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Aug. 11th, 2010 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaLately I've been coming back to the Gnostic literature. This morning I encountered a text that hadn't really stood out in my mind before: the Revelation of Adam to Seth, a Sethian text with strong Hellenic overtones that has a really interesting hymn in the middle.
By this I mean the passage that gives fourteen different accounts of the origin of the savior, 13 of them attributed to thirteen kingdoms, the last attributed to "the generation without a king over it," which means in the context of the document the descendants of Seth, who are free from the spiritual fetters of the archons. The number 13 is interesting; if it was 12 we could easily see this as a reference to the 12 tribes of Israel -- which they may be, except that several of the savior-origin stories refer to various aspects of the Christian gospel (orthodox and otherwise). I'm losing my edge, or else I'd've already figured out who the 13 kingdoms were supposed to be. My instinct tells me this hymn is a ritual rubric.
There's also a reference to Solomon's 'army of demons,' which is a rather esoteric reference -- Bentley Layton says in a footnote that at the time there was a myth that Solomon had the ability to control and command demons, note for example the goetic grimoire named "the Lesser Key of Solomon the King." I wasn't aware the myth went back to antiquity... fascinating.
By this I mean the passage that gives fourteen different accounts of the origin of the savior, 13 of them attributed to thirteen kingdoms, the last attributed to "the generation without a king over it," which means in the context of the document the descendants of Seth, who are free from the spiritual fetters of the archons. The number 13 is interesting; if it was 12 we could easily see this as a reference to the 12 tribes of Israel -- which they may be, except that several of the savior-origin stories refer to various aspects of the Christian gospel (orthodox and otherwise). I'm losing my edge, or else I'd've already figured out who the 13 kingdoms were supposed to be. My instinct tells me this hymn is a ritual rubric.
There's also a reference to Solomon's 'army of demons,' which is a rather esoteric reference -- Bentley Layton says in a footnote that at the time there was a myth that Solomon had the ability to control and command demons, note for example the goetic grimoire named "the Lesser Key of Solomon the King." I wasn't aware the myth went back to antiquity... fascinating.
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Date: 2010-08-11 09:12 pm (UTC)http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fstable%2F1560412&ei=5xFjTIboCsT48AaigMnaCQ&usg=AFQjCNEc6r-jEuUeztKzcN-EJZEl2H_pWw
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Date: 2010-08-11 10:16 pm (UTC)Aww, yes, cool! It turns out I have online access to this.
I agree with the author that this hymn is a cut-and-paste from an earlier source. It turns out that there is a lot of contention over the original source, though, because people have argued for nods to Jewish, Hellenic, Mithraic, and Iranian traditions.
The author's argument is that there's an Egyptian style of aretalogy that compiles accounts of deities from 13 disparate traditions and then argues that they all embody a single deity. The last one cited is the "true" origin. He cites an example involving Isis.
I'm not familiar enough with Egyptian scripture of the time to really comment, but sure, it seems feasible to me. There was a fair bit of seeding of Coptic culture into Gnostic tradition.