The Gospel of Eve: woman as the bearer of the Gnosis

“Eve fell not; woke up. And when you wake up, you opened the path of knowledge.”

1. What is the “Gospel of Eve”

• It is a apocryphal gospel gnostic, today virtually lost, mentioned in the context of the apocrypha of the New Testament.
• We know only by a few quotes of Epiphanius of Salamis in his work Panarion (section 26), a treatise against heresies, written at the end of the fourth century.
• Epiphanius claims that it was one of the sacred books of a gnostic sect libertineidentified with the Borboritas or Phibionitas (sometimes linked to Naasenos, Nicolaitans, or other similar groups).
• Several scholars have argued that it could be identical or closely related to the “Gospel of Perfection”another lost text.

In summary: there is a manuscript, or in Greek, or coptic, or in any language. Only a few lines produced by a polemicist who wants to prove how “disgusting” and heretical, it was the sect that used it.

2. Sources: what we really know

2.1. Epiphanius of Salamis and the Panarion

• Epiphanius (c. 310-403) was a bishop in Cyprus and the author of the Panarion (“kit”), an encyclopedia of heresies that classifies and refutes 80 sects.
• In the chapter 26 describes the Borboritas/Phibionitas, who is accused of sex rites ends, including the use of semen and menstrual blood in contexts pseudo-prison.
• There he mentions that these groups had several books:
  • Ferris wheel (about the wife of Noah)
  • Gospel of Eve
  • The apocalypse of Adam
  • Gospel of Perfection, among others.

All direct information on the Gospel of Eve depends on this sole author.

2.2. The problem of the reliability

• The Panarion it is written with an intention clearly controversial and moralizing: Epiphanius want to display these sects as morally repugnant, doctrinally absurd and dangerous for the faithful.
• Part of the modern research agrees that there were gnostic groups with sex ritesbut he also points out that Epiphanius exaggerates, select and sexualiza everything we can.
• Therefore, we can't read their quotes from the Gospel of Eve as a summary neutral textbut as the material ripped out of context and reinterpreted to support his accusation.

3. The preserved fragments of the Gospel of Eve

3.1. The fragment main: the vision on the mountain

Epiphanius quotes a passage which he attributes explicitly at the Gospel of Eve (Panarion 26,3,1). In summary, the text says something like this:

“I was on a high mountain and saw a very large man and a smaller one; I heard a sound as of thunder, I went to listen, and he told me: ‘I am thou and thou art I... I am sown in all things; from where you want to you can pick me up, and pick me up, you pick yourself.’”

Key Ideas that emerge from this:

• Scenario visionary/apocalyptic: a high mountain, vision of the figures of the supernatural.
• Formula identity mystical: “I am you and you are me”, very typical of the language of gnostic and hermetic (egō sy kai sy egō).
• The image of a divine reality “planted” in all things, that can be collected: the meeting that “seed”, the subject meets himself.

This fits with the gnostic idea that sparks of the divinity or of the Logos are dispersed in the cosmos and must be collected (through gnosis, rites, etc) for the salvation.

3.2. Possible second fragment: the tree of twelve fruits

Epiphanius cites the other passage to be apocryphal in the same chapter that some scholars believe that it also comes from the Gospel of Eve:

“I saw a tree that was twelve fruits of the year, and I said, ‘This is the Tree of Life’.”

• Epiphanius interprets this as a reference to the menstrual cycle, connecting even with Revelation 22,2 (“the tree of life that gives fruit every month”).
• However, the reading menstrual your interpretationnot necessarily the intention of the original text.
• From an optical gnostic, could be a image of the fullness of timethe entirety of the aeons or the fertility spiritual associated with Wisdom (Sophia), or own Eva.

Beyond these two passages, there is no text safe the Gospel of Eve. All that is reconstructed is extrapolation.

4. Context of gnostic theology and likely

4.1. Eva in mythology, gnostic

In many gnostic systems:

• Eve is not just about the “woman who falls”, but a figure associated with Wisdom (Sophia) or to a divine female principle.
• Linked sometimes with Ferris wheel (Norea), figure gnostic-burning Noah's ark and reveals the mode of recovering the divine sparks through the “emissions” sex.
• Eve, by eating from the tree of knowledge, is view not as guilty, but as the one who introduced the saving knowledge in the world.

It is logical to assume that the Gospel of Eve highlight:

• The omnispresencia of the divine principle (“seed” or “Logos”) in all things.
• The role of Eva as the discoverer of the “food of the knowledge salvador”according to some dictionaries of the bible.
• A vision revealed (in the mountain), in which a divine figure is identified with the visionary and reveals the true nature of the self.

4.2. The reason for the “seed dispersed”

The phrase “I am sown in all things” fits with:

• The doctrine naasenia on the “seeds scattered in the cosmos since the Man Ineffable”, by which they consume the universe.
• Parallel with the myths of Osiris and Dionysus, where the god is torn to pieces and dispersed, and then assembled.

In key gnostic:

• The material world is full of the “seeds” of the spirit or of the divinity, trapped in matter.
• The the task of the gnostic it is to recognize those seeds, collect them (through gnosis and certain rites), and so return in the pleroma.

5. The Borboritas and reading sexual Epiphanius

5.1. Accusations of sex rites

Epiphanius says that the Borboritas:

• Practiced coitus interruptuspicking up the semen and consuming him ritually.
• Mixed menstrual blood with other elements in his so-called “sacraments”.
• They justified this with apocryphal texts, including the Gospel of Eve, performing the “seed” and the “dispersion” in a literal way-sexual.

