IIIIIIIJJJ ii 1111111 AIP o CIRYIPHA

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EDITED BY WILHELM SCHNEEMELCHER ·

The Gospel of Eve

1. Literature: A. Harnack, Gesch. d. altchristl. Lit. I 1, 21958, 156; 166ff.; 0. Bardenhewer, Gesch. d. altkirchl. Lit. 21913 (1962), 347; 352.

2. Attestation: Epiphanius mentions a Gospel of Eve ( E'Oa~ov Bua<; ) in connection with the Gospel of Perfection, and ascribes its fabrication to the Gnostics (Pan. 26.2.6; I, pp.277.17-278.6 Holl; tr. Williams, NHS 35, p. 84).

3. Extant remains: The only certain quotation from the Gospel of Eve is found in Epiphanius:

I stood upon a high mountain and saw a tall man, and another of short stature, and heard as it were a sound of thunder and went nearer in order to hear. Then he spoke to me and said: I am thou and thou art I, and where

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thou art there arnl, and I am sown in all things; and whence thou wilt, thou gatherest me, but when thou gatherest me, then gatherest thou thyself.

(Pan. 26.3.1; I, p. 278.8-13)

It is much less certain that, as is commonly supposed, 1 a second •extract from the Gospel of Eve is preserved by Epiphanius:

I a tree which bore twelve fruits in the year, and he said to me: Tius 1s the Tree of Life.

(Pan. 26.5.1; I, 281.17-19)

4. ~o~tent: The first passage quoted in Epiphanius appears to belong to the begmmng of the document. It is however very difficult to make any precise statements about the identity of the speaker and the mythical interlocutor. Eve herself could be the narrator of the vision, but it could just as well be some anonymous seer. Several interpretations may likewise be offered for the two figures who appear in the vision. They may represent 'the Urmensch and his dwarfish earthly likeness', 2 or the U rmensch and the Son of Man, 3 or it may be a question of 'God the Father and Barbelo, who is stunted because the power has been taken from her'. 4 Perhaps also the two figures are in reality one, seen at one and the same time under two different aspects, as is frequently the case in narratives of this type (cf. e.g. the beginning of the Apocryphon of John or appearances of Jesus Christ or other beings, divine or demonic, in manifold embodiments). All that is certain is that the Gospel of Eve belongs to the revelation documents, hence to the apocalyptic literature. It is constructed after the widespread pattern of the 'vision report' and employs the usual motifs of this kind of literature: the setting of the scene upon a mountain, the appearance of a figure of very great or gigantic stature, an address by this figure to the seer. The revealer, or divine being, discloses to his interlocutor his identity with him, by an almost stereotyped formula (eyro cru Ka\ cru E"(O)) which is often employed in gnostic, Hermetic, magic or alchemical texts. 5 This identity implies that the one is everywhere and always present to the other, and that there is a consubstantiality between them. 'To gather oneself' (emnov cruA/\£')'EtV ), i.e. to gather the substan~e of one's spiritual 'light-nature'. which is dispersed in the body and in matter, to recover and save one's 'ego' by disengaging it from the diversity of the world and restoring it to its original unity, is equivalent to saying that the one at the same time gathers and saves the substance, or a part of the substance, of the other, which is likewise scattered, dispersed and imprisoned in the world. There is a collaboration between the Saviour and the saved. Here again the theory and the language are gnostic. 6 They recur in Manicheism. 7

On the other hand a reference in Epiphanius (Pan. 26.2.6; I, 278. 1-2 Holl: au'tfi~ [sc. Eua~] c>f\0ev co~ E'OpO'OaT\~ 'tO ~proµa 'tll~ yvrocrero~ £~ U7tOKCXA'O'JIEOl~ 'tOU ACXA~aav'to~ au-cij ocpero~ suggests that the writing had for its subject the discovery by Eve, in cons;quence of a revelation received from the mouth of the serpent, of the 'food' or 'fruit of Gnosis', the saving knowledge. 8

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It would then set forth the gnostic doctrine of salvation thus revealed. The encounter with the serpent and the latter's speech were probably reported either by Eve herself or by the narrator, who would have learned of it in the course of his vision. Since it contained the announcement made by Eve, or at least to Eve of this 'good tidings' which is Gnosis, the true knowledge, and perhaps als~ because it took the form of a dialogue with a redeemer ( Christ himself?), the work would in a sense be taken as a kind of 'gospel', transmitted by Eve, or with her as the central figure. The rather peculiar title would be much better explained in this way than on the assumption that Eve was a witness to the earthly life and teaching of Christ. The Armenian Infancy Gospel (chap.IX) relates how Eve was present with Joseph at the first suckling of Jesus, and testified to the virgin birth, so that this interpretation would not be entirely arbitrary. In the present case, however, it seems excluded.

The context of the second quotation adds that the 'Gnostics' read these lines in apocrypha (Ev &.1toKpU<p0t~) and saw in them a symbolic reference to men-strual blood. But it is more probably a case of a very free quotation of Rev. 22:2 (K. Holl in his edition of the Panarion, I, 281, note to line 17). Even if it be maintained that &1tOKpu<pcx. here indicates an esoteric writing of gnostic origin, it would seem that the passage ought rather to be connected with 'The Great Questions of Mary' (below p. 390f), where we find a theory of menstrual blood, based on allegorical interpretation of other biblical passages, which is analogous to that which our quotation is held to presuppose (Epiph. Pan. 26.8.7 and 9.2).

Harnack (Litg. I, 166 and 168) believed it possible to find traces of the Gospel of Eve in the Pistis Sophia (c. 96) and among the Peratae (Hippol. Ref. V 16.8 and 13-14), but the evidence on which he relies admits of several opinions. On the other hand one may agree with him in the assumption (op. cit. II 1.539) that the work was written in the 2nd century.

Notes

B. Gospels under the name of an Old Testament figure

1. E.g. Harnack, Litg. I, 166; Bardenhewer, Litg. 12, 347. 2. Hennecke, NTApo2

, p. 69; cf. perhaps a picture in Cubiculum I of the hypogaeum of the Aurelii, in C. Cecchelli, Monumenti cristiani-eretici di Roma, Rome 1949, pl. II right. 3. Holl in his edition of the Panarion, I, 278, note to line 8. 4. H. Leisegang, Die Gnosis4, Leipzig 1955, p. 190. 5. Cf. Reitzenstein, Poimandres, pp. 236-244; A. Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie3, pp. 97,240; K. Holl in his edition of the Panarion I, 278, note to line 11; A.J. Festugiere, Corpus Hermeticum I, 68, note 33. 6, Cf. Epiphanius, Pan. 26.10.9; Gospel of Philip, in Epiph. Pan. 26.13.2 (see above, p. 180); L. Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien, Munich 1922, pp. 4-32, 76f.; H. Jonas, Gnosis und spiitantiker Geist/, Gottingen 1934, 21954, pp. 139f.; R. Bultmann, ZNW 24, 1925, l 18f.; id. Das Evangelium des Johannes 11 , Gottingen i950, p. 41 n. 2. 7. Cf. SB Berlin 1933, p. 308, and 1934, pp. 877 and 891. 8. Cf. Iren, adv. Haer. 30.15; ps.-Tertullian, adv. Omnes Haer. 2; Filastri~s 1; Epiphanius Pan. 37.3.1: Ophites; Hippol. Ref V 16.8: Peratae.

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