Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[Concerning the writings of others, according to their own account.] Others again tell monstrous tales: that there is a certain first light in the power of Bythos (the Deep), blessed, incorruptible, and boundless; and that here is the Father of everything, styled the First Man. His Ennoia (Thought), once put forth, is, they say, the offspring of the one who sent it out, and this one they call Son of Man, that is, the Second Man. Positioned under these two figures stands the Holy Spirit, and beneath that Spirit lie separate elements — water, darkness, the deep, and chaos — over which, they claim, the Spirit hovered, and this they name the first Woman. Afterward, the First Man, they say, rejoicing with his son at the loveliness of the Spirit — namely, the Woman — and shedding light upon her, fathered from her an incorruptible radiance, a third male figure, whom they term Christ: offspring of the First and Second Man and of the Holy Spirit, that first Woman; father and son both uniting with the woman whom they also style Mother of All Living.
But since she could not bear or contain the greatness of the lights, she is said to have become overfull and to have overflowed toward the more leftward parts. And so their son, Christ alone, being as it were the right-hand one, was caught up immediately with his mother into the incorruptible Aeon and carried to the regions above. This, they say, is the true and holy Church, which arose as the naming, the gathering, and the joining together of the Father of everything — the First Man — and of the Son, the Second Man, and of Christ their son, and of the aforementioned Woman.
The power that overflowed from the Woman, possessing the moisture of light, they teach fell downward away from the fathers, having of its own will this moisture of light; and this they call the left-hand power, Prunicus, Sophia, and the male-female. It descended simply into the waters, which had been motionless, and set them in motion, giving them a body. For they say that all things ran to and clung to the moisture of her light, and surrounded it; and had she not had this, the whole would perhaps have been swallowed up and submerged by matter. This power, then, bound by the body that came from matter, and greatly weighed down, at length came to herself and tried to flee the waters and ascend to her mother, but was unable, on account of the heaviness of the body surrounding her. Being in very ill case, she contrived to hide the light that was above her, fearing that it too might be harmed by the lower elements, as she herself had been. And when she had received power from the moisture of the light that was with her, she sprang back and was raised on high, and, spreading out above, she covered over and made this visible heaven out of her own body; and she remained beneath the heaven she had made, still bearing the impress of a watery body. When she had received desire for the light above, and had taken power throughout, she is said to have laid aside her body and been freed from it. This body they say she put off, and they call it woman from woman.
They say that her son also had a certain inbreathing of incorruption left in him by his mother, by which he works; and having become powerful he too, they say, put forth out of the waters a motherless son — for they claim he had no knowledge of his own mother. And his son, in imitation of his father, sent forth another son in turn; this third begot a fourth, and the fourth himself begot a son; and so also in dignities and powers they proceed one from another. And they have given these lying names: the one who is first from the mother they call Ialdabaoth; the one from him, Iao; the one from him, Sabaoth (the Great); fourth in line Adoneus; fifth Eloeus; sixth Oreus; and, last of the seven, Astaphaeus. These heavens, powers, angels, and makers they set in order, seated in heaven according to their generation, unseen, ruling also over heavenly and earthly things — the first of them, Ialdabaoth, despising his mother because he had made sons and grandsons without anyone's permission, and further angels, archangels, powers, authorities, and dominions. When these had been made, his own sons turned against him in strife and contention over the rulership; at which Ialdabaoth, grieved and in despair, gazed downward into the sediment of matter lying beneath and set his craving on it, and from this, they say, a son was brought forth. This, they say, is Nous himself, in the twisted form of a serpent; and from him, in turn, spirit, soul, and all worldly things; and from these were generated all forgetfulness, malice, jealousy, envy, and death. This serpent-shaped and twisted Nous of theirs, they say, further perverted the Father by his crookedness, while he was still with their Father in heaven and in paradise.
Hence Ialdabaoth, swelling with pride and glorying over all that lay beneath him, declared: I am father and deity, and beyond me exists no one else. But his mother, on hearing this, called out against him: Do not speak falsely, Ialdabaoth; for beyond you stands the Father of everything, the First Man, and Anthropos, offspring of Anthropos. When all were thrown into turmoil at this unfamiliar voice and its sudden announcement, and inquired whence the cry had issued, Ialdabaoth, they say, seeking to draw them away and win them to himself, said: Come, let us fashion man in our likeness. On hearing this the six powers — their mother having planted in them the notion of man, in order that through him she might drain from them the primal power — came together and formed a man immense in breadth and length; but since he could only wriggle upon the ground, they brought him to their father, Sophia so working that she might likewise drain from him the moisture of light, so that he could not be raised up against those who possess power above. But when that one breathed into the man the spirit of life, they say he was secretly drained of that power; and that the man thereby came to have Nous and Enthymesis (Reflection); and these, they say, are what is saved; and that he at once gave thanks to the First Man, forsaking his makers.
