The Gnostic Bible: Gnostic Texts of Mystical Wisdom form the Ancient and Medieval Worlds

LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 145

love,

idea.

The fourth eternal realm has been set up for the fourth luminary, Eleleth.

There are three other realms with it:

perfection,

peace,

Sophia.

These are the four luminaries that stand before the self-conceived god;

these are the twelve eternal realms that stand before the child of the great self-

conceived, the anointed,^34 by the will and grace of the invisible spirit. The

twelve realms belong to the child of the self-conceived one, and everything

was established by the will of the holy spirit through the self-conceived one.

GERADAMAS AND SETH

Now, from the foreknowledge of the perfect mind, through the expressed will

of the invisible spirit and the will of the self-conceived one, came the perfect

human, the first revelation, the truth. The virgin spirit named the human Ger-

adamas^35 and appointed Geradamas to the first eternal realm with the great

self-conceived, the anointed, by the first luminary, Harmozel. Its powers dwell

with it. The invisible one gave Geradamas an unconquerable power of mind.

Geradamas spoke and glorified and praised the invisible spirit by saying,

"Because of you everything has come into being, and to you everything

will return.

"I shall praise and glorify you, and the self-conceived, and the eternal

realms,

the three—father, mother, child, the perfect power."

Geradamas appointed his son Seth to the second eternal realm, before the

second luminary, Oroiael.

In the third eternal realm were stationed the offspring of Seth,^36 with the

third luminary, Daveithai. The souls of the saints were stationed there.

34. Geradamas? Perhaps read "the great self-conceived child, the anointed." See also below.


35. Geradamas is the perfect human being, Adamas or Adam, in the divine realm, the father of
    Seth and the heavenly ancestor of humankind. The name probably derives from Hebrew, per-
    haps meaning Adam the stranger (so Howard M. Jackson and Birger A. Pearson), that is, Adam
    who is an alien in this world but is at home in the divine realm. For other suggestions for the
    meaning of Geradamas, see lames E. Goehring in Pearson, ed., NagHammadi Codex VII, p. 388.


36. The phrase "the offspring of Seth," like "the unshakable race," designates the gnostic group.