The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi for the Study of Early Jewish Mysticism Dylan M. Burns The ancient body of thought known today as Gnosticism—characterized by a distinction between the creator-deity and the true God, who shares a divine nature with an elect humanity that in turn is superior to the world and its maker—is of primary importance for our understanding of the earliest development of Christianity.1 Its relationship with Judaism, and particularly the history of Jewish mysticism, is no longer a subject of dispute as much a nearly moribund topic.2 Yet scholarship on ancient Judaism— Given the interdisciplinary nature of this volume, I have focused on larger questions regarding the agenda of the study of Gnosticism and Jewish mysticism, rather than minutiae; nonetheless, I hope that the approach taken here proves to be a productive one. This paper was presented in various forms: at the University of Copenhagen (May 2015), at the Eighth Enoch Seminar at Gazzada (June 2015), and at the Zentrum für jüdische Kulturgeschichte, in Salzburg (December 2018). For comments and criticisms I am indebted to the audiences of each of these talks, especially Daniel Boyarin, Lorenzo DiTommaso, and Susanna Plietzsch, as well as Jeremy Brown. I eschew here the question of the relationship between ancient gnostic literary traditions and the (relatively) later kabbalistic literature, as discussed by Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), esp. 112–55. The topic absolutely merits new investigation, and it is a hope of the present study to contribute to such an endeavor. 1. These are the primary characteristics of the works associated with the gnostic school of thought known to Irenaeus (Haer. 1.29–30) and Porphyry (Vit. Plot. 16). See David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Dylan M. Burns, “Providence, Creation, and Gnosticism according to the Gnostics,” JECS 24 (2016): 55–79. 2. Mysticism is a difficult term which continues to undergo scrutiny and revision by scholars. For the purposes of the present study, which is more concerned with sources that have been termed mystical in scholarship rather than the etic construct mysti- -503This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 504 Dylan M. Burns ranging from rabbinic literature to the Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigrapha, and medieval mystical texts—has experienced a renaissance in recent decades, having transformed the terrain upon which the boundaries between and Gnosticism and Judaism were once divined by scholarship. In the present contribution, I hope to suggest how gnostic studies might digest these developments, allowing us to address, in fresh and new terms, the relationship of Gnosticism—particularly the Sethian apocalypses unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1945—to Jewish mystical traditions and practices. Conversely, our gnostic evidence, principally the Sethian works from Nag Hammadi, provides us with valuable insight into the reception and transformation of Jewish mystical traditions during the second to fifth centuries CE, a period in which our evidence regarding these traditions is scarce indeed. The gnostic apocalypses thus may be of tremendous use in formulating new approaches to current problems regarding the evolution and contours of both our gnostic and Jewish sources. 1. Gnosticism, Judaism, and Jewish Mysticism Revisited It is strange that gnosticism has more or less disappeared from research into the history of ancient Jewish mysticism (and vice versa), since it spent cism, it is helpful to appropriate the term and its attendant cognates to describe these sources insofar as they push “toward the transcendent and toward that which exceeds the human, whether framed experientially or linguistically”—see Louise Nelstrop, “Mysticism,” in Vocabulary for the Study of Religion, ed. Robert A. Segal and Kocku von Stuckrad (Brill Online, 2016). On debate about the term mysticism vis-à-vis Jewish mysticism, see esp. Eliot Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 50–73; Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 1–20; and Christoph Markschies, Gottes Körper: Jüdische, christliche und pagane Gottesvorstellungen in der Antike (München: Beck, 2016), 190–94. On the term mysticism more generally, the account of Bernard McGinn remains useful: The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (New York: Crossroad, 1991), xiii–xx, 265–343. A contributing factor to the situation is the skepticism regarding the category Gnosticism fashionable in the previous generation of Nag Hammadi scholarship, following from the work of Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: Arguments for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); and Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). On reading sources once regarded as gnostic simply as Christian (and thus insulated from Judaism), see, for instance, Karen L. King, review of The Gnostics, by David Brakke, HR 52 (2013): 294–301; cf. also below, n. 12. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 505 well over a century on the docket following the tremendous influence of Heinrich Graetz’s Gnostizismus und Judentum (1846).3 What happened? In short, the enterprise of putting ancient Jewish and gnostic sources in conversation with one another became tied up in the elusive search for the origins of Gnosticism in Judaism. This search proceeded—and failed—in three arenas, which are worth briefly reviewing since the fallout roughly demarcates the borders presently existing between the study of Gnosticism and that of ancient Jewish mysticism—and implicitly, our means for transgressing them. The first is rabbinic evidence about Jewish mysticism, particularly regarding the character of Elisha ben Abuya, who appears in our rabbinic sources as a kind of mystical, intellectual rebel, who, torn by the problem of evil, rejects halakah in favor of licentiousness and Greek paideia.4 Most famously, the Babylonian Talmud features him in its commentary on the legend of the four sages who ascend to paradise, wherein “Aḥer”—ben Abuya’s nickname (Heb. for “other”)—sees Metatron sitting and writing the merits of Israel. Knowing that angels are not allowed to sit, he is shocked and wonders (incredulously), “perhaps—God forfend!—there are two divinities!” “Permission was [then] given to him to strike out the merits of Aḥer. A Bath Kol went forth and said: Return, ye backsliding children—except Aḥer” (Hag. 15a).5 Scholars have long drawn a connection 3. Helpful discussions of Graetz’s work and influence and subsequent forays into the relationship between Gnosticism and Judaism can be found in Birger A. Pearson, “Friedländer Revisited: Alexandrian Judaism and Gnostic Origin,” in Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, ed. Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 10–28; Gerald Luttikhuizen, “Monism and Dualism in Jewish-Mystical and Gnostic Ascent Texts,” in Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez, ed. Anthony Hilhorst, Émile Puech, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, JSJSup 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 749–52; Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Rethinking (Jewish-)Christian Evidence,” in Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia, ed. Raʿanan S. Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 349–64; and Jan Lahe, Gnosis und Judentum: Alttestamentliche und jüdische Motive in der gnostischen Literatur und das Ursprungsproblem der Gnosis, NHMS 75 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 99–157. 4. For a survey and discussion of the sources about ben Abuyah, see Alon Goshen-Gottstein, The Sinner and the Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha ben Abuyah and Eleazar ben Arach, Contraversions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), as well as the following notes regarding the Pardes narrative. 5. Trans. in Isidore Epstein, ed., The Babylonian Talmud: Hagiga (London: Soncino, 1935–1952). This account is also related in 3 En. 16.2 (cf. Peter Schäfer, ed., This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 506 Dylan M. Burns between ben Abuyah’s Otherness, mysticism, antinomianism, and ostensible speculations about there being “two powers in heaven” and took him as evidence of pre-Christian, Jewish Gnosticism, a line of reasoning we still find today in some secondary literature.6 Yet such a reading of the evidence is unpersuasive; the Babylonian Talmud is a highly redacted text of late antiquity (and thus a difficult witness of developments of the first century CE), while the whole phrasing of an orthodox Rabbinism that opposed ben Abuya likely blankets diversity in ancient Jewish culture, instead replicating the terms of early Christian heresiography.7 Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981], §20); Hekhalot Zutarti (Schäfer, Synopse, §§338–39, 344–46, 348, G7); and Merkabah Rabbah (Schäfer, Synopse, §§671–73). For critical discussion of the various recensions of these passages and their background in ancient Jewish literature, see Nathanael Deutsch, Guardians of the Gate: Angelic Vice-Regency in Late Antiquity, BSJS 22 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 48–75; Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 193–94 and 231–42; Daniel Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms: Meṭaṭron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism,” JSJ 41 (2010): 345–56; and Andrei A. Orlov, “Two Powers in Heaven … Manifested,” in Wisdom Poured Out Like Water: Studies on Jewish and Christian Antiquity in Honor of Gabriele Boccaccini, ed. J. Harold Ellens et al., DCLS 38 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 351–64. 