They say that Ialdabaoth, in his jealousy, wanted to devise a way of emptying man of power through a woman, and that he drew a woman out of his own Enthymesis (his own "thought"); but that Prunicos, taking hold of her, invisibly emptied her of that power. The rest of the rulers, coming and marveling at her beauty, called her Eve, and, desiring her, begat sons by her, whom they say are also called angels. Their mother, they say, contrived through the serpent to seduce Eve and Adam into transgressing Ialdabaoth's commandment. Eve, hearing this as though it came from the Son of God, believed it readily, and persuaded Adam to eat from the tree of which God had said they should not eat. And they say that when they had eaten, they came to know the power that is above all things, and withdrew from those who had made them. Prunicos, seeing that even through her own creation they had gotten the better of the powers, greatly rejoiced, and cried out again that, whereas the Father is incorruptible, this ruler here, calling himself Father, had lied — since there had once existed a Man and a First Woman, and this ruler, adulterating what was not his, had sinned. She declares that God is to be recognized — having now also her own Enthymesis restored to her — and for that reason turns at once toward God; and at this Ialdabaoth is seized with jealousy and tries to diminish the power in the woman, making her, after the pattern of the First Woman, herself an instrument of the Mother (Prunicos, that is, Sophia).
But Ialdabaoth, because of the forgetfulness that had come over him — not even attending to any of this — cast Adam and Eve out of paradise, on the ground that they had broken his command. Since he had longed for sons to be begotten to him from Eve, but did not obtain this, since his own Mother worked against him in everything, secretly emptying Adam and Eve of the moisture of the light, so that the one who came from the higher principality might have no share either in the curse or in the reproach. Thus they teach that Adam and Eve, having in this way been emptied of the divine substance, were cursed by him, and cast down out of heaven into this world. And they say that the serpent too, for opposing the Father, was hurled by him down to the lower world, but that he brought the angels who are here under his own power, and himself begat six sons, he himself existing as the seventh, in imitation of the hebdomad that surrounds the Father. And these seven, they say, are the world-ruling demons, forever hostile to and warring against the human race, since it was on account of humanity that their father was cast down below.
They say that Adam and Eve at first had light, luminous, and, so to speak, spiritual bodies, such as they had when they were first fashioned; but that on coming here, these bodies were changed into something darker, grosser, and more sluggish, and their soul likewise dissolved and languid — since from their maker they had received only the world's own breath of life — until Prunicos, taking pity on them, restored to them the sweet fragrance of the moisture of the light; through which they were brought back to remembrance of themselves, and recognized themselves as naked and as consisting of bodily matter [an editorial note is interposed here in the source at this point and is too corrupted to render], and they recognized that they bore death within them. They discovered, they say, being led by Sophia, that a body had been placed around them only for a time; and they found food as well, again with Sophia going before them, and, once satisfied, they came together with one another in the flesh, and begat Cain — whom the fallen serpent, together with his own sons, seized upon at once and corrupted, filling him with the world's forgetfulness, driving him into folly and boldness, so that when he killed his brother Abel he was the very first to display jealousy and to bring about death. After these, they say, Seth was begotten according to the providence of Prunicos, and after him Norea; and from these they say the rest of the multitude of mankind was begotten, and driven, from this lower hebdomad, into every kind of wickedness, and into apostasy from the holy hebdomad above, and into idolatry and every other contempt of it — the Mother always secretly working against them, in order to save what was properly her own, that is, the moisture of the light. They hold that the holy hebdomad consists of the seven stars they call the planets; and they say that the fallen serpent has two names, Michael and Samael. Ialdabaoth, angry at mankind because they did not worship him or honor him as Father and God, sent a flood upon them to destroy them all together. [Here the source text carries an interpolated editorial comment, obscure in the manuscript, to the effect that from this one may fairly conclude that the true Gnostics could not deny Adam salvation.] But Sophia, being present, saved those who were with Noah in the ark, on account of the moisture of that light which was from her, through which the world was again filled with human beings; and from these they say Ialdabaoth himself chose a certain Abraham, and made a covenant with him, promising that should his offspring remain in service to him, he would grant them the land as an inheritance; and he gave them the Law, and made them Jews; and from among these he