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Elaine Pagels – the Gnostic Gospels

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Elaine Pagels – the Gnostic Gospels Also by Elaine Pagels THE JOHANNINE GOSPEL IN GNOSTIC EXEGESIS THE GNOSTIC PAUL: GNOSTIC EXEGESIS OF THE PAULINE LETTERS ADAM, EVE, AND THE SERPENT VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1989 Copyright © 1979 by Elaine Pagels All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1979. Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all acknowledgments to reproduce previously published material, they appear on the opposite page. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Pagels, Elaine H 1943- The gnostic gospels. Originally published in 1979 by Random House, New York. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Gnosticism. 2. Chenoboskion manuscripts. I. Title. BT1390.P3 1981 273’.1 80-12341 ISBN 0-679-72453-2 (pbk.) Manufactured in the United States of America 79C8 Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.: Excerpts from the New Testament. The Scripture quotations in this publication are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946, 1952, © 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and used by permission. Wm. B. Eerdman's Publishing Co.: Excerpts from Tertullian, Iranaeus and Hippolytus. Reprinted from The Ante Nicene Fathers by permission of the Wm. B. Eerdman's Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.: Excerpts from The Nag Hammadi Library by James M. Robinson. Copyright © 1977 by E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands. Reprinted by permission of E. J. Brill and Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Harvard University Press: Excerpts from Clement and Ignatius, in The Apostolic Fathers, 1912, The Loeb Classical Library, translated by Kirsopp Lake. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press. Lutterworth Press and The Westminster Press: Excerpts from New Testament Apocrypha, Volume I, edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher and Edgar Hennecke. English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson. Published in the U.S.A. by The Westminster Press, 1963. Copyright © 1959 J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen. English translation © 1963 Lutterworth Press. Excerpts from New Testament Apocrypha, Volume II, edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher and Edgar Hennecke. English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson. Published in the U.S.A. by The Westminster Press, 1966. Copyright © 1964 J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen. English translation © 1965 Lutterworth Press. Used by permission. Oxford University Press: Excerpts from The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, translated by Herbert Musurillo. Copyright © Oxford University Press 1972. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. To Elizabeth Diggs and Sharon Olds in loving friendship ACKNOWLEDGMENTS THE WRITING of this book began several years ago with research into the relation between politics and religion in the origins of Christianity. The first four chapters have been published in more technical form in scholarly journals (specific references precede the footnotes of each chapter). In preparing this volume I have generally chosen to follow the translations offered in The Nag Hammadi Library, edited by James M. Robinson, since these are readily available to all readers. In certain cases, however, I have changed the translation for the sake of clarity, consistency or interpretation (for example, I have translated the Coptic transliteration of the Greek term not as "perfection," but as "fulfillment," which seems to me more accurate; in other cases, where the Coptic term apparently translates the Greek , I have translated it not as "man" but as "humanity"). In the case of two texts, I have used different translations (see below). I am especially grateful to those colleagues and friends who have read and criticized the entire manuscript: Peter Berger, John Gager, Dennis Groh, Howard Kee, George MacRae, Wayne Meeks and Morton Smith. For other advice and criticism, specifically of aspects of the introduction, I owe grateful thanks to Marilyn Harran, Marvin Meyer, Birger Pearson, Gilles [ix] Acknowledgments Quispel, Richard Ogust and James M. Robinson. I am grateful, too, to Bentley Layton for permission to use his translation of the Treatise on Resurrection, and to James Brashler for permission to use his translation of the Apocalypse of Peter. Special thanks are due the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lita A. Hazen Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation for their support, which granted me the time to devote to writing; and to President Jacqueline Mattfeld and Vice President Charles Olton for approving a year's leave from my responsibilities at Barnard College. Especially I wish to thank Lydia Bronte and Lita A. Hazen for their encourage- ment throughout the whole project. The present version of the book would have been impossible to produce without the superb editing of Jason Epstein, Vice President and Editorial Director of Random House; the excellent advice of John Brockman; and the conscientious work of Connie Budelis in typing and Barbara Willson in copyediting. Finally, I wish to thank my husband for his loving encouragement in the process of this work. [x] CONTENTS Introduction xiii I The Controversy over Christ's Resurrection: Historical Event or Symbol? 