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The following introductory comments are extracted from G.R.S. Mead, Pistis Sophia: A Gnostic Gospel, pp. xxxix - l. It should
be remember that this introduction was written in 1921, decades before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, and at a
time when the Pistis Sophia was one of the most important and largest collections of Gnostic material available to scholars.
An Excerpt from the Introduction to Pistis Sophia
by G.R.S. Mead
We have in the contents of the Askew, Bruce and Berlin Codices a rich material which hands on to us valuable direct information
concerning what I have called 'The Gnosis according to its Friends,' in distinction from what previously used to be our only
sources, the polemical writings of the heresiological Fathers, which set forth 'The Gnosis according to its Foes.' We have
thus at last a new standpoint from which to review the subject, and therewith the opportunity of revising our impressions
in a number of respects; a considerably different angle of vision must needs change the perspective of no little in the picture.
The chief business or interest of the orthodox Fathers was to select and stress what appeared to them to be the most bizarre
points and elements, all that was most absurd in their judgment, in the many Gnostic systems, and of course, and rightly,
everything that could be thought to be ethically reprehensible. Good, bad and indifferent were only too frequently lumped
together. It was of no interest to this polemic to mention similarities in belief and practice between the heretics and their
opponents, to dwell on the lofty faith of numbers of these Gnostics in the transcendent excellence and overmastering glory
of the Savior or on many signs of spiritual inwardness, and especially of high virtue, in which they were at the least not
less scrupulous than their critics. Doubtless there were sects and groups whose tenets were absurd at any valuation, and some
whose laxity of ethics demanded severe reprobation. But the majority could not be accused on the score of moral delinquency,
indeed no few were rigidly ascetic; and some of their speculations again have a sublimity of their own, and in a number of
cases anticipated Catholic dogma. If we turn to our direct sources in Coptic translation, we find that the ethic is admirable,
even if we are averse from over-asceticism in the religious life, and that their whole-souled devotion to and worship of the
Saviour is unbounded.
It is no part of the plan of this translation to attempt anything in the nature of a commentary. That would mean a second
volume, and would in any case be an unsatisfactory performance; for much would still remain obscure, even if every ray of
light shed on this or that special point by those who have most deeply studied the subject, were gathered together. One or
two very general remarks, however, may be ventured.
In the P.S. Jesus is everywhere pre-eminent and central. He is here revealed as Saviour and First Mystery, who knows all and
unveils all, infinite in compassion. As such he is pre-existent from eternity, and his ministry is not only earthly, but cosmic
and supercosmic; indeed, it is the chief feature in the divine economy. Yet nowhere is he called the Christ. If this is intentional,
no reason seems to be assignable for such an abstention. There is no sign of antagonism to Judaism or to the O.T. On the contrary,
the psalms and other utterances which are quoted, are validated by the theory that it was the Power of the Saviour which 80
prophesied of old through the mouth of a David, a Solomon, or an Isaiah.
The whole setting is post-resurrectional. In Div v. i.-iii Jesus has already, for eleven years after the crucifixion, been
instructing his disciples, men and women, in the Gnosis. The scene now depicts the disciples as gathered round the Saviour
on the Mount of Olives on earth. The range and scope of this prior teaching may be seen in Div. iv., where the introductory
words speak of it as taking place simply after the crucifixion. In this stratum the scene is different. The sacramental rite
is solemnized on earth; it takes place, however, on the Mount of Galilee and not on the Mount of Olives. But the scene is
not confined to earth only, for the disciples are also taken into some of the regions of the invisible world, above and below,
have vision there conferred upon them, and are instructed on its meaning. Now in Div v. i.-iii. Jesus promises to take the
disciples into the spheres and heavens for the direct showing of the nature and quality and inhabitants, but there is no fulfillment
of this promise in the excerpts we have from ' The Books of the savior.' It is not to be supposed, however, that Div. iv.
is part of the fulfillment of the high promise made in the prior extracts; for in it we move in an earlier phase of the instruction
and in an atmosphere of lesser mysteries than those indicated in the preceding part.
