The Intertextual Sammael
Intertextual analysis has become common in post
structural literary criticism. The Structuralist
model of literary analysis stressed “assertions of objectivity, scientific
rigor, methodological stability, and other highly rationalistic-sounding terms.”
[9]. Poststructuralist theory, on the other hand, places its emphasis on
“uncertainty, indeterminacy, incommunicability, subjectivity, desire, pleasure
and play” [10]. Post-Structuralist
literary theory argues “that criticism, like literature itself, is inherently
unstable.” The term intertextuality was
developed by poststructuralist critics and theorists “in an attempt to disrupt
notion of stable meaning or objective interpretation,” [11]. The term suggests that each text “is situated
for each reader in an ever-changing web composed of innumerable texts.” [12]. As
such, there is no “extratextual” reality to which texts refer or that give
texts there meaning. Meaning or reference
is possible “only in relation to this network,” [13].
Intertexuality is a highly efficacious method to
examine some of the shared material in our Nag Hammadi works and the PRE.
In the first place, it leaves behind difficult notions that can hinder
investigation like the establishment of exact lines of transmission of the
stories about Sammael between “Gnostic” and Rabbincal authors. Such lines of transmission no doubt existed,
but the historical record is lacking, and all such historical reconstructions
are just that, reconstructions. Even as
methodical a scholar as Strousma makes statements that exceed our
documents. In an analysis of the rape or
seduction of Eve by the archons in the Nag Hammadi texts we have examined, and
the Jewish sources of these stories, he states : “The parallelisms in the texts
quoted above reveal the existence of definite links between Jewish and Gnostic
versions of Eve’s adultery and/ or seduction,” [Strousma,48]. He bases the “definite links” on a pun on
Eve’s name and the serpent in the Reality of the Rulers that only works in
Aramaic, and not Coptic or Greek. Strousma
admits that the “rabbinical texts” were probably redacted at a later date than
the “Greek or Aramaic Vorlage of the
Gnostic texts,” nevertheless “a previous oral tradition may be assumed.” Even more boldly, Strousma has the influence
as one way:
Moreover, it
is easier to understand Gnostics attributing previously known legends about the
serpent to the demiurge, than to imagine rabbis integrating scandalous Gnostic
sayings about God the Creator into their thought simply by transferring them to
Satan or the Serpent [Stousma,49].
This leap makes many
presuppositions about the rabbis, as if they are a monolithic group with one
agenda (and not the variegated bunch they were), God the Creator (again, a
notion with varied expression) and “scandalous” Gnostic sayings, and by
extension, the scandalous Gnostics themselves. These simple assertions
illustrate the pitfalls of an essentially historico-literary examination of the
Nag Hammadi literatures. Without another
group of documents to support such claims, these statements, couched in
historical certainty, are merely speculations.
But it goes further than
that. Such speculations are actually
harmful to an examination of the materials we outlined here. Even the brief overview of the materials
presented above from Nag Hammadi works and the PRE show that there is an overlap between the two sources. But assertions like Strousma’s effectively
hamstring further research. By having
stable and unchanging categories like the “rabbis” and the scandalous “Gnostics,”
great harm is done; his methods and outcomes resemble those of the
structuralist approach: he couches his work in firm historical nomenclature
that has little if any firm basis.
Intertextual examination
does not have the pitfalls of such source criticism. Intertextuality focuses
“upon the ways in which authors absorb, transform, or transgress the traditions
they appropriate. [14]. As Karen Kings expands on this notion, intertextual
analysis tends to
…stress the ways that authors alludes
to prior written and oral materials in contexts of struggle. Each work labors to displace other
interpretations in order to supersede them. This practice is not so much a
matter of influence or borrowing as it is a matter of confrontation; authors
reshape meaning by resituating known materials in ways that can at once present
their own views and replace prior readings [15].
King uses this method to
examine The Gospel of Mary, but it
can be quite helpful examining the Sammael material in PRE and the Nag Hammadi works.
