recovering adam's lost glory: nag hammadi codex ii in its egyptian monastic environment

Mohr Siebeck

Jewish and Christian Cosmogony in Late Antiquity

Edited by

Lance Jenott and Sarit Kattan Gribetz

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlages

Lance Jenott, born 1980, is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo. He studied History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Washington (Seattle) and Princeton University, and holds a PhD in the Religions of Late Antiquity from Princeton University.

Sarit Kattan Gribetz, born 1984, is a post-doctoral fellow at the Jewish Theological Semi-nary and Harvard University. She studied Religion, Jewish Studies, and Classics at Prince-ton University, where she earned an AB and PhD in the Religions of Late Antiquity.

ISBN 978-3-16-151993-2ISSN 0721-8753 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)

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Table of Contents

Preface ...................................................................................................... V Table of Contents ................................................................................... VII Abbreviations .......................................................................................... IX

LANCE JENOTT AND SARIT KATTAN GRIBETZ

In the Beginning: Cosmogony in Late Antiquity ....................................... 1

Part I: Scripture and Interpretation

JAMES C. VANDERKAM

Made to Order: Creation in Jubilees ....................................................... 23

YAIR FURSTENBERG

The Rabbinic Ban on Ma’aseh Bereshit: Sources, Contexts and Concerns .......................................................................................... 39

GEOFFREY S. SMITH

Constructing a Christian Universe: Mythological Exegesisof Ben Sira 24 and John’s Prologue in the Gospel of Truth .................... 64

Part II: Theology and Anthropology

MAREN R. NIEHOFF

The Emergence of Monotheistic Creation Theology in Hellenistic Judaism ................................................................................. 85

TUOMAS RASIMUS

The Archangel Michael in Ophite Creation Mythology ........................ 107

GWYNN KESSLER

Constant Creation: (Pro)creation in Palestinian Rabbinic Midrashim ... 126


Table of Contents

CHRISTIAN WILDBERG

Corpus Hermeticum, Tractate III: The Genesis of a Genesis ................ 139

Part III: Pedagogy and Ethics

RICHARD A. LAYTON

Moses the Pedagogue: Procopius, Philo, and Didymus on the Pedagogy of the Creation Account ........................................................................ 167

ALEXANDER KOCAR

“Humanity came to be according to three essential types”: Anthropogony and Ethical Responsibility in the Tripartite Tractate .... 193

LANCE JENOTT

Recovering Adam’s Lost Glory: Nag Hammadi Codex II in its Egyptian Monastic Environment .......................................................................... 222

Part IV: Space and Ritual

NAOMI KOLTUN-FROMM

Rock Over Water: Pre-Historic Rocks and Primordial Waters from Creation to Salvation in Jerusalem ........................................................ 239

MIKA AHUVIA

Darkness Upon the Abyss: Depicting Cosmogony in Late Antiquity .... 255

OPHIR MÜNZ MANOR

The Ritualization of Creation in Jewish and Christian Liturgical Texts from Late Antiquity .............................................................................. 271

Bibliography ......................................................................................... 287

Contributors .......................................................................................... 311 Index of References ............................................................................... 313 Index of Subjects ................................................................................... 328


Recovering Adam’s Lost Glory: Nag Hammadi Codex II in its Egyptian Monastic Environment

LANCE JENOTT1

The men of the desert were thought capable of recovering, in the hushed silence of that

dead landscape, a touch of the unimaginable glory of Adam’s first state. – Peter Brown2

The study of the Nag Hammadi Codices as products of Coptic Christianity rather than Gnosticism is still in its infancy. Since the thirteen books were discovered in 1945, the vast majority of studies have focused on the theol-ogy of individual texts and what scholars believe to have been the intellec-tual and social environments of their lost Greek originals hypothetically dated to the second and third centuries. However, even shortly after the books were discovered, scholars raised questions about who owned the texts as we discovered them – in codices dating to the fourth or even fifth century, in upper Egypt, and in Coptic translation. In 1958, Jean Doresse, in his Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, speculated that the entire “li-brary” belonged to a fourth-century sect of Sethians living in the Thebaid.3 Torgny Säve-Söderbergh argued that it belonged to orthodox Christians who used the books as ammunition to refute heretics. 4 Others, such as Frederik Wisse and Clemens Scholten, suggested that the books belonged

1 This essay has been written under the aegis of project NEWCONT at the University

of Oslo, which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC Grant agreement no 283741.

2 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 220.

3 Jean Doresse, Les livres secrets des gnostiques d’Égypte (Paris: Plon, 1958); English translation: The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion (trans. Philip Mairet; London: Hollis & Carter, 1960), 250–51.

4 Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentations? The ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Nag Hammadi Library,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi (ed. Jacque É. Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 3–14.


