The Sethians ( Greek: Σηθιανοί) were one of the main currents of
Gnosticism
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek language, Ancient Greek: , Romanization of Ancient Greek, romanized: ''gnōstikós'', Koine Greek: Help:IPA/Greek, �nostiˈkos 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced ...
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
and Middle Platonism. However, the exact origin of Sethianism is not properly understood.
History
Mentions
The Sethians (Latin ''Sethoitae'') are first mentioned, alongside the
Ophites
The Ophites, also called Ophians (Ancient Greek, Greek Ὀφιανοί ''Ophianoi'', from ὄφις ''ophis'' "snake"), were a Christian Gnosticism, Gnostic sect depicted by Hippolytus of Rome (170–235) in a lost work, the ''Syntagma'' ("arrange ...
, in the 2nd century, by
Irenaeus
Irenaeus ( or ; ; ) was a Greeks, Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christianity, Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology by oppos ...
(who was antagonistic towards Gnosticism) and in Pseudo-Tertullian (Ch. 30). According to Frederik Wisse, all subsequent accounts appear to be largely dependent on Irenaeus. Hippolytus repeats information from Irenaeus.
According to Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 375), Sethians were in his time found only in Egypt and Palestine, but fifty years earlier, they had been found as far away as Greater Armenia.
Philaster's (4th century AD) ''Catalogue of Heresies'' places the
Ophites
The Ophites, also called Ophians (Ancient Greek, Greek Ὀφιανοί ''Ophianoi'', from ὄφις ''ophis'' "snake"), were a Christian Gnosticism, Gnostic sect depicted by Hippolytus of Rome (170–235) in a lost work, the ''Syntagma'' ("arrange ...
, Cainites, and Sethians as pre-Christian Jewish sects. However, since Sethians identified Seth with Christ (''Second Logos of the Great Seth''), Philaster's belief that the Sethians had pre-Christian origins, other than in syncretic absorption of Jewish and Greek pre-Christian sources, has not found acceptance in later scholarship.
Origins and development
Hans-Martin Schenke was one of the first scholars to categorize several texts in the
Nag Hammadi library
The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Thirteen leather-bound papyrus c ...
as Sethian.
According to John D. Turner, British and French scholarship tends to see Sethianism as "a form of heterodox Christian speculation", while German and American scholarship views it as "a distinctly inner-Jewish, albeit syncretistic and heterodox, phenomenon." Roelof van den Broek notes that "Sethianism" may never have been a separate religious movement but that the term rather refers to a set of mythological themes that occur in various texts. According to Turner, Sethianism was influenced by
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
and Middle Platonism, and six phases can be discerned in the interaction of Sethianism with Christianity and Platonism.
''Phase 1''. According to Turner, two different groups, existing before the 2nd century CE, formed the basis for the Sethians: a Jewish group of possibly priestly lineage, the so-called ''Barbeloites'', named after Barbelo, the first emanation of the Highest God, and a group of Biblical exegetes, the ''Sethites'', the "seed of
Seth
Seth, in the Abrahamic religions, was the third son of Adam and Eve. The Hebrew Bible names two of his siblings (although it also states that he had others): his brothers Cain and Abel. According to , Seth was born after Abel's murder by Cain, ...
".
''Phase 2''. The ''Barbeloites'' were a baptizing group that in the mid-2nd century fused with Christian baptizing groups. They started to view the pre-existing Christ as the "self-generated ( Autogenes) Son of Barbelo", who was " anointed with the Invisible Spirit's 'Christhood. According to Turner, this "same anointing asreceived by the Barbeloites in their baptismal rite by which they were assimilated to the archetypal Son of Man." The earthly Jesus was regarded as the guise of Barbelo, appearing as the Divine Logos, and receiving Christhood when he was baptized.
''Phase 3''. In the later 2nd century CE, the Christianized Barbeloites fused with the Sethites, together forming the Gnostic Sethianists. Seth and Christ were identified as bearers of "the true image of God who had recently appeared in the world as the Logos to rescue Jesus from the cross."