Div v. i.-iii. throughout proclaim the revelation of higher mysteries. This is only now made possible by the supremely joyous
fact that in the twelfth year of the inner-teaching-ministry a great, If not supreme, moment in the life of the Saviour has
been accomplished; his earthly ministry is now achieved, and he is invested with the full radiance of his triple robe of glory,
which embraces the whole powers of the universe. He ascends into heaven in dazzling light which blinds the disciples. After
thirty hours he returns again, and in compassion withdraws his blinding splendour, 60 as to give his final teaching to his
faithful in his familiar form. This means that ' The Books of the Saviour' purport to contain not only a post-resurrectional
teaching, and therefore a Gnostic revelation supplementary to the public preaching before the crucifixion, but also a still
higher and more intimate unveiling within the post-resurrectional instruction already current in the tradition. If there had
been apocalyptic elements and visions in the prior literature, there were to be still more transcendental revelations now
on the completion of the ministry. Until the investiture, or rather reinvestiture, had taken place according to the divine
command, it had not been possible for the Saviour to speak in utter openness face to face on all things; now it is possible.
Such is the convention.
In Div v. i.-iii. there is presupposed throughout a system of eons and the rest, which is already highly complex and shows
manifest signs of consisting of stage once severally at the summit of earlier systems, but now successively subordinated.
It is clear then that, if still loftier hierarchies are to be brought on to the stage, it can only be by again reducing what
had previously been regarded as 'the end of all ends ' to a subordinate position. This is the method adopted, and we lose
ourselves in the recital of the designations and attributes of ever more transcendental beings and spaces and mysteries.
In all of this, however, there is no sign of interest in metaphysical speculation; there is no philosophizing.. It is then
not any element of Hellenic thought proper in the aeonology, which is said to have been so strongly the case with the teaching
of Valentinus himself, that has led so many to conjecture a Valentinian derivation. It is rather the long episode of the sorrowing
Sophia which has influenced them. This episode reflects on a lower level of the cosmic scale somewhat of the motif of the
' tragic myth' of the world-soul the invention of which is generally ascribed to Valentinus himself, though he may possibly
have transformed or worked up already existing materials or notions. It is this long Sophia episode and its skillfully inverted
mystical exegesis and allegorical interpretation, following the method developed by Alexandrine contemplatives which has produced
the impression on many that it was of fundamental importance for the system of the P.S.
It is certainly an indication of the deep interest of the circle in repentance and the penitential psalms. But the interest
is here ethical rather than cosmological. Pistis Sophia would seem ~o be intended to represent the type of the faithful repentant
individual soul. Throughout, the chief interest is in salvation and redemption. This i8 to be acquired by repentance and by
renunciation of the world, its lures and cares, but above all by faith in the Saviour, the Divine Light, and his mysteries.
The first requisite is sincere repentance. The chief topic round which all the ethical teaching naturally centres, is sin,
its cause and its purification, and the revelation of the mystery of the forgiveness of sins and of the infinite compassion
of the First Mystery. Though there i8 very much also concerning the complex schematology of the invisible worlds and the hierarchies
of being, much concerning the soul and its origin, of how it comes to birth and departs from earth-life, much of the light-power,
the spiritual element in man,-all is subordinated to the ethical interest in the first place, and in the second to the efficacy
of the high mysteries of salvation.
The whole is set forth in terms of these mysteries, which are now conceived in a far more vital way than was apparently the
case in the earlier literature. On the lower side the mysteries still in some respects keep in touch with the tradition of
words-of-power, authentic and incorruptible names, and so forth, though there is little of this specifically in Div v. i.-iii.
But it is evidently intended that the higher mysteries should now be conceived in the light of the fact that the Saviour himself
is in himself concretely the First Mystery and indeed the Last Mystery, and that -the mysteries are not so much spiritual
powers as substantive beings of transcendent excellence The light-robe is a mystery of mysteries, and they who have received
of the high mysteries become light-streams in passing from the body. The mysteries are closely intertwined with the lore of
the glory and its modes.
