Additional Literature of Gnostic Wisdom
26
The Exegesis
on the Soul
f I "1
I he Exegesis on the Soul is a history of the soul, of her fall into the
I world, her corruption there in the body of a woman hounded by
JtL... lecherous men, and the ways of her virtuous return, through
repentance, to heaven. As in other tractates, such as Herakleon's Commen-
tary on the Gospel of John, the notion of allegorical interpretation of scrip-
ture is central, a practice that orthodox Christians essentially adopted from
the gnostics while repudiating their thought. Here the interpretation extends
to the Hebrew prophets and Homer. Not only are these interpreted in ways
that support a gnostic system, but the texts themselves, at least in our Coptic
version, also appear in versions differing markedly from standard texts in
ways that confirm a gnostic slant. The author's sources were probably the an-
thologies of the day.
The soul in Greek is Psyche. She is understood to be feminine in name and
nature, and great stories are told about her in Greco-Roman literature. Here in
the Exegesis on the Soul she is presented as originally androgynous when she
was a virgin and with her father. When she fell into the earthly world she lost
her virginity to lovers and bandits, who deceived her as she deceived herself.
In her first fallen state, though the details are not transparent, the womb,
which appears to be the womb of the soul, is external, like male genitalia. Cap-
tive to her body and to men who abuse her through physical pleasure and then
abandon her, she asks the father to have mercy on her. The father turns the