6. For earlier Forschungsgeschichte on the “two powers controversy,” see Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Judaism, SJLA 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 8–14. More recent studies (which have little to say regarding gnostic sources) include Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “Jewish-Christian Relations and Rabbinic Literature—Shifting Scholarly and Relational Paradigms: The Case of Two Powers,” in Interaction between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature, ed. Marcel Poorthuis, Joshua Schwartz, and Joseph Aaron Turner, JCP 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 15–44, esp. 30–40; Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms”; and Orlov, “Two Powers in Heaven,” 351 n. 1. Segal acknowledged the evidence about ben Abuya to be highly redacted but nonetheless considered it indicative of interaction between gnostic and merkabah traditions in Tannaitic circles (Two Powers in Heaven, 60–67, 150–51). Others have regarded ben Abuya to be a historical personage and “gnostic heretic” (Pearson, “Friedländer Revisited,” 24: “it can hardly be doubted any longer that Elisha ben Abuya [Aḥer] was a Gnostic heretic,” who, dissatisfied with Judaism, “turned to Gnosticism” and “proselytized” on its behalf); see also Guy S. Stroumsa, “Aḥer: A Gnostic,” in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism, ed. Bentley Layton, NBS 41 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 2:816. 7. Ithamar Gruenwald, “Aspects of the Jewish-Gnostic Controversy,” in Layton, Rediscovery of Gnosticism, 2:713–23, esp. 721; Shaye J. D. Cohen, Review of Two Powers in Heaven, by Alan Segal, AJSR 10 (1985): 114–17. Boyarin emphasizes that Segal’s analysis views the two-powers heresy as an intrusion on Judaism, rather than an integral, ancient current within developing Judaism (“Beyond Judaisms,” 327–28). Less persuasive is Adiel Schremer’s claim that one could read the rabbinic evidence This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 507 Meanwhile, the 1945 discovery of a cache of thirteen Coptic papyrus manuscripts near the city of Nag Hammadi (Upper Egypt) revolutionized the study of Gnosticism, for these ancient books seem to contain many works whose contents resemble the teachings of the gnostic school of thought mentioned by Irenaeus, Porphyry, and others. Scholars widely recognized that many of the Nag Hammadi texts recall midrashim, extensions of and commentaries on famous biblical stories, gnostic retellings of the creation of Adam, his fall with Eve from the garden of Eden, Noah and the flood, God’s statement that he is jealous, and much else.8 Did Gnosticism then arise from Hellenized exegesis of problematic passages in the Hebrew Bible, producing the famous gnostic view of the Jewish God as foolish, if not arrogant and cruel?9 Our earliest testimonies about gnostic teachers such as Satornilus or Basilides intimate that they were Christians in some sense, and every surviving gnostic manuscript from antiquity appears to be a Christian product (including those containing midrashic works from Nag Hammadi).10 Our inability to extract about two powers as not pertaining to the development of gnostic or even Christian ideas at all but an “existential response to despair” following Jewish military defeats at Roman hands (“Midrash, Theology, and History: Two Powers in Heaven Revisited,” JSJ 39 [2007]: 23–54). Schremer’s argument, if valid, furnishes rabbinic evidence undergirding the old thesis that Gnosticism arose as “an existential response to despair” following Jewish military defeats at Roman hands (see below), which would in turn mean that the two-powers controversy does constitute evidence pertinent to the development of Gnosticism! 8. Classic examples include but are not limited to Apocryphon of John (NHC II 1 par.), the Nature of the Rulers (NHC II 4), and Apocalypse of Adam (NHC V 5). On these and other texts from Nag Hammadi as midrashim, see e.g., Birger A. Pearson, “Jewish Haggadic Traditions in The Testimony of Truth from Nag Hammadi (CG IX,3),” in Pearson, Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, 457–70. For exhaustive analysis, see Lahe, Gnosis und Judentum, 191–356. 9. An old thesis; for a recent rehearsal, see Volker Henning Drecoll, “Martin Hengel and the Origins of Gnosticism,” in Gnosticism, Platonism, and the Late Ancient World: Essays in Honour of John D. Turner, ed. Kevin Corrigan and Tuomas Rasimus, NHMS 82 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 139–65, esp. 161–63. It is difficult to draw a line between this phrasing and Pearson’s contention that “although much of the detail of Friedländer’s argument is open to question, he has been vindicated in his basic contention, that Gnosticism is a pre-Christian phenomenon that developed on Jewish soil” (“Friedländer Revisited,” 28). 10. On the manufacture of our Coptic gnostic sources by Egyptian Christians, see Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), focusing on the “monastic hypothesis.” On the This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 508 Dylan M. Burns evidence about Gnosticism from emergent Christianity—even if we deign to conflate the two—mitigates the famous hypothesis that such anti-Jewish exegesis of Scripture must have been the product of disenfranchised, educated Alexandrian Jewry, devastated by the failures of the cataclysmic Jewish Wars (68–70 CE) and the Jewish rebellion against Trajan (115– 117).11 The question of the Jewish origins of Gnosticism is commonly regarded as closed, for good reason.12 Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), meanwhile, attempted to sketch out a history of Jewish literature detailing visionary encounters with the Godhead and assigned Gnosticism a central role in this history (even if he ultimately regarded it as “metaphysical anti-Semitism”).13 Recognizing that Kabbalistic literature must have emerged from a wider spectrum of ancient and early medieval Jewish mystical texts—chiefly inspired by Ezekiel’s vision of the celestial throne-chariot (Heb. merkabah)—his chief interest lay in the early medieval hekhalot (“palaces”) literature. Scholem saw the ornate Jewish “throne-world” of the hekhalot treatises as resembling gnostic descriptions of heaven as a plērōma (Grk. “fullness”) inhabited by various aeons, potencies, and archons.14 For him, the ascent of the rabbis past dangerous obstacles in the heavenly palaces derived from Christian character of even early evidence about Gnosticism, see Alistair H. B. Logan, Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy: A Study in the History of Gnosticism (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996). 11. The famous thesis of Robert M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (San Francisco: Harper Torchbooks, 1959), 27–38, followed widely (as discussed in Lahe, Gnosis und Judentum, 111–13, 121–22). 12. For relevant recent scholarship on this topic, see Dylan Burns and Matthew Goff, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices, NHMS 103 (Leiden: Brill, 2022). 13. On Scholem’s exploration of so-called Jewish Gnosticism in the context of German Jewish and Christian philosophy of his day, see Benjamin Lazier, God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 146–60; still useful is the discussion of Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 75–76. On Scholem’s interpretation of Gnosticism as “metaphysical anti-Semitism” (a quip issued to Jonas), see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 190. For use of the term, see, e.g., Joel Fineman, “Gnosis and the Piety of Metaphor: The Gospel of Truth,” in Layton, Rediscovery of Gnosticism, 2:309. 14. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1995), 44. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 509 gnostic accounts of ascent past demonic archons.15 The spells used by the rabbis to navigate these obstacles consist of foreign words (so-called nomina barbara), which Scholem saw as identical to the semi-intelligible incantations in our gnostic evidence.16 He considered the Shiʿur Qomah literature—speculation on the shape and magnitude of God’s body—to be influenced by the “mystical anthropomorphism” of gnostic thinkers.17 Scholem believed that Elisha ben Abuya was a gnostic.18 For him, then, gnostic texts provided evidence for a Hellenized “Jewish Gnosticism” that could be reconstructed from gnostic, rabbinic, and hekhalot sources.19 There are reasons to disagree with Scholem: the comparisons are primitive and, in many cases, forced.20 Moreover, Scholem wrote without much knowledge of the Nag Hammadi texts and so worked with a considerably different set of data than we employ today. Finally, he paid little attention to Jewish apocalyptic literature.21 So, while approaches similar to Scholem’s live on in pockets of scholarship, his perspective has more or less disappeared from the study of Jewish mysticism and taken Gnosti15. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 49–54. 16. Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: JTS, 1960), 32–33. 17. