versions of the Sacred Marriage Mystery in the words
of the Chinese alchemist, Shang-ku-san-tai, who wrote, with words appro-
priate to all:
The union of man and woman is like the mating of Heaven and Earth.
It is because of their correct mating that Heaven and Earth last forever.
Humans have lost this secret and have therefore become mortal. By
knowing it, the Path to Immortality is opened once again.
423 Ibid., 11.

424 Ibid., 8–9, 132–35.
425 Ibid., 9.
8 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
“At-one-ment” with God. In the preceding pages we have attempted to

trace the development of an ancient soteriology that existed alongside of
the sacrificial rites of the Jewish Temple, referred to by Paul as a “Great
Mystery” (Eph 5:32), and by intertestamental Jews as a “Wisdom Mystery,”
a unitive tradition that was secretly portrayed by the Embracing Cherubim
over the Ark of the Covenant (b. Yoma 54a), and which sought to redeem
fallen man by uniting him spiritually to God’s creative companion and en-
voy. Though orthodoxy has long denied the existence of objects in the
Holy of Holies after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC, we have
seen evidence that Solomon’s statues had been replaced sometime during
the Second Temple period by figures depicting a male and female in an
erotic embrace, signifying Yahweh’s redemptive “marriage” to Israel, and
on an individual level, the transformation of the believer into a being of
light. Philo, who was a contemporary of Jesus, described the Cherubim in
some detail; and Josephus, who had been a priest in the Temple, admitted
in Contra Apion that the Romans found “that which was agreeable to piety”
when they entered the Holy of Holies in A.D. 70, though he was not per-
mitted to describe it to outsiders. The sixth century historian, John Malalas,
recalled that one of the things that the Emperor Titus found when he de-
stroyed the Second Temple was the Cherubim, and that his son, Vespasian,
reerected them outside the city walls of Antioch at a site still known as “the
Cherubim” (Chronographia, 10.45).
In 1973, Raphael Patai published important evidence from rabbinic
and Kabbalistic sources detailing the existence of the Embracing Cherubim.
In 1988, Moshe Idel showed that they were part of “a mystical tradition” at
least as old as Philo, in which “the cherubim were envisioned as syzygies” (a
male-female pair), a tradition “made explicit in the Talmud itself.”1 Idel’s
sources also affirm that the statues were “intertwined with one another, as
1 B. Yoma 54a; Kabbalah: A New Perspective (New Haven, 1988), 132, also 131.
451
452 A GREAT MYSTERY
symbolized by the form of the cherubim,”2 and specified that their union
took place “in the Temple to increase the fruitfulness of Israel” (Rabbi
Eleazar, Commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah, I.3).
Characterized in the Talmud as God’s “large Face” and “small Face,”
these divine manifestations were sometimes known as the “Bridegroom”
and the “Bride,”3 or God’s internal male and female powers, powers that
united sexually to bring about the creation of man. According to the Kab-
balists, Adam and Eve were created according to the same pattern, hence
were expected to unite in marriage, following the model established in the
heavens, thus guaranteeing their survival in the world to come.
According to Clement of Alexandria and Origen, Christians remem-
bered the embracing statues as “a pair of angels,”4 who sought to unite in
order to restore the oneness of God and man. This shows that memories of
the marriage mystery survived in Christian writings for several centuries,
even in Gnostic legends of a heavenly fall that could be repaired by restor-
ing the unity of the sexes, evolving finally into various forms of quietism
and alchemy, perhaps even interacting with Far Eastern Tantrism, whose
feminine partner in similar rites of union was also called “Wisdom” (Prajna).
The basic premise of this ancient tradition was that men are not saved
by sacrificial offerings, or by the substitution of scapegoats, but by uniting
with God and sharing his power. It came into Jewish Christianity as the mystery
of “marriage” to Jesus/Wisdom, during which God and man become “one
flesh” and “one spirit” (Eph 5:31; 1 Cor 6:17). Yet in all of its metamor-
phoses, the “Great Mystery” rested on the premise that men were derived
from God and that their destiny is to be reunited with him (“protology =
eschatology”), and in this way receive the divine nature. This was not “ab-
sorption” into God (as in Hindu samadhi), but spiritual “cleavage,” or “ad-
hesion” (devekuth), thereby creating a pneumatic continuum that mediates the
traits of the Whole to its Parts, while preserving their personal identities. In
the process, God’s Spirit plants new life in the moribund, a life that will
survive beyond the grave, thus doing for the individual what he cannot do
for himself.
Unfortunately, modern Judaism and Latin Christianity have tended to
prefer forensic solutions, based on “sacrifice, substitution, ransom,” etc.5

3 Idel, Kabbalah, 134.
4 Ibid., 132–33. See our pp. 224–26, above.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 453
Yet the equally legitimate tradition of uniting man to God and “begetting”
divine qualities in him played a critical role in earlier soteriologies and is still
suggested by the rite of communion. Intertestamental Judaism and Primi-
tive Christianity in fact promised no less than deification (theopoesis, theosis),
when the Bridegroom married the Bride and planted his supernatural life in
her, making them spiritually “one.”
The felicitous English expression invented to describe such unions
was the thirteenth-century phrase, “at-one-ment,” which was employed
scripturally for the first time in Tyndale’s translation of Romans 5:11, where
Paul declares that through Christ “we have received the ‘atonement’ (katal-
lagē).” In Greek, katallagē means “reconciliation,” or “the restoration of
friendship and harmony.” Tyndale, however, preferred to render Paul’s
katallagē with the more pregnant expression, “at-one-ment,” which seren-
dipitously suggested the idea of a literal union.6 Thus, with a fortunate new
word, he offered his readers a deeper understanding of what Paul and John
meant by “oneness with Christ” than the establishment of mere “harmony”
or “mental agreement,” an act for which there was no exact equivalent in
either the Hebrew Old Testament or the Greek New Testament, though
the idea of “cleavage” to the Lord was clearly anticipated by the use of the
verb dabaq (“cleave, cling”) in the Psalms. The Greek word for this deeper
kind of “oneness” would undoubtedly have been henosis, which is derived
from the numeral, hen (“one”), hence meaning “to become one.” Jewish
mystics likewise adopted the Hebrew word yiḥud (“unification”) as a proper
description of man’s soteriological union with God, also derived from the
number “one” (eḥad), and which similarly meant “to become one.”
Unfortunately, the idea of “at-one-ment” was somewhat compromised
when it was employed to render the Old Testament verb kipper, which actu-
ally means “to wipe clean,” or “to purify,” referring to the use of sacrificial
blood to sanctify the Temple on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). Asso-
ciation with blood-sacrifice in turn invested “at-one-ment” with a punitive
or disciplinary meaning, making it a forensic act instead of a transformation
through union with the Divine. The difference between these two kinds of
soteriology can be seen when we compare the Latin and Greek theories of
salvation. In the former, God delivers men from guilt by extracting a penalty
6 E.g., “He made them at one with God, that there should be nothing to break
the atonement, but that the things in heaven and the things on earth should be joined
together as it were into one body” (Thomas More). “Their long divided bodies they atone,
and enter amorous parley” (Thomas Heywood).
454 A GREAT MYSTERY
from his Son, while in the latter, he delivers them from corruption by uniting
himself with the unholy in order to make it holy.
W. Adams Brown summarized this important distinction by pointing
out that in Latin tradition, Christ redeems men by suffering death and pun-
ishment for their sins (“expiation,” “penal substitution,” “scapegoat,” etc.),
whereas in the Greek tradition it is not Christ’s death that answers man’s
need, but sharing the power of his resurrection.7 Thus while the Latin
Church saw God and Christ as lawgivers and judges—eager to “balance the
books” and “punish transgression”—the Greeks saw them as the Ultimate
Reality with which the sinner must unite in order to be transformed into
something new. This again corresponds to the original meaning of the Eng-
lish word “atonement,”8 whereas other Western languages have favored the
Latin idea of “expiation,” or “penal satisfaction” (e.g., German Sühne [the
original meaning behind versöhnen], Busse, Genugtuung; French racheter, expia-
tion, réparation, etc.).
The “punitive” idea also worked its way into the popular understand-
ing of the English word “atonement,” which now means “to pay the price,
to make reparation.” Modern Jews likewise tend to think of “atonement” as
a process of “remorse” and “mortification,” whereas the original New
Year’s Day—which eventually became Yom Kippur—was probably a day of
intense joy over God’s return to his Temple.9 Attaining righteousness
through the receipt of God’s Spirit was also the object of the Jewish Wis-
dom Mystery; hence it would be unjust to characterize Jewish soteriology as
exclusively “legalistic,” as many Christians have done.
Indeed, we have seen that the New Testament idea of renewal through
henosis with the Divine had important roots in the Jewish Temple feasts,
when pilgrims went to the Sanctuary to receive a personal vision of God’s
“Face,” and to be filled with his light,10 just as “at-one-ment” with Christ
filled the penitent with God’s Spirit, his supernatural righteousness making
it possible to keep God’s law successfully (Rom 8:3–5; 2 Cor 3:9). In this
sense, Johannine and Pauline soteriology was a continuation of Jewish tradi-
tion, probably mediated by the same Jewish-Christian community that gave
us the Gospel of Thomas, later transformed by Paul into the “Great Mystery”
7 See his “Expiation and Atonement,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed.
James Hastings (New York, 1925), 5:641–50.

8 Oxford English Dictionary, 1:754–55 (Second Edition).
9 See Julian Morgenstern, “The Gates of Righteousness,” HUCA 6 (1929): 1–
37, esp. 19, 25, 31–32, 35.

10 See “The Temple as a Source of Power” (pp. 64–82, above).
of “Marriage to Christ,” and by John into the “Marriage Supper of the

Lamb.”
THE HEAVENLY PATTERN OF THE SEXES IN THE GREAT MYSTERY

According to the Great Mystery, an eternal male-female pattern governs
behavior on several levels: marriages that take place in the celestial world,
man’s redemptive marriage to Yahweh-Christ; and human marriages that
assimilate husband and wife to heavenly prototypes. Indeed, though it is
largely ignored by modern believers, this divine male-female paradigm has been
a critical part of Israel’s soteriology for countless centuries, probably since
the time of the Sumero-Semitic “Sacred Marriage,”11 shaping the symbolism
of the Temple, and inspiring numerous scriptural references to God’s “mar-
riage” to his people, the most striking being the poetry of Song of Songs.
Though some have dismissed Song of Songs as little more than a col-
lection of antique love-ballads, its true meaning no doubt goes back the
union of Yahweh and a Female Companion during Israel’s Iron Age, a un-
ion imitated ritually by the taking of brides during the ancient Feast of Tab-
ernacles. Gershom Scholem’s valuable summary of this immemorial tradi-
tion is worth quoting again for its depiction of this Divine Sexuality and the
great importance it had in Jewish tradition, and by extension, in New Tes-
tament and Gnostic traditions of Christ’s union with the Church:
The hieros gamos, the “sacred union” of the King and Queen, the Celes-
tial Bridegroom and the Celestial Bride, to name a few of the symbols, is
the central fact in the whole chain of divine manifestations in the hidden
world. In God there is a union of the active and the passive, procreation
and conception, from which all mundane life and bliss are derived …
One of the images employed to describe the unfolding of the Sefiroth
pictures them … as the offspring of mystical procreation, in which the
first ray of divine light is also the primeval germ of creation; for its ray
which emerges from Nothing (i.e., God beyond human understanding)
is, as it were, sown into the “celestial mother,” i.e., into the divine Intel-
lect, out of whose womb the Sefiroth spring forth, as King and Queen,
son and daughter. Dimly we perceive behind these mystical images the
male and female gods of antiquity, anathema as they were to the pious
Kabbalist.12
11 See pp. 264–65, above; also p. 398.

