The Gnostic Gospels (14 page)

when the Holy one … first created mankind, he created him with two faces, two sets of genitals, four arms and legs, back to back. Then he split Adam in two, and made two backs, one on each side.
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Some gnostics adopted this idea, teaching that Genesis 1:26–27 narrates an androgynous creation. Marcus (whose prayer to the Mother is given above) not only concludes from this account that God is dyadic (“Let
us
make humanity”) but also that “humanity, which was formed according to the image and likeness of God (Father and Mother) was masculo-feminine.”
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His contemporary, the gnostic Theodotus (c. 160), explains that the
saying “according to the image of God he made them, male and female he made them,” means that “the male and female elements together constitute the finest production of the Mother, Wisdom.”
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Gnostic sources which describe God as a dyad whose nature includes both masculine and feminine elements often give a similar description of human nature.

Yet all the sources cited so far—secret gospels, revelations, mystical teachings—are among those not included in the select list that constitutes the New Testament collection. Every one of the secret texts which gnostic groups revered was omitted from the canonical collection, and branded as heretical by those who called themselves orthodox Christians. By the time the process of sorting the various writings ended—probably as late as the year 200—virtually all the feminine imagery for God had disappeared from orthodox Christian tradition.

What is the reason for this total rejection? The gnostics themselves asked this question of their orthodox opponents and pondered it among themselves. Some concluded that the God of Israel himself initiated the polemics which his followers carried out in his name. For, they argued, this creator was a derivative, merely instrumental power whom the Mother had created to administer the universe, but his own self-conception was far more grandiose. They say that he believed that he had made everything by himself, but that, in reality, he had created the world because Wisdom, his Mother, “infused him with energy” and implanted into him her own ideas. But he was foolish, and acted unconsciously, unaware that the ideas he used came from her; “he was even ignorant of his own Mother.”
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Followers of Valentinus suggested that the Mother Herself had encouraged the God of Israel to think that he was acting autonomously, but, as they explain, “It was because he was foolish and ignorant of his Mother that he said, ‘I am God; there is none beside me.’ ”
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According to another account, the creator caused his Mother to grieve by creating inferior beings, so she left him alone and withdrew into the upper regions of the heavens. “Since she had departed, he imagined that he was the only being in existence;
and therefore he declared, ‘I am a jealous God, and besides me there is no one.’ ”
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Others agree in attributing to him this more sinister motive—jealousy. According to the
Secret Book of John
:

 … he said …, “I am a jealous God, and there is no other God beside me.” But by announcing this he indicated to the angels … that another God does exist; for if there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous? … Then the mother began to be distressed.
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Others declared that his Mother refused to tolerate such presumption:

[The creator], becoming arrogant in spirit, boasted himself over all those things that were below him, and exclaimed, “I am father, and God, and above me there is no one.” But his mother, hearing him speak thus, cried out against him, “Do not lie, Ialdabaoth …”
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Often, in these gnostic texts, the creator is castigated for his arrogance—nearly always by a superior feminine power. According to the
Hypostasis of the Archons
, discovered at Nag Hammadi, both the mother and her daughter objected when

he became arrogant, saying, “It is I who am God, and there is no other apart from me.” … And a voice came forth from above the realm of absolute power, saying, “You are wrong, Samael” [which means, “god of the blind”]. And he said, “If any other thing exists before me, let it appear to me!” And immediately, Sophia (“Wisdom”) stretched forth her finger, and introduced light into matter, and she followed it down into the region of Chaos.… And he again said to his offspring, “It is I who am the God of All.” And Life, the daughter of Wisdom, cried out; she said to him, “You are wrong, Saklas!”
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The gnostic teacher Justinus describes the Lord’s shock, terror, and anxiety “when he discovered that he was not the God of the universe.” Gradually his shock gave way to wonder, and
finally he came to welcome what Wisdom had taught him. The teacher concludes: “This is the meaning of the saying, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.’ ”
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Yet all of these are mythical explanations. Can we find any actual, historical reasons why these gnostic writings were suppressed? This raises a much larger question: By what means, and for what reasons, did certain ideas come to be classified as heretical, and others as orthodox, by the beginning of the third century? We may find one clue to the answer if we ask whether gnostic Christians derive any practical, social consequences from their conception of God—and of humanity—in terms that included the feminine element. Here, clearly, the answer is
yes.

Bishop Irenaeus notes with dismay that women especially are attracted to heretical groups. “Even in our own district of the Rhône valley,” he admits, the gnostic teacher Marcus had attracted “many foolish women” from his own congregation, including the wife of one of Irenaeus’ own deacons.
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Professing himself to be at a loss to account for the attraction that Marcus’ group held, he offers only one explanation: that Marcus himself was a diabolically clever seducer, a magician who compounded special aphrodisiacs to “deceive, victimize, and defile” his prey. Whether his accusations have any factual basis no one knows. But when he describes Marcus’ techniques of seduction, Irenaeus indicates that he is speaking metaphorically. For, he says, Marcus “addresses them in such seductive words” as his prayers to Grace, “She who is before all things,”
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and to Wisdom and Silence, the feminine element of the divine being. Second, he says, Marcus seduced women “by telling them to prophesy”
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—which they were strictly forbidden to do in the orthodox church. When he initiated a woman, Marcus concluded the initiation prayer with the words “Behold, Grace has come upon you; open your mouth, and prophesy.”
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Then, as the bishop indignantly describes it, Marcus’ “deluded victim … impudently utters some nonsense,” and “henceforth considers herself to be a prophet!” Worst of all, from Irenaeus’ viewpoint, Marcus invited
women to act as priests in celebrating the eucharist with him: he “hands the cups to women”
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to offer up the eucharistic prayer, and to pronounce the words of consecration.