Recovering Adam’s Lost Glory 223

to Christian monks who read them for their ethical, specifically ascetic teachings.5

In the 1990s, researchers such as Françoise Morard and Michael Wil-liams went beyond the question of the owners and overall purpose of the library by examining individual codices as textual collections.6 These stud-ies focused largely on scribal rationales for the selection and arrangement of tractates within a codex, that is, how ancient scribes might have chosen specific texts for inclusion based on what they perceived to be common religious themes and genres, such as Codex V as a collection of apocalyps-es. The focus on an individual codex as a collection emphasizes the her-meneutical impact of codex technology: the collection of otherwise dis-crete texts into a single, physical volume facilitates the way readers inter-pret texts in terms of one another by finding, and creating, conceptual con-tinuities among them. As Williams observes, the technology of the codex “encouraged hermeneutical perspective(s) in terms of which works that tous seem theologically conflicting could come to be read as reflecting the same concern.”7

Studies of the selection and arrangement of material in individual codi-ces then led to discussions of the “reader experience” of the codex, and the need for what Stephen Emmel calls a “theory of Coptic readership.” Ac-cording to Emmel, such a theory would involve reading “the texts exactly as we have them in the Nag Hammadi Codices in an effort to reconstruct the reading experience of whoever owned each of the Codices. This read-ing would have to be undertaken in full cognizance of contemporary Cop-tic literature, and the culture of Upper Egypt, during, say, the third to sev-enth centuries.”8

While previous codex studies have focused almost exclusively on the book’s content, and how the physical collection itself could create a sense of conceptual continuity among its tractates, Emmel’s recommendation

5 Frederik Wisse, “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt,” in Gnosis: Fest-

schrift für Hans Jonas (ed. Barbara Aland; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 431–40. Clemens Scholten, “Die Nag-Hammadi-Texte als Buchbesitzer der Pacho-mianer,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 31 (1988): 144–72.

6 Françoise Morard, “Les Apocalypses du Codex V de Nag Hammadi,” in Les Textes de Nag Hammadi et le Problème de leur Classification (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 341–57; in the same volume: Michael A. Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s),’” 3–50.

7 Michael A. Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubi-ous Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 241, emphasis added.

8 Stephen Emmel, “Religious Tradition, Textual Transmission, and the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years (ed. John D. Turner and Anne McGuire; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 34–43, at 42–43.


224 Lance Jenott

encourages us to look beyond the codex and ask how the content fits into Coptic Egypt. That is, we should not only study how readers might have perceived relationships among the tractates in a given codex, but, more importantly, we should contextualize the codex in its broader Egyptian en-vironment by relating specific themes to what we already know about the culture of Coptic Christianity in late antiquity. Given what we know about Coptic Christians, about their theological questions and everyday concerns, what in these books did ancient readers find useful, edifying and instruc-tional?

Before proceeding, I would like to emphasize that despite an older trend of scholarship that maintains a phenomenological distinction between Gnosticism and Christianity, there can be no doubt that the Nag Hammadi Codices were produced by Christians. The Christian character of the codi-ces is clear not only in the attribution of many of the texts to famous apos-tles of Jesus, such as Peter, Paul, James, Thomas, and Philip (not to men-tion Mary in the Berlin Codex), but also in the practices employed by the scribes who copied them, including crucifix icons and forms of Christian nomina sacra found in contemporary Christian manuscripts. The Nag Hammadi Codices should therefore be viewed as “primary sources” for Coptic Christianity, and not for Gnosticism.

In this essay, I discuss how Nag Hammadi Codex II could have ap-pealed to monastic readers who were interested in recovering the lost glory of Adam, and who sought to do so by eradicating passions from their bod-ies through sexual continence and combat with demons. As scholars have observed, the texts bound in Codex II offer several interpretations of the Adam and Eve episode in Genesis in ways that encourage readers to live a celibate life, not in union with a human partner, but in union with Christ and/or the Holy Spirit.9 To be clear, I am not arguing that an interest in creation stories was the only rationale underlying the scribe’s selection of material for Codex II, or that an emphasis on an ascetic lifestyle is the only edification that readers could have found in it. Nevertheless, its stories about the primordial man and woman, and the sexual continence it teaches to recover humanity’s original glory, fit nicely with what we know about monastic ideals of Adam in Christian Egypt.

9 Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, “Contextualizing the Present, Manipulating the Past: Codex II

from Nag Hammadi and the Challenge of Circumventing Canonicity,” in Canon and Canonicity: The Formation and Use of Scripture (ed. Einar Thomassen; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), 91–108; Eduard Iricinschi, “Scribes and Readers of Nag Hammadi Codex II: Book Production and Monastic Paideia in Fourth-Century Egypt” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2009).



The Contents of Codex II Codex II contains seven texts: 1. The Apocryphon of John; 2. The Gospel of Thomas; 3. The Gospel of Philip; 4. The Hypostasis of the Archons; 5. a treatise called “On the Origin of the World” by modern editors, but whose actual title is probably The Exegesis on the Soul;10 6. a second Exegesis on the Soul; and finally 7. The Book of Thomas. At the end of the codex, the scribe wrote a colophon that reads “Remember me too, my brothers, [in] your prayers. Peace to the holy ones and the spiritual.”

