www.metalog.org/files/grobel1.html

The Gospel of Truth

A Valentinian Meditation on the Gospel

Translation from the Coptic and Commentary by Kendrick Grobel

Abingdon Press, New York & Nashville: 1960

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-5231

(From: www.questia.com)

Contents

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Introduction

The first of the now famous Dead Sea Scrolls came to light in 1947. A few years earlier,¹ not later than 1945, peasant laborers making an excavation in Upper Egypt had made an equally interesting find. Without archaeological intent they accidentally dug into a tomb of the early Christian period, probably fourth century. It contained a large jar full of books, a regular library comprising about forty-eight works.² One volume, deposited in the Coptic Museum in 1946, was later purchased by the Museum, and there it remains. Another volume— the one containing the Gospel of Truth— was sold into private hands that same year. Early in 1949 the rest of the volumes were deposited in the Coptic Museum. In 1952, after protracted negotiations and ultimately by seizure³ the entire find (minus the volume already privately sold) became the

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property of the Coptic Museum. Of this vast material at Cairo there has so far been published a single volume consisting of 158 photographic plates. (See footnote 3.)

The site of the discovery lies on the eastward bend of the Nile just south of the middle of Egypt, some three hundred miles from Cairo and about thirty miles short— north— of Luxor. The discoverers were first reported to have been fellahin from the small city on the west bank of the river where the railroad crosses to the other side— Nag Hammadi.⁴ But the investigation of Doresse⁵ at the site established that they were from Debbah and Hamra-Doum, villages on the east side of the Nile, and that they were working on their own side of the river at the foot of Jebel-et-Tarif, about five miles northeast of the bridge. This is about where the ancient town of Chenoboskion⁶ once was, known in Christian history as the site of an early monastery (ca. AD 320) of Pachomius and hence one of the earliest of all Christian monasteries. At first this find was given the popular appellation Library of Nag Hammadi. Evidently it was from there that it was first heard of. One can readily conjecture that it was simply the nearest larger town where the discoverers could find a merchant willing to risk the 3£ Egyptian ($8.50), which was all they got for their important discovery. It now seems more appropriate to call it after the nearer and more historic site, Library of Chenoboskion.

The library, though it comprises so many titles, consists of eleven volumes, some substantially complete and in their

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bindings (nine, apparently), two without bindings, and minor remnants of two otherwise vanished books. All of the books are— or were— codices, not scrolls, and written on papyrus, bound in leather (with some blind tooling, to judge from a photograph in V.C. III.128),⁷ with envelope flaps and attached thongs to tie the volumes shut. The papyrus pages, in spite of their brittleness, are said to be in excellent condition; the photographic facsimiles so far published bear this out. Most of the one-thousand-odd pages in the find are whole; relatively few pages are missing or out of place.

All of the writing is in Coptic— the youngest form of the old Hamitic language of Egypt— but in most cases, perhaps all, is translated from a Greek original. Nine of the volumes are in the Sahidic dialectic of Coptic (the dialect of Upper Egypt and the most important literary medium), a more archaic Sahidic, according to Doresse, than any hitherto known. Two (?) others are in a long disputed dialect closest to Subakhmimic; one other contains writings some of which are in this dialect and some in Sahidic. Doresse judges them to be of various dates but all within the period of approximately AD 250 to 350; Puech and Quispel extend the later date to about the end of the fourth century as a safer but still uncertain boundary.

Of this large find a single volume has reached the outside world, the one which contains among its five writings the Gospel of Truth.⁸ How it left Egypt is, for understandable reasons, kept mysterious except that we are told that it was

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at the instigation of a Belgian antiquary, since deceased, named Eid. It was brought to the United States in search of a purchaser, nearly found one, but was taken back to Belgium, where for some time its location remained unknown to scholars. It was located by Gilles Quispel, professor of the University of Utrecht, through whom it was purchased in 1952 by George H. Page, a resident of a suburb of Zurich, as a gift to the Jung Institute in Zurich. In honor of the famous director of the institute, Carl G. Jung, the papyrus has been named Codex Jung.

This codex differs from all the others in both format and content. As to format, the other codices have pages about three fifths as wide as they are tall, approximating the page proportions of our familiar octavo books of today width/height = about ⅔; but Codex Jung is narrow and tall, the pages 14 x 29 cm. (ca. 5½ × 11½ in.) and the written area 9.5 x 24 cm. (ca. 3¾ × 9½ in.).⁹ Since its discovery the Codex has lost its leather binding and come apart, but the pages bear their ancient numeration in the middle of the upper margin. One hundred pages remain, ninety-six with numbers, two that have lost their numbers by mutilation, and two that may have been the last leaf of the book, though now showing no number. The numbered pages are 1-32, 37-48, 51-58, and 91-134. The first gap (lacuna) lies within the Gospel of Truth, but according to Doresse certain leaves from this Codex are on deposit at the Cairo Museum and among them is some of the text of the Gospel of Truth. Fortunately both the missing leaves from the Gospel of Truth are there and have now been published

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in the photographic edition mentioned on page 7. These pages (33-36 of the MS) are here published in English for the first time. On these high, narrow pages the lines of writing are necessarily short, averaging about twenty letters, but the number of lines per page is correspondingly high, ranging (within the compass of the Gospel of Truth) from thirty-four to forty-one lines. To facilitate line-by-line reference to the printed Coptic text or to the photographic facsimiles behind it, the lines of the original are approximately preserved in this translation except where doing so would have intolerably wrenched English syntax; in such cases a word or phrase may be displaced by as much as two lines.

