That Platonic Daimon again...

Every now and then when browsing on the internet, I come across discussions of "daimon" and statements that because Plato used the term to indicate "spirit" so could the Gnostics. I am rebuffed with the simple statement that "the Gnostics relied on Plato." This in fact is the exact argument that Bart Ehrman put forward during the Judas book session at the San Diego SBL. Oh, and also I am criticized because "angels" (a positive term) is used as well to describe the Archons.

I say, "Hold your horses!" (yes, I actually say this, because I'm an equestrian - and now I live in Texas!).

Let's think about this. The Gnostics had taken biblical theology to a new level by merging it with Platonic thought. But did Platonic thought (or biblical theology for that matter) look the same after the merger?

Plato had a demiurge, a creator god. Was he good or evil? He was good. And he worked hard to create the best possible world as a reflection of the world of forms. The world he created was the best that could be given the fact that it was a reflection of the higher world in the realm of matter. The soul can work to be freed from matter by pious living, and upon death, ascend back to the Good.

The Sethian Gnostics had a demiurge, Ialdabaoth. Was he good or evil. He was evil, an opponent to the high god, in a war against the high god. Because he was the one who created the world, it is a world of suffering and imprisonment. The only hope for freedom of the soul is for a redeemer to come and teach it how to get out of the cycle of imprisonment that contains it through Ialdabaoth's rule and destroy Ialdabaoth's army. No amount of righteous living is going to free the soul from the clutches of the demiurge. Only a redeemer more powerful than Ialdabaoth could do it. The redeemer comes as a spy in disguise, and ends up double-crossing the Archons, vanquishing them when he was crucified. He wins the war and saves the soul. This is NOT Plato's universe, but it is the Gnostics'.

Yes the Archons are called angels. But what kind of angels are they? They are the fallen or jealous angels who are battling the high god (cf. the fall of Satan myth, which was a myth that these Gnostics also merged with the Platonic myth). The good angels (the ones that didn't fall) are the Aeons who live beyond this cosmos. The daimons are the demons, which is another class of malicious beings created from a different substance than the angels. So in Sethian mythology the two nasty assistants to Ialdabaoth are Nebro(el) who is called a demon (daimon), and Saklas a jealous angel.

All of this is to say two things:
1. We have to be very cautious not to assume that the same word used in one tradition means exactly the same thing in another. This was the downfall of the History of Religions School, and we cannot make this same mistake twice! When a word is reappropriated (as the Gnostics did with Plato's ideas), meanings alter sometimes substantially. So what we have to do is figure out the tradition that has reappropriated the term, and how this reappropriation has been done.

2. The same word can be used in these texts to mean different things, and this wouldn't have been problematic for the audience who knew the bigger myth. Yes, Saklas may be called an angel, but he certainly wasn't one of God's good ones! Nor were any of the lesser Archons and their numerous assistants who dwelled in their heavens. They were literally called "armies" of angels (often translated "hosts"), and their enemy was the supreme God and his Son.

The conclusion remains that daimon in the Sethian context is negative. It means demon. And when you add "13" to the title (Thirteen Demon), the particular demon referenced is Ialdabaoth who dwells in the thirteenth realm. This is common Sethian mythology discussed in texts that were written in the same time period as the Gospel of Judas.

Response (7) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

This is my final response, covering his material on Pistis Sophia. I found this part of his paper to be very interesting, although I think that it shows a Valentinian Gnostic pattern quite distinct from the Sethian. So it is not going to be as helpful illuminating the Gospel of Judas' pattern than Meyer might think. This is only my initial reaction. I need to study these patterns more closely, which I'm actually doing for the Codex Judas Congress. I have been researching patterns of 12 and 13, especially as they relate to the apostles and the cosmic structures and claims to authority.

So perhaps I will leave this whole discussion to that conference, and Meyer and I can have some common ground to discuss when he comes to town. Personally I would like to move the conversation on the Judas gospel and the Tchacos Codex beyond the deadlock we have been engaged in the last few months.

By the way, don't forget that Meyer and Wurst are going to be giving a public lecture (March 13, 7-8 p.m., Rice University) on how they restored the codex from a box of fragments, and what media involvement and corporations means for scholarship.

Response (6) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

6. The 13th. Numerology is especially important for the Gnostics. Their cosmos is built on different enumerations of the aeonic and cosmic realms. The early Sethian enumeration of the cosmic realm is based on the seven planets and the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The number five (12 minus 7) is attributed to the hells. Above these twelve realms is another realm of fixed stars where the demiurge lives, in the 13th.