If you were to read the book from cover to cover, you would begin with the Apocryphon of John, a revelation of the resurrected Jesus to John the son of Zebedee, which provides a sweeping narrative of salvation history including a detailed account of protology and creation, the origins of de-mons and humanity, and salvation from demonic oppression brought by Christ through his descent, incarnation, teaching and baptism.

After learning this master narrative, you read further teachings of Jesus and meditations on biblical themes in the Gospels of Thomas and Philip. The next text you find is the Hypostasis of the Archons, a treatise about the origins of demonic world rulers, which takes as its starting point the Apos-tle Paul’s teaching that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the authorities of the universe and the spirit of wickedness.”11

Then come the two treatises each entitled the Exegesis on the Soul. The first (named “On the Origin of the World” by modern editors) relates an-other grand story of creation, and explains how humanity came to be en-snared by erotic passion (eros) in subordination to demonic powers. The second Exegesis on the Soul presents a fascinating Christian homily on the soul’s marriage to Christ, drawing on several biblical texts including Gen-esis and the Prophets, Psalms, the Gospels and Paul’s letters, as well as passages from Homer’s Odyssey. It narrates the soul’s fall from her origi-nal purity, her metaphorical “prostitution” with sin, and her ultimate resto-ration to the merciful Father through a spiritual marriage with Christ, her

10 Because the title Exegesis on the Soul appears both before and after II,6 (codex pp.

127, 137) modern editors have assumed that II,5 has no title and thus named it “On the Origin of the World” due to its cosmogonic content. But this parsing creates a curious situation: II,5 becomes the only tractate in the codex with no title, while II,6 becomes the only tractate with a title repeated in superscript and subscript (all other titles in the codex are in subscript). Michael Williams (“Interpreting,” 28–30) therefore suggests that II,5 and II,6 are both entitled The Exegesis on the Soul. One finds a similar arrangement in NHC V, in which two texts entitled The Apocalypse of James were copied next to each other. When hypothesizing about the ancient reader experience of Codex II, this under-standing of the titles on II,5 and II,6 is at least worth consideration.

11 NHC II 86.20–25; cf. Eph 6:12. For the sake of “reader experience,” I assume that ancient readers of Codex II believed Paul wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians.


226 Lance Jenott

bridegroom. The final reading in the codex, The Book of Thomas, records a dialogue between Jesus and his brother Thomas on the theme of extin-guishing the lustful “fire” with which demons ignite the body.

A Book for Combating Demons

Even from this cursory overview, one can see how Codex II may have ap-pealed to ancient Coptic readers who sought bodily purity and psychologi-cal peace through a life of sexual asceticism. Its repeated emphasis on hu-manity’s ongoing struggle against demonic powers and the manifold ways they attack the body, especially through lust, was a preoccupation that per-vaded the lives of Egyptian monks and grasped their imaginations.12 One recalls that in the Life of Antony, Athanasius’ great ascetic hero preaches a long sermon about how to fight demons. As with the Hypostasis of the Ar-chons in Codex II, Antony begins by quoting the great Apostle, that our contest is not against flesh and blood but against “the world rulers of this present darkness.” Antony focuses his lesson on the tricks that demons contrive to fool aspiring ascetics, but admits that one could say so much more on the subject: “the mob of them is huge in the air around us, and they are not far from us. But the differences among them are many. A speech about their natures and distinctions would be lengthy, and such a discourse is for others greater than us.”13

What Antony only hints at in his speech is just what a reader would have found in Codex II: lengthy discourses about the minute differences among demons, their individual names, even specific parts of the body they control. In the Apocryphon of John, Jesus specifies well over 100 names of demons along with the passions and body-parts they came to govern since the time when they fashioned Adam’s mortal body, from his head made by Eteraphaope-abron, down to his toenails made by Miamai. Jesus even refers readers to the Book of Zoroaster if they are interested in “the others who are in charge over the remaining passions.”14 Later in the codex, in the first Exegesis on the Soul’s description of heavenly authori-ties, the reader finds more lists of demons along with bibliographic refer-ences to where they can find further information about “the effect of these

12 David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early

Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 13 Vita Antonii, 21. Quotations of the Vita are from the translation of Robert C. Gregg,

Athanasius: The Life of Antony and The Letter to Marcellinus (Classics of Western Spir-ituality; New York: Paulist Press, 1980), slightly modified at times based on the Greek text in Migne, PG 26.

14 NHC II 19.6–10.



names,” their “force” and their “influences.”15 This kind of technical in-formation about demons surely would have been of interest to readers for whom Antony’s sermon was, as he admitted, only a basic introduction.