Internally two things set this codex apart from the rest of the library. (1) It is written in the non-Sahidic dialect which only very few of the books exhibit. Whatever may be the case with the other non-Sahidic works, it now becomes clear that the Gospel of Truth is to all intents and purposes written in Subakhmimic (A²), a dialect recognized by Copticists for at least fifty years. It is the dialect once spoken downstream from Akhmim at and round about Asyût, something more than a hundred miles downstream from Chenoboskion. At or near Asyût, then, this translation of the Greek Gospel of Truth must have been made; there, too, in all likelihood this copy of the translation was made and from there later brought up river to Chenoboskion.¹⁰ There are some differences from the A² documents hitherto known, but they may plausibly be attributed to three factors: idiosyncrasies of the translator, the early date

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of the manuscript and the fact that all the previously known A² documents are either orthodox Christian or Manichean-this is the first Christian Gnostic document in A² that has been published— and each of these religious groups probably had traditional linguistic mannerisms of its own. The more important internal difference is that (2) while the majority of the library's writings belong to a Gnostic sect labeled ‘Sethian’ by Puech and Quispel, this whole Codex is of the Valentinian sect. What was that?

To answer this question one must say something of the remarkable man Valentinus. Born in northern Egyptca. AD 100-110 (deduction only) probably in a Greek-speaking family in spite of his Latin name, which he may have adopted later, he received a thorough Hellenistic education at Alexandria. When he became a Christian is unknown, but he was already teaching in Egypt before he moved to Rome, where he lived and worked about 136-155 (or 165?) in uneasy rapport with the church there. In fact he was ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the Roman congregation of the Great Church. Tertullian, too young to have known him, abhors his name, telling us (de praescriptione haer.) that he and Marcion had been semel et iterum ejecti— ‘cast out [of the Church] once and again’ if we take his counting literally (but perhaps ‘repeatedly’). In order to be ejected even twice, a man must have been readmitted once, and readmission implies that at this one time at least (and lasting how long?) the Christians at Rome had no serious misgivings about his orthodoxy. If Tertullian may be believed further, then either before his first ejection or after his restitution (less likely) his standing in that congregation was so high that he had a not altogether unreasonable expectation of being made a bishop. Not unreasonable— at least Tertullian refrains from any ironic exclamations at so preposterous a hope, such as we would expect of Tertullian if

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he really had considered it preposterous. On the contrary, he even leans in the other direction and, in spite of himself as it were, wrings from his pen a testimony that is all the more noteworthy, as coming from him, a testimony that goes far toward justifying Valentinus' episcopal aspirations. ‘Because both as to talent and eloquence he was an able man’ (de praescriptione, 30). This is an amazing admission! But it is certainly muted and dampened by Tertullian's orthodox revulsion. All the Christians of the second century are personalities in a deep historical shadow, even where considerable of their writing has survived. We can at least speculate that if Ignatius, Valentinus, and Justin Martyr had been equally fortunate as to the survival of their writings, Valentinus might turn out to have been both the ablest in ‘talent and eloquence’ and the most original of the three and of their whole century— originality, of course, being always an entirely ambivalent endowment, capable of producing a great poet or an arch liar of the same man (even both in the same man), depending upon how it is used. Had Valentinus' originality only been harnessed in and by the Great Church! He was not made bishop. Tertullian does not hesitate to ascribe Valentinus' rupture ‘from the Church of authentic rule’ to his offended dignity at being thus passed over. He may well be right. However we do not know when the break took place nor how, nor how long he still taught in Rome as a heretical Christian. According to Ireneus he was in Rome at least until Anicetus became bishop (154 or 155)— but how long had he been heretical? Before his death (date unknown) he apparently left Rome and taught somewhere farther east— on Cyprus, Epiphanius says, but that may only be his local patriotism. Epiphanius was a Cypriote.

With the additional fact that he was able to attract to himself gifted and passionate disciples who for several generations

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taught and expanded his ideas (and ultimately distorted them beyond recognition), that is all we know about Valentinus-except his teaching.

But do we know all that we are told about Valentinus' teaching? The source materials are abundant but with the exception of a few direct quotations, probably genuine, they all turn out to be secondary, tertiary, or of even remoter degree. Conventionally Ireneus' Against Heresies has been regarded as the chief source. Close in time (ca. 180-90) and written at no great distance from Rome (Lyons— Lugdunum), its information is precious. But the grandiose system described in the first eight chapters of Book I, while it may be Valentinian, turns out to be three times removed from Valentinus himself. It is: (1) Ireneus' never quite sympathetic account of the system (upoqesiV, I.8.1) taught by anonymous (2) disciples of (3) Ptolemy (§2 of Ireneus' Preface), who had been a direct pupil of Valentinus. Each transfer gives opportunity for distortion of the original teaching— probably greatest between numbers three and two. For the letter of Ptolemy to Flora preserved in Epiphanius 33.3-7 reveals to us a very ‘moderate Gnostic’ (Bultmann) indeed who says nothing that would make one guess the existence of the bizarre speculations of Ireneus' chapters 1-8, though of course no one can know what lies behind the vague allusions at the end of the letter (§ 9). Since the general tendency of the whole gnostic movement from the second to the fourth centuries seems to be toward more vivid mythology and more and more daring speculation, it is probably permissible to assume that the wild heterodoxy of Ptolemy's disciples bears somewhat the same kind of relation to Ptolemy's mild heterodoxy, as this does to Valentinus' relatively unknown position. If so, we would expect to find Valentinus more nearly orthodox than Ptolemy— perhaps on the outer edge of orthodoxy or over the border in heterodoxy

