746 CATHAR LITERATURE
SATAN'S ANGEL CHOOSES THREE TREES
FORTHE CRUCIFIXIONAnd again I asked the lord. I said to him, "What did he do during all that
time?"
And he told me, "From the instant the devil was expelled from the glory of
the father and was forbidden to take part in affairs of heaven, he sat on the
clouds and sent his ministers, angels burning with fire, down below to the
people. He did so from the time of Adam to Enoch. And he raised his minister
Enoch above the firmament and revealed his divinity to him.^14 He had pen and
ink brought to him. And once seated, Enoch wrote sixty-seven books under the
devil's dictation, and the devil ordered him to carry them back to earth.
Enoch kept them safely on the earth and then transmitted them to his chil-
dren, and he began to teach them the way to celebrate sacrifices and iniquitous
mysteries. So he concealed from people the kingdom of the skies.
And Satan said to them, "See that I am your god and that there is no other
god but me."^15 That is why my father sent me into the world, that I make
known and teach people to perceive the wicked spirit of the devil. But then
Satan, having learned that I had descended from the sky to this world, sent
his angel, and he took the wood of three trees and gave it to Moses so that I
might be crucified on a cross made from the wood, which is at this time wait-
ing for me. And he made his divinity known to his people, and ordered the
law to be given to the children of Israel, and that he cross dry through the
middle of the Red Sea.
THE LORD INSEMINATES THE ANGEL MARY
When my father thought of sending me to the earth, he sent before me his
angel named Mary to receive me. Then I came down,^16 entered her by the ear,
and came out of her ear.^17- In the Vienna version, the devil ravishes Enoch with ecstasy as he sends him on high.
- Isaiah 45:5-6, 21; 46:9. This arrogant claim is commonly made by the creator of the world
(for example, Yaldabaoth) in gnostic texts. - The Vienna version adds, "she became my mother."
- The notion that Mary was inseminated through the ear is based on noncanonical apocrypha
and is found in medieval painting. Here Jesus as an angel inseminates his mother the angel
Mary with his sperm through her ear. This notion of purity is doubly reinforced, since Mary
will not have been inseminated normally, and the child will issue from her pure ear rather than
from her loins.