The teachings inside Codex II may not have been the only aspect of the book that readers found helpful for combating demons; they may have per-ceived the book itself, the physical object, as an apotropaic weapon as well. For among all the Nag Hammadi Codices, Codex II is unique for the elabo-rate decoration tooled onto its leather cover, including different kinds of ankh crucifixes, the traditional Egyptian symbol for life and iconographic basis for the Christian crux ansata.16 It is likely that Egyptian Christians would have regarded these crucifix icons as more than mere decoration, but as powerful symbols of Christ’s life-giving victory over demons – the very same victory they would read about inside the book – and as an active source of protection from harmful attacks. In late antique Egypt, making the sign of the cross to ward off evil spirits was both common practice and a topic for theological reflection.17 Athanasius begins his Contra gentes by victoriously proclaiming that “by this sign all demonic activity is put to flight,”18 and, in his biography of Antony, depicts the hero signing the cross over himself and recommending its power to others on several occa-sions.19 It is likely that readers of Codex II would have seen the same pow-er reflected in the crucifixes adorning its cover.

The Glory of Adam

The ousting of demons from the body and mind was imagined not only as the assertion of self-control, but, even more so, as recovering something that had been lost – the original, spiritual condition in which humanity was first created in Adam. By overcoming passions and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide the mind toward contemplation of the Father, one was re-storing the image of God that had become tarnished by humanity’s fall into spiritual paralysis. Following the popular legacy of Origen, who united

15 NHC II 102.7–11; 107.2–3, 14–17. 16 James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco:

HarperCollins, 1988), 18; Robinson, “The Construction of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honor of Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; Lei-den: Brill, 1975), 175.

17 See, for example, G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), s.v. �¢*ª"��< (B); ��*¸> (E3).

18 Athanasius, Contra gentes 1; cf. De incarnatione 29, 47. All quotations from Con-tra gentes and De incarnatione follow the edition and translation of Robert W. Thomson, Athanasius: Contra gentes and De incarnatione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

19 Vita Antonii 13, 35, 53, 78, 80.


228 Lance Jenott

Platonic acumen with Christian myth, the goal of returning the soul to God by recovering Adam’s original glory in Paradise permeated Egyptian Christianity of the period in various guises.

In Athanasius’ Contra gentes, he explains how “the first man to be cre-ated, who was called Adam in Hebrew, had his mind fixed on God … and lived with the holy ones in the contemplation of intelligible reality which he enjoyed in that place which Moses figuratively called Paradise.” Unfor-tunately people fell from this blissful life of meditation when they sought “what was closer to them,” namely the body and its sensations, thus forget-ting God and turning to idolatry and sin.20 According to Athanasius, only the incarnation of God’s Wisdom and Son, the divine Logos, in human form could restore the image of God in all other persons; in his famous formulation, “He became man that we might become divine.”21

The theme of return to paradisical times continues in Athanasius’ Life of Antony, where the ascetic hero preaches a sermon about the soul’s return to its original state before the Fall. Christians, he says, need not travel abroad like Greeks to seek an education, for as the Lord instructed them, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” Antony interprets Jesus’ enigmatic saying, found in Luke and the Gospel of Thomas in Codex II, as a refer-ence to the dormant intellect within each individual.22 Then, almost as a mantra, Antony repeats that one must strive to restore the intellect to its original condition “as it was made,” “as it was created,” “as we were made.”23

For some interpreters of Genesis, the return to Adam’s original state al-so called for sexual renunciation. For, they believed, Adam and Eve did not possess ordinary bodies of flesh before the Fall, but received them af-terward when God gave them “skin coats” (Gen 3:21). As such, they were originally unmoved by passion and suffering too—perfect models of ascet-icism for monks to imitate. But interpretations of Genesis that discounted the fleshly bodies of the first humans were highly controversial. Epiphani-us of Salamis complains that the “mortally dangerous exegesis” issued by

20 Athanasius, Contra gentes 2–3.21 Athanasius, De incarnatione 54 (Thompson); on the Wisdom-Son-Logos, see also

16, 19, 40. 22 Luke 17:21: û ¹�� $�� > ³�� ; Gos. Thom. 3: û ¹�[��

$��] ��> ³�� [��]�� (P. Oxy. 654); (NHC II 32.25). Note that the Vita Antonii’s variant reading ¹�� *�� (PG 26:873) is not attested in the critical apparatus of Nestle-Aland 27.

23 Vita Antonii 20. The theme of returning to one’s original, “intelligible essence” (ousia noera) also appears throughout the genuine letters of Antony. See Lance Jenott and Elaine Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I: Sources of Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt,” JECS 18.4 (2010): 557–589, esp. 570–72.



