JUNG AND THE LOST GOSPELS Cover art by Ann Kilgore Illustrations by Jan Saether STEPHAN A. HOELLER JUNG AND THE LOST GOSPELS INSIGHTS INTO THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY This publication is made possible with the assistance of the Kern Foundation The Theosophical Publishing House Wheaton, III. U.S.A. Madras, India/London, England Copyright © 1989 by Stephan Hoeller A Quest original. First edition 1989 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission except for quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For additional information write to: The Theosophical Publishing House 306 West Geneva Road Wheaton, Illinois 60187 A publication of the Theosophical Publishing House, a department of the Theosophical Society in America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Hoeller, Stephan A. Jung and the lost Gospels : insights into the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library / Stephan A. Hoeller. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8356-0652-X ISBN 0-8356-0646-5 (pbk.) 1. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961—Contributions in occultism. 2. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961 — Contributions in gnosticism. 3. Dead Sea scrolls— Criticism, interpretation, etc. 4. Nag Hammadi codices— Criticism, interpretation, etc. 5. Occultism. 6. Gnosticism. I Title. BF1999.H623 1989 296.1’55—dc20 89-40174 CIP Printed in the United States of America Once again to Kristofer, dear friend and helper; and to Sidney and Jean Lanier, with grateful thanks Contents Foreword by June Singer .......................................... ix P re fa c e ......................................................................... xvii Acknowledgments .......................................................xix Prologue: How the West Was Lost: Loss and Recovery of Psychological Spirituality......................................................................... 1 Part I: The Other Tradition 1. A Tale of the Two Heresies: Nag Hammadi and Qumran ........................... 15 2. Saintly Rebels: The People of the Scrolls....................................29 3. Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ: From Prototype to Archetype..............................42 4. The Fem inine W isdom and the Coming of the Knowing O nes ......................... 62 5. The Odyssey of G nosis ........................................ 78 Part II: The Other Reality 6. Errant Wisdom: The Myth of Sophia ............................................ 99 7. The Dancing Savior: The Myth of the Gnostic Christ ................... 117 8. The Princes of the World: The Myth of the Tyrant Angels..................... 136 9. A Traveler from Heaven: The Myth of “Song of the Pearl” ................... 154 10. And the Myth Goes On: Some Modern Gnostic Myths ....................... 166 Part III: The Other Gospels 11. The Secret Sayings of Jesus: The Gospel of Thomas................................... 185 12. Means of Transformation: The Gospel of Philip ..................................... 202 13. Redemption and Ecstasy: The Gospel of Truth and The Gospel of the Egyptians ......................... 217 Epilogue: From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels: The Alternative Future of Human H istory...............................................................232 N o te s ............................................................................... 247 In d e x ............................................................................... 255 Foreword June Singer When the canon of the Bible was closed, those who determined what should constitute the Holy Writ and stand as a bulwark against heathenism and heresy had their reasons for excluding some writings while including others. Surely there were questions of authenticity and quality, but there was also an urgency to establish a standard by which all other religious expressions could be measured in the future. Both Judaism and Christianity had suffered the necessity of clarifying and strengthening their doctrines so that their adherents would have a firm basis for withstanding the opposition they faced from the pagan world and from Rome. These formulations necessarily left little room for individual interpretation or variance from the newly established norms. Among Jews and also among the early Christians, there were those dissidents whose points of view differed from that proclaimed in the Bible concerning what con­ stitutes the spiritual life and, in Christianity, what was the true nature and teaching of the Anointed One sent by God to proclaim His message to humankind. Their writings, contemporary with the biblical books, were considered dangerous or spurious by the reigning religious authorities, and the writers of those extra-canonical works were branded as heretics—which indeed they were if heresy means taking a position in opposition to the orthodoxy of the times. The writings nevertheless became touchstones for communities whose members sought freedom of thought and of worship, relief from the im­ position of authority, and an opportunity to experience IX X Foreword God directly without mediation by a churchly hierarchy. Much of the content of these works had to do with es­ chatology, the portents of the Last Days when God would rain down destruction upon His people because of their having capitulated to the forces of evil in the world. Also expressed in these works was a hope for eventual redemp­ tion, depicted among Jews as the coming of a Messianic Age and in Christianity as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Over the years many of these works were lost, some were preserved and continued to be read as more or less esoteric literature, and some were secreted in caves and other unlikely places awaiting another time when the world might be more ready to attend to their messages. Until 1945, only a few fragments of the lost gospels were available for reading by the public. Here and there some scholars and seekers learned of the existence of certain of the writings and studied them. Among these was the great Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung. It was in 1945, you will remember, when the United States, in the cause of peace, dropped atomic bombs upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Curiously enough, within a year or two of that date, were discovered the two most important finds of this lost sacred literature in modem history. One was the Dead Sea Scrolls, the work of the men of the ascetic Jewish community of Essenes at Qumran, near Jerusalem; the other was the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of papyrus books written by members of a Gnostic sect within two or three hundred years after the time of Jesus and found in a jar in a cave in upper Egypt. From the time of their discovery until now, the new-found treasures have kept teams of scholars occupied in piecing them together, deciphering them, and attempting to under­ stand them. Indispensable as the work of these learned men and women has been, their scholarship is only the vital open­ ing act to a drama of cosmic proportions. These scholars’ contribution in their first act was to understand the words and then the context from which they were written before Foreword xi any interpretation could be undertaken. The second act would have to concern apprehending the personal psy­ chological significance of this material for people today, and the third would consist of understanding this mythic material in terms of its wider, even global, significance. Scholars and translators working on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi books have been pursuing their endeavor with the requisite dedication to objectivity. Con­ sequently one rarely detects in their work any indication of the degree to which they themselves are or are not in sympathy with the particular perspectives that characterize these texts. If one were to describe these documents in a single word, that word would be heterodox, in the sense of differing from, or contrary to, an established religious point of view. These works are radical departures from the normative Judaism or orthodox Christianity of their times. The early Church Fathers had no difficulty declaring the Gnostic Gospels heretical. Scholars today who undertake the study of religious texts in the ancient Semitic or Coptic languages as a rule come from fields such as biblical theology and criticism. The academic rigor of the translators and editors who worked with these writings allowed for little overt expression of personal opinion, much less for a passionate response. As a Jungian analyst, I cannot help wondering what those exegetes really think, in their private thoughts, of these works that so dramatically challenge the accepted doctrines of their day, as well as our own. It was C. G. Jung who discovered for himself and became enraptured by the literature of the Jewish and Christian Gnostics, whose writings included the Lost Gospels. The word “enraptured” can be used advisedly, for Jung did not come to these materials as a scholar who relied on the researches and support of predecessors and colleagues. He encountered the personifications of the myths directly, through the medium of the unconscious—as an eruption of mysterious ideas and images of unknown origin carrying messages about the nature and workings of the human psyche. The story of how the Gnostic material revealed • • Xll Foreword itself to Jung is found in his autobiographical work Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Only after meeting with Gnostic ideas, in the form of dreams or fantasies or active imagination, was Jung inspired