One of the main elements in the lower schematology is the ancient astral lore, those ground-conceptions of sidereal religion
which dominated the thought of the times and upheld their sway directly and indirectly for long centuries after. But here
again our Gnostic, while retaining the schematology for certain purposes, placed it low in the scale. Moreover, while not
denying that previously there was truth even in the astrological art, they reduced the chances of the horoscope-casters to
zero, by declaring that the Saviour in the accomplishment of his cosmic ministry had now drastically changed the revolution
of the spheres, so that henceforth no calculations could be counted on; these were now of no more value than the spinning
of a coin.
Our Gnostics were also tranmigrationists; transcorporation formed an integral part of their system. They found no difficulty
in fitting it into their plan of salvation, which show no sign of the expectation of an immediate end of all things -that
prime article of faith of the earliest days. So far from thinking that reincarnation is alien to gospel-teaching, they elaborately
interpret certain of the most striking sayings in this sense, and give graphic details of how Jesus, as the First Mystery,
brought to rebirth the souls of John the Baptizer and of the disciples, and supervised the economy of his own incarnation.
In this respect the P.S. offers richer material for those interested in this ancient and widespread doctrine than can be found
in any other old-world document in the West.
A far more distressingly puzzling immixture is the element of magic. In Div. iv. especially there are invocations and many
names which resemble those found in the Greek magical papyri and other scattered sources. But no one has so far thrown any
clear light on this most difficult subject of research in general, much less on its relation to the P.S. It is evident that
the writers of Div. iv. and of the first treatise of the Bruce Codex set a high value on such formula and on authentic names;
nor are these entirely absent from the excerpts from 'The Books of the Saviour' as witness the five words written on the light
robe. Our Gnostics unquestionably believed in a high magic, and were not averse from finding in what was presumably its most
reputable tradition, material which they considered to be germane to their purpose. In this tradition there must have been
a supreme personage possessing characteristics that could be brought into close connection with their ideal of the Saviour,
for they equate a certain Aberamentho with him. The name occurs once or twice elsewhere; but who or what it suggested, we
do not know. In any case, as they utilized and attempted to sublimate so much else which was considered by many in those days
to be most venerable, in order that they might the more extend and exalt the glory of the Saviour and take up into it what
they considered the best of everything, so did they with what was presumably the highest they could find in the hoary tradition
of magical power, which had enjoyed empery for so long in the antique world and still continued to maintain itself even in
religio-philosophical circles, where we should, from the modern standpoint, least expect to find it.
As to the setting of the narrative,-if we had not such an abundance of instances of pseudo-historic and pseudo-epigraphic
scripture-writing, if this were not, so to speak, the commonplace, not only of apocryphal and apocalyptic literature, but
also of no little that falls within the borders of canonical sanction, we might be more surprised than we are at the form
in which the composers or compilers have framed their work. It is clear that they loved and worshipped Jesus with an ecstasy
of devotion and exaltation; they do not fall short in this of the greatest of his lovers. What sort of authority, then, could
they have? Suppose they had for conceiving the setting of their narrative in the way they have?
Objective physical history, in the rigid sense in which we understand it to-day, was of secondary interest to them, to say
the least; indeed, it was apparently of little moment to the Gnostics of any school, and their opponents were not infrequently
rowing in the same boat. The Gnostics were, however, less disingenuous; they strenuously declared their belief in continued
revelation, they delighted in apocalyptic and in psychic story. The belief in a post-resurrectional teaching had doubtless
existed for long in many forms in Gnostic circles. It must have been widespread; for, as shown by Schmidt quite recently (Bib.
59), a (Catholic writer in Asia Minor found himself compelled to steal the fire of the Gnostics and adopt the same convention
in an orthodox document that was intended to be a polemic against Gnostic ideas, somewhere in the 3rd quarter of the 2nd century.