Origen had infected many Egyptian monks.24 Epiphanius’ concern about the popularity of Origen’s doctrines in Egypt appears to be well founded.25 A homily or exhortatory epistle discovered at the Monastery of Apa Epiphanius at Thebes, just south of where the Nag Hammadi Codices were produced, reflects very similar teachings: For until Eve [transgressed, they] kept the commandment, and they were living with each other without passion ( ). It was when they transgressed the commandment that they were cast out of Paradise. Then they became ashamed (Gen 2:25–3:10). For where there is transgression of the commandment, there is shame and darkness. It was at that time that they clothed themselves with mortality ( ) – I mean the garment of skin (Gen 3:21). This is the time when Adam knew Eve his wife (Gen 4:1). So then in-deed, this is the way it is for us too, as long as we are in Paradise – I mean the life of monasticism ( ) in which we dwell – and (as long as) we are zealous to keep the commandments of the gospel, which is the cultivation of Paradise (Gen 2:15). Let us speak with one another in what belongs to God, without passion ( ). For it is because of this that Christ appeared [in] the flesh, so that he might turn us back…26 For this monastic teacher, mortality (the garment of skin) and sexual inter-course (when Adam “knew” his wife) are hallmarks of the post-Fall world. Before then, they lived immortal, and passionless. But persevering in the monastic life takes one back to Paradise, where one lives without passion, and “cultivates” the garden by keeping the gospel. The fact that this ostra-con dates to the late sixth or early seventh century shows the continuity of

24 Epiphanius, Pan. 64.3,8–4,1; 64.65,5–28, trans. Frank Williams, The Panarion of

Epiphanius of Salamis (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1987, 1994), 2:134, 192–95. In Pan. 52 (Williams 2:67–70), Epiphanius describes an alleged sect whose members “named them-selves after Adam” and aspired to imitate Adam and Eve as they lived in Paradise. They called their church “Paradise” and attended services in the nude, checking their clothing at the door. They also maintained they were “virgins” and observed strict sexual conti-nence (though Epiphanius claims, characteristically, that they actually reveled in de-bauchery). It is of course likely that Epiphanius fabricated this group entirely. He admits that he got his information from hearsay, and that he has not read about them in books nor met any of them in person. Yet even if these “Adamians,” as he calls them, were the mere product of Epiphanius’ imagination, conjured up to arrive at the golden number of eighty heresies promised in his preface, his description nevertheless shows us how Adam and Eve could be seen as the inspiration for Christians pursuing humanity’s original con-dition through sexual renunciation.

25 On Origen’s legacy in Egyptian monasticism, see especially Samuel Rubenson, “Origen in the Egyptian Monastic Tradition of the Fourth Century,” in Origeniana Sep-tima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts (ed. W. A. Bienert and U. Kühneweg; Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 319–37; Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity; Minneap-olis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995).

26 O.Mon.Epiph. 62; W. E. Crum and H. G. Evelyn White, The Monastery of Epipha-nius at Thebes, Part II: Coptic Ostraca and Papyri (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition, 1926), 18, 166–67.


230 Lance Jenott

such interpretations of Genesis among Egyptian monks even after Origen and his teachings were condemned at the second council of Constantinople in 553.

One finds further interest in recovering Adam’s original glory recorded in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum), where some of the most spectacular ascetic masters are remembered for achieving such power. One tale recalls a certain Abba Paul, a resident of the Thebaid, who could grasp snakes in his hands and cut them straight through the middle. When asked how he achieved this gift, he responded, “If someone has ob-tained the highest purity, everything is subject to him as it was to Adam when he was in Paradise.27 As scholars have observed, the monk’s ability to pacify wild animals became a commonplace in the hagiographic tradi-tion, and reflects the recovery of Adam’s God-given dominion over the earth granted in Gen 1:28.28 Perhaps even more spectacular are the tales about Abba Pambo, who was remembered as an early follower of Antony and a teacher of the Origenist Tall Brothers at Nitria. According to the Ap-ophthegmata, “they said of Abba Pambo that, just as Moses received the image of Adam’s glory when his face was glorified, so too did the face of Abba Pambo shine like lightning, and he was like a king sitting on his throne. It was the same way with Abba Silvanos and Abba Sisoës.”29

While the ideal of returning to Adam’s original glory can be found throughout Egyptian literature of the period, one is hard pressed to find stories about Adam’s radiant luminosity as assumed by the tale of Abba Pambo. Indeed, the biblical texts themselves give no such description of Adam.30 Yet Coptic readers would have found exactly that in Nag Ham-

27 Apophthegmata Patrum (alphabetical collection), Paul 1 (PG 65:380–81): �� >

��#�%�� $�*��%��, =�� ³=�� , Æ> �� Å�¶� »�� =�*��Ã, =*�� Î =�*�¹£�� #�.

28 See Benedicta Ward, The Lives of the Desert Fathers (trans. Norman Russell; Lon-don: Cistercian Publications, 1980), 43–44.

29 Apophthegmata Patrum, Pambo 12 (PG 65:372): ý��"�� =�*� �� ¹¹® ©��¹þ, »�� Æ> ¼��¹� Þ<ÿ�£> �� £> ��%> Å�¶�, »�� $% �� =*��<=�� · �æ�<> �� ¹¹® ©��¹þ Æ> ��*�=� ¼��=� �� =*��<=��, �� Æ> ¹��¿> ��$#��> �=� �� $*�� . å£> ��£> �*"��> �� & �¹¹®> Ì��>, �� & �¹¹®> Ì��%. A similar story is told about Abba Joseph (PG 65:229): When Abba Lot asked Abba Joseph whether he should do more than exercise moderation, fast, and meditate, the master “stretched out his hands to heaven and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire (��=ª��¯ =�*�¯).” Joseph then said, “If you want, you can become entirely like fire.”

