1980 34, 36-46; ( North-Holland PublishingCompany VigiliaeChristianae

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD (CG 11,5): A GNOSTIC PHYSICS

BY

PHEME PERKINS

The preface to the fifth tractate in codex II from Nag Hammadi, On the Origin of the World, claims to engage the reader in a cosmological discussion about the arrangement of chaos. Interpretations of this work usually assume that once the author has shown chaos to be "shadow" and not a primal reality, his cosmological interests end and gnostic mythologizing takes over. Alexander B6hlig, for example, treats the philosophical language as part of a mythological syncretism designed to present the plan of salvation that will destroy the world.' While some attempts have been made to incorporate Gnostic materials into the study of middle Platonism,2 Heinrich D6rrie's judgment that Gnostic cosmologies represent "the facile musings of mediocre minds," para-philosophical ramblings of the semi-erudite, reflects the usual view. Such judgments seem unsound, in part because they discount the intellectual interests of Gnostic speculation - thus manifesting the same distaste for their negative cosmology as in the rhetoric of Plotinus' refutatio, where the genre dictates such comments, - and because the Nag Hammadi texts are showing an increasing variety of philosophical allusions; and finally because myth played a larger role in hellenistic cosmological speculation than it is usually given credit for. For example, the Hesiod passage on chaos usually cited as the source for the opening reference to chaos in this treatise3 was allegorized by Zeno.4 Linking 'chaos' to the verb cheesthai, Zeno associates it with the element water; earth appears as itself; Tartarus is air; and eros, fire.5 Such identifications are presupposed in Orig. World. B6hlig, himself, observes that this text is more optimistic than cosmologies which hold strict domination of fate.6 Therefore, I suggest a commentary on these passages from the perspective of 2nd. AD physics. In this article I would like to take a brief look at four pieces of such a commentary on Orig. World: biological metaphor; the eros myth; providence, and the end of the cosmos. I am not concerned with tracing the mythological background

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to these various concepts - a task already well advanced by Tardieu7but rather with those unique features of the presentation in Orig. World which would strike a 2nd. cent. reader as indebted to cosmological speculation.
BIOLOGICALMETAPHOR

Biological metaphors play a striking role in many Gnostic cosmologies. Where we have other versions of the myth to compare with Orig. World, the latter has expanded the biological aspect. For example, the description of the origin of the arche of jealousy - itself an old cosmogonic motif8 has expanded the abortion metaphor derived from its Gnostic source:
Hypostasisof the Archons(CG II 94,13-15): ...and that shadow was cast aside to a place (meros)and its form became a work (ergon)in matter(hyle) like an abortion. Originof the World(CG II 99,8-20): ...that jealousy was like an abortion which had no spirit(pneuma)in it; it was like the shadows in a great waterysubstance(ousia).Then (tote) Wrath (chole)which came into being from the shadow, was cast to a part (meros)of chaos (chaos). Since that day, a waterysubstance(ousia) appearedand what was enclosed in it flowed out, appearing in chaos (chaos)as one who bears a child is deliveredof all her afterbirth(lit. excess,perisson). This is how matter(hyle), when it came from the shadow, was cast aside.

The watery substance is a standard feature of Stoic cosmogonies.9 The primal fire changes into such a substance before the separation into elements. Here it is equated with the afterbirth following an abortion, the cosmogonic principle, jealousy. Within that metaphorical context one is reminded that in medical writers ekballein (noudje ebol) is a term used for abortion.10 This biological analogy serves to refute a Stoic cosmogonic view by insisting that there is no spirit in the watery substance. Such a metaphor would not be extraneous to a debate with Stoicism. Stoic cosmogonies frequently used generative metaphors - though certainly not abortion! to describe the birth of the cosmos.ll For example, Zeno is reported to have said:
God, nous, fate and Zeus are one ... being by himself in the beginning,he transformedall substancethroughair into waterand, just as the spermis embracedin the

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seminalfluid,so also the spermatikos logos of the cosmos; this one remainsbehindin the moist substance,making matteradaptedto himself, looking toward the genesis of the next things. First he generatedthe four elements.12