However they arrived at their conviction, it seems highly probable that the writers of the P.S. must have sincerely believed
they had high authority for their proceeding, and were in some way emboldened by ' inspiration ' to carry out their task.
As far as they were concerned, they do not by any means seem conscious of belonging to a decadent movement or of deterioration
in the quality of the ideas they were attempting to set forth, as so many modern critics would have it. On the contrary, they
thought they were depositories or recipients of profound mysteries never hitherto revealed, and that by a knowledge of these
mysteries they could the more efficiently evangelize the world.
It is evident, however, that the P.S. was never intended to be circulated as a public gospel. Certain things are to be preached
or proclaimed to the world, but only certain things. Certain mysteries, again, the recipients were to bestow under certain
conditions, but others were to be reserved. The ' Books of the Saviour ' are, therefore, to be regarded as apocrypha in the
original sense of the word-that is, ' withdrawn ' or ' reserved ' writings. As such they fell within the proscriptions of
artificial secrecy common to all the initiatory institutions of the time and of all time. And artificial secrecy can with
difficulty, if ever, avoid the moral and intellectual hazard of its innate obscurations. The P.S. was intended for already
initiated disciples, for chosen learners, though pledge of secrecy is mentioned. It was intended, above all, for would-be
apostles, for those who should go forth to proclaim what was for them the best of good news; it is clearly the inner instruction
of a zealously propagandist sect.
If ' The Books of the Saviour ' in their full original form - for in the extant P.S. we have but selections from them and
the formula of the higher mysteries are omitted,-and if what is given of the lower mysteries in Div. iv. were held back from
public perusal owing partly at least to the fear of the unworthy making improper use of them, there is little danger to-day
on this score, for this part of the miscellany remains so far the most securely incomprehensible. And indeed no little else
remains obscure, even when we are of those who have made a protracted study of the psychical elements in mysticism and of
the general psychology of religious experience. But there is much also in our codex which has a charm of its own. There are
things of rare, if exotic, beauty, things of profound ethical significance; things of delicate spiritual texture.
In any case, however all these very various elements and features in the syncretism be judged and evaluated, the Pistis Sophia
is unquestionably a document of the first importance, not only for the history of Christianized Gnosticism, but also for the
history of the development of religion in the West.
Information on Pistis Sophia
The Pistis Sophia is preserved in the Codex Askewianus and has been known to scholars for nearly two centuries. Jack Finegan
writes (Hidden Records of the Life of Jesus, p. 298), "The text of Codex Askewianus is divided into four sections."
H.-C. Puech, revised by Beate Blatz, writes (New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, p. 362): "following the analysis of K.R. Köstlin,
the results of which were adopted and more precisely stated by C. Schmidt, it is today almost unanimously agreed that the
four sections of the manuscript must be divided into two distinct groups. The first three sections correspond to the three
books of one and the same work, probably composed between 250 and 300: the first book (pp. 1-81 of the Schmidt-Till translation)
has neither superscription nor colophon; the second (pp. 82-162) has at the beginning the title (added later) 'The second
book (tomos) of the Pistis Sophia', but is designated at the end as 'A part (meros) of the books (or rolls: teuche) of the
Saviour (soter)'; the third (pp. 164.20-231.9), separated from the second by an independent fragment, the end of a lost book,
is likewise entitled in the colophon 'A part (meros) of the books (or rolls: teuche) of the Saviour (soter)'. On the other
hand the fourth section (232.1-254.8), which has no title, is in reality a distinct work, composed in the first half of the
3rd century and thus older than those which precede it. Accordingly only the work contained in the first three books merits
the name 'Pistis Sophia'."
