Foster—Irenaeus and the Non-Canonical Gospels 115Adamas is mentioned but once in the Apocryphon, “And from the foreknowledge of
the perfect mind, through the revelation of the will of the invisible Spirit and the will
of the Autogenes,
is he whom the virginal Spirit called Pigera-Adamas, and he placed him over the first
aeon with the mighty one, the Autogenes, the Christ, by the first light Armozel; and
with him are his powers” (Ap. John 8.27-35). Interestingly, although Irenaeus identi-
fies the role of Adamas as a key element in the cosmological system he describes, the
actual name is not used with great frequency in the Apocrphon. Instead, that text uses
the term “the perfect man” on four occasions, apparently to designate the same figure.
The final paragraph in chapter 29 of book I is in some ways a miscellany of elements
that Irenaeus recalls or deems worthy of comment concerning this system. The open-
ing line summarizes the origin of the Holy Spirit: “they maintain, that from the first
angel, who stands by the side of Monogenes, the Holy Spirit has been sent forth, whom
they also term Sophia and Prunicus” (Hae r. I.29.4). This protological account of the
Holy Spirit accords with elements found throughout the Apocryphon, but again does
not preserve all elements to be found in that text.
Pearson’s assessment that parallels between Adversus haereses I.29 and the Apoc-
ryphon of John occur within the first part of that text is generally correct. This is the
section of the revelation discourse, and in fact many of the parallels are drawn from
the first part of that revelation discourse (Ap. John 1.1—9.24). Whether the implication
automatically follows that Irenaeus may have been using a shorter form of the text is
dubious, especially as the ten questions of the dialogue section (Ap. John 13.13—31.25)
do have some parallels with Hae r. I.30, where Seth is a named character.^32
Since Irenaeus gives a general outline of the cosmological system for the purpose
of discrediting it, he does not provide close enough parallels to determine if he was
indebted to any specific text form of the Apocryphon. Nor can one be entirely certain
that he was citing the cosmic myth from this text either directly or by memory. Yet,
notwithstanding these caveats, the key features of the system in the Apocryphon and
those outlined by Irenaeus abound in shared features. There can be no doubt that the
same cosmology stands behind both descriptions, and there is a reasonably high likeli-
hood that Irenaeus used a text similar to that of the Apocryphon as the source of his
information. However, Grant may be correct, based on the fact that Irenaeus shows
no apparent knowledge of the names of the 365 angels responsible for the parts of the
human body or of the descent of the Pronoia to the lower darkness which are contained
in the longer version of the text, that Irenaeus “almost certainly used the shorter Greek
Apocryhon.”^33 Nonetheless, two factors should be acknowledged. First, that Irenaeus
leaves out many of the elements found in the Berlin Codex since he is summarizing
the main ideas of the text. Also secondly, although some text form of the Apocryphon
almost certainly circulated in Greek, there is no way of proving that this was the form
preserved in the Berlin Codex. Thus, while there is strong evidence to suggest that the
underlying myth of the Apocryphon and Adversus haereses 1.29 came from a common
source, and that it is likely that the source of Adversus haereses 1.29 was some form of
the Apocryphon of John, beyond this other conclusions are ultimately speculative.