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but still not far from orthodoxy. Yet when Ireneus for the extent of one page (I,11,1) purports to be reporting the specific teaching of Valentinus himself, he offers us the same old system of chapters 1-8 ( Ptolemy's disciples) with some details changed but basically the same scheme: thirty Eons or stages of being emanated serially from (or within?) the ineffable Deity and grouped in three ranks, one of eight members, one of ten, and one of twelve. One from the twelve-group ‘fell’ and in a here unexplained way created the rest of the universe— it is evidently the myth of Sophia in tersest allusive form. Add a slightly more complicated Horos-speculation and a variation as to the origin of the celestial (the pre-existent) Christ, and you have Ireneus' account. Then either our expectation that we would find Valentinus nearer to orthodoxy was wrong— or Ireneus did not know but merely deduced what Valentinus had taught from his firsthand knowledge of what Valentinians were still teaching. Karl Heussi¹¹ judges that Valentinus was ‘incomparably closer to normative Christianity than his disciples who much more than he, were influenced by syncretism.’ (‘Dass sein System . . . dem Gemeindechristentum ungleich náher stand, als seine viel mehr durch den Synkretismus bestimmten Schüler,’ §13r). Probably Heussi here has in mind and is approving the convincing attempt of Eugène de Faye¹² to understand Valentinus solely from the few reasonably reliable direct quotations that have come down from him, principally in the Miscellanies of Clement of Alexandria. In contrast to the heresiologies of the church fathers the most striking thing in the fragments is that they reveal a Valentinus whose soteriology is Christocentric-not pleromatocentric or sophiacentric— and a man whose thought still shows the virtue of simplicity. As to the relative

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amount of mythical symbol and metaphysical speculation to be attributed to the historical Valentinus, we must remember the evidence for a development within him away from orthodox Christianity. At the end of his teaching days he was likely indulging in speculations and using myth symbols which had been foreign to his earlier days, or embryonic, or veiled with ambiguity. If we had enough of his actual words we might be able to detect three stages of Valentinus: (1) Valentinus the catholic Christian (though with a tendency to daring expression), (2) Valentinus the bizarre Christian of doubtful acceptability to the Great Church, (3) Valentinus the brilliant heretic, a speculative Gnostic, but nevertheless closer to the Church's teaching than even Ptolemy or Heracleon. From seeking the Valentinus behind the fragments, De Faye could say:

Valentine appears to have been a highly cultured person, long familiar with Plato, obsessed by the deepest religious and ethical aspirations of his time, haunted by the problem of evil and that of salvation, a man who came to Christianity because he felt that in it he had found satisfaction for the needs of his conscience and the solution for the problems with which he was preoccupied. Having become a Christian, he continued to meditate and dig. Christianity, far from halting his mind's flight, only stimulated it the more. By this route he became the most daring speculative mind in the second century.¹³

These appraisals of De Faye and Heussi were made three decades ago when no one dreamed that a whole Gnostic library was soon to be unearthed and in it a volume that is distinctly of the Valentinian school of Gnosticism, not of the later schools derivative from it or parallel with it— the Codex Jung.

How do we know that the Codex Jung is Valentinian? Not by any author's name found within it. All five of the writings

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are strictly anonymous: (1) An aprocyphal Letter of James, (2) our present Gospel of Truth, (3) a Letter of Rheginos (or Reginus) on the Resurrection, (4) a Treatise on the Three Natures, (5) a fragment of a prayer attributed to an apostle. Only the second has as yet been published,¹⁴ but Puech and Quispel have published the results of their preliminary study of the first and the third.¹⁵ Concerning the first they write:

In the letter itself there are not indications numerous enough or explicit enough to permit us to affirm without any reservation whatever that it is the work of a Gnostic and not of some more or less orthodox Christian. Although we should be inclined, personally, to regard it as a document of Valentinian Gnosticism, we would readily grant that it would not be impossible to see in it, as in the Epistula Apostolorum, a stray product of early Christian literature.¹⁶

Concerning the third they go further: ‘The Letter to Rheginos comes either from a teacher belonging to the eastern branch of Valentinianism— or from Valentinus himself. As to the choice between these two possibilities, we would decide for ourselves, with all due reservations, in favor of the latter.’ Whetted by such a judgment from two cautious scholars, many now impatiently await their edition and translation of this third writing.

