Overview
The opening words of the Secret Book of John are "The teaching of the saviour, and the revelation of the mysteries and the things hidden in silence, even these things which he taught John, his disciple." The author John is immediately specified as "John, the brother of James — who are the sons of Zebedee." There are four separate surviving manuscripts of "The Secret Book of John". Three of these were found in the Nag Hammadi codices in 1945, while the fourth was found independently 50 years earlier from another site in Egypt. All four versions date to the 4th century. Three of these appear to be independently produced Coptic translations of an original Greek text. Two of the four are similar enough that they probably represent copies of a single source.
Many Christians in the 2nd century CE hoped to receive a transcendent personal revelation such as Paul was able to report to the church at Corinth (2 Corinthians 12:1-4) or that John experienced on the isle of Patmos, which inspired his Revelation. As Acts narrates what happened after the time Jesus ascended to heaven, so the Apocryphon of John begins at the same point but relates how Christ reappeared to John.
The remainder of the book is a vision of spiritual realms and of the prior history of spiritual humanity.
The Apocryphon of John begins as Jesus comes to Apostle John who seems lost and confused about the truth of Christianity and its actual legitimacy. This document was set up as a dialogue format in which John asks Jesus different questions and finally Jesus leaves to the Heavens. This is the basic opening for all the versions of the Apocryphon of John. There are four different versions of this text, two longer and two shorter. The shorter versions are found in the Nag Hammadi library III and the Berlin Codex. The longer versions are found in the Nag Hammadi library II and IV. Although all these versions basically tell the same story, they all have tiny differences and some are more complete than others. First of all the Berlin Codex leaves out the entire section of creating the different parts of Adam. Additionally, there is no mention of Zoe who is like Eve’s divine twin. Lastly, it leaves out a significant chunk of who went to reveal the truth to Adam and Eve to awaken them from their ignorance. These texts would have been more commonplace in the early centuries of Christianity and certainly because there was no official group claiming themselves as “Gnostics,” many other religious groups could have been presented with this material.
A Pharisee named Arimanius comes to John and denounces Jesus, saying that “this Nazoraian had led you astray.” As John questioned the real authenticity of Jesus, the heavens began and tremble and a figure cloaked in bright light “which had three forms” began to ask why John had began to doubt. This figure is later revealed to be Jesus himself and he begins to explain the cosmology and creation of the universe.
He first explains the concept of the Blessed One/True Father/ Ineffable One. This first power in recognition of itself spawned the aeon Barbelo who is known as the Mother Spirit/Great Mother. She is also seen as a consort with the Great Divine. Barbelo then began to implore God to grant the creation of other aeons which are basically sub categories/emanations from God himself. Henceforth the pleroma (heavenly realm) was now filled with 365 aeons and their respective angels. Among these aeons was Sophia the aeon of Wisdom. She was the last aeon to be created. She became ambitious and tried to create something without the consent of her consort, nor God. She created a creature, Yaldaboath, “in the form of a lion faced serpent and its eyes were like lightning fires which flash” (10:10-11). Yaldaboath was cast from the pleroma by Sophia and was covered by a cloud. He being ignorant, created other archons until they numbered 365 as well.
Then Yaldabaoth who is also called Samael and Saklas, said “let us make man in our image” (15:1-2). All the different archons had different tasks in creating Adam. All 365 archons made different aspects of Adam’s body or emotions. “Asterechme the right eyel Thaspomocha the left eye; Yeronumos the right ear; Bissoum the left ear; Akioreim the nose; Banen-Ephroum the lips” and so on (15-16: 30-35, 1). Although Adam had a body, Yaldabaoth could not get him to move. Sophia, who wanted to repair her wrongdoings by retrieving the spark that was lost, came down from the pleroma and tricked Yaldabaoth to give his portion of the spark (which was in him because he was created from Sophia who was a part of the Divine Father). Ergo, Yaldabaoth sent his spark into Adam and he became alive. Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil prompted by the revelatory figure, who here is seen as Jesus. The snake also did convince Adam (possibly Eve it is not clear) to also eat from the tree “wickedness, begetting, lust and the destruction” (20:25). Thus Yaldabaoth became angry and put onto Adam a deep sleep. Eventually the Epinoia of light hid herself in Adam and trying to find her, Yaldabaoth made another creature named Eve. Having lost the spark, Yaldabaoth was now considered lower than Adam and Eve. Angry, he raped Eve and bore two children: Cain and Abel. As long as they were connected to the lowest level of matter, they could not be released to go to the pleroma. Adam and Eve had only one legitimate son: Seth. The spark that allowed the humans to return to the heavenly realm traveled in Seth’s line for Cain and Abel were the children of Eve and Yaldabaoth. Finally, as a last attempt to rid the world of man, Yaldabaoth sent a great flood to wipe out everything. However, Noah and other individuals with this special spark were informed by the heavenly realm and were saved. Although the Christians and Jews state that only Noah was saved, the Gnostics stated that “THEY hid themselves in the ark”, implying that there were more people than just Noah (29:6).
Therefore, the Gnostics with the Apocryphon of John are trying to state that Moses basically got everything wrong and everyone else (the Christians and Jews) were being duped by the demiurge and not the true Divine Father. Regarding the term “Gnostics” it is crucial to remember that the gnostics did not call themselves by this term; this was a later title put onto them. They believed that they were essentially Christians who got it right. The others were essentially Christians who did not get the correct version of the story. ←Although the different versions of the texts have minor variants (The Berlin Codex has many minor differences with the Nag Hammadi II and IV), all texts generally agree that the main revealing entity was Jesus Christ. Hence the strangeness of the texts. If Jesus Christ was omitted, it could be seen as a set of Jewish texts that reacted to the Jesus movement. Additionally, the snake and Sophia are also accepted as entities that also revealed the truth to Adam and Eve. Still accepting the mainstream Christian view, the snake only revealed the evils of the world. Also, in another version Eve is created from Sophia’s repenting, not by Yaldabaoth and his archons.
In addition, there are different types of Gnosticism as well (different versions focus on other elements). In the Valentinian version of Gnosticism, the cosmology is a little different. The Valentinian version is more overtly Christianized than the Apocryphon of John which is called the Sethian version. The Sethian Gnosticism is more Jewish in background and context. The Valentinian version is much closer to the concepts of Neo-Platonism as well. In fact a lot of the concepts of Gnosticism itself is based on Platonism and Neo-Platonism (for Valentinian Gnosticism). Valentinian Gnosticism was led by Valentinus who was a student of Theudas who was a student of Paul. In this version, ignorance is like a cloud which separates humans from the Father. Therefore, like Neo-Platonism, only through education and meditation would one receive the gnosis. Furthermore, the demiurge is not seen as so evil.
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