Another fragment shows the same metaphor used to allegorize a story of Zeus and Hera:
Zeus, remembering Aphroditeand genesis, softened himself and, having quenched much of his light, transformed (it) into fieryair of less intensefire. Then, havinghad
intercourse with Hera ... he ejected the entire seminal fluid of the All ... Thus he

made the whole substancewet, one seed of the All; he himselfrunningthrough it, just like the forming and fashioningspirit in seminalfluid.13

The monist commitments of Stoicism introduce a certain peculiarity into the process in that everything is formed out of the seminal fluid; all Hera does is induce the spilling of the fluid. When we turn to Orig. World, we find similar generative processes. The archons of the lower world spill their seed to fashion terrestrialAdam (114,27-32). But since they have no pneuma, Adam is an abortion without spirit (115,5). The medical writers tell us that seminal fluid is a kind of froth of blood and seed.14Therefore, the other descriptions of generation from spilled blood may have a similar origin. Adam finally gains soul through the breath of Sophia (115,13) - an allusion to Genesis from the earlier versions of the myth.15It has its parallels in medical speculation as to how/when an embryo attained spirit.16 Though Aristotle had thought it innate, derived from the seed of the father, hellenistic medical writers suggested that it was acquired by respiration. Such parallels suggest that the cosmogonic traditions in Orig. World are not derived directly from Hesiod but stem from the type of philosophical account of the genesis of the cosmos that originated in Stoic circles. His anti-Stoic polemic is evident in the abortion, afterbirth, no pneuma metaphors used to describe generation.
EROS MYTH

Tardieu has given a detailed treatment of the mythological elements in this section of the treatise.7 I would simply like to supplement his analysis with some cosmological considerations. Zeno's allegory of Hesiod equated Eros with fire, an identification repeated in CG II 109,3f. The scholiasts claim that Zeno held that eros came into existence third - a claim that has caused Hesiod commentators no end of discussion.18That tradition may be followed here as Eros is the third type of being to come into existence in the lower world - Ialdabaoth the first; his offspring, the second.

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Tardieu has pointed out that the mode of Eros' generation parallels that of Adam.19 But, unlike Adam and other entities in the lower world, Eros is made from light (108,19). His departure from paradise leaves the darkness without nous (111,34), and Pistis must immediately create the heavens as a substitute (112,1 f). Thus Eros retains the ordering function attributed to him in earlier cosmogonies. Two passages from Plutarch may serve to illustrate the cosmological understanding of Eros. In the Dialogue on Love 764 B-D, he describes an Egyptian myth in which Eros is sun and Aphrodite, moon. His cosmological interpretation of that myth distinguishes sun and Eros. The sun as a sensible reality draws the mind downward to the sense world. Eros, on the other hand, leads it up to the intelligible world; like the logos, it may be said to preside over the noetic cosmos of ideas. A passage in On the Face in the Moon (926F-927A) links the beneficent activity of Eros with Providence (pronoia). He is arguing that a Stoic doctrine of natural place would lead the elements back to disorder and separation. In their initial state he says:
... they fledand avoidedeach other,pursuingpeculiar(idios)and arbitrary (authades) motions, since they were in the state in which everythingwithout God is, according to Plato20, that is, like bodieslackingmind and soul; until the desiredone (himerton) came to nature(physis)through(ek) Providence (pronoia),when affectionor Aphrodite or Eros came into being as Empedocles,Parmenidesand Hesiod say.

A Gnostic interpreter could easily read this account as equivalent to the birth of Eros from Pronoia, and the eventual ordering of the cosmos through the activity of providence which is described in Orig. World. An even more direct terminological link is provided by the designation of Eros as himertos. Tardieu has tied the beauty of Eros (109,8f) with Hesiod's assertion that Eros is most beautiful (kallistos).21 But Orig. Worldis closer to this tradition. Orig. World 109,3 tells us that the male name of Eros is himeros. Since Orig. Worldseems to employ a tradition of Eros cosmogony like that in the Plutarch passage, we might even take himertos as the original reading - a name which fits the reaction to Eros in the continuation of the narrative. Eros' birth from Pronoia as the result of her desire for what is above her leads to another cosmological interpretation, this one concerning Isis. Plutarch interpretsher as the receptacle of Tim 49A, 51A, whose dual nature links her both to the material world and to the world of ideas:
For Isis is the female principleof natureand the one who receivesall generation,so - and countlessnamesby the majorityshe is called by Plato nurseand all-receptive since, being turned to this or that by the logos, she receives shapes (morphe)and