12 Scholem, MT JM, 227.
456 A GREAT MYSTERY
The Catholic paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin, considering the universal

importance of this sexual paradigm, drew a similar conclusion, though he
couched it in scientific language, describing the attraction of the sexes an
integral part of the cosmic order:
The mutual attraction of the sexes is so fundamental a fact that any ex-
planation of the world which does not succeed in incorporating it struc-
turally, as an essential part of its edifice, is virtually condemned (Esquisse
d’un universe personnel, 1936, Oeuvres, vi. 91).13
The union of the sexes would in fact appear to be part of what physicists
call the “Anthropic Cosmological Principle,” a design encoded in the very
atoms and particles of the universe. One even suspects that the Genesis
account of the Primal Adam’s separation into isolated sexes, and his recon-
stitution by means of marriage (Gen 1:26–27 and 2:22–24), were based on
an intuitive recognition of meiosis and fertilization, where the 46 chromo-
somes of Ideal Humanity are first reduced to the 23 chromosomes of egg
and sperm, so that they can recombine to recreate the 46 chromosomes of
the human being. This also survived in the domestic hieros gamos of the
Kabbalists, during which legitimate intercourse transformed the husband
and wife into the Holy Cherubim, at the same time “catalyzing” the union
of God and his Shekhinah, who came to dwell between the human couple,
and to plant superior souls in their offspring (the “Secret of a King”).
Loss of the Great Mystery and its association with the Temple were
largely due to the latter’s destruction in A.D. 70. We nevertheless encounter
a number of idealized plans for a restored Temple, as it was pictured, for
instance, in the “True Gnosis” of Clement of Alexandria, or in the “secret
mysteries” of Origen. Many of the “heretical” Gnostics also built “Bridal
Chambers,” patterned after the Jerusalem Holy of Holies, where a symbolic
marriage was believed to “catalyze” the marriage of Christ and the believer.
Thus, theoretical pictures of a restored Temple cultus continued to con-
clude by passing through the veil in union with Christ (Heb 10:19–20), or simply
beholding the Embracing Cherubim as a sign of one’s forthcoming union with
him (9:5). In the Johannine mystery, one received a celestialized vision of
the Ark and saw the Bridegroom coming to marry his Bride (Rev 11:19;
21:2), as the worshipper was transformed into a “pillar” in the Temple that
is God and the Lamb (3:12; 21:22). For the growing number of Gentile
converts, however, who were not allowed to enter the Sanctuary, baptism
13 Quoted in Christopher Mooney, Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ
(Garden City, NY, 1968), 241.

had to suffice as the means of bringing about a redemptive union with

Christ—as hinted by Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (3:27), or as recalled in
Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lectures on the Mysteries—for the loss of the original mys-
tery and its replacement by Constantine “orthodoxy” left the Church with-
out an authentic Temple tradition.
We have also seen that early Jews and Christians conceived of the
Temple as the earthly terminus of Wisdom’s Light-Stream. This “Light-Stream”
was thought of as an “effluence of God’s glory” and a “mirror of his active
power” (Wisdom of Solomon, 7:25ff), hence the means of communicating
his attributes to men. Philo in fact told how this “effluence” of divine light
“consorted” with men in the Temple, “begetting” divine qualities in them,
even deifying them. The Johannine and Pauline concept of a “fulness of
Godhood” that transfers deity to others would also appear to be a devel-
opment of the sapiential Light Stream, during which one was filled with
God’s luminous power, and divine qualities were engendered in him.
A distinct advance over the Jerusalem cultus, however, was the re-
quirement that those who hoped to become “one” with God must be willing
to participate personally in the sacrifice that Christ initiated on the Cross
(“dying and rising with Christ”). In this way, they would be assimilated into
the mystery that science calls “negative entropy” (John 6:5–14), learning to
provide instead of consume (4:31–34). And as they had been enabled to obey
God’s Law, they would be judged and rewarded according to their works. Thus
obedience became a prerequisite for admission into heaven (Matt 19:17),
since the Law in its deepest intent consists of the norms that prevail in God’s
Kingdom, though they were now based on the selfless love of Christ, rather
than on legalistic considerations. In this way, the cult of animal sacrifice was
transformed into the cult of self sacrifice, in synergy with the miraculous
power that Christ displayed by his resurrection from the dead on behalf of
his “friends.”
Thus the New Testament promised that men would become “sharers
of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), and “transformed into the image of the
Lord” (2 Cor 3:18). They would be made “like him” (1 John 3:2), their bod-
ies “the same as his glorious body” (Phil 3:21), and filled with “all the ful-
ness of God” (Eph 3:19). The Church Fathers used John 10:34–35 as a
“proof-text” for the promise of deification, a promise that survived for
some time in the Greek Church, but was reduced to sanctification by Latin
Christians, as it is by most modern believers.
458 A GREAT MYSTERY
THE LIGHT-STREAM AND THE GNOSTIC PLEROMA

Gnostic intellectuals were especially eager to explore the internal structure
of God’s “fulness,” and to understand its ability to bestow deity on others.
Like “Wisdom” and the Holy Spirit, the Gnostic “Pleroma” was an “efflu-
ence of light,” containing the collective attributes and powers of God-
hood.14 One might in fact characterize the Gnostic Pleroma as an “ex-
ploded diagram” of the Johannine and Pauline “fulness,” revealing its inter-
nal male-female pattern, a pattern that was organized like the divine lineages in
the ancient Semitic theogonies. The Gnostics also saw in their Pleroma the
sapiential River of Light as it flowed down from God’s Throne, branching
into the angels and “days of creation” as they emerged at the time of crea-
tion (the “Hexaemeron”), no doubt contributing to the Neo-Platonic doc-
trine of “emanation.” In particular, they saw within the Pleroma the same
“Father-Mother-Son-and-Daughter” pattern that the Kabbalists saw in the
four letters of the Sacred Name (YHWH), and which likewise corresponded
to the polytheism of ancient Israel.
We must therefore view the Gnostic Pleroma not as the product of an
alien mythology, but as a “cross section” of Wisdom’s “Light-Stream” or
the New Testament “fulness,” one that contains the collective laws and en-
ergies that comprise Godhood. Those who consider the Gnostic Pleroma
to be peopled with “foreign” and “non-Christian” figures should therefore
realize that bizarre figures like Barbelo, Ennoia, Fate, the Upper and Lower
Sophias, and the Thrice-Male Son were not alien beings, but algebraic symbols
used to track the heavenly powers and their interactions, revealing the hid-
den structure of the “fulness.” In particular, the Gnostic Pleroma showed
how God extends himself through angels and deified “offspring” to dwell in
others, and in the process make them what he is:
A process of extension, as the Father extends himself to those whom he
loves, so that those who came forth from him might become him as
well (Tripartite Tractate 73:23–28).
The Father is the one who is within the rest. But that which is in them
all is the fulness (Gospel of Philip 68–12–14).
Gnosticism further coordinated the devolving contents of the Light-
Stream with the three levels of reality recognized by Greek science (pneu-
matic, psychic, and hylic), and corresponding to the “Three Degrees of Glory”
14 Described by de Faye as “la divinité sans Dieu lui-même,” cited in G. Del-
ling, “plārās,” TDNT 6:300.

that were encountered in the Jewish Temple, the same “Degrees of Glory”
that Christians would attain after death.15 Even apparent differences be-
tween the Jewish Creator and the Christian Savior—who are actually identi-
fied in much of the New Testament—could be explained as graded appear-
ances of the same individual—the Wisdom/Logos—who was in fact a historical
relic of El’s ancient Son, Yahweh (Deut 32:8, original version). Thus the
Gnostics arrived at what we might call a “Unified Field Theory” that ex-
plained the whole of ancient knowledge, both sacred and secular, at the
same time reconciling the apparent differences that appear on a worldly
level.
Gnosticism also offered invaluable evidence of the Christianity that
gave it birth, and whose traditions it sought to preserve, even if it some-
times distorted them. Indeed, it was never intended as a new religion, but as
an explanation of the old, one that was especially designed to show the hierar-
chical relationship between Christianity and the Judaism that engendered it.
In particular, it was a development of the conservative Jewish-Christianity
that survived in Jerusalem until the destruction of the Temple, and which
left us such works as the Gospel of Thomas and the Odes of Solomon. For this
reason, the Gnostics considered themselves to be the sole surviving exam-
ples of true orthodoxy, amidst a plethora of diverging sects, including the one
that would eventually prevail in the West.
Finally, we have sought to verify this important tradition by examining
its influence on medieval traditions like the Holy Grail and Freemasonry,
both of which held union with the Divine to be the authentic method of
attaining salvation. In so doing, they were only perpetuating the traditions
of the Christianized Temple, which did not disappear altogether with the
advent of Constantine Christianity, but went underground as the “Munt-
salveshe” of the Grail legend, the alembic of the alchemical “Sacred Mar-
riage,” or as the “Solomonic Temple” of the Freemasons, all of which offer
substantial evidence of Christianity’s former veneration of the Holy of Ho-
lies as the earthly portal that leads into Eternity.
15 See pp. 43–44, 82–84, 245, 257–58, 272–73, above.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ackerman, Susan. Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-

Century Judah, Harvard Semitic Monographs 46. Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1992.
Adam, A. “Erwägungen zur Herkunft der Didache,” Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte 68 (1957): 1–47.
Adams, Henry. Mont St. Michel and Chartres. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1926.
Adams Brown, William. “Expiation and Atonement,” in Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics. Edited by James Hastings. New York: Scribner,
1925.
Adolf, Helen. Visio Pacis: Holy City and Holy Grail; an Attempt at an Inner
History of the Grail Legend. State College, PA: Pennsylvania State
University, 1960.
Albright, William F. Archaeology and the Religion of Israel. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953.
-------. “Archaic Survivals in the Text of Canticles,” in Hebrew and Se-
mitic Studies: Presented to Godfrey Rolles Driver in Celebration of his
Seventieth Birthday, 20 August 1962. Edited by Winston Thomas
and W. D. McHardy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963: 1–7.
-------. From the Stone Age to Christianity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1957.
-------. Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1969.
Albright, William, and C. S. Mann. Matthew, Anchor Bible. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1971.
Andersen, Francis I., and David Noel Freedman. Amos, Anchor Bible.
New York: Doubleday, 1989.
-------. Hosea, Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980.
Anderson, Gary A. “Introduction to Israelite Religion,” in The New In-
terpreter’s Bible. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994, I: 272–84.
461
462 A GREAT MYSTERY
Anderson, George W. “The Psalms,” in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible.

Edited by Matthew Black and H. H. Rowley. London: Nelson,
1962: 409–43.
Arndt, William, F., Wilbur Gingrich, and Walter Bauer. A Greek-
English Lexicon of the New Testament. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
Ashe, Geoffry. “The Grail and the Golden Age,” in At the Table of the
Grail: Magic and the Use of Imagination. Edited by John Matthews.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
Attridge, Harold W., Charles W. Hedrick, and Robert Hodgeson, Jr.
Nag Hammadi Gnosticism and Early Christianity. Peabody, MA: Hen-
drickson Publishers, 1986.
Attridge, Harold W., and Elaine Pagels. “The Tripartite Tractate,” in
The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M. Robin-
son. New York: Harper & Row, 1977: 58–103.
Aune, David E. The Cultic Setting of Realized Eschatology in Early Christian-
ity. Leiden: Brill, 1972.
Baer, Richard A. Jr., Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female. Leiden:
Brill, 1970.
Baigent, Michael, Robert Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy
Grail. New York: Delacourte Press, 1982.
Barker, Margaret. The Gate of Heaven: The History and Symbolism of the
Temple in Jerusalem. London: SPCK, 1991.
-------. The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God. Louisville, KY:
Westminster/John Knox, 1992.
-------. The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy. London
and New York: T&T Clark, 2003.
-------. The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God. London: SPCK, 2007.
-------. On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Temple Symbolism in the New Testament.
Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995.
-------. Temple Theology: An Introduction. London: SPCK, 2004.
Barrois, G. A. “Pillar,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 3:815–17.
Bart, Benjamin F., and Robert Francis Cook. The Legendary Sources of
Flaubert’s Saint Julien. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.
Barth, Markus. Ephesians, Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1974.
Batey, Richard A. “Jewish Gnosticism and the ‘Hieros Gamos’ of Eph
V:21–33,” New Testament Studies 10 (1963–64): 121–27.
-------. New Testament Nuptial Imagery. Leiden: Brill, 1972.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 463
Bauer, J. B. “Uxores Circumducere,” Biblische Zeitschrift 3 (1959): 94–

