The Gnostic Crucifixion Part 1

The Gnostic Crucifixion.

by G. R. S. Mead.

PREFACE.

The Gnostic Mystery of the Crucifixion is most clearly set forth in the new-found fragments of _The Acts of John_, and follows immediately on the Sacred Dance and Ritual of Initiation which we endeavoured to elucidate in Vol. IV. of these little books, in treating of _The Hymn of Jesus_.

The reader is, therefore, referred to the "Preamble" of that volume for a short introduction concerning the nature of the Gnostic Acts in general and of the Leucian _Acts of John_ in particular. I would, however, add a point of interest bearing on the date which was forgotten, though I have frequently remarked upon it when lecturing on the subject.

The strongest proof that we have in our fragment very early material is found in the text itself, when it relates the following simple form of the miracle of the loaves.

"Now if at any time He were invited by one of the Pharisees and went to the bidding, we used to go with Him. And before each was set a single loaf by the host; and of them He Himself also received one. Then He would give thanks and divide His loaf among us; and from this little each had enough, and our own loaves were saved whole, so that those who bade Him were amazed."

If the marvellous narratives of the feeding of the five thousand had been already in circulation, it is incredible that this simple story, which we may so easily believe, should have been invented. Of what use, when the minds of the hearers had been strung to the pitch of faith which had already accepted the feeding of the five thousand as an actual physical occurrence, would it have been to invent comparatively so small a wonder?

On the other hand, it is easy to believe that from similar simple stories of the power of the Master, which were first of all circulated in the inner circles, the popular narratives of the mult.i.tude-feeding miracles could be developed. We, therefore, conclude, with every probability, that we have here an indication of material of very early date.

Nevertheless when we come to the Mystery of the Crucifixion as set forth in our fragment, we are not ent.i.tled to argue that the popular history was developed from it in a similar fas.h.i.+on. The problem it raises is of another order, and to it we will return when the reader has been put in possession of the narrative, as translated from Bonnet's text. John is supposed to be the narrator.

(The Arabic figures and the Roman figures in square brackets refer respectively to Bonnet's and James' texts. I have added the side figures for convenience of reference in the comments.)

THE VISION OF THE CROSS.

1. [97 (xii.)] And having danced these things with us, Beloved, the Lord went out. And we, as though beside ourselves, or wakened out of sleep, fled each our several ways.

2. I, however, though I saw the beginning of His pa.s.sion could not stay to the end, but fled unto the Mount of Olives weeping over that which had befallen.

3. And when He was hung on the tree of the cross, at the sixth hour of the day darkness came over the whole earth.

And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave, and filled it with light, and said:

4. "John, to the mult.i.tude below, in Jerusalem, I am being crucified, and pierced with spears and reeds, and vinegar and gall is being given Me to drink. To thee now I speak, and give ear to what I say. 'Twas I who put it in thy heart to ascend this Mount, that thou mightest hear what disciple should learn from Master, and man from G.o.d."

5. [98 (xiii.)] And having thus spoken, He showed me a Cross of Light set up, and round the Cross a vast mult.i.tude, and therein one form and a similar appearance, and in the Cross another mult.i.tude not having one form.

6. And I beheld the Lord Himself above the Cross. He had, however, no shape, but only as it were a voice--not, however, this voice to which we are accustomed, but one of its own kind and beneficent and truly of G.o.d, saying unto me:

7. "John, one there needs must be to hear those things, from Me; for I long for one who will hear.

8. "This Cross of Light is called by Me for your sakes sometimes Word (Logos), sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Bread, sometimes Seed, sometimes Resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace.

9. "Now those things [it is called] as towards men; but as to what it is in truth, itself in its own meaning to itself, and declared unto Us, [it is] the defining (or delimitation) of all things, both the firm necessity of things fixed from things unstable, and the 'harmony' of Wisdom.

10. "And as it is Wisdom in 'harmony,' there are those on the Right and those on the Left--powers, authorities, princ.i.p.alities, and daemons, energies, threats, powers of wrath, slanderings--and the Lower Root from which hath come forth the things in genesis.

11 [99]. "This, then, is the Cross which by the Word (Logos) hath been the means of 'cross-beaming' all things--at the same time separating off the things that proceed from genesis and those below it [from those above], and also compacting them all into one.

12. "But this is not the cross of wood which thou shalt see when thou descendest hence; nor am I he that is upon the cross--[I] whom now thou seest not, but only hearest a voice.