In the Gospel of Judas, Judas isn’t simply the 13th Demon, his star is attached to the 13th realm which means that the 13th realm in the Gospel of Judas is a cosmic one, not one of the pleromic realms above the cosmos. Stars are fixtures of this universe and govern it. There are no stars in the pleroma. Furthermore, the Gospel of Judas says that Nebro(el)-Ialdabaoth and Saklas lived in clouds and with their six assistants generated twelve angels in the heavens and gave them to the twelve angels for dwelling places. This means that Nebro(el)-Ialdabaoth and Saklas live above the 12th heaven in the 13th realm of fixed stars that is referred as the 13th realm in which Judas' star dwells. This isn't the cosmology just in this text, but is also found in other Sethian texts as I explain in my book.

The reference to thirteen “seals” in Marsanes, is not the same reference. We shouldn't be mixing them up. The seals do not represent 13 cosmic realms, but refer to the fact that the initiate must be sealed 13 times in a ritual activity. Furthermore in this late text, the first three seals are associated with the cosmos and ascending beyond it. The fourth and fifth seals concern the place of disembodied souls and repentant souls. The sixth seal is the seal that belongs to the self-generated aeons. And so forth.

Response (5) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

5. Transcription problems are another thing entirely. There are two transcription errors that NGS has corrected from the time it published the first popular book to the Critical Edition. These have been corrected, so why are they still important to point out? Because the public doesn’t know about them and because the corrected transcription makes for completely opposite readings in vital interpretative areas. The original wrong readings have affected the way that this text was initially interpreted and presented to the public.

Bottom p. 46 of manuscript. How did I see that the original NGS publication had emended this text and translated it: “they will curse your ascent to the holy [generation]”? I compared this reading to their Coptic transcription which had been posted on-line. An [n] appeared in brackets in front of nekktê. This reads nekktê as a noun rather than an emphatic negative future verb. Through this emendation (when the n was added), the negative is no longer present in the sentence. When we met in the Sorbonne, several of us raised this point quite loudly, and then we were given another provisional transcription that would form the basis for the Critical Edition. In that edition, the emendation was gone and ktê was replaced with bôk. Now it reads: “they […] to you, and you shall not ascend to the holy generation.” The negative emphatic future is back, but with a different verb.

By the way, there is no footnote in the popular edition to indicate that the team had altered the text and that their translation was based on that alteration. There isn’t even a bracket around [your ascent]. The footnote arrived in the Critical Edition when two outside scholars, Nagel and Funk, pushed the issue.

My point is that emendations are very dangerous and often wrong because they are conscious decisions. No matter how innocent they may seem, they should be avoided except where there is no better explanation. This is especially true when we are dealing with emendations that change the sentence from negative to positive or positive to negative.

I have not made any damning, slanderous, or defamatory charges against Meyer or anyone else on the NGS team. What I have said is that the text was altered by the team when this emendation was made. This is a fact that can easily be observed. I also go on in my Op. Ed. piece to say that I do not know why this mistake (and the others) were made, but it is a question that I would like answered. I think that the emendation of this text was a mistake, that consequently the altered reading of this text has led the public and other scholars to believe that Judas ascends to the holy generation when he does not.

I have not made any statement of intentionality. I have left this as an open question in the Op. Ed. piece, wondering about two possibilities: that the task of reconstruction was difficult and that the scholars were working under conditions abnormal and harmful for the academic process. Meyer has now answered that question in his response to me: the text was a nightmare; that they kept working on it after the popular translation was published; that they got feedback from external scholars which made them put away the emendation.

Response (4.2) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

4.2 daimon I agree that there are contexts where daimon can be translated as “a divinity” a point I did make in my book. But the conventional translation of this word in Gnostic texts is “demon” because the realms around the world are filled with beings that are created by the demiurge and work for him against the high god. When these archonic beings are called “angels” (angeloi) it is not in the sense of good angels, but the fallen angels who rape women, bring sinful things to humans, and war against the high god (Enoch; Gen 6).

This is why Meyer correctly translates in his new edited volume, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, daimon as “demon” in all instances that I have been able to locate (except the one in question in the Gospel of Judas). If someone finds a case where daimon isn't translated demon in this new edition of the NHS, please let me know.