102.
Beare, Francis W. “Ephesians: Introduction and Exegesis,” in Inter-
preter’s Bible, Vol. X: Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians. New York:
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1953.
Behm, J. “morphē, morphō, morphōsis, metamorphō,” in Theological Dictionary
of the New Testament, 4:742–59.
Besant, Annie. Esoteric Christianity: or, The Lesser Mysteries. Madras: The-
osophical Pub. House, 1957.
Bharati, Agehananda. The Tantric Tradition. Garden City, NY: Double-
day, 1970.
Bishop, Carl Whiting. “The Geographical Factor in the Development
of Chinese Civilization,” Geographical Review 12 (1922): 19–41.
Blakney, R. B. The Way of Life: Lao Tzu. New York: Mentor Books,
1955.
Blair, E. P. “Mary,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 3:288–90.
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science,
Religion, and Philosophy. Volume. 2. London: The Theosophical
Publishing Company, Limited, 1888.
Blofeld, John. The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet. New York: Dutton, 1970.
Böhl, F. M. Th. “Das Menschenopfer bei den alten Sumerern,”
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 39 (1930): 83–98.
Bornkam, Günther. “mystārion, myeō,” in Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament, 4:802–28.
Borsch, Frederick H. The Son of Man in Myth and History. Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1967.
Bousset, Wilhelm. Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the
Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus. Nashville: Abingdon, 1970.
-------. Hauptprobleme der Gnosis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ru-
precht, 1973.
-------. “Die Himmelsreise der Seele,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 4
(1901): 136–69.
Boustan, Ra’amam S., and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds. Heavenly Realms
and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2004.
Brashler, James, Peter Dirkse, and Douglas M. Parrott. “Asclepius 21–
29,” in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M.
Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1977: 330–38.
Brenner, Athalya. The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and
‘Sexuality’ in the Hebrew Bible. Leiden: Brill, 1997.
464 A GREAT MYSTERY
Brooks, Beatrice A. “Fertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testa-

ment,” Journal of Biblical Literature 60 (1941): 227–53.
Brown, Arthur C. L. Notes on Celtic Cauldrons of Plenty and the Land Be-
neath the Waves. Boston: Ginn, 1913.
Brown, Raymond E. Jesus, God and Man. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1967.
-------. John I–XII, Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.
-------. John XIII–XXI, Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1970.
--------. The Semitic Background of the Term “Mystery” in the New Testament.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.
Brown, Raymond E., and Paul J. Achtemeier. Mary in the New Testa-
ment: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic
Scholars. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978.
Browning, Don S., M. Christian Green, and John Witte, Jr., eds., Sex,
Marriage, and Family in World Religions. New York: Columbia Uni-
Bruce, F. F. The Epistle to the Hebrews: the English Text with Introduction,
Exposition, and Notes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964.
Buchanan, George W. To the Hebrews, Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1972.
Buckley, Jorunn. “A Cult-Mystery in the Gospel of Philip,” Journal of
Biblical Literature 99 (1980): 569–81.
Burchard, Christoph. “Joseph and Aseneth: A New Translation and
Introduction,” in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H.
Charlesworth. Volume 2. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985:
177–247.
Burney, C. F. The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1922.
Burrows, Eric. “The Number Seventy in Semitic,” Orientalia 5 (1936):
389–408.
Burrows, Millar. The Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Viking Press, 1955.
-------. More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls: New Scrolls and New Interpreta-
tions. New York: Viking Press, 1958.
Cameron, Ron, and Arthur J. Dewey. The Cologne Mani-Codex: (P. Colon.
inv. nr. 4780): Concerning the Origin of His Body. Missoula, MT:
Scholars Press, 1979.
Campbell, Joseph. The Mythic Image. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1974.
Caron, M., and S. Hutin. The Alchemists. New York: Grove Press, 1961.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 465
Casey, Robert P. The Excerpta ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria, Stud-

ies and Documents 1. London: Chrisophers, 1943.
Chadwick, Henry. Alexandrian Christianity: Selected Translations of Clement
and Origen. Edited by J. E. L. Oulton and H. Chadwick. Philadel-
phia: Westminster Press, 1954.
de Chardin, Teilhard. “Esquisse d’un universe personnel,” 1936,
L’énergie humaine, vol. 6 of the Oeuvres de Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962.
Charles, R. H. Apocrypha of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971.
Charles, R. H., and W. O. E. Oesterley. The Book of Enoch. London:
SPCK, 1917.
Charlesworth, James H. “Odes of Solomon,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of
the Bible, 5:637–38.
-------. “The Odes of Solomon—Not Gnostic,” Catholic Biblical Quar-
terly 31 (1969): 357–69.
-------. The Odes of Solomon. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977.
-------. “Solomon, Odes of,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6:114–15.
Charlier, C. V. L. “Ein astronomischer Beitrag zur Exegese des Alten
Testaments,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 58
(1904): 386–94.
Charpentier, John. L’Ordre des Templiers. Paris: La Colombe, 1945.
Chavasse, Claude. The Bride of Christ: An Enquiry into the Nuptial Element
in Early Christianity. London: Faber and Faber, 1940.
Chesnutt, Randall D. “Joseph and Aseneth,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary,
3:969–71.
Chung-Yuan, Chang. Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy,
Art & Poetry. New York: Julian Press, 1963.
Circlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by Jack Synge. New
York: Philosophical Library, 1962.
Cleeve, Brian. “The World’s Need,” in At the Table of the Grail: Magic
and the Use of Imagination. Edited by John Matthews. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
Closs, Hanna. “The Meeting of the Waters,” in At the Table of the Grail:
Magic and the Use of Imagination. Edited by John Matthews. Lon-
don: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
Collins, John J. “The Son of Man and the Saints of the Most High in
the Book of Daniel,” Journal of Biblical Literature 93 (1979): 50–66.
466 A GREAT MYSTERY
Collins, John J., and Michael Fishbane, eds. Death, Ecstasy, and Other
Worldly Journeys. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1995.
Colpe, Carsten. “ho huios tou anthrōpou,” in Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament, 8:400–77.
-------. Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule: Darstellung und Kritik ihres Bildes
vom Gnostischen Erlösermythus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1961.
Conze, Edward. “Buddhism and Gnosis,” in Origini dello Gnosticismo.
Edited by Ugo Bianchi. Leiden: Brill, 1967: 651–67.
Coppens, J. “Miscellanées Bibliques,” Bulletin d’Histoire et d’Exegese de
l’Ancien Testament 23 (1947): 173–90.
Corbin, Henry. The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Boulder: Shambhala,
1978.
-------. Temple and Contemplation. London and New York: KPI in asso-
ciation with Islamic Publications, 1986.
Cosmo, Umberto. A Handbook to Dante Studies. New York: Barnes and
Noble, 1947.
Coulton, G. C. From St. Francis to Dante: Translations from the Chronicle of
the Franciscan Salimbene (1221–1288). London: Duckworth, 1908.
Cumont, Franz. Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans. New
York: Dover Publications, 1960.
Cunliffe-Jones, Hubert, Benjamin Drewery, and George Park Fisher.
A History of Christian Doctrines: In Succession to the Earlier Work of G.
P. Fisher. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
Dahood, Mitchell. The Psalms, Anchor Bible. Volume 1. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1965.
Daniélou, Jean. Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture. London: Darton,
Longman & Todd, 1973.
-------. The Theology of Jewish Christianity. London: Darton, Longman &
Todd, 1964.
Dasgupta, S. B. An Introduction to Tantric Buddhism. Calcutta: University
of Calcutta, 1958.
Davies, G. Henton. “Ark of the Covenant,” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the
Bible, 1:222–26.
Davies, Stevan L. The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom. New York:
Seabury Press, 1983.
Davies, W. D. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in
Pauline Theology. 4th edition. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 467
Davila, James R., ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Ju-
daism and Early Christianity: Papers from an International Conference at
St. Andrews in 2001. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Day, John. “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Lit-
erature,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105 (1986): 385–408.
Day, John, ed. Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel: Proceedings of the Ox-
ford Old Testament Seminar. London: T&T Clark, 2005.
Day, Peggy L., ed. Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1989.
Dean-Otting, Mary. Heavenly Journeys: A Study of the Motif in Hellenistic
Jewish Literature. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984.
DeConick, April D. “Entering God’s Presence: Sacramentalism in the
Gospel of Philip,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1998 Seminar Pa-
pers. Number 37, Part One. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998.
-------. Seek to See Him: Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas.
Leiden: Brill, 1996.
Delacroix, Henri. Etudes d’histoire et de psychologie du mysticism: les grands
mystiques chrétiens. Paris: F. Alcan, 1908.
Delling, Gerhard, “plārās,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
4:283–310.
Deussen, Paul. The Philosophy of the Upanishads. New York: Dover Pub-
lications, 1966.
Deutsch, Nathaniel. The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and
Merkabah Mysticism. Leiden: Brill, 1995.
-------. Guardians of the Gate: Angelic Vice Regency in Late Antiquity. Lei-
den: Brill, 1999.
Dever, William. “How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite,” in The
Rise of Ancient Israel. Edited by Hershel Shanks. Washington, DC:
Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992: 27–56.
-------. “Israel, History of (Archaeology and the Israelite ‘Conquest’),”
in Anchor Bible Dictionary, 3:545–58.
-------. Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research. Seattle: Wash-
ington University Press, 1990.
Dodd, C. H. The Bible and the Greeks. London, Hodder & Stoughton
1935.
-------. The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
Doresse, Jean. The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to
the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion. New York:
Viking, 1960.
468 A GREAT MYSTERY
Drower, Ethel S. The Secret Adam: a Study of Nasoraean Gnosis. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1960.
-------. Water into Wine: A Study of Ritual Idiom in the Middle East. Lon-
don: Murray, 1956.
Duchesne-Guillemin, Jacques. Symbols and Values in Zoroastrianism, their
Survival and Renewal. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Dupont-Sommer, A. The Essene Writings from Qumran. Oxford: Black-
well, 1961.
Edersheim, Alfred. The Temple: Its Ministry and Services as They Were at the
Time of Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.
Eichrodt, Walther. Theology of the Old Testament. 2 volumes. Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1967.
Eissfeldt, Otto. “El and Yahweh,” Journal of Semitic Studies 1 (1956): 25–
37.
Eliade, Mircea. A History of Religious Ideas 2. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1982.
-------. The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History Return.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954.
-------. Patterns in Comparative Religion. New York, Sheed & Ward, 1958.
-------. The Two and the One. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965.
-------. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. New York: Pantheon Books, 1958.
Elior, Rachel. The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism.
Portland and Oxford: The Littman library of Jewish Civilization,
2004.
Emerton, J. A. “The Origins of the Son of Man Imagery,” Journal of
Theological Studies 9 (1950): 225–42.
Engelsman, Joan Chamberlain. The Feminine Dimension of the Divine.
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979.
Engnell, Ivan. Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1967.
Epstein, Y’hiel Mikhael. Seder T’fillah Derekh Y’share. Offenbach, 1791.
Evola, Julius. The Metaphysics of Sex. New York: Inner Traditions Inter-
national, 1983.
Fauriel, C. Histoire de la poesie provençale: cours fait à la faculté des lettres de
Paris. Paris: J. Labitte, 1846.
Fendt, Leonhard. Gnostische Mysterien: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des
Christlichen Gottesdienstes. Munich: Kaiser, 1922.
Filoramo, Giovanni. A History of Gnosticism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
Filson, F. V. “Peter,” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 3:756–57.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 469
Finegan, Jack. Hidden Records of the Life of Jesus: An Introduction to the New
Testament Apocrypha. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1969.
Fischer, Lizette Andrews. The Mystic Vision of the Grail Legend and in the
Divine Comedy. New York: AMS Press, 1967.
Fitzmeyer, Joseph A. “Further Light on Melchizedec from the Qum-
ran Cave 11,” Journal of Biblical Literature 86 (1967): 25–41.
-------. The Gospel according to Luke (I–IX), Anchor Bible. New York:
Doubleday, 1981.
-------. “Now This Melchizedec,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963):
305–21.
-------. “Son of David in Mt. 22:41–46,” in Essays on the Semitic Back-
ground of the New Testament. Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Lit-
erature, 1978.
Flemington, W. F. “Baptism,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible,
1:348–53.
Fletcher-Louis, Crispin H.T. All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropol-
ogy in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
Flinders Petrie, Sir William. Egypt and Israel. London: SPCK, 1923.
Flusser, David. Judaism of the Second Temple Period: Qumran and Apocalypti-
cism. Grand Rapids and Jerusalem: Eerdmans and The Hebrew
University Magnes Press, 2007.
Foerster, Werner, and R. McLain Wilson. Gnosis: a Selection of Gnostic
Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Ford, J. Massyngberde. “Levirate Marriage in St. Paul (1 Cor VII),”
New Testament Studies 10 (1963–64): 361–65.
Fox, Michael V., Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Avi Hurvitz, Michael L.
Klein, Baruch J. Schwartz, and Nili Shupak, eds. Texts, Temples and
Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran. Winona Lake, IN: Eisen-
brauns, 1996.
Franken, H. J. The Mystical Communion with JHWH in the Book of Psalms.
Leiden: Brill, 1954.
Frankfort, Henri. Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern
Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1948.
Freeman, James M. Manners and Customs of the Bible. Plainfield, NJ: Lo-
gos International, 1972.
Furnish, V. P. “Mark, Secret Gospel of,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the
Bible, 5:573.
García Martínez, Florentino. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran
Texts in English. Leiden: Brill, 1996.
470 A GREAT MYSTERY
Gärtner, Bertil. The Temple and the Community in the New Testament: A
Comparative Study in the Temple Symbolism of the Qumran Texts and the
New Testament. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.
Gaster, T. H. The Dead Sea Scriptures. 3rd edition. Garden City, NY: An-
chor, 1976.
Geiger, Abraham. Urschrift und Übersetzung der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit
von der inneren Entwicklung des Judenthums. Breslau: Hainauer, 1857.
Georgi, D. “Der vorpaulinische Hymnus Phil. 2:6–11,” in Zeit und
Geschichte: Dankesgabe an Rudolf Bultmann zum 80. Geburtstag. Edited
by Erich Dinkler, Rudolf Bultmann, and Hartwig Thyen. Tübin-
gen: Mohr, 1964: 262–93.
Gilmour, S. McLean. “Luke: Introduction and Exegesis,” in Interpreter’s
Bible Vol. VIII: Luke-John. Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press,
1952.
Ginzberg, Louis. Legends of the Jews. 7 volumes. Philadelphia: The Jew-
ish Publication Society of America, 1909–38.
Goldberg, B. Z. The Sacred Fire: the Story of Sex in Religion. New York: H.
Liveright, 1930.
Golitzin, Alexander. “Recovering the ‘Glory of Adam’: ‘Divine Light’
Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Ascetical Lit-
erature of Fourth-Century Syro-Mesopotamia,” in The Dead Sea
Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity: Pa-
pers from an International Conference at St. Andrews in 2001. Edited by
James R Davila. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Goodenough, Erwin R. By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Ju-
daism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935.
-------. An Introduction to Philo Judaeus. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1940.
-------. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. 13 volumes. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1953–68.
Goodfriend, Elaine Adler. “Prostitution (OT),” in Anchor Bible Diction-
ary, 5:505–10.
Gordon, Cyrus H. Before Columbus: Links between the Old World and An-
cient America. New York: Crown Publishers, 1971.
Grant, Frederick C. “Mark: Introduction and Exegesis,” in Interpreter’s
Bible Vol. VII: Matthew-Mark. Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury
Press, 1951.
Grant, Robert M. Gnosticism and Early Christianity. London: Oxford
University Press, I959.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 471
-------. A Historical Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Simon