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forms (idea).She has an innatelove (eros)for the first and most lordly of all things, whichis the same as the good, and she yearnsfor and pursuesthat; but the part that comes from evil, she flees and rejects,for she is place and matterfor both, but she always inclines towards the better one and offers it herself for reproductionand sowing of effusionsand likenessesin which she rejoicesand is glad that she is pregnant and teemingwith procreations. is the image(eikon)of substance For procreation (ousia) in matter(hyle) and the thing createdis the imitation(mimesis)of reality.22

Isis' dual nature, her productivity, and her longing for the good all parallel the situation of Pronoia (108,14-19). But Pronoia's desire cannot be satisfied. The Light-Adam shuns her much as Isis flees from what is is derived from evil. Plutarch's conclusion could not apply to the world of Pronoia: what is created is not - at least in any positive and direct sense - an image of reality. The influence of Isis aretalogy on the hymn of Eve at 114,7-15 is further evidence that such appropriations of the Isis figure were common in Gnostic circles.23 Tardieu suggests that the Eve of the hymn is an anti-type of Pronoia in this passage.24We would trace the resemblance to two independent and different appropriations of the Isis figure.
PROVIDENCE

Careful examination of the text shows that Orig. World has systematized the picture of Pronoia as providence along very specific lines. We have already seen that Plutarch used Eros-Pronoia as part of an antiStoic argument to prove that the cosmos is ordered by a transcendent intelligence. The corresponding Pronoia in Orig. Worldis the second in a three-level scheme reflectedin the work. The highest two cosmic principles are designated Pronoia and are beneficent; the lowest, Fate, is not. The section of Plutarch's On the Moon from which we quoted makes a sharp distinction between Fate, the unchanging order of nature, and Providence. Through Providence, God can place an earthly body, the moon, in a place suited to a fiery one. Thus Providence is stronger than Fate. This twofold distinction is typical of middle Platonic polemic against Stoic doctrines of Fate, which were perceived as rigidly deterministic.25 Orig. World agrees with the providence/fate division of this tradition. But Pronoia itself is divided. The highest providence is that of Pistis Sophia. Unknown to the archons, it directs all events so that humanity will eventually come to possess gnosis:
This all happenedaccordingto the Providenceof Pistis so that man will show forth his form and condemnthem throughtheirfashioning(plasma),and their shape was a containerof light.26

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This motif seems to be the author's translation of the expression "the will of the Father" found in Hyp. Arch.27The earlier expression is preserved in Orig. World 110,9 where we are told that the tree of life "appeared through the will of God." Next in order is the Providence associated with the Archigenetor (101, 26-28), which we have already seen in the Eros story. At the end of the episode, this Pronoia is placed in heaven and through the lower Sophia orders the heavens (111,32-112,10). The beneficent activity of this providence shows herself in the creation of Adam:
All this happenedaccordingto the providence(pronoia)of the archigenetor so that the first mother producedin herself every mixed seed (sperma),which was joined of the cosmos (cosmos) with its patterns (harmozein)to the Fate (heimarmene) A plan (oikonomia) came into being con(schema)and righteousness(dikaiosune). cerningEve so that the fashioning(plasma)of the powers (exousia)would become a containerof light.28

