TO SEE THE LIGHT:
A GNOSTIC APPROPRIATION OF JEWISH PRIESTLY PRACTICE AND SAPIENTIAL AND APOCALYPTIC VISIONARY LORE

TO SEE THE LIGHT:
A GNOSTIC APPROPRIATION OF JEWISH PRIESTLY PRACTICE
AND SAPIENTIAL AND APOCALYPTIC VISIONARY LORE

John D. Turner
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Pp. 63-113 in Mediators of the Divine: Horizons of Prophecy and Divination on Mediterranean Antiquity (ed. R. M. Berchman; Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 163; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998)

I. Baptism and Visionary Experience in Sethian Gnosticism: Overview

Even the most casual reader of the Sethian gnostic treatises from the Nag Hammadi Library cannot fail to notice their numerous references to visions of the transcendental world and its contents, numerous references to baptisms, washings, anointings and sealings, as well as the presence of various prayers, doxologies and hymns mentioning or directed to a rather fixed set of divine beings. Such references generally occur in stanzaic, even hymnic, passages to be found especially in Gos. Egypt., Apoc. Adam, Melch., Zost., Ap. John, and Trim. Prot. They apparently refer to a sequence of ritual acts involving a kind of baptism, which the texts often designate by the term "the Five Seals."[1]
    In whatever baptismal tradition the Sethian treatises and their readers stood, it is clear that, in spite of the more than several references to ritual acts that could indeed be enacted by ordinary human beings, the importance of the rite lay primarily in the spiritual plane, an emphasis that seems characteristic of Christian and probably non-Christian baptizing circles throughout the first century. In particular, the Sethian baptismal water was understood to be of a celestial nature, a Living Water identical with light or enlightenment, and the rite itself seems to have been conceived as a series of visionary experiences resulting in complete enlightenment and therefore total salvation.
    The frequent references to visionary experiences suggest a self-performable mental or psychic praxis or a contemplative technique that could--although not necessarily--be enacted independently of any outward ritual actions, and in which baptismal terms are employed to designate entrance into ever higher states of mental abstraction from the realm of sensible experience. In this sense, terms which on face value seem to refer to ritual acts, such as "baptism," "immersion," "water," "disrobing," "enrobing," stripping," "putting on," "sealing," and the like, come to designate acts of mental transformation, conceptual refinement and abstraction, abstention from previous behavioral dispositions, "unlearning" of older and adoption of new perceptions of self and world, and entrance into a higher state of enlightenment. It is natural to assume that such a mental transformation arose out of the individual experience of actual cultic and ritual praxis, a praxis of a sort that could be taught and enacted either while participating in the physical setting and associated gestures of the rite or quite apart from them.[2]
    This close association of baptism with visionary experience in the Sethian treatises seems to have antecedents that lie, at least in part, within ancient and later Jewish priestly protocol.[3] On entering the Jerusalem temple, ritual purity was required of both priests and laity, and various forms of lustration or self-immersion were practiced by the priests prior to service in the temple so long as it was in existence. But during the periods of the temple's demise, from 586 BCE to its rebuilding in 515 BCE, and after its final destruction in 70 CE, as well as throughout the period of the widespread Hasidic rejection of the temple and its administration during the Hasmonean regime, visionaries and apocalyptists in the wake of Ezekiel developed the notion of a superior, supramundane temple. It was there that God had caused his glory to reside in preference to a corrupt or damaged earthly temple, a place that could be approached only by an act of vision. By such acts of vision, transcendent and eschatological things and events could be made a present reality. Furthermore, if ritual cleansing and immersion was required for service at the Jerusalem temple when it existed, how much the more would such cleansing be required for service in the heavenly, eschatological temple that replaced the earthly temple during the periods of its destruction or corruption? Thus one would expect lustrational practices to have continued to be the appropriate means of purifying oneself for attendance in the supramundane temple as well, except that in this case, they became a prelude to acts of vision, and even the means through which visionary ascent was achieved, as well as a component of the vision itself.
    One might further expect that a close connection between lustration and visionary experience had arisen within the realm of the apocalyptic thought that developed throughout the first five centuries BCE and continued on in the early Christian and associated movements such as that of John the Baptist and his followers, as well as the Sethian Gnostics. Such a connection is strikingly evident in the case of the traditions concerning the inaugural baptism of Jesus by John, as well as in the Sethian texts themselves. It seems likely that certain priestly visionary practices were known to the authors of apocalyptic and sapiential literature insofar as they shared in a general affiliation between scribes and priests or Levites. As I hope to show, it is in this sacerdotal-sapiential-apocalyptic speculative environment that the Sethian visionary and baptismal traditions are likely to have arisen.

II. The Baptismal Doctrine of the Sethian Treatises

1. The Apocryphon of John

The only explicit reference in Ap. John to the Sethian baptismal or ascensional rite of the Five Seals occurs in the three-stanzaed hymnic conclusion to the longer versions of Ap. John, which portrays a series of three descents of the divine Pronoia into the world of darkness (II, I: 30,11-31,25).[4] Using a first-person self-predicatory style much like those of the Isis aretalogies and of certain wisdom poems, each stanza of this hymn-like passage narrates a separate saving descent of Pronoia, who is to be considered identical with the figure called Barbelo or Ennoia or the merciful Mother-Father throughout the earlier part of the treatise. This Pronoia aretalogy, which seems to have once existed apart from the larger body of Ap. John and only included at a later compositional stage,[5] tells how Pronoia, "the remembrance of the pleroma," descends twice into the lower world and shakes the foundations of chaos and returns to the world of light without effecting any permanent salvation, but then in a third descent enters the prison, said to be the body, awakens the soul from its corporeal forgetfulness, and raises it into the light by sealing it "in the light of the water with Five Seals." [6] This luminous water is identical with the first emanation from the supreme deity, appearing as a reflective medium in which his own self-image is manifested in the form of the divine Pronoia herself (Ap. John, NHC II,1: 4,19-29). Baptism is therefore the initiate's immersion into the waters that immediately surround the supreme deity.
    Corresponding to the three descents narrated in the Pronoia monologue, in the main body of Ap. John, Barbelo/Pronoia initiates three redemptive movements from the higher world into the lower world: her original self-manifestation as the image of the divine Adam into the lower world, her manifestation as the spiritual Eve for the enlightenment of the earthly copy of the divine Adam and the concomitant self-condemnation of the archontic powers, and her final manifestation in the form of the Christ of the enclosing narrative frame. Ironically, the inclusion of the first person self-predicatory language of the Pronoia aretalogy as part of the first person revelation of the Christ of the narrative frame has the effect of claiming the baptism of the Five seals as the gift of the masculine Christ rather than the feminine figure envisioned in the actual text of the Pronoia hymn.

2. Trimorphic Protennoia

Using nomenclature reminiscent of that found in Ap. John, Trim. Prot. identifies the initiator and bringer of salvation as Protennoia or Barbelo, the First Thought of the Invisible Spirit. She appears in three successive forms: First, as Father, she is the divine but as yet inarticulate Voice of the First Thought of the Invisible Spirit who presides over the establishing of the heavenly dwellings for her members and descends to chaos to loosen their bonds. Second, as Mother, she is the articulate Speech of the Thought who overthrows the old aeon ruled by the evil powers and announces the dawn of the new age. Third, as the Son, she is the fully articulate Logos who adopts the guise of successively lower powers, descends to and enters the "tents" of her members, puts on Jesus, thus rescuing him from the cross, and leads her members back to the light by means of the celestial ascent ritual of the Five Seals.[7]
    The imagery of water, light, ascent and descent found in the Pronoia hymn and in Trim. Prot. seems heavily indebted to the Hellenized Jewish wisdom tradition.[8] These two works appear to be old, likely contemporaneous with the Johannine prologue with which they share a common mythological structure, suggesting an early date for these works, perhaps the early second century CE.
At various points throughout Trim. Prot., the triple descent of Protennoia and the various forms in which she appears, namely as Voice, Speech and Word, are interpreted by means of concepts which are drawn from the Sethian baptismal terminology: The Voice is said to be the unpolluted spring from which flows Living Water, characterized as radiant light.[9] The Word, bearing Living Fruit, pays the tribute of this Fruit to the Living Water, which it pours out upon Protennoia's "Spirit" (i.e., her gnostic "members" who share affinity with her) which originated from the Living Water but is now trapped in the soul (i.e. the psychic realm) below. The baptismal rite of the Five Seals is the celestial ascent by which one strips off the psychic and somatic garments of ignorance (cf. Col 2:11-15). It transforms and purifies Protennoia's members within those aeons from which Protennoia initially revealed her masculine likeness (43,20-25; probably in the form of the Autogenes who established the Four Lights), and it clothes them with radiant light (48, 7-14):
I gave to him] from the Water [of Life, which strips] him of the Chaos [that is in the] uttermost [darkness] that exists [inside] the entire [abyss], that is, the thought of [the corporeal] and the psychic. All these I put on. And I stripped him of it and I put upon him a shining Light, that is, the knowledge of the Thought of the Fatherhood.
    Rather than designating a fivefold immersion in the Living Water, the Five Seals are interpreted as a five-stage ritual of psychic ascent: the investiture of the stripped Spirit with light, its enthronement, its baptism by Micheus, Michar and Mnesinous in the spring of Living Water, its glorification with the Fatherhood, and its rapture into the light (perhaps the Four Lights) by the servants of the Four Lights Kamaliel, [..]anen and Samblo (48, 15-35). The stages of this visionary rite do not seem to follow in an intuitively obvious sequence (e.g., in 45, 13-20 one has the following sequence: glorification, enthronement, investiture, baptism and becoming Light). Indeed, since most cults practiced naked baptism, one might expect the order: baptism, investiture, enthronement, glorification and final rapture.[10]
    In the concluding section of Trim. Prot., the Five Seals are equated with the "ineffable ordinances of the Father," taught by Protennoia to her "members," "the brethren." The Five Seals are said to be "complete by means of Nous." Whoever possesses the Five Seals "of these particular names"[11] has stripped away all ignorance and darkness and has put on a shining light, permanently free from the power of the hostile archontic forces and experiencing a mutual indwelling with Protennoia until the time when she gathers all her members into her eternal kingdom. It is thus clear that these Five Seals are connected with an ability to name and experience the presence of certain spiritual beings, and the transmission of a doctrine that enables one to reject (strip away) a profane occupation with the world (ignorance) and to adopt (put on) an appropriate way of seeing things. The rite is the dramatization of this process, and the Sethian myth is in effect its narratization.
The fact that the author refers to the recipients of this baptismal ascent ritual in the first person plural and as "brethren" suggests a (Sethian) community with a well-established tradition of water baptism that has been conceived as a mystery of celestial ascent, and which brings Gnosis (48,33-34) and total salvation, as H.-M. Schenke suggested in 1978.[12]

3. Melchizedek

The baptismal doctrine of Trim. Prot. seems to sustain a close relationship especially to Gos. Egypt., Zost., and more distantly to Melch. and perhaps Marsanes and even Apoc. Adam. A distinctly Christian treatise, Melch. exhibits prominent Sethian features at two points. The first occurs in a speech addressed to Melchizedek by Gamaliel, the one sent to "the congregation of [the children] of Seth" (IX,1: 5,17-6,10; in other treatises he is identified as one of the "ministers" of the Four Lights). The other occurs in an invocation spoken by Melchizedek as he undergoes baptism in response to Gamaliel's previous revelation (IX,1: 14,16-18,7). Each of these contains baptismal imagery, and the first contrasts the receipt of two kinds of baptism, perhaps one in ordinary water and the other in celestial water.[13]
    Melch. would strike one as a Christian meditation upon the relation between Jesus Christ and the high priest Melchizedek, were it not for the fact that the two speeches contain an admixture of Sethian Gnostic terminology that may have been added to an originally non-Sethian treatise. Each speech includes invocations of holy powers such as the Father of the All, Barbelo as the Mother of the Aeons, Doxomedon as the first-born of the Aeons, the Four Luminaries (Harmozel, Oroiael, Daveithai and Eleleth), Pigeradamas the Man-of-Light, Mirocheirothetos (elsewhere Meirothea, mother of Adamas), and Jesus Christ as Commander-in-Chief. It seems as if Melch. is a basically Christian work which has been Sethianized.[14]

4. Marsanes

In Marsanes, one finds baptismal language scattered throughout. Washing" is mentioned on page 55; pages 64-66 seem to narrate Marsanes' vision of certain angels, which include Gamaliel, who is over the spirit(s) and "takes" him somewhere in an action which involves a "spring," probably of "living" water, a "washing" and a "sealing" with the "seal of heaven."[15] Like Zost., this treatise also seems to interpret the various levels of visionary ascent with baptismal terminology, indeed without a trace of Christian language.[16] This shows that transcendentalizing baptismal terminology was featured not only in Christian-influenced Sethianism, as Melch., Trim. Prot. and Gos. Egypt. show, but also in forms of Sethianism apparently uninfluenced by Christianity, as in Zost. and Marsanes, which are instead influenced by a contemporary Platonic practice of visionary ascent.

