2l6 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOMthis world and his body. Now enlightened, Zostrianos preaches the impas-
sioned gnostic sermon given here, in order to awaken lost people to saving
knowledge.
The text of Zostrianos survives in Coptic in the Nag Hammadi library. It
was composed in Greek some time before it became known, in the latter half
of the third century, to Plotinos and his students. Despite the suggestion that
the text tells the story of the Persian sage Zostrianos, the text is a pseudony-
mous composition, and its actual place of composition is unknown.THE SERMON OF
ZOSTRIANOS
1
A lost crowd I^2 awakened, saying,
You who are alive, holy offspring of Seth,^3
understand this. Do not turn a deaf ear to me.
Awaken your divinity to divinity
and strengthen your undefiled chosen souls.
Observe the constant change that is here
and seek the unchanging state of being unborn.
The father of all these beings invites you.
When you are being rebuked and maltreated,
he will not forsake you.
Do not wash yourselves^4 with death,
nor rely on those who are inferior
as if they were superior.
Flee from the madness and the fetter of femaleness
and choose the salvation of maleness.^5i. The Sermon of Zostrianos: Nag Hammadi Codex VIII,i, pp. 130,14 to 132,5; translated from
the Coptic by Marvin Meyer.- The speaker is thought to be Zostrianos, now back in the body and enlightened after his
heavenly trip. - This phrase designates the Sethian gnostics.
- Or "baptize yourselves."
- Femaleness may symbolize this world, maleness the world above, in Zostrianos and other
texts, for example, Gospel of Thomas 114.