4^4 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM
all Egypt, Osiris;^7
Greek wisdom, the heavenly crescent moon;
Samothracians, venerable Adamas;^8
people of Haimos, corybant;^9
Phrygians, sometimes Papas,^10
sometimes corpse or god or sterile
or goatherd or harvested green sheaf
or flute player whom the fertile almond brought forth.SERMON
The Greeks say that earth first brought forth a human, bearing a good gift,
who wished to become the mother not of insensible plants or of irrational an-
imals but of a tame animal loved by god.
The Assyrians claim that among them was born Oannes the fish eater.^11
The Chaldaeans mention Adam and say that this person was the only one
whom the earth produced. He lay without breath and motionless and im-
movable like a statue. He was an image of that human above, Adamas, and
was made by many powers.
The great human from above, from whom he and "every family existing on
earth and in the heavens"^12 is derived, had to be completely submissive. There-
fore he was given a soul,^13 so that through the soul the enslaved creature of the
great and most excellent and perfect human might suffer and be punished.
They also ask what the soul is and where it originates and what its
nature is, since it enters human beings and, by its movement, enslaves and
punishes the creature of the perfect being on earth. They inquire not from
the scriptures but from mystical doctrines.
If you say that everything originated from one principle, you are wrong, but
if you say it came from three, you are right and can prove the whole matter.
- Osiris is an Egyptian god of moisture, kingship, and the underworld, and the husband of Isis.
He also dies and yet lives on as king of the underworld. - Adamas is the primal human.
- A corybant (or korybant) is an ecstatic celebrant sometimes linked to the Great Mother of
Phrygia. Haimos is the name of a river in Thrace. - Papas is a name connected to Attis, possibly related to Papa.
- Oannes is the Mesopotamian god of wisdom and is part man and part fish.
- Ephesians 3:15.
- The animating, as opposed to immortal, soul.