5. The Gospel of the Egyptians

In many ways the Sethian treatise that is most explicit about the baptismal rite is "the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit," commonly called the Gospel of the Egyptians. As suggested by Schenke, Gos. Egypt. can "be understood as the mythological justification of a well-defined ritual of baptism including the invocations that must be performed therein."[17] He observes that the emphasis of this text falls on its final part (III, 2: 63,4-68,1; cf. IV, 2: 74,17-80,15). Here the text narrates the three parousiai of Seth, namely his descents at the flood, at the conflagration, and at the judgment of the archons, to save his seed ("saints") who have gone astray in the world (similarly in Apoc. Adam). While the first two salvific visitations of Seth occur in primordial times to preserve his seed from the flood and probably from the conflagration of Sodom and Gomorrah, his third visitation presumably occurs during the celebration of the contemporary Sethian baptismal rite. Here Seth descends wearing a Logos-begotten body prepared for him "by the virgin," in order to "put on" Jesus and to defeat the powers of the thirteen aeons.
    This is the same pattern found in Trim. Prot., where Barbelo first descends to loosen her member's bonds to this world, second, to overthrow the power of the archons and their chief, and third, to confer the rite of the Five Seals. On that third descent, the Logos-aspect of Protennoia is said to descend through the levels of the various powers, at each level disguising herself in the garments and form of each one, finally putting on Jesus and bearing him and her seed aloft into the holy light. While Trim. Prot. identifies this Logos with the perfect Son, the Autogenes Christ, Gos. Egypt. identifies the Logos as the son of the Great Christ. Both Trim. Prot. and Gos. Egypt. associate the Logos with a figure who descends from the Four Lights in order to introduce to the Sethian gnostic a form of baptism in the celestial Living Water. Gos. Egypt. identifies this water as Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus (a barbarized version of the name of Jesus). Trim. Prot. identifies the Living Water with the Voice-aspect of Protennoia which the Logos pours out on her members below, stripping them of the corporeal and psychic thought and replacing it with radiant light. Ap. John identifies the same water with the fount of luminous water streaming from and surrounding the supreme Invisible Spirit. The prominent presence of the names Christ and Jesus in these accounts suggests that some form of Christianity played an important, though not necessarily exclusive, catalytic role in the formulation of these traditions.
Gos. Egypt. connects the baptismal rite quite firmly with the Seth's three parousiai, the third of which corresponds with the descent of the Logos. On the other hand, Trim. Prot. seems to witness another, probably earlier, understanding of the rite, in which it was connected, not with the story of Seth, but instead with the story of the descent of the divine Wisdom or First Thought of God in the form of the Logos who pours forth enlightenment on those who would attend to her. This same understanding underlies the Pronoia hymn at the end of Ap. John, where it is the dominantly feminine figure of Pronoia who descends to confer the Five Seals. There, however, she is not identified explicitly with the Logos, even though the effect of the frame narrative of the entire work is to identify the first-person statements of Pronoia as the words of the Christ who narrates the three descents to John.
    Another difference between Trim. Prot. and Gos. Egypt. is that, while Trim. Prot. attributes this replacement of the psychic nature with one of light to a conferral of the rite of the Five Seals by Protennoia in the guise of the Logos, Gos. Egypt. interprets the Logos-begotten body of Seth as the instrument of the holy baptism. The bodily form adopted by Seth for the judgment of the archons on his third and final appearance (contemporary with the current Sethian community) is none other than that of Jesus; it was prepared and put on by Seth by the aid of the "virgin," which might be a reference either to the tradition of Jesus' virgin birth, or to the male virgin Barbelo. In all accounts, the original establishment of the holy baptism brought by the logos-begotten Jesus whom the great Seth has put on is attributed ultimately to Barbelo, the Pronoia of the Father (III,2: 63,21-64,3). She is the primary actor behind the scenes, appearing in the world as the Logos in certain guises.
    In Gos. Egypt. this baptism effects not only rebirth, but also invocations and the receipt of visions, enlightenment, and immortality. Rebirth is said to be a begetting of the saints through invisible secret symbols, the "killing"[18] and renunciation of both the world and the god of the thirteen aeons.[19] Certain invocations (epiklêtos) of the saints form the prelude to the receipt of visions: at the appearance of Seth along with Aerosiel, Selmechel and 400 angels who are to guard the incorruptible race until the consummation of the age, the great men of the great Seth receive visions of various spiritual beings. Among these are beings whose names occur repeatedly in the Sethian treatises.[20] Finally, in III,2: 65,26-66,8 it is said that through the incorruptible man Poimael, those "who are worthy of (the) invocation (epiklêsis), the (baptism of) the renunciations (apotaxeis) of the Five Seals in the spring-baptism will know their receivers (paralêmptôres) as they are instructed about them; they will be known by them and by no means taste death."
In III,2: 66,9-68,1 there follows a long prayer in which the baptizand praises the Living Water Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus as the eternal Jesus who truly is, the glorious name that is now upon and within him, granting him immutability and the armor of (en)light(enment). Stretching out his hands while yet folded, the baptizand apparently symbolically portrays the circle of all those who have received enlightenment, and praises the man (Seth?) who raises up the man (Jesus?) in whose name the baptizand will be purified. Having received the incense of life, the baptizand has mixed it with "water after the model of the archons" (presumably the earthly water of his baptism), now to live with the savior in the peace of the saints.
    Gos. Egypt. is replete with references to certain gestures and verbal performances capable of ritual enactment: invocation, renunciation, receipt of incense, doxological prayers, pronouncement of names, manual gestures, and elevation as well as baptism itself. Throughout, the use of the passive voice for ritual actions and the use of the plural in reference to the saints begotten through instruction appears very much to refer to a community ritual in which there were initiates and officiants, as well a tradition of prescribed actions and declarations.
    What is more, it may be that the entire Gos. Egypt. and not just its conclusion has the baptismal rite in view. It is significant that the five doxologies punctuating the completion of various stages of its cosmology invoke nearly the same set of beings as are invoked in the doxologies of Melch. (IX,1: 5,17-6,10; 14,16-18,7), there revealed by Gamaliel and pronounced by Melchizedek as he is baptized.[21] If the term "Five Seals" originally designated a fivefold baptismal procedure, it may be that Gos. Egypt. was read aloud during the administration of each phase of the ritual: after the reading of a section of the cosmology, the baptizand may have repeated the doxology concluding each section as a way of affirming the receipt of each of the Five Seals. A similar correlation between baptismal sealings and depictions of the structure and deployment of the transcendent world occurs also in Zost, although there the sealings are clearly given a celestial, rather than earthly, setting.
    Finally, what of the matter of Christian influence? In both Gos. Egypt. and Trim. Prot., the final act of salvation is the descent of Seth in the form of the Logos or of the Logos in the form of Christ, who "puts on," that is, appears in the form of, Jesus. The salvation of Jesus implied in these two texts certainly reflects Christian influence, but of an extremely polemical sort, since rather than being the savior, Jesus becomes the one saved. In view of this Sethian Christological reinterpretation, one would characterize these two texts as reacting to rather than merely submitting to Christian influence. In the case of Trim. Prot., I have elsewhere tried to show that this reaction is the result of a polemical redaction of an originally non-Christian text.[22] On the other hand, the Gos. Egypt. in its present form is so thoroughly Christianized that one would tend to see the mutual relationship of Seth and Jesus as one of its original features.

6. The Apocalypse of Adam

Among other things, Apoc. Adam contains a dream vision revealed to Adam by three glorious men who narrate a third saving mission conducted by an illuminator whose origin is unknown to the evil powers. Thirteen opinions of his origins are rejected; in reality he comes from a great aeon to enlighten his elect. The illuminator does not experience birth or generation, and does not receive nourishment, glory and power in the beyond and then "come (down) to the water," which the author or redactor regards as polluted and chaotic.[23] Instead, the Illuminator remains above in the light where he resides with the three imperishable illuminators Yesseus, Mazareus, Yessedekeus, the Living Water. At some point, angelic beings will bring the truth to the Sethians below in a way independent of the written word of the evil creator, a truth that is apparently communicated by a holy baptism through logos-begotten illuminators. Thus there is a distinction between the holy baptism with Living Water and a baptism ordained by the creator and practiced by his servants who have polluted the water of life.
    As they stand independent of context, the thirteen kingdoms seem to be speculations on the coming of the Illuminator into the world (i.e., "to the water" is here a metaphor for the Illuminator's coming "into the world" through some kind of earthly baptism). But already their context in Apoc. Adam (NHC V,5: 77,26-82,19) betrays possible Christian motifs such as the "signs and wonders" of the Illuminator and the punishing of the flesh of the man upon whom the Holy Spirit comes, perhaps referring to Jesus' baptism in the Jordan. Moreover, it is said that the powers who are disturbed and blinded by the Illuminator's third descent "will use the name in error" in an attempt to determine his origin. Since the phenomenon of pronouncing "the name" plays a prominent role in many baptismal accounts, one may presume that Apoc. Adam is concerned here with baptismal doctrine.
    The thirteen opinions concerning the descent of the Illuminator seem to exhibit a myth that could be developed in various ways to portray the origin of mankind, the origin of the Savior, as well as the relation of water baptism and celestial baptism to the experience of birth and rebirth. Some years ago, J. M. Robinson[24] drew attention to a series of striking parallels to the structure and motifs of these thirteen opinions concerning the origin of the Illuminator, which are to be found in the NT Apocalypse of John (Rev 12:1-17), in the baptism and "temptation" narrative of Mark 1:9-13, and in some fragments from the Gospel of the Hebrews. He suggested that Rev 12 and Apoc. Adam shared a common mythical tradition concerning the appearance of a divine child who together with his divine mother is threatened by an evil power, yet is rescued and finds safety in the wilderness until the evil power is destroyed. Apoc. Adam rigidified this myth into a repeated outline of possible origins of the Illuminator, while the author of Revelation merely added Christian interpretation. While the thirteen kingdoms of Apoc. Adam reflect the mythical coming and baptism of the Illuminator, Rev 12 takes it as a birth story of the Lamb of God, causing variations within certain episodes of the myth between these two works. Very significantly, just as Apoc. Adam places this myth of origins in a baptismal context, Mark 1:10-13 and the Gospel of the Hebrews both reflect this same myth in the context of Jesus' baptism rather than his birth. It may be that entrance into the world through baptismal rebirth is a more effective symbol of divine origin than entering through birth. Clearly baptism and birth both represent those liminal transformations through which one enters a new mode of existence, in this case, adoption as God's Son; little wonder that the Gospel of John (ch. 3) and later Christian literature conceive of baptism as a rebirth.[25]

