Rethinking “Gnosticism” This page intentionally left blank Rethinking “Gnosticism” AN ARGUMENT FOR DISMANTLING A DUBIOUS CATEGORY MICHAEL ALLEN WILLIAMS PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright 1996 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Williams, Michael A. Rethinking “Gnosticism” : an argument for dismantling a dubious category / Michael Allen Williams. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-01127-3 (cl : alk. paper) 1. Gnosticism. 2. Rome—Religion. I. Title. BT1390.W475 1996 229′.932—dc20 96–6490 This book has been composed in Adobe Galliard Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America by Princeton Academic Press 12345678910 TO MY PARENTS “A GODLY HEART PRODUCES A HAPPY LIFE” Sentences of Sextus 326b (Nag Hammadi Codex XII 28, 22–24) This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES xi PREFACE xiii ABBREVIATIONS xvii INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER ONE What Kind of Thing Do Scholars Mean by “Gnosticism”? A LOOK AT FOUR CASES 7 Introduction 7 The Apocryphon of John 8 Ptolemy and Valentinian Christianity 14 Justin the Gnostic 18 Marcion of Sinope 23 What Is “Gnosticism”? 26 CHAPTER TWO “Gnosticism” as a Category 29 Introduction 29 “Gnosticism” and Self-Definition 31 “Gnosticism” as Typological Construct 43 Alternatives to “Gnosticism” as a Category 51 CHAPTER THREE Protest Exegesis? or Hermeneutical Problem-Solving? 54 Introduction 54 Hermeneutical Value Reversals Not Thoroughgoing 57 Value Reversals Usually Linked to Specific Problems 63 Conclusion 76 CHAPTER FOUR Parasites? or Innovators? 80 Introduction 80 Special Organism versus Ordinary Process 83 The Agents of Innovation 84 Innovation as a Dynamic Process 90 Metaphors versus Explanations 93 Conclusion 94 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER FIVE Anticosmic World-Rejection? or Sociocultural Accommodation? 96 Introduction 96 Mythological Symbol and Social Reality 97 General Level of Social Interaction and Involvement 101 Degree of Sociopolitical Deviance 103 Attempts to Reduce Cultural Distance 107 Social Dropouts? 108 Breaking Off the Front End 109 Conclusion 113 CHAPTER SIX Hatred of the Body? or the Perfection of the Human? 116 Introduction 116 The Body Negative 118 The Body Divine 123 Conclusion 136 CHAPTER SEVEN Asceticism . ? 139 Introduction 139 Ascetic Practices and Lifestyles 140 Perfection and the Family 150 Conclusion 160 CHAPTER EIGHT . or Libertinism? 163 Introduction 163 The Problematic Evidence 164 The One Instance of Direct Testimony 184 Conclusion 187 CHAPTER NINE Deterministic Elitism? or Inclusive Theories of Conversion? 189 Introduction 189 Ethical Parenesis 190 Spiritual Ethnicity, Conversion, and Growth 193 Providence, Fate, and Free Will 202 Recruitment and Conversion 208 Conclusion 211 CHAPTER TEN Where They Came From . 213 Introduction 213 The Problem with Defining “Gnosticism” as the Innovation 214 CONTENTS ix Accounting for the Innovations in Question 219 Conclusion 231 CHAPTER ELEVEN . and What They Left Behind 235 Introduction 235 Successful Movements and Unsuccessful Movements 236 Previous Theories about the Relation of the Library’s Content to Its Social Context 241 Selection and Arrangements of Tractates within the Nag Hammadi Codices 247 Conclusion 260 CONCLUSION 263 NOTES 267 MODERN WORKS CITED 311 INDEX 329 This page intentionally left blank FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1. Select Christian demiurgical movements and other groups compared in terms of tendency toward high-tension sociocultural resistance versus tendency toward low-tension so- ciocultural accommodation 111 Figure 2. Hypothetical growth curve of Christian population in the Roman Empire, assuming 2,000 Christians in the year 50 C.E., and an average growth rate of 40 percent per decade 238 Figure 3. Scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices 243 Table 1. Heresiological Catalogs 34 Table 2. Sample Categorizations of Nag Hammadi Tractates as “Gnostic” or “Nongnostic” 47 Table 3. Hermeneutical Valuation of Elements from the Genesis Narrative 61 Table 4. Reversal or Nonreversal in Valuation of Elements from the Genesis Narrative 62 Table 5. Compositional Rationales in Nag Hammadi Volumes: Part A—“History of Revelation” Arrangements 250 Table 6. Compositional Rationales in Nag Hammadi Volumes: Part B—Arrangements Imitating the Order of Collections of Christian Scripture 254 Table 7. Compositional Rationales in Nag Hammadi Volumes: Part C—“Liturgical” Order 256 Table 8. Compositional Rationales in Nag Hammadi Volumes: Part D—Ascent and Eschatology 257 