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 38–42; Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 65. For recent discussions of the Shiʿur Qomah literature, see Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 306–15; and Markschies, Gottes Körper, 202–23. 18. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 14–19. 19. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 10, 34–35. 20. For instance, Scholem referred to Irenaeus’s account of Marcus’s description of the correspondence between Aletheia’s body parts and the letters of the Greek alphabet as evidence for the circulation of Shiʿur Qomah traditions in second-century Gnosticism; see his On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah (New York: Schocken, 1997), 25–30, regarding Irenaeus, Haer. 1.14. Schäfer rightly points out that the parallels are superficial, since the letters are not names and Aletheia is neither a giant nor God (Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 311–13; see also Markschies, Gottes Körper, 234–38). Observing that “originally it was heavenly figures in the Jewish tradition, mainly angels, to whom outsize dimensions were attributed,” Schäfer asks, “could it be that, once the vast size of the angels was adopted by the Christians (and, worse, these angels became divine figures), the Jewish tradition came to insist that only God himself has gigantic dimensions?” (315). 21. I.e., works written using the genre of apocalypse, wherein a supernatural mediator transmits heavenly knowledge, whether of the future or of cosmic secrets, to a seer or prophet, which is passed on in written form, often with the authority of an authoritative pseudonym (thus John J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 [1979]: 1–20). This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 510 Dylan M. Burns cism along with it.22 Thus Peter Schäfer’s survey of 2010, entitled The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, does not treat Gnosticism at all. And why should it? After all, our rabbinic evidence tells us nothing about Gnosticism, our extant gnostic sources command us to read them as productions of Christian contexts, and Scholem’s “Jewish Gnosticism” is today regarded as a serious misnomer. Rather, the study of early Jewish mysticism today is consumed with different questions, largely arising from the treatment of new data, which may be broken down into three groups: the pseudepigrapha and apocalypses (and, more widely, apocalypticism, however construed); the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran; and finally, the publication, translation, and interpretation of the hekhalot texts themselves. Students of early Jewish mysticism are then largely concerned with the problem of how to weave all this material together: for instance, what is the relationship in these texts between magical-theurgical practices (i.e., the controlling of angels) and visionary practices (i.e., joining angels in heaven before God in the unio liturgica)?23 To what extent do these texts present evidence for Jewish mystical practice at all—or are they simply literary artifacts?24 What are the implications of the Qumran find, if any, for our understanding of 22. This is a legacy of Gilles Quispel, who argued that an ancient, pre-Christian, Jewish Gnosticism could be reconstructed from the Hermetica, hekhalot literature, the pseudo-Clementines, and Samaritan sources, in addition to our patristic and Coptic evidence about Gnosticism; see, e.g., Gilles Quispel, “Christliche Gnosis, jüdische Gnosis, hermetische Gnosis,” in Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica: Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel, ed. J. van Oort, NHMS 55 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 3–36, esp. 17–19, regarding the Jewish origins of Gnosticism apud Scholem. 23. On this tension, see e.g., Peter Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (Syracuse: State University of New York Press, 1992), 143, 150–57, esp. 151; James R. Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism, JJTPSup 20 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 8–9; Markschies, Gottes Körper, 221; and further below. 24. An extensive debate with many participants; for Forschungsgeschichte, see, e.g., Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 121–24; Vita Daphna Arbel, Beholders of Divine Secrets: Mysticism and Myth in the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 12–14; April D. DeConick, “What Is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism?,” in Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, ed. April D. DeConick, SymS 11 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 1–26, esp. 5–8; Raʿanan S. Boustan, “The Study of Heikhalot Literature: Between Mystical Experience and Textual Artifact,” CurBR 6 (2007): 130–60, esp. 143–47; and Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation, 9–13. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 511 the hekhalot literature and Jewish mysticism in general?25 And where does apocalyptic literature fit into the mix?26 A central difficulty is the state of the evidence, despite its relative abundance—for between the angelic liturgies of Qumran and the hekhalot literature we have a more or less millennium-long gap in our data (extending from the Hellenistic period through the end of late antiquity) for developments in Jewish mysticism.27 The bulk of our ancient Jewish apocalyptic texts, as well as our rabbinic evidence, roughly falls into this gap, but while the apocalypses furnish valuable evidence on a case-by-case basis, they are too diverse in origin, content, and transmission to constitute a coherent corpus that one could compare against the Qumran and hekhalot corpora. Meanwhile, our rabbinic evidence about Jewish mystical practices is slim indeed.28 2. Gnostic Apocalypses, Sethian Apocalypses This is where our Coptic gnostic evidence steps in. Here, we have a corpus of texts that we can date to the fourth–fifth centuries CE in Roman Egypt but in some cases are translations of works we know to have circulated in the second and third centuries throughout the Roman Empire. Significantly, the predominant genre of these works is apocalypse—about half of them, in total.29 Yet for the reasons outlined above, this body of texts has 25. Discussed further below. 26. The focus of Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, AJEC 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), esp. 68–110, and Martha Himmelfarb, Ascents to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); see also Andrei Orlov, From Apocalypticism to Merkavah Mysticism: Studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, JSJSup 114 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), esp. 103–6. 27. Recognized by Reed, “Rethinking (Jewish-)Christian Evidence,” 354. 28. Schäfer has argued that “the rabbis were preoccupied with the exegesis of certain passages perceived as dangerous, and not with ecstatic experiences” (Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 350, emphasis original; see also 350–52), but cf. Wolfson’s reminder that exegesis and experience are not so easily demarcated from one another (Through a Speculum, 121–24). One need not take either side in this debate to recognize the value of an additional body of Vergleichsmaterial preserving a great deal of relevant evidence that antedates the earliest hekhalot manuscripts. 29. This figure assumes one regards revelation-dialogues without a heavenly journey under the heading of apocalypse, so Harold W. Attridge, “Valentinian and Sethian Apocalyptic Traditions,” JECS 8 (2000): 208–9; see Dylan M. Burns, “The Gnostic Apocalypses,” in The Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature, ed. Colin McAllister (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 59–78. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 512 Dylan M. Burns received little attention from specialists in ancient Judaism and especially Jewish mysticism, although a few scholars have flagged passages in gnostic literature that seem to describe speculation about the merkabah.30 Nonetheless, a particular set of gnostic apocalypses constitutes valuable evidence for our understanding of the history of Jewish mysticism. These apocalypses belong to a branch of gnostic literature called “Sethian,” chiefly due to its focus on the figure of Seth as revealer and savior.31 Within this group of Sethian apocalypses, Zostrianos (NHC VIII 1), Marsanes (NHC X 1), and Allogenes (NHC XI 3) stand out as particularly exotic. They are apocalypses of the cosmological stripe of Ethiopic or Slavonic Enoch, describing the heavenly journey and acquisition of cosmic secrets of the revealer-savior figures after whom the treatises are named.32 However, they are also replete with the jargon of Neoplatonism, the later form of Platonic philosophy that was assumed by intellectual antagonists of 30. Philip S. Alexander, “Comparing Merkavah Mysticism and Gnosticism: An Essay in Method,” JJS 35 (1984): 1–18, esp. 2 n. 2, following Gruenwald, “Aspects of the Jewish-Gnostic Controversy?” regarding Nature of the Rulers (NHC II 95.26– 32; Orig. World NHC II 104.35–105.30). Descriptions of the merkabah are also to be found in fragments of the Valentinian Theodotus (Clement of Alexandria, Exc. 37–39 [Sagnard], per Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 34–35) and the Sethian Egyptian Gospel NHC IV 51.2–3 = NHC III 49.14, per C. R. A. Morray-Jones, “Transformational Mysticism in the Apocalyptic-Merkabah Tradition,” JJS 43 (1992): 28–29, on the title “Domedōn Doxomedōn”; better, see NHC IV 53.3–54.20 = NHC III 43.8–44.13. 