7. Zostrianos

Zost. likewise records most of the names of the divine figures associated with the baptismal rite reflected in the Gos. Egypt. But in Zost., the baptismal imagery is not applied to any earthly phenomenon or process, nor to the descent of a revealer figure from the divine world bearing the Five Seals. Instead, the imagery of baptism and sealing is used solely to delineate the various stages in a supracelestial ascent, and is not explicitly connected with a redemptive ritual brought below by Seth or Christ or some other manifestation of the Logos. This interpretation of baptism owes to the influence upon Zost. of a tradition of visionary ecstatic ascent achieved as a self-performable technique originally at home in religious Platonism and likely mediated to Zost. by teachings identical with or similar to those found in the treatises Allogenes (and more distantly Marsanes and the Three Steles of Seth). These treatises commemorate the ecstatic ascent of a single exceptional individual, such as Zostrianos or Allogenes or Marsanes, who from a Sethian perspective ought to be seen as alternative manifestations of Seth. While the preponderant teaching and scheme throughout Zost. is drawn from the kind of doctrine and scheme also found in Allogenes, it is clear that in pages 6-62, Zost. draws on the very sort of baptismal ascent traditions found especially in Gos. Egypt., interpreting them in the light of the scheme of ascent and doctrine of transcendent metaphysical levels found also in Allogenes.
    The basic scheme of Zost., like that of Allogenes, is built around the reception of a graded series of revelations and visions of the transcendent realms appropriate to each successive ontological level visited by the visionary. At each stage of the ascent, he is instructed about its character and spiritual inhabitants, and is assimilated to their nature. Allogenes marks each level of ascent by the mental internalization of successively higher revelations from various figures, the attendant visions he has achieved, and increasing degrees of cognitive abstraction and "learned ignorance." Zost. marks the stages of ascent by a graded series of baptisms or washings and sealings. Indeed it seems that the author of Zost. is interpreting the Platonic metaphysical and ascensional doctrine found in Allogenes, the Three Steles of Seth, and Marsanes in terms of Sethian baptismal tradition.
    The metaphysical or ontological structure of both Allogenes and Zost. as well as The Three Stelesof Seth, is centered on the triad Father-Mother-Son as is the case in Gos. Egypt., Ap. John and Trim. Prot. In Zost. this triad is conceived as a vertical hierarchy of beings.[26] At the ontological summit, perhaps beyond the metaphysical level of being itself, one finds the Triple Powered Invisible Spirit. Below him, the Mother member of the triad is named Barbelo, who herself subsumes a triad of hypostases. The highest of these is Kalyptos, the Hidden One. The next lowest is Protophanes, the First-Appearing One, who however has associated with him another being called the Triple Male (Child). The third being is the Son of the traditional Father-Mother-Son triad, the divine Autogenes or Self-begotten God.
    According to Zost., below these beings, in descending order, one finds the following ontological levels: 1) that of the Self-begotten Ones characterized by partial existence; 2) the level of Metanoia or Repentance which seems to mark the level of the repentant Sophia and the repentant souls assigned in Ap. John to the lowest Light Eleleth; 3) the level of the Paroikesis or Sojourn, a sort of transitional level between the Repentance and the next lower level, called the Antitypoi or copies of the seven aeons, produced as a reflection (by the Archon) of the reflection produced by Sophia's downward inclination; 4) the level of the Ge Aerodios or Airy Earth, probably the earth's sublunar atmosphere; and finally the earth itself. Marsanes (X, 1: 2,12-4,23) enumerates each of these levels (earth, atmosphere, planetary and stellar aeonic copies, the Sojourn, Repentance, self-begotten ones, Autogenes, Protophanes, Kalyptos, Barbelo, the Triple Powered One, the Invisible Spirit, and an ultimate unknown "Silent One") as "seals" in ascending order. Like Marsanes, Zost. seems to be using baptismal terminology to interpret the doctrine of contemplative ascent of the sort found in Allogenes and The ThreeSteles of Seth, which themselves do not refer to baptism.
    Throughout the first sixty or so pages of Zost., it seems that Zostrianos is baptized more than twenty times in the course of his ascent: Once at the airy earth, seven times in the copies of the aeons, once in the Sojourn and six times in the Repentance for a subtotal of fifteen. At the level of the Self-begotten Ones he is baptized four times (once for each of the Four Lights) by the traditional Sethian baptizers and purifiers, and again for a fifth time at the level of Autogenes, where he becomes divine. In a further baptism at the level of the Triple Male Child, he becomes truly existing, and lastly, it seems that he is baptized once more at the level of Protophanes, where he becomes perfect, for a subtotal of seven, and a grand total of some twenty-two or more baptisms or washings. Although the fragmentary state of the text precludes certainty on the total number of baptisms or their precise significance, here baptism here has clearly become interpreted as a metaphor for the process by which a visionary becomes assimilated to the being and nature of each level of the transcendent realm to which he ascends.[27]
    Zost. portrays a visionary experience which has no explicit ritual setting. It seems that terms which may once have had a ritual reference now serve only as means to articulate the various stages of a visionary ascent. As in certain visions of the heavenly temple, e.g., the concluding chapters of Ezekiel, the waters are of a celestial nature. What is one to make of this? Does Zost. lie at the terminus of a process of development in which acts of vision that occurred in the context of the Sethian baptismal practice (witnessed in Ap. John, Trim. Prot., and Gos. Egypt.) were subsequently separated from their original ritual context to become a self-contained, independent, and self-performable contemplative practice? Or does Zost. merely represent a later expression of an associated but alternative trajectory of visionary practices that developed alongside but independently of specifically Sethian communal baptismal rite? Clearly, the knowledge of the nature of the Sethian encounter with both Platonism and Christian forms of gnostic Sethianism would help to resolve the puzzle of ritual origins, assuming that their various forms are not merely the result of free invention.

III. Towards a Theory of Sethian Baptism

The recent study of Sethian baptism by Jean-Marie Sevrin argues that an actual baptismal rite underlies the Sethian treatises, even though that rite was not an original part of the Sethian sacred history.[28] Sevrin hypothesizes that the original baptismal rite reflected in the Sethian treatises was adopted rather than instituted by the Sethians. It was probably performed only once as an initiation, and had the goal of fructification and quickening through "Living Water," not of lustration or purification, even though it resulted in separation from the profane world. The receipt of "living water," identified as life and light, was a metaphor for enlightenment through receipt of the saving Gnosis that made possible the Sethians' insight into their celestial origins. Although this rite shows itself to have been heavily spiritualized and nearly completely transformed into a visionary and contemplative practice of spiritual ascent, it was consistently associated with a ritual of water baptism in which there were cultic officiants, and in which the initiate was immersed perhaps five times, each time in the name of various Sethian divine figures. The names of the various baptizers and receivers were invoked during the actual baptism. In addition to a ritual invocation (epiklêsis) and formal renunciation (apotaxis, apotagê) of fleshly associations, which are mentioned in Gos. Egypt., there may have been additional rituals of investiture and enthronement, perhaps also of anointing, as symbols of the recipients' status as members of the sovereign and autonomous--"kingless"--race or seed of Seth.
    As to the existence of an actual rite, Sevrin makes the following points: 1) If there was a rite behind the baptismal mythologumena, one would expect it to be referred to in spiritual rather than material terms. 2) While the rite does seem to be a literary fiction in one or two Sethian treatises, the majority do appear to reflect an actual water rite, especially Trim. Prot., Zost., Marsanes, and the conclusion of Gos. Egypt. and Apoc. Adam. 3) The baptismal language gives the impression of concreteness and verisimilitude with a series of actions that could be performed by actual human beings in sequence, such as: invocation of names, stripping, immersion in or pouring upon of water, sealing, investiture, coronation and enthronement. 4) The presence of somewhat stereotypical phrases, liturgical hymns, doxologies, invocations and glossalalia, some with strophes and refrains, suggests that the baptismal language is not merely a literary fiction. 5) The presence of polemic against impure forms of baptism or polluted baptismal waters suggests an actual rite similar to those practiced by others or which others could corrupt, rather than a purely interior, spiritual exercise enjoyed only by these Gnostics.
    Basing his analysis mainly upon Gos. Egypt. (III,3: 63,4-65,26), Sevrin reconstructs the essential parts of the rite as including: 1) a pre-baptismal profession of the names of various beings connected with the proper execution of the rite; 2) an invocation (epiklêsis) of the principal spiritual powers active during the baptism, and a purificatory renunciation (apotaxis) of the corrupting influence of the world;[29] 3) baptism by immersion of the candidate in actual water, understood to symbolize the "living water" of gnosis;[30] 4) a raising up of the candidate, understood primarily in spiritual terms; 5) the utterance of a post-baptismal hymn of thanksgiving; 6) perhaps other less well-attested rites, such as a ritual handshake, or the extension of one's arms in the form of a circle, to which one might also add an investiture, enthronement and coronation.[31] It seems that the act of baptism involved a regulated procedure and the participation of persons other than the one being baptized. Rather than being self-administered, it was probably administered by a mystagogue, since this baptism is almost invariably said to be received or brought or conferred.[32] Beyond these hints, no information about such other participants is forthcoming. Instead, the named participants in the other Sethian treatises all seem to be divine beings, various "baptizers," "receivers," "purifiers," and figures who "preside" over things like "waters," "the mountain" and the "name" of the one who will administer the baptism (cf. Gos. Egypt. III,2: 64,9-65,26). In Apoc. Adam (V,5: 84,17-23), it is the celestial baptizers Micheus, Michar and Mnesinous who preside over the baptism and the living water. Elsewhere, it is generally Barbelo, the divine First Thought, who appears in one of her various modalities and actually confers the baptism of the Five Seals, while the other figures play a definitely subservient role.
    Sevrin conjectures that such a baptismal rite was not original to Sethianism, since it is only Gos. Egypt. that connects Seth firmly with the institution of the rite. The rite was instead originally at home in the movement that developed the mythology surrounding the figure of the Mother Barbelo, who flowed or emanated from the living water that symbolized the self-reflection of the First member of the Father-Mother-Son triad.[33] The baptismal rite, with its fivefold immersion and total absence of an anointing, cannot have originated within Christianity, and whatever Christian features are present, such as the formulaic phrases "Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus" and "baptized in the name of," as well as Seth's putting on Jesus, are all secondary. The rite must rather have originated in a heterodox Jewish baptismal sect, perhaps that of the Elchasaites: they placed extreme value on water as the divine source of life, were baptized in the names of various divine and natural powers, and made use of a ritual formula.
    Although the Christian contribution seems more complex than he would allow, and although the unrepeatable, once-for-all and exclusively initiatory character of the rite is far from clear, Sevrin's analysis of the nature and origin of Sethian baptism seems to be most plausible, and makes a great contribution towards understanding the origins of the Sethian movement, as well as to the general understanding of Sethian doctrine.