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE This book cannot exactly be said to be an introduction to “gnosticism,” since after all it presents an argument for the abandonment of that very category. However, I have tried to write a study that would serve a rela- tively wide audience, and certainly not just specialists in “gnosticism,” or early Christianity, or religions in late antiquity, or even in the study of reli- gion at large. My effort has been to frame a discussion that is also accessible and welcoming to the interested general reader, who knows little or noth- ing about what is customarily called “gnosticism” (or “what people used to call ‘gnosticism,’” as in recent years, tongue in cheek, I have sometimes put it to indulgent colleagues and students). The extended argument at the core of this book amounts to a case study in the construction of categories in the study of religions, and in how a category can become more an im- pediment than an expedient to understanding. But in the course of this argument, it has been my intention to do a bit more than discuss categories and methodology. I hope also to have been successful in helping the non- specialist gain a fairly close impression of the “soul” of various ancient groups and individuals whose writings are discussed, some of their funda- mental concerns, self-understandings, social involvements, expectations and aspirations, worldviews, and relations between these and the various religious symbols that they created. The picture does not always match pre- vailing scholarly and popular understandings of these groups, and indeed in important instances it diverges rather sharply. That is my fundamental point: Men and women whose conceptions and practices are discussed in what follows have in crucial respects been greatly misunderstood. And imagining them as the same religious species (“the Gnostics”) has resulted from such misunderstanding and then further magnified it. None of the chapters in the book has previously appeared in print in its present form. However, a version of portions of chapter 6 was published several years ago as the article “Divine Image—Prison of Flesh: Perceptions of the Body in Ancient Gnosticism,” one among several contributions to the three-volume collection of essays Fragments for a History of the Human Body, published in the Zone series (see Modern Works Cited). My ap- proach to the topic has evolved since that article, but I would like to thank the editors of that collection, Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, and Zone, for advance permission to adapt portions of the article for this book. Also, chapter 11 includes revised and considerably adapted material from a paper, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s),’” presented in September 1993 at Univer- sité Laval, Québec, at a conference devoted to the problem of classifying the tractates among the Nag Hammadi Coptic codices. That paper has now appeared in the published proceedings of that conference, edited by Louis xiv PREFACE Painchaud and Anne Pasquier (see Modern Works Cited). I thank the vol- ume editors and Les Presses de l’Université Laval for their kind permission to use this adapted material. Other portions of the book have also evolved from papers delivered at various conferences. As a result, there are numerous scholars to whom I am in debt for criticisms and suggestions that they have offered over the years, with respect to this or that paper. I am embarrassed to admit that the number and specifics of such instances simply exceed my faculties of recol- lection. I will inadvertently overlook someone who ought to have been mentioned. But it would be unforgivable not to acknowledge how much I owe to at least the following colleagues who regularly or at important moments have come to my aid, by way of timely support, encouragement, generously shared insights, and specific suggestions, or outright and persistent dis- agreement: Jorunn Buckley, Elizabeth Clark, James Goehring, Bentley Layton, Anne McGuire, Elaine Pagels, Birger Pearson, Pheme Perkins, Einar Thomassen, and Frederik Wisse. Among fellow specialists in Nag Hammadi and related matters, I must single out for very special thanks John Turner, who for several years now has been not only a close friend but a patient and invaluable critic, sounding board, and consistent source of new insight. And a very special acknowledgment should be made of my debt also to Karen L. King, whose work on Nag Hammadi materials for the past several years has been breaking theoretical ground in directions that often have closely paralleled my own