This passage reflects another distinction common in middle Platonism: some parts of man's being - the body, lower soul - are subject to the law of Fate; here "joined to the Fate of the cosmos." The rational part of the soul is above Fate so that free will can operate as an independent cause.29 Orig. Worldalso understands Fate as natural law which binds all that is under it. Thus Fate is said to prevent the archons from shortening Adam's time (121,16). But as the natural law of this world Fate can be said to collaborate with the archons, who have by now been demoted to the status of earthly demons. As a result, the cosmos is in disorder and ignorance (123,12-16). We are told that this Fate with its Providence will be destroyed along with the archons (125,27-32). Thus the Gnostic cosmos is subject to three levels of providential ordering. This schema has been introduced into earlier mythological material by the author of the treatise. But he has not invented the threefold division of providence. This doctrine is found in a specific middle Platonic circle. It makes its appearance in a treatise On Fate attributed to Plutarch. It is summarized by Apuleius and repeated in Calcidius and Nemesius. Pseudo-Plutarch may be responsible for the origin of the view, which he is careful to derive from exegesis of the Timaeus.Dillon suggests that he was influencedby Plutarch's discussion of the three fates in On the Moon 945C.30The relevant argument of this terse and difficult treatise runs as follows: A. Fate and Providence cannot be equated - contrary to the Stoic view. Although everything that happens according to Fate is also subject to Providence, some things happen according to Providence without being subject to Fate.

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B. The Timaeussupports a doctrine of three levels of Providence. (1) The highest, primary providence is the intellection or will of the primary God. It is beneficent toward all things. In confirmity with his will, all things are primordially arranged as is best and most excellent (Tim. 29D-30A). This orderingseems to correspond to the middle Platonic logos ordering the intelligible realm and the celestial gods. (2) A secondary providence is assigned the gods who move the heavens and see that all mortal things come into being in an orderly manner. According to Tim. 42D-E, these "younger gods" were entrusted with the creation of mortal beings so that God would not be responsible for the evils that would occur. It is closely associated with Fate and even said to be begotten along with it (574B). (3) Finally, tertiary providence, said to be contained in Fate, is the providence which belongs to the demons stationed in the terrestrial regions and who oversee individual human affairs. These three stages correspond to the levels we have observed in Orig. World. Apuleius' account (De Plat. i. 12) is phrased in less abstract terms than Ps.-Plutarch but depends upon the same sequence of Timaeus texts. (1) Primaryprovidence belongs to the supremeGod who both organized the heavenly gods and who created human beings and law. (2) The other gods are assigned the zodiac and the regular movements of the visible heavens. (3) Finally, the demons act as intermediariesbetween men and the gods. Dillon comments that Apuleius' account seems an amateur's summary of a doctrine he does not quite understand.31 However, he does show more concern to defend the harmonious interrelations of the three levels than Ps.-Plutarch. He also seems primarily interested in the doctrine as an account of the activities of three levels of divine beings. The same concurrence of three levels of providence with the beings responsible for exercising it occurs in Orig. World. To summarize, we may compare Orig. World with Ps.-Plutarch. The first providence, there associated with the creator, here belongs to Pistis, who is the one responsible for the existence of this cosmos. (The highest God is not involved - perhaps one of the reasons that led the author to revise the earlier formulations about the will of the Father?) The second, there tied to the planetary gods, is here associated with the Archigenetor, the source of those gods.32 The secondary providence in both instances seems to be primarily an image of the beneficent primary providence. The

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lowest providence in Ps.-Plutarch is described as subject to Fate and administered by the demons. Orig. World portrays it as Fate with its providence.
THE END OF THE AGE

The doctrine of a threefold providence is not the only link between Ps.-Plutarch and Orig. World. In Orig. World, the lower world and its fate will finally be annihilated (125,23-127,17). Ps.-Plutarch has adopted the concept of a cyclic renewal of the cosmos. He interprets the "great year" of Tim. 39D using Stoic language as a reference to cyclic repetition of everything (569A-C). He is thus committed to the Stoic theory of an infinite series of worlds. Orig. Worldmust defend the eschatological view that the lower world will be destroyed (cf. Hyp. Arch. 97,5-21) against confusion with such a cyclic apokatastasis. Like Ps.-Plutarch, he picks up a certain amount of Stoic terminology not paralelled in earlier accounts. At 126,18f, a female figure identified as the one who created the first reality, i.e. Pistis Sophia, is said to lay aside the "wise fire of insight" and to take on wrath to destroy the powers. Van Unnik has shown that the expression "wise fire" was introduced by second-century Stoics to distinguish fire as all-pervasive logos from fire as an element.33If we pursue the Stoic connection, we are reminded that in Stoic cosmology the "wise fire" is responsible for providence and is that into which the whole returns at the end of a cycle. Here, once the Gnostics have been revealed, Pistis can lay aside the "wise fire" or beneficent providence by which her creation has been governed and can destroy it. Without ordering providence, the Archigenetor will turn against his creation and ultimately himself.34Finally we are told that the entire lower world will be overcome by light and become "like what has never been" (126,35-127,5). Thus the dissolution of the cosmos does more than return everything to the primordial element from which it came; fire, darkness and its derivations are completely destroyed. We are told that the deficiency is extinguished at its root (127,3). Remembering that Orig. World promised to reveal the structure of chaos and its root, we now see the logic of the treatise. The The process will not inevitably start again because neither chaos, nor "wise fire," nor providence are eternal. Light is not a material element. Platonists from Antiochus of Ascalon on had argued that the world was eternal because there was nothing stronger than the beneficial ordering of providence to destroy it.35But this cosmos, the lower world of dark-

