788 EPILOGUE
or gnostics, is the Ginza. This fertile, nonascetic religion of the living water is
practiced by groups in villages and cities of Iraq and Iran, and some, far from
their roots, have migrated to cities in America.^23RECOVERY OF GNOSTIC SCRIPTURES
Gnosticism lives beyond the existence of a contemporary school in a chance
Mesopotamian village or city or in assimilated Catharist communities in Mon-
treal or Detroit. Principally, it has survived as sacred texts. A gnostic bible has
emerged, gradually assembled out of the church fathers' imperfect Greek and
Latin refutations, from tombs in Persia and China, from a pot under the
sands near the ancient hamlet of Chenoboskion in which was discovered
the great Coptic Nag Hammadi library, and also from documents held in
the Coptic Museum at Cairo and in the British Museum and Berlin Museum.
These are some of the sites where words of gnosticism have been located
and stored.
Some heresiological literature had survived, but altogether not more than
fifty printed pages. But by the end of the Middle Ages the long reconstruction
of that gnostic memory was in full swing. A large collection of writings known
as the Corpus Hermeticum (or the Hermetica), attributed to Hermes Tris-
megistos, was repeatedly copied. The central work of the Hermetica is the
Poimandres, a Socratic dialogue between the dark body and the enlightened
mind, or nous, whose purpose is the soul's escape and ascent. Cosimo de Medici
ordered the Poimandres to be translated into Latin; this appeared in 1471,
translated by Marsilio Ficino. In the late eighteenth century the Coptic text
Pistis Sophia (Faith Wisdom), going back to the third century, found its way
into English libraries. This collection contains interminable gnostic conversa-
tions by the risen Jesus with his companions about the fall and redemption of
a heavenly aeon Pistis Sophia. In the next hundred years Pistis Sophia was
translated into Latin and European languages. In 1896 more came out of Egypt:
a Coptic papyrus volume containing the Gospel of Mary, the Secret Book of
John, and the Sophia of Jesus Christ. Five songs of a major collection, the
Songs of Solomon (or Odes of Solomon), were in the Pistis Sophia.- In modern times Mandaeans have moved from villages to medium-sized towns and cities
between Baghdad and Basra and in Iran to cities like Ahvaz and Shustar, where ceremonies are
attended but knowledge of the old languages and scripts is diminishing.