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According to the Gnostic doctrine of God, there is the “unknown God” beyond all that is visible or sensible, incorporating Pleroma (“Fullness”) of angels and other heavenly beings. The world was not created by this Highest God, the Father, but by a subordinate being, the Demiurge (Yaldabaoth), who was identified with the Biblical God. Because the Demiurge was the misbegotten of Sophia, created without her heavenly consort, the material world itself was equated with its Creator, the Demiurge, and therefore construed as evil. However, the Father is not indifferent towards the well-being of men: he is concerned with redeeming the men’s souls, the divine sparks, which are scattered around, and by this means, restoring the broken androgynous unity of the Pleroma.
The tree image employed by Mesopotamians and by the Jewish mystics, is not foreign to the Gnostics either. For instance, in the Tripartite Tractate (NHC 1.5 51.15-28) God, the Father, or the primal beginning, being the Monad, is described using the image of the “root”; he is described as “root of the all”, which brings forth trees, branches and fruits, by which the Pleroma is meant. The Father is therefore comparable to Aššur or to the Kabbalistic En Sof.
Like in Jewish mysticism, the Gnostic is an image of God. Furthermore, through his relationship with the Father, the highest God, the earthly man is superior to the Creator, the Demiurge. According to the “doctrine of the God ‘Man’” (Urmensch), the earthly man is a copy of the divine pattern, which likewise often bears the name “man.” The complicated pattern can be reduced to two basic types: (1) the Highest Being himself is the First or the Primal Man (Anthropos), whose appearance gives the creator powers a pattern or model for the creation of the earthly (and therefore second) man; (2) the Highest God produces first of all a heavenly man of like nature (frequently called the “Son of Man”), who is then the direct prototype of the earthly (and therefore third) man. In the second version, there is often also the idea that the (second) heavenly primal man allows himself to be seduced into taking up residence in the earthly (bodily) man; he is then regarded as an “inner man” and at the same time represents the divine substance in man, the pneuma. This view is especially important in Manicheism, where the Son of God or Man falls into darkness and is held there captive, and can return only after leaving some part of his being behind. This part then forms the soul of light, i.e., pneuma, scattered throughout the world in the bodies of men. The Son of Man must return to the earth to gather together the rest of his nature in order to restore his original totality and thus redeem himself. Furthermore, by collecting the parts left behind, he redeems the humans as well.
Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Tripartite Tractate, NHC 1.5 51.15-28
Bibliography
| Lapinkivi 2004, 167-168 | Lapinkivi, Pirjo. The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence. State Archives of Assyria Studies 15. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Coprus Project 2004. |
Pirjo Lapinkivi
URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001379.php
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