[CatherineTorpey]

The Rev. Natalie Perkins, our digital minister, will preach tomorrow. She has chosen a non-canonical text from the Nag Hammadi scriptures. Her text is from a poem with the intriguing title “The Thunder, Perfect Mind.” I’ve pasted the text below.

The Nag Hammadi scriptures are early Christian scriptures which had been hidden away, then discovered after 1,600 years in Egypt in the late 1940s. (It’s easy to confuse them with the Dead Sea Scrolls, another very significant find around the same time in Israel/Palestine.)

As Christianity matured in its first 400 years, the roles of bishop got more and more defined and their authority clarified. There was a natural organizational pressure to agree on a common set of doctrines. Christianity becoming the state religion under Constantine accelerated this process, but does not entirely account for it. A common orthodoxy would probably have developed with or without Constantine, though of course we cannot know.

The Nag Hammadi scriptures were probably buried in the 4th century as orthodoxy (“right belief”) began to be enforced. This library consists of scrolls which display a theology based in “gnosticism.” Gnosis in Greek is the word for “knowledge.” Gnosticism is a type of religious thinking that emphasizes an inner knowing as the mark of good theology. It is a term that is used for this type of theological understanding which flourished within Judaism and Christianity in the first couple of centuries after Jesus.

Gnosticism is appealing in that it is a more “inward knowing” type of spirituality. However, in its day, it was as guilty of having an us/them belief system as any others. Those “in the know” (having the “gnosis”) were saved while those not “in the know” were not saved. So while much of it is appealing, it’s also true that there were good reasons that the authorities were concerned about this “heresy.” Here is a good resource to read about gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi scriptures:

The Nag Hammadi Library

What follows is the poem and the introduction to it from “A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts” by Hal Taussig –

An Introduction to The Thunder: Perfect Mind
With the exception of Gospel of Thomas, no other Nag Hammadi document has been received with as much excitement in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as The Thunder: Perfect Mind.

… Only one manuscript of The Thunder: Perfect Mind exists. It was found at Nag Hammadi with fifty-one other documents. There is no mention of Thunder in any other known piece of ancient literature. So this discovery at Nag Hammadi is monumental.

There is no indication of an author in the Nag Hammadi pages, and the title, as in many other documents from early Christianity, seems to have been added later. The meaning of the book’s title has remained inscrutable and awaits new ideas emerging from its active use in our day. It is possible that Thunder was composed in Egypt, as it was found there and Egypt is the only location mentioned in the text.

Many scholars assume that Thunder was originally in Greek, like most early Christian letters and gospels. But recent work on its Coptic text suggests the possibility that Coptic is its original language, highlighting again its possible origin in Egypt.

Most difficult is approximating the time of Thunder’s composition. The possibilities range from the first century BCE to the third century CE. Recent close study of Thunder has also concluded that column 21, the last of its nine manuscript pages, was almost certainly written later than the rest of the text, most probably in the third century.

… Thunder’s divine and mostly feminine voice makes creative room for all kinds of human experience…. Although found in a collection of Christian documents, Thunder itself does not refer to Jesus or Christ at all. This is also true of 3 John in the traditional New Testament, and the Letter of James mentions Jesus only twice. The divine self-proclaiming voice of Thunder is most like the voice of Jesus in the Gospel of John.

Like John’s Jesus, who is a divine figure both powerful and humiliated, Thunder’s divine voice speaks simultaneously of its own deep pain and its glorious boldness…. Besides the Gospel of John’s Jesus and Thunder, no other ancient (or modern) divine voice presents itself as simultaneously both so glorious and so humiliated.

Of course, Thunder’s primarily feminine voice shocks and amazes most twenty-first-century readers. Close attention to this gendered dimension of Thunder’s self-proclamation points to two striking aspects: The roles and situations with which Thunder identifies correspond to a very wide range of women’s roles in the ancient (and modern) world. By associating herself with so many different women characters, Thunder breaks down the many ways in which the ancient world stereotyped women as glorious, shameful, corrupt, powerful, and opaque. This voice does not seem to allow itself to be caricatured in the ways women were/are. In this way, Thunder both associates women with the divine in unexpected ways and makes herself more real relative to life’s challenges, promises, and ironies.

