120 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOMthe Good, will, as the invisible source of spiritual light, acquire luminous
names. For now, in this quintessential moment of gnostic development, we
have the anomaly of familiar almighty Jewish Elohim being guided by his new
gnostic master, the Good. The Book of Baruch, then, is our first clear paradigm
of gnostic dualism in which worldly and heavenly authority is shared by two di-
vinities, one of whom, Elohim, will eventually become nearly synonymous with
Satan, and the other, the Good, will become the core of the pleroma, the gnostic
fullness from which all spirit emanates and to which all light returns.
Early Jewish gnosticism is Jewish in speech and preoccupation. It still
remembers its Hebrew names such as those of its leading figures Elohim
and Edem (who is also called Israel), it concentrates on marriage and family,
and the love scenes return to the erotic diction of the Song of Songs. Unlike
other contemporary gnostic texts that are said to have had a Jewish Urtext,
here the Jewish basis has not been excised. Robert W. Grant compares Baruch
to "the mystical Judaism we find in the Zohar, where Yahweh is called the
father and Elohim the mother."^2
Jewish gnosticism is born in a first-century climate of diverse Jewish vi-
sions, ranging from those of Utopian Essene communities in the desert to cos-
mopolitan Jews in Alexandria, such as the philosopher Philo, who is filled with
Torah, neoplatonism, and strategies of mystical ascension. In the midst of all
this religious ferment and the political realities of Roman occupation, the de-
struction of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the subsequent terrifying diaspora, Jewish
gnosticism seems to gain strength as does the other new major Jewish sect, the
messianists or Christians. The Christians offer faith in an earthly Jewish mes-
siah who has become divine and identified with god, and who promises salva-
tion after death—a matter of scant interest in the Hebrew Bible. By contrast,
the gnostics will offer the promise of an interior light or breath, attainable
during one's lifetime through the epiphany of gnosis. In Baruch, through the
commands and actions of the Good, we see hints of a true paradise on earth
and in heaven, which in its allegorical ending points to hope.
Yet the narration ends with Eden still a conflicted mess, lacking harmony
or immediate resolution. There will be no peaceable kingdom on earth until
the human and divine forces on earth resolve their discord by means of an
as yet unavailable fully gnostic design. Everything in Baruch is transitional,
- Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity.