The Gnostic Bible: Gnostic Texts of Mystical Wisdom form the Ancient and Medieval Worlds

270 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM

those tame and wild and running loose.

He gathers them and shuts them in

so, like it or not, they cannot escape.

CAIN

The one who has been created^27 is beautiful,

and you would expect his sons to be noble creations.^28

If one was not created but engendered,

you would find his seed was noble,

but now he was created and he engendered.

Is this nobility? Adultery came into being,

then murder. One^29 was engendered in adultery,

since he was the child of the serpent.^30

So like his father he too became a murderer and killed his brother.

Every sexual act between unlike persons is adultery.

GOD IS A DYER

God is a dyer.^31

The good dyes, true dyes, dissolve into things

dyed in them.

So too for things god has dyed.

His dyes are imperishable because of their colors.

What god dips he dips in water.

SEEING

It is impossible to see anything in the real realm

unless you become it.

Not so in the world. You see the sun without being the sun,

27. Adam, or else a more general statement about anyone.


28. Bentley Layton suggests that the negative has been omitted here, and that the sentence
    should read "his sons are not noble creations" (Gnostic Scriptures, 336).


29. Cain.


30. On the description of the origin of Cain, see the accounts of the seduction of Eve by Yald-
    abaoth in the Secret Book of John and the rape of Eve in the Reality of the Rulers.


31. The Gospel of Philip has more on dyeing below; see "The Lord in the Dye Works of Levi."