30 According to Alon Goshen Gottstein, “An examination of rabbinic myths regarding the creation of Adam … reveals that the meaning of body is not necessarily the physical body with which we are acquainted. Adam’s body is a body of light” (“The Body as Im-age of God in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 87 [1994]: 171–95, at 195). However, David H. Aaron shows the weak evidence for Adam’s light-body in rabbinic texts (“Shedding



madi Codex II, which contains multiple creation stories depicting Adam in a luminous state, endowed with divine intelligence, and master over zoo-morphic demons (a transposition of his dominion over beasts of the earth to dominion over “beasts” of the heavens). Monks who recalled Abba Pambo shining like Adam in all his glory could have been inspired by de-scriptions of Adam’s radiance in Codex II as well.

Adam in Codex II

In the Apocryphon of John, readers learn that the heavenly “first human” was created androgynous, out of the Father’s primordial light, so that its light shines like the Father.31 The earthly Adam too was created luminous and, at least initially, superior to the demons. When the heavenly human reveals its radiant image to the demonic rulers who dwell in darkness be-low, they recognize its power and desire to keep it for themselves. The chief ruler, resolving to create a body to house the divine light, exhorts his lieutenants, saying “Come, let us create a man after the image of God and after our likeness, that his image may become a light for us.” They then decide to call him Adam, “so that his name may become for us a power of light.”32 Yet their creature remained motionless on the ground because it lacked divine spirit. So the heavenly Father, showing mercy to the creature, tricked the chief ruler into blowing whatever spiritual power he possessed into the man’s face, thus animating his body. When the spirit transferred into the man, “his body was moved and gained strength, and it was lumi-nous.” The demons quickly learn that Adam’s “intelligence was greater … he could think better than they … and he was free from wickedness.”33

Readers looking further into the codex would find more descriptions of Adam’s original luminosity in the first Exegesis on the Soul (II,5). In an interpretation of Gen 1–2, the tractate provides not two stories of humani-ty’s creation, but three: on the first day, the sixth day, and the eighth day. The Adam created on the first day is, in fact, the divine light authored by God’s command “let there be light” (Gen 1:3). The second Adam, created on the sixth day in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26–27), was a soul-endowed man. And finally the Adam created on the eighth day was of the earth (Gen 2:7). 34 According to this account, it was the primordial

Light on God’s Body in Rabbinic Midrashim: Reflections on the Theory of a Luminous Adam,” HTR 90.3 [1997]: 299–314).

31 NHC II 4.26–5.11. 32 NHC II 14.13–15.13. 33 NHC II 19.15–20.9. 34 NHC II 117.28–118.6; cf. 108.3–24; 111–112; 115; 122.6–9.


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“Adam of light” whose image appeared to the demons below and served as the heavenly model after which carnal man was formed.

Just as Abba Paul taught that monks must achieve “the highest purity” to recover Adam’s glory, Codex II teaches its readers that they must exer-cise rigorous ascetic discipline, renounce carnal sexuality, including hu-man marriage, and pursue the spiritual marriage with Christ that restores them to their original condition. Elaine Pagels has observed how a select number of texts from Nag Hammadi share an interpretation of the union between Adam and Eve, not as a model for the sanctity of marriage be-tween a man and a woman as it was often interpreted (cf. Mark 10:2–12), but rather as a model for sexual abstinence.35 Although Pagels did not em-phasize it at the time, it is striking that three of the four texts she discusses (the Apocryphon of John, Hypostasis of the Archons, and the second Exe-gesis on the Soul) are in Codex II, and therefore were already being read together in antiquity. The texts in Codex II encourage readers to look be-yond Adam and Eve’s carnal union to their real, original union before Eve was separated from Adam’s side (Gen 2:21–22). This even older union of Adam and Eve thus becomes a symbol for the human being’s union with true Life (Eve, Hawa, Zoe). The first “fall” of humanity, then, came not when Eve was duped by the serpent in the Garden, but when she – true Life – was divided from Adam. But one can regain true life by renouncing carnal sexuality and entering into a chaste union with Christ who brings “life” (Eve) back into “Adam” (the human being, whether man or woman).

The Apocryphon of John presents Eve as an avatar of the Holy Spirit, originally given to Adam to teach and empower him. It relates that “the helper” whom God sent to Adam (Gen 2:18) was in fact a luminous intel-lect, she “who is called Life,” originally hidden within him. When demons became jealous of Adam’s superior wisdom and power (see above) and cast him into the lower region of matter, the merciful Father sent Eve to teach Adam about his divine origins and sustain him in the struggle against demons: And (the Father) sent, through his beneficent Spirit and his great mercy, a helper to Ad-am, luminous intellect (epinoia) which comes out of him, who is called Life. And she assists the whole creature by toiling with him and by restoring him to his fullness. … And the luminous intellect (Eve) was hidden in Adam in order that the rulers might not know her. She assists the whole creature by toiling with him and by restoring him to his fullness.36

35 Elaine Pagels, “Exegesis and Exposition of the Genesis Creation Accounts in Se-

lected Texts from Nag Hammadi,” in Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, and Early Christianity (ed. Charles W. Hedrick and Robert Hodgson Jr.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986), 257–85.