and Schuster, 1972.
-------. “The Mystery of Marriage in the Gospel of Philip,” Vigiliae
Christianae 15 (1961): 129–40.
Graves, Robert, and Raphael Patai. Hebrew Myths; the Book of Genesis.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963.
Greenberg, Moshe. Ezekiel 1–20, Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1983.
Gressman, Hugo. Die Lade Jahves und das allerheiligste des salomonischen
tempels, Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1920.
Grobel, Kendrick. The Gospel of Truth: A Valentinian Meditation on the
Gospel. New York: Abingdon, 1960.
-------. “How Gnostic Is the Gospel of Thomas?” New Testament Studies
8 (1962): 367–73.
Gruenwald, Ithamar. From Apocalypticism to Gnosticism: Studies in Apoca-
lypticism, Merkavah Mysticism and Gnosticism, Beitrage Zur Erfor-
schung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums. Frank-
furt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1988.
-------. Rituals and Ritual Theory in Ancient Israel. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Guenther, Herbert V. The Life and Teaching of Naropa. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1963.
Guthrie, Donald. New Testament Theology. Downer’s Grove: Inter-
Varsity Press, 1981.
Hall, Manly P. An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and
Rosacrucian Symbolic Philosophy: being an interpretation of the secret teach-
ings concealed within the rituals, allegories and mysteries of all ages. Los
Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1957.
Hamerton-Kelly, R. G. Pre-Existence, Wisdom, and the Son of Man; a Study
of the Idea of Pre-existence in the New Testament. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1973.
von Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph. Mysterium Baphometis revelatum, Fund-
graben des Orients 6. Vienna: Typis Antonii Schmid, 1818.
Haran, Menahem. Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1978.
von Harnack, Adolph. “Die Adresse des Epheserbriefes des Paulus,”
Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 37 (1910):
696–709.
-------. History of Dogma. New York: Dover, 1961.
Harris, J. Rendel. Fragments of Philo Judaeus. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1886.
472 A GREAT MYSTERY
-------. Odes and Psalms of Solomon. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1909.
-------. The Teaching of the Apostles (Didachē tōn Apostolōn): newly edited, with
facsimile text and a commentary. London: Clay, 1887.
Haywood, H. L. Symbolical Masonry: An Interpretation of the Three Degrees.
Kingsport, TN: Southern Publishers, 1923.
Hedrick, Charles W. “The (Second) Apocalypse of James” in The Nag
Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. New
York: Harper & Row, 1977: 269–76.
Helmbold, Andrew K. “Gnosticism,” in Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia. Vol-
ume 1. Chicago: Moody Press, 1975: 688.
-------. The Nag Hammadi Gnostic Texts and the Bible. Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1967.
Hennecke, Edgar, Wilhelm Schneemelcher, and R. McL. Wilson. New
Testament Apocrypha. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963–66.
Himmelfarb, Martha. Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Höfner, Maria. “Die vorislamitische Religionen Arabiens,” in Die
Religionen Altsyriens, Altarabiens und der Mandäer. Edited by Hartmut
Gese, Maria Höfner, and Kurt Rudolph. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
1970.
Holmes, Edmond. The Holy Heretics: the Story of the Albigensian Crusade,
The Thinker’s Library 124. London: Watts, 1948.
Hooker, Morna. The Son of Man in Mark: A Study of the Background of the
Term “Son of Man” and Its Use in St. Mark’s Gospel. Montreal:
McGill University Press, 1967.
Horne, Alex. King Solomon’s Temple in the Masonic Tradition. North Hol-
lywood, CA: Wilshire Book Co., 1974.
Hurd, J. C. Jr. The Origin of 1 Corinthians. New York: Seabury Press,
1965.
Idel, Moshe. Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
-------. Kabbalah and Eros. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2005.
-------. Kabbalah: A New Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1988.
-------. “Sexual Metaphors and Praxis in the Kabbalah,” The Jewish Fam-
ily: Metaphor and Memory. Edited by D. Kraemer. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 473
Isenberg, Wesley. “Gospel of Philip,” in The Nag Hammadi Library in

English. Edited by James M. Robinson. New York: Harper &
Row, 1977: 139–60.
Isaac E. “1 Enoch: A New Translation and Introduction,” in Old Tes-
tament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H. Charlesworth. Volume
1. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985: 5–90.
James, Montague Rhodes. The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1924.
Jeremias, Joachim. The Eucharistic Words of Jesus. Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1977.
-------. “pais theou,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 5:659–
716.
-------. “thura,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 3:173–79.
Jervell, J. Imago Dei: Gen 1, 26 f. im Spätjudentum, in der Gnosis und in den
paulinischen Briefe. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960.
Johnson, Aubrey R. The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1961.
Johnson, S. E. “Lord (Christ),” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible,
3:151.
Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: the Message of the Alien God and the
Beginnings of Christianity. 2nd edition. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.
Jowett, George F. The Drama of the Lost Disciples. 8th edition. London:
Covenant Pub. Co., 1975.
Jung, Carl. Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and
Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
-------. Psychology and Alchemy. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1953.
Kahane, Henry, and Renée Kahane. The Krater and the Grail: Hermetic
Sources of the Parzival. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965.
Kanagaraj, Jey J. ‘Mysticism’ in the Gospel of John: An Inquiry into Its Back-
ground, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement
Series 158. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.
Käsemann, Ernst. Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen. Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964.
-------. The Testament of Jesus: A Study of the Gospel of John in the Light of
Chapter 17. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968.
-------. Das wandernde Gottesvolk: Eine Untersuchung zum Hebräerbrief. Göt-
tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961.
474 A GREAT MYSTERY
Keil, Carl Friedrich, and Franz Delitzsch. Commentary on the Old Testa-
ment. 10 volumes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969.
Kennedy, J. “Buddhist Gnosticism, the System of Basilides,” Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society (1902): 377–415.
Kleinknecht, Hermann. “legō,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testa-
ment, 4:77–91.
Kraeling, E. G. “The Real Religion of Ancient Israel,” Journal of Biblical
Literature 47 (1928): 133–59.
Kraft, R. A. “Apostolic Fathers,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible,
5:36–38.
Kramer, Samuel N. “Dumuzi’s Annual Resurrection: An Important
Correction to Inanna’s Descent,” Bulletin of the American Schools of
Oriental Research 183 (1966): 31.
-------. The Sacred Marriage Rite: Aspects of Faith, Myth, and Ritual in An-
cient Sumer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.
Kraus, H. J. Gottesdienst in Israel: Grundriss einer Geschichte des alttesta-
mentlichen Gottesdienstes. 2nd edition. Munich: Kaiser, 1962.
Lake, Kirsopp, and H. J. Cadbury, in The Beginnings of Christianity. Part I:
The Acts of the Apostles. Volume 4. Edited by F. J. Foakes-Jackson
and Kirsopp Lake. London: MacMillan and Co., 1933.
Lampe, G. W. H. “Acts,” in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible. London:
Nelson, 1962: 882–926.
Layton, Bentley. The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations
and Introductions. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987.
Lea, Henry Charles. History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. New
York: Russell and Russell, 1888.
Lecarrière, Jacques. The Gnostics. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977.
Legman, G. The Guilt of the Templars. New York: Basic Books, 1966.
Leipoldt, Johannes, and Hans-Martin Schenke. Koptisch-gnostische
Schriften aus der Papyrus Codices von Nag-Hamadi. Hamburg-
Bergstedt: Reich, 1960.
Leloup, Jean-Yves. The Sacred Embrace of Jesus and Mary: The Sexual Mys-
tery at the Heart of the Christian Tradition. Rochester, VT: Inner Tra-
ditions, 2005.
Lemche, Niels Peter. “Israel, History of (Premonarchic Period),” in
Anchor Bible Dictionary, 3:526–45.
Lewy, Julius. “The Old West Semitic Sun-God Hammu,” Hebrew Union
College Annual 18 (1944): 436–43.
L’Heureux, Conrad. Rank among the Canaanite Gods: El, Ba‘al, and the Re-
pha’im. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 475
Liddell, H. G. and R. Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Claredon

Press, 1940.
Lightfoot, J. B. The Apostolic Fathers, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1956.
Lohse, Eduard. “huios, huiothesia,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Tes-
tament, 8:334–99.
Longenecker, Richard. The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity. Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981.
Loomis, R. S. Arthurian Tradition and Chrêtien de Troyes. New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1949.
-------. The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol. Cardiff: University
of Wales Press, 1963.
-------. Wales and the Arthurian Legend. Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 1956.
de Lubicz, R. A. Schwaller. Adam l’homme rouge. Paris: Montalia St.
Moritz, 1927.
MacDonald, Dennis Ronald. There Is No Male and Female: The Fate of a
Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism. Philidelphia: Fortress Press,
1987.
Mackenzie, Donald. Myths of China and Japan. Boston: Longwood Press,
1977.
Mahdihassan, S. “Dualistic Symbolism, Alchemical and Masonic,”
Iqbal Review (1963): 55–78.
Manson, T. W. “HILASTERION,” Journal of Theological Studies 46
(1945): 1–10.
Matthews, Caitlin. “Sophia, Companion on the Quest,” in At the Table
of the Grail: Magic and the Use of Imagination. Edited by John Mat-
thews. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
Matthews, John. “Temples of the Grail,” in At the Table of the Grail:
Matthews, John, ed. At the Table of the Grail: Magic and the Use of Imagina-
tion. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
May, H. G. “The Fertility Cult in Hosea,” American Journal of Semitic Lit-
erature 48 (1932): 73–78.
-------. “Some Aspects of Solar Worship,” Zeitschrift für die Alttesta-
mentliche Wissenschaft 55 (1937): 269–81.
McCarter, P. Kyle, Jr. 1 Samuel, Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY: Dou-
bleday, 1980.
476 A GREAT MYSTERY
-------. “The Origins of Israelite Religion,” in The Rise of Ancient Israel.