Our present interest is in item two. It has neither a title, nor an ascription of authorship, nor any colophon, but its first words are: ‘The Gospel of Truth.’ By its incipit it was known, as were many ancient books. Now a book popularly

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designated by this term has been known, as a mere name, since the writings of Ireneus. In III.11.9, he writes:

But they who are from Valentinus, being here again without any reverence, bring forth their own compositions and boast of having more Gospels than there are. In fact they have gone to such lengths of audacity as to entitle what was not long ago composed by them [The] Gospel of Truth, though it in no way agrees with the Gospels of the apostles, lest even the Gospel should be without blasphemy among them. For if what is brought forth by them is the Gospel of Truth but is unlike those which were passed on to us by the apostle, ‘those who will can learn’ (as Scripture itself intimates¹⁷) that what was passed on by the apostles is no longer the Gospel of the truth.

This is rather general. Conceivably two different works could have had this same name, whether title or incipit. Is there no more specific identification? There is. In Ireneus II.24.6, where the author is refuting the Valentinian scheme in general without naming any particular subdivision, he well-nigh quotes Gospel of Truth 31:35 ff.— though evidently at secondhand, for there is no evidence that he had ever examined an actual copy of it— in these words:

But further, though ‘they’ call material things ‘left hand’ and say that whatever is of the left hand necessarily falls into perdition and that the Savior came to the lost sheep to transfer it to the ‘right hand’— that is, to those ninety-nine sheep who belong to salvation and did not perish but remained in the fold— they still have to admit that (the latter), being a gesture of the left hand, do not [by their own definition] belong to salvation.

Though the Gospel of Truth is not here named, this passage coupled with III.11.9, is explicit identification. (I.16.1 & 2

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had already indicated that a similar teaching was repeated by the school of the Valentinian pupil Marcus with numerological elaboration.)

Ireneus evidently did not know by whom this work was written; he vaguely says (see quotation above from III.11.9) ‘by them’— someone or other of the Valentinian school. If he had suspected that Valentinus himself might be the author he would almost certainly have accused him of it, as he does not hesitate to saddle him, by implication, with all the inventions of Ptolemy's disciples (Valentinus' ‘grandchildren’), in the witty parody at I.11.4: ‘the delirious melons of Valentinus.’ Neither do we know who wrote it, nor does any ancient writer tell us unambiguously. But the unknown author of Against All Heresies (Pseudo-Tertullian) tells us (ch. IV) of Valentinus: ‘He also has his own gospel beyond these of ours.’ He writes ‘has,’ not ‘wrote.’ Nevertheless, what are we to suppose is meant by ‘his own gospel’? One that he approved and used? Surely— and a fifth gospel, not one of the canonical four. But by whom was it written? We know of no Christian-Gnostic predecessor who could have written a gospel that would have led this brilliant and original thinker to adopt it for his own use. Nor is it at all likely that this fertile teacher would have adopted the work of one of his own pupils. Furthermore the most probable interpretation of ‘his own gospel’ is that he had it as his own because he had written it. Whether the words are true can of course be questioned. Pseudo-Tertullian may be mistaken or mendacious. Or he may be making ‘Valentinus’ simply eponymous for all that was Valentinian in his own time, as others evidently did. But let us keep open the possibility that he knew the facts and was speaking truth— that Valentinus himself wrote a ‘gospel,’ this Gospel of Truth.

Brief acquaintance with our present text quickly reveals

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that Ireneus is right in saying that it ‘in no way agrees with the Gospels of the apostles’— at least so far as content, plan, and method are concerned.¹⁸ It is in no sense a narrative, and it contains not a single story about Jesus, though it alludes to some. It never explicitly cites words of Jesus,¹⁹ though again it alludes to some known from the Canon. It never names any country or city or other geographical entity nor any date; it never mentions any apostle or disciple nor uses the name of any human being except Jesus (three times, ‘Jesus Christ’ once, and once ‘Christ’ alone). More important still, it nowhere makes the slightest claim to be either a gospel or the gospel. The gospel of which it speaks is the gospel in Paul's sense— the good news proclaimed and embodied by Christ and now bequeathed to believers as a responsibility for further proclamation. The ‘Book’ of which it often speaks is this preliterary gospel of Paul which is pre-existent not merely to Christ's advent but to the universe itself insofar as the author identifies it with the Living Book of the Living. The ‘Book’ certainly is none of the canonical gospels, nor this nameless writing itself. Nor does there seem to be any polemic against the canonical gospels (or other books of the Canon, for that matter) as if they were rivals. Rather, their validity and their content seem to be accepted as beyond discussion and alluded to in much the same way as in Ignatius' letters. The gospel which is the subject of praise and reflection in this writing is the underlying good news behind the four canonical gospels and the NT as a whole. Pseudo-Tertullian is right, if ‘gospel’ be marked as a popular

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and inaccurate designation. ‘He has his own 'gospel' beyond these of ours’— beyond, not in place of— in addition to, not in competition with— the Church's gospels. Had he been less partisan, Pseudo-Tertullian might have and should have continued, ‘and, in all candor, the book has no title and claims 'Gospel' only as its subject, fit subject for any Christian.’ If the author of our work had felt a real need for a title he might very well have chosen his own phrase 37:3, ‘Words of Meditation,’ adding perhaps ‘Concerning the Gospel.’ As a descriptive designation, at any rate, these words are placed over the following translation.

