226 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM
the grand being. She is whore and holy. Throwing us off stride, she claims to
be the mother of her father. Finally, in her tractate of paradox, she reassures by
announcing that she is the knowledge of her search. And crucially she of the
perfect mind tells of the good reward for turning to her sumptuous spirit:
"There they will find me and live, and they will not die again."
The paradoxical self-declaration of the speaker as wife and virgin, mother
and daughter, and midwife, is paralleled in the text On the Origin of the
World.
THUNDER
3
I was sent out from the power
and have come to you who study me
and am found by you who seek me.
Look at me, you who study me,
and you who hear, hear me.
You waiting for me, take me into yourselves.
Don't banish me from your vision.
Don't let hatred enter your voice against me
or let anger enter your hearing.
In no place, in no time, be unknowing of me.
Be alert. Don't be ignorant of me.^4
I am the first and the last.
I am the honored and scorned.
I am the whore and holy.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and daughter.
I am the members of my mother
and the barren one with many sons.
I have had a grand wedding
and have not found a husband.
I am a midwife and do not give birth.
- Thunder: Nag Hammadi Codex VI,2, pp. 13,1 to 21,32; translated from the Coptic by George
W. MacRae in Robinson, ed., Nag Hammadi Library in English, rev. ed., pp. 297-303; revised in
verse by Willis Barnstone. - Much of this language recalls the role of wisdom in Jewish wisdom literature.