31. The seminal studies remain Hans-Martin Schenke, “Das sethianische System nach Nag-Hammadi-Handschriften,” in Studia Coptica, ed. Peter Nagel, BBA 45 (Berlin: Akademie, 1974), 165–73; and Schenke, “Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism,” in Layton, Rediscovery of Gnosticism, 2:588–616. Frederick Wisse rightfully points out that Schenke’s recognition of a coherent body of mythologoumena and ideas spread throughout the Nag Hammadi texts does not necessarily constitute the existence of a Sethian social group; see “Stalking Those Elusive Sethians,” in Layton, Rediscovery of Gnosticism, 2:563–76. Even so, scholars generally agree that the set of Sethian characteristics identified by Schenke constitutes a more or less coherent group; see, e.g., Michael A. Williams, “Sethianism,” in A Companion to Second-Century “Heretics”, ed. Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, VCSup 76 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 33–34, 36. For criticism of the category (resulting in a trimmed Sethian corpus set next to a smaller Ophite corpus), see Tuomas Rasimus, Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence, NHMS 68 (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 32. Per Collins, “Introduction,” 9. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 513 Christianity such as Porphyry, disciple of the great philosopher Plotinus.33 Porphyry tells us that There were in his [Plotinus’s] time many others, Christians, in particular heretics who had set out from the ancient philosophy, men belonging to the schools of Adelphius and Aculinus—who possessed many works of Alexander the Libyan and Philocomus and Demostratus of Lydia, and who produced revelations of Zoroaster and Zostrianos and Nicotheus and Allogenes and Messos and others of this sort who deceived many, just as they had been deceived, actually alleging that Plato really had not penetrated to the depth of intelligible substance. Wherefore, Plotinus often attacked their position in his seminars, and wrote the book which we have entitled Against the Gnostics. (Porphery, Vit. Plot. 16)34 Against the Gnostics (Enn. 2.9 [33]) is extant today.35 Since works with titles identical to several of those mentioned by Porphyry have been unearthed in Coptic translation at Nag Hammadi, we possess versions of gnostic apocalypses that caused a fuss among Platonic philosophers in Ploti- 33. The relationship of these works to contemporary Platonism is an ongoing enterprise pioneered by John D. Turner in many publications, but esp. his Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition, BCNH Études 6 (Québec: Université Laval; Leuven: Peeters, 2001). More recently, see Tuomas Rasimus, “Porphyry and the Gnostics: Reassessing Pierre Hadot’s Thesis in Light of the Second- and Third-Century Sethian Treatises,” in Plato’s “Parmenides” and Its Heritage, ed. John Douglas Turner and Kevin Corrigan, WGRWSup 2–3 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), 2:81–110; Jean-Marc Narbonne, Plotinus in Dialogue with the Gnostics, SPNPT 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Dylan M. Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); and Zeke Mazur, The Platonizing Sethian Gnostic Background of Plotinus’ Mysticism, NHMS 98 (Leiden: Brill, 2020). 34. Translation mine. On this passage, see inter alii Paul-Hubert Poirier and Thomas Schmidt, “Chrétiens, hérétiques et gnostiques chez porphyre: Quelques precisions sur la Vie de Plotin 16.1–9,” Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres: Comptes rendus des séances de l’année 2010. Avril-juin, ed. P. de Boccard (Paris: CRAI, 2010), 913–42; and Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God, 161–63. 35. For commentary on Enn. 2.9, see Paul Kalligas, “Plotinus against the Gnostics,” Hermathena 169 (2000): 115–28; Nicola Spanu, Plotinus, ‘Ennead’ II 9 [33] ‘Against the Gnostics’: A Commentary, StPatrSup 1 (Leuven: Peeters, 2012); Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God, 32–47; and Sebastian R. P. Gertz, Plotinus. Ennead II.9: Against the Gnostics; Translation with an Introduction and Commentary (Las Vegas: Parmenides, 2017). This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 514 Dylan M. Burns nus’s seminar in Rome in 263 CE and an extant polemic written against their Christian gnostic readers—probably the most specific information we possess about the who, what, where, and when of any extant ancient apocalyptic text. When we read the Coptic Zostrianos and Allogenes—and the two other treatises from Nag Hammadi that closely resemble them, Marsanes and the Three Steles of Seth (NHC VII 5)—the reason these Platonizing Sethian treatises circulated in an ancient postgraduate philosophy seminar is clear, given their use of technical language drawn from advanced, later Greek metaphysics. What scholarship is just beginning to ascertain, however, is that these works also are deeply indebted to Jewish mystical traditions we know from other ancient apocalypses, as well as the Qumran literature.36 The most cogent example of this indebtedness is their interest in the angelification of the seer, particularly in the context of liturgical passages that appear to describe participation in the angelic glorification of the Godhead itself.37 3. Angelification in Sethian Literature Two passages in the Sethian corpus mention this angelification explicitly. The first is from a revelatory work entitled First Thought in Three Forms, in which the narrator describes the transformation of a baptismal initiate at the hands of angelic figures: I delivered him unto the enrobers, Iammon, Elassō, Amēnai, and they [clothed] him with a robe, from the robes of light; and I delivered him unto the baptizers—they baptized him, Mikheus, Mikhar, Mnēsinous— and they immersed him in the fountain of the [Water] of Life. And I delivered him unto those who enthrone—Bariēl, Nouthan, Sabēnai— 36. Foundational research on the question was conducted by Madeline Scopello, “The Apocalypse of Zostrianos (Nag Hammadi VIII.1) and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch,” VC 34 (1980): 376–85; Scopello, “Un rite idéal d’intronisation dans trois textes gnostiques de Nag Hammadi,” in Nag Hammadi and Gnosis: Papers Read at the First International Congress of Coptology (Cairo, December 1976), ed. R. McLachlan Wilson, NHS 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 91–95; and Scopello, “Youel et Barbélo dans le Traité de l’Allogène,” in Colloque international sur les textes de Nag Hammadi, Québec 22–25 août 1978, ed. Bernard Barc, BCNH Études 1 (Québec: Presses de l’université Laval; Leuven: Peeters, 1981), 374–82. 37. The following section recapitulates material I have treated elsewhere in more detail (Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God, 122–30). This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 515 they gave him a throne from the throne of glory. And I delivered him unto those who glorify—Ariōm, Ēlien, Phariēl—they glorified him with the glory of the fatherhood. And [then those who snatch up] raptured— Kamaliēl [ . .] . —anan, Samblō—servants of great luminaries, holy. They took him to the luminous place of his fatherhood, and [he received] the Five Seals, through [the] light of the Mother: Prōtennoia. And it was given to him to partake [in the mystery] of knowledge. (Three Forms NHC XIII 48*.15–34)38 Mikheus, Samblo, and their cohort are angelic baptizers that appear on multiple occasions in the Sethian corpus; the initiate, who joins them here in baptism, enrobement, enthronement, and so forth, thus joins the company of angels who give glory to God. The Platonizing ascent apocalypse Zostrianos also features these celestial baptizers, as it describes the ascent of its eponymous seer into heaven: And I was baptized in the [name of] the divine Self-Begotten One, by the powers that exist [upon the] living water: Michar and [Micheus], and I was purified by [the] great Barpharanges. And they [glorified] me, writing me into glory. [I was] sealed by [them], those who exist upon the powers—[Michar], Micheus—with Seldao and [Elenos], and Zogenethlos. And I [became] a [god]-seeing angel. (Zost. NHC VIII 6.7–18)39 Other stages of angelificaiton are reported in the text; the keyword in all these passages, however, is “glory” (Copt. eoou). In First Thought, the baptizers and baptized join one another in “giving glory” (ti eoou) while in Zostrianos, various passages discuss beings called “glories” (heneoou) who appear to be closely associated with angels (if not angels themselves; Zost. NHC VIII 46.15–30, 48.21–23). The name of a principal revelator-angel in Zostrianos and Allogenes is Youel, glossed as “she who belongs to the glories, the male, virgin glory.”40 The glories anoint Zostrianos, further divin38. My translation of the Coptic text in Paul-Hubert Poirier, ed. and trans., La pensée première à la triple forme, BCNH Textes 32 (Québec: Presses de l’université Laval; Leuven: Peeters, 2006). 39. My translation of the Coptic text in Catherine Barry et al., eds. and trans., Zostrien, BCNH Textes 24 (Leuven: Peeters, 2000). 