First, this method displaces Strousma’s notion that the rabbi’s use of
the Sammael tales is somehow the correct one, the authoritative tradition that
is unchanging from the oral sources he speculates they inherited. It gives us the opportunity to entertain the
somewhat novel idea that the Sammael sections of the PRE, especially those that deal with Adam, Eve, Sammael, Abel and
Cain, are taking their cue from “Gnostic” works. As we shall see, to support this, there are
some indication in the PRE that its
author(s) were engaged in polemic with “Gnostic” groups.
We must first begin with
what the PRE leaves out of its
material about Sammael. For such an
important figure in the history of the world, his origins are left
unspoken. This does not seem
accidental. As we saw, the origins of
Sammael are key to the cosmogony and anthropogenic ideas of the The Secret Book of John, The Reality of the Rulers, and the First
Thought in Three Forms. His demiurgical
function is key to each work, and without it, they would be radically altered
in their meaning. Sammael, who has
control over the lower world or the earth in the PRE, functions in much the same way as the Sammael of Nag
Hammadi. He rules the lower estate of
the universe, however there his power appears to be absolute, and more
importantly, legitimate. In this sense,
his role is expanded beyond that of the Sammael of Nag Hammadi. That Sammael is consistently, or nearly
consistently, painted as a negative force whose power is illegitimate. Sammael in PRE has his power by a writ of God!
Here, PRE is engaged with
demiurgical notions of Sammael and refuts them.
It is hazardous to argue from silence, but the omission of Sammael’s
creation may be less than accidental. It
is a motif that occurs repeatedly in the Nag Hammadi works we have
discussed. And in an arena where so much
literary traditions are being re-iterated and reinterpreted, the omission of
Sammael’s birth is nothing less than a denial of his demiurgical status. Sammael is instead explained in reference to
his place in the angelic pantheon, a place where he is supreme, but only
understood in reference to like beings that occupy the same heavenly niche. Sammael is legitimized in the PRE.
In the Nag Hammadi works he is the demiurge, and is consistently
denigrated. The author(s) of PRE engage in a “confrontation” to
redefine Sammael.
The first area the PRE appears to directly engage Gnostic
notions is the creation of man. In PRE it is God and the Torah that create
man. When God says “Let us make a man in
our image, after our likeness,” he is telling the Torah, and the Torah’s
response is distress. The Torah is against creating man, stating
that “he will be full of anger,” but God creates the man anyway. This is not the first revolt of angels or
divine beings against God’s premiere creation.
At the beginning of Chapter 13, where Sammael is first introduced, the ministering
angels speak to God, and question his creation: “What is man, that thou
shouldst take note of him?.... Man is like a vanity upon earth there is none
his like,” [PRE,91] God then explains
that just as the angels proclaim God’s praise in the heavens, so too will man
on earth. Then God asks if “you are
unable to call the names of the creatures which I have created?” And the angels are indeed unable to name them. Adam then stood up, and in keeping with the
Genesis narrative, named the creatures of the earth. The angels then “retreated” and said “If we
do not take counsel against this man so that he sin before his Creator, we
cannot prevail,” [PRE,91]. This is the incident that precedes Sammael’s
revolt.
The angels, and then Sammael’s
jealousy of humans, supersedes the stance of the “Gnostics” in such texts at
The Secret Book of John. There, the
lower order of creatures envies humanity, and seeks to dominate it. In the PRE
this scenario is effectively re-written to give primacy to God, whose rule is
not questioned, but the lower order, from unnamed angels, to Sammael, and even
the pre-existent Torah, in various ways disagree with God’s decision to create
humans. Certain members of the divine
pantheon do nothing with these impulses (like the pre-existent Torah, who
although disapproving of God’s desire to create humanity, helps in the task) to
Sammael and his band, whose jealousy leads him to tamper with humanity. But they cannot stop God from creating
man. The author(s) of PRE essentially strips the power from
the Gnostic interpretation of man’s creation.