… The Coptic (and the translation used in A New New Testament) scrambles Thunder’s gender a bit. Although she speaks primarily as a feminine divine figure, occasionally she speaks as a masculine divine figure. This is similar to Jesus in the gospels of John and Matthew, and Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, where Jesus is actively associated with the feminine figure of divine Wisdom and as such becomes a person both feminine and masculine.… This more diffuse engenderedness opens up for the twenty-first-century reader a space where highly prescribed Western ideas of what is feminine or masculine are challenged. It offers readers today the chance to identify with Jesus and Thunder without rehearsing and reinforcing the long-held Western ideas of a defended and prescribed femininity and masculinity.

Here the twentieth- and twenty-first-century “queer movements”* have much to offer in understanding these ancient portraits of Thunder and Jesus….

AND HERE IT IS:
THE THUNDER, PERFECT MIND
I am the first and the last
I am she who is honored and she who is mocked
I am the whore and the holy woman
I am the wife and the virgin
I am the mother and the daughter
I am the limbs of my mother
I am a sterile woman and she has many children . . .
I am she whose wedding is extravagant and I didn’t have a husband
I am the midwife and she who hasn’t given birth
I am the comfort of my labor pains
I am both awareness and obliviousness
I am humiliation and pride
I am without shame I am ashamed . . .
Do not be arrogant to me when I am thrown to the ground . . .
Do not laugh at me in the lowest places
Do not throw me down among those slaughtered viciously . . .
I am she who exists in all fears and in trembling boldness
I am she who is timid . . .

[CatherineTorpey]

Hey all,

I thought that the lines above were the full poem, but I was mistaken! Here’s the full poem. This is NOT the translation that Natalie is using. This one mutes the gendered language compared to the translation found in A New New Testament See you all very soon.

Thunder, Perfect Mind

Translated by George W. MacRae

I was sent forth from the power,
and I have come to those who reflect upon me,
and I have been found among those who seek after me.
Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,
and you hearers, hear me.
You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.
And do not banish me from your sight.
And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.
Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!
Do not be ignorant of me.

For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am <the mother> and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.
I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday.
And he is my offspring in (due) time,
and my power is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.

Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and hate those who love me?
You who deny me, confess me,
and you who confess me, deny me.
You who tell the truth about me, lie about me,
and you who have lied about me, tell the truth about me.
You who know me, be ignorant of me,
and those who have not known me, let them know me.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.

I am the one who is disgraced and the great one.
Give heed to my poverty and my wealth.
Do not be arrogant to me when I am cast out upon the earth,
and you will find me in those that are to come.
And do not look upon me on the dung-heap
nor go and leave me cast out,
and you will find me in the kingdoms.
And do not look upon me when I am cast out among those who
are disgraced and in the least places,
nor laugh at me.
And do not cast me out among those who are slain in violence.

But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.
Be on your guard!

Do not hate my obedience
and do not love my self-control.
In my weakness, do not forsake me,
and do not be afraid of my power.

For why do you despise my fear
and curse my pride?
But I am she who exists in all fears
and strength in trembling.
I am she who is weak,
and I am well in a pleasant place.
I am senseless and I am wise.

Why have you hated me in your counsels?
For I shall be silent among those who are silent,
and I shall appear and speak,

Why then have you hated me, you Greeks?
Because I am a barbarian among the barbarians?
For I am the wisdom of the Greeks
and the knowledge of the barbarians.
I am the judgement of the Greeks and of the barbarians.
I am the one whose image is great in Egypt
and the one who has no image among the barbarians.
I am the one who has been hated everywhere
and who has been loved everywhere.
I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death.
I am the one whom they call Law,
and you have called Lawlessness.
I am the one whom you have pursued,
and I am the one whom you have seized.
I am the one whom you have scattered,
and you have gathered me together.
I am the one before whom you have been ashamed,
and you have been shameless to me.
I am she who does not keep festival,
and I am she whose festivals are many.