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ness and shadow, has no such positive relationship to the transcendent divine world. When Pistis lays aside her fire, the lower world returns to its root: "that which has never been."
CONCLUSION

Our author, then, has taken gnostic mythological traditions and cast them into a coherent cosmological account which uses the philosophical terminology of the time to defend his view against popular middle Platonic and Stoic alternatives. His presentation of Gnostic myths shows him to have been familiar with the cosmological use of biological imagery and Stoic and middle Platonic interpretation of Hesiod, the pre-Socratics, Isis mythology and the Timaeus.The limited attestation of the three-providence doctrine allows us to draw an even more precise picture of the author. Its other popularizer, Apuleius, is known to have studied in Athens around A.D. 150.36He reports rules similar to those known to have existed in the school of Taurus (fl. 105-165), a follower of Plutarch's. Apuleius' praise of Plutarch's nephew Sextus, tutor to Marcus Aurelius, leads Dillon to propose that Sextus may have returnedto Athens to teach in the 150's and have been another of Apuleius' teachers.37Finally, one may include the author of Ps.-Plutarch On Fate. Like Orig. World, Apuleius presents the doctrine of three levels of providence, Timaeus exegesis, Isis mythology and, in novelistic form, an Eros story, whose parallels to Orig. World have been extensively exploited by Tardieu.38 But there is more. Apuleius' teacher, Taurus, prided himself on medical knowledge and took an interest in Aristotelean scientific speculation.39In his Apologia (chs. 36-38), Apuleius digresses to show off his own knowledge of Aristotle. Further, his interpretation of Tim. 77C-D makes a slight, but significant alteration of the text: instead of discussing the sexual desires of male and female, he describes the role of pulse in the genital veins in causing the ejaculation of sperm. This shift shows familiarity with the hellenistic medical discussion of pulse in the body.40 Since all Apuleius' known teachers were followers of Plutarch, we may even suggest that the cosmological allegorization of Isis and Hesiod (Eros) myths had probably carried on into the discussions of this circle in Athens. We thus conclude that the peculiarities of the cosmological interpretation in Orig. Worldreflect the teaching of this particular group at Athens around A.D. 150. We may reasonably assume that our author studied philosophy at Athens at that time. In the treatise before us, he has applied

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the teaching of that school to the exposition of Gnostic cosmological traditions such as we find in Hyp. Arch. and Ap. John and the SethianOphites. His methods of "footnoting" and mythological documentation also remind us of the concern with arcane lore in Plutarch and Apuleius. Orig. World may have been composed sometime around A.D. 175. It demonstrates that in some quarters, at least, Gnostics were not merely spinning out cobwebs of fantastic mythology but were able to engage in the same type of reflection on their own tradition that characterizedother thinkers in the second century A.D. In addition to controverting the Platonic doctrine of the eternity of the physical cosmos and the Stoic doctrine of cosmological cycles, the adaptation of the doctrine of three levels of providence ameliorates the severity of fate and demonic domination in the lower world. In short, the educated Gnostic reader finds his tradition presented in such a way as to be compatible with current cosmological discussion. Orig. World is not the semi-erudite mythologizing of popular philosophical language but the consistent use of cosmological principles to illuminate and "rationalize" the Gnostic mythological cosmos.
NOTES

