LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 157
might not recognize her, but that afterthought might be able to restore what
the mother lacked.^67
THE IMPRISONMENT OF HUMANITY
The human being Adam was revealed through the bright shadow within. And
Adam's ability to think was greater than that of all the creators. When they
looked up, they saw that Adam's ability to think was greater, and they devised
a plan with the whole throng of rulers and angels. They took fire, earth, and
water, and combined them with the four fiery winds.^68 They wrought them
together and made a great commotion.^69
The rulers brought Adam into the shadow of death so that they might produce
a figure again, from earth, water, fire, and the spirit that comes from matter,^70
that is, from the ignorance of darkness, and desire, and their own false spirit.
This is the cave for remodeling the body that these criminals put on the
human, the fetter of forgetfulness.^71 Adam became a mortal being, the first to
descend and the first to become estranged.
The enlightened afterthought within Adam, however, would rejuvenate
Adam's mind.
The rulers took Adam and put Adam in paradise. They said, Eat, meaning,
do so in a leisurely manner.^72 But in fact their pleasure is bitter and their
beauty is perverse. Their pleasure is a trap, their trees are a sacrilege, their fruit
is deadly poison, their promise is death.
They put their tree of life in the middle of paradise.^73
I^74 shall teach you the secret of their life, the plan they devised together, the
nature of their spirit: The root of their tree is bitter, its branches are death, its
shadow is hatred, a trap is in its leaves, its blossom is bad ointment, its fruit is
- Afterthought helps to restore the divine spirit or light that mother Sophia lost to Yaldabaoth.
- Here fiery winds replace air as the fourth element.
- The scene recalls a noisy workshop in which a statue or a fetter is being forged.
- Here material spirit replaces air as the fourth element.
- The description of a human being and a shadow in a cave may well derive from the allegory
of the cave in Plato's Republic, Book 7. Further, the body as the prison or tomb of the soul is
also a well-known platonic and Orphic teaching. - Genesis 2:16-17.
- Literally, "the tree of their life" (in Nag Hammadi Codex II).
- The savior, here Jesus, is speaking.