136 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOMthe problem of evil and vindicated the goodness of god by interpreting the
opening chapters of Genesis and other portions of the Hebrew Bible in an in-
novative and even shocking manner. In the hypothetical Jewish text the re-
vealer and savior must have been the heavenly forethought of god, as is clear
from the hymn of the savior that concludes the revelation in the longer ver-
sion of the Secret Book of John. In the hymn of the savior, and elsewhere in
the Secret Book of John, the revealer speaks in the first-person singular ("I").
In the earlier Jewish text, the revealer would have been Barbelo, the fore-
thought of god, but in the present Christian version of the Secret Book of
John, the revealer is Jesus.
The Secret Book of John explains the contrast between an absolutely ex-
cellent and all-transcendent One (or monad) and an absurd and fallen world
by means of an intricate mythological account of a god who emanates, creates,
falls, and finally is saved. It combines insights derived from Genesis with
Greek philosophical and mythological themes to produce a dramatic story of
salvation, a remarkable account of the evolution, and the devolution, of the
invisible divine spirit.
Greek psychology and philosophy (platonism, for example) posited a sys-
tem in which the mind is linked to the divine and the divine is said to be mind.
Accordingly, the Secret Book of John employs a series of Greek terms related
to the word mind (nous) in order to describe the career of the divine and the
creation of the cosmos. The account describes the invisible spirit or mind ex-
tending itself through a thought (ennoia), a forethought (pronoia), until it
achieves an enlightened state of mind (nous) and a spiritual fullness (pleroma).
Alas, a loss of wisdom (Sophia) brings about mindlessness (aponoia); the
restoration of wisdom is finally accomplished through the expression of di-
vine afterthought (epinoia).
The following cast of principal characters emerges in the mythic account
of the Secret Book of John:
The father of all, called the One, the invisible virgin spirit
The divine mother, forethought of all, Barbelo, called mother-father, first
human, holy spirit, triple male
The divine child, the self-conceived, the anointed
The four heavenly luminaries, Harmozel, Oroiael, Daveithai, Eleleth
Afterthought, a heavenly aeon, sent as a revealer with connections to fore-
thought, Sophia, and Eve