on the highly bizarre "paraphrase of shem"

[sophiaserpentia]

Among the texts of the Nag Hammadi Library there is this one - the Paraphrase of Shem - that I've been looking at since last night. And TBH it kind of freaks me out.

First issue: where does this text come from? It seems to have been written entirely out of the blue. It is a Gnostic text but is not Jewish, Egyptian, Christian, Zoroastrian, Manichaean, Mandaean, Buddhist, Hindu, Platonist, Roman, or anything. It does not bear any characteristics that identify it as being a product of any particular sect or school of Gnosticism. There are no markers that identify when or where it was written, except that it must have been before 350 CE. It might have been long before then.

There are some very slight clues. The first is that it uses the terms "Light" and "Darkness" which were characteristic of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and "Logos" and "Sophia" which were characteristic of... everywhere, really, that Alexander the Great conquered. The second is this:

When he will have appeared, O Shem, upon the earth, [in] the place which will be called Sodom, (then) safeguard the insight which I shall give you. For those whose heart was pure will con­gregate to you, because of the word which you will reveal. For when you appear in the world, dark Nature will shake against you, together with the winds and a demon, that they may destroy the in­sight. But you, proclaim quickly to the Sodomites your universal teaching, for they are your members. For the demon of human form will part from that place by my will, since he is ignorant. He will guard this utterance. But the Sodomites, according to the will of the Majesty, will bear witness to the universal testimony. They will rest with a pure conscience in the place of their repose, which is the unbegotten Spirit. And as these things will happen, Sodom will be burned unjustly by base Nature. For the evil will not cease in order that your majesty may reveal that place.

So, it was written by someone who mourned the destruction of Sodom. Not surprising really that someone should have, since the people who lived there must have had relatives and friends and compatriots and so on. The tradition teaches that the descendants of Shem moved to the east after the Flood, and south into Arabia, etc., so someone who claims ancestry from Shem by way of Sodom would have likely lived by the Dead Sea.

So that makes two markers that point to the Dead Sea. Not so weird or disturbing, eh? Except that the people who lived there at the time, the Nabateans, had no traditions that match any of the angel or archon names listed in the Paraphrase of Shem. I suppose the author might have just made up the names out of whole cloth, but it's very unusual. It would be unique, actually. Gnostics were almost always reacting to existing tradition.

It starts to get strange when you look at the archaeological evidence. There was never a city in the areas where Sodom and Gomorrah supposedly existed. The area is an incredibly desolate salt basin 50 feet under sea level. It's where water goes to die. Seriously, there is an entire mountain made out of salt there. Do you see anything missing? Only things like trees and life.

I suppose such an area might have seemed welcoming to someone who thought Nature was an evil demon. Which is where the text starts to get really strange. Nature is evil, and especially fearsome is her "dark vagina":

She (i.e. Nature) turned her dark vagina and cast from her the power of fire which was in her from the beginning through the practice of the Darkness. It (masc.) lifted itself up and shone upon the whole world instead of the righteous one. And all her forms sent forth a power like a flame of fire up to heaven as a help to the corrupted light, which had lifted itself up. For they were members of the chaotic fire. And she did not know that she had harmed herself. When she cast forth the power, the power which she possessed, she cast it forth from the genitals. It was the demon, a deceiver, who stirred up the womb in every form – . And in her ignorance, as if she were doing a great thing, she grant­ed the demons and the winds a star each. For without wind and star nothing happens upon the earth.

The first half of this text -- and it's quite long -- is a strange rambling tale of disembodied genitals rubbing up against each other and bearing elemental forms which take turns being astonished at one another. There is no sense of narrative structure, of progression from an initial state to a final state. Just this, on and on:

And the light which was in the Hymen was disturbed by my power, and it passed through my middle region. It was filled with the uni­versal Thought. And through the word of the light of the Spirit it re­turned to its repose. It received form in its root and shone without deficiency. And the light which had come forth with it from the silence went in the middle region and returned to the place. And the cloud shone.

On a basic level it is a manifestation of the "Terrible Mother" story mentioned by Carl Jung and Erich Neumann. But it's not really a surprise that this text and its material didn't catch on.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Some of the key words occur in other Gnostic texts -- fire and water, for example, are important in the Manichaean writings and a few other Gnostic writings. But... that's pretty tenuous, really. If I put my mind to it for a few days I might be able to suss out some internal structure, but at the moment it's not really a valuable use of my time.

[kittenkissies.livejournal.com]

Is any of this passage a valuable use of your time? Or is your time being spent on something other than this altogether. If not, I am sorry for wasting your time by asking a question.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Asking a question is never a waste of my time. I meant that I didn't know if spending several days examining this text would be worthwhile since it is probably, like you say, some kook's ramblings. I've been working on a book about Gnosticism and there are many other materials that would turn up a wealth of stuff if I spent time examining those instead.

[kittenkissies.livejournal.com]

Yes. I wish you the best fortune with this. I am having trouble with any book of the New Testament after Acts. To me, Paul is too bitter and insecure (no, no real examples) to be worth canonization. Boy that kinda stomps on all of Roman Catholicism...I would have like to see if Peter would have had more Christlike writings if they had used him instead.