''Phase 4''. At the end of the 2nd century, Sethianism grew apart from the developing Christian orthodoxy, which rejected the Docetian view of the Sethians on Christ.
''Phase 5''. In the early 3rd century, Sethianism was fully rejected by Christian heresiologists, and Sethianism shifted toward the contemplative practices of Platonism, while losing their interest in their own origins.
''Phase 6''. In the late 3rd century, Sethianism was attacked by neo-Platonists like Plotinus, and Sethianism alienated from Platonism. In the early to mid-4th century, Sethianism fragmented into various sectarian Gnostic groups, like the Archontics, Audians, Borborites, and Phibionites. Some of these groups existed into the Middle Ages.
Relationship with Mandaeism
Various scholars have noted many similarities between
Mandaeism
Mandaeism (Mandaic language, Classical Mandaic: ),https://qadaha.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/nhura-dictionary-mandaic-english-mandaic.pdf sometimes also known as Nasoraeanism or Sabianism, is a Gnosticism, Gnostic, Monotheism, ...
and Sethianism. Kurt Rudolph (1975) has observed many parallels between Mandaean texts and Sethian Gnostic texts from the
Nag Hammadi library
The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Thirteen leather-bound papyrus c ...
Five Seals
In Sethianism, Sethian Gnostic texts, the Five Seals are typically described as a baptismal rite involving a series of five full immersions in holy running or "living water," symbolizing spiritual ascension to the divine realm. The Five Seals are ...
" of Sethianism, which he believes is a reference to quintuple ritual immersion in water, to Mandaean masbuta. According to Buckley (2010), "Sethian Gnostic literature ... is related, perhaps as a younger sibling, to Mandaean baptism ideology."Buckley, Jorunn J. (2010) Mandaean-Sethian connections ''ARAM'', 22 (2010) 495-507.
Theology
Sethianism claims that ''gnosis'' first descended upon
Seth
Seth, in the Abrahamic religions, was the third son of Adam and Eve. The Hebrew Bible names two of his siblings (although it also states that he had others): his brothers Cain and Abel. According to , Seth was born after Abel's murder by Cain, ...
, the third son of Eve and Adam, whose knowledge the Sethians regard as their origin. Norea, the wife of
Noah
Noah (; , also Noach) appears as the last of the Antediluvian Patriarchs (Bible), patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5–9), the Quran and Baháʼí literature, ...
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
conception of creation and the divine's relation to reality. The Sethian cosmogony is most famously contained in the '' Apocryphon of John'', which describes an Unknown God. Many of the Sethian concepts were derived from a fusion of Platonic or Neoplatonic concepts with the
Old Testament
The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...
Philo
Philo of Alexandria (; ; ; ), also called , was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt.
The only event in Philo's life that can be decisively dated is his representation of the Alexandrian J ...
(20 BC–40 AD).
Creation
From the "Unknown God" emanate '' aeons'', a series of paired female and male beings. The first of these is Barbelo, who is a co-actor in subsequent emanations. The ''aeons'' that result are representative of the various attributes of God, which are indiscernible when they are not abstracted from their origin. God and the ''aeons'' comprise the sum total of the spiritual universe, known as the ''
Pleroma
Pleroma (, literally "fullness") generally refers to the totality of divine powers. It is used in Christian theological contexts, as well as in Gnosticism. The term also appears in the Epistle to the Colossians, which is traditionally attributed ...
''.
In some versions of the myth, the ''aeon'' Sophia imitates God's actions, performing an emanation of her own without the prior approval of the other aeons in the Pleroma. This results in a crisis within the ''Pleroma'', leading to the appearance of the '' Yaldabaoth'', a "serpent with a lion's head". This figure is commonly known as the demiurge, the "artisan" or "craftsman", after the figure in
Plato
Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
's Timaeus. Sophia at first hides this being but subsequently escapes, stealing a portion of divine power from her in the process.
The ''Yaldabaoth'' uses this stolen power to create a material world imitating the divine Pleroma. To complete this task, he spawns a group of entities known collectively as ''
Archons
''Archon'' (, plural: , ''árchontes'') is a Greek word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem , meaning "to be first, to rule", derived from the same ...
'', "petty rulers" and craftsmen of the physical world. Like him, they are commonly depicted as zoomorphic, having the heads of animals.
At this point, the events of the Sethian narrative begin to cohere with the events of Genesis, with the demiurge and his ''archontic'' cohorts fulfilling the role of the creator. In Genesis, the demiurge proclaims himself to be the only god, claiming that there are no other gods superior to him. However, the audience's understanding of the context and prior events reinterprets this declaration and the nature of the creator in a dramatically different way.
The demiurge unknowingly emanates a shadow "Image" of Adam while unwittingly transferring the portion of power stolen from Sophia into the first physical human body. He then creates Eve from Adam's rib in an attempt to isolate and regain the power he has lost. By way of this, he attempts to rape Eve, who now contains Sophia's divine power; several texts depict him as failing when Sophia's spirit transplants itself into the Tree of Knowledge.The pair eat of the tree of the divine epi-gnosis guided by Christ appearing as an "eagle" above it to guide them to remember their true "nature above".
Theological significance
The addition of the prologue radically alters the significance of events in Eden. Rather than emphasizing a fall of human weakness in breaking God's command, Sethians (and their inheritors) emphasize a crisis of the Divine Fullness as it encounters the ignorance of matter, as depicted in stories about Sophia. Eve and Adam's removal from the Archon's paradise is seen as a pronoic part towards freedom from the Archons as part of the "Sacred Plan" hinted at in the Secret Apocryphon of John..
Sethian texts
Most surviving Sethian texts are preserved only in Coptic translation of the Greek original. Very little direct evidence of Gnostic teaching was available prior to the discovery of the
Nag Hammadi library
The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Thirteen leather-bound papyrus c ...
, a collection of 4th-century Coptic translations of Gnostic texts, perhaps hidden in reaction to Athanasius of Alexandria's Easter letter of 367, which banned the use of non-canonical books. Some of these texts are known to have been in existence in the 2nd century, but it is impossible to exclude the presence of later syncretic material in their 4th-century translations.
* The
Gospel of Judas
The Gospel of Judas is a non-canonical religious text. Its content consists of conversations between Jesus and his disciples, especially Judas Iscariot. The only copy of it known to exist is a Coptic language text that is part of the Codex ...
Irenaeus
Irenaeus ( or ; ; ) was a Greeks, Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christianity, Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology by oppos ...
, )
*
Nag Hammadi library
The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Thirteen leather-bound papyrus c ...
Irenaeus
Irenaeus ( or ; ; ) was a Greeks, Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christianity, Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology by oppos ...
Melchizedek
In the Hebrew Bible, Melchizedek was the king of Salem and priest of (often translated as 'most high God'). He is first mentioned in Genesis 14:18–20, where he brings out bread and wine and then blesses Abraham, and El Elyon or "the Lord, Go ...
Gospel of Judas
The Gospel of Judas is a non-canonical religious text. Its content consists of conversations between Jesus and his disciples, especially Judas Iscariot. The only copy of it known to exist is a Coptic language text that is part of the Codex ...
is the most recently discovered Gnostic text.
National Geographic
''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...
has published an English translation of it, bringing it into mainstream awareness. It portrays Judas Iscariot as the "thirteenth spirit (daemon)",Gospel of Judas, pg 44. translated by Kasser, Meyer, Wurst. who "exceeded" the evil sacrifices the disciples offered to Saklas by sacrificing the "man who clothed me (Jesus)".Gospel of Judas, pg 56. translated by Kasser, Meyer, Wurst. Its reference to Barbelo and inclusion of material similar to the Apocryphon of John and other such texts, connects the text to Barbeloite and/or Sethian Gnosticism.
Five Seals
In Sethianism, Sethian Gnostic texts, the Five Seals are typically described as a baptismal rite involving a series of five full immersions in holy running or "living water," symbolizing spiritual ascension to the divine realm. The Five Seals are ...