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The Angels in Ancient Gnosis: Some Cases

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The Angels in Ancient Gnosis: Some Cases The Angels in Ancient Gnosis: Some Cases Madeleine Scopello Ancient Gnosis has given much attention to angels, as evidenced by both the excerpts transmitted by the heresiologists and the first-hand sources preserved in Coptic. In my opinion, Gnostic angelology constitutes a sort of canvas on which metaphysical, cosmological, and anthropogonic themes have been graft- ed. The reflection on the angels is closely intertwined with the founding theme of Gnosis, which dissociates an inferior creator and enemy of mankind from a perfectly good and transcendent god, who is the source of knowledge. Both are accompanied by angels: evil angels surround the creator, and good angels, the transcendent God. The creator, the demiurge, identified in several systems with the god of the Bible, shapes the cosmos in order to imprison man and make him his slave, depriving him of the spark of knowledge which the transcendent God had provided him. In his creative act, this ignorant and incapable god is assisted by entities often qualified in the texts by the term “angel.” In several Gnostic systems, creation is also attributed to angels acting collectively. These angels, who are co-responsible, or even responsible for creation, can also be charac- terized by the term “demon” (δαίμων), or by the more technical Gnostic term “archon” (Greek ἄρχων, Latin princeps, Coptic ⲁⲣⲭⲱⲛ). These (bad) angels also produce the body of man, likened to a dark jail wherein the spark of light that he possesses is stifled and extinguished. Other functions are exercised by the associate angels of the demiurge: they govern the cosmos and are the merci- less guardians of the spheres who strive to block the Gnostic on the road to his heavenly abode. As for the transcendent God, the Unknowable, towards whom those who have revived in themselves the cognitive spark try to return, he is also sur- rounded by angels. They form his heavenly court and honour him with a perpetual worship. But the angels can also act as intermediaries to lead the man who aspires to knowledge to the One; they instruct and support him in mystical experiences, most often throughout his journey to heaven: they are the agents of revelation. In addition, the enunciation and invocation of angelic names foster mystical experience and help to attain the celestial mys- teries. Within the limits of this article I will provide an overview of Gnostic angelol- ogy, using both the heresiological sources and the first-hand documentation preserved in Coptic. We shall first examine the function of the angels in their © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004374980_004 20 scopello relation to a defective demiurgy and, in a second stage, the various roles of the angels in the wake of the transcendent God. Let us remind that the texts preserved in the codices found in Egypt—the codex Askew,1 the codex Bruce,2 the Berlin codex,3 the Nag Hammadi codices,4 and the codex Tchacos5—were translated from Greek into Coptic towards the middle of the 4th century. The lost Greek texts had been composed by anony- mous Gnostic authors between the middle of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century, which situates them at about the same period as the refutations of the Fathers of the Church. The only treatises that were probably written later in Greek at the end of the 3rd or even the beginning of the 4th century, and which are therefore closer in time to their Coptic translation, are those transmitted by the codex Bruce and the codex Askew. 1 This codex, on parchment, was bought by Antoninus Askew in London, from an antique dealer in 1750. It is preserved in the British Museum (British Library Additional 5114). It con- tains a treatise of 178 leaves (356 pages) usually designated by the (modern) title of Pistis Sophia. See Schmidt—MacDermot 1978a. 2 This codex, on papyrus (in total 78 leaves = 156 pages), was purchased by the Scottish traveller James Bruce in 1773 near Thebes. It is kept at the Bodleian Library (Bruce Mss. 96). It contains two esoteric treatises: the two Books of Jeu, which form a single set, and a treatise commonly called the Untitled Text. See Amélineau 1882; Schmidt—MacDermot 1978b; new edition by Crégheur 2018. See also Evans 2015. 3 Purchased in 1896 in Ahmim from an antique dealer by the German philologist Carl Rein- hardt, and subsequently identified as Gnostic by the coptologist Carl Schmidt, this codex was acquired by the Berlin Museum of Egyptology (Berolinensis 8502). It contains four treatises: the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene), the Apocryphon of John, The Sophia of Jesus Christ, and the Act of Peter. See Tardieu 1984. 4 A complete translation of the first-hand Gnostic Coptic texts discovered in 1945 in Upper Egypt at Nag Hammadi was established by Robinson—Smith 1988. See also Robinson 2000 and the new translation by Meyer 2007. In French, we refer to the work of the French- Canadian team working on the texts of Nag Hammadi (Université Laval): Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, Section “Textes”, Québec (36 volumes published in the series Textes between 1977 and 2017; 8 volumes published in the series Études and 7 in the series Con- cordances); Mahé—Poirier 2007 (22012), with the contribution of the members of the team Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi. In German, see Schenke, Bethge, Kaiser 2001, 2003. 5 This codex, found in 1980 in the region of al-Minya, was made available to specialists in 2006. See Kasser et al. 2007..
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