The
Secret Book of John (
Apocryphon of John) is a second-century AD Sethian
GnosticGnosticism refers to diverse, syncretistic religious movements in antiquity consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect god, the demiurge; this being is frequently identified with the...
text of secret teachings. It describes Jesus Christ reappearing after his Ascension and giving secret knowledge (
gnosisGnosis is the spiritual knowledge of a saint or mystically enlightened human being. In the cultures of the term gnosis was a special knowledge or insight into the infinite, divine and uncreated in all and above all, rather than knowledge strictly into the finite, natural or material world which...
) to the apostle
JohnJohn the Apostle was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of James, another of the Twelve Apostles....
. This book is reputed to bear this revelation.
Overview
The opening words of the
Secret Book of John are
"The teaching of the saviour, and the revelation of the mysteries and the things hidden in silence, even these things which he taught John, his discipleJohn the Apostle was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of James, another of the Twelve Apostles....
." The author John is immediately specified as
"JohnJohn the Apostle was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of James, another of the Twelve Apostles....
, the brother of JamesJames, son of Zebedee or Yaakov Ben-Zebdi/Bar-Zebdi, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was a son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of John the Apostle. He is also called James the Greater to distinguish him from James, son of Alphaeus, who is also known as James the Less. James is...
— who are the sons of ZebedeeZebedee is a name used in several contexts:*In the Bible, Zebedee was a Hebrew fisherman, the husband of Salome, and the father of James and John, two of the Apostles of Jesus...
." One of the two distinct surviving versions is thought to be the original, of which the other was a lengthy embellishment. The later version is also so restructured that, although both versions have the same themes, few words and verses are had in common.
Many Christians in the second century CE hoped to receive a transcendent personal revelation such as
PaulPaul of Tarsus, also called Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Paul, or Saint Paul, Paul of Tarsus, also called Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Paul, or Saint Paul, Paul of Tarsus, also called Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Paul, or Saint Paul, ...
was able to report to the church at Corinth (
2 Corinthians 12:1-4) or that John experienced on the isle of
PatmosPatmos is a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea. One of the northernmost islands of the Dodecanese complex, it has a population of 2,984 and an area of 34.05 km . The highest point is Profitis Ilias, 269 meters above sea level. The Municipality of Patmos, which includes the offshore islands of...
, which inspired his
Revelation. As
Acts narrates what happened after the time Jesus ascended to heaven, so the
Apocryphon of John begins at the same point but relates how Christ reappeared to John.
The remainder of the book is a vision of spiritual realms and of the prior history of spiritual humanity.
History
A book called the
Apocryphon of John was referred to by
IrenaeusSaint Irenaeus , was a Christian Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire . He was an early church father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology...
in
Adversus HaeresesOn the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis , commonly called Against Heresies , is a five-volume work written by St. Irenaeus in the second century. Due to his assertion that Eleutherus was the current bishop of Rome, the work is usually dated...
, written about 185 CE, among the writings that teachers in second-century Christian communities were producing,
"an indescribable number of secret and illegitimate writings, which they themselves have forged, to bewilder the minds of foolish people, who are ignorant of the true scriptures" — scriptures which Irenaeus himself was establishing as no more and no less than four, the "Fourfold gospel" that his authority helped make
the canonical fourA Biblical canon or canon of scripture is a list or set of Biblical books considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community, generally in Judaism or Christianity. The term itself was first coined by Christians, but the idea is found in Jewish sources...
. Among the writings he quotes from, in order to expose and refute them, include the
Gospel of TruthThe Gospel of Truth is one of the Gnostic texts from the New Testament apocrypha found in the Nag Hammadi codices . It exists in two Coptic translations, a Subachmimic rendition surviving almost in full in the first codex and a Sahidic in fragments in the twelfth.-History:The Gospel of Truth was...
,
Gospel of JudasThe Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel purported to document conversations between the apostle Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ. The document is not claimed to have been written by Judas himself, but rather by Gnostic followers of Jesus...
, and this
secret book of John.
Little more was known of this text until 1945, when a cache of thirteen papyrus
codicesA codex is a book in the format used for modern books, with separate pages normally bound together and given a cover...
(bound books) that had been hidden away in the fourth century, was fortuitously discovered at
Nag HammadiNag Hammadi , is a city in Upper Egypt. Nag Hammadi was known as Chenoboskion in classical antiquity, meaning "geese grazing grounds". It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about 80 kilometres north-west of Luxor.It has a population of about 30,000, who are mostly...
in Egypt. The
Apocryphon of John was among the texts, in three Coptic versions translated from the Greek. Two of the versions are very similar and represent one manuscript tradition; they incorporate a lengthy excerpt from a certain
Book of ZoroasterZoroaster or Zarathushtra , also referred to as Zartosht , was an ancient Iranian prophet and religious poet. The hymns attributed to him, the Gathas, are at the liturgical core of Zoroastrianism...
appended to the
Apocryphon (as chapters 15:29 – 19:8f) A shorter version of the
Apocryphon found at Nag Hammadi does not contain the interpolation and represents another manuscript tradition. Still another version of this short edition of the text was discovered in an ancient Coptic Codex acquired by Dr. Carl Reinhardt in Cairo in 1896. This manuscript (identified as the "Berlin Gnostic Codex" or BG 8502) was used along with the three versions found at Nag Hammadi to produce the translations now available. The fact that four manuscript "editions" of this text survived -- two "long" versions and two "short" versions -- suggests how important this text was in early gnostic Christian circles. It should also be noted that in the three Nag Hammadi codices where the
Apocryphon of John appears, the text in each case is the first text of the collection.
Influence
The
Apocryphon, set in the
framing deviceA frame story employs a narrative technique whereby an introductory main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage for a fictive narrative or organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story...
of a revelation delivered by the resurrected Christ to John the son of Zebedee, contains some of the most extensive detailing of classic
dualisticDualism denotes a state of two parts. The word's origin is the Latin duo, "two" . The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages.-Moral...
Gnostic mythology that has survived; as one of the principal texts of the Nag Hammadi library, it is an essential text of study for anyone interested in
GnosticismGnosticism refers to diverse, syncretistic religious movements in antiquity consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect god, the demiurge; this being is frequently identified with the...
. Frederick Wisse, who translated it, asserts that
"The Apocryphon of John
was still used in the eighth century by the Audians of Mesopotamia" (Wisse p 104).
The
Apocryphon of John has become the central text for studying the gnostic tradition of Antiquity. The creation mythology it details has been the object of study of such writers as
Carl JungCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology known as Jungian psychology. Jung's approach to psychology has been influential in the field of depth psychology and in countercultural movements across the globe...
and
Eric VoegelinEric Voegelin, born Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin, was a political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, Germany, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna. His advisers on his dissertation were Hans Kelsen and Othmar Spann. He became a teacher and then an associate professor...
.
External links
Sources
- Davies, Stevan, . Secret Book of John: The Gnostic Gospel, Annotated and Explained ISBN 1-59473-082-2
- Logan, Alastair H. B. 1996. Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy. Based on the Apocryphon of John.
- Pagels, Elaine
Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey, , is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she is best known for her studies and writing on the Gnostic Gospels...
, 2003. Beyond Belief.
- Wisse, Frederick. The Nag Hammadi Library in English.