1 A.Bohlig and P.Labib, Die Koptisch-Gnostische Schriftohne Titel aus Codex II von Nag Hammadi(Berlin 1962)34. An English translationof all the Nag Hammadi tractatesis availablein J. M. Robinson ed. The Nag Hammadi Library(San Francisco 1977). 2 in C.J. de Vogel, On the NeoplaMost notably the discussionof Valentinianism tonic Characterof Platonism and the Platonic Characterof Neoplatonism, Mind 62 der Geistmetaphysik (1953) 43-64; H.J.Kramer, Der Ursprung (Amsterdam1964)and J.Dillon, The MiddlePlatonists(London 1977) 384-88. On hellenisticcosmology see H.Dorrie, Divers Aspects de la Cosmologie de 70 av. J.-C. a 20 ap. J.-C., RTP 22 (1972) 403. 3 Hesiod, Theog.116-120, cited by B6hlig, Schrift, 19. On the role of myth in cosmologies see S. Sambursky, Physical Worldof the Greeks(New York 1962) 215. 4 SVFI,103f. 5 See the discussionof this passagein D.E. Hahn, The Originsof Stoic Cosmology (Columbus1977) 79. 6 Schrift,35. 7 M.Tardieu, TroisMythes Gnostiques (Paris 1974). 8 29E commentsthat the authorof the universeis good and without Plato Timaeus jealousy and desiresall to be like itself. F. M. Cornford,Plato's Cosmology (New York n.d.) 34 suggests that Plato is opposing the view of older mythologiesthat the gods werejealous of humanity. 9 SVFI 102; II 579-81, 590. Hahn, Origins, 57, observes that all one would see prior to the separationof the elementswould be a mass of water. 10 J. du Mortie, Le vocabulairemedical d'Eschyle et les ecrits hippocratiques (Paris 1935)25f.

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11 Hahn, Origins,29-90. H. thinks the Stoics used medical traditions to renew cosmogonic metaphorsthat had been droppedin Plato and Aristotle. 12 SVFI, 102f = D.L. vii, 136. 13 SVF II, 622

See Hahn, Origins, 69. See Ap. John BG 51,12-52,1; Hyp. Arch. 88,12-16. See Hahn, Origins, 162. 17 Tardieu, Trois Mythes, 141-214. 18 See M.L.West, Hesiod: Theogony (New York-Oxford Origins, 89 n. 61. 19 Trois Mythes, 154.
14

15 16

1966) 193f.; Hahn,

20

of that passage see Plutarch, Referringto Tim. 53B. For other interpretations

De Def. Or. 430DE; De An. Proc. 1016DF. 21 Trois Mythes, 159. He mentions the Plutarch passage, 153 n. 61. 22 De Is. Osir. 372EF. 23 See Bohlig, Schrift, 74; Tardieu, Trois Mythes, 107ff. 24 Trois Mythes, 143 n. 15.
25 See the commentson Stoic doctrinein Cicero,De Div. 1,125-128and the parody of that view of fate in Lucian,Dial. Mort.30. 26 CG II 113,4-10; cp.102,4-7,27ff. 27 CG II 87,22f; 88,1f; 88,88,34-89,1; 96,11f. 28 CG I11117, 18-24. 29 See the discussion in Cicero, De Fato 19; Topica 59; and Plotinus, Enn. 11,4. 30 Middle Platonists, 214f; 322. 31 Ibid., 326. 32 Bohlig, Schrift, 55 note to 153,32f. 33 W.C. Van Unnik, The 'Wise Fire' in a Gnostic EschatologicalVision, Kyriakon Fest. JohannesQuasten(Munster1970)vol. I, 287. 34 Perhapsthe referenceto the crashingand burningof the heavens(126,29f.) was seen as a reflectionof the Stoic conflagration. 35 See Cicero, Acad. Post. 27ff. and the discussion in Dillon, Middle Platonists, 82f; 243. 36 37

38
39 40

Dillon, Middle Platonists, 308 f. Ibid., 338. Trois Mythes, 146-48. Dillon, Middle Platonists, 238. See Hahn, Origins, 172.

ChestnutHill, Ma. 02167, Boston College, Dept. of Theology