36 NHC II 20.9–28.



Adam loses his glory only when the chief ruler devised a plan to separate him from Eve, his luminous intellect. Continuing its interpretation of Gen 2, the Apocryphon explains that the sleep which the chief ruler induced in Adam was not a literal sleep, but a slumber of the mind, a forgetfulness “in his perception.” Therefore the ruler did not remove Adam’s rib literally, as Moses said, but rather his intellect.37 The ruler then solidified his reign over humanity by replacing the spiritual Eve with a mere carnal copy of the woman and inspiring in her the sexual lust that leads to procreation and death.38

Readers would find a similar (though not identical) interpretation of Adam and Eve’s original union in the Hypostasis of the Archons. It too re-lates that Adam was first endowed with the Holy Spirit (Eve) until the de-monic rulers separated them. They cast Adam into a “deep sleep,” which it explains as ignorance, and removed the Spirit from him in the form of a woman. However, their plan to steal Adam’s superior intelligence failed when his sudden encounter with the “spirit-endowed woman” turns into a moment of enlightenment: “And when he saw her, he said, ‘It is you who has given me life; you will be called “Mother of the Living” (cf. Gen 2:23; 3:20). For it is she who is my mother. It is she who is the physician, and the woman, and she who has given birth.’”39 The Holy Spirit then departs from the woman, and so from Adam too, when the demons attempt to rape her. But she returns to them later in the form of the snake to convince them to eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. After eating, they realize that they are “naked,” not literally, but of the Spirit, and possessed only soul. The chief ruler then curses the woman, the snake and Adam, and expels them from the garden where their new life of toil distracts them from devotion to the Spirit.40 Humanity must then await the arrival of the Savior, who will liberate them from bondage to demonic powers and re-store the Spirit to them with the “unction of eternal life.” Then they too will “ascend to the limitless light” and become “children of the light.”41

The Gospel of Philip also teaches that Eve’s separation from Adam (Gen 2:21–22) marked the beginning of humanity’s mortality. “In the days when Eve was in Adam, there was no death. When she separated from him, death came into being.”42 The next passage sets forth a solution to the mor-tal predicament, though in a highly obscure way: “Again, when it/he goes in and receives it/him for itself/himself, there will be no death” (

37 NHC II 22.18–23.4. 38 NHC II 24. 39 NHC II 89.11–17. 40 NHC II 89.17–91.11. 41 NHC II 96.31–97.14. 42 NHC 68.22–24.


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[68.24-26]). As one can see, it is not at all clear who/what goes into where, or what it/he receives.

Hugo Lundhaug suggests that the subject can be understood as Christ, the second Adam (1 Cor 15, Rom 5), who brings salvation to humanity (mortal Adam) by entering the world and receiving death for himself. He offers the interpretative paraphrase, “Again, when Christ enters and re-ceives death for himself, no death will take place.”43 This interpretation becomes even clearer when the ambiguous passage is read in context, set in an inclusio dominated by the themes of coming ( ) and going ( ) – presumably in and out of the world – as well as Christ’s own coming ( ) and death on the cross: Before Christ, some came out of where they were no longer able to go in (i.e., heaven), and they went to where they were no longer able to leave (i.e. the world). But when Christ came, those who went in (to the world), he brought out, and those who went out (from heaven) he brought in. In the days when Eve was in Adam, there was no death. When she separated from him, death came into being. In turn, when he (Christ) goes in (to the world) and receives it (death) for himself, there will be no death. “My God, my God, why, Lord, [have] you forsaken me?” This is what he said on the cross. For he was divided in that place.44 It is Christ’s arrival and death that restores Eve (life) to Adam (humanity): “Christ came so that the separation that happened at the beginning might be rectified. Again he will join them both together, and to those who have died in the separation he will give life, and he will join them.”45

The Gospel of Philip is famous for its enigmatic teachings about “the mystery of marriage” and “the bridal chamber,” and some scholars have interpreted them as endorsements of a literal union between man and woman (either sexual or celibate).46 But as we have seen, a more symbolic meaning of Adam’s reunification with Eve is at play. As Lundhaug ex-plains, Christ enters the world as the second Adam to receive death on the cross, thereby abolishing death from the world and restoring Adam to true life. Adam’s reunion with Eve therefore symbolizes the life into which one enters in union with Christ.47

43 Hugo Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Sote-riology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 214–20, at 216.

