THE TRIMORPHIC PROTENNOIA

BY

ROBERT McL. WILSON

It would of course be quite impossible, within the limits of a short communication, to deal in detail with the problems relating to this text. One of the translations to be mentioned already has some twenty pages of notes in addition to sixteen of introduction. The purpose of this paper is simply to draw attention to a few points which seem to deserve notice, and to raise some questions for consideration. The text became available with the publication of the Facsimile Edition volume containing Codices XI, XII and XIII,l and trans• lations into French and German have already been published.2 A cursory examination and comparison will reveal broad agreement as to structure and content, the more to be expected since the three main divisions are clearly marked in the text itself, but at the same time a considerable degree of variation in points of detail. A line by line comparison of a single Coptic page yielded some twenty variants in thirty-five lines of text. The first point to be made, therefore, is that the study of this text is still only beginning. We are not yet at the stage of definitive editions and accepted versions. Seeking an explanation for the variations, we may note that several arise from the same cause: MIle Janssens has restored the text only where she is fairly confident about filling the lacunae, whereas the Berlin group have consistently endeavoured to present a complete and unbroken text, except when several consecutive lines are completely missing, as is the case from p. 46 on. Many of the reconstructions are very attractive, but some of them must remain conjectural. 3 This

1 The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codices XI, XII and XIII (Leiden 1973). 2 Y. Janssens, Le Codex XIII de Nag Hammadi, in Le Museon 87 (1974), 341-413; the German version in TLZ 99 (1974) 731-746 was prepared by the Berlin Arbeitskreis fUr koptisch-gnostische Schriften under the leadership of H. M. Schenke, with Gesine Schenke as "federfiihrend" for this document. 3 At 35.4, for example, Mile Janssens restores on the basis of a passage in the Berlin THE TRIMORPHIC PROTENNOIA 51 prompts the warning that the editors' brackets should be duly respected. One author - who shall be nameless! - once denied any connection between the Oxyrhynchus Logia and the , on the ground that the sayings in POx 654 differed from those in Thomas• blissfully unaware that half of every line he was quoting was a con• jectural restoration, whereas the other half could be matched almost exactly with the Coptic. A further point concerns the identity of the sect from which the work derives. The Berlin group describe it as "clearly Sethian", and note affinity with the form of the Sethian system underlying the Nag Hammadi Gospel of the Egyptians. 4 Later on they call it "in der Substanz ein Dokument der vom Christentum (noch) unberiihrten (sethianischen) ", and note that only a single sentence can be claimed as clearly Christian.5 To this we shall return. Mlle Janssens casts her net rather wider, listing several groups whose systems involve some form of a three-fold manifestation - although, recalling the parable of the Drag-net, we may do well to consider carefully which of these fish should be retained. In particular, she finds links with the , the anonymous treatise in the , and related documents like the anonymous treatise in Codex II. The sect of the Apocryphon she describes as "probablement des Bar• belognostiques-sethiens,6 but in her conclusion she speaks of the Protennoia as "a veritable mine for knowledge of in general, and Barbelognosticism in particular". 7 This raises yet again a problem which has become the more pressing with the progress of the publica• tion of the Nag Hammadi texts: that of the validity and accuracy of the heresiological classification handed down by the early Fathers. 8 To what extent were Sethians and Barbelognostics distinct and sepa• rate groups, and how can we account for Barbelognostic material in a Sethian text or vice versa? What is certain is that the names of four of the "luminaries" appointed over the four aeons match with those in the Apocryphon. 9 text of the Apocryphon of John; the German version is based on a completely different reconstruction. 4 Op. cit. 731. 5 lb. 733. 6 Op. cit. 348. 7 Ib.413. 8 See F. Wisse, The and the Heresiologists, Vig. Chr. 25 (1971),205£f. 9 Harmozel is missing, but is restored by the Berlin group in a lacuna (38.35), a.