Rather than the work of a blind demiurgical power, it is God’s
work. Elements of a divine revolt
against humanity remain, but they are effectively reshaped into a different
mold.
We also see elements of this
transformation in the PRE portrait of
Sammael and the serpent. Although the PRE quotes the injunction in Genesis
that the serpent was more wily than any of the beasts that God created, he is
also portrayed as Sammael’s unwitting puppet, and appears incapable of
resisting Sammael’s use of him as a mouthpiece.
In the PRE the serpent is
given a far more positive portrayal than in The Secret Book of to John. Here, in answer to a question by John about
the serpent “Sir, is it not the serpent that taught Adam to eat?” The Saviour answers John and seems to equate
the snake with one of the archonic rulers who taught Adam “the sowing of desire
for corruption [sexual reproduction] so that Adam might be useful to it [the
serpent] [Layton,44]. Here, the serpent and Sammael/the First Ruler
are identified. The PRE takes this conjunction and makes it firmer, and in essence
absolves the serpent from responsibility. The serpent is not given a positive or
negative role. He is neutral, and his
power in stripped from “Gnostic” hermeneutics. Once more we have the PRE playing with “Gnostic” notions and turning them around
In The Reality of the Rulers, the snake plays
a more beneficial role. The “female
spiritual principle” descends in the snake and he instructs them to eat the
fruit. When they do they realize that
they are “naked of the spiritual element, and took fig leaves and bound them
upon their loins,” [L71]. The snake as
instructor of Adam and Eve is also at odds with the portrait of the snake in PRE.
As we said, the animal is essentially neutral, participating in Adam and
Eve’s corruption, but technically not responsible for it.
By far the greatest reworking of
“Gnostic” myth by the author(s) of PRE
is the story of Sammael, Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. This myth is central to the story of the
Secret Book of John, and in PRE it is
the central organizing principle to the first third of the book. The PRE
pits Adam and Sammael in a contest to see who will impregnate Eve. Both do so, with Adam producing Abel, and
Sammael Cain. Cain’s paternity becomes
the very material cause of evil in the world.
He is jealous by nature, a trait he inherited from his father, and
sexual jealousy (and an overabundance of sexual desire) lay at the heart of his
character flaws.
The
cycle of stories about Cain and his progeny are key to the development of human
history as conceived by PRE and The
Secret Book of John. For PRE, the rebellion against creation that
begins with Sammael’s tampering with Adam, Eve and the serpent in the Garden
receives a decisive push when Sammael impregnates Eve. Cain, her offspring, resembles his
father. He also has his father’s
temperament: he is licentious and jealous, and this jealously leads him to kill
his brother Abel. Adam and Eve bear
Seth, and he, unlike his brother, is fully human. We saw how the angels took consul against
Adam [PRE,91], and the reproductive
strategy they developed appears to have worked.
They wished to destroy God’s pre-eminent creation, and when they could
not do so, effectively hijacked it. When
the sons of God took the Cainite women for wives, this situation was
doubled. Now, a race of creatures
existed on the earth that was essentially divine in origin. They, even more so than the descendant of
Cain, are guided by licentiousness. And
although we do not see any interactions with the descendants of Seth and these
creatures, Noah’s chastisement of them before the flood reveals some of these
dynamics: the mixing of the divine and human is a failed experiment. When the angels and human procreate, the
result is a creature that is neither, and worse yet does not seem reconciled
with either an angelic or human role. The
race of Cainites are destroyed by God during the Flood. Noah, as an heir to Seth, continues the human
line. For the PRE the story of Cain, his half human half divine parentage, and
the Sons of God becomes a closed book.
The mixed race of the angels and humans ends in a catastrophe that wipes
them out. God destroys the attempts by
Sammael and his band to steer creation by sexual means.
There
is some indication that the PRE is
engaged in polemic against “Gnostics”.
In one chapter called “The Premundane Creation” there is a list of the
areas of the world that God has created.