IV. The Relationship of Sethian Baptism to Christian Baptism

If the Sethian Gnostic treatises do reflect a group who practiced an actual baptismal rite, there arises the problem of the identity of this group. Many of the treatises envision a group whose members understood themselves as the distant offspring of Seth, their primordially enlightened ancestor, who had fathered a pure seed apart from the depraved race of Cain, contact with which must at all costs be avoided; several of the treatises purport to be records of certain revelations granted to Seth or to a Seth-like figure which were preserved from the ancient destructions of the world by flood and fire. To be sure, baptismal language occurs in treatises that present this myth of Seth and his race, but the association of Seth's story with baptismal activity seems clear at only one point: Seth has now come to reveal his and his race's story not only in the form of certain books, tablets and verbal revelations, but also in the form of a sacred baptism which he conveys by means of a "logos-begotten body" which has the appearance of Jesus.
    The explicit connection between the final manifestation of Seth and his conferral of the saving baptism known as the Five Seals occurs only in Gos. Egypt. (III,2: 63,4-65,26), a treatise which, though rich in baptismal imagery, is nevertheless strongly Christianized, especially in having Seth finally manifest himself in the form of Jesus. Trim. Prot. and the longer ending of the Ap. John likewise envision the final manifestation of the savior as involving the conferral of a saving baptism called the Five Seals. However, this savior, said to be the third manifestation of the divine First Thought in the form of Christ (appropriately, according to Ap. John.), or of the Logos (mistakenly taken by the Archons for their Christ, according to Trim. Prot.) who rescues Jesus from the cross, is not explicitly identified with Seth. In these treatises, a transcendental feminine being, rather reminiscent of Lady Wisdom as presented in Jewish wisdom literature, descends to earth in order to confer a baptism whose purpose is to raise the recipient back into the world of light. The latter two treatises identify the third manifestation of the divine First Thought with Christ: Ap. John. by designating Christ as the first person narrator of Pronoia's triple descent, and Trim. Prot. by attributing the identification of the Logos with Christ to a misconception on the part of the Archons, who here seem to symbolize the leaders of a non-Sethian community. It therefore seems that Gos. Egypt.'s equation of the third manifestation of the First Thought with the Seth who puts on Jesus may depend on a historically earlier equation of the First Thought with Christ, suggesting that the "Sethianizing" of the agent of the Five Seals was subsequent to her "Christification."
    Despite the fact that Ap. John and Trim. Prot. are more or less strongly Christianized, the portions of these treatises that portray the receipt of the Five Seals betray no fundamental Christian features beyond a few interpretive glosses. This phenomenon causes one to wonder whether the connection between Seth and baptism was an original feature of the Sethian story, or arose only when the story of Seth had become Christianized, either by using it as a way of explaining the pre-existent activity of Jesus and his subsequent manifestation in the world, or by using the story of Jesus to explain the significance of Seth.
To judge from the Sethian baptismal mythologumena, the Sethians, wherever they derived their baptismal terminology, must have developed it in close rapprochement with Christianity. Within the Sethian literature, the few passages that associate Seth with baptism usually mention the figure or name of Jesus also. Outside the Gnostic Sethian literature, Seth does not seem to be associated directly with baptism. On one occasion (Post. Cain 125-6; cf. ibid. 10; 170), Philo allegorizes upon Seth as the "watering" (Gk. postimos, a play on Heb. [sinvcircumflex]êt, "Seth," and a derivative of [sinvcircumflex]atah, "drink") of the soul by the sweet stream of wisdom (sophia). Although no baptismal or other ritual reference is here detectable, this reference may point to a tradition in which Seth was identified as the bearer of a divine wisdom portrayed with aquatic metaphors.
    Given the lack of non-Christian evidence for a connection between Seth and a baptismal rite, one may surmise that some form of Christianity may have exerted an influence on the rise of this association, and may even have been the catalyst that prompted it. Certainly several of the Sethian treatises have been secondarily Christianized or were originally products of Christian Sethianism. With the exception of Melch., it is more likely that these treatises should be considered as Sethian compositions with an admixture of Christian motifs than vice versa, since the Christian content is dominated by Sethian content. It seems that the purpose of this admixture is more likely to claim Christ for Sethianism than to claim Seth for Christianity, given the tendency to present Christ as an avatar or earthly manifestation of Seth, or even as the object of redemption rather than as the redeemer per se. Again, the fact that the Sethian treatises generally associate the advent of Christ with the revelation or administration of the "Five Seals" suggests that baptismal practice or speculation formed the principal point of contact between Christianity and Sethianism.
    In Gos. Egypt. (III,2: 63,4-64,9), baptism is inaugurated by Seth, but only by virtue of his donning "a logos-begotten body which the great Seth prepared for himself secretly through the Virgin," subsequently identified as "Jesus the living one, even he whom the great Seth has put on, ... through whom he nailed the powers of the thirteen aeons." Thus, in his final manifestation, Seth engineers Jesus' virgin birth, judges the archontic powers through Jesus' crucifixion, and makes available the holy baptism, itself established by the Father's Pronoia (i.e. Barbelo), through Jesus' logos-begotten body. The connection between Seth and the institution of baptism certainly seems to be mediated by a prior identification of the bringer of baptism with the Logos in the form of Jesus. Such a prior identification must have been suggested to gnostic Sethianism by a form of Christianity that attributed the origin of saving baptism to Jesus. One thinks of baptism as a metaphor for Jesus' death, as in Mark 10:38, or of the Pauline formula of baptism as a dying and rising with Christ (Rom 6:3-4; Col 2:12), or perhaps especially of the Johannine portrayal of Jesus as a baptist in competition for disciples with John the Baptist (John 4:1). Trim. Prot. and Gos. Egypt. (NHC III,2: 63,21-24) both agree that the baptism of the Five Seals was ultimately established by the divine First Thought, and associate its introduction with an appearance of the divine Logos (Trim. Prot. NHC XIII,1: 48,13-35; in Gos. Egypt., Seth's "logos-begotten body"). Although there is no evidence that it mentioned the Logos, the same must also have held true for the hymnic Pronoia monologue before its insertion into Ap. John. Perhaps under the influence of a Christian Logos-Christology, an original association between a salvific descent of the divine First Thought and a manifestation of the divine Logos--an association that need not have been influenced by Christian thought--suggested a further association with Christ, which was subsequently followed by the association with Seth.
    Again, the baptismal "Living Water," itself a conception found also in Johannine Christianity (John 4:7-15) and identified with the Holy Spirit (John 7:38-39), is called by the Sethians "Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus" (Gos. Egypt. III 2: 64,10-11; 66:10; Apoc. Adam V,5: 85,30-31; Zost. VIII 1: 47,5-6; 62,12); this seems to be a barbarized version of the name of Jesus into which Christians were baptized, perhaps in a threefold way. Yet to adopt this name did not necessarily mean understanding oneself principally as a Christian, as the rather cryptic and concealed form of this name suggests. After all, this name appears in Apoc. Adam, in the context of a Sethian polemic against some form of water baptism practiced by lawless people who pollute the Living Water, which is (perhaps redactionally) identified with "Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus."[34] Those who held such unenlightened views of baptism would be regarded as outside the Sethian camp, but it is not clear whether they were Christians or not.[35]
    There is, however, one feature that may be useful in deciding the question of a Christian provenance for the baptismal imagery. In certain of the treatises, such as Ap. John, Trim. Prot., and Gos. Egypt., baptism is portrayed as a redemptive ritual brought below by Seth or Christ or some other manifestation of the divine First Thought appearing in the world as the Logos bearing the gift of the Five Seals. On the other hand, in Zost. and perhaps in Marsanes, baptismal language occurs mainly in descriptions of contemplative visionary ascent which have nothing to do with any descending revealer figure. This suggests either of two scenarios: 1) The latter two treatises are the product of a re-interpretation of the baptismal imagery found in the former three treatises, whereby the descent pattern is replaced by the visionary ascent pattern. Or 2) the treatises featuring the ascent pattern represent an independent adoption of baptismal imagery from a source that originally associated baptism with a form of transcendental visionary practice rather than with the earthly advent of a descending figure, be it the Logos or Seth or Jesus.
    The posing of such alternatives prompts one to consider also other possible sources for the transcendentalizing baptismal imagery. Both alternatives yield a pattern in which there is no place for a descending revealer or redeemer, and thus seem to be non-Christian or extra-Christian developments. The first alternative suggests a deliberate removal of Christian motifs from a previously established Christian baptismal tradition, while the second--and in my opinion more likely--alternative raises the possibility of a baptismal tradition that originated quite apart from Christian influence. While pagan tradition does not seem to be a likely candidate, one may suggest pre- or extra-Christian Hellenistic Judaism, especially in quarters where visionary experiences were of great significance, such as in apocalyptic or wisdom circles.

V. Sethian Gnosticism as a Fusion of Two Movements

I conclude that the Sethianism of the Nag Hammadi treatises is a product of two distinct but not entirely unrelated speculative movements within or on the fringe of Hellenistic Judaism: 1) the wing of the wisdom tradition that was in conversation with contemporary Platonism, which I take to be the originating milieu of the "Barbeloite" speculation on the divine Wisdom and Name, and 2) the rather more apocalyptically oriented tradition of speculation on the traditions about the primordial figures of Adam and Seth which gave rise to the sacred history of the Sethians. The first movement, which I will call "Barbeloites," conceived the receipt of revelation as a kind of baptism in wisdom, conceived as a light or knowledge, and conferred by the Logos or Voice or First Thought of the high deity. The second group, which I will call "Sethites" (in distinction from Gnostic Sethians), conceived of revelation as deriving from certain ancient records containing the sacred history of the enlightenment of their primordial ancestors, records that had been brought to light by a recent reappearance of Seth, the chief recipient and beneficiary of this revelation. The name "Barbeloite" is inspired by the group to whom Epiphanius ascribed the theogony and cosmogony summarized in Irenaeus' Haer. I.29, which is recognized by contemporary scholars as being nearly identical with the theogony and cosmogony found in the four versions of Ap. John. Common to these accounts is the doctrine of a divine Father-Mother-Son triad consisting of the Invisible Spirit, Barbelo (Protennoia, Pronoia, Ennoia, etc.) and the divine Autogenes (Triple Male Child, later variously Geradamas, the Great Seth, the Great Christ), and the story of Sophia's mistaken generation of her son the Protarchon. To this common material, Ap. John adds the story of the Protarchon's creation of the lower world, his entrapment of the divine substance in the protoplastic human beings, and the Mother's threefold descent, culminating in a saving baptism, to rescue the spirit entrapped in the world through Sophia's misdeed. Although Irenaeus' summary of Barbeloite teaching makes no mention of the baptismal rite of the Five Seals, it is likely that the baptismal rite entered the complex of Gnostic Sethianism through this group, rather than through the Sethites, since there is no evidence for any baptismal practices connected with speculation on the figure of Seth that can be dated with any reliability prior to that found in the Gnostic Sethian texts themselves. On the other hand, among Sethian Gnostic treatises that do not mention the figure of Seth at all, such as Trim. Prot., it is the figure of Barbelo who confers the saving baptism, and even in those treatises where Seth is said to confer this baptism, it is clear that he is acting as an emissary for Barbelo.
    These two movements coalesced to yield the Sethianism of the Gnostic treatises essentially by shifting the identity of the revealer and central conferer of baptism from a personified attribute of the deity, such as the figure of the divine Thought (Ennoia, Pro[ten]noia) or Wisdom (Sophia) or Name (Barbelo, Youel) to that of Seth in his final appearance, or to the figure of Christ in his earthly manifestation. It may be that this coalescence was originally an inner-Jewish phenomenon, but the abundant evidence of Christianization in the Sethian treatises suggests that Christianity was a basic factor. After all, it was a baptizing movement that considered its pre-existent savior to be a recent manifestation or representative of the divine wisdom and Logos--a manifestation perhaps understood to have begun at his baptism by John--and who may have been a baptizer himself. Since the connection between Christ and the divine Wisdom seems better attested and perhaps earlier than that between Seth and the divine Wisdom, I hypothesize that such Christian influence impinged on a proto-Gnostic Sethian movement, the "Sethites," through the medium of a previously Christianized Barbeloite baptismal sect.[36] The point of contact between the two movements lay in the parallel between Seth and Jesus as recent manifestations of a pre-existent divine being who represents the true image of God.
    The present Sethian system results from the designation of the self-begotten son (Autogenes) of Barbelo as the establisher of the four Sethian Luminaries and the gradual transference of the role of conferring the Five Seals from the figure of Barbelo to that of the divine Logos, regarded as one of her modal manifestations or as her emissary. Under the influence of the Christian identification of Christ with the Logos, the figure bearing the Five Seals becomes conceived in the form of Christ, and by the analogy between Christ and Seth as manifestations of the divine image, this figure becomes naturally conceived also in the form of Seth himself or of Seth in the guise of Christ. This mythology and the rite interpreted by it were only gradually connected with the figure of Seth and the sacred history relating to him. This history centered on the primordial figures of Adamas, Seth and the seven generations sprung from him, and their contemporary descendants, all conceived as spiritually resident within the Four Luminaries Harmozel, Oroiael, Daveithai and Eleleth, and as having escaped sexual mixture with the polluted race of the descendants of Cain.