G. R. S. Mead writes (Pistis Sophia, pp. xxxvii-xxxix):
The earlier view ascribed the P.S. to Valentinus, who died probably about the middle of the 2nd century, or a decade later,
or alternatively to an adherent of the Valentinian school. We may call it the 2nd-century theory. A succession of scholars
were of this opinion, among whom may be mentioned Woide, Jablonski, La Croze, Dulaurier, Schwartze, Renan, Révillout, Usener
and Amélineau. This earlier view can hardly be said to have been supported by any great show of detailed argument, except
by the French Egyptologist and Coptic scholar Amélineau, who was its most stalwart supporter. Seven years prior to his translation
of P.S. in 1895, Amélineau devoted 156 pp. of a voluminous essay (Bib. 19), in which he sought to prove the Egyptian origins
of Gnosticism—a general thesis which can hardly be maintained in the light of more recent research,—to a comparison
of the system of Valentinus with that of the P.S.
Meantime in Germany, shortly after the appearance of Schwartze's Latin version in 1851, the careful analysis of the system
of the P.S. by Köstlin in 1854 gave rise to or confirmed another view. It abandoned the Valentinian origin, and pronounced
generally in favour of what may be called an 'Ophitic' derivation. Köstlin plaecd the date of the P.S. in the 1st half of
the 3rd century, and Lipsius (Bib. 15) and Jacobi (Bib. 17) accepted his finding. We may call this alternative general view
the 3rd-century theory.
In 1891 Harnack, accepting Köstlin's analysis of the system, attacked the problem from another point of view, basing himself
chiefly on the use of scripture, as shown in the quotations from the O.T. and N.T., and on the place of the doctrinal ideas
and stage of the sacramental practices in the general history of the development of Christian dogma and rites. He pointed
out also one or two other vague indications, such as a reference to persecution, from which he concluded that it was written
at a date when the Christians were 'lawfully' persecuted. These considerations led him to assign the most probable date of
composition to the 2nd half of the 3rd century. Schmidt in 1892 accepted this judgment, with the modification, however, that
Div. iv belonged to an older stratum of the literature, and should therefore be placed in the 1st half of the century. This
general view has been widely adopted as the more probable. In Germany it has been accepted by such well-known specialists
as Bousset, Preuschen and Liechtenhan; and in France by De Faye. Among English scholars may be mentioned chiefly E. F. Scott,
Scott-Moncrieff and Moffat.
The only recent attempt to return to the earlier 2nd-century view is that of Legge in 1915 (Bib. 57), who roundly plumps for
Valentinus as the author. In order to do this he thinks it necessary first of all to get out of the way Harnack's parallels
in P.S. with the fourth gospel. They may just as well, he contends, be compilations from th synoptics. One clear parallel
only can be adduced, and this may be due to a common source. I am not convinced by this criticism; nor do I think it germane
to Legge's general contention, for it is precisely in Valentinian circles that the fourth gospel first emerges in history.
In the Introduction to the first edition of the present work I registered my adhesion to the Valentinian hypothesis, but,
as I now think, somewhat too precipitously. On general grounds the 3rd-century theory seems to me now the more probable; but,
even if Harnack's arguments as a whole hold, I see no decisive reason why the P.S. may not equally well fall within the 1st
half as within the 2nd half of the century.
Jack Finegan writes (op. cit., pp. 299-300): "In contrast with the fourth book in Codex Askewianus, where the revelation takes
place immediately on the day of the resurrection, i.e., the third day after the crucifixion, here at the beginning of the
first book (Chap. I, Page 1 in Till) we read that after Jesus was raised from the dead he spent eleven years with the disciples
(mathetai), and in his discourses with them taught them only as far as the places (topoi) of the first commandment and as
far as the places (topoi) of the first mystery (musterion)."
J. J. Hurtak writes (Pistis Sophia, p. xxvii): "The Pistis Sophia teaches us that humanity has inherited from the First Space
of the Divine an indwelling divine power. The Savior is directed by the Ineffable to assist in the extension of the Divine
powers into the human kingdom according to the desires of humanity, and to reveal the efficacy of the highest mysteries of
salvation to humankind."
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