We are told “From the quarter facing north darkness goeth forth into the
world.” This area was left purposefully
incomplete by God, stating “I am God, let him come and complete this quarter
which I have left (incomplete) and all will know he is a God,” [PRE,17].
This may well be a polemic against demiurgical notions. In a chapter titled “Creation on the Sixth
Day,” the creatures of the earth bow down to Adam, thinking that he is
God. Adam chastises them, and enjoins
them to worship only the “King over us the One who created us,”
[PRE,79-80]. This incident may very well
be a polemical attack on certain “Gnostics” doctrines where the first Adam is
the lower God.
These
are subtle attacks against “gnosticism” but they show that PRE was not unaware of the uses that “Gnostic” texts made of such images
of God. The reworking of the material
about Sammael, Cain, and his offspring is even more radical. Here, the Cainite line is utterly
destroyed. God effectively destroys the
divine revolt that hijacked his creation.
Here, PRE is reinterpreting
some common Gnostics stories to fit its own textual agenda to give the creator
sole status. As we saw in The Secret
Book of John, Cain and Abel are deified as Eloim and Iaue; Eloim had the face
of a bear, while Iaue had the face of a cat;
Iaue is just, while Eloim is unjust.
Iaue is in charge of fire and wind, while Eloim is in charge of water
and earth. These creatures rule their
respective realms, and Eloim, the first born, in unjust, while Iaue, the
second, is just. “And it [the first
ruler] called them by the names Cain and Abel, with trickery in mind.” [Layton,47]. This fascinating read of Cain and Abel makes
many moves that PRE seeks to
disavow. In the first, both Cain and Abel are descended from
the First Archon. In the second, Cain
and Abel are equated with Elohim and Yahweh, both born from the First Archon,
and are called Cain and Abel with “trickery in mind.” The divine status of Cain and Abel are hid;
their theriomorphic nature is not revealed to all, and in a sense, the reader
of the Secret Book of John is forced to revaluate the use of Elohim and Yahweh
in the Hebrew Bible. In the Secret Book
of John, Seth is the only legitimate offspring of Adam and Eve, and he is
called Seth, after the “race of the eternal realms,” [Layton,47].
The Secret Book of John then takes very telling liberties with the
chronology of Genesis. The First Ruler
repents of his creation, and Noah and “many other people from the immovable
race,” were saved by hiding in a “certain place,” and in a “luminous cloud,” [Layton,50]. After the flood story The Secret Book of John
provides the story of the fallen angels taking the daughters of man as their
spouses and siring offspring. These
creatures are not wiped out in any cataclysm, but exist “to the present time.” The general dynamic of chosen race and wicked
race, laid out in the PRE and then
destroyed in the Flood, is found in the Secret Book of John, but there are also
some subtle but crucial moves in The Secret Book of John that creates
interesting areas of departure. The
First Ruler destroys all except for the Immovable Race, i.e. he appears to
destroy the descendants of Cain. The
fallen angels narrative, then, is a sullying of members of the Immovable Race,
dividing their ranks into a Chosen people and
a “children of darkness” [Layton,50].
PRE redirects the narrative elements of the Immovable Race tales found
in the Secret Book of John. It actually
has a more focused historical reconstruction of the Cainites, Sons of God, and their
effect on human history than the Nag Hammadi works we have seen, but the
duality between the two races does not continue post-flood. Although Sammael continues to rule over
humanity, he no longer does so through reproductive means. As we saw in some of his other appearances in
PRE, he mainly does this through
tricks and deceit. We can see, in the PRE the beginning of a widening of
Sammael’s role which would continue to evolve through the Middle Ages. He is being closely associate with the Angel
of Death, with Satan, and finally, with the power of evil. PRE
reworks the “duality” found in “Gnostic” works between a lower order ruled by
the demiurge and the higher ruled by God.
The dichotomy between Sammael/Satan and God would continue in various
manifestations throughout the Jewish Middle Ages. Although it would become a “normative” Jewish
tradition, the PRE began as a
response against “Gnostic” stories about Sammael, and attempts to reshape them.
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