300 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM
commandments (which the savior came to fulfill, not to destroy); Moses' own
additions to the law; and the additions by the elders. The latter two parts were
mixed with impure and evil law, which was a compromise necessary to control
the people before the advent of New Testament rigor. These lapses in law were
made with regard to "hard-hearted divorce," revenge killing, and all other in-
justices. For his part, the savior Jesus altered the commands on offerings, cir-
cumcision, fasting, and the Passover unleavened bread. The new law takes
commands to a spiritual level. Following Paul, one should have circumcision
not of the flesh but of the spiritual heart.
Ptolemy's exegesis of Christian law was certainly already clear in Paul's
changes and the New Testament itself, but now it is presented in a way to
show that pure law derives not from the perfect god but from the demiurge,
the creator god of the Bible. The god of the Bible, however, is presented not
entirely as a narrow, angry god of the Jews, but as a middle deity between the
perfect, ungenerated god and the devil. That god of the law, who is still in
the Christian province, is the arbitrator of justice, which depends on him.
But he is inferior to the perfect god, as his justice is lower. His world is cor-
ruption, darkness, and the material, while the god of all is incorruption and
self-existent light. Finally, the savior is with the perfect god. We read, "The
substance of the latter [the god of all] produced a double power, while the
savior is an image of the greater one."
At the conclusion, the writer of the didactic letter returns to the reader,
telling her personally, "These points will be of great benefit to you in the fu-
ture, if like fair and good ground you have received fertile seeds and go on to
show forth their fruit." The Letter to Flora is a letter to convert. It speaks for
the power of Valentinian thought to address significant issues, concerning god
and law, in a creative and thoughtful manner.
LETTER TO FLORA
1
RECASTING OF THE MOSAIC LAW
The law ordained through Moses, my dear sister Flora, has not been under-
stood by many persons, who have accurate knowledge neither of him whoi. Ptolemy's Letter to Flora survives in Greek as a quotation from a work by the heresiologist
Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion (33.3-7); translated by Grant, Gnosticism, pp. 184-90;
adapted by Willis Barnstone.