314 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM
(15) John 2:19
Destroy this temple
and in three days I shall raise it up.
In three full days, not on the third day, which is the day of the resurrection of
the church.(16) John 2:20
This temple was built over forty-six years, and you will
raise it up in three days?
Solomon's constructing the temple in forty-six years is an image of the savior.
The number six refers to matter, that is, what is fashioned, while forty, the un-
combined realm of four,^18 refers to god's breathing in^19 and the seed in that
breathing in.^20(17) John 4:12
You are not greater than our father Jacob,
who gave us the well and who himself drank
and whose sons and cattle drank?
That well signified weak, temporary, and deficient life and its glory. It was lim-
ited to being worldly. This is proved by the fact that Jacob's cattle drank from
it. But the water that the savior gave is of his spirit and power. "You will not be
thirsty forevermore," for his life is eternal and will never perish like the first
water from the well. It is permanent. The grace and gift of our savior are not
taken away or consumed or defiled by whoever shares in them. But the first life
is perishable. "Water springing into eternal life" refers to those who receive life
supplied abundantly from above and who pour out what has been given them
for the eternal life of others. The Samaritan woman revealed uncritical faith,
alien to her nature, when she did not waiver about what was said to her. "Give
me this water so I won't be thirsty." She hated the shallows pierced by the word
and that place of so-called living water.
(18) John 4:16
Go and call your husband and come back here.- Or, "tetrad," a group of four aeons in the Valentinian concept of the pleroma.
- On god breathing the breath of life into the nostrils of the first human, see Genesis 2:7.
- The seed in the divine in-breathing refers to the spiritual people.