I, I am godless,
and I am the one whose God is great.
I am the one whom you have reflected upon,
and you have scorned me.
I am unlearned,
and they learn from me.
I am the one that you have despised,
and you reflect upon me.
I am the one whom you have hidden from,
and you appear to me.
But whenever you hide yourselves,
I myself will appear.
For whenever you appear,
I myself will hide from you.

Those who have […] to it […] senselessly […].
Take me [… understanding] from grief.
and take me to yourselves from understanding and grief.
And take me to yourselves from places that are ugly and in ruin,
and rob from those which are good even though in ugliness.
Out of shame, take me to yourselves shamelessly;
and out of shamelessness and shame,
upbraid my members in yourselves.
And come forward to me, you who know me
and you who know my members,
and establish the great ones among the small first creatures.
Come forward to childhood,
and do not despise it because it is small and it is little.
And do not turn away greatnesses in some parts from the smallnesses,
for the smallnesses are known from the greatnesses.

Why do you curse me and honor me?
You have wounded and you have had mercy.
Do not separate me from the first ones whom you have known.
And do not cast anyone out nor turn anyone away
[…] turn you away and [… know] him not.
[…].
What is mine […].
I know the first ones and those after them know me.
But I am the mind of […] and the rest of […].
I am the knowledge of my inquiry,
and the finding of those who seek after me,
and the command of those who ask of me,
and the power of the powers in my knowledge
of the angels, who have been sent at my word,
and of gods in their seasons by my counsel,
and of spirits of every man who exists with me,
and of women who dwell within me.
I am the one who is honored, and who is praised,
and who is despised scornfully.
I am peace,
and war has come because of me.
And I am an alien and a citizen.

I am the substance and the one who has no substance.
Those who are without association with me are ignorant of me,
and those who are in my substance are the ones who know me.
Those who are close to me have been ignorant of me,
and those who are far away from me are the ones who have known me.
On the day when I am close to you, you are far away from me,
and on the day when I am far away from you, I am close to you.

[I am …] within.
[I am …] of the natures.
I am […] of the creation of the spirits.
[…] request of the souls.
I am control and the uncontrollable.
I am the union and the dissolution.
I am the abiding and I am the dissolution.
I am the one below,
and they come up to me.
I am the judgment and the acquittal.
I, I am sinless,
and the root of sin derives from me.
I am lust in (outward) appearance,
and interior self-control exists within me.
I am the hearing which is attainable to everyone
and the speech which cannot be grasped.
I am a mute who does not speak,
and great is my multitude of words.
Hear me in gentleness, and learn of me in roughness.
I am she who cries out,
and I am cast forth upon the face of the earth.
I prepare the bread and my mind within.
I am the knowledge of my name.
I am the one who cries out,
and I listen.
I appear and […] walk in […] seal of my […].
I am […] the defense […].
I am the one who is called Truth
and iniquity […].

You honor me […] and you whisper against me.
You who are vanquished, judge them (who vanquish you)
before they give judgment against you,
because the judge and partiality exist in you.
If you are condemned by this one, who will acquit you?
Or, if you are acquitted by him, who will be able to detain you?
For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
and the one who fashions you on the outside
is the one who shaped the inside of you.
And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;
it is visible and it is your garment.
Hear me, you hearers
and learn of my words, you who know me.
I am the hearing that is attainable to everything;
I am the speech that cannot be grasped.
I am the name of the sound
and the sound of the name.
I am the sign of the letter
and the designation of the division.
And I […].
(3 lines missing)
[…] light […].
[…] hearers […] to you
[…] the great power.
And […] will not move the name.
[…] to the one who created me.
And I will speak his name.

Look then at his words
and all the writings which have been completed.
Give heed then, you hearers
and you also, the angels and those who have been sent,
and you spirits who have arisen from the dead.
For I am the one who alone exists,
and I have no one who will judge me.
For many are the pleasant forms which exist in numerous sins,
and incontinencies,
and disgraceful passions,
and fleeting pleasures,
which (men) embrace until they become sober
and go up to their resting place.
And they will find me there,
and they will live,
and they will not die again.
This translation was made by George W. MacRae, excerpted from The Nag Hammadi Library in English edited by James M. Robinson, and transcribed for online publication originally at the Gnostic Society Library (gnosis.org).

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