Edited by Hershel Shanks. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology
Society, 1992: 119–36.
McKelvey, R. J. The New Temple, the Church, in the New Testament. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
McLean, Adam. “Alchemical Transmutation in History and Symbol,”
in At the Table of the Grail: Magic and the Use of Imagination. Edited
by John Matthews. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
McRae, George W. “The Gospel of Truth,” in The Nag Hammadi Li-
brary in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. New York: Harper
& Row, 1977: 38–51.
-------. “Nag Hammadi,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 5:613–19.
Meek, T. J. “Canticles and the Tammus Cult,” American Journal of Se-
mitic Literature 39 (1922–23): 1–14.
-------. “Magic Spades in Mesopotamia,” University of Toronto Quarterly 7
(1939): 196.
Meeks, Wayne. “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol
in Earliest Christianity,” History of Religions 13 (1974): 165–208.
Mettinger, T. N. D. The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in
the Ancient Near East. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell Interna-
tional, 2001.
Michaels, J. R. “Apostolic Fathers,” in The International Standard Bible
Encyclopedia, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979: 207.
Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus 1–16, Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday,
1991.
Mooney, Christopher. Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ. Gar-
den City, NY: Doubleday, 1968.
Mopsik, Charles. Sex of the Soul: The Vicissitudes of Sexual Difference in
Kabbalah. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005.
Morgenstern, Julian. “The Ark, the Ephod, and the ‘Tent of Meeting,’”
Hebrew Union College Annual 17 (1942–43): 246–47.
-------. “The Cultic Setting of the ‘Enthronement Psalms’,” Hebrew Un-
ion College Annual 35 (1964): 1–42.
-------. “The Despoiling of the Egyptians,” Journal of Biblical Literature
68 (1949): 1–28.
-------. The Fire Upon the Altar. Leiden: Brill, 1963.
-------. “The Gates of Righteousness,” Hebrew Union College Annual 6
(1929): 1–37.
-------. Some Significant Antecedents of Christianity. Leiden: Brill, 1966.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 477
Morris, Robert. The Poetry of Freemasonry. Chicago: The Werner Com-

pany, 1895.
Mowry, Lucetta. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early Church. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1962.
Müller, H.-P. “chākham; wisdom,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Tes-
tament, 4:364–85.
Mundkur, Balaji. The Cult of the Serpent: an Interdisciplinary Survey of its
Manifestations and Origins. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1983.
Murphy, Roland E. “The Canticle of Canticles and the Virgin Mary,”
Carmelus 1 (1954): 18–28.
Murry, J. Middleton. Adam and Eve. London: A. Dakers, 1944.
Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China. 7 volumes. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954–2004.
Newsom, Carol. Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition, Harvard
Semitic Studies 27. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985.
Newstead, Helaine. Bran the Blessed in Arthurian Romance. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1939.
Nibley, Hugh. Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present. Edited by
Don E. Norton. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. Volume 12,
Ancient History. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and Foundation
for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992.
Nielsen, Ditlef. Die altarabische Mondreligion und die mosaische Ueber-
lieferung. Strassburg: K. J. Trübner, 1904.
-------. “Die altsemitische Muttergöttin,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 17 (1938): 526–51.
-------. Der dreieinige Gott in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung. Copenhagen:
Gyldendalske Boghandel-Nordisk Forlag, 1922.
Nissinen, Marti, and Risto Uro, eds. Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human
Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity. Winona Lake:
Eisenbrauns, 2008.
Nötscher, Friederich. “Das Angesicht Gottes Schauen” nach biblischer und
babylonischer Auffassung. Würzburg: C J Becker, 1924.
Nyberg, H. S. “Studien zum Religionskampf im Alten Testament,” Ar-
chiv für Religionswissenschaft 35 (1938): 329–87.
O’Brien, John A. “Why Priests Marry,” Christian Century 87 (1970): 417.
Odeberg, Hugo. 3 Enoch, or the Hebrew Book of Enoch. New York: Ktav,
1973.
Oepke, Albert. “gunē,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
1:776–88.
478 A GREAT MYSTERY
Olyan, Saul M. Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel. Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1988.
Orlov, Andrei A. From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism: Studies in the
Slavonic Pseudepigrapha. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
------. The Enoch-Metatron Tradition. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005.
Orr, William, and James Walther, 1 Corinthians, Anchor Bible. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1976.
Owen, D. D. F. The Evolution of the Grail Legend. Edinburgh: Oliver &
Boyd, 1968.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1979.
-------. The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters. Philadel-
phia: Fortress Press, 1975.
-------. The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis: Heracleon’s Commentary on
John. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1973.
Parente, Paschal P. “The Canticle of Canticles in Mystical Theology,”
Catholic Biblical Quarterly 6 (1944): 142–58.
Parker, John. The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite: Now First Translated
into English, from the Original Greek. London: J. Parker and Co.,
1897.
Parry, Donald W., ed. Temples of the Ancient World: Ritual and Symbolism.
Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company and Foundation for An-
cient Research and Mormon Studies, 1994.
Parry, Donald W., and Stephen D. Ricks, eds. The Temple in Time and
Eternity. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mor-
mon Studies at Brigham Young University, 1999.
Pass, H. Leonard. “Altar (Christian),” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Eth-
ics. Edited by James Hastings. Volume 1. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1912: 338.
Patai, Raphael. The Hebrew Goddess, 1st edition. New York: Ktav Pub.
House, 1967.
-------. The Hebrew Goddess, 3rd edition. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1990.
-------. Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual. London: T.
Nelson, 1947.
-------. The Messiah Texts. New York: Avon, 1979.
-------. The Seed of Abraham: Jews and Arabs in Contact and Conflict. Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986.
-------. Sex and Family Life in the Middle East. Garden City, NY: Double-
day, 1959.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 479
Parunak, H. van Dyke. “Was Solomon’s Temple Aligned to the Sun?”

Palestine Exploration Quarterly 110 (1978): 29–33.
Pearson, Birger A. “Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary,
4:984–93.
Pedersen, J. Israel, Its Life and Culture. Copenhagen: Branner, 1940.
Perrin, Norman. Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus. New York: Harper &
Row, 1967.
Pétrement, Simone. A Separate God: The Christian Origins of Gnosticism.
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990.
Philenenko, Marc. Joseph et Aséneth, texts critique et notes. Leiden: Brill,
1968.
Phipps, William E. The Sexuality of Jesus: Theological and Literary Perspec-
tives. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
-------. Was Jesus Married? The Distortion of Sexuality in the Christian Tradi-
tion. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
Plumpe, Joseph Conrad. Mater Ecclesia: An Inquiry into the Concept of the
Church as Mother in Early Christianity. Washington: Catholic Uni-
versity of America Press, 1943.
Pope, Hugh T. “Mary Magdalene,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia. Volume
9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910.
Pope, Marvin H. El in the Ugaritic Texts. Leiden: Brill, 1955.
-------. “Proselyte,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 3:921–31.
-------. Song of Songs, Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977.
Potter, Charles F. Did Jesus Write This Book? New York: University
Books, 1965.
Pritchard, James B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts. Princeton: Princeton
Prutz, Hans. Geheimlehre und Geheimstatuten des Tempelherren-Ordens: Eine
kritische Untersuchung. Berlin: Mittler, 1899.
Przyluski, Jean. “Etudes Indienne et chinoises; Les Unipeds,” Mélanges
Chinois et Bouddhiques 2 (1933): 307–32.
Pulver, Max. “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion According to the
Acts of St. John,” in The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks
2. Edited by Joseph Campbell. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1955: 169–93.
Quesnell, Quentin. “‘Made Themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of
Heaven,’ (Mt. 19,12),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30 (1968): 335–58.
Quispel, Gilles. “An Unknown Fragment of the Acts of Andrew (Pap.
Copt. Utrecht N. 1),” Vigiliae Christianae 10 (1956): 129–48.
480 A GREAT MYSTERY
-------. “Gnosis and the New Sayings of Jesus,” Eranos Jahrbuch 38

(1969): 261–95.
Rabinowitz, Louis. Encyclopedia Judaica 5:399.
Race, Robert. “The Legend of the Third Degree,” in British Masonic
Miscellany. Compiled by George M. Martin. Volume 9. Dundee:
David Winter and Son, 1920: 84–133.
von Rad, Gerhard. “eikōn,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
2:351–96 (with Kittel and Kleinknecht).
-------. Old Testament Theology. 2 Volumes. New York: Harpers, 1962.
-------. Wisdom in Israel. Nashville: Abingdon, 1972.
Rahner, Hugo. “The Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries,” in
The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks 2. Edited by Joseph
Campbell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955: 337–408.
Rankin, O. S. Israel’s Wisdom Literature: Its Bearing on Theology and the His-
tory of Religion. Lund: Schocken Books, 1947.
Ravenscroft, Trevor. The Cup of Destiny: The Quest for the Grail. York
Beach, ME: S. Weiser, 1982.
Rawson, Philip. The Art of Tantra. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973.
Reik, Theodor. Pagan Rites in Judaism: from Sex Initiation, Magic, Moon-
Cult, Tattooing, Mutilation, and Other Primitive Rituals to Family Loyalty
and Solidarity. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1964.
Reitzenstein, Richard. “Eine frühchristliche Schrift von den dreierlei
Früchten,” Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 15 (1914):
60–90.
-------. Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen nach ihren Grundgedanken und
Wirkungen. Vortrag ursprünglich gehalten in dem
Wissenschaftlichen Predigerverein für Elsass-Lothringen den 11.
November 1909. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1927.
-------. Poimandres: Studien zur Griechischägyptischen und Frühchristlichen
Literatur. Leipzig: Teubner, 1904.
Richardson, Jabez. Richardson’s Monitor of Free Masonry. Chicago: Ezra A.
Cook Pub. Inc., 1975.
Riley, Hugh M. Christian Initiation: A Comparative Study of the Interpretation
of the Baptismal Liturgy in the Mystagogical Writings of Cyril of Jerusalem,
John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Ambrose of Milan. Wash-
ington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1974.
Ringgren, Helmer. Israelite Religion. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966.
-------. Word and Wisdom: Studies in the Hypostatization of Divine Qualities
and Functions in the Ancient Near East. Lund: H. Ohlssons boktr.,
1947.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 481
Rivera, P. Alfonso. “Sentido mariologico del Cantar de los Cantos,”

