Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [341]
Perpetua’s vision is related to the famous Logion 114 of the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus tells Mary that she must become a man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Mary’s gender reversal serves as a key for interpreting Perpetua’s Imitation of Christ. In this respect, Jesus’ passion is viewed as the same kind of agōn (contest) which the martyr must endure in the arena. The purpose and reward of this ordeal is seen in the third vision, where Perpetua experiences a journey to heaven in which she and her companions are carried by four angels and stand before a heavenly throne. This prophetic dream foretells the heavenly reward of martyrs and, by extension, all the faithful. Perpetua’s actual end is unknown, but the story is a great gift, a paradigm of Christian passion, and a martyr narrative for the future edification of the church.56
Besides the effect on spectators, the work has had an even greater effect on those who have read it. After martyrdom ceased to be a common experience in the church, it still retained its value to encourage faith, to garner conversions, to concentrate the will of the faithful, and to inspire missionizing. There is a definite relationship between stories of martyrdom and ascetic behavior. The “red” martyr was replaced by the “white” martyr, the person who sacrificed even ordinary pleasures like marriage and procreation to achieve the same immortal state that the martyrs achieved. Perpetua’s example served as encouragement for missionizing as well. The monastics, unencumbered by family or relations, were important vectors in spreading the word of Christianity to new lands.
The Sethians: The Hypostasis of the Archons
THE HYPOSTASIS OF THE ARCHONS, otherwise translated as the Reality of the Rulers, is one of many Gnostic retellings of the creation story. It is from a school of Gnosticism called “Sethian” by scholars. The documents of this school consist of wildly mythological, sometimes dreamlike narratives, based on the Hebrew Bible. The Seth of the scholarly designation is the Biblical Seth, the surviving son of Adam, who carries gnōsis to the present, and not the Egyptian Seth. In this bizarre genre, the Bible’s heroes are seen as villains, while some of the Biblical villains are seen as heroes. The text identifies those who transmitted the gnōsis to the present generations and Seth is a key link.
gnōsis begins in the garden of Eden. The snake is a hero because it passes redeeming gnōsis to Adam and Eve. The God of the Old Testament is seen as an ignorant or evil demiurge (creator) because He thinks that He is the only God. He does not know that there is a God of salvation, who is above him. This is a polemical mythology, reflecting a Gnostic defense against Rabbinic and, especially, Christian opposition.57 These texts reveal a radically anti-Jewish and anti-orthodox attitude.
The Hypothesis of the Archons, which will have to serve as a representative of a whole genre of Sethian texts found in the Nag Hammadi Corpus, discusses a conflict between the secondary authorities of the cosmos and the true reigning spirit of “Incorruptibility,” who is gendered as a female power. The hierarchy of the evil ruling powers of the cosmos appears to be an ironic caricature of church hierarchy. We can characterize the Hypostasis of the Archons as a Sethian text, due to the portrayal of Eve and the serpent as salvific characters. Eating from the tree of knowledge is a positive act, which lifts the veil of ignorance deluding Adam and Eve. After the Female Spiritual Principle enters the serpent, it refutes the prohibition given to them by the god called “Samael,”58 a depiction of the Hebrew God as an ignorant demiurge.
The serpent explains, “With death you shall not die; for it was out of envy that it said this to you. Rather, your eyes shall open and you shall come to be like gods, recognizing evil and good” (Hyp. Arch. 90:6-11). This