Elohim, Edem, and Baruch

This is the statement he makes. There are three unbegotten first principles of everything: two male and one female. Of the male principles, one is called good — it alone is called that — and it has foreknowledge of everything. The other is the father of everything that is begotten; he has no foreknowledge, and he cannot be seen. The female principle has no foreknowledge either. She is quick to anger, of two minds and of two bodies, and she answers in every detail to the girl in the story Herodotus tells: as far as the groin a young woman, and below that a snake, as Justinus says. This girl is called Edem, and also Israel. These principles of everything are, he says, the roots and the springs out of which the things that exist have come; there was nothing else at all. So the Father, who has no foreknowledge, looked at that half-woman Edem and was seized with desire for her. This Father, he says, is called Elohim. And Edem longed for Elohim just as much, and the desire they shared brought them together in a single loving goodwill. Out of that union the Father fathers for himself, out of Edem, twelve angels. The names of the angels the Father fathered are these: Michael, Amen, Baruch, Gabriel, Esaddaeus … And the names of the maternal angels, the ones Edem bore, have been set down in the same way, and they are these: Babel, Achamoth, Naas, Bel, Belias, Satan, Sael, Adonaeus, Kavithan, Pharaoh, Carcamenos, and Lathen. [a]

Of these twenty-four angels, the paternal ones side with the Father and do everything according to his will, and the maternal ones side with Edem the Mother. All these angels together are Paradise, he says — the Paradise Moses speaks about: “God planted a garden in Edem, toward the east,” that is, toward the face of Edem, so that Edem might look at the garden, which is the angels, without ever stopping. The angels are called the trees of this garden as a figure, and the tree of life is the third of the paternal angels, Baruch. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the third of the maternal angels, Naas. This, Justinus says, is how one ought to read the words of Moses, and he adds: “Moses said these things in disguise, because not everyone reaches the truth.”

And once Paradise had been formed, he says, out of the marriage joy of Elohim and Edem, the angels of Elohim took some of the most beautiful earth — not from the part of Edem that is a monster, but from the parts above the groin, which are human in shape and gentle to look at — and made man out of that earth. Out of the monstrous parts came the wild animals and the rest of the living creatures. So they made man as a sign of the oneness and the love between them, and they assigned their own powers to him: Edem gave the soul, Elohim the spirit. The man Adam is produced as a kind of seal and reminder of their love, an emblem of the marriage of Edem and Elohim that would last forever. In the same way Eve too was produced, he says, just as Moses described her — an image and an emblem, a seal of Edem to be kept forever. And in the same way a soul was placed in Eve, an image, from Edem, and a spirit from Elohim. Commands were given to them: “Increase and multiply and inherit the earth” — that is, Edem; for that is how he wants it to have been written. And Edem handed over to Elohim the whole of the power that belonged to her, as a kind of marriage dowry. That is why, he says, in imitation of that first marriage, women bring a dowry to their husbands to this day, obeying a certain divine and fatherly law that came into being from Edem toward Elohim.

And when everything had been created as Moses described it — heaven and earth and the things in them — the twelve angels of the Mother were divided into four principles, and each fourth of them is called a river: Phison, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates, as Moses states, he says. These twelve angels are linked together and go around into the four parts and manage the world, holding from Edem a kind of satrap’s authority over the world. They do not stay in the same places, but move around as though in a circle dance, changing place for place, and at fixed times and intervals giving up the places assigned to them. When Phison holds power over places, famine, hardship, and distress prevail in that part of the earth, for the company of these angels is grudging. In the same way each of the four parts has its own evil seasons and swarms of diseases, according to the power and the nature of each. And this stream of evil runs on without a break, like the current of a river, all around the world, according to the will of Edem and according to which fourth part is ruling. And out of some cause of this kind the necessity of evil has arisen.

