Isaiah 6:9–10 in Gnostic Interpretations

Zuzana Vítková

1 Introduction

Gnosis was a religious current, or rather a specific way of interpreting the world, that appeared in the ancient Mediterranean at the end of the first or in the second century of the Christian era. It is not entirely clear what its roots were, but we know that it very early embraced themes of Christian thought. It also influenced the early development of Christian theology, though mostly in a specific ‘negative’ way, as the early Christian theologians and heresiolo- gists, such as Irenaeus of Lyon, were trying to establish and to define what was theologically ‘correct’ against the background of the opinions they attributed to the ‘Gnostics’.1 Thus, the heresiologists have brought under the common label of ‘Gnosis’ many diverse teachings of different people, whom they took as their doctrinal opponents. It is far from certain, however, that all the people and authors of the texts labeled as ‘Gnostics’ understood themselves in this way. Many of them probably considered themselves only to be Christians, who have a special insight and think in a broader context. What loosely connected the various streams and texts and what earned them the collective name, was the emphasis on knowledge (gnosis), which they took as a prerequisite for the ‘awakening’ of the divine element inside the human being, and so for the pos- sibility of his or her salvation. The scholars of the last century took over Irenaeus’ distinguishing between ‘orthodox’ and ‘Gnostic’ or ‘heretic’2 and presupposed some religious ‘fight’ or ‘competition’ between quite well defined groups and its theological con- cepts, described by names, like e.g. ‘Valentinians’, ‘Montanists’, ‘Sethians’, but also the ‘Pauline’, ‘Johannine’, and ‘Jewish’ Christianity. They also followed Irenaeus in using the terms ‘Gnosis’ and ‘Gnosticism’ to cover a great variety

1 Irenaeus also invented a model of a single and true Christianity from which the heresies diverged (see Brakke, Gnostics, 5). 2 King, Gnosticism, 218: “Scholars have followed Irenaeus and the other ancient heresiolo- gists by using it to define normative Christianity and to render certain forms of Christianity illegitimate. (…) the academic study of Gnosticism in the twentieth century reinscribes and reproduces the ancient discourse of orthodoxy and heresy.”

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439825_010 Isaiah 6:9–10 in Gnostic Interpretations 121 of ancient texts and intellectual currents3 as well as in turning interpretative categories into social.4 As a consequence the Gnosis began to be considered as a separate religion.5 In more recent times, there appeared a persuasive criticism of this attrac- tive, but not very accurate and a rather simplifying scheme.6 The Christianity in the pre-Constantine period encompassed much richer variety of diverse concepts than we can imagine. The boundaries between the groups were not clear, people and ideas travelled. In this era, we can speak only of ‘proto- orthodoxy’.7 The scholars criticizing the concept of Gnosis as too broad even suggest that the category should be abandoned because it puts under one um- brella people and texts all too diverse.8 Others propose that the name should be used only for more delimited group of material, such as ‘Sethian Gnosticism’ or ‘Classical Gnosticism’.9 These scholars, trying to assemble a set of ancient writings that likely originated among a group of people who called themselves and were known as ‘Gnostics’, seek to re-define the term on the basis of the common mythology and ritual as a social category.10 Other researchers argue

3 King, Gnosticism, 53: “The discourse of orthodoxy and heresy has been employed to con- strue the relationship of Gnosticism to Christianity almost solely in terms of difference, and the relationship of widely varying so-called Gnostic materials to each other almost solely in terms of similarity.” 4 Brakke, Gnostics, 22. 5 See, for example, Rudolph, Gnosis, 2: “We shall not go far wrong to see in it a dualistic religion …” Brakke, Gnostics, 21: “As Gnosticism became [sc. in the work of scholars, ZV] a religion seemingly without boundaries, the people and texts that scholars assigned to it assumed the characteristics of that religion, even if they did not display it.” 6 See esp. Williams, Rethinking; King, Gnosticism; Brakke, Gnostics. 7 Cf. Brakke, Gnostics, 7–10: “There was no single and uniform proto-orthodoxy, but multi- ple modes of piety, authority, and theology that later orthodoxy represents as its forerun- ners.” Also the idea that we should track down the Gnostic ideas to one single root (like Irenaeus who believed that this ‘root’ was in Simon Magus) was abandoned. 8 Williams, Rethinking, 214: “We have constructed category which is too poorly defined and inclusive too far of large”; see also p. 255. However, his proposed category of “biblical de- miurgical tradition” (Rethinking, 72–73) is also not very satisfying. Williams’ book has the merit of deconstructing many clichés that have come to be associated with the ‘Gnostics’ (that they dramatically reverse the Biblical narrative in their interpretations; that they behaved in using the old traditions like some religious ‘parasites’; that they were either licentious or strictly ascetic). 9 King, Gnosticism, 218. 10 This group corresponds to those whom modern historians have often called ‘Sethians’ or ‘Sethian Gnostics’; Brakke, Gnostics, 27–31; see also 50–51 (the list of ancient works attrib- uted to Gnostics and the related texts).