at least in the Rome of the third century CE.30 The decision to compose a treatise under the name of a “foreign” character like Zostrianos or Enoch, as opposed to Pythagoras, is significant, particularly among thinkers such as Numenius, Plotinus, or Porphyry for whom Platonic Orientalism was a live issue. Sethian literature thus employed a specific genre that used a body of specific literary motifs to make vigorous claims to authority in a scholarly environment where these specific claims would have been controversial. A close look at the Platonizing treatises’ use of these motifs—literary traditions common to the Jewish and Christian apocalypses—will tell us a great deal about what kind of audience the Platonizing Sethian treatises must have been intended for, and what Plotinus meant when he said that another way of writing would be more appropriate for refuting their readers.
ANOTHER WAY OF WRITING
The frame narratives of Marsanes, Allogenes, and Zostrianos (I omit the Three Steles of Seth, because, as a liturgical work, it has almost no narrative to speak of) each employ stock motifs of Jewish and Christian apocalypses, chief among them being the pseudepigraphic appeal to the authority of Judeo-Christian seers. Other features are instantly recognizable within the context of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic tradition, including the disposition of the seer prior to enlightenment, the medium of the heavenly journey, and interaction with the revealer figure. Altogether, these traditions compose a distinctive way of writing of its own, which seeks to authorize its message by invoking themes and images, familiar to readers of the apocalypses, that its audience would have found convincing and respectable.
Marsanes is an apocalypse insofar as a revealer delivers cosmological secrets to the eponymous seer. The identity of the revealer is not clear, but two apocalyptic literary traditions are: the emphasis on the authority of the seer and the use of paraenesis. As discussed at the end of Chapter 1, the character “Marsanes/Marsianos” was the protagonist of other Gnostic apocalypses, known to Epiphanius and the author of the Untitled Treatise in the Bruce Codex.31 Early on in Marsanes, a “third power of the Thrice-Powered One” describes to the seer the “silent” nature of the One beyond the One.32 After what appears to be a visionary experience, it tells the seer, “it is necessary [for you to know] those that are higher than these and tell them to the powers. For you (sg. masc.) will become [elect] with the elect ones [in the last] times.”33 Marsanes himself repeatedly asserts his revelatory authority in the text, as when he addresses the reader at the beginning: “for I am he who has [understood] that which truly exists, [whether] partially or [wholly], according to difference [and sameness].”34 Authorized to preach, Marsanes tells his readers to “[control] yourselves, receive [the] imperishable seed, bear fruit, and do not become attached to your possessions.”35 Each of the Platonizing apocalypses has paraenesis culminating in injunctions to missionary activity;36 these are common in contemporary Jewish apocalyptic texts, such as 2 Enoch, 4 Ezra, or 2 Baruch.37
Allogenes also exhibits the traditions of pseudepigraphic authorization via identification with a seer, reinforcement of the seer’s authority, and paraenesis, in addition to several other common apocalyptic themes: the protagonist’s fear, periods of preparation between revelation, and the practice of inscribing and burying books. The treatise assumes the genre (closely related to apocalypse) of a testament, or will, to the seer’s “son,” Messos. If we acknowledge that the very name “Allogenes” refers to the author as a Sethian, that is, one of “another seed,” as some scholars do, then we can “indirectly impute patriarchal status to Allogenes,” who is probably of antediluvian origin.38 Other scholars simply assign him the identity of an incarnation of Seth himself.39 The incipit of the narrative is unpreserved; the reader is immediately thrust into a revelation dialogue between the seer and the angel Youel, describing the makeup of Barbelo and the first principle, a “Thrice-Powered Invisible Spirit.” Allogenes grows upset:40
“I was able (to conceive of transcendent things), although I was clothed in flesh. [I] heard about them through you, about the teaching which is in them (i.e., the revelations), since the thought that is in me distinguished those [which] are beyond measure and the unknowables. Because of this, I am afraid, lest my learning has produced41 something beyond what is fitting.” And then, O Messos, Youel, the one who belongs to all the glories, said these things to me. She [revealed (
What Collins terms the “disposition of the seer” is a stock element in apocalypses, particularly the disposition of fear, which is met by the soothing words of angelic mediators.43 Allogenes skillfully applies the motif to the dilemma of the mystic—the problematic status of knowledge of what is necessarily unknowable—even while retaining its Jewish coloring. While the first principle of the Greek philosophers is unknowable, it is certainly nothing to be afraid of.44 Sirach, on the other hand, discourages attempts to know too much, and in Hekhalot literature, knowledge of the Godhead is not only forbidden but dangerous.45
Youel’s response fails to “steady” Allogenes, who once again expresses his fears and is reassured that he is both worthy of vision and responsible for communicating it to others.46 The angel anoints and “strengthens” him. This “empowerment” of the seer by heavenly beings is common to the Platonizing Sethian texts. Paralleled only rarely in contemporary Platonic literature, the tradition is also clear in the heavenly journeys of 2 Baruch and the Apocalypse of Abraham, where the seer is occasionally “strengthened” by angels to ease the shock of the journey.47
The discussion continues along predictably metaphysical lines, and, finally, Allogenes, convinced of his worthiness, prepares himself for ascent through meditative techniques: “And when Youel, the one who belongs to all the glories, had said these things to me, she separated herself from me, leaving me. But I did not despair because of these words which I had heard; I contemplated myself for one hundred years. And I rejoiced by myself a great deal, since I was in a great light and a blessed path, since those, meanwhile, who I was worthy of seeing and then those who I was worthy of hearing about (are) those whom it is fitting for the great powers alone [ … ].”48 “Breaks” in between revelatory discourses are another tradition in the apocalypses; Ezra and Baruch fast for seven days between visions.49 The inordinate life span that enables Allogenes to meditate for a century is common to Jewish legends about the patriarchs.50 Some kind of period of waiting between visions of “the Father” seems to be implied in a fragmentary passage of Marsanes.51 It is not clear if such practices involved a withdrawal from contemporary urban life to the wilderness or understood retreat in a more metaphorical or limited fashion, or simply as apocalyptic literary cliché.52
Finally, upon his descent from the Barbelo, Allogenes is commissioned to write a book, presumably that bearing his name: “he (speaker unknown) said to me, write down [those things that I] will tell you, and I will remind you, for the sake of those who will be worthy after you. You must leave this book upon a mountain, and adjure a guardian: ‘come, dreadful one.’ And when he had said these things, he separated himself from me. As for me, I was full of joy, and I wrote down this book, which was set apart for me (to write), my son, Messos, so that I might reveal (σωλπ) to you those things which were preached before me, and that I received first in a great silence.”53 The ancient seer’s composition of a revelatory manuscript for posterity is one of the most common traditions in apocalyptic
