LITMIR.BIZ

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the reader is immediately thrust into a revelation dialogue between the seer and the angel Youel, describing the makeup of Barbelo and the first principle, a “Thrice-Powered Invisible Spirit.” Allogenes grows upset:⁴⁰

      “I was able (to conceive of transcendent things), although I was clothed in flesh. [I] heard about them through you, about the teaching which is in them (i.e., the revelations), since the thought that is in me distinguished those [which] are beyond measure and the unknowables. Because of this, I am afraid, lest my learning has produced⁴¹ something beyond what is fitting.” And then, O Messos, Youel, the one who belongs to all the glories, said these things to me. She [revealed ()] these things, and said, “No one is allowed to hear these things, except for the great powers alone, O Allogenes, (for) a great power has been laid upon you, that which the father of the entirety, the eternal, laid upon you before you came to this place, so that you might distinguish those things which are difficult to distinguish, and so that you might understand those things which are unknown to the multitude, and so that you might be saved, in that one who belongs to you, that one who was first to save (others) and who does not himself need to be saved.⁴²

      What Collins terms the “disposition of the seer” is a stock element in apocalypses, particularly the disposition of fear, which is met by the soothing words of angelic mediators.⁴³ Allogenes skillfully applies the motif to the dilemma of the mystic—the problematic status of knowledge of what is necessarily unknowable—even while retaining its Jewish coloring. While the first principle of the Greek philosophers is unknowable, it is certainly nothing to be afraid of.⁴⁴ Sirach, on the other hand, discourages attempts to know too much, and in Hekhalot literature, knowledge of the Godhead is not only forbidden but dangerous.⁴⁵

      Youel’s response fails to “steady” Allogenes, who once again expresses his fears and is reassured that he is both worthy of vision and responsible for communicating it to others.⁴⁶ The angel anoints and “strengthens” him. This “empowerment” of the seer by heavenly beings is common to the Platonizing Sethian texts. Paralleled only rarely in contemporary Platonic literature, the tradition is also clear in the heavenly journeys of 2 Baruch and the Apocalypse of Abraham, where the seer is occasionally “strengthened” by angels to ease the shock of the journey.⁴⁷

      The discussion continues along predictably metaphysical lines, and, finally, Allogenes, convinced of his worthiness, prepares himself for ascent through meditative techniques: “And when Youel, the one who belongs to all the glories, had said these things to me, she separated herself from me, leaving me. But I did not despair because of these words which I had heard; I contemplated myself for one hundred years. And I rejoiced by myself a great deal, since I was in a great light and a blessed path, since those, meanwhile, who I was worthy of seeing and then those who I was worthy of hearing about (are) those whom it is fitting for the great powers alone [ … ].”⁴⁸ “Breaks” in between revelatory discourses are another tradition in the apocalypses; Ezra and Baruch fast for seven days between visions.⁴⁹ The inordinate life span that enables Allogenes to meditate for a century is common to Jewish legends about the patriarchs.⁵⁰ Some kind of period of waiting between visions of “the Father” seems to be implied in a fragmentary passage of Marsanes.⁵¹ It is not clear if such practices involved a withdrawal from contemporary urban life to the wilderness or understood retreat in a more metaphorical or limited fashion, or simply as apocalyptic literary cliché.⁵²

      Finally, upon his descent from the Barbelo, Allogenes is commissioned to write a book, presumably that bearing his name: “he (speaker unknown) said to me, write down [those things that I] will tell you, and I will remind you, for the sake of those who will be worthy after you. You must leave this book upon a mountain, and adjure a guardian: ‘come, dreadful one.’ And when he had said these things, he separated himself from me. As for me, I was full of joy, and I wrote down this book, which was set apart for me (to write), my son, Messos, so that I might reveal (σωλπ) to you those things which were preached before me, and that I received first in a great silence.”⁵³ The ancient seer’s composition of a revelatory manuscript for posterity is one of the most common traditions in apocalyptic literature, as in the Ascension of Isaiah or 2 Enoch: “give them books in your handwriting, and they will read them and they will acknowledge me as the Creator of everything. And they will understand that there is no other God except myself.”⁵⁴ The tradition showcases the esoteric nature of a revealed book, and explains how antediluvian texts could survive cataclysms or simply go unread for a long time.⁵⁵ Indeed, the device carries the eschatological implication that only the “last generation (the author’s own)” could “break the seal of the mystery” of God’s plan; or further, it is not the generation of the author that is being confronted with the revealed mystery but that of the reader(s).⁵⁶

      A similar constellation of apocalyptic traditions is negotiated in the lengthy Zostrianos, which, thanks to its relatively well-preserved opening and closing, offers by far the most data. It begins with the eponymous seer reflecting on his circumstances prior to revelation: “I was in the cosmos for the sake of those of my generation and those who would come after me, the living elect…. I preached forcefully about the entirety to those who had alien parts. I tried their works for a little while; thus the necessity of generation brought me into the manifest (world). I was never pleased with them, but always I separated myself from them, since I had come into being through a holy birth.⁵⁷ And being mixed, I straightened my soul, empty of evil.”⁵⁸ Frustrated with his community, he retreats and contemplates metaphysical questions alone, which eventually leads him to despair and a resolve to suicide, when an angel appears and intervenes.⁵⁹ The arrival of revelation to a seer in great emotional distress is common in the Jewish apocalypses.⁶⁰ Then Zostrianos “instantly and exuberantly ascended with the angel, into a great luminous cloud,⁶¹ leaving my shell (πλάσμα) upon the earth, to be guarded by some glories. And [we] were rescued from the whole cosmos, and the thirteen aeons that exist in it, and their angelic beings. They did not spot us, and their ruler (ἄρχων) became disturbed before [our mode of] passage.”⁶² The tradition of the ascent to heaven via cloud is also widespread in Jewish apocalypses.⁶³

      The same is true of the stealthy passage through the clutches of the heavenly powers, which is replicated prior to Zostrianos’s reembodiment at the end of the treatise, after his revelations: “Then, when I came down to the aeons of the [self-begotten] individuals, I received an [image ()] that was pure, yet appropriate for sense-perception (αἴσθησις). I came down to the aeonic copies (ἀντίτυπος) and went to the aetherial earth. And I wrote three wooden tablets (πύξος), leaving them in knowledge ()⁶⁴ for all those who would follow me, the living elect. I came down to the perceptible world and I put on my image (); since it was uneducated, I strengthened it, going around to preach the truth to everybody. Neither the angelic beings of the world nor the archons saw me, for I evaded a myriad of torments which nearly killed me.”⁶⁵ This passage is obscure; it does not identify these steles with the text of Zostrianos itself, so they must be a separate work.⁶⁶ However, writing in heaven was commonly associated in Jewish pseudepigrapha with Enoch’s role as a divine scribe, a role at the root of rabbinic traditions where, transformed into Metatron, he sits in heaven writing. ⁶⁷ Zostrianos probably drew on this tradition, for, like the seer of 2 and 3 Enoch, Zostrianos has been transformed into an angel over the course of his heavenly journey and acquired supra-angelic knowledge.⁶⁸

      Meanwhile, Zostrianos’s descent “invisible and unharmed” past a series of hostile archons is a leitmotiv of apocalyptic, Gnostic, and Manichaean ascent texts. In the Ascension of Isaiah the prophet witnesses the savior’s descent to earth in a disguise, to avoid conflict with malevolent angels.⁶⁹ In a hymnic passage shared

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