Where does this meditation stand between orthodoxy and heterodoxy? Deity, far from being a thirtyfold complex à la Ireneus, consists of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ‘God’ as an explicit word (noute) occurs twice; once in the most Hebraic passage of the whole work (37:33), and the context leaves no doubt that the Hebrew-Christian God is meant, God whose will is supreme and who, Himself— not some Demiurge— is the creator of the universe. Otherwise God is always called the Father, and with no suggestion of a distinction between a Propator and a being emanated from him to be called merely Pater (or Nous or Monogenes). ‘Nous’ occurs but as the Father's mind (16:36; 19:37) not a relatively independent hypostasis except perhaps at 37:10. Bythos never occurs. The synonym ‘bathos’ (depth, or height) occurs, but as the depth ‘of Him’ (22:25) or ‘of His thought’ (37:7); only in 40:27 might bathos be thought to have a certain independence. Several of the other attributes and epithets of God from which the thirty Eons of the Pleroma bore their names in the system of Ptolemy's disciples occur either in transparent Coptic translation or left as Greek, but

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they occur as attributes and epithets of God, not as independent mythological persons.²⁰

There is but one Son, not a whole genealogy of several generations of Eons— the Father's beloved Son (30:31) who preexisted as the Father's secret, His Word (only twice ‘Logos,’ otherwise Coptic equivalent), upon whom he conferred his name, whom the Father revealed, and who thereupon revealed the Father, thus bestowing saving knowledge of Him, salvation. There is no suggestion of a split Son, a Jesus and a Christ, much less of a fourfold split into a heavenly Jesus and an earthly Jesus, a heavenly Christ and a Christ on earth. Though the category of history is rarely touched, the history of Jesus' passion is both implicitly and explicitly present. Even whether Jesus on earth is Docetically conceived is at least uncertain; the one expression which might decide the matter (31:6) is ambiguous. (See commentary below.)

The (Holy) Spirit is not prominent in the meditation. Complete with the adjective the expression occurs only three times, of which two seem to be within glosses (24:11; 26:36); the third (27:4) is an echo of John 20:22. But just as in the NT, Spirit also occurs with article or possessive pronoun and no adjective yet pretty certainly means Holy Spirit; in two of these cases the Spirit appears as Helper (30:17) or Sustainer (42:33); the third is obscure (43:17). Once ‘the spirit of

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power’ (31:18) is mentioned (cf. II Tim. 1:7, Isa. 11:2), but there is about it the same ambiguity as in the Canon. While clearly of divine origin, it is loaned to certain men and becomes a characteristic of them— the ambiguity is beautifully illustrated by the distribution of ‘Spirit’ and ‘spirit’ in RSV Isa. 11:2. There is no suggestion that Pneuma ( Heb. Ruach, fem.) is a female, which has to be the case in the system of Ptolemy's disciples where Pneuma is the heavenly spouse of Christus (Tertullian, Against the Valentinians, XI). Neither for Pneuma nor any other attribute is anything like a syzygy intimated. In fact in the meditation as in the NT, it may be doubted that the Holy Spirit has even the degree of independence which the later concept of the third person of the Trinity ascribed to it; it is a function of God.

There is neither mention of, nor allusion to, any sort of Horos-speculation— contrary to the expectation aroused by Ireneus I.11.1.

The most striking lack of all is the absence of Sophia. She is the central figure— whether heroine or villainess is hard to say, more nearly the latter— of the drama of creation in all the heresiologists when they treat of the Valentinian ‘fable’ or myth. The meditation once uses the Greek word ‘sophia,’ but with a verb so appropriate (r-.meleta, ‘meditate’) that there can be little doubt but that ‘sophia’ here is the ordinary appellative, not a proper name. Whose wisdom is not easy to decide. The pioneer translators thought God's; if so, then in the nonmythological (or at least no longer mythological) way in which the Bible usually speaks of God's wisdom. On stylistic grounds I think it more likely that it means the believer's (knower's) wisdom conferred upon him by the Book (see notes at 23:18). Coptic synonyms of the root ‘wise’ (sbw and rm-.n-.6ht) occur, but without mythological suggestiveness. The key figure, the Eon Sophia, whose troubles

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led to the release of the forces of creation and resulted in the creation of this, gnostically speaking, lamentable universe, and the concomitant need for salvation from it, is missing. On the whole, one would be inclined to characterize this meditation as either nonmythological— or mythological only as the Christology of the NT is mythological— or, at the most, veiledly mythological, were it not for one other figure not yet mentioned. This is t.planh, ‘the error’ or ‘Error.’ Among the ten occurrences of this term there are all the following possibilities: (1) a simple appellative with no personal implication (22:21, 24; 31:25; 32:37), (2) the appellative personified, (3) the appellative hypostatized but wavering as all hypostasis does between poetic personification and personal independence, and (4) a mythological person with a history of her own who then demands a proper name. Four²¹ passages seem to demand that we recognize the probability of an Error myth here. Consequently in the translation planh is always transliterated and capitalized— Planē. This device looks more confident than it really is; it only intends to reflect the translator's growing conviction that a hitherto unrecognized myth is here present. (See the notes within.) Resemblances to the Sophia myth and important differences from it are there pointed out. May it be that this Planē myth is the mother in Valentinus' own teaching of the later Sophia myth— though the latter must have other roots that are centuries older than Valentinus— in the Valentinian school and then in the Ptolemaic?²² Perhaps the other works in the Codex Jung will throw light upon the question.