singled out seven days, which they also term the sacred hebdomad. And each of the rulers takes his own herald to glorify him and proclaim him as God, so that the rest, hearing of these glories, might likewise serve those who are proclaimed as gods by the prophets. And this is how they distribute the prophets: they say that Moses, Joshua the son of Nun, Amos, and Habakkuk belonged to Ialdabaoth; that Samuel, Nathan, Jonah, and Micah belonged to Iao; that Elijah, Joel, and Zechariah belonged to Sabaoth; that Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel belonged to Adonai; that Tobit and Haggai belonged to Eloi; that Micah and Nahum belonged to Orei; and that Ezra and Zephaniah belonged to Astaphaeus. Each of these, then, glorifying his own father and god, they say that Sophia herself also spoke much through them concerning the First Man and the incorruptible Aeon, and concerning that Christ who is above, forewarning and reminding men of the incorruptible light, of the First Man, and of the descent of Christ; and that when the rulers were terrified at this, and marveled at the novelty of what was being proclaimed through the prophets, Prunicos brought it about, through Ialdabaoth (who did not know what he was doing), that two further emissions to mankind should occur — one from the barren Elizabeth, the other from the virgin Mary.
And since Sophia herself could find no rest, neither in heaven nor on earth, she was grieved, and called upon her mother for help. Her mother, the Prior one, took pity on her daughter's repentance, and asked the First Man that Christ be sent to help her; and he descended, sent to his sister, to the moisture of the light. When Sophia who is below became aware that her brother was descending, she made known his coming by way of John, and made ready the repentance-baptism, preparing Jesus in advance, so that Christ, upon his descent, might find a clean vessel, and that, through her son Ialdabaoth, Christ might make the woman known. It is said that he passed down through the seven heavens, taking on a likeness to their sons, and by degrees stripped them of their power. For, they say, the whole moisture of the light ran together to him, and Christ, descending into this world, first put on his sister Sophia, and the two of them rejoiced, refreshing one another; and this is what they define as the bridegroom and the bride. Jesus, being begotten of the Virgin through the working of God, was, they say, wiser, more pure, and more upright than every other man; and Christ, joined to Sophia, descended into him, and so Jesus Christ came to be.
They say that many of his disciples did not recognize the descent of Christ into him; but when Christ had descended into Jesus, then he began to work miracles, and to heal, and to make known the Father who was unknown, and to declare openly that he himself was the Son of the First Man. At this the rulers, and the father of Jesus, grew angry, and worked to have him killed; and when he was led away, they say that Christ himself, together with Sophia, withdrew into the incorruptible Aeon, while Jesus was crucified — Christ not having forgotten his own, but having sent down upon him from above a certain power, which raised him up in that body which they also call the animal and spiritual body — for he sent back the worldly elements into the world. But when the disciples saw him risen, they did not recognize him, nor did they even recognize Jesus himself, for whose sake he had risen from the dead. [The source text here carries a corrupted editorial note that cannot be reliably rendered.] They say that this was the greatest error among his disciples, that they supposed he had risen in a worldly body, not knowing that flesh and blood are unable to inherit the kingdom of God.
They also want to confirm the descent of Christ and his ascent from this: that the disciples say Jesus did nothing of great note either before his baptism or after his resurrection from the dead, not knowing that Christ had been united to Jesus, and to the incorruptible Aeon of the hebdomad — for they call the worldly body the animal body. They say he remained after the resurrection for eighteen months, and that, as perception descended upon him, he learned clear truths, and passed these on to the few of his disciples whom he judged fit to receive such great mysteries; and thus he was received up into heaven, with Christ seated at the right hand of the father Ialdabaoth, so that into himself he might gather the souls of those acquainted with them, once their worldly flesh had been laid aside, enriching himself — his father not knowing this, nor even seeing him — so that just as Jesus enriches himself with holy souls, his father is correspondingly diminished, being lessened and emptied of his own power through those souls. For he will no longer have holy souls to send back down again into the world, but only those that are of his own substance, that is, of his own breath. And the consummation will come when the whole moisture [the text breaks off in the manuscript at this point, and resumes with a separate note:] — and this is why they say the serpent is called the wisest of all creatures, and also on account of the arrangement of our intestines, through which food is carried, and which have such a shape as to display, hidden within us, the generative substance of the serpent's form.