13. "I was held [to be] what I am not, not being what I was to many others; nay, they will call Me something else, abject and not worthy of Me. As, then, the Place of Rest is neither seen nor spoken of, much more shall I, the Lord of it, be neither seen [nor spoken of].

14. [100 (xiv.)] "Now the mult.i.tude of one appearance round the Cross is the Lower Nature. And as to those whom thou seest in the Cross, if they have not also one form, [it is because] the whole Race (or every Limb) of Him who descended hath not yet been gathered together.

15. "But when the Upper Nature, yea, the Race that is coming unto Me, in obedience to My Voice, is taken up, then thou who now hearkenest to Me, shalt become it, and it shall no longer be what it is now, but above them as I am now.

16. "For so long as thou callest not thyself Mine, I am not what I am. But if thou hearkenest unto Me, hearing, thou, too, shalt be as I [am], and I shall be what I was, when thou [art] as I am with Myself; for from this thou art.

17. "Pay no attention, then, to the many, and them that are without the mystery think little of; for know that I am wholly with the Father and the Father with Me.

18. [101 (xv.)] "Nothing, then, of the things which they will say of Me have I suffered; nay that Pa.s.sion as well which I showed unto thee and the rest, by dancing [it], I will that it be called a mystery.

19. "What thou art, thou seest; this did I show unto thee. But what I am, this I alone know, [and] none else.

20. "What, then, is Mine suffer Me to keep; but what is thine see thou through Me. To see Me as I really am I said is not possible, but only what thou art able to recognise, as being kin [to Me] (or of the same Race).

21. "Thou hearest that I suffered; yet I did not suffer: that I suffered not; yet I did suffer: that I was pierced; yet was I not smitten: that I was hanged; yet I was not hanged: that blood flowed from me; yet it did not flow: and in a word the things they say about Me I had not, and the things they do not say those I suffered. Now what they are I will riddle for thee; for I know that thou wilt understand.

22. "Understand, therefore, in Me, the slaying of a Word (Logos), the piercing of a Word, the blood of a Word, the wounding of a Word, the hanging of a Word, the pa.s.sion of a Word, the nailing (or putting together) of a Word, the death of a Word.

23. "And thus I speak separating off the man. First, then, understand the Word, then shalt thou understand the Lord, and in the third place [only]

the man and what he suffered."

24. [102 (xvi.)] And having said these things to me, and others which I know not how to say as He Himself would have it, He was taken up, no one of the mult.i.tude beholding Him.

25. And when I descended I laughed at them all, when they told Me what they did concerning Him, firmly possessed in myself of this [truth] only, that the Lord contrived all things symbolically, and according to [His]

dispensation for the conversion and salvation of man.

COMMENTS.

The translation is frequently a matter of difficulty, for the text has been copied in a most careless and unintelligent fas.h.i.+on, so that the ingenuity of the editors has often been taxed to the utmost and has not infrequently completely broken down. It is of course quite natural that orthodox scribes should blunder when transcribing Gnostic doc.u.ments, owing to their ignorance of the subject and their strangeness to the ideas; but this particular copyist is at times quite barbarous, and as the subject is deeply mystical and deals with the unexpected, the reconstruction of the original reading is a matter of great difficulty. With a number of pa.s.sages I am still unsatisfied, though I hope they are somewhat nearer the spirit of the original than other reconstructions which have been attempted.

It is always a matter of difficulty for the rigidly objective mind to understand the point of view of the Gnostic scripture-writers. One thing, however, is certain: they lived in times when the rigid orthodoxy of the canon was not yet established. They were in the closest touch with the living tradition of scripture-writing, and they knew the manner of it.

The probability is that paragraphs 1-3 are from the pen of the redactor or compiler of the _Acts_, and that the narrative, beginning with the words "And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave," is incorporated from prior material--a mystic vision or apocalypse circulated in the inner circles.

The compiler knows the general Gospel-story, and seems prepared to admit its historical basis; at the same time he knows well that the story circulated among the people is but the outer veil of the mystery, and so he hands on what we may well believe was but one of many visions of the mystic crucifixion.

The gentle contempt of those who had entered into the mystery, for those unknowing ones who would fain limit the crucifixion to one brief historic event, is brought out strongly, and savours, though mildly, of the bitterness of the struggle between the two great forces of the inner and spiritualizing and the outer and materializing traditions.