Ephimerides Mariologicae 1 (1951): 437–68; 2 (1952): 25–42.
Roberts, Alexander, and James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers: Transla-
tions of the Writings of the Fathers down to A. D. 325. 10 volumes.
Buffalo: The Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1885–96.
Roberts, B. J. “Athbash,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1:306–7.
Roberts, J. J. M. The Earliest Semitic Pantheon: A Study of the Semitic Deities
Attested in Mesopotamia before Ur III. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Robertson Smith, W. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. 3rd edition.
London: Black, 1927.
Robinson, James M. “Basic Shifts in German Theology,” Interpretation
16 (1962): 76–97.
-------. “A Form-Analysis of Colossians 1:15–20,” Journal of Biblical Lit-
erature 76 (1957): 220–87.
Robinson James M., and Helmut Koester. Trajectories through Early
Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971.
Robinson, William C., Jr. “The Exegesis on the Soul,” in The Nag
Hammadi Library in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. New
York: Harper & Row, 1977: 190–98.
de Rola, S. K. Alchemy: The Secret Art. New York: Thames and Hudson,
1973.
de Rougemont, Dennis. Love in the Western World. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1957.
Rudolph, Kurt, and R. McL. Wilson. Gnosis: the Nature and History of
Gnosticism. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.
Runciman, Steven. The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist
Heresy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947.
Russell, D. S. Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic 200 BC–AD 100.
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964.
Rylaarsdam, J. C. “Nazirite,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 3:526–
27.
-------. “Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread,” in Interpreter’s Dic-
tionary of the Bible, 3:663–68.
Sampley, J. Paul. “And the Two Shall Be One Flesh”: A Study of Traditions
in Ephesians 5:21–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1971.
Sänger, Dietrich. Antikes Judentum und die Mysterien. Tübingen: Mohr,
1980.
482 A GREAT MYSTERY
de Santillana, Giorgio, and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill: an

Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time. Boston: Gambit, 1977.
Schafer, Peter. Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to
the Early Kabbalah. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Schaya, Leo. “The Meaning of the Temple,” in The Sword of Gnosis:
Metaphysics, Cosmology, Tradition, Symbolism. Edited by Jacob Nee-
dleman. Baltimore: Penguin, 1974.
-------. The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah. Baltimore: Penguin, 1975.
Schenke, H.-M. “Das Evangelium nach Philippus. Ein Evangelium der
Valentinianer aus dem Funde von Nag-Hamadi,” Theologische Lit-
eraturzeitung 84 (January 1959): 1–26.
------. “Nag Hamadi Studien III,” Zeitschrift für Religions-und Geistes-
geschichte 14 (1962): 351–61.
Schiele, Friederich. “Harnack’s ‘Probabilia’ Concerning the Address
and the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” American Journal of
Theology 9 (1910): 290–308.
Schlier, Heinrich. Der Brief an die Epheser: Ein Kommentar. Düsseldorf:
Patmos, 1957.
-------. Christus und die Kirche im Epheserbrief. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr,
1930.
Schmidt, Carl. Die Beiden Bücher des Jeu: Unbekanntes Altgnostische Werk.
Erster Band: Die Pistis Sophia. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962.
-------. Neue Originalquellen des Manichaismus aus Ägypten. Stuttgart: Kohl-
hammer, 1933.
Schmidt, Nathaniel. “The Son of Man in the Book of Daniel,” Journal
of Biblical Literature 19 (1900): 22–28.
Schonfield, Hugh. The Essene Odyssey: the Mystery of the True Teacher and
the Essene Impact on the Shaping of Human Destiny. Longmead, Safts-
bury, Dorset: Element Books, 1984.
Schoeps, H. J. “Judenchristentum und Gnosis,” in Le Origini dello Gnos-
ticismo. Edited by Ugo Bianchi. Leiden: Brill, 1967: 528–537.
Scholem, Gershom. Das Buch Bahir. Leipzig: W. Drugulin, 1923.
-------. “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der kabbalistischen Konzeption
der Schechinah,” Eranos Jahrbuch 21 (1953): 45–107.
-------. Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition. New
York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960.
-------. Kabbalah. Jerusalem: Keter, 1974.
-------. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books,
1961.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 483
-------. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. New York: Schocken Books,
1965.
-------. “Die Vorstellung von Golem in ihrem tellurischen und
magischen Beziehungen,” Eranos Jahrbuch 22 (1953): 237–43.
Schröder, F. Rolf. Die Parzivalfrage. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1928.
Schweitzer, Albert. The Mysticism of the Apostle Paul. New York: H. Holt
and Co., 1931.
Scott, George Riley. Phallic Worship: A History of Sex and Sex-Rites in Re-
lation to the Religions of All Races from Antiquity to the Present Day.
Westpoint, CT: Associated Booksellers, n.d
Scott-Moncrieff, P. D. “Coptic Church,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics. Edited by James Hastings. Volume 7. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1912: 113–19.
Scroggs, Robin. The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1966.
Segal, Alan F. “Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christi-
anity, and Their Environment,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der
Romischen Welt 2.23.2 (1980).
-------. Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
-------. Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and
Gnosticism. Leiden: Brill, 1977.
Segelberg, Eric. “The Coptic Gnostic Gospel According to Philip and
Its Sacramental System,” Numen 7 (1960): 189–200.
Siegfried, Carl. Philo von Alexandria als Ausleger des Alten Testaments; die
griechischen und jüdischen Bildungsgrundlagen und die allegorische
Schriftauslegung Philo’s. Jena: Verlag von Hermann Dufft, 1875.
Singer, Samuel. Wolfram und der Gral: Neue Parzival Studien. Bern: Verlag
H. Lang, 1939.
Skehan, P. W. Studies in Israelite Poetry and Wisdom. Washington: Catholic
Biblical Association, 1971.
Skehan, P. W., and A. di Lella. The Wisdom of Ben Sira, Anchor Bible.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987.
Smith, Jonathan Z. “The Garments of Shame,” History of Religions 5
(1965): 218–22.
Smith, Margaret. The Way of the Mystics: the Early Christian Mystics and the
Rise of the Sūfīs. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in
Ancient Israel. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990.
484 A GREAT MYSTERY
Smith, Morton. “The Case of the Gilded Staircase,” Biblical Archeology

Review 10 (Sept./Oct. 1984): 5, 50–55.
-------. Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1973.
-------. The Secret Gospel: the Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel
according to Mark. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Stählin, Gustav. “phileō,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
9:119–46.
Stählin, Otto. Clemens von Alexandrien, Deutsche Akademie der Wissen-
schaften zu Berlin. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1905–1936.
Stauffer, E. “theos,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 3:94–
121.
Stegmann, B. Christ, the “Man from Heaven”: A study of 1 Cor. 15, 45–47
in the Light of the Anthropology of Philo Judaeus. Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America, 1927.
Stein, Sir Mark Aurel. Innermost Asia: Detailed Report of Explorations in
Central Asia, Kan-su and Eastern Iran, Carried out and Described under
the Orders of H.M. Indian Government. 4 volumes. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1928.
Stewart, Bob. “The Grail as a Bodily Vessel,” in At the Table of the Grail:
Strack, Hermann Leberecht, and Paul Billerbeck. Kommentar zum Neuen
Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. Munich: Beck, 1922–61.
Strugnell, John. “The Angelic Liturgy at Qumran (4q serak šhirot ‘olat
haššabbat),” in Congress Volume, Oxford, Supplements to Vetus
Testamentum 7. Leiden: Brill, 1960: 318–45.
Summers, Montague. The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism. London:
Rider, 1950.
Tabor, James D. Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise in Its Greco-
Roman, Judaic, and Early Christian Contexts, Studies in Judaism.
Lanham: University Press of America, 1986.
Taylor J. Glen. Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for
Sun Worship in Ancient Israel. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993.
Thomas, Joseph. Le mouvement baptiste en Palestine et Syrie (150 av. J.-C.-
300 ap. J.-C.). Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1935.
Tödt, H. E. The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition. Philadelphia: West-
minster Press, 1965.
Tompkins, Peter. The Magic of Obelisks. New York: Harper & Row,
1981.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 485
van der Toorn, Karel. “Prostitution (Cultic),” in Anchor Bible Dictionary,

5:510–13.
Trible, Phyllis. “God, Nature of, in the Old Testament” in Interpreter’s
Dictionary of the Bible, 5:368–69.
Tucci, Giuseppi. “Some Glosses upon Guhyasamaja,” Melanges chinois et
bouddhiques 3 (1934–35): 339–53.
-------. The Theory and Practice of the Mandala. London: Rider, 1962.
Turner, H. E. W., and Hugh Montifiore. Thomas and the Evangelists. Na-
perville, IL: Allenson, 1962.
Turner, John D. “Trimorphic Protennoia,” in The Nag Hammadi Li-
brary in English. Edited by James M. Robinson. New York: Harper
& Row, 1977: 511–22.
Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: a Study in the Nature and Development of
Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1948.
van Unnik, W. C. “The ‘Gospel of Truth’ and the New Testament,” in
The Jung Codex: A Newly Recovered Gnostic Papyrus, Three Studies.
Edited by F. L. Cross. London: Mowbray, 1955.
de Vaux, Roland. Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions. 2 volumes. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.
-------. The History of Early Israel. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978.
Vermes, Geza. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Harmondsworth: Pen-
guin, 1969.
Volz, Paul. Das Neujahrsfest Jahwes; Laubhüttenfest. Tübingen: J.C.B.
Mohr, 1912.
Vriezen, Theodore H. The Religion of Ancient Israel. Philadelphia: West-
minster Press, 1967.
Wagner, Reinhardt. Die Gnosis von Alexandrien. Stuttgart, n.d. [1968].
Waite, A. E. The Holy Kabbalah: A Study of the Secret Tradition in Israel as
Unfolded by Sons of the Doctrine for the Benefit and Consolation of the Elect
Dispersed through the Lands and Ages of the Greater Exile. New Hyde
Park, NY: University Books, 1960.
Wallis, G. “dābhaq,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 3:79–83.
Watts, Alan. Nature, Man and Woman. New York: Pantheon, 1958.
Weber, Ferdinand. Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter
Schriften gemeinfasslich dargestellt. New York: Olms, 1975.
Weiner, Herbert. 9½ Mystics: the Kabbalah Today. New York: Holt,
Reinhart and Winston, 1969.
Welch, Holmes. Taoism: The Parting of the Way. Boston: Beacon Press,
1957.
486 A GREAT MYSTERY
Weston, Jessie L. From Ritual to Romance. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,

1957.
-------. Legend of Sir Percival: Studies upon Its Origin, Development, and
Position in the Arthurian Cycle. 2 volumes. London: D. Nutt, 1906–
1909.
-------. The Quest for the Holy Grail. London: G. Bell, 1913.
Widengren, Geo. The Accadian and Hebrew Psalms of Lamentation in Reli-
gious Documents a Comparative Study. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells,
1937.
-------. Sakrales Königtum im Alten Testament und im Judentum; Franz
Delitzsch-Vorlesungen. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1955.
Wiggins, Steve A. A Reassessment of Asherah: With Further Considerations of
the Goddess. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2007.
Wilckens, U. “sophia,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 7:
496–526, 565–76.
Wilhelm, Richard, and C. G. Jung. The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chi-
nese Book of Life. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1950.
Williams, C. S. C. “I and II Corinthians,” in Peake’s Commentary on the
Bible. London: Nelson, 1962: 954–72.
Williams Jackson, A. V. Researches in Manichaeism. New York: AMS
Press, 1965.
Williams, Michael A. “Uses of Gender Imagery in Ancient Gnostic
Texts,” in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols. Edited
by C. Walker Bynum, S. Harrell, and P. Richman. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1986.
Wilson, R. McLain. The Gospel of Philip. London: A. R. Mowbray, 1962.
-------. Gnosis and the New Testament. Oxford: Blackwell, 1968.
-------. Studies in the Gospel of Thomas. London: Mowbray, 1960.
Winston, David. The Wisdom of Solomon, Anchor Bible. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1974.
Wolfson, Elliot R. Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination
in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994.
Wolfson, H. A. Philo. 2 volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1947.
Woodroofe, Sir John (Arthur Avalon). Shakti and Shakta. Madras: Ga-
nesh, 1951.
Yadin, Yigael. The Temple Scroll. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society,
1983.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 487
Yamauchi, Edwin. Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Proposed Evi-

dences. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973.
Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1946.
-------. Philosophies of India. New York: Pantheon Books, 1956.
INDEX
absorption, 71, 72, 363, 468 Bardaisan, 372, 379