VI. The Connection between Wisdom, Barbelo, Vision and Baptism

In summary, the Sethianism of the Nag Hammadi treatises seems to be a product of two distinct speculative movements within or on the fringe of Hellenistic Judaism: 1) that segment of the wisdom tradition that was in conversation with contemporary Platonism, which I take to be the originating milieu of the "Barbeloite" speculation on the divine Wisdom and Name, and 2) the rather more apocalyptically oriented tradition of speculation on the traditions concerning the primordial figures of Adam and Seth which gave rise to the sacred history of the Sethians. Thus the figure of Barbelo and whatever group it was who honored her as the conferer of this baptism, merits further discussion.

1. The Pursuit of Wisdom

To begin with, whatever the significance of her name, Barbelo is a wisdom figure, whom one might picture as a higher double of Sophia, the divine Wisdom, whom these texts hold responsible for the production of the physical cosmos. It is therefore natural to seek the background of the figure of Barbelo within the kind of speculation at home in the Hellenistic Jewish Wisdom schools responsible for the personification of the figure of the divine wisdom and the development of the myth concerning her role in the creation of the world and in the subsequent enlightenment of mankind as it is found particularly in Proverbs (esp. 8 & 16-18), Sirach (esp. 1 & 24), Wisdom (esp. 7-10), 4 Ezra, 1 Enoch 42, and in Philo.
    In this setting, Sophia was identified with the divine name, glory and presence, and with the revelation of the divine will in the form of the Torah. Sophia was conceived as a radiant light, the effulgence of the most high, who provided enlightenment for all who would seek her instruction. She was the first-born of all creation, who established the world. She was the overflowing source of light and life, making those who partook of her like a canal of water flowing into a river emptying into a sea, and making her instruction shine forth like the dawn. She made her throne in a pillar of cloud, and she covered the earth like a mist, and those who thirsted for her could drink of her. Aquatic images appear also in the early chapters of Genesis, where it speaks of the Spirit hovering over the face of the Tehom, or a mist covering the earth in the garden of Eden. Having been God's instrument in the creation of the All, she was tirelessly active in the attempt to enlighten its human denizens and save them from peril.
    It is significant that Wisdom 10:1-6 historicizes Wisdom's salvific activity in the following sequence of visitations: she protected the first-formed father of the world, saved the earth from the flood through Noah and the ark, recognized the righteousness of Abraham amidst the confusion of Babel, and rescued Lot from the fire that descended on Sodom and Gomorrah. Eventually, Sophia desired to seek a place where she might dwell and set up her tent. For the author of Sirach 24, Wisdom was commanded to make her dwelling among the children of Israel in the temple on Zion, even in the form of the Mosaic Torah, where she became accessible to all who would seek instruction from her. On the other hand, in 1 Enoch 42, the divine Wisdom who, according to Proverbs 9, had built an accessible house to which she invited "from the highest places in town" the attendance of all peoples, could not in fact find such an earthly dwelling; just as in the case of Ezekiel's vision of the departure of the divine glory from the temple, she had retreated to heaven. But instead of the temporary departure envisioned by Ezekiel, Wisdom's search for an earthly abode is unsuccessful, and she twice reascends to heaven among the angels (cf. 4 Ezra 5:9), while it was only Iniquity who finally left her abode to dwell like a rain or dew among those whom she did not expect to meet. Here, Wisdom's departure is here thought to be permanent; since she had settled permanently "among the angels," she could be sought only in an act of supramundane vision.
    Thus within the Wisdom tradition, there are two points of view regarding Wisdom's accessibility: she is either near or far away. If however, she is far, it is necessary either that Wisdom leave her dwelling to come to us, or that we find some means to ascend to her. Such seems to be the origins of the two basic salvific patterns in the Sethian texts: the descent of Wisdom versus the visionary ascent of the seeker's mind.
It is within the realm of such speculation as this that certain persons, whom I have called Barbeloites, seem to have adopted the name Barbelo as a designation for the exalted figure of the divine wisdom.[37] The basic (and perhaps oldest) texts containing such Barbeloite speculation on Sophia, that is, Irenaeus, Haer. I.29, the Pronoia hymn at the end of the longer versions of Ap. John., and Trim. Prot., are clearly structured around the attempts of the divine wisdom to enter the daily life of a humankind who had become oblivious to her, and to reveal herself and her ultimate source in the higher world. As the Johannine prologue suggests, only a few respond to her call for enlightenment. It almost seems as if something like the myth of Sophia's two unsuccessful descents in 1 Enoch 42 and her successful one in Sirach 24 were combined into a total of three descents into the lower world, two unsuccessful, and the third, successful, resulting in the final awakening and salvation of those who received her. A similar pattern is ascribed to the Logos in the Johannine prologue, but without a clear enumeration of descents. Ap. John. and Trim. Prot. have Barbelo conferring this salvation in the form of the baptismal rite of the Five Seals. It seems that the rather consistent aquatic imagery applied to Sophia in the wisdom texts, especially Sirach and Philo, has been interpreted so as to apply a baptism in living water which leads to enlightenment.
    Of course not all the aquatic imagery in the Sethian texts is positive, symbolic of illumination and enlightenment. Apoc. Adam envisions a pollution of the waters of life, and may indeed understand the waters to which the Illuminator descends in the similes of the thirteen kingdoms to represent materiality. In contrast to the transcendent, luminous living water in which Barbelo first emerges as a faithful reflection of the Invisible Spirit's thought (cf. Ap. John, NHC II,1: 4,18-28), Sethian treatises also portray dark and chaotic waters at the lowest level of the cosmos which are said to have been produced by a shadow deriving from the downward inclination of Sophia, and out of which the demiurge produces the physical cosmos as merely a pale and inauthentic reflection of the divine aeons.[38] Such negative valorizations of water might arise from a negative estimation of otherwise quite neutral aquatic imagery found in the biblical tradition. Thus Sophia's identification with a kind of mist that covers the earth, as in Sir 24, might be interpreted negatively, as an obscuring cloud, or perhaps as having something to do with the primeval waters of chaos, or the Tehom, over which the Spirit of God hovered at the creation. In this connection, Sophia might be regarded as a lower being, perhaps even a fallen being. On the other hand, her characterization as a life-giving kind of water would lead to a higher estimation of Sophia as the source of enlightenment, indeed an enlightenment that could be received during baptism. As a pre-existent cosmogonic agent, one would expect Sophia to have contact with both the heights and the depths of the cosmos, to have dwelt in high places, to "have made the circuit of the vault of heaven and have walked in the depths of the abyss, in the waves of the sea, in the whole earth" (Sir 24:3-6).[39]
    Both Trim. Prot. and the Pronoia hymn of Ap. John portray the divine First Thought as thrice descending to chaos to rescue her fallen members. In the context of Barbeloite baptism, the movements of descending and ascending in the course of the rite would lend themselves to a spiritual interpretation in which the descent into the water could be conceived as a participation in Barbelo's descent into the chaotic materiality of the earth or of the bodily prison or of "the psychic and somatic thought" of unenlightened persons, whose souls themselves had made this descent at birth (Ap. John, NHC II,1: 30,32-31,22; Trim. Prot., NHC XIII,1: 48,6-14). Likewise, ascent from the water could be conceived as a participation in Wisdom's return to her heavenly dwelling.
    In wisdom texts, one can point to many aquatic metaphors for wisdom as well as aquatic metaphors for the acquisition of wisdom: drinking wisdom, being washed in wisdom, and so on, but one wonders what factors might have given such metaphors a ritual instantiation such as baptism. Nothing in the Jewish wisdom literature seems to suggest such a connection, and we know almost nothing about the activities and organization of the shadowy wisdom teachers and the "wisdom schools" or "wisdom movement" hypothesized to lie behind this literature. Where does one look for a such a ritual background?

2. Priestly Lustrational Practices and the Pursuit of Vision

At the outset, I proposed another venue for a conceptual connection between baptism, water and visionary experience, namely in the post-exilic notion of a heavenly temple and the traditional lustrational practices of the Jerusalem priesthood, particularly in situations where the status of the physical temple was in question during the times of its destruction or suspected defilement. If ritual cleansings and immersions were required for service at the Jerusalem temple when it existed, how much the more would such lustrations be required for service in the heavenly (whether archetypal or eschatological) temple that replaced the earthly one during the periods of its destruction or corruption?
    In Jewish priestly lore there are numerous instances where a complete bath in water was the means of achieving ceremonial and ritual purity, after childbirth, menstruation, various diseases especially leprosy, and contact with the dead. Of particular interest are the complete washings required of priests and Levites prior to their consecration, before entering the sanctuary, and of the high priest on the Day of Atonement.[40] The holiness maintained by such washings has a self-evident place in the sacrificial cult of the Jerusalem temple, and perhaps in that of the other Jewish temples known to exist. But then how might these regulations be fulfilled in instances where no temple was available, either because of distance, destruction, disrepair, or co-option by a priesthood regarded as illegitimate or unclean?

3. Qumran

One thinks particularly of the needs of a priestly community such as that of the Essenes, of which one instance is probably to be found in Graeco-Roman times at Qumran. Entrance into the Qumran community itself involved some kind of purificatory washing: the statement that the wicked shall not enter or be cleansed by the water evidently presupposes a lustration required of the righteous who do enter the covenant community.[41]
At Qumran, there was also a distinction between ordinary and eschatological lustration. According to 1QS 3.6-9, during the present age, which is characterized by the conflict between the spirit of darkness and perversity and the spirit of light and truth, one receives physical washing with the waters of purification only after the soul has been humbled by repentance and the spirit has atoned for one's sins. According to 1QS 4.18-22, in the age to come, at the time of the Visitation, there will be an end to evil and fleshly defilement, at which point fleshly and spiritual lustration are no longer separate, and the elect will be sprinkled with the spirit of truth as a purifying water, and the upright will understand the knowledge of God and angelic wisdom. At that time, spirit and water will become one, just as will flesh and spirit, and the heavenly and earthly temple and priesthood will become one. The similarity to Sethian baptism is close, except that Sethian baptism is effective in the here and now, and strips away the fleshly element rather than unifying it with the spirit.
    In addition to the notion of an eschatological washing, some of the texts speak of transcendental waters related to some kind of heavenly temple. Certain Qumran texts refer to the garden of Paradise, the water of life, trees planted by the water of life with their roots in the primeval waters, all bearing some connection with the holy rock of the temple.[42] In 1 Enoch 24-26 there is a constellation of images including such things as: the tree of life planted in the holy place, the divine throne, and the temple and the holy mountain from which the streams of life are to flow. Similar images are found in the prophets, especially in Ezekiel's priestly vision of the new temple whose waters will make Judah into a new Paradise, and in Canaanite (Ugaritic) literature as well, where water flowing from the temple at the mountain of El symbolizes the victory of the divine warrior Baal over Yamm / Mot.[43]