44 NHC II 68.17–36. 45 NHC II 70.12–17. 46 Robert M. Grant, “The Mystery of Marriage in the Gospel of Philip,” VC 15 (1961):

129–40; Jorunn Buckley, “A Cult-Mystery in the Gospel of Philip,” JBL 99 (1980): 569–81. Michael Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism, 147–49 suggests that Philip promotes en-cratic marriages. See also Elaine Pagels, “The ‘Mystery of Marriage’ in the Gospel of Philip Revisited,” in The Future of Early Christianity (ed. Birger Pearson; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 442–54.

47 Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 216–17.



Readers of Codex II would also be encouraged to embrace a spiritual marriage with Christ by the second Exegesis on the Soul (II,6). The text is full of sexual and sensual imagery, yet all in the service of an exhortation to renounce human sexuality. It contrasts the transient passions of carnal marriage to the everlasting enjoyment of marriage to Christ. Husbands and wives lose interest and turn away from each other. But the soul’s union with Christ is not like that. It is eternally satisfying. Here too, the union between Adam and Eve symbolizes the soul’s marriage to Christ: For they were originally joined to one another when they were with the Father before the woman led astray the man, who is her brother. This marriage (i.e., to Christ) has brought them back together again and the soul has been joined to her true lover, her real master, as it is written.48 This exhortation to pursue union with Christ follows a clearly disdainful attitude toward carnal sexuality and procreation in the first Exegesis on the Soul (II,5). It teaches that “woman followed earth, marriage followed woman, birth followed marriage, and dissolution followed birth.”49 The frequent denunciations of carnal sexuality found throughout Codex II are then reinforced at the end by the Book of Thomas, in which Jesus warns about demons attacking people with the fire of lust, and proclaims “Woe to you who love womankind and polluted intercourse with them!”50

The collection of these texts into one physical volume would encourage readers to “hear” them in terms of one another. Readers may have made sense of more enigmatic sayings in the Gospels of Thomas and Philip, for example, by recourse to the codex’s other tractates. Thomas’ teaching that Mary must become male to enter the kingdom, or that one must “make the two one … make the male and female one and the same” might have been heard as a call to reunify Adam and Eve by living an ascetic life.51 Similar-ly, in Philip’s final instructions about clothing oneself “with light” in the bridal chamber, readers might have seen a reference to Adam’s original luminosity described in the codex’s more mythological narratives. Like the power of Abba Paul, who cut snakes with his bare hands, the light de-scribed by Philip arms those who bear it with protection and power in the here and now. For “the one who receives that light will not be seen, nor can he be detained. And nothing will be able to trouble one of this sort, even while he dwells in the world.”52

48 NHC II 132.27–133.9; For a detailed discussion, see Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 99–112, 122–23, who notes that Christ is also depicted as a second Adam in Ex. Soul.

49 NHC II 109. 50 NHC II 144; cf. 139; 142.20–30. 51 NHC II 37.24–35; 51.18–26. 52 NHC II 86.4–11; cf. 70.5–9; 76.22–29.


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Conclusion The Historia Monachorum preserves an anecdote about a young Egyptian named Amoun who desired the ascetic life but was compelled to marry by his rich parents. On the night of the wedding, so the story goes, he sur-prised his wife in the bridal chamber with a plan not to consummate the marriage, but to “preserve their virginity in secret.” They did not remain together, however, as many encratic couples did. A few days later Amoun set out for the desert hermitage at Nitria, leaving his wife behind to estab-lish a convent.53

As I have argued in this essay, Codex II’s encouragement to renounce carnal marriage and observe continence in union with Christ fits nicely in-to the monastic culture in which Amoun and his would-be wife lived. Its detailed descriptions of Adam’s original luminosity and superiority over theriomorphic demons would make perfect sense to monks who heard leg-ends about great masters like Abba Paul and Pambo becoming like Adam in their own power and radiance. The several exegeses of the first chapters of Genesis in Codex II interpret Adam and Eve’s original union as a sym-bol for the God-given life they once possessed in Paradise before their separation and Fall. One can regain that life by renouncing the distractions of human sexuality, a fleeting passion, and entering into eternal marriage with Christ, the soul’s true bridegroom. Christ restores Eve to Adam, and so Life to Man.

Nag Hammadi Codex II thus provides further evidence of what Eliza-beth Clark identifies as an “ascetic trajectory” popular in the late fourth and early fifth century, especially among such revered Fathers as Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome and John Chrysostom, for whom “the earliest moments of creation (Gen 1–2) might be taken to signal the blessed regime of vir-ginity.”54 Despite the fact that some of the mythological assumptions found in Codex II differ drastically from those of the church fathers (e.g., their view of the God of Israel), its exegesis of Adam and exhortation to live the ascetic life would nevertheless support the ethos they championed.

53 Historia Monachorum in Aegypto 22.1. For a different version of Amoun’s story,

see Palladius, Lausiac History 8, trans. Robert T. Meyer, Palladius: The Lausiac History (Ancient Christian Writers 34; Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965), 41–43.

54 Elizabeth Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christi-anity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 146.


recovering adam's lost glory: nag hammadi codex ii in its egyptian monastic environment

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