Hello Michael -
It’s been a while since I posted on this thread. I see that Illaria Ramelli has now answered you in an Appendix to her new book. I look forward to reading this. But since you’ve asked for our advice, I may still get back to you here if anything occurs to me that she hasn’t covered (I’ve been especially interested in your sections on the Cathars and the Brethren of the Free Spirit in DR – and you won’t be surprised to know that I disagree with a lot your analysis 
But it has been very interesting to think about these topics again; I thank you warmly for reigniting my interest).
I thought I’d leave you for the moment with some ideas I’ve had about your use of the Apocryphon of John
In chapters 2 and 3 in volume 1 of DR you return several times to the importance of the Sethian Gnostic text The Apocryphon of John for your case. You are right to say that the Saviour tells John about three eschatological destinies in this; some people are saved after a single life on earth; others are lead astray but are given further chances through reincarnation to come to the Truth; but it is only apostates who have eternal punishment reserved for them:
’’They [the apostates] will be taken to a place where the angels of misery go, where there is no repentance. They will be kept there until the day when those who have blasphemed against the spirit will be tortured and punished eternally’’.
I can’t argue with you here – this is what the text says. Thus far OK.
You then say that while it is not a universalist text the Apocryphon is ‘almost universalist’. The point you labour here is that, in your view, only a few apostates get damned – after being given every chance to repent in multiple incarnations -which means that nearly all get saved.
But there is no reason to think that ‘only a few apostates’ get damned in my view. I think you’ve brought those assumptions to the text rather than them being in the text already.
To clarify this matter I’d first want to ask what ‘apostate’ means in the context of this Gnostic text. At the beginning of the Apocryphon – before the appearance of the Saviour – there is a hostile encounter between John and a Pharisee who accuses John of apostasy for renouncing the religion of his Fathers. The name of the Pharisee is given as ‘Arimanias’; and a couple of scholars have suggested that this may be a reference to Joseph of Arimathea. However, Mervin Myer – in the translation that you and I have both read/used – follows the scholarly consensus in a note suggesting that the name is very probably a Greco-Roman form of ‘Ahriman’, the ‘evil spirit’ of Zoroastrianism. So when apostasy is first alluded to at the very beginning of the Apocryphon – it is John that is accused of being apostate from the traditions of his forefathers by a fellow Jew whose name suggests the Spirit of Evil.
The Apocryphon – like all Sethian texts – characterises that creator of the world as an evil monster (By way of contrast, in Valentinian Gnosticism the creator demiurge is characterised as merely being ignorant and is capable of salvation) The Sethian demiurge is named ‘Ialbadaoth’ and in the Apocryphon his depravity even extends to sending his henchmen to rape Eve. And a very clear teaching of the Apocryphon is that there are two spirits vying for each human being: the Spirit of Life, and the Counterfeit Spirit. The Counterfeit Spirit comes from Ialbadaoth the creator of matter. The Sprit of Life is the grace from the Pleroma of true Spirit.
I would suggest that in Apocryphon whereas apostasy to Arimanias the Jew means renouncing the worship of the creator of the world which are the traditions of his forefathers (and this is a false definition that comes from the counterfeit spirit), to John apostasy means to actually fall down and worship Ialbadaoth (and this is the true definition that comes from the spirit of life).
So the real ‘apostates’ in the Apocryphon are not necessarily ‘just a few’ in number. They would certainly include all practising Jews and perhaps even orthodox Christians who persist in worshipping the creator.
Another reason why you see the Apocryphon as significant to your case is that it has been described as ‘the Gnostic Bible’. It was given this epithet because four manuscripts are extant – more than most other Gnostic texts – and three of these manuscripts are part of larger codices into which they have been copied first and thus given pride of place.
However… these codices were created from the middle of the fourth to the beginning of the fifth century. We know that Irenaeus was familiar with an earlier version of the creation myth in the Apocryphon of John because he alludes to this in ‘Against Heresies’ (1.29–31), which is evidence that the manuscript tradition of the Apocryphon goes back at least to 180 A.D./C.E. But the Apocryphon was obviously not seen by Irenaeus as a threat worthy of great attention – which it would have done if it had been the key text of Gnostics in the second century. Irenaeus reserves most of his fire for the Valentinians.
As far as I can see, all we can safely about the status of the Apocryphon is that it seems to have become a very important text in some ascetic communities in the fourth century long after Origen had died (perhaps its extreme world rejection appealed to some when Christianity and Empire seemed to be merging?). But there is no evidence that it had this high status amongst Gnostic groups in the second century (when the texts of explicit Christian universalism emerge).
And there is no chance that the Apocryphon could have exerted any influence on the emergence Christian Universalism. It’s characterisation of the creator god as a monster is too extreme. Origen, himself denounces the Sethians (whom he calls ‘Ophites’) in Contra Celsus 6.21–40) for this belief in the strongest terms. And as I’ve argued above your characterisation of the Apocryphon as being ‘near universalist’ is very much open to question.
P.S. I feel happy to have countered you with some posts while people were waiting for Dr Ramelli’s response. You wrote of ‘entering the lion’s den under your own name’ when you came to speak to a few of us here all of those years ago. This time I’ve written back to you here at your request without any help or collaboration or encouragement from anyone. So I think we can at least call it quits over that Michael -
All good wishes
Richard Whittington