4. A Relation between Vision and Water

In addition to ritual and eschatological lustrations, and allusions to various kinds of waters--whether earthly or eschatological or primeval--associated with the temple--whether earthly or supramundane--one finds instances in which water is associated with the visionary act itself. There are several instances in which visions of heavenly reality are received by seers on the banks of rivers or other bodies of water. In Ezekiel 1, Ezekiel is sitting with the exiles by the river Chebar, the heavens open, and he sees visions of God coming out of the North.[44] In Daniel 10, Daniel is standing by the great river in Babylon and receives a vision of a celestial being, perhaps Gabriel, who is clothed in the same kind of linen garment as is the high priest on the day of atonement (Lev 16:4; cf. also the angels in Ezekiel's visions, Ez 9:3-11; 10:2). In 1 Enoch 13:7-9, Enoch sits beside the river Dan reading out the Watchers' petition for divine forgiveness, falls asleep, and receives a dream-vision of the divine, whereupon he ascends to heaven. The heaven through which he ascends to the divine throne is clearly a temple with vestibule, sanctuary and holy of holies, through which he passes as though he were an authorized high priest (cf. Jub 4:45); the angels for which he intercedes seem to symbolize the Jerusalem priests as having polluted the temple through their sins. This way of criticizing the earthly temple and priesthood by comparison with the heavenly goes back to Ezekiel's vision of the departure and return of the divine glory in chs. 40-48. In fact almost all the ascent apocalypses[45] understand the celestial realm as a temple; the visionary achieves his place among the angels through investiture with a special garment and joining the angelic praise of the deity, just as priests and Levites respectively act in the earthly temple. In 2 Enoch, the archangel Michael strips Enoch of his earthly garments, anoints him with oil and invests him with glorious garments in the manner of a priest, and he becomes a glorious being.
    Within Christian literature, the connection between vision and water occurs not so much in the context of heavenly ascensions, but rather of baptismal visions. In Mark 1 parr. Jesus is baptized in the Jordan by John, and coming out of the water, he sees the heavens opened, the spirit of God descending on him and hears the heavenly voice elect him as Son. In John 3:3-5, rebirth as a condition of seeing the kingdom is equated with being born of water and spirit. To be compared is the baptismal vision of king Gundaphorus in the Syriac Acts of Thomas 20, where at the initial anointing, the voice of Jesus was heard, and after the invocation and baptism proper, a luminous man carrying a blazing torch appeared as the participants were emerging from the water.[46]
Michael Stone wonders whether the connection between heavenly visions and bodies of water may be related to certain Graeco-Roman magico-meditative techniques involving contemplation of a body of water until visions were seen in it.[47] Such examples of hydromancy go as far back as the ancient Sumerian list of antediluvian kings: the seventh, Enmeduranki, was honored by Shamash and Adad with the mystery of Anu, Enlil and Ea, namely, how to observe oil on water. [48]

5. The Figure of Levi

The connection between baptism, the priesthood, visionary experience and the heavenly temple becomes particularly evident in later literature associated with the figure of Levi, whose heavenly ascent culminates in his appointment as priest. [49] In the Aramaic Vorlage of Test. Levi 2.3 (Mt. Athos MS e || 4QTestLevi cols. I & II), Levi washes his entire body in water, prays and receives a vision in which he ascends to the highest heaven. In 8,1-5 Levi is portrayed as both priest and prophet, anointed with oil, washed in pure water, clothed in a glorious robe, the breastplate of understanding, the garment of truth, a turban (crown) of sign-giving, and the ephod of prophecy.[50] In 18,1-9, apparently the figure of Jesus Christ has been substituted for that of Levi as a new anointed priest replacing the Levitical order. He will be a new star radiating the light of knowledge, receiving holiness from the heavenly temple by means of a paternal voice, with the spirit of understanding and sanctification resting on him "in the water," a clear allusion to Jesus' baptism (but cf. 2,3 without the phrase "in the water"). Perhaps this heavily Christianized passage has replaced an earlier account of Levi's heavenly vision, concluded by series of instructions on Levi's priestly duties.[51]

6. The Priesthood and the Heavenly Temple

Many of these instances of association between water and the visionary experience of prophets and seers are connected in one way or another with the Israelite priesthood, particularly in post-exilic situations where the normal discharge of this function was prevented by either the demise of or a perceived corruption of the earthly temple. Although the link is largely circumstantial in nature, it seems that the ultimate antecedents of the transcendental baptism known to the Sethian Gnostics lie in the visionary experience of certain Jewish priestly groups. It was they who presided over the temple, the place where one would most expect to receive a vision of God, as did Isaiah in his inaugural call (Isaiah 6), the place where wisdom settled in her quest for a home, and ministered just as the priests (Sir 24:8-12). Those who would seek the face of God and behold his beauty serving in his house all the days of their lives must have clean hands and a pure heart (Pss 24, 27). Among those seeking such a vision, it would be priests above all else who would have had a strong interest in lustration and in the degree of purity possessed by and enabled by various waters. The priesthood and their Levitical assistants who chanted hymns and gave instruction seem ideal candidates for the authorship of much of the speculative wisdom found in apocalyptic and other literature concerning various calendrical schemes, the structure of the upper world with its heavenly temple, and the creation of the universe (e.g., the Priestly account of the creation in Genesis 1). Immersion in study and speculation concerning such matters amounted to immersion in the divine wisdom, just as much as immersion in the study of the Torah. Perhaps it is not going too far to suggest that ritual immersion in water was viewed as one means to strip away the perceived corruption of the world from the mind of one who would have these secrets revealed to him. Such wisdom was available only to the pure, whether it might be revealed from above to below by such a means as Torah study, or whether by a visionary ascent of the soul to the heavenly temple and the divine throne. Either way involves an act of vision, and to be washed in purifying water would be tantamount to being bathed in the divine spirit and wisdom, to being immersed in the intense light surrounding the divine throne. In God's house, next to the divine throne in the shadow of the cherubimic wings, one drinks from the divine river, the fountain of life, by whose light the visionary sees light (Ps 36:7-9). One can scarcely think of a more apt Jewish equivalent to Plato's description of the intense light of ultimate Goodness and Beauty awaiting anyone who would risk the ascent out of the cave of illusion.

7. Sage and Priest

One therefore is lead to imagine the closest relationship between the search for the divine wisdom portrayed in the Jewish wisdom books and the priestly experience of seeking and serving in the place of the divine presence, whether that be found in the mundane or the heavenly temple. The pursuit of the divine presence and wisdom on the part of sage and priest alike seems to have involved acts of transcendental vision. This form of spiritual quest seems common not only to priest and sage, but also to the apocalyptic seer as well as the gnostic visionary. Although the relationship of the authors of the wisdom books to the temple cult is not clearly delineated, at least some of them were likely priests or Levites who objected to perceived improprieties in the temple cult in Jerusalem during the second and first centuries BCE. [52] In this period of socio-political instability and factionalism, both wisdom and the priests whose sense of cultic legitimacy as those instructed in the true wisdom were felt to be displaced from social reality. Thus marginalized, they were conceived as ideal figures, who, though absent from its actual leadership, were nevertheless available to those who could see.
In the case of the priesthood, it seems possible to hypothesize a connection between the experience of vision and water, whether that water be a feature of the heavenly temple or the ordinary water associated with purificatory lustrations. Such a connection would have been known to the authors of the wisdom books as well, especially if their places of instruction or the scriptoria within which they produced their books were part of the temple complex, and were themselves priests or traced their ancestry through priestly or Levitical families.