When Elohim had prepared and created the world out of their shared pleasure, he wanted to go up to the high parts of heaven and see whether anything in the creation was lacking. He took his own angels with him, since it was his nature to climb, and left Edem below: being earth, she was not inclined to follow her husband upward. So Elohim came to the highest part of heaven, and when he saw a light better than the one he had made himself, he cried out, “Open the gates for me, so that I may go in and acknowledge the Lord; for I thought that I myself was the Lord.” A voice came back to him out of the light: “This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous go in through it.” The gate opened at once, and the Father went in without his angels, toward the Good One, and he saw “what eye has not seen and ear has not heard and what has not entered the human heart.” Then the Good One says to him, “Sit at my right hand.” And the Father says to the Good One, “Let me overturn the world I have made, Lord, for my spirit is bound fast in human beings, and I want to have it back.” Then the Good One answers him, “You can do no evil while you are with me, since it was you and Edem together who made the world out of the joy of your marriage. Let Edem keep the world, then, as long as she wants; but you stay with me.” Then Edem, knowing that Elohim had deserted her, was overcome with grief, and she set her own angels beside her and made herself beautiful, in case Elohim might pass into desire and come down to her.

But when Elohim, held fast by the Good One, came down to Edem no longer, Edem ordered Babel — that is, Aphrodite — to bring adulteries and the breaking up of marriages among human beings. Her purpose was that, as she had been divorced from Elohim, so the spirit of Elohim that is in human beings should be wrung with grief and punished by separations of the same kind, and should suffer exactly what the deserted Edem was suffering. And Edem gives great power to her third angel, Naas, so that he might chastise the spirit of Elohim that is in human beings with every kind of punishment, and Elohim might be punished through the spirit for deserting his wife against the agreements the two of them had made. Elohim the father, seeing this, sends out Baruch, the third angel among his own, to help the spirit that is in all human beings. So Baruch came and stood in the middle of the angels of Edem — that is, in the middle of Paradise, for Paradise is the angels among whom he stood — and gave the man this command: “You may eat freely from every tree that is in Paradise, but you may not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” That tree is Naas. The meaning is that the man was to obey the other eleven angels of Edem; the eleven have passions, but they are not guilty of breaking the law. Naas, however, has sinned. He went in to Eve, deceived her, and committed adultery with her, and that is a breaking of the law. He also went in to Adam and used him as a boy is used, and that too is an outrage. Adultery and sex between males both came from this.

From then on vice and virtue were both at work among human beings, and both come from a single source, the Father. For the Father, having gone up to the Good One, points out the way from time to time to those who want to go up to him as well; but having left Edem, he caused a beginning of evil for the spirit of the Father that is in human beings. So Baruch was sent to Moses, and through him spoke to the sons of Israel, so that they might turn to the Good One. But the third angel, Naas, working through the soul that came from Edem upon Moses, as it comes upon everyone, clouded over the orders Baruch gave and made his own orders be listened to instead. This is why the soul is set against the spirit and the spirit against the soul. For the soul is Edem and the spirit is Elohim, and both of them are in everyone, women and men alike. After this, Baruch was sent again, this time to the prophets, so that through the prophets the spirit that lives in human beings might hear a warning and get away from Edem and from that wicked fabrication, just as the Father, Elohim, had fled. In the same way, though — through the prophets — Naas by a similar trick, working through the soul that lives in man alongside the spirit of the Father, lured the prophets away, and every one of them was drawn off after him and did not follow the words of Baruch that Elohim had commanded.

In the end Elohim chose Heracles, an uncircumcised prophet, and sent him to put down the twelve angels of Edem and to free the Father from the twelve angels, those wicked ones of the creation. These are the twelve contests of Heracles that Heracles went through, from first to last: the Lion, the Hydra, the Boar, and the rest in order. For they say that these are the names of them among the nations, and that they were carried over, with the names changed, from the working of the maternal angels. When he seemed to have beaten his opponents, Omphale — she is Babel, that is, Aphrodite — fastens onto him and lures Heracles away and strips him of his power, that is, of the commands of Baruch that Elohim had issued. And in place of that power she wraps him in her own robe, that is, in the power of Edem, the power below. So the prophesying of Heracles was left unfulfilled, and his works with it.