3 II "One God, One Bishop": The Politics of Monotheism 28 III God the Father/God the Mother 48 IV The Passion of Christ and the Persecution of Christians 70 V Whose Church Is the "True Church"? 102 VI Gnosis: Self-Knowledge as Knowledge of God 119 Conclusion 142 Notes 153 Index 175 [xi] INTRODUCTION IN DECEMBER 1945 an Arab peasant made an astonishing archeological discovery in Upper Egypt. Rumors obscured the circumstances of this find—perhaps because the discovery was accidental, and its sale on the black market illegal. For years even the identity of the discoverer remained unknown. One rumor held that he was a blood avenger; another, that he had made the find near the town of Naj ‘Hammadi at the Jabal al-Tarif, a mountain honey- combed with more than 150 caves. Originally natural, some of these caves were cut and painted and used as grave sites as early as the sixth dynasty, some 4,300 years ago. Thirty years later the discoverer himself, Muhammad ‘Ali al- Samman, told what happened.1 Shortly before he and his brothers avenged their father's murder in a blood feud, they had saddled their camels and gone out to the Jabal to dig for sabakh, a soft soil they used to fertilize their crops. Digging around a massive boulder, they hit a red earthenware jar, almost a meter high. Muhammad ‘Ali hesitated to break the jar, considering that a jinn, or spirit, might live inside. But realizing that it might also contain gold, he raised his mattock, smashed the jar, and discovered inside thirteen papyrus books, bound in leather. Returning to his home in al-Qasr, Muhammad ‘Ali dumped the books [ xiii] Introduction and loose papyrus leaves on the straw piled on the ground next to the oven. Muhammad's mother, ‘Umm-Ahmad, admits that she burned much of the papyrus in the oven along with the straw she used to kindle the fire. A few weeks later, as Muhammad ‘Ali tells it, he and his brothers avenged their father's death by murdering Ahmed Isma’il. Their mother had warned her sons to keep their mattocks sharp: when they learned that their father's enemy was nearby, the brothers seized the opportunity, "hacked off his limbs . ripped out his heart, and devoured it among them, as the ultimate act of blood revenge."2 Fearing that the police investigating the murder would search his house and discover the books, Muhammad ‘Aliasked the priest, al- Qummus Basiliyus Abd al-Masih, to keep one or more for him. During the time that Muhammad ‘Ali and his brothers were being interrogated for murder, Raghib, a local history teacher, had seen one of the books, and suspected that it had value. Having received one from al-Qummus Basiliyus, Raghib sent it to a friend in Cairo to find out its worth. Sold on the black market through antiquities dealers in Cairo, the manuscripts soon attracted the attention of officials of the Egyptian government. Through circumstances of high drama, as we shall see, they bought one and confiscated ten and a half of the thirteen leather-bound books, called codices, and deposited them in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. But a large part of the thirteenth codex, containing five extraordinary texts, was smuggled out of Egypt and offered for sale in America. Word of this codex soon reached Professor Gilles Quispel, distinguished historian of religion at Utrecht, in the Netherlands. Excited by the discovery, Quispel urged the Jung Foundation in Zurich to buy the codex. But discovering, when he succeeded, that some pages were missing, he flew to Egypt in the spring of 1955 to try to find them in the Coptic Museum. Arriving in Cairo, he went at once to the Coptic Museum, borrowed photographs of some of the texts, and hurried back to his hotel to decipher them. Tracing out the first line, Quispel was startled, then in- [xiv] Introduction credulous, to read: "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down."3 Quispel knew that his colleague H.-C. Puech, using notes from another French scholar, Jean Doresse, had identified the opening lines with fragments of a Greek Gospel of Thomas discovered in the 1890's. But the discovery of the whole text raised new questions: Did Jesus have a twin brother, as this text implies? Could the text be an authentic record of Jesus' sayings? According to its title, it contained the Gospel According to Thomas; yet, unlike the gospels of the New Testament, this text identified itself as a secret gospel.
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