One passage that Meyer translates with both daimon and pneuma is sufficient to demonstrate my point: “For…all…among the [dominions and] these authorities and archangels and powers and the whole generations of demons (daimôn)…Awaken your mind, Paul, and notice that this mountain where you are standing is the mountain of Jericho, so that you may come to know the things hidden in what is visible. You will meet the twelve apostles, for they are chosen spirits (pneuma), and they will welcome you.”

Response (4.1) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

4.1 porj e- As for Meyer’s insistence that I “must know, these are not ‘mistranslations’ at all, but rather they represent alternative ways of understanding a difficult text” and that he has footnoted the alternatives, I think we need to be very clear here. When is an alternative “erroneous”?

Let’s look at porj e- (separate from) which Meyer is still insisting can be translated “set apart for.” There was no footnote with another translation in the popular edition, but one can be found in the Critical Edition now which understands “separate from” to be an alternative. But is it an alternative? Crum (271b-272a) says that the expression means a) “divide from” in transitive sense and “be divided from” in intransitive sense; b) “divide into” in transitive sense and “be divided into” in intransitive sense. Now when one examines actual Coptic sentences that are translations of Greek originals, it is clear that a) is used to mean to divide or separate one thing from another and b) is used to mean to divide into separate things. It is not used to mean “to set apart for” (such as Rom. 1:1), an expression that must contain ebol (porj ebol e-) and is used regularly in Coptic literature. This is its correct usage and Kasser appears to know it because that is how he translates this passage in the French. This should be the translation maintained in the English as well. “Separate from” is not an alternative translation. It is the correct translation. I am glad to read that Meyer is “increasingly inclined to translate this difficult Coptic phrase as ‘set apart from.’”

While we are on this subject, I might also point out that on page 159 of the Critical Edition (James 29.2) is also incorrect. Here is the expression porj ebol e- which has wrongly been translated “these three are separated from a place of faith.” It should read “these three are set apart for a place of faith.” Who are the three? Sapphira, Susanna and Joanna who are three of the seven women disciples who receive esoteric teaching. By the way, there is no footnote in the Critical Edition indicating “set apart for” as an “alternative” reading in James 29.2.

Response (4) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

4. The popular book which was released to the public was based on a provisional Coptic translation that now turns out to be flawed. Some of these errors have been acknowledged and corrected in The Critical Edition put out by NGS a year later. Others have not. Now we have the problem of going about correcting the errors after the fact and in a public forum, which is uncomfortable for all involved. But this is what happens when our work is not vetted through the normal channels of blind peer review before publication. This academic procedure allows for errors to be corrected before the text is published. This helps to avoid the perpetuation of the errors by other scholars who rely on the publication for their own work. All of us make errors. Hopefully they are caught before publication.

Response (3) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

3. This text is not good news about Judas, just as the gospel of Matthew in not good news about Matthew. It is good news about Jesus from the perspective of the Sethian Gnostic Christians – that they are the holy generation taught by Jesus and possessors of his secrets. Because of this, they are saved. The rest of Christians are ignorant and worship Ialdabaoth. Because of this, they remain under the influence of Fate, and probably will be destroyed along with the cosmos. Because of the fragmentary nature of the gospel, it is uncertain whether or not this situation is predestined.

Response (2) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

2. Gnostic texts use parody and satire quite frequently. This is found, for instance, in the Testimony of Truth, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, the Acts of John, which take aim at apostolic Christians and their practices and beliefs. The Sethians were particularly good at making fun of traditional biblical beliefs, especially when it came to the Genesis story and their use of traditional verses like “Besides me there is no god” by applying it to Ialdabaoth and implying that this is the god that other Christians ignorantly are worshiping. I do not think of the Gospel of Judas as a parody in terms of a modern comic skit or genre. I have never used it this way, nor would I.

Response (1) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

I am happy to see Professor Meyer offer his reflections on the Gospel of Judas, responding critically to me. You can find his response "The Thirteenth Daimon," on his new website. Let me take the points he raises and reflect upon each one. I will post separately on each issue as time permits. This means that you might have to read them in ascending order.

1. A small but important point. My interpretation is not revisionist. There was never an opportunity granted to scholars worldwide to discuss this text and settle on a consensus. What happened is that National Geographic had a monopoly on the text, published their interpretation, had a media machine that made it appear that their reading of the text was and should be it. Once other scholars had the opportunity to study the text this last year and begin to get their opinions into print (which normally takes a year) we are seeing that the NGS interpretation is NOT the consensus, and the type of interpretation I am in favor of is supported by a growing number of scholars who are initially publishing their takes on this text. It will be several years before we can determine what (if any) will be the consensus let alone what is revisionist.