LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 213powers of the luminaries, who use language closely connected to that
of the opening portion of the Secret Book of John to explain the unexplain-
able and communicate what cannot be put into words. Whatever the divine is,
it is not this, it is not that. "It is not something that exists, which people can
understand, but something greater, which no one can understand."
The Foreigner is a Coptic text in the Nag Hammadi library, and like other
texts in the Nag Hammadi library, it was most likely composed in Greek.
Karen L. King suggests a date of composition in the first quarter of the third
century to correspond with the likelihood that Plotinos knew of the text. She
also suggests, more tentatively, that the text may have been written in Egypt,
possibly in Alexandria.^1
VISION OF THE FOREIGNER
2
Through a primary revelation of the first one,^3 which is unknown to all, I saw
the god that is greater than perfection, and the triple power^4 that exists in all.
I was seeking the ineffable, unknowable god, of which people are ignorant
even if they understand it at all, the mediation of the triple power, which is
located in stillness and silence and is unknowable.
When I was empowered by these things, the powers of the luminaries^5 said
to me, You have done enough to hinder the inactivity that is in you by seeking
what is incomprehensible. Rather, hear about it, as is possible, through a pri-
mary revelation and a revelation.^6
Does it^7 exist through its own being, or does it exist and will it come fur-
ther into being? Does it act? Does it know? Is it alive? For it has no mind, no
life, nothing real—and nothing unreal, incomprehensibly. Does it come from
what it has? No, there is nothing at all left over, as if it causes something to be
undertaken, or it purifies something, or it receives or gives something. Nor is
i. King, Revelation of the Unknowable God, pp. 60-61.- Vision of the Foreigner: Nag Hammadi Codex XI,3, pp. 6i,8 to 64,1; translated from the
Coptic by Marvin Meyer. - The invisible spirit.
- Forethought, or Barbelo.
- In Sethian texts the luminaries are Harmozel, Oroiael, Daveithai, and Eleleth.
- The primary revelation seems to be a visual disclosure, the revelation an oral disclosure.
- That is, the invisible spirit. Much of what follows in the Vision of the Foreigner resembles the
opening portion of the Secret Book of John.