Abrasax and the Great Ignorance

The good news, Basilides says, came first from the Sonship, through the Son who sat beside the Archon, to the Archon himself. So the Archon learned that he was not the God of the universe but was himself something that had been brought into being; and he learned that above him lay the stored-up treasure of that One who cannot be spoken of or named and who does not exist, and of the Sonship. At that he turned, and he was filled with terror, when he was brought to see what ignorance he had been in. This, Basilides says, is what the words mean: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” [a]

For being taught by word of mouth by Christ, who sat beside him, he began to gain wisdom: he learns who the One who does not exist is, what the Sonship is, what the Holy Spirit is, how the machinery of the universe is fitted together, and how all things are likely to end. This is the wisdom spoken in a mystery, and about it, Basilides says, Scripture uses these words: “not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit.” So the Archon, taught and instructed and filled with fear, went on to confess the sin he had committed in making so much of himself. This, he says, is what is meant by the words: “I have recognized my sin, and I know my offense, and about it I will confess forever.”

Once the Great Archon had been taught by word of mouth, and every creature of the Ogdoad had been taught and instructed with him, and the mystery had become known to the powers of heaven, the good news had next to come down to the Hebdomad, so that the Archon of the Hebdomad might be instructed and brought into the good news in the same way. So the Son of the Great Archon kindled in the Son of the Archon of the Hebdomad the light he had himself, kindled from above out of the Sonship. The Son of the Archon of the Hebdomad was given that radiance, and he announced the good news to the Archon of the Hebdomad; and that Archon too, exactly as in the account already given, was terrified and brought to confess.

Everything in the Hebdomad, then, was in the same way lit up and had the good news announced to it. For in these regions of the universe, on this teaching, there are countless creations: Principalities, Powers, and Authorities. The followers of Basilides have a very long and wordy book about them, in which they claim that there are three hundred and sixty-five heavens, and that the great Archon over them is Abrasax, because the letters of his name add up to 365 — so that the reckoning of the title takes in everything there is, and this, they say, is why the year has that many days. But when these things had happened, he says, the Formlessness in our own quarter of creation had to be given radiance in its turn, and the mystery had to be uncovered to the Sonship that had been left behind in the Formlessness like a miscarriage.

This mystery was not made known to the generations before, he says; as it stands written, “By revelation the mystery was made known to me,” and, “I heard words that cannot be spoken, which no one is allowed to utter.” The light, then, that had come down from the Ogdoad above onto the Son of the Hebdomad came down from the Hebdomad onto Jesus the son of Mary, and he was given radiance, lit up by the light that shone upon him.

This, he says, is what is meant by “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” — that is, what came from the Sonship, through the Boundary Spirit, upon the Ogdoad and the Hebdomad, as far down as Mary; and by “the power of the Most High will overshadow you” — that is, the power of judgment, which streamed from the height above, through the Demiurge, as far as this creation, which is to say, as far as the Son. And the world, he says, holds together in this way until the whole Sonship that was left behind — left to do good to the souls in the Formlessness and to be done good to in return — is given form, follows Jesus, hurries upward, and comes out purified. It becomes so fine that it can hurry upward by its own power, as the first Sonship did, for it holds all the strength that by nature belongs with the light that shone down from above.

When the whole Sonship has come, he says, and stands above the Boundary Spirit, then the creature will be shown mercy. For until now it groans and is in torment and waits for the sons of God to be revealed, so that all the men who belong to the Sonship may go up out of here. When that happens, God will bring an enormous ignorance over the whole world, so that all things may go on as their nature requires, and nothing may crave anything that is against its nature. Every soul in this quarter of creation — all those whose nature it is to stay undying here and nowhere else — will remain here, aware of nothing higher or better than what it has. [n]

No report and no knowledge of the beings whose home is set above will reach the regions below, so that the souls beneath may not be racked with longing for what they cannot have. It would be as if a fish craved to feed on the mountains along with the sheep: a wish of that kind, he says, would be the death of them. So everything that stays in this quarter is imperishable, but perishable if it takes to wandering and crossing over out of what is natural to it.

In this way the Archon of the Hebdomad will know nothing of what lies above him. The same enormous ignorance will take hold of him as well, so that sorrow and grief and groaning may leave him; he will not crave anything impossible, and so he will not be visited with anguish. The same ignorance will take hold of the Great Archon of the Ogdoad too, and of every creature under him, so that nothing anywhere may crave anything that is against its nature and be swamped with sorrow. And so there will be the restoring of all things, which by nature were laid down from the beginning in the seed of the universe, and which will be restored each at its own proper season.