VII. Conclusion: The Barbeloites, Vision, and Baptism

The antecedents of Barbeloite baptism as I have described it seem to lie in such a sacerdotal and sapiential environment. The Sethian texts provide strong evidence for the existence of a baptismal rite which at some point involved immersion in ordinary water, for which I can think of no more likely origin than the priestly lustrations connected with service in the temple. The Barbeloite rite was also the occasion for a vision of the heavenly realm and immersion in the heavenly light or living water that radiated from the supreme deity, in much the same way as apocalyptic visionaries saw the intense light radiating from the divine throne and chariot and streams of living water flowing from the heavenly temple.
    Within the Barbeloite school of speculation, this trend towards contemplative vision seems to lead in two directions. One direction leads to the pattern of baptism as a rite conferred upon the Gnostic resulting from the descent of the divine First Thought or Wisdom in the form of the Logos or of Christ or of Seth. Participation in the rite involved visionary illumination, enlightenment, and complete salvation. Along this trajectory, it seems that a lustrational practice, developed within sapiential and priestly circles, was associated with speculation on the relationship between God and his hypostatized Thought or Wisdom, viewed as the respective mother and father of the divine Logos, the instrument of creation and enlightenment such as we find described by Philo.[53] Such a complex of practice and speculation was developed into the Barbeloite myth of the triple descent of Barbelo, whose final appearance in the form of the Logos culminated in conferring the baptismal rite of the Five Seals. Under Christian influence, this Logos figure became associated with an earthly appearance in the person of Jesus; it was inaugurated in the context of his own baptism consisting of a heavenly vision and his commissioning as God's Son who would himself offer a baptism in Living Water or the divine Spirit. The specifically Sethian gnostic portrayal of the rite resulted from an equation between the idea of a contemporary appearance of the primordial Seth to rescue his seed and the similar appearance of the pre-existent Christ in the person of Jesus, such that the two figures were identified.
    The other direction taken by this Barbeloite speculation and practice of contemplative vision either led away from the baptismal rite or developed completely apart from concern with it. This would be the branch whose interest in wisdom speculation led to a fusion with a religious Platonism such as is found in the Chaldean Oracles, and in other Neopythagorean and Middle- and Neoplatonic sources, resulting in the production of the Neoplatonizing Sethian treatises such as Zost., Allogenes, Steles Seth, and Marsanes. Here, Barbelo does not descend to confer wisdom through a baptism; instead, the soul of the visionary ascends through a sequence of self-performable acts of mental contemplation, each of which could be symbolized as a baptism or sealing, up to and even beyond the level of the divine First Thought. This distinction seems to be a natural result of the dichotomy between the accessible immanence and inaccessible transcendence of wisdom found already in Jewish wisdom literature. Given the conclusion that Wisdom is no longer accessible on the earthly plane, one has only two possibilities: either that she descend to us, or that we ascend to her. Either possibility involves some act of vision, either by way of response to and recognition of the divine initiative and call, or by the more rigorous way of a self-performable act typical of Platonism. In both cases, to undergo Barbeloite baptism entails visionary experience; baptism is not preparatory to, but is equivalent to vision.
    I have suggested that the Barbeloite precursors of the Gnostic Sethians sustained their initial encounter with Christianity as fellow practitioners of an initiatory baptism, wherein the initiate acquired a new identity. The baptismal rite provided a natural point of contact between these Barbeloites and Christians who likewise viewed their own baptism as a rebirth into a higher mode of existence, and saw the baptism of Jesus as the liminal occasion through which the pre-existent savior had inaugurated his revelatory mission in the world, if not the point at which the divine Spirit or Sonship appeared in the world and entered into him. Such an encounter seems to have encouraged the Barbeloites to identify the third member of their Father-Mother-Son triad with the pre-existent Christ and to identify the Mother's third appearance in the world with the descent of the Logos in the form of the Christ who raised Jesus from the cross. Given this identification, a further encounter between such Christianized Barbeloites and Sethite groups who claimed to be the beneficiaries of revelations received through a recent manifestation of the primordial Seth, might have suggested for these Sethites an identification between Seth and the Christ who had descended upon Jesus at his baptism. Seth came bearing a higher form of baptism with the Five Seals just as Christ came bearing a higher form of baptism in the Spirit or in a Living Water that could lead to rebirth and eternal life. The Christologies developed in the process are mostly developments that depend on Hellenistic Jewish wisdom speculation, which was rather rich in an aquatic symbolism for the process of enlightenment. Although it was developed in the relative isolation of esoteric wisdom and priestly schools, it may indeed have achieved part of its later popularity precisely through a natural affinity with a highly symbolic ritual practice like baptism. Certainly the symbols for the divine Wisdom would have been highly attractive vehicles for articulating the significance of the central rite practiced by whatever baptizing sects may have populated the Jordan valley in the first century.
[1 ] The main passages are: Gos. Egypt. (the series of prayers in III, 2: 65,26-68,1 and the doxologies in IV, 2:59,13-29; III, 2:49,22-50,17; 53, 12-54,11; 55,16-56,3; 61,23-62,13); Apoc. Adam (the visions of the thirteen kingdoms, V,5: 77,27- 82,19, and the concluding sections in 82,19-85,31); Melch. (the aretalogies of Gamaliel and Melchizedek in IX, 1: 5,17-6,10 and 14,16-18,7 respectively); Zost. (esp. NHC VIII, 1: 5,11-7,22; 15,1-21; 47,1-63,9); the Pronoia hymn of Ap. John (II, 1: 30,11-31,25); Trim. Prot. (sporadically throughout the aretalogical passages and especially in the recitation of XIII, 1: 48,15-35 and in other, more expository passages, e.g. 36,5b-7a; 37,1b-3a; 37,35; 41,21b-24a; 45,12b- 20; 46,16-19a and 48,top-48,12a). The term "the Five Seals," mostly referring to some kind of baptism, occurs in Ap. John II, 1:31,24; IV, 1:49,4; Gos. Egypt. IV, 2:56,25; 58,6; 58,27-28; 59,27-28; 66,25-26; 74,16; 78,4-5; III, 2:55, 12; 63,3; 66,3; the Bruce untitled treatise 32,10 [Schmidt-MacDermot]; and Trim. Prot. XIII, 1:48,31; 49,27-28; 47,29; 50,9-10).
[2 ]Clearly such stripping, disrobing and attendant nakedness is a ritual metaphor for entering the liminal state, just as the "primary revelation" and "non-knowing knowledge" presented in Allogenes constitute cognitive metaphors for the same process. At this point, the initiate or the visionary is "neither this nor that, and yet is both" (V. W. Turner, "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage" in Forest of Symbols [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967], 98), neither enlightened nor unenlightened, but inhabiting the liminal state of literal or figurative nakedness, humility, utter passivity, and abandonment of any claim to status or possession of knowledge. The same applies also to the incognito descent and unrecognizability of the Savior during the period of his descent from and return to the world of light (cf. Trim. Prot. NHC XIII, 1: 47,13-50,12 and Allogenes NHC XI, 3: 58,7-61:31). The third phase of the initiatory "rite of passage," aggregation, means incorporation not only into a new state of awareness and into the elect group which inhabits this state, but also the advent of a new cosmic situation, such as the defeat of the hostile cosmic powers and the dissolution of chaos. In the Sethian treatises, typical metaphors for aggregation are Pronoia's gathering of all her members, or instances of contemplative assimilation with increasingly higher levels of reality. As Plotinus observed, such transformed persons thought themselves superior in rank to the very stars, even to the gods themselves (Ennead 2.9.9.43-60). These characteristics, typical of initiatory rites, seem also apt characterizations of the Sethian rite, which may or may nor have been initiatory, may have involved the concept of purification, and may have been administered repeatedly.
[3 ]I am indebted for the following observation on the connection between baptism and apocalyptic thought to my student Gordon Watley, "The Baptismal Practices of Jewish Apocalyptic Movements," MA Thesis in Classics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, August, 1990.
[4 ]First noted by G. W. MacRae, "Sleep and Wakening in Gnostic Texts," in Le Origini dello Gnosticismo: Colloquio di Messina, 13-18Aprile 1966 (ed. U. Bianchi; Supplements to Numen 12; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967), 496-507.
[5 ]Elsewhere, I have argued not only that there is a common motif of the triple descent of the divine First Thought shared between Trim. Prot. and Ap. John, but also that Trim. Prot. probably first emerged as an expansion of the shorter hymn concluding Ap. John, embellished by the addition of more aretalogical self-predications of the divine First Thought, certain other materials that parallel the cosmogony of Ap. John, a number of baptismal traditions, and a concluding section which uses Johannine language to develop a docetic interpretation of the relationship between Jesus and the Logos. See J.D. Turner, "The Gnostic Threefold Path to Enlightenment: The Ascent of Mind and the Descent of Wisdom," Novum Testamentum 22 (1980), 324-51, and "Sethian Gnosticism: A Literary History," in Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (ed. C. W. Hedrick and R. Hodgson; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986), 55-86 (hereafter cited as "Threefold Path" and "Sethian Gnosticism").
[6 ]Cf. the Naasene psalm in Hippolytus, Ref. 6.10.1, in which Jesus says: "Therefore send me, Father; bearing seals I will descend, I will pass through all the Aeons, I will disclose all mysteries, I will show the form of the Gods; and the secrets of the holy way that awaken Gnosis I will impart."
[7 ]In an unpublished paper, "The Virgin that Became Male: The Feminine Principle in Platonic and Gnostic Metaphysics," I have tried to show that the Father-Mother-Son nomenclature (which appears also in Ap. John and Gos. Egypt.) is likely to be an adaptation of the Father, Mother, Child triad developed by Plato in Timaeus 48-52, representing respectively the transcendent Forms as father, the receptacle and nurse of becoming as mother, and the images comprising the phenomenal world as child or offspring.
[8 ]According to it, the exalted Sophia is the fountain or spring (cf. Sirach 15:3; 24:30; Philo, Fuga 195) from which flows the Word like a river (Philo, Somn. 2.242; cf. Fuga 97). She is also equated with the living water of which God is the source (cf. Prov 16:22; 14:27; Cant 4:15 and Bar 3:12 with Jer 2:13; 17:13 [LXX], Jn 4:10; 7:38 and Odes of Solomon 11:5-9; 30:1-6). She is the Mother of the Word through whom the universe came to be (Philo, Fuga 109); indeed mother of all creatures (Philo, Det. 115-116). To be baptized in her water is to receive true Gnosis. Her Voice is the revelation of the truth. The same sort of myth of descent applied to Barbelo or the First Thought in the Sethian treatises figures also in the story of Sophia in 1 Enoch 42 and other sources--such as the Johannine prologue--where Wisdom (or the Logos) descends to find a place to dwell among men, but meeting with initial failure, reascends or tries again.
[9 ]Gnosis, or perhaps the seed of Seth; cf. Gos. Egypt. III,2: 56,4-13. Cf. the radiant light with which the Invisible Spirit is surrounded in Ap. John II, 1: 4,18-26, as well as the important place given to the Four Lights.
[10 ]According to the survey of J. Ysebaert, Greek Baptismal Terminology: Its Origins and Early Development (Graecitus Christianorom Primeva 1, Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1962), by mid-second century, the Christian baptismal ritual comprised (with regional variations) approximately the following sequence of acts (in certain regions preceded by a two-day fast and an all-night vigil culminating with the rite performed in darkness): 1) renunciation of sin and Satan (later spoken with outstretched arms and facing westwards), sometimes coupled with removal of the outer garments, standing in penance on sackcloth or goatskin, and a pre-baptismal anointing with oil and cruciform signation on the forehead, (either as a kind of exorcism or as an epiklêsis of the Holy Spirit); 2) stripping naked (reminding the postulant of the primal nudity of Adam and Eve in the Garden); 3) an optional complete pre-baptismal anointing with oil; 4) water baptism by immersion accompanied by invocation of "the Names" (usually threefold and including affirmations of creedal interrogations, later spoken eastward); 5) emergence from the water (in which the baptizand is to imagine himself as clothed in a radiant garment); 6) an optional post-baptismal anointing with oil or myrrh (absent in the Syrian rite, and thus likely a secondary addition); 7) investiture (usually in white clothing, signifying receipt of the light of immortality, supplemented in Egypt much later with a crowning); 8) a post-baptismal anointing of the head by the priest or bishop with oil or myrrh; and 9) an imposition of hands, usually by the bishop, which may include a further anointing and "sealing" on the forehead. Any one of these acts, the anointings (frequently conceived as apotropaic), the imposition of hands or the baptism itself might be called a "seal." To judge from the Acts of Thomas 26-27, the ascent from the water (Syriac version) or the anointing with oil (Greek version) may also involve luminous appearances of the Savior, and Justin Martyr (Apol. 1.61.11-12) characterizes the baptismal washing as "enlightenment" (phôtismos). See the convenient collection of texts in E. C. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy. London: SPCK, 1970). While for non-Sethian Christians this ceremony would be followed by a kiss of peace and the Eucharist, the Sethian ritual appears to have been complete in itself, and effective of salvation. The Sethian rite of the Five Seals (investiture, baptism in the Living Water, enthronement, glorification and enlightenment in Trim. Prot. 48,15-35; 45,12-20), includes acts similar to those in 2 Enoch 22 (stripping of earthly garments, anointing, investing, enlightening) and in The Testament of Levi 8,2-10 (investing as priest and king, anointing, washing, feeding, drinking, further investing and crowning). In Test. Levi 18,6-7 at the advent of the eschatological priest, a star arises, emitting the light of knowledge, the Father's Voice issues from the heavenly temple, and the spirit of understanding rests upon him in the water. The similarity of these motifs to those of the synoptic accounts of Jesus' baptism is obvious. Similar baptismal motifs occur in the Odes of Solomon (11,7-16: drinking Living Water, stripping away of folly, investing with radiance and enlightenment; 24,1-5: the Voice of the dove above the Messiah and the opening of the abysses). The sequence of acts in the Sethian Five Seals is also nearly duplicated in the Mandaean Masbuta as summarized by Kurt Rudolph, Die Mandäer: II. Der Kult (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, N.F. 57; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 88-89: investiture, entrance into the "jordan," triple self-immersion, triple immersion by the priest, triple signation with water, triple drink, crowning or wreathing, invocation of divine names, ritual handshake, and ascent from the "jordan." Like many of these baptismal materials, the Sethian baptismal materials seem consistently to link the descent of the savior (Seth or Christ as the Logos) into the world with the descent of the baptizand into the water or world of chaos, and the visionary ascent of the baptizand out of the water or world into the light with a sort of royal enthronement of the baptizand. The similar pattern of various of the NT Christological hymns may also be seen against such a baptismal environment (Phil 2:6-11; Col 2:9- 15, etc.).