Tertullian expresses similar outrage at such acts of gnostic Christians:

These heretical women—how audacious they are! They have no modesty; they are bold enough to teach, to engage in argument, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, and, it may be, even to baptize!
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Tertullian directed another attack against “that viper”
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—a woman teacher who led a congregation in North Africa. He himself agreed with what he called the “precepts of ecclesiastical discipline concerning women,” which specified:

It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer [the eucharist], nor to claim for herself a share in any
masculine
function—not to mention any priestly office.
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One of Tertullian’s prime targets, the heretic Marcion, had, in fact, scandalized his orthodox contemporaries by appointing women on an equal basis with men as priests and bishops. The gnostic teacher Marcellina traveled to Rome to represent the Carpocratian group,
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which claimed to have received secret teaching from Mary, Salome, and Martha. The Montanists, a radical prophetic circle, honored two women, Prisca and Maximilla, as founders of the movement.

Our evidence, then, clearly indicates a correlation between religious theory and social practice.
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Among such gnostic groups as the Valentinians, women were considered equal to men; some were revered as prophets; others acted as teachers, traveling evangelists, healers, priests, perhaps even bishops. This general observation is not, however, universally applicable. At least three heretical circles that retained a masculine image of God included women who took positions of leadership—the Marcionites, the Montanists, and the Carpocratians. But from the
year 200, we have no evidence for women taking prophetic, priestly, and episcopal roles among orthodox churches.

This is an extraordinary development, considering that in its earliest years the Christian movement showed a remarkable openness toward women. Jesus himself violated Jewish convention by talking openly with women, and he included them among his companions. Even the gospel of Luke in the New Testament tells his reply when Martha, his hostess, complains to him that she is doing housework alone while her sister Mary sits listening to him: “Do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her, then, to help me.” But instead of supporting her, Jesus chides Martha for taking upon herself so many anxieties, declaring that “one thing is needful: Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”
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Some ten to twenty years after Jesus’ death, certain women held positions of leadership in local Christian groups; women acted as prophets, teachers, and evangelists. Professor Wayne Meeks suggests that, at Christian initiation, the person presiding ritually announced that “in Christ … there is neither male nor female.”
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Paul quotes this saying, and endorses the work of women he recognizes as deacons and fellow workers; he even greets one, apparently, as an outstanding apostle, senior to himself in the movement.
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Yet Paul also expresses ambivalence concerning the practical implications of human equality. Discussing the public activity of women in the churches, he argues from his own—traditionally Jewish—conception of a monistic, masculine God for a divinely ordained hierarchy of social subordination: as God has authority over Christ, he declares, citing Genesis 2–3, so man has authority over woman:

 … a man … is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.)
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While Paul acknowledged women as his equals “in Christ,” and allowed for them a wider range of activity than did traditional
Jewish congregations, he could not bring himself to advocate their equality in social and political terms. Such ambivalence opened the way for the statements found in I Corinthians 14, 34 f., whether written by Paul or inserted by someone else: “…  the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but they should be subordinate … it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”

Such contradictory attitudes toward women reflect a time of social transition, as well as the diversity of cultural influences on churches scattered throughout the known world.
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In Greece and Asia Minor, women participated with men in religious cults, especially the cults of the Great Mother and of the Egyptian goddess Isis.
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While the leading roles were reserved for men, women took part in the services and professions. Some women took up education, the arts, and professions such as medicine. In Egypt, women had attained, by the first century
A.D
., a relatively advanced state of emancipation, socially, politically, and legally. In Rome, forms of education had changed, around 200
B.C
., to offer to some children from the aristocracy the same curriculum for girls as for boys. Two hundred years later, at the beginning of the Christian era, the archaic, patriarchal forms of Roman marriage were increasingly giving way to a new legal form in which the man and woman bound themselves to each other with voluntary and mutual vows. The French scholar Jérôme Carcopino, in a discussion entitled “Feminism and Demoralization,” explains that by the second century
A.D.
, upper-class women often insisted upon “living their own life.”
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Male satirists complained of their aggressiveness in discussions of literature, mathematics, and philosophy, and ridiculed their enthusiasm for writing poems, plays, and music.
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Under the Empire,

women were everywhere involved in business, social life, such as theaters, sports events, concerts, parties, travelling—with or without their husbands. They took part in a whole range of athletics, even bore arms and went to battle …
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