Apart from its blurred mythology the meditation is unmis-

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takably Gnostic in thought and feeling— Gnostic in a wide enough sense to include some underlying presuppositions in Paul, John, Deutero-Paul, and Ignatius. Not that the Greek word Gnosis or any word on that stem occurs in the meditation. The Coptic root saune (Sah. sooun), verb and noun, represents it; the synonymns mme, ema6te, and 4wp may perhaps represent a Greek word of the stem gno, but saune is so prominent that I have reserved the translation Gnosis to it, though sometimes the verb with object forces one to let ‘know’ render it. I have tried to represent the synonymous stems by verbs other than ‘know.’ The capitalization of Gnosis in the translation is admittedly tendential. By the same device many a sentence of Paul or John could be made to seem more technically Gnostic than it is in reality. ‘Knowledge’ is a central and legitimate concern in all biblical faith. The reader of this transation should in every case make the experiment of reading the word without the capital. The capital only calls it to his special attention.

An important word of usual Gnostic vocabulary is strikingly absent: Proballein, ‘emanate.’ The frequent use of this word in Pistis Sophia suggests that the Greek verb was so established as a technical term that no native Coptic word had been sought or needed to express it. The meditation has neither the Greek verb nor a Coptic equivalent. The Father is indeed said to ‘beget’ as in the Canon, but to beget ‘the Son,’ again as in the Canon. Neither does the technical term Probolh ‘emanation’ occur (contrast Pistis Sophia). If there is a Coptic equivalent for it here, it is the problematic, not otherwise known, word 5h (six times) which the pioneer translators conjectured to have this meaning. Strange, however, that neither Pistis Sophia nor the Books of Jeû seem to know the word. Furthermore ‘emanation’ is derived from a basically verbal idea; the lack both of a cognate verb and of any

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synonymous verb counsels the caution of leaving it an untranslated enigma for the present.

W.C. van Unnik, professor of NT at Utrecht, has declared unequivocally that Valentinus himself was the author of this work.²³ I agree with him. Certainly the author must be sought within the Valentinian circle. If a pupil of Valentinus, he would seem to be an ‘earlier’ one than Ptolemy or Heracleon because he is less evolved in the irresistible mythological-heterodox trend than either of them (even Ptolemy distinguishes the Demiurge from God, as the meditation does not). It is also fairly certain that he wrote in the Latin-speaking half of the empire. The Greco-Latin hybrid phormē (27:20 = forma) for morphē points in this direction; so does the particular system of finger reckoning presupposed by page 32, for this system is known only from Latin lands. This does not necessarily mean Rome or even Italy, but it does not exclude Rome. Yet he wrote in Greek, evidently at a place in the Latin-speaking world where Christians still spoke Greek. That suggests either Rome or the Rhone valley, but if the bishop of Lugdunum had known that a notorious Valentinian had written in his own neighborhood he certainly would have mentioned it when he indignantly spoke of Gnostic morals there (Ireneus I.13.7). That leaves Rome. We know that the two outstanding leaders of western Valentinianism after Valentinus were Ptolemy and Heracleon, yet the surviving fragments of their writings do not favor their authorship of this work. We are left with the choice of a brilliant, unrecorded pupil of Valentinus early enough to have written at Rome this not even certainly heretical work— or Valentinus himself. Economy of theory favors the latter, the explicit statement of Pseudo-Tertullian supports it, and Ireneus'

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vaguer remarks (see above, p. 19) are not against it. The ascription of authorship of many books of the NT rests upon more tenuous evidence than this. Puech and Quispel speak with respect (EvVer, p. xiv) of van Unnik's hypothesis but remain aloof from it. We shall provisionally treat the meditation as Valentinus' work.

The safest thing that can be said about the original date of the work is that it considerably antedates the writings of Ireneus' Against Heresies (written ca. AD 180-88). In that work Ireneus says the Valentinian ‘gospel’ was composed ‘not long ago’ (see p. 18 above). How long is ‘not long’? It is a relative term, of course, but Ireneus is using it relative to the age of the canonical Gospels, which he probably dates still within the first century, even though he would have to date them all after AD 80 ( Jesus lived fifty years!— Iren. II.22.5). To one looking backward a hundred years, probably anything appreciably younger than fifty years happened ‘not long ago.’ If this be assumed, we have narrowed the limits to ca. 140-70; had it been any later than 170 Ireneus would have said ‘very recently’ rather than ‘not long ago.’ But, by hypothesis, Valentinus wrote it himself while he was in Rome and while he was still in or not far out of the Great Church. Ireneus dates Valentinus' sojourn at Rome by the names of the bishops there: ‘Valentinus came to Rome in the time of Hyginus, flourished (or ‘reached his peak,’ hkmase) under Pius, and remained until Anicetus.’²⁴ No reliable dates can be set for Hyginus, but Pius' office seems to have lasted ca. 140-54 and Anicetus' ca. 154-65. Unfortunately ‘until Anicetus’ does not unambiguously mean ‘up to, but not including, Anicetus,’²⁵ even though that is the more likely meaning.

