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Poetics of the Gnostic Universe : Narrative and Cosmology in the Apocryphon of John / by Zlatko Ple“E

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Poetics of the Gnostic Universe : Narrative and Cosmology in the Apocryphon of John / by Zlatko Ple“E Poetics of the Gnostic Universe Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies Editors Stephen Emmel & Johannes van Oort Editorial Board H.W. Attridge, R. Cameron, W.-P. Funk, I. Gardner, C.W. Hedrick, H. Jackson, S.N.C. Lieu, P. Nagel, D.M. Parrott, B.A. Pearson, S. Richter, J.M. Robinson, K. Rudolph, W. Sundermann, G. Wurst VOLUME 52 Poetics of the Gnostic Universe Narrative and Cosmology in the Apocryphon of John by Zlatko Ple“e BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ple“e, Zlatko. Poetics of the Gnostic universe : narrative and cosmology in the Apocryphon of John / by Zlatko Ple“e. p. cm. — (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean studies, ISSN 0929–2470 ; 52) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90–04–11674–5 (alk. paper) 1. Apocryphon of John—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. II. Series. BT1392.A752P54 2006 229’.94—dc22 20050508214 ISSN 0929–2470 ISBN 90 04 11674 5 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................................ vii Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Chapter One. Narrative and Composition ............................ 7 The Frame Narrative: Authorship and Narrative Voices .... 7 Dramatis Personae ................................................................ 20 John’s Failed Inventio ........................................................ 20 John’s Vision: Form and Content .................................. 25 The Revelatory Monologue: Narrative Structure, Plot, Voices ................................................................................ 43 Dispositio: What Is—What Has Come to Be—What Will Come to Pass .................................................................... 43 Plot: The Logic of the Savior’s Narrative ...................... 47 Dissonant Voices, Consonant Models: Plato, Moses, and Dame Wisdom .............................................................. 67 Chapter Two. The Realm of Being ...................................... 74 Agnostos Theos .................................................................... 74 Praising Oneness: A Literary Analysis .......................... 74 The God without Qualities ............................................ 82 Kataphasis ............................................................................ 91 Formation of the Spiritual Realm ................................ 91 The Language of Procession in the Apocryphon of John ...... 107 Chapter Three. The Realm of Becoming .............................. 139 Sophia “Our Sister” (Prov 7:4) .......................................... 139 Sophia the Lowest Aeon ................................................ 139 Sophia’s Miscarriage ...................................................... 142 Sophia’s Motivation: The Soul “in Travail of Birth” ...... 148 Cosmogony, Part One: The ‘Gnostic’ Demiurge ............ 160 Ialdabaoth in the Luminous Cloud .............................. 161 Ialdabaoth the Villain .................................................... 171 Ialdabaoth the Demiurge .............................................. 178 “Let Us Make a Man” .................................................. 200 Ialdabaoth the Jealous God .............................................. 210 vi contents Cosmogony, Part Two: Sophia’s Repentance .................... 222 Narrative Function of the Episode .................................. 222 Other ‘Gnostic’ Interpretations of Genesis 1:2b ............ 225 Sophia’s Movement and Wisdom Literature .................. 234 Temporal Coordinates of Sophia’s Movement: Sophia, Ialdabaoth’s Assistant .................................... 240 Spatial Coordinates of Sophia’s Movement: Metanoia, Its Meaning and Function .......................................... 246 “What Will Come to Pass”—Diakrisis, or Final Separation 263 Conclusion .................................................................................. 267 Bibliography .............................................................................. 276 Index locorum ............................................................................ 303 Index nominum et rerum potiorum ........................................ 321 PREFACE This book has been long in the making. I had originally conceived it as a search for philosophical doctrines which helped to inform the cosmological model of the Apocryphon of John, one of the most coher- ent and comprehensive narrations of the classic ‘Gnostic’ myth. The principal aim of the study was to assess the impact of Plato’s Timaeus on the Apocryphon’s thematics, composition, and style. From the out- set I was conscious of the danger of disregarding other constitutive elements of the Apocryphon: the Mosaic account of creation in Genesis, Jewish Wisdom tradition, Hellenistic philosophy, magic, science, and, last but not least, the Johannine Gospel. Yet it took a while before I realized that, in order properly to assess the status and function of philosophy in the cosmological section of the Apocryphon, I needed to take into account the other voices and explain the interplay of all these discursive domains. The consequences of this methodolog- ical shift were already visible in my Yale doctoral dissertation, and I can only hope that this thoroughly rewritten version will make them even more transparent. This monograph still argues that the Timaeus is the key text for understanding the ‘poetics’ of the ‘Gnostic’ universe. Plato’s account of cosmogony provided the author of the Apocryphon of John with the appropriate interpretive frame for his revisionist explanation of the Mosaic story of creation; with the narrative template for his orderly exposition of cosmogony; and with the best representational schema to account for his basic presuppositions, such as the distinction between essence and appearance, original and copy, idea and image, image and apparition. At the same time, however, the universe that emerges from the Apocryphon’s narrative is more complex and more dynamic than Plato’s. Platonic forms are no longer endowed with objective existence, but are relegated to the divine subjectivity; the structure of the universe is not only more elaborate and hierar- chical, but is also pervaded with an immanent principle of eternal coherence; and finally, Plato’s celebrated distinction between forms, copies, and deceptive apparitions seems obliterated in favor of the ‘Deleuzian’ duality of the original model and its distant, illusory sim- ulacrum. In short, Plato’s Timaeus appears here not only as a text to viii preface read and scrutinize, but also as a phenomenon to rewrite. Such a subversive transformation is effected by the intercession of homolo- gous ‘voices’ from all of the above listed discursive domains. The relationship established between these domains is not that of mechan- ical juxtaposition but of partial substitution. Modern scholars have characterized this hermeneutical technique as ‘intertextuality’, yet I continue to exploit its ancient name—reasoning by analogy, syllogis- mos or ratiocinatio legalis, one of the four legal issues (staseis) in Hellenistic rhetorical classification. The book is thus not intended as a work of ‘Quellenforschung,’ but rather as an essay in ‘Gnostic’ poetics. In spite of some significant divergences in wording and content between the four manuscript witnesses, I have looked at the Apocryphon of John as a unitary liter- ary creation, in which the anonymous author makes creative use of various philosophical systems, religious traditions and rhetorical tech- niques of argumentation in order to articulate his original world- model. This model—perhaps best represented as a multiple-tiered fountain flowing with water that spurts from the single source at the top—is indicative of the author’s imaginative mind and ‘mannerist’ mentality. Both in style and in content, there is a tendency to excess. The universe of the Apocryphon of John is an anamorphic construc- tion of high complexity, with tiers multiplied almost praeter necessi- tatem—aeons, luminaries, archangels, angels, authorities, archons, demons, humans. Its language is equally complex and intrinsically obscure, reflecting the author’s inclination to accumulate seemingly unrelated symbolic codes and disconnected ideas. The reliance on such ‘mannerist’ procedures discloses the strong conviction that truth must remain hidden from vulgar cobblers and, more importantly, that language can never adequately fill the inexpressible void of the spiritual plane. My adjustment to the Apocryphon’s polyphony would have taken longer than it did without the timely intervention of many people. My interest in Gnosticism I owe first and foremost to my ‘Doktorvater’ from Yale’s Department of Religious Studies, Bentley
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