40. See Zost. NHC VIII 53.13–14, 54.15–17, 62.11–12, 63.9–10, 125.13.17; Allogenes NHC XI 50.18–19, 52.13–14, 55.17–18, 55.32–34, 57.24–25. Youel’s name (if not personage) likely derives from the same traditions that give us the angel Jahoel (Apoc. Abr. 10–11); see Madeline Scopello, “Portraits d’anges à Nag Hammadi,” in This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 516 Dylan M. Burns izing him after his baptisms (Zost. [NHC VIII 1.[63].20–22]). Eventually, he becomes elect, is crowned, and effectively acts as a revelatory angel for the angels: They set [me] down, and left. And Apophantēs, with Aphropais the virgin-light, came to me, and he brought me down to the Primary Manifestation—great, male, perfect intellect. And I saw all of them, in the form in which they exist: as one. And I united with them all, blessing the aeon of the Hidden One, the virgin Barbelo, and the Invisible Spirit. I become completely perfect, received power, was written into glory, and was sealed. I received a perfect crown there. I came to the perfect individuals, and they all made inquiries of me. They listened to the enormities of knowledge (I had to offer), rejoicing all the while and [receiving] power. (Zost. NHC VIII 129.1–22) Many other Sethian works detail a similar dynamic of glorification, selfglorification, and transformation in the context of participation in the celestial liturgy, even if they do not explicitly say that human beings are transformed into angels. A particularly important example is to be found in the Three Steles of Seth (another one of those Platonizing works), a liturgical work where the speaker is often in the first-person plural, describing the group-activity of glorifying the deity as the central soteriological act: With what shall we bless you? We cannot—but we give thanks, since we are inferior to you, for you granted us (to see you), as He who is superior, to glorify you to the extent that we are able. We bless you, for we have been saved for all the time that we glorify you! Because of this do we glorify you: so that we might be saved, completely, eternally. We bless you, for we are able. We have been saved, because you, you wished at all times for all of us to do this. (Steles Seth NHC VII 126.17–32)41 Acts du huitième congrès international d’études coptes: Paris, 28 juin–3 juillet 2004, ed. N. Bosson and Anne Boud’hors, OLA 163, 2 vols. (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 2:886. On Jaohel’s similarities to Metatron, see Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 51; Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 68; and Deutsch, Guardians of the Gate, 35–36. 41. My translation of the Coptic text given by James M. Robinson and James E. Goehring, “The Three Steles of Seth,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII, ed. Birger A. Pearson, NHS 30 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 371–421. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 517 Some kind of noetic ascent is implied in the text, as it is broken down in to three hymns (per the literary conceit of three steles), each addressed to a progressively more abstract and thus superior entity. (The above passage is addressed to the highest god, The One.) This dynamic of glorification, transformation, and salvation, practiced alongside other ascending glorifying beings, clearly derives from a greater body of wellknown Jewish apocalyptic traditions that liken humans to angels insofar as they join these celestial beings in glorifying God in heaven—particularly in works that describe the transformation of a seer or the righteous to an angel as one joins the celestial liturgy.42 In some of these cases, as in Zostrianos, the angelified seer is not just an angel but a being superior to angels.43 How does the presence of these Jewish traditions regarding angelification in gnostic apocalypses help us understand problems in Jewish mysticism, namely, the relationship between magical practices and visionary practices, the question of practice versus literary artifact, the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the role of apocalyptic literature? Let us tackle each question in turn. 4. Magic, Ascent, and Theurgy As we saw earlier, there is a certain tension in the hekhalot corpus between practices that seem to elevate the seer on the journey to heaven and those that are concerned with controlling angels, particularly to obtain mastery of torah (the so-called Sar Torah praxes). Symptomatic of the confusion arising from this tension is the widespread use of the term theurgy in the scholarly literature to describe all manner of practices, whether they result in the adjuration of a celestial being or in some kind of interaction with celestial beings.44 Scholarship on the Sethian treatises also toyed with using 42. Classic examples include 2 En. 22.8–10 and T. Levi 8.4. See further Scopello, “Un rite idéal”; Morray-Jones, “Transformational Mysticism,” 22–23; and John D. Turner, “Baptismal Vision, Angelification, and Mystical Union in Sethian Literature,” in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels, ed. Eduard Iricinschi et al., STAC 82 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 210–11. 43. 2 Bar. 51.10–13; Ascen. Isa. 8.13–16, 9.1–6, and esp. 9.27–30. 44. For the use of the term theurgy to describe the adjuration and mastery of heavenly beings in hekhalot literature, see e.g., Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 143–44, 150; Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 114 and passim; Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls, This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 518 Dylan M. Burns theurgy to describe many of their practices, presumably because these Platonizing works derive from the mid-third to early fourth-century Platonist circles to which belonged Iamblichus of Chalcis, who systematized a body of cultic practices into what he called theurgy (theourgia, “divine work”): rituals designed to elevate the soul of the practitioner to the heaven.45 A close look at the practices mentioned in the Sethian apocalypses shows that they operate on entirely different presuppositions than those of Iamblichus about the relationship of human beings to the divine in ritual, and so the use of the term theurgy for them is a misnomer. The same can be said of the hekhalot works, recognition of which could help us frame the issue of the variety of practices in them in a more productive way. Indeed, a marked feature of the Sethian literature is widespread use of (pseudo-)Greek nomina barbara not superficially unlike what we find in the Jewish ascent literature, as, for example, in Allogenes: STDJ 42 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 320; Philip S. Alexander, Mystical Texts: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Related Manuscripts, LSTS 61 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 25, 116–16; James R. Davila, “Ritual in the Hekhalot Literature,” in Practicing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature; Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson, ed. April D. DeConick, Gregory Shaw, and John D. Turner, NHMS 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 457, 464; and Markschies, Gottes Körper, 221–22. Others use the term theurgy to describe the use of nomina barbara; see Johann Maier, “Das Gefährdungsmotiv bei der Himmelsreise in der jüdischen Apokalyptik und ‘Gnosis,’ ” Kairos 5 (1963): 29; and Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, 104. The term also sometimes seems to be used interchangeably with magic; so Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 75–92; Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, 265; and Martha Himmelfarb, “Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses and the Hekhalot Literature,” HUCA 59 (1988): 86. For theurgy as simply referring to practices that elicit encounters with heavenly beings (whether on earth or in heaven), see Alexander, Mystical Texts, 126. Covering virtually all these themes is Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 156–99. 45. On the theurgic character of the Platonizing Sethian literature (and esp. Marsanes), see Birger A. Pearson, “Introduction: Marsanes,” in Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X, ed. Birger A. Pearson, NHS 15 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 249–50, followed widely, e.g., by John D. Turner, “Introduction: Marsanes,” in Marsanès, ed. and trans. WolfPeter Funk, Paul-Hubert Poirier, and John D. Turner, BCNH Textes 27 (Québec: Presses de l’université Laval; Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 20, 81, 231–34. The classic discussion of Iamblichaean theurgy remains Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1995); but see also Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity: The Invention of a Ritual Tradition, BERG 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2013), 95–135. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 519 You are great, Armēdōn! You are perfect, Epiphaneus! And in accordance with the activity that is yours, the second power and the Mentality, from which derives Blessedness: Autoēr, Bēritheus, Ērigenaōr, Ōrimenaios, Aramen, Alphleges, Ēlēlioupheus, Lalameus, Yetheus, Noētheus! You (sg.) are great. (Allogenes NHC XI 53.11–21) Speculation on the hidden mysteries of the Greek alphabet, meanwhile, is a central topic to the Platonizing Sethian apocalypse Marsanes, where different syllables are said to be useful in naming angels (and so in gaining power over them), as in a passage that remarks that “the rest are different: αβεβηβιβοβ, in order that you might [gather] them, and be distinguished from the angels; and effects shall be produced” (Marsanes NHC X 32*.1– 6).46 Read together with Zostrianos, it appears that, as in the hekhalot texts, some Sethian apocalypses presume that human beings can not only dwell among angelic beings but even wield power over them, by virtue of the height reached in ascent. As much seems to be presumed by a passage in the Untitled Treatise in the Bruce Codex about the prophets Marsanes and Nicotheus: The powers of all the great aeons have worshiped the power that is in Marsanes, saying, “who is this one that has seen these things before his very face, so that for his sake did he manifest in this way?” Nicotheus said about him: “he saw him, for he is that one.” He said, “the Father exists, transcending every perfect being.” He has revealed the triple-powered, perfect, invisible one. Every single perfect human being saw him; they spoke about him, glorifying him, each in his own way.47 As Howard Jackson has argued, the passage explains how the seers Marsanes and Nicotheus have obtained visions of the “Only-Begotten (God)” (monogenēs), been transmogrified, acquired power that angels worship (auouōšet … enci ndynamis), and engaged in “glorifying” (euti eoou) the deity, presumably by passing on their knowledge to the elect (in the apoca- 46. My translation of the Coptic text of Funk, Poirier, and Turner, Marsanès. 47. My translation of the Coptic text given in Carl Schmidt, ed., The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Treatise in the Bruce Codex, rev. and trans. Violet MacDermot, NHS 13 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 235.14–23. My translation and interpretation of the passage follow Howard Jackson, “The Seer Nikotheos and His Lost Apocalypse in the Light of Sethian Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi and the Apocalypse of Elchasai,” NovT 32 (1990): 261. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 520 Dylan M. Burns lypses bearing their names).48 This dynamic of ascent, vision, and transformation into a supra-angelic being also seems to be presupposed in the work Marsanes: For it is I who have [apprehended] that which truly exists, [whether] individually or [universally]. According to category, [I have learned] that they exist from the [beginning, in the] entire universe, as eternal: namely, everything that has come into being, whether without substance or by means of substance, those who are unbegotten and the divine aeons, together with the angels and the souls which are without guile, and the psychic [garments], which resemble [the] simple (things). (Marsanes NHC X 4.24–5.9)49 The perspective of the Sethian apocalypses about the possibility of obtaining supra-angelic status is mutually exclusive with the terms and very purpose devised by Iamblichus in his construction of a theurgic system of ritual. He believed that when human souls descend into bodies, they descend entirely into bodies—and so into matter; therefore, they require the aid of material objects imbued with divinity in order to escape matter.50 However, he emphasizes that the theurgist’s mastery of these objects does not mean that the theurgist has power over the divine, for human beings and their corporeal tools occupy a relatively diminished place in the hierarchy of heavenly beings. Rather, the proper arrangement of bodies in ritual permits an irruption of the divine that elevates the human soul, which never itself possesses power over angels, demons, or gods.51 Con48. “Marsanes” is, of course, the title of one of the Platonizing treatises from Nag Hammadi (NHC X 1), while an Apocalypse of Nicotheus was among the works Porphyry says the Christian gnostics circulated in Plotinus’s seminar (Vit. Plot. 16). 49. My translation of the Coptic text of Funk, Poirier, and Turner, Marsanès; see also Turner, “Introduction: Marsanes,” 139. 50. Plotinus and Porphyry, meanwhile, believed that the soul does not descend entirely into bodies but remains, on some level, in heaven, engaged in contemplation of the forms; therefore, contemplation alone will draw the descended part of the soul back up to the undescended soul, obviating any need for rituals dealing with bodies (see e.g., Iamblichus, An. 6–7 and commentary ad loc.; Damascius, Comm. Phaedr. 105; Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 61–69). 51. Iamblichus’s logic derives in large part from his debate with his elder contemporary Porphyry, who in his Letter to Anebo charged that rituals have no place in the philosopher’s life; rather, the presupposition of various rituals (such as intercessionary prayer, healing spells, divination, etc.) to have power over heavenly beings This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 521 fronted with a Marsanes or Zostrianos “worshiped” by “the powers,” Iamblichus would have decried these prophets as would-be sorcerers (goētes), not theurgists (theourgoi). He probably would have also said as much regarding the sages populating the hekhalot literature, although the corpus presents a diversity of explanations of what the relationship between human and divine beings looks like. Sometimes, the seer is capable of binding and controlling angels (a goetic claim, in Iamblichaean terms).52 Sar Torah emphasizes the necessity of divine intervention, for it is God who chooses to bestow complete knowledge of torah—a model much closer to the grace that Iamblichus insists is at work in theurgic operations.53 (On the other hand, the same macroform features angelic protestations to God’s choice to render humans superior to angels—exactly what would bother a Neoplatonist.)54 In any case, it is clear that the matter was approached by the writers and redactors of the hekhalot corpus without much (more likely: any) regard for the strictures of Neoplatonic theurgy and its rigid hierarchies. Driving a wedge between adjuration and ascent in the hekhalot texts does us no favors in helping us understand these works; nor does use of the term theurgy in a second-order sense to describe certain of these practices.55 Rather, as in the Sethian gnostic literature, the ability of a sage to is the provenance of the vulgar sorcerer (goēs); for recent discussions of Porphyry’s arguments, see Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity, 74–83. By agreeing with Porphyry on the presupposition that human beings cannot exert control over superhuman beings, Iamblichus thus changes the terms of the argument, successfully differentiating the work of the theourgos from the fallible conjurer (thus e.g., Myst. 2.11; see further Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity, 108–10). 52. For explicit remarks on the seer’s ostensible mastery of the bound angel, see, for example, Hekhalot Zutarti (Schäfer, Synopse, §§419–21), Maʿaseh Mekabah (Schäfer, Synopse, §573), Merkabah Rabbah (Schäfer, Synopse, §686), and Sar Panim (Schäfer, Synopse, §623/G1). 53. Schäfer, Synopse, §§282–91; and Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 49–53. 54. Schäfer, Synopse, §§291–94. 55. Cf., for instance, the wide use of the term by Idel in, e.g., Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 156–99. Tanaseanu-Döbler is not bothered in principle by use of the term theurgy in the study of kabbalah: “keeping the distinction between object level and meta-level clear, ‘theurgy’ can then be abstracted from its specific context of origin to be used as a scholarly tool as defined by the researcher” (Theurgy in Late Antiquity, 15). This is, of course, true for any term but begs the question whether usage of said term on the second-order “meta-level” is particularly clear—and in the case of theurgy in the context of Jewish mysticism, it is not. In any case, what is needed is an archaeol- This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 522 Dylan M. Burns control angels appears to come from the same place as his ability to join them and even gain elevated status over them in heaven. Both the Sethian gnostic and hekhalot corpora describe a diversity of practices and goals, but this diversity rests on a foundation constituted by an anthropological perspective about the potential of certain human beings to overcome celestial obstacles and obtain some kind of divine status (relative to angels, at least).56 The latter fact seems to have been more interesting than the former to those who produced and used this literature; maybe it should be for us, too. 5. Ritual Practice or Literary Cliché? More difficult is the question of whether Jewish mystical texts describe things people actually did—for example, singing hymns, going into trances, and having visions of God’s throne—or whether they were written and consumed as purely literary artifacts, preserving legends about rabbinic heroes for the sake of culture. Here, too, the Sethian gnostic material provides us fresh data, particularly in the liturgical text called the Three Steles of Seth, discussed above. Comprised of three hymns to three successively exalted deities, this work remarkably uses the first-person plural: Emoyniar, Nibareu, Kandephoros, Aphredon, Dephaneus, you who are Armedon to me, the giver of power, Thalanatheus, Antitheus! You who exist within yourself, and who are before yourself! And after you, nothing has come into activity. With what shall we bless you? We cannot—but we give thanks, since we are inferior to you, for you granted us (to see ogy of the use of the term to the field. This archaeology would likely lead us back into the world of early modern European Christian kabbalah (as Annette Yoshiko Reed has related to me, in conversation). In the twentieth-century scholarly context, it is also worth recalling Scholem’s friendship with the pioneer of the modern study of ancient theurgy, Hans Lewy, inaugurated in 1935, upon Scholem’s arrival in Jerusalem and founding, together with Lewy and the great Coptologist Hans J. Polotsky, of the pilegesh (“concubine”) group. See further Steven M. Wasserstrom, “Concubines and Puppies: Philologies of Esotericism in Jerusalem between the World Wars,” in Adaptations and Innovations: Studies on the Interaction between Jewish and Islamic Thought and Literature from the Early Middle Ages to the Late Twentieth Century; Dedicated to Professor Joel L. Kraemer, ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann and Jossi Stern, Collection de la Revue des Études juives (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 381–413. 