Adam Kadmon, 29, 82, 338, 339, beard, 386
341, 344, 377 Beatific Vision, 236, 238, 353, 421
Adonis, 271, 428 beginning, 10, 25, 34, 51, 57, 63, 64,
agape, 106, 207, 209, 210, 218, 319, 66, 79, 90, 99, 100, 102, 123, 146,
321, 322, 324, 326 155, 156, 157, 161, 162, 172, 175,
alchemy, 285, 390, 391, 398, 401, 178, 223, 232, 245, 248, 261, 264,
403, 406, 407, 408, 411, 455, 463, 270, 277, 286, 289, 292, 300, 310,
465, 468 327, 330, 340, 341, 354, 355, 387,
allegories, 2, 119, 316, 354, 487 400, 401, 404, 409, 427, 429
Anath, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 28, 35, 197, blood, 68, 115, 119, 120, 132, 141,
266, 271, 366, 412 142, 166, 169, 243, 319, 320, 321,
antitypes, 20, 119, 254, 268, 277, 282 381, 400, 413, 415, 417, 421, 422,
Aphrodite, 271, 324, 365 423, 424, 428, 456, 462, 470
Archons, 320, 323, 376 Bogomils, 371, 375, 380, 384, 430
Ark, vii, 5, 6, 7, 13, 27, 53, 54, 57, 58, Bogumils, 329
66, 67, 69, 124, 139, 177, 220, Buddhism, 374, 397, 450, 451, 453,
225, 260, 338, 414, 421, 425, 426, 457, 461, 481, 482
427, 432, 467, 473, 482, 492 bull, 32, 33, 421
Artemis, 365 caduceus, 391, 394, 458
asceticism, 307, 313, 316, 329, 331, Catharism, 316, 371, 383
343, 353, 355, 356 Cathars, vii, 329, 372, 375, 381, 382,
Asherah, 26, 27, 52, 55, 266, 271, 384, 425, 430
346, 482, 493, 502 cauldrons, 418, 426
Atonement, 2, 19, 84, 87, 169, 279, celibacy, 226, 306, 307, 332, 354, 355
332, 334, 470, 476 Celtic, 391, 414, 416, 417, 418, 419,
Attis, 271, 428 420, 426, 430, 479, 491
Baal, 11, 12, 13, 16, 26, 28, 33, 52, chaos, 16, 76, 173, 181, 266, 325,
90, 197, 271, 272, 273, 412, 428 373, 392, 413
Baphomet, 385, 386 chariot, 22, 204, 219, 336, 346
baptism, 88, 91, 93, 115, 127, 128, cinnabar, 400, 462
129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, circumcision, 129, 132, 161, 171,
142, 155, 173, 174, 175, 176, 199, 172, 173, 174, 186
203, 207, 238, 245, 247, 248, 286, cleavage, 70, 140, 169, 363, 464, 468,
292, 310, 328, 373, 380, 424, 473 469
Barbelo, 275, 278, 299, 320, 321, cleave, 124, 125, 131, 169, 311, 469
322, 323, 448, 475
489
490 A GREAT MYSTERY
communion, 44, 69, 70, 71, 72, 75, fire, 6, 37, 52, 53, 55, 56, 66, 67, 76,
77, 88, 123, 124, 180, 186, 187, 81, 98, 148, 149, 242, 243, 249,
209, 248, 301, 322, 324, 335, 336, 261, 319, 329, 333, 358, 359, 362,
356, 358, 413, 469 372, 375, 376, 400, 407, 410, 427,
compass, 392, 393, 395, 396, 397, 431, 448, 452, 460, 464, 465
435, 437, 438, 457 Fisher King, 415, 417, 423
consummation, 18, 192, 233, 287, fruitfulness, 19, 161, 191, 196, 198,
413 468
Coptic, 102, 127, 190, 207, 286, 374, Fu Hsih, 392, 393, 394, 395, 396,
378, 443, 483, 499 397, 404, 453, 458
Cybele, 271 gnosis, 39, 113, 149, 219, 239, 288,
Degree, 108, 400, 435, 436, 437, 440, 328, 329, 378, 422, 451
447, 496 Gnostic, vi, vii, 1, 15, 22, 28, 50, 57,
deification, 3, 40, 83, 122, 143, 184, 58, 96, 98, 99, 102, 106, 127, 134,
215, 219, 234, 237, 356, 359, 361, 137, 146, 150, 160, 165, 168, 176,
362, 363, 364, 365, 377, 469, 474 178, 183, 195, 201, 202, 206, 212,
desert, 17, 27, 29, 30, 31, 77, 79, 89, 217, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226,
151, 152, 345, 353, 355, 412, 457 236, 238, 240, 242, 243, 252, 253,
door, 38, 105, 114, 122, 272, 303, 254, 255, 256, 264, 265, 267, 269,
406 270, 273, 274, 275, 276, 278, 282,
Ebionite, vi, 89, 146, 182, 186, 241, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 291,
242, 243, 246, 326 292, 294, 298, 299, 301, 303, 306,
Eden, 64, 128, 137, 167, 186, 196, 310, 319, 320, 322, 323, 325, 328,
197, 249, 253, 328, 432 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 337,
effluence, 24, 51, 56, 57, 82, 113, 338, 339, 340, 341, 356, 366, 372,
189, 190, 194, 199, 265, 297, 328, 374, 375, 376, 378, 379, 380, 381,
473, 474 385, 387, 408, 409, 419, 423, 424,
El, 14, 15, 16, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 47, 425, 428, 429, 430, 431, 433, 437,
79, 90, 93, 107, 170, 256, 266, 438, 441, 449, 450, 452, 454, 455,
271, 272, 273, 346, 352, 475, 483, 465, 468, 471, 474, 480, 483, 485,
490, 495 486, 487, 489, 490, 494, 499, 501,
Elkasaite, 230, 233, 246 502
Elyon, 14, 79, 90, 261, 273 Gnosticism, vi, vii, 1, 13, 28, 39, 57,
Encratites, 316, 355 82, 96, 127, 129, 137, 154, 158,
equinox, 52, 53, 272 174, 177, 178, 179, 183, 184, 194,
Eucharist, 1, 126, 127, 130, 132, 199, 195, 203, 239, 243, 244, 246, 251,
207, 209, 248, 319, 321, 322, 325, 252, 253, 254, 268, 274, 275, 280,
326, 327, 328, 421 287, 288, 291, 316, 318, 319, 329,
eunuchs, 226, 308 330, 331, 334, 356, 371, 372, 373,
Eve, 10, 20, 128, 131, 134, 137, 138, 385, 422, 424, 430, 441, 450, 451,
139, 145, 157, 158, 160, 188, 204, 454, 475, 477, 478, 483, 484, 486,
245, 246, 277, 278, 279, 281, 286, 487, 489, 491, 495, 497, 498, 499,
314, 316, 325, 350, 352, 366, 376, 503
411, 425, 468, 493
INDEX 491
Gnostics, 22, 50, 82, 145, 176, 194, 412, 413, 414, 419, 425, 426, 432,
203, 218, 222, 239, 252, 253, 254, 435, 452, 453, 463, 464, 471, 472
255, 259, 265, 269, 270, 274, 275, Hindu, 333, 376, 399, 450, 452, 454,
276, 278, 280, 281, 283, 286, 293, 456, 458, 459, 468
306, 317, 318, 320, 323, 324, 326, Hiram Abiff, 405, 422, 424, 436,
327, 328, 330, 331, 332, 339, 357, 437, 438, 439, 440, 443, 446, 447,
366, 367, 372, 382, 385, 401, 423, 448
429, 455, 473, 474, 475, 483, 490 Hittites, 365
gold, 31, 32, 52, 55, 190, 236, 362, honey, 177, 179, 197, 199, 200, 320,
398, 400, 401, 402, 408, 409, 410, 412
462 horos, 24, 119, 379, 380
Gospel of Philip, 7, 97, 105, 106, hypostases, 266, 367
121, 127, 129, 160, 176, 195, 203, Ialdabaoth, 279, 301, 322
210, 213, 243, 246, 276, 277, 278, indwelling, 70, 92, 98, 111, 140, 141,
281, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 154, 171, 182, 280, 299, 305, 332,
289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 298, 363, 380, 460
299, 304, 311, 312, 323, 409, 432, Ishtar, 16, 271
443, 475, 480, 482, 486, 488, 502 Isis, 16, 38, 118, 271, 274, 353, 365,
Gospel of Thomas, v, 38, 95, 96, 98, 391
100, 101, 102, 107, 121, 123, 128, Ka‘ba, 29, 348, 456
130, 138, 140, 160, 169, 178, 179, Kabbalah, 8, 10, 11, 21, 58, 82, 204,
183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 200, 203, 213, 244, 280, 331, 335, 337, 342,
205, 209, 214, 216, 237, 243, 282, 344, 345, 346, 350, 351, 468, 488,
285, 286, 289, 290, 291, 292, 302, 492, 498, 499, 501, 502
303, 304, 312, 313, 358, 386, 405, Kabbalism, 16, 17, 27, 76, 224, 338,
409, 433, 442, 443, 447, 449, 453, 350, 351, 363, 407, 409, 411, 422,
471, 475, 482, 486, 502 436
harlot, 108, 125, 134 Kali, 365, 453
Heavenly Council, 20, 71, 75, 76 karezza, 212, 383
henosis, 38, 72, 88, 109, 140, 142, kavod, 3, 51, 52, 53, 54, 59, 136
169, 170, 182, 237, 254, 283, 295, kiss, 106, 114, 179, 180, 187, 209,
332, 359, 380, 469, 471 210, 211, 278, 284, 302, 303, 322,
heptad, 77, 148, 160 348, 360, 368, 370, 378, 381, 385,
Hexaemeron, v, 58, 78, 102, 138, 389, 425
147, 149, 150, 154, 155, 156, 157, Leper, 443, 444, 445
158, 160, 161, 245, 254, 255, 339, Light-Stream, vi, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60,
340, 366, 474 62, 65, 78, 147, 148, 160, 194,
hieros gamos, 10, 14, 19, 20, 29, 34, 248, 251, 253, 254, 255, 265, 269,
36, 42, 51, 65, 123, 131, 134, 135, 273, 274, 275, 278, 283, 329, 330,
137, 165, 181, 182, 188, 191, 192, 332, 338, 339, 473, 474
197, 198, 200, 201, 205, 255, 295, lion, 24, 56
296, 300, 301, 302, 305, 327, 331, logos, 11, 40, 107, 148, 194, 232,
338, 339, 344, 346, 348, 350, 352, 328, 391
353, 364, 377, 378, 379, 406, 410,
492 A GREAT MYSTERY
Logos, 3, 24, 28, 46, 47, 56, 57, 58, Mother Goddess, 26, 27
59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 69, 88, 89, 92, mystae, 63, 104
93, 94, 100, 121, 146, 148, 149, mystics, 28, 75, 82, 140, 239, 335,
160, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 337, 340, 353, 361, 364, 367, 368,
177, 178, 181, 182, 192, 193, 194, 369, 397, 430, 469
218, 220, 223, 224, 227, 228, 229, Nag Hammadi, 97, 106, 143, 214,
230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 238, 251, 252, 284, 286, 287, 293, 299, 300,
255, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 301, 302, 303, 305, 330, 373, 406,
270, 275, 277, 293, 304, 306, 316, 448, 477, 479, 487, 488, 492, 494,
325, 331, 368, 375, 377, 379, 407, 497, 501
408, 421, 424, 425, 427, 441, 449, navel, 186, 382
475, 485 New Year, 30, 52, 53, 54, 55, 348,
male-female image, 11, 20, 268, 338, 373, 470
343 nous, 47, 59, 113, 375, 378, 389
Mandaeans, 327, 372, 377 Ophites, 325
Manichaean, 371, 374, 375, 378, 379, orthodoxy, 8, 96, 134, 184, 207, 248,
380, 383, 408, 420, 421, 422, 426, 251, 253, 275, 330, 334, 371, 387,
434, 438, 450, 454 423, 467, 473, 476
Manichaeism, 316, 356, 371, 372, Osiris, 16, 271, 274, 428
374, 377, 378, 379, 380, 441, 502 Ouranos, 273
manna, 57, 116, 177, 178, 179, 414, Ouroborus, 403, 404
421, 428 particles, 255, 375, 376, 472
Marduk, 31, 52, 266, 271, 332 Paulicians, 371, 384
Marriage of the Lamb, 115, 127 Pentad, 375, 377
Mary Magdalene, 213, 214, 278, 309, Phibionites, 319, 320, 321, 323, 324,
310, 311, 432, 433, 443, 495 382
marzeah, 210 Philosopher’s Stone, 364, 405, 407,
Mecca, 29, 355, 365, 457 408, 410, 419
Melchizedec, 39, 43, 44, 91, 95, 117, phylacteries, 347, 349
122, 140, 239, 484 pillar, 24, 355, 419, 448, 453, 473
Merkabah, 42, 57, 81, 83, 116, 124, Platonism, 49, 228, 274, 317, 331
172, 186, 194, 204, 218, 239, 336, pleroma, 58, 82, 168
338, 431, 483, 493, 498 Pleroma, vi, vii, 253, 255, 269, 270,
milk, 37, 118, 192, 193, 194, 199, 273, 274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 283,
200, 367, 369 285, 287, 294, 301, 302, 312, 331,
mirror, 25, 60, 93, 112, 113, 116, 332, 334, 337, 340, 474
162, 163, 195, 200, 201, 202, 203, preexistence, 35, 63, 92, 93, 99, 151,
205, 206, 253, 288, 292, 293, 294, 156, 157, 163, 184, 232, 265, 276,
295, 296, 297, 298, 356, 357, 359, 313, 351, 404
388, 473 pregnant, 45, 283, 316, 377, 469
Mishnah, 7, 54, 132, 159, 283 procreation, 41, 45, 46, 63, 165, 196,
monad, 44, 48, 233 215, 320, 324, 328, 338, 349, 376,
monasticism, 306, 354, 355, 356 472
Montanism, 355
INDEX 493
prostitute, 37, 38, 125, 208, 213, 217, semen, 21, 300, 319, 320, 321, 323,
276, 457 327, 328, 401, 454, 459, 460, 463,
Protoctist, 149, 341 464
protoctists, 149, 254 Sephiroth, 16, 58, 277
pseudepigrapha, 17, 335, 336 serpent, 128, 217, 326, 391, 392, 393,
Pythagoreans, 353 394, 404, 444, 458, 459
Queen of Heaven, 13, 365 serpents, 325, 391, 392, 393
Qumran, 36, 44, 55, 75, 77, 78, 80, sevenfold, 56, 57, 77, 116, 147, 160,
83, 133, 151, 177, 181, 184, 186, 254, 338
190, 197, 204, 207, 247, 274, 298, seventy, 152, 153, 346
307, 328, 336, 340, 483, 484, 485, Shakti, 400, 453, 454, 458, 459, 460,
500 503
Ras Shamra, 16, 23, 28, 346, 366, 412 Shekhinah, 3, 6, 8, 11, 16, 17, 21, 27,
Rebis, vii, 390, 391, 392, 393, 395, 28, 29, 35, 44, 46, 59, 118, 196,
396, 398, 404, 408, 411, 435, 437, 209, 215, 297, 298, 320, 341, 342,
465 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349,
Rechabites, 353 350, 351, 352, 426, 432, 472
resurrection, 28, 52, 88, 92, 93, 120, Shiva, 400, 453, 454, 457, 458, 460
128, 141, 142, 169, 191, 197, 271, size, 159, 168
286, 287, 290, 305, 311, 312, 313, snakes, 391
314, 406, 413, 415, 437, 439, 441, soma, 113, 164, 168, 452
442, 470, 474 Sophia, vi, 3, 28, 34, 39, 40, 48, 91,
ritual embrace, 105, 284, 392, 454 178, 209, 214, 243, 255, 266, 267,
ritual meal, 175, 319 269, 270, 275, 277, 279, 280, 297,
rod, 57, 117, 414 306, 321, 323, 327, 346, 350, 367,
round-dance, 295, 296 375, 379, 380, 383, 386, 388, 408,
sacra, 68 424, 425, 426, 432, 433, 451, 491,
Sacred Marriage, vi, vii, 1, 2, 30, 31, 498
40, 42, 83, 103, 107, 118, 122, soteriology, 87, 108, 160, 170, 182,
123, 127, 130, 131, 135, 136, 137, 249, 303, 323, 375, 401, 431, 467,
139, 140, 164, 165, 166, 191, 192, 470, 471
197, 229, 234, 236, 239, 288, 305, square, 392, 393, 395, 396, 397, 435,
327, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 437, 438, 463
352, 353, 363, 364, 365, 378, 400, Stoic, 24
403, 404, 406, 407, 409, 411, 412, Stoics, 251, 316, 353
433, 457, 458, 465, 471, 476, 490 sun, 25, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 62, 85,
sanctify, 107, 130, 136, 175, 470 113, 157, 184, 188, 190, 197, 219,
Sarpanit, 31, 271 234, 235, 236, 237, 242, 271, 272,
seal, 12, 137, 173, 199, 221, 385 333, 375, 394, 395, 396, 400, 408,
seed, 15, 41, 42, 47, 65, 88, 90, 118, 412, 421, 450
123, 198, 221, 223, 243, 263, 279, surrogate, 12, 23, 33, 38, 42, 48, 107,
280, 306, 318, 319, 320, 341, 349, 138, 194, 381
369, 376, 379, 383, 434, 464
494 A GREAT MYSTERY
syzygy, 28, 146, 147, 164, 165, 230, trinity, 340