[11 ]NHC XIII, 1: 49:29-30: titie nsfragis nte neeiran ete nai ne. The use of the Coptic relative clause ete nai ne in the absolute seems odd; perhaps it once had a predicate, now lost, providing a more specific gloss on the Five Seals. As it stands, its antecedent is "these names," presumably the names of the beings named in 48:15-35. The effect of this phrase is to identify the Five Seals with a (ritual) invocation of the names of these spiritual beings, the baptizers, guardians, investitors, rapturers, glorifiers, enthroners and others associated with the baptismal rite.
[12 ]Schenke ("Gnostic Sethianism" in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale, March 28-31, 1978, ed. B. Layton, Supplements to Numen 41; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980-1981 (hereafter cited as Rediscovery), 2.602-607), distinguishes between two Sethian rites or mysteries: baptism, and a higher one, cultic ascension. He calls attention to the interpretation of baptism as the stripping off of the flesh found already in Col 2:11-15, suggesting that earthly and celestial Sethian baptism are likewise cultically identical. Schenke's observations lead him to suppose the ultimate origin of gnostic Sethianism was in the baptist circles of Palestine, a supposition with which I agree, although this raises the question of the actual existence of these sects, many of which seem to have been invented for nefarious purposes by the heresiologists.
[13 ]Cf. the phrase "[the waters] which are above" (NHC IX,1: 8,1) in the speech of Gamaliel. In the case of Melchizedek's speech, he says that he will pronounce his "name" as he "receives baptism," signifying the entrance of the baptizand into a special social or ontological class, and implying, though not necessarily entailing, that baptism is not self-administered (although no officiant is mentioned or alluded to).
[14 ]Cf. B. A. Pearson, transl. with S. Giverson, "Melchizedek," in B. A. Pearson ed., Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X (Nag Hammadi Studies 15; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), esp. 229-250.
[15 ]Most importantly, Marsanes refers to each of thirteen levels of being, from the sense-perceptible world through the Aeon of Barbelo on up to the levels of the Invisible Spirit and the unknown Silent One beyond him, as an ascending sequence of thirteen "seals," the upper eight of which are identified by names also used by Zost. to designate the supracelestial realms.
[16 ]See below on Zost; the fifth seal designates the Repentance; the sixth, the self-begotten ones; the seventh, Autogenes; the eighth, Protophanes; the ninth, probably Kalyptos; the tenth, Barbelo; the eleventh and twelfth, the Invisible Spirit and his Triple Powered One; the thirteenth is the unknown Silent One.
[17 ]"Gnostic Sethianism" in Rediscovery, 2.600.
[18 ]Coptic hôtb, IV, 2: 75,3-4; III, 2: 63,3-12 has hôtp, "reconciliation."
[19 ]I.e. the world-creator Sakla. Presumably the thirteen aeons, "nailed" by Seth as he makes his third appearance in the form of Jesus' "Logos-begotten" body (III,2: 64,1-9), refer to the realms below the level of the Four Lights; cf. Zost.. VIII,1: 4,25-27: "I was rescued from the whole world and the thirteen aeons in it, and their angelic beings." The number thirteen seems to have nothing to do with the thirteen seals of Marsanes or the (total of) thirteen kingdoms in Apoc. Adam.
[20 ]Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus the living water, Micheus, Michar and Mnesinous, who preside over the spring of truth or the gate of the waters, Seldao and Elainos who preside over the mountain, the Four Lights Harmozel, Oroiael, Davithe and Eleleth along with their "ministers" Gamaliel, Gabriel, Samblo and Abrasax, and finally Yoel, who presides over the divine name with which one is baptized. Perhaps the mountain is the same as the mountain in which Gos. Egypt.. is said to have been placed by Seth: Charaxiô (III,2: 68,13), which might mean something like "mountain [Heb. har] of the worthy [Gk. axios i.e. "those who are worthy," namely the Sethians]," where Seth put the treatise, and upon which the sun cannot rise (i.e. in the southern hemisphere; cf. Virgil, Aeneid 1.243-251; Cicero, Luc. 123; Tusc. 1.68). A Charaxio is also mentioned by Ovid at Metam. 12.272 as a Lapith and at Heroides 15.117 as a brother of Sappho. In Gos. Egypt.. III, 2: 52,3-53,9 the ministers of the Four Lights, Gamaliel, Gabriel, Samblo and Abrasax are ranked in the same order as members of the aeons of the Four Lights Harmozel, Oroiael, Daveithai and Eleleth. These "ministers" are joined respectively by two series of hypostatized virtues: 1) Charis, Thelesis, Synesis, and Phronesis (derived from the systems of Ap. John and Irenaeus. Haer. I. 29), who are regarded as feminine consorts of the Four Lights, and 2) Mneme, Agape, Eirene and (Aionia) Zoe (from Ap. John, NHC II, where Aionia Zoe may be a corruption of ennoia and zôê, who are regarded in Gos. Egypt. as feminine consorts for the four ministers. Gos. Egypt. also portrays these Lights as the respective dwellings of Autogenes and Adamas, the great Seth and Jesus, the "sons of the great Seth," and "the souls of the sons," the same arrangement as in Ap. John. (II,1: 8,28-9,24). In Trim. Prot. (XIII, 1: 48,26-31; Abrasax is missing) these "ministers" of the Four Lights preside over an immediately post-baptismal rapture of the baptizand into the Light-place of the Fatherhood.
[21 ]As in the case of Ap. John, the first part of Gos. Egypt. consists of an elaborate theogony narrating the generation of the five principal transcendent beings who comprise the highest aeon of the divine world, called the Doxomedon aeon. Its members are: the great Invisible Spirit and the male virgin Barbelo familiar from Ap. John; the thrice-male Child; the male virgin Youel, who seems to be a double of Barbelo; and Esephech the Child of the Child, who seems to be a lower double of the thrice-male Child. In this enumeration, the third member of the Father-Mother-Son triad, usually identified as the Autogenes Logos, now consists of no less than three beings, the thrice-male Child, Youel and Esephech (the first two mentioned in Allogenes and all three in Zost.), with the result that the Autogenes Logos of Gos. Egypt.. is demoted to a lower level, subordinate to the Doxomedon Aeon. The basic outline of this theogony seems be an elaboration upon a traditional list of five principal transcendent beings who are the objects of five repeated doxologies or presentations of praise which punctuate the major episodes of the theogony (IV, 2: 59,13-29; III, 2: 49,22-50,17; 53,12-54,11; 55,16-56,3; 61,23-62,13). Gos. Egypt. understands the beings contained in the Doxomedon aeon to constitute a divine pentad, which it identifies with the Five Seals of the Sethian gnostic baptismal rite.
[22 ]J.D. Turner, "Threefold Path", 324-51, and "Sethian Gnosticism," 55-86.
[23 ]Hippolytus (Ref. 5.27.2-3) reports that in Justin's Baruch one swears to be silent about the mysteries as one "drinks from the living water, which is for them a baptism (loutron), a source of living water springing up. For there is a distinction, he says, between water and water: below the firmament there is a water of the evil creation in which material and psychic men wash themselves, and above the firmament there is the living water of the Good in which the spiritual, living men bathe, and in which Elohim bathed without repenting of it." In the Sethian theogony and cosmogony, a similar distinction is maintained between the transcendent luminous living water in which Barbelo emerges as a faithful reflection of the Invisible Spirit's thought (cf. Ap. John NHC II, 1: 4,18-28) and the dark and chaotic waters below produced by the downward inclination of Sophia, from which the demiurge produces the physical cosmos as merely a pale and inauthentic reflection of the divine aeons (e.g. Zost. NHC VIII, 1: 9,16-10,18; Hyp. Arch. NHC II, 4: 87,11-20 and parallels). Cf. the report on the Sethians (Ref. 5.19.21) according to which the savior, having entered the world through a virgin womb "washed himself and drank the cup of living, springing water, which anyone wishing to put off the form of a servant and don the heavenly garment must drink."
[24 ]"On the Gattung of Mark (and John)," in Jesus and Man's Hope (175th Anniversary Festival on the Gospels at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) Perspective 11, 2(1970), 99-129, especially 119-129.
[25 ]In Apoc. Adam, the descent of the Illuminator to the water involves the receiving of his name by the seed of Seth (V, 5: 83,4-8). This interpretation is followed by a polemic against those who pollute the Water of Life by placing it under the will of the powers and writing down the revelation (V, 5: 84,4-85,18). Instead, one is to receive a higher baptism of gnosis through the logos-begotten ones and the imperishable illuminators Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus, the Living Water (V,5: 85,22-31). This contrast between two orders of baptism, one inferior and the other superior, also underlies the NT distinction between Jesus' baptism by John in ordinary water--a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins--and the superior baptism with the Holy Spirit (and with fire) to be conferred by Jesus. Indeed, Robinson thinks that in the NT the underlying myth originally referred to baptism, since it "attached itself to Christian tradition at the point where the Christian story originally opened, i.e. at the baptism, especially when there was no infancy narrative in a given situation to provide another alternative." It may be that this myth intersected biblical tradition in the context of post-exilic wisdom speculation, perhaps in terms of Ezekiel's vision of the divine glory departing from Judea and its doomed temple, the exile of God's bride Israel and her children in a foreign land, and the eventual restoration after Cyrus' defeat of the Neo-babylonians. One finds the imagery of barrenness, wilderness, forsakenness, and widowhood contrasted with the primordial creative power of the divine spirit and word, and the restorational motifs of nourishment, marriage, birth and light in Is 40:1-5, 12-17; 41:17-20,25; 44:1-5; 45:1-13; 48:12-16; 49:6, 19-21; 54:1-3; 55:6-11; 60:1-3; 61:1-4; 62:1-5; 65:17-25, and especially 66:6-14. This very basic myth concerning a divine child who together with his divine mother is threatened by an evil power, yet is rescued and finds safety in the wilderness until the evil power is destroyed, could be made to apply to many stories of the origin of heroes: not only to Adam and his divine mother or to Seth and his mother Eve, but also to the birth of Jesus to Mary and their flight to Egypt from Herod, and perhaps more remotely to certain aspects of the Isis-Osiris-Horus cycle as well as the stories of Zeus and Rheia, Perseus and Danaae, and Jason and Diomede. Such a myth concerning the advent of a savior into a world ruled by hostile powers is repeatedly applied to baptism not only in Mark, the Gospel of the Hebrews, and in Apoc. Adam, but also in many NT and Sethian gnostic sources. In those cases where the means of the savior's advent occurs through childbirth, the mother ends up being threatened by and rescued from hostile powers; in those cases where the occasion of the savior's advent is his baptism, the mother remains secure in the background, or perhaps appears in the world in the form of a Spirit or Voice which descends upon the savior at the time of his baptism. In Mark, which has no birth story, the Savior is baptized in the (ordinary) water to which he comes, after which the Spirit descends to the Savior together with a Voice that pronounces him to be the Son of God. The parallel in Matthew, which follows a birth narrative, agrees, but has reservations about the baptism in water by John. Finally, the Fourth Gospel, which has no birth narrative, suppresses Jesus' explicit baptism by John in mere water, and demotes John to a mere Voice of one crying in the wilderness, whose only subsequent function is to bear witness to the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus. Instead, the Fourth Gospel (Jn 4:7-15) understands Jesus as the source of Living Water, which to drink means eternal life; although he has baptized Judaean people in water (3:22; 4:1), there will be a time when he will baptize with the Holy Spirit, which the author identifies with the Living Water (Jn 7:37-39). Here both birth and baptism seem to be interpreted in terms of rebirth, or being "born from above," through "water and the Spirit." One thus reborn has lost earthly origins and connections, and is uniquely empowered to "see" and "enter" the Kingdom. While the obvious reference seems to be to Johannine Christians, the absence of explicit accounts of Jesus' birth and baptism on the earthly plane combine with this conception of being born from above as an additional reference to the untraceable--and thus divine--origin of the Savior who brings light into the world. The parallel with the explanation of the origins of the Illuminator in Apoc. Adam is obvious. Again, like the Fourth Gospel's conception of Jesus as the one who will provide living water, Trim. Prot. regards the Logos who descends with the Five Seals as the one who pours forth Living Water upon the Spirit below out of its source, which is the Father / Voice aspect of Protennoia, called the unpolluted spring of Living Water. Perhaps it would not be going too far to suppose that Johannine and Sethian conceptions of baptism had a common origin.
[26 ]See J. H. Sieber, "An Introduction to the Tractate Zostrianos from Nag Hammadi," Novum Testamentum 15 (1973), 238; idem, "The Barbelo Aeon as Sophia in Zostrianos and Related Tractates," in Rediscovery, 2.788-795 and his Introduction to Zost . in J. H. Sieber, ed., Nag Hammadi Codex VIII (Nag Hammadi Studies 31; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991). On this triad, see generally my "Threefold Path" and "Sethian Gnosticism".
[27 ]According to pages 5-7, after an initial revelation from an angel of Light, Zostrianos ascends in a cloud of light above the darkness of the thirteen aeons up to the airy earth and is baptized. H