56. See also the remarks of Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 115–17. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 523 you), as He who is superior, to glorify you to the extent that we are able. (Steles Seth NHC VII 126.9–23)57 Together with the occasional use of paraenetic language throughout the Sethian apocalypses, it is difficult for me to imagine that these texts did not arise from some kind of communal milieu that engaged in meditative and hymnic practices that, their authors believed, brought them into communion with the angels.58 This should not surprise us. Christian literature going back to the apostle Paul abounds with individuals and groups who likened themselves to angels or claimed to enjoy their company.59 The presence of literary allusions and clichés in the Sethian literature, then, does not preclude the reality of a lived practice behind them. Can we say the same of the hekhalot texts? The evidence should also give us pause when we consider Martha Himmelfarb’s famous postulate of a shift in early Jewish ascent literature, from the accounts of “passive” raptures we find in the apocalypses to the prescriptions for “active” practice on the part of the seers portrayed in the hekhalot works.60 We could apply no such binary to the Sethian apocalypses: on the one hand, the apocalyptic literary frame of these works presents revelation and rapture as passive events which simply happen to the seer, while on the other hand, it is most reasonable to suppose that these works were intended to be used, for the reasons outlined above. Moreover, the Sethian corpus furnishes the example of Marsanes, which seems to describe a variety of cultic practices, ranging from alphabet-mysticism to astrology and some sort of ritual involving carved objects; these passages are fragmentary, but their descriptions are probably not rhetorical.61 57. My translation of the Coptic text of Robinson and Goehring. 58. Paraenetic passages in the Platonizing Sethian texts include Marsanes NHC X 26*.12–17, 27*.21–23, 39*.18–41*.8; Zost. NHC VIII 130.16–132.5. 59. For a fine survey of these traditions, see Harold W. Attridge, “On Becoming an Angel: Rival Baptismal Theologies at Colossae,” in Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi, ed. Lukas Bormann, Kelly Del Tredici, and Angela Standhartinger, NovTSup 74 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 481–98. 60. Himmelfarb, “Heavenly Ascent”; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 113; and widely followed, e.g., by Michael D. Swartz, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Later Jewish Magic and Mysticism,” DSD 8 (2001): 190; cf. Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation, 15–16. 61. Marsanes NHC X 35*.1–6: “[… and the] waters, and the [images of the] This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 524 Dylan M. Burns Finally, we are presented with a slice of external evidence by Plotinus, who states that his gnostic opponents claim to be superior to the stellar deities, “because, they say, it is possible for them to exit (the cosmos) when they die, while this is not possible for those who eternally adorn heaven” (Enn. 2.9.18.36–37).62 This means that the gnostics known to Plotinus and Porphyry, readers of the ascent apocalypses Zostrianos and Allogenes, took seriously these texts’ descriptions of the makeup of the heavenly world to be experienced following the release of death.63 6. Qumran and the Unio Liturgica The problem of lived practice versus literary cliché brings us back to Qumran, where similar questions have been raised concerning language about angelification in the Dead Sea Scrolls. A tenuous consensus among scholars exists that the authors of the Sabbath Songs and other works extant at Qumran must have believed themselves to possess some kind wax shapes, [and] emerald images. As for the rest, I will teach you about them—this (treatise) is (about) [the] production [of] names.” My translation of the Coptic text of Funk, Poirier, and Turner, Marsanès. Even more lacunous is the discussion of astrology on pp. 41–42 of the manuscript. 62. All translations of Enn. 2.9 in the following notes are my own, from the text of Plotinus, Ennead II, ed. and trans. Arthur H. Armstrong, LCL 441 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966). 63. Rightly Michael A. Williams, “Did Plotinus’ ‘Friends’ Still Go to Church? Communal Rituals and Ascent Apocalypses,” in DeConick, Shaw, and Turner, Practicing Gnosis, 510. Williams notes further (504) that Plotinus’s remarks at Enn. 2.9.12.6–9 about the “one or two, who, with great difficulty and then just barely, are moved out of this world, and then, scarcely having recalled anything, state what they have seen” may refer to his (gnostic) friends who have obtained experiences of visionary ascent. As Gertz recognizes (Plotinus, 231–32), however, the context of 12.6–9 is Plotinus’s own polemic against gnostic tales of the imperfect demiurge, whose dysfunctional creative power ostensibly operates by virtue of its memory of an “image” of the heavenly realities (12.1–5). To illustrate his point, Plotinus alludes in 12.6–9 to the difficulty faced even by people who have achieved a vision of the forms (and thus overcome some of the forgetfulness that is concomitant with worldly birth) to explain their vision, much less create a model of it; how then, he asks, could this mere “material reflection” of a heavenly being—the gnostic demiurge—“not only remember these things and take a real conception of <that celestial> world, but also learn from whence it came?” (12.9–12). This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 525 of special status regarding the angels and their liturgy.64 I have argued elsewhere that the evidence from Nag Hammadi and Qumran is mutually illuminating, indicating that the readers of the Sethian works also likely regarded themselves as capable of dwelling with the angels.65 I will not belabor this point further here. However, it is worth commenting on the preference of some to contrast this unio liturgica—wherein humans celebrate God along with the angels—with the so-called unio mystica developed in Neoplatonism and favored in medieval Abrahamic religions, wherein humans claim experiences of union with God (angels aside).66 The Sethian evidence exhibits the limitations of this distinction, insofar as the Platonizing texts could be representative of either side of the binary. Allogenes harmonizes doxologies to be uttered along with the angels with discourses on negative theology whose very reading likely constituted a mystical practice—Lesemysterium.67 The third Stele of Seth begins by proclaiming the achievement of visionary union with the God of the Platonists: “We rejoice! We rejoice! We rejoice! We have seen! We have seen! We have seen that one 64. E.g., Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition, HSS 27 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 16–19; more recently, Alexander, Mystical Texts, 45–47, 54; Peter Schäfer, “Communion with the Angels: Qumran and the Origins of Jewish Mysticism,” in Wege mystischer Gotteserfahrung: Judentum, Christentum, und Islam, ed. Peter Schäfer and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 65 (München: Oldenbourg, 2006), 37–66, esp. 47, 56–59; and Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 132–46; cf. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam. 65. Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God, 130–32. See also Burns and Goff, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices. 66. Eliot Wolfson, “Mysticism and the Poetic-Liturgical Compositions from Qumran: A Response to Bilhah Nitzan,” JQR 85 (1994): 185–202, esp. 186–87; similarly, Swartz, “Dead Sea Scrolls,” 187–88; Alexander, Mystical Texts, 105; Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 165; Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 19–20, 349–50; Luttikhuizen, “Monism and Dualism,” 762–63, 772; and Turner, “Baptismal Vision,” 211. Cf. also the somewhat dissenting remarks of Markschies, Gottes Körper, 221–22. 67. Dylan Burns, “Apophatic Strategies in Allogenes (NHC XI,3),” HTR 103 (2010): 161–79. Cf. for instance the Lesemysterium of Gos. Truth (NHC I 3; XII 2) with its affinities to Neoplatonic and postmodern reading-strategies, as discussed by Fineman, “Gnosis and the Piety of Metaphor,” and Eliot Wolfson, “Inscribed in the Book of the Living: Gospel of Truth and Jewish Christology,” JJS 38 (2007): 234–71, esp. 253–55. The Gospel of Truth presents us with reading strategies for the unio mystica, but the element of unio liturgica, so emphatic in the Sethian texts under examination here, is subdued if not absent. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 526 Dylan M. Burns who is truly pre-existent, truly existing, for he is the first one, eternal” (Steles Seth NHC VII 124.17–21). Finally, in Zostrianos, the eponymous seer, having been transformed into an angel several times over and participated in numerous doxologies during his heavenly journey, is made privy to a revelation on the nature of the Godhead which shares a source with (or itself constitutes the source of) Marius Victorinus’s speculations in Adversus Arium, in turn strongly resembling the mystical theology of the anonymous Turin Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides.68 To be sure, Eliot Wolfson is right that accounts of angelification and descriptions of practices for achieving union with God are two different things, but our Sethian sources envisioned them as complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.69 What does this tell us?70 In any case, our Sethian evidence shows that interest in Jewish traditions about the unio liturgica persisted into late ancient gnostic circles and is probably the tip of the iceberg of such speculations, which must have also circulated among Jews in the first centuries of our era. Unio liturgica traditions prior to the hekhalot literature thus extended far beyond Qumran and constitute no isolated prologue in the history of Jewish mysticism but a long chapter, that continued to develop in a variety of Jewish and Christian contexts contexts throughout late antiquity. 68. Michel Tardieu, “Recherches sur la formation de l’Apocalypse de Zostrien et les sources de Marius Victorinus.” ResOr 9 (1996): 7–114. The most recent Forschungsbericht on this complex of evidence is John D. Turner, “The Anonymous Parmenides Commentary, Marius Victorinus, and the Sethian Platonizing Apocalypses: State of the Question,” in Gnose et Manichéisme: Entre les oasis d’Égypte et la route de la soie; Hommage à Jean-Daniel Dubois, ed. Anna van den Kerchove and L. Gabriela Soares Santoprete, BEHER 176 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 93–126. 69. One could even say the same of our ancient Neoplatonic evidence itself, since the possibility of union with the supreme principle was under debate (thus e.g., Iamblichus, An. 50, discussed in Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 114–15). 70. Luttikhuizen, “Monism and Dualism,” 772, thinks it tells us the following: the yordē merkavah “must nevertheless must have been aware of the ontologically infinite distance between God and his creature, whereas gnostics started from the conviction that the innermost core of their being … originated from, and was consubstantial with, the metacosmic unknowable God.” While I do not disagree with any of this per se, I wonder if it is the whole story. This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 527 7. Conclusion Reviving the question of the relationship between Gnosticism and Judaism and putting sources labeled gnostic and Jewish in conversation with one another are productive enterprises. We need not search for the origins of Gnosticism or Jewish mysticism in order to better diagnose the deep currents of Jewish thought, imagery, and terminology in certain gnostic sources and to, in turn, use these gnostic sources to help clarify some of the problems in our Jewish sources. Furthermore, abandoning the language of origins does not mean that we abandon the language of development. All of these traditions about angelification, ascent, and apocalypses were common lore in Hellenistic Judaism. Different groups drew on this heritage in different ways as they splintered and evolved in late antiquity, which explains the broad but significant parallels between diverse groups indebted to Jewish traditions, such as the authors of Sethian works—as detailed here—and other (anti-)baptismal movements, such as Manichaeism, Elchasaism, or Mandaeanism, which, like Sethianism, occupy the borderlines between and beyond Judaism and Christianity.71 As primary interpreters of this stratum, contemporary with the redaction of apocalyptic and rabbinic traditions, Sethian gnostic writings literature then merit a sizable place not only in histories of apocalyptic literature, but also of the development of Jewish mysticism. That is only a particular cut of extant gnostic literature relevant to this development: I have not discussed the Gospel of Philip’s treatment of the heavenly temple,72 the dimensions of the demiurge in the Bruce Codex,73 71. Wolfson rightly saw past the “Jewish-Christian divide” in his assessment of the social identity behind the author of the Gospel of Truth (“Inscribed in the Book of the Living,” 337). 72. See recently Matthew Twigg, “Esoteric Discourse and the Jerusalem Temple in the Gospel of Philip,” Aries 15 (2015): 47–80. 73. My translation of the Coptic given in Schmidt, Books of Jeu, 226.18–227.21: “The second place came into being, being called ‘demiurge,’ and ‘father,’ and ‘word,’ and ‘source,’ and ‘intellect,’ and ‘human being,’ and ‘eternal,’ and ‘infinite.’ This is the column, this is the overseer, and this is the father (of) the universe, and this is the one upon whose head the aeons are a crown, casting out rays of light. The outline of his face is the unknowability in the outer universes, which seek his face at all times, wishing to know it; for his word extends to them, and they desire to see him, and the light of his eyes penetrates the places of the outer fullness. And the word that comes from his mouth penetrates whatever is above and below, and the hair of his head is (equal This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. 528 Dylan M. Burns the methodological issues posed by the still-living category of “jüdische Gnosis,”74 the common milieu of late ancient magic so influential on both the Nag Hammadi and hekhalot corpora,75 or the principal issues in comparing gnostic and Jewish theophanies.76 There is much work to do. We live in exciting times. to) the number of the secret worlds, and the inner boundary of his face is something equal to the image of the aeons. The hairs of his face are (equal to) the number of the outer worlds. And the expanse of his hands is the manifestation of the cross. The expanse of the cross is the ennead which is on the right side and those on the left. The stem of the cross is the ungraspable human being. This is the father. This is the fountain that silently bubbles. It is this one who is sought after in every place. And this is the father from whom the monad came, like a luminous spark.” General parallels of the description of God’s body in the Untitled Treatise to the Shiʿur Qomah literature have been drawn already by David Brakke, “The Body as/at the Boundary of Gnosis,” JECS 17 (2009): 208–9. Markschies also recalls this treatise in his discussion of gnostic speculations about the divine body but focuses rather on the usage of the Platonizing terminology of depth (Gottes Körper, 239–40). 74. On which see Klaus Herrmann, “Jüdische Gnosis? Dualismus und ‘gnostische’ Motive in der frühen jüdischen Mystik,” in Zugänge zur Gnosis: Akten zur Tagung der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft vom 02.–05.01.2011 in Berlin-Spandau, ed. Christoph Markschies and J. van Oort, PtSt 12 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 43–90. 75. See e.g., Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, 264–89, but esp. Reimund Leicht, “Gnostic Myth in Jewish Garb: Niriyah (Norea), Noah’s Bride,” JJS 51 (2000): 133–40. 76. In gnostic texts, we almost never hear about angels or the heaven in general as made of fire (exceptions: Clement of Alexandria, Exc. 37–39; Nat. Rulers NHC II 95.9–10; Marsanes NHC X 64*.1–5, a passage too fragmentary to be of much use), while in our material from Qumran, the Jewish pseudepigrapha, and the hekhalot literature, fire is ubiquitous. Plotinus’s gnostic opponents claim that the demiurge first makes everything out of fire (Enn. 2.9.11.28–29, 12.12–21), a notion Plotinus finds absurd (see further Gertz, Plotinus, 232–33). In any case, it is striking how little interest gnostic apocalypses show in the fiery nature of the celestial world, given their welcoming attitude to other imagery common to apocalyptic literature, e.g., the crowns worn by heavenly beings, for which see Dylan M. Burns, “Sethian Crowns, Sethian Martyrs? Jewish Apocalyptic and Christian Martyrology in a Gnostic Literary Tradition,” Numen 61 (2014): 552–68. Gnostic literature appears to prefer a more abstract visual metaphor, light. Cf. the emphasis on visual (heretical) vs. audial, aniconic (positive) theophanic metaphors in our primary sources about the two powers controversy as discussed in Orlov, “Two Powers in Heaven”; cf. Wolfson, who recommends caution before the distinction (Through a Speculum That Shines, 49–50). This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2023 by SBL Press. The Importance of the Gnostic Apocalypses from Nag Hammadi 529 Bibliography Alexander, Philip S. “Comparing Merkavah Mysticism and Gnosticism: An Essay in Method.” JJS 35 (1984): 1–18. ———. Mystical Texts: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Related Manuscripts. LSTS 61. London: T&T Clark International, 2006. Arbel, Vita Daphna. 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