At last, though, in the days of Herod the king, Baruch is sent down once more by Elohim; and coming to Nazareth he found Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, a boy of twelve, keeping sheep. He announced to him everything from the beginning, everything that had been done by Edem and Elohim and everything that was likely to happen afterward, and he spoke these words: “All the prophets before you were lured away. So make an effort, Jesus, son of man, not to be lured away; preach this word to people, and carry back to them the news of what belongs to the Father and what belongs to the Good One, and go up to the Good One and sit there with Elohim, the Father of us all.” And Jesus obeyed the angel and said, “I will do everything, Lord.” And he went and preached. So Naas wanted to lure this one away as well. Jesus, however, would not listen to what he offered, for he stayed faithful to Baruch. So Naas, burning with anger because he could not seduce him, had him crucified. But Jesus left Edem’s body on the tree and went up to the Good One, saying to Edem, “Woman, you keep your son.” That is, she keeps the soulish and earthly man. He himself handed his spirit over into the hands of the Father and went up to the Good One.

Now the Good One is Priapus, the one who caused everything that exists to be produced before it existed. This is why he is called Priapus, he says: because he shaped everything beforehand. That is why his statue stands in every temple, honored by the whole creation, and why there are images of him along the roads, carrying ripe fruit above his head — that is, the produce of the creation, which he caused, having first shaped the creation when it did not yet exist. So when you hear people saying, he says, that the swan went in to Leda and fathered a child by her, understand that the swan is Elohim and Leda is Edem. And when they claim that an eagle went in to Ganymede, know that the eagle is Naas and Ganymede is Adam. And when they say that gold went in to Danae and fathered a child by her, remember that the gold is Elohim and Danae is Edem. And by bringing forward in the same way all the accounts of this kind, which suit legends well enough, they carry on the work of teaching.

So when the prophet says, “Hear, heaven, and listen, earth: the Lord has spoken,” by heaven he means, Justinus says, the spirit that is in man from Elohim; by earth, the soul that is in man alongside the spirit; by the Lord, Baruch; and by Israel, Edem — for Israel, like Edem, is called the wife of Elohim. “Israel,” he says, “did not know me” — Elohim — “for if he had known me, that I am with the Good One, he would not have punished, out of a father’s ignorance, the spirit that is in human beings.”

And so, in the first book, the one titled Baruch, the oath is written down that they force people to swear who are about to hear these mysteries and be initiated with the Good One. This oath, Justinus says, our Father Elohim swore when he was beside the Good One, and having sworn it he did not change his mind; and about this, he says, it has been written, “The Lord swore and will not change his mind.” The oath runs in these terms: “I swear by the Good One who is above all things to guard these mysteries, to tell them to no one, and not to fall back from the Good One to the creature.” And when he has sworn this oath, he goes on to the Good One and sees “whatever eye has not seen and ear has not heard and what has not entered the human heart”; and he drinks from living water, which they suppose is their washing, a spring of living, bubbling water. For a separation has been made between water and water. There is water below the vault of the wicked creation, in which earthly and soulish men are washed, and there is living water above the vault, the water of the Good One, in which spiritual, living men are washed. Elohim washed himself in this water, and having washed he did not change his mind. [x]

And when the prophet says, he says, “Take yourself a wife of prostitution, since the earth has prostituted itself and gone away from following the Lord” — that is, Edem goes away from Elohim. In these words, he says, the prophet plainly declares the whole mystery, and he is not listened to because of the wicked scheming of Naas. In that same manner they hand down other passages from the prophets, interpreted in the same spirit, throughout a great many books. The volume titled Baruch, though, is above all others the one in which the reader will find the whole explanation of their legendary system.

Dear friends, I have run into many heresies, but it has never been my lot to meet a wickeder man than this Justinus. The truth is that his followers ought to copy his own Heracles and clean out, as the saying goes, the cattle yard of Augeas — or rather, I should say, a drainage ditch. Once the men who follow this teacher have fallen into it, they can never be cleaned again; they will not even be able to lift their heads.

Since, then, we have explained Justinus’s attempts at a system — Justinus, the counterfeit Gnostic — it seems useful as well to set out, in the books that follow, the opinions put forward in the heresies that come next, and to leave not one of these men unrefuted. We will refute them by bringing forward the claims they make themselves, at least as much of what they say as is enough to hold them up as a public example. And we will have done what we set out to do even if the only thing brought into the open is the secret and unspeakable mysteries they practice among themselves, into which — silly mortals that they are — they are initiated only with a great deal of trouble. So let us see what Simon has to say as well. [ad]