ABSTRACT
The period between the first flourishing (and building) of Christian churches ca. 290 ce under the emperor Diocletian (before the Great Persecution, 303–311) and the first territorial expansions of Islam (632–656) is pivotal in the history of the Gnostic trajectory of thought. By 300 never had the relevant parties in philosophical debates been in such a good position to contend. Neoplatonism, strong in the Syrian Near East, had received a fillip from Porphyry of Tyre’s unlikely sponsor Gallienus (sole emperor 260–268) (Bray 1997: 244–66) and the philosopher had edited Plotinus’s work by the end of the century, with his student Iamblichus working on a commentary of the (Zoroastrian-associated) Chaldean Oracles (Lloyd 1967: 283–300). The extant Egyptian Hermetic treatises were being circulated, often as a united corpus, headed by the treatise Poimandres probably to present an antidote to rampantly growing Christianity (Haenchen 1956), yet they were apparently detached from the so-called “perfect sermon” of Asclepius. Certainly Hermetic cosmology was written up, with plural divinities, to outclass Genesis (thus Corp. Hermet., Libell. 3.1–3b [Scott, vol. 3, pp.110–12]), the Sun epitomizing “god-ness” ([Latin] Asclep. 10.1–6), while Gnostics were discredited for saying the world was bad ([Coptic] Asclep. [NHC = Nag Hammadi Codices] VI.74–5). Neoplatonists, now with some pretension to offer “universal salvation” (Simmons 2015), were becoming increasingly antagonistic to the Christians and more “pro-establishment” (Porphyry, Kata Christianōn apud Macarius Magnes, Apocrit. 2–4; Iamblichus, De mysteriis Aegyptiorum), also dissociating themselves from “classic Gnostics” (Plotinus, [Contra Gnosticos for] Enneads 2.9; Porphyry, Vita Plotini 16). The stronger Gnostic schools, both Valentinian and Sethian, were apparently trying to achieve rapprochement with (Neo-)Platonists (note NHC VII.9; X.1, 3; and see Turner 2001: 179–200), Sethians and Plotinus apparently deploying Plato’s spurious second Letter to assert their own versions of a fallen Sophia (Mazur 2017). And Gnostics used Hermetic texts, including Asclepius (NHC VI.6; VI.8). Theurgic interests linked Gnostics and Hermetists closer together (at least in Egypt) than either to Neoplatonists, but gnostikoi were less interested in participation in the divine by enlivening idols ([Latin] Asclep. 23–4) than in the gnōsis 272of aeonic names, to “call them out” for protection in a death journey of ascent to their hidden Deity, using names like Iao or Sabaoth common to Egyptian magicians (e.g., Papyri Graecae Magicae XII [PJ 384(v), Preisendanz, vol. 2]); cf. also Pearson 1992) and disclosing magical diagrams of ascent (e.g., Origen, Contra Celsum 6.24–5). Zoroastrian-affected Gnostics speculated that Spirit (pneuma) ultimately controlled the struggle between Light and Darkness, until the final Resolution (Paraphrase of Shem [NHC VII.1] 1–3, 44–6); while Gnosticizing Christians also showed interest in Mithras and Mithraism, accentuating ascent to Light through an aeonological world (Liturgia Mithraica [Papyr. Graec. Mag. (Preizendanz) vol. 1], IV. 628–57, 696–724; van den Broek 2013: 142; Mastrocinque 2017). The unveiling of “mysteries” (illuminating the dark) was a favored conceit across the board.