That each thing has its own particular times, Basilides says, the Savior is witness enough, when he remarks, “My hour has not yet come.” And the Magi bear the same witness, gazing at his star. For Jesus himself, he says, was conceived in thought at the time when the stars were generated and the seasons came all the way back round to their starting point, in the vast mass of all seeds. On this teaching he is the one conceived as the inner spiritual man inside the soulish man — that is, the Sonship, which left its soul behind here, not so that it might be mortal, but so that it might stay here as its nature requires, just as the first Sonship left the Holy Spirit, the Boundary Spirit, above in its own place — and who has then been clothed in a soul of his own.

So as to leave out none of Basilides’ teachings, I will also explain whatever they put forward about a gospel. With them, as has already been shown, the good news is the knowledge of the things above the world — the knowledge the Great Archon did not have. So when it was made plain to him that there are also the Holy Spirit, that is, the Boundary Spirit, and the Sonship, and the God who does not exist, who is the cause of them all, he was glad at what he had been told and was filled with delight. For them, that is what the good news is.

Jesus, on their account, was born as we have already said. And once the birth we have explained had taken place, everything in our Lord’s life happened, they hold, exactly as it is described in the Gospels. And it all happened, he says, so that Jesus might become the firstfruits of a sorting-out of the different kinds of created things that had been mixed together. For the world had been divided into an Ogdoad, which is the head of the whole world — the Great Archon being the head of the whole world — and into a Hebdomad, whose head is the Demiurge of the things below, and into this order of creatures among us, where the Formlessness is. So the kinds of created things that had been mixed together had to be told apart by a separating that Jesus performed.

What suffered was his bodily part, and that was a part of the Formlessness, and it went back into the Formlessness. What was raised up was his soul-part, and that was a part of the Hebdomad, and it went back into the Hebdomad. He brought back to life the element that was the property of the height above where the Great Archon lives, and that element stayed beside the Great Archon. And he carried up, as far as what is above, the element that was the property of the Boundary Spirit, and it stayed in the Boundary Spirit. Through him the third Sonship — the one left behind to do good and to be done good to — was purified, and through Jesus it went up toward the blessed Sonship and passed through all of these.

For the whole purpose of all this was the blending together of what one might call the mass of all seeds, and then the telling apart of the different kinds of created things, and the restoring of what had been blended to its own proper parts. So Jesus became the firstfruits of the telling apart of the kinds of created things, and his suffering took place for no other reason than the separating it brought about among the kinds of created things that had been mixed together. For in this way, Basilides says, the whole Sonship that had been left in the Formlessness to do good and to be done good to was divided into its own elements, in the same way that the natures in Jesus were told apart. These, then, are the tales that Basilides tells after his stay in Egypt; and, taught by the wise men of that country in so grand a system of wisdom, he brought forth fruit of this kind.

There was a man named Saturnilus, who flourished about the same time as Basilides but spent his life in Antioch in Syria, and who put forward opinions close to whatever Menander taught. He says there is one Father, unknown to everyone — the one who made angels, archangels, principalities, and powers; that the world and everything in it was made by certain angels, seven of them; and that man too was a work of angels. A shining image had appeared from above, from the Power that rules over all; and when the angels could not hold on to it, because, he says, it went straight back up again at speed, they urged one another on, saying, “Let us make man in our likeness and image.” And when the figure had been formed and could not lift itself up, since the angels had not the power for it, but went on writhing like a worm, the Power above took pity on it, because it had been born in its own image, and sent out a spark of life, which raised the man up and made him alive. This spark of life, he says, hurries back after death to the things of its own order, and the rest, out of which they were made, dissolves back into those. [v]

The Savior he took to be unbegotten, without a body, and without shape, and he held that Jesus was shown as a man in appearance only. He says the God of the Jews is one of the angels; and because the Father wanted to strip all the Archons of their sovereignty, Christ came to overthrow the God of the Jews and to save those who believe in him — and these are the ones who have the spark of life in them. For he claimed that two kinds of men had been formed by the angels, one wicked and the other good; and since demons kept coming to the help of the wicked, the Savior came to overthrow worthless men and demons, and to save good men.

He states that marriage and having children are from Satan. Most of the men who belong to his school also keep away from meat, and by this show of self-denial they take many people in. And they hold that the prophecies were spoken partly by the world-making angels and partly by Satan — who is himself, on their account, the angel who works against the angels of the world, and against the God of the Jews above all. These, then, are the real teachings of Saturnilus.