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But does the verb for what he did under Pius mean simply ‘floruit’? Ireneus' purpose, if merely chronological, would seem to have been better served by saying simply that Valentinus came to Rome under Hyginus and stayed until (or until after) Anicetus became bishop. Why the remark that ‘he reached²⁶ his acme’— his prime or peak— under Pius? Surely Ireneus does not use this expression out of any neutral biographical interest. Then probably out of his polemical, ironic animus, under Pius he ‘reached his peak’ not of manhood, nor of standing in the Church, but of madness— he ‘blossomed out’ (a literal meaning of akmozw as a heretic). But the meditation certainly appears to have been written before any such blossoming out— hence some years before 154, say 150 if not earlier. His early years in Rome were spent ‘in and out’ of the Church— at least twice ‘in’ and twice ‘out,’ which would take some years, say 135-45. Yet if the meditation was written any considerable time before his defection or exclusion from the Church, it is astonishing that it never got into the stream of the Church's literature; there is no indication that any but heretical Christians had ever read it before our own day. It remains a guess, but my guess is that it was written just before his final expulsion from the Church (there is no rancor in it) around AD 150²⁷— this leaves five

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years for further mythological evolution before he left Rome and for the acquiring of the followers whom Ireneus reports Polycarp to have turned back to the Church of God when the aged Polycarp came to Rome (AD 154).

The text of the meditation was sumptuously published in 1956 under the title Evangelium Veritatis.²⁸ The volume contains the text five times over, each with identical pagination: (1) the complete and legible photographic facsimiles of the papyrus itself, (2) the text in Coptic type with, (3) the French master translation facing each page, (4) a German translation, and (5) an English translation. There are also notes, pages 51-59, and nearly complete vocabularies in Greek (pp. 113ff.) and Coptic (pp. 114-27), both so contrived as to furnish a concordance to all but the commonest words in the whole work (except for pp. 33-36, which were then unknown). For any original work on the meditation that edition is indispensable.

The translation here offered was undertaken for the following reasons: (1) The English version is the least satisfactory of the three in EvVer. It is a translation of a translation— the French— with little or no reference to the Coptic, made by a translator whose mother tongue obviously was not English. (The German version, on the contrary, is a rethinking of the Coptic text into German.) (2) There are ambiguities in the Coptic, sometimes mentioned in the notes of EvVer, but often not, to which no single translation can do justice. It is hoped that the present translation has occasionally utilized

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the context in such a way as to make the alternative it chooses convincing. (3) There are many who are neither technical theologians nor Copticists to whom a small and inexpensive form of this document ought to be welcome— theological students and students of history and philosophy, the nonspecialized student of comparative religion, and many a Christian layman interested even in the byways of the history of his faith.

The author is well aware that in many an obscure passage he has only succeeded in stirring up the darkness. Possibly even that may later aid a more penetrating reader to illumine it with understanding, if he, too, senses that there is something here worthy of being understood.

Abbreviations and Signs in the Text

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Signs:

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The Valentinian Meditation on the Gospel

16:31 The Gospel of Truth¹ is a joy² for them who have received the boon,³ through the Father of Truth,⁴ of knowing⁵ it ⁶

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by virtue of the Word⁷ who came from 16:35 the Pleroma,⁸ (the Word) who⁹ is in the thought. and-mind of the Father, (the Word) who is called

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the Soter,¹⁰ that being the name¹¹ (Soteria?) of the work he is to do¹² for the redemption (swte)¹³ of those¹⁴ who were 17:1 a-Gnostic¹⁵ of the Father when the N[ame . . .].¹⁶ The Gospel is the manifestation of the hoped-for,¹⁷ the treasure-trove¹⁸

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of those who seek it.¹⁹ For indeed 17:5 the Totality (of creatures)²⁰ have been searching after that²¹

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(or Him) from which²² they emerged— and (all along) the Totality were within Him,²³ the unthinkably Incomprehensible One,²⁴ who is choicer than any thought!²⁵— whilst this 17:10 not-knowing-the-Father became an anguish²⁶ and a terror; and the anguish condensed like a fog

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so that none²⁷ could see.

The Plot of Planē

Because of this,²⁸ 17:15 Planē²⁹ took confidence.³⁰ She set to work upon her substance³¹

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in a void³² in her ignorance of the Truth.³³ She was at work upon a molded figure³⁴ preparing as best she could with 17:20 beauty³⁵ the substitute for the Truth.³⁶ But this did not mean a defeat ³⁷ for Him, the unthinkably Incomprehensible One, for they were naught— this anguish and this Forgetting³⁸ and this deceitful figure— 17:25 whereas the abiding Truth is unchangeable,

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unperturbed, unembellishable.³⁹ Therefore look with scorn upon Planē: she was so 17:30 rootless⁴⁰ (that) she was in a fog⁴¹ concerning the Father, occupied with preparing labors⁴² and forgettings and terrors, so that by means of them she⁴³ might entice Those- 17:35 of-the-Middle⁴⁴ and take them captive.⁴⁵ Planē's Forgetting⁴⁶ was