233, 234, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, Troubadour, 371, 381, 383
267, 268, 299, 366, 373, 381 Upanishads, 451, 452, 483
Tantra, 451, 453, 454, 457, 459, 460, Valentinians, 216, 221, 226, 243, 252,
461, 462, 496 254, 276, 277, 281, 287, 312, 318,
Tantric, vii, 383, 397, 398, 400, 451, 373, 380
452, 453, 454, 456, 457, 458, 459, Vedas, 452
460, 461, 463, 478, 482 virgin, 33, 34, 35, 41, 47, 48, 50, 65,
Tantrism, 452, 454, 455, 468 107, 135, 178, 181, 225, 226, 227,
Tetrad, 15, 21, 253, 270, 271, 272, 276, 313, 315, 357, 359, 383
273, 276 virgines subintroductae, 154, 212,
Tetragrammaton, 257, 437 218, 315, 383
theogony, 272 wedding feast, 345
Theotokos, 365 white stone, 421, 422, 428
throne, 24, 53, 56, 75, 76, 79, 82, wilderness, 2, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 42,
172, 214, 249, 336 43, 44, 67, 117, 177, 213, 248,
tomb, 114, 213, 252, 305, 393, 396, 249, 313, 424, 431, 435
397, 411, 427, 441 wine, 64, 126, 199, 319, 322, 326,
transfiguration, 112, 113 327, 328, 411, 412
Tree of Life, 64, 126, 243, 245, 280, womb, 7, 193, 300, 338, 340, 369,
331 405, 411, 425, 428, 472
Triad, 15, 82, 270, 272, 273, 376, 462 Zoroastrian, 333, 402
Trigrams, 394, 395, 396 Zoroastrianism, 333, 372, 464, 483

Eugene Seaich, A Great Mystery: The Secret of The Jerusalem Temple The Embracing Cherubim and at-One-Ment With The Divine

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

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

Eugene Seaich, A Great Mystery: The Secret of The Jerusalem Temple The Embracing Cherubim and at-One-Ment With The Divine

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A GREAT MYSTERY: THE SECRET OF

THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE

In der Liebesnächte Kühlung, Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest, Überfällt

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Seaich, Eugene, 1925-

Printed in the United States of America

5 The Post-New Testament Wisdom Mystery ...............................................167

Yin and Yang, the Rebis, and Alchemy....................................................385

One of the most salient points to emerge in Post-Modernism is the concept

3 The Bride of Christ (London, 1940), 17.

1 Translation by G. W. Buchanan, Hebrews, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY,

4 “The Cultic Setting,” HUCA 35 (1964): 34–35, n.71.

5 The Secret Doctrine, (London, 1888), 2:460.

Philosophy (Los Angeles, 1957), 176.

10 Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 101. Rabbi Rabinowitz, while acknowledging their

of Jewish mysticism, the Shekhinah, and the Shekhinah-Matronit in the Kabbalah

THE CHERUBIM AS GOD’S “FACE”

13 Friederich Nötscher, “Das Angesicht Gottes Schauen” (Würzburg, 1924), 90–93.

16 Helmer Ringgren, Israelite Religion (Philadelphia, 1966), 163.

(hereafter, YGC), 135, 129.

He also suggests that the name of Anath at Elephantine, “Anath-Bethel,” would

THE CHERUBIM AS SYMBOLS OF GOD’S MALE-FEMALE IMAGE

mediating “power,” described variously as his “angel” (Exod 23:20), or as a “per-

Trible’s article in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 5:368.

from On Drunkenness in fact preserves the exact same divine Triad of

geschichtlicher Beleuchtung (Copenhagen, 1922); “Die altsemitische Muttergöttin,”

geschichte 14 (1962): 351–61.

chaos and providing fertility at the time of creation. Their pattern of

38Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 304.

THE CHERUBIM AS SYMBOLS OF GOD’S REDEMPTIVE MARRIAGE TO

40 Legends of the Jews, 3:159.

Nevertheless, the Heavenly Union (literally “copulation”) “depends on the

THE CHERUBIM AS PARADIGMS OF HUMAN MARRIAGE

41 Quoted in Patai, Man and Temple (London, 1947), 92.

47 Scholem, On the Kabbalah (New York, 1965), 140.

ther via personal communication, or taken from The Hebrew Goddess.

also commanded to become “one” by means of legitimate marriage (Gen

WHO WAS WISDOM?

1 Amongst Alexandrian Jews “Wisdom was normally equated with God’s

From the mouth of the Most High I came forth,

City, NY, 1987), 335.

5 Two Powers in Heaven (Leiden, 1977; see p. 14, above).

9 An expression used by Conrad L’Heureux, Rank among the Canaanite Gods

(Missoula, 1979), 5; and by J. J. M. Roberts, The Earliest Semitic Pantheon (Baltimore,

terpart to a mother goddess, or goddess of love.” Israelite Religion (Philadelphia,

13 Leviticus Rabbah, 6:1 (ca. A.D. 300).

rah,”17 or the “Law” by which the universe was governed. In Christianity,

ISRAEL AS GOD’S BRIDE

personification of the preexistent ekklesia (e.g., Tripartite Tractate, 58:29–59:1), which

Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 3:664.

24 Samuel N. Kramer, The Sacred Marriage Rite (Bloomington, 1969), 49–106. In

47 (1928): 148; de Vaux, History of Early Israel, 708.

29 “Miscellanées Bibliques,” Bulletin d’Histoire et d’Exegese de l’Ancien Testament 23

THE BRIDE WISDOM

33 Richard A. Batey, New Testament Nuptial Imagery (Leiden, 1972), 26–27.

Mother-like she will meet him,

the same article.

Already in early childhood,

PHILO’S ACCOUNT OF THE WISDOM MYSTERY

52 The “secret knowledge” and the “knowledge of God,” respectively.

the Giants, 47.

59Fragments of Philo Judaeus (Cambridge, 1886), 69.

movement back to the Pharisaic Judaism of the Second Temple.