Some modern studies considered that there were gnostic groups libertines with components of “sexual magic”, but they also stress that Epiphanius caricature and it enlarges everything I can to shock.

5.2. Do you text or erotic symbolism bad read?

Many researchers point out that:

• The gnostics used to write in multiple levels of meaningfull of mystical symbolism, not the literality.
• It is very possible that Epiphanius read literally a language that is intentionally symbolic (seeds, fluids, tree, fertile, etc), and what reinterpretara in the light of practices that he considered aberrant.

Conclusion prudent:

We don't know if the Gospel of Eve, described sex rites; what we do know is that Epiphanius uses the text to legitimize his indictment against a sect that wants to discredit.

6. Relationship with the “Gospel of Perfection,” and other texts

• Epiphanius lists a separate “Gospel of Eve” and a “The gospel of Perfection” among the books of the Borboritas.
• Some authors believe that in reality it is the same written with alternate titles; others believe that they were texts are different but related.
• No consensus exists, because we don't have the full text of any of the two.
• Nor is there, up to now, no document of Nag Hammadi, which can be identified with certainty as the Gospel of Eve.

The Gospel of Eve, if it was different, it was probably part of a gnostic library wider, together with text such as:

• The apocalypse of Adam (known for Nag Hammadi).
• Ferris Wheel/Norea, associated to the female figure gnostic.

7. Dating, authorship and place of origin

7.1. Dating

• As Epiphanius writes at the end of the fourth century and speaks of a text that has already been established, scholars tend to situate the Gospel of Eve in the century II or III d.C.
• This range coincides with the ferment of the movements of the gnostics and the proliferation of apocryphal gospels.

7.2. Authorship and geographic scope

• The authorship is unknown.
• It probably arose in a environment gnostic Greek-speakingtied to the eastern Mediterranean (Egypt, Syria or neighbouring areas), where are located many of these groups.
• By the type of subject matter (Eva, “seed” scattered, tree of life, etc), it is associated to current ophites/naasenias and circles that reinterpret the Genesis in key gnostic.

8. Theological themes that can be rebuild

From the fragments, and of the context of gnostic, can suggest several thematic axes:

1. Identity mystic of the believer with the divine
   • “I am thou and thou art I” - formula union of the subject with the developer.
   • The visionary discovers that the “figure” is, in some sense, his truly I divine or the Man in light blue.
2. Omnipresence of the Logos / Spirit
   • “I am sown in all things:” the divine principle is dispersed in the cosmos.
   • You meet that “seed” is at the same time meet yourself (salvation understood as reintegration).
3. Reinterpretation of the myth of Eve
   • Likely to claim Eva as carrier of knowledge salvador, front of the demonization that will later part of the theological tradition.
   • Eva can act as the protagonist of the vision or as a symbolic figure of the soul that receives revelation.
4. Symbolism of the Tree of Life and the twelve fruits
   • Twelve kinds of fruit per year: fullness of time (twelve months), or the meeting of the twelve tribes/eons, etc
   • Epiphanius reduces him to a figure of speech menstrual; the exegesis gnostic was probably more complex and cosmic.

On the whole, it seems a “gospel of revelation” (type apocalyptic): a character (may Eve) receives in a vision, the revelation of the true structure of the cosmos and of his divine identity.

“The tree that bears twelve fruits does not point at the time, but the whole of being.”

9. Reception in the history of the Church and in the modern research

9.1. Receipt old

• The Gospel of Eve he never went at the christian canons and it is only remembered as “book of heretics”.
• Do not quote the great fathers alexandrian fathers (Origen, Clement) as text exegesis, but he is known almost exclusively by Epiphanius.
• Your disappearance most likely due to:
  • Its use was restricted to certain groups.
  • The destruction or abandonment of the libraries gnostic and the repression of the ecclesial left him without a transmission.

9.2. Rediscovery in modern criticism

• Prior to the discovery of Nag Hammadi, barely knew each other gnostic texts first hand; the Gospel of Eve was one of the few “windows” indirect.
• Authors Schneemelcher (New Testament Apocrypha), and other reference works including “lost gospel”with only fragments of Epiphanius, and a brief discussion.
• Today, the majority of the specialists are very wise:
  • Recognized importance to understand the imaginary gnostic Eve.
  • It is stressed that there is no basis to reconstruct a complete system from two phrases.
  • It warns against the idealizations modern they present him as “the great gospel feminist lost” without textual evidences sufficient.

“The real drop is not to eat the fruit, but forget the knowledge that the fruit reveals.”

10. The essential

If we reduce it to the essentials, this is “all there is to know” about the Gospel of Eve:

1. Text lost
   • We have No manuscripts or full versions.
   • Only two (maybe three) short quotes in the Panarion of Epiphanius.
2. Gnostic nature
   • Belongs to an environment gnostic of II–III centuries.
   • Presented to Eve and the visionary in the key of revelation and gnosis, with strong symbolism cosmic.
3. Central themes deductible
   • Identity mystical between the human being and the developer divine.
   • Dispersion of the “seed” or divine principle in the cosmos and its collection as the way of salvation.
   • Tree of Life with its twelve kinds of fruit, linked to the fullness of the time and the fertility spiritual.
4. Reading controversy of Epiphanius
   • What used to reinforce their accusations against a group of gnostic libertine (Borboritas), which imputes rites outrageous sex.
   • It is likely that sexualice symbology which in origin was more wide.
5. Current hypotheses
   • Could match or be intimately linked to the Gospel of Perfectionbut there is no absolute certainty.
   • It has become a paradigmatic example of “lost gospel” known only by an enemy.