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not a (divine) manifestation;⁴⁷ it did not constitute a 18:1 [. . . . . . ]⁴⁸ with⁴⁹ the Father. The Forgetting did not arise under the hand of the Father, though it did arise because of Him, but what arises in Him is Gnosis, 18:5 which made its appearance⁵⁰ in order that Forgetting might be destroyed and the Father be known. Since Forgetting arose because the Father was not known, then 18:10 from < > the moment on when the Father becomes known, Forgetting will not be.⁵¹ This⁵² is the Gospel of that which (Him whom?)⁵³ they are seeking,it⁵⁴ has revealed him to the initiate⁵⁵ through the mercies

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8:15 of the Father (as) the secret mystery:⁵⁶ Jesus the Christ⁵⁷ through whom {it⁵⁸ has illumined those who by reason of Forgetting were in the darkness; it illumined them. It⁵⁹ gave them a Way, 18:20 and the Way is the Truth which it⁶⁰ showed them. Because of this, Planē⁶¹ was enraged at it, she persecuted it: she was endangered⁶² by it, and brought to naught:⁶³ he was nailed to a tree,⁶⁴ he

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18:25 became a fruit⁶⁵ of Father-Gnosis, but it has not destroyed (any)⁶⁶ because they ate it,⁶⁷ but granted those who ate it to become a rejoicing over His (?)⁶⁸ finding: that⁶⁹ He 18:30 found them in Him⁷⁰ and (that) they found Him in them, this unthinkably Incomprehensible One, the Father, the Perfect One, Him who created the Totality,⁷¹ in Whom the Totality is,

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18:35 and Whom the Totality lacks,⁷² for He withheld within Himself their completeness⁷³ which He had not given the Totality.

The Withheld Completeness

He did not begrudge (it them), the Father, for what grudging (is there) which (could be) between 18:40 Him and His members?⁷⁴ For if⁷⁵ the way 19:1 of this Eon⁷⁶ had⁷⁷ [. . . . . .] they would not have been able to come [to?] the Father, who withholds within Himself their completeness,⁷⁸ who 19:5 gives it to them as a return to Himself and (as) a Gnosis, (a Gnosis) characterized⁷⁹ by per-

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fection⁸⁰— He⁸¹ who made the Totality, and in Whom the Totality is, and whom the Totality lacked. 19:10 It is like the situation of a person with whom there are some who are unacquainted: that person is wont to desire that they know⁸² him and thus love him;⁸³ for 19:15 what was it that the Totality lacked⁸⁴ but Gnosis of the Father?

The Teacher of the Book

He⁸⁵ became a quiet and leisurely guide. In a school⁸⁶ he appeared, he spoke

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19:20 the word⁸⁷ in the capacity of a teacher⁸⁸ {There came forth those who— in their own hearts⁸⁹ only— were wise,⁹⁰ testing him, but he put them to shame because 19:25 they were empty. They hated him because they were not truly wise men. After all these there came forth also little children,⁹¹ those to whom applies: theirs is the Gnosis 19:30 of the Father.⁹² When they became strong they had been taught about the face-forms(?)⁹³ of the Father. They knew, they were known; they were glorified, they 19:35 {glorified.⁹⁴ This living⁹⁵ Book of the Living had been⁹⁶ revealed in their heart,

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(the Book) that⁹⁷ is written in the thought-and-mind^{98 20:1} [of the] Father and (which) since the foun-dation⁹⁹ of the Totality¹⁰⁰ is within His incomprehensibility¹⁰¹— this (Book) which none could take 20:5 because that remained for him who was to take¹⁰² it and be

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slain.¹⁰³ None could have been revealed, of those who believed in salvation, if had not appeared¹⁰⁴ that Book.

Jesus Suffers for the Book

20:10 This is why the merciful one, the faithful one¹⁰⁵— Jesus!— was patient¹⁰⁶ to endure the sufferings until he took¹⁰⁷ that Book, for he knows that this death of his (means) life for many.¹⁰⁸ 20:15 As in the case of a not yet opened testament¹⁰⁹ {the estate¹¹⁰ of the dead master of the house remains concealed,} so also was the case of the Totality, which was concealed while the Father of the Totality was 20:20 invisible,¹¹¹ being a unit¹¹² within

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Himself (?), out of Whom all the maeit¹¹³ are wont to go forth. This is why Jesus appeared: he opened ¹¹⁴ (cj.) that Book. ¹¹⁵ 20:25 He was nailed to a tree, he

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fastened the testamentary¹¹⁶ disposition¹¹⁷ from the Father to the Cross. Oh such magnanimity!¹¹⁸— such that he draws¹¹⁹ himself downward to death while eternal 20:30 life¹²⁰ enclothes him.¹²¹ Having divested¹²²

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himself of these perishing rags.¹²³ he clothed himself with the imperishability which none has power to take from him.¹²⁴ Having gone into 20:35 the empty maeit¹²⁵ of the terrors, he passed through those who, through Forgetting, were naked, becoming a Gnosis and a completion as he proclaims what is in the heart 21:1 [of the Fathe]r¹²⁶ . . . . . . . . . . . . . teach them who ac[cept] instru[ction].

The Book Grants Completion

But those who are to accept instruction— viz., the living¹²⁷ ones who are inscribed in this Book 21:5 of the Living— are taught apart, alone,¹²⁸ receiving themselves¹²⁹

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