Currently there is no widespread agreement on what constitutes gnosis or the gnostic identity in the ancient world. David Brakke argues that one can use the term “Gnostic” in a narrow sense to identify a particular Christian group in antiquity (The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010] 1–89). In contrast, Geoffrey S. Smith attempts to prove that “the Gnostic school” and the “Gnostics” are heresiological constructs “designed to consolidate a variety of unaffiliated Christian groups into one coherent and manageable category” (Guilt by Association: Heresy Catalogues in Early Christianity [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015] 152). European scholars continue to use “gnosis”/“gnostic” as global terms, with full recognition that these terms are heuristic and part of secondary (scholarly) discourse (e.g., Roelof van den Broek, Gnostic Religion in Antiquity [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013]). The best option, it seems, is to offer a polythetic classification wherein gnostic thinkers or groups possess a range of characteristics without any one group or thinker possessing all of them, for polythetic classification (see J. Z. Smith, Imagining Religion from Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) 4–5. The characteristics need not be solely doctrinal, but should involve ritual practice, disposition, and mythmaking. See the “idealized cognitive model” of April D. DeConick (“Crafting Gnosis: Gnostic Spirituality in the Ancient New Age,” in Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World: Essays in Honour of John D. Turner [ed. Kevin Corrigan and Tuomas Rasimus; NHMS 82; Leiden: Brill, 2013] 287–305, at 300–301). Yet even if widespread agreement on a set of characteristics were attained, it still would not explain how gnostic groups emerged, developed, and crafted their own specific identities.
To focus my comparison, the Naassene and Clementine interpretations of Ps 82:6 (LXX 81:6: “I have said: you are gods, all of you children of the Most High” (see Peter Machinist, “How Gods Die, Biblically and Otherwise: A Problem of Cosmic Restructuring,” in Reconsidering the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism (ed. Beate Pongratz-Leisten; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011) 189–240). As is well known, Christians formed their identities by inscribing themselves into the epic of Jewish scripture. Karen King identifies “the ‘correct’ relationship to Jewish Scripture” as “the single most important factor in defining normative Christian identity” (The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle [Santa Rose: Polebridge, 2003] 155). By examining how two thinkers generated a myth of deification from the same Jewish text, we catch them in the act of constructing similar gnostic Christian identities.
The Naassene Report
The Naassene report opens book five of the Refutation of All Heresies, a polemical work completed about 225 CE and attributed to Hippolytos of Rome. This attribution is by no means certain. A version of the two-author theory for the Hippolytan corpus is now widely held. In Allen Brent’s reconstruction, the author of Ref. is an anonymous early 3rd-cent. bishop who dies, leaving the community to a member of the same school—in fact the “real” Hippolytos who reconciles with the successors of Callistus (Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century [VCSup 32; Leiden: Brill 1995]). J. A. Cerrato accepts the theory of an eastern Hippolytos, probably from Asia Minor who composed the exegetical commentaries. For him, all links are severed between this genuine Hippolytos and the author of the Refutation (Hippolytus East and West: The Commentaries and the Provenance of the Corpus [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002]). See further M. David Litwa, Refutation of All Heresies Translated with an Introduction and Notes (Writings from the Greco-Roman World 40; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), xxvii-liii. The critical edition of Ref. used here is Miroslav Marcovich, Hippolytus: Refutatio omnium haeresium (PTS 25; Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1986). The Naassene report itself derives from a gnostic Christian document (or documents) dating from the mid to late second century CE. Richard Reitzenstein called the document a “sermon” (Predigt), and in her comprehensive study of the Naassenes, Maria Grazia Lancellotti continues to use this term (Reitzenstein, Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und frühchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904) 82; Lancellotti, The Naassenes: A Gnostic Identity among Judaism, Christianity, Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Traditions).
