LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 229I am called law and you have called me lawlessness.
I am one you pursued and seized.^7
I am one you scattered and gathered together.
I am one before whom you are ashamed,
and to me you are shameless.
I am the woman who attends no festival
and whose festivals are many.
I am godless and one whose god is great.
I am one you studied and you scorn me.
I am unlettered and you learn from me.
I am one you despise and you study me.
I am one you hide from and you appear to me.
When you hide I show.
When you appear I hide
Take me into understanding from grief,
and take me from understanding and grief.
Receive me into yourselves from other places
ugly and destroyed.
And steal from the good even in their ugliness.
Out of shame take me to yourselves shamelessly.
Without shame and with shame, rebuke what is mine
in you
and come to me, you who know me
and you who know my members,
and make great ones among small first creatures.
Come to childhood
and don't despise it, because it is small and tiny.
Don't turn away the great in parts from the small,
for the small is known from the great.
Why do you curse and honor me?
You wound me and have mercy.
Don't separate me from the first you have known.
Don't cast out or turn away,
turn away and not know....
7- Eve is often described as being seized or raped in gnostic literature.