Michael Waldstein,
The Providence Monologue in the Apocryphon of John and the Johannine Prologue,
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 1995.
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The connection between Jewish wisdom traditions and Gnostic speculations has been highlighted by a number of scholars. The Providence Monologue [at the end of the long version of the
Apocryphon of John] is a particularly striking example of this connection. Its narrative strongly resembles Jewish stories about the descent and re-ascent of pre-existent Wisdom ... It is likely that the background of the Providence Monologue lies in such Jewish stories about Wisdom, recast in terms of πρόνοια, Providence ...
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Previously, the author, Waldstein, is more explicit: - "The Providence Monologue...is a non-Christian text rooted in Hellenistic-Jewish wisdom speculations, recast in recognizably Gnostic fashion"
[and]
- "In its present setting in The Apocryphon of John, the Providence Monologue is [said to be] spoken by 'Jesus', "the savior," to tell of three trips he took as the divine Forethought or Providence"
[and]
- In sum, when Providence describes her trips into the cosmos she appears to be primarily interested in what she does when she arrives, namely, reveal herself, and in the effect of her trips, the salvation of her listeners. She does not dwell on the mode of her travels, incarnation or otherwise. In this respect the Providence Monologue resembles the Wisdom of Solomon, which also knows of saving arrivals of the divine spirit or Wisdom without specifying the exact way in which the revealing savior arrives (eg. Wis 9.17-18).31, below
The question is how and why certain stories are used, recast and reinterpreted. A comparison between the Providence Monologue and the Wisdom of Solomon shows that the many motifs shared by these two texts are deployed in the Monologue with a sharper dualistic edge and a new claim of consubstantiality between the self and the divine spirit ...
In deploying motifs shared with the Wisdom of Solomon in
...two distinctive directions, increased alienation from the cosmos and increased claim to identity with the divine, the Providence Monologue moves into close kinship with texts commonly classified as "Gnostic."
... If the similarities between the Providence Monologue and the Johannine Prologue are not close enough to indicate dependence of the former on the latter, they are also not close enough to indicate dependence of the latter on the former. The argument employed by Robinson to show that the Johannine Prologue depends on the
Trimorphic Protennoia hinges on the manner in which motifs concentrated in the Prologue appear widely dispersed in the more detailed and elaborate mythical scheme of the
Trimorphic Protennoia where they seem to find their "natural context." The Providence Monologue does not provide sufficient grounds for such an argument—mainly, perhaps, because it is so short, only about one fourth longer than the Prologue.
What the Providence Monologue can provide is a benchmark, more similar in style and length to the Johannine Prologue than the
Trimorphic Protennoia, by which one can measure the proximity or distance of the Prologue to or from a Gnostic recasting of Jewish sapiential motifs. This article has attempted to establish that benchmark. Measurement of the Prologue is a further task, contingent on exegesis of John.
31 More detailed information on the way in which the savior arrives is found in a hymnic fragment contained in the [Nag Hammadi]
Letter of Peter to Philip which has points of contact with both the Providence Monologue and the Johannine Prologue:
- "I am the one who was sent down in the body because of the seed which had fallen away. And I came down into their mortal mold. But they did not recognize me; they were thinking of me that I was a mortal man. And I spoke with him who belongs to me, and he harkened to me just as you too who harkened today. And I gave him authority in order that he might enter into the inheritance of his fatherhood. And I took [...] they were filled [...] in his salvation. And since he was a deficiency, for this reason he became a pleroma"
(NHC VIII 136.16—137.4) See Marvin Meyer, The Letter of Peter to Philip: Text, Translation & Commentary (SBLDS 53; Chico: Scholars Press, 1981) 128-
An interesting aside is discussion of a
Call of Awakening and a
Ritual Raising and Sealing in the account of the third trip by Providence, and a footnote associated with that discussion.
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The expanded call begins with Providence's self-presentation in the "I am" style (18a-b) together with the announcement of salvation, "who raises you up to the honored place" (18c). It continues with exhortations (19-10). These exhortations, in turn, contain teachings on the origins of the human race: Providence is the listener's "root" (19), a root that has become trapped by a system of hostile powers (20) in the prison of the body (21).
The call also resembles the tripartite model of Gnostic revelation discourses constructed by Bultmann and Becker in their work on the Johannine discourses: self-predications in the "I am" style; summons to a decision; and promise of reward and/or threat of punishment.
The call is followed by a ritual of raising and sealing which accomplishes what the call commands. Taken by itself, "raising" could simply be a metaphor for " awakening. " The parallel position of two actions, however, "I raised him up and sealed him," suggests a rite with two main elements, raising and sealing, perhaps a baptismal rite in which the initiate is raised out of the water and anointed.
The indicative "And I raised him up" (22a) accomplishes the imperative "Arise!" (19, cf. 15), and the indicative "I sealed him in the light of the water with five seals, in order that death might not have power over him from this time on" (22b-c) accomplishes the imperative, "Guard yourself against the angels of poverty . . . (and) beware of . . . Hades!" (20-22). "I raised him up" probably has additional overtones in the vertical cosmic schema that forms the backdrop of Providence's descents and ascents. The initiate is to be raised, ultimately, to the sphere of light from which Providence herself descends.
Behind this mythic ritual, in which Providence herself paradigmatically raises and seals the paradigmatic listener, there probably stands an actual rite.
40 Five seals are attested in several Sethian texts in cultic contexts. Cultic references are clearest in a Sethian text closely related to the
Apocryphon of John, the
Gospel of the Egyptians.
- "Here one has a series of references to certain gestures and verbal performances capable of ritual enactment: renunciation, invocation, naming of holy powers, doxological prayer to the living water, receipt of incense, manual gestures, as well as baptismal immersion itself," Turner, "Ritual in Gnosticism," 144.
Some Sethian texts reject outward rites in favor of a purely spiritualized symbolic understanding.
The Apocalypse of Adam, for example, rejects polluted physical baptism in favor of a purely spiritual baptism consisting of knowledge.
40 The three elements contained in the statement,
"I sealed him in the light of the water," are attested in early Christian baptismal language.
Baptism as a whole came to be called "seal," perhaps by analogy to the Jewish use of "seal" for circumcision.
"The seal, then, is the water"
(Hermas,
Sim. 9.16.4); see Gottfried Fitzer, σφραγίς,
TDNT 7.939-53, esp. 951-53.
Baptismal water was linked with the light of faith eg. "
This washing is called illumination (φωτισμός)" (Justin,
Apol. 1.61.11-12)
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