The Naassenes explicitly identified themselves as Christians. In fact, they claimed to be the only true Christians (ἡμεῖς Χριστιανοὶ μόνοι, Ref. 5.9.22 [PTS 25:170.124]). They identified the source of their tradition as Jesus, whose teaching was passed on through two successive tradents: James the brother of Jesus, and “Mariamme” (apparently Mary Magdalene) (Ref. 5.7.1). According to the author of Ref.’s initial description, Naassene mythology includes both a Father and Son deity. The Father is the unknown, indeterminate Human. The Son of this Human is the determinate Logos later identified with Christ (Ref. 5.6.4; 5.7.33). In the author of Ref.’s later summary (Ref. 10.9.1 [PTS 25:384.3]), we learn that both the Human and Son of Human were called “Adamas” and are in fact the same being (τὸν αὐτόν). From this (unfortunately cursory) information, we might intuit that the Naassenes upheld a kind of consubstantiality between Father and Son similar to later Christian thought. To facilitate clarity, I will refer to the Father/Human as the Naassene “primal deity,” and the Son of the Human as their “mediate deity.
In this myth, images from Homer and the Bible promiscuously blend. In the end, Christian images and language tend to predominate. Hermes morphs with Christ. The Naassene writer’s allegory of Odyssey 24 is a Christian allegory (one of the first in a long history). His christological hermeneutic weaves Christian language and symbols so tightly into Homer’s text that, if removed, the whole tapestry would unravel.
Clement of Alexandria
For most readers, Titus Flavius Clemens—or Clement of Alexandria—requires less of an introduction. Born around 150 CE and instructed by a variety of Christian teachers in the circle of the Mediterranean, he taught in Alexandria around the turn of the third century. He died elsewhere, in Cappadocia or Palestine, around 215 (Eusebios, Eccl. hist. 6.6.1; 6.11.6). Clement then quotes Ps 82:1: “God stood in the congregation of gods; in the midst of gods he passes judgment.” Although he does not say so explicitly, Clement hints that it is Christ who is the presiding deity, while Christian martyrs make up the deified congregation (Justin, Dial. 124.1). Martyrs are models of those superior to passions and pleasures. Clement calls these Christians “gnostics” (γνωστικούς), who are superior to the world (τοὺς τοῦ κόσμου μείζονας). They reject, as far as possible, “everything human” (πᾶν τὸ ἀνθρώπινον) (Strom 2.20.125.4–5 [GCS 15:181.5–10]). To some degree, this goal can be achieved while still in the body. The Christian gnostic who masters the passions while in the body is (in Clement’s bold phrase) “a god walking about in flesh” (ἐν σαρκὶ περιπολῶν θεός) (Strom. 7.16.101.4 [SC 428:304.20–21]). As is well-known, the phrase is an allusion to Empedokles DK 31 B112.4–5: “I am for you an immortal god [θεὸς ἄμβροτος] . . . I walk about [πωλεῦμαι] honored among all.”32 But Clement likely thought of Christ, whom he elsewhere calls “a god in a bit of flesh” (θεὸς ἐν σαρκίῳ) (Strom. 6.16.140.3 [SC 446:340.17]).
The mention of deification sparks a citation of Ps 82:6: “I have said you are [ἐστε, present tense] gods.” To illustrate the meaning of this text, Clement does not appeal to the New Testament, but Empedokles, who says that the souls of diviners, singers, doctors, and leaders “bloom as gods best in honor” (Strom. 4.23.150.1 [SC 463:306.1–5]).33 Earlier in book 4, Clement uses the same verse from Empedokles that was quoted by the Naassene writer. The martyr, by living among human beings, shows “what magnificent honor and what great beatitude” he has abandoned (4.4.13.1). For Clement, as we saw, the martyr is the true gnostic (4.4.15.3–4; 4.7.52.2–3). In book 6, Clement interprets the fifth commandment about honoring one’s father and mother. Our spiritual father is God, he says, while our mother is Wisdom, whom Solomon calls “Mother of the righteous.”34 God is our Father because Ps 82:6 calls those who know (ἐπιγνόντας) God both “children and gods” (υἱοὺς . . . καὶ θεούς). Although Clement does not explicitly mention the Christian gnostic here, he makes plain that being a god is based on present knowledge (ἐπιγνόντας) of God (Strom. 6.16.146.1–2 [SC 446:352.1–9]).
One would think that Clement here speaks only about future deification. Yet he adds that gnosis is swift (ταχεῖα) to purify and fit for transforming human beings to what is superior (Strom. 7.10.56.7 [SC 428:184.21]). In the end, gnosis “easily transfers a person to the divine and holy [state] akin to the soul, and through a familial light transports him across the mystical stages of advancement, until it restores him to the uppermost place of rest. . . . For in this lies the perfection of the gnostic soul” (7.10.57.1–2).
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