LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 179
But there follows a series of contentions between Adam's descendent Noah
and the creator, leading to the creator's attempt to destroy the peopled earth
with water and fire. Noah makes a pact with the creator of this world, and he
and his family are saved personally on earth. More significant, the angels of
the great light save the people of knowledge, the Sethians, who live for six hun-
dred years. And from Noah's seed, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, come the people
of the world, the descendants of Shem and thirteen kingdoms from Ham and
Japheth. The thirteenth kingdom consists of four hundred thousand people
who will live with those who have the great eternal knowledge.
The Revelation of Adam seems to distinguish several groups of people on
the earth, according to their degree of enlightenment:
The seed of Seth, the gnostics.
The descendants of Shem, perhaps the people of Israel,^2 who are men-
tioned only obscurely in the text.
The descendants of Ham and Japheth. These include not only the twelve
kingdoms that constitute the people of this world but also the four
hundred thousand, the thirteenth kingdom that sojourns with the
seed of Seth. These must form a special group, drawn from the
people of the world and associated with the gnostics of the seed
of Seth.^3Bentley Layton, acknowledging the difficulties faced in distinguishing the
different groups of people in the Revelation of Adam, suggests that that text
may intend to specify a division of human beings into three essential groups:
the seed of Seth, the descendants of the sons of Noah, and the four hundred
thousand. Such a threefold division, Layton concludes, may be reminiscent of
the Valentinian tendency to divide people into three groups.^4
Sakla the creator, in a way that may recall the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah, brings apocalyptic catastrophes of fire, sulfur, and asphalt darken-
ing the powers of the luminaries of the world, the sun and the moon. But now
clouds of light called Abrasax, Sablo, and Gamaliel come down and transport
the chosen above the realms and rulers, and they are saved and become like
- Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, p. 52.
- Here 400,000 is a symbolic number used to designate this group of people. In another apoc-
alyptic text a similar use of a symbolic number for a group of people is to be noted in the
144,000 people to be saved according to the New Testament Apocalypse. - Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, p. 52.