The Reality of the Rulers (“Hypostasis of the Archons”) recounts the gnostic myth from the creation of Ialdabaoth down to Noah and the flood and concludes with a prediction of the final advent of the savior, the destruction of demonic powers, and the victory of the gnostics. In the first half of the work the story line intertwines with the wording of Genesis in the Septuagint Greek version, tacitly calling attention to discrepancies between the myth and canonical scripture. Of special importance is an unusual account of the rebellion of Sabaoth against his satanic father Ialdabaoth and his eventual installment as lord of the seventh heaven, i.e. as the god of Israel (?). Learned etymologies and puns on Semitic names suggest close contact with a Jewish or Jewish-Christian milieu, despite the anti-Jewish intention of the myth. Apart from the opening paragraph, no elements clearly characteristic of non-gnostic Christianity occur in the work. The author’s theological perspective stresses the activity of divine providence (”the will of the parent”) even in the deeds of the demonic rulers, probably thus altering to some degree the original intent of gnostic myth.

The Hypostasis of the Archons and the Origin of the World both tell us that Pistis Sophia (a) desired to produce alone, without her consort, a work that would be like unto the first-existing Light: it came forth as a celestial image which (b) constituted a curtain between the higher realms of light and the later-born, inferior aeons; and a shadow extends beneath the curtain, that is, on its outer side which faces away from the light. The shadow, which was called “Darkness,” becomes matter; and out of this matter comes forth, as an abortion, the lion-shaped Ialdabaoth. Comments:

a) Nature of the fault. “Without consort” (Hypostasis 142:7): the same motif occurs in the Apocryphon of John (BG   36:16-37:4; see above, p. 200), also in the Sophia of Jesus,28 and is fully explained in Hippolytus  ’ version of the Valentinian myth, viz., as impossible imitation of the Father’s mode of creativity “out of himself,” which requires no sexual partner (see above, p. 182, n. 11). Thus Sophia’s fault is here presumption, hybris, leading directly to failure, but indirectly, in the further chain of consequences (via the demiurge, in whom the hybris reappears compounded by ignorance and amor dominandi) to the becoming of the material world: this, therefore, and with it our condition, is the final fruit of the abortive attempt of an erring sub-deity to be creative on her own. The student of Valentinianism knows from Irenaeus   (Ptolemy: Italian school) and the Excerpts from Theodotus (Anatolian school) of a different and more sophisticated motivation of Sophia’s error: excessive desire for complete knowledge of the Absolute (see above, p. 181 f.). To this variant there seems to be no parallel in the new documents, anymore than there was in the older ones. And in the light of the Coptic testimony it is now safe to assume what internal evidence by the criterion of subtlety and crudity always suggested: that Hippolytus’ version, which agrees so well with the now attested gnostic Vulgate, represents within Valentinian literature an archaism, preserving currency from the established gnostic Sophia mythology, whereas the version prevalent within the school itself represents a uniquely Valentinian refinement.

b) Consequence of the fault. The “curtain,” in the above examples obviously a direct effect of Sophia’s work as such, is in the Sophia of Jesus a creation of the Father in response to this “work”: he spreads a separating screen “between the Immortals and those that came forth after them,” so that the “fault of the woman” may live and she may join battle with Error (BG 118.1-17).29 This recalls the “limit” (horos) of the Valentinians, in the second of his roles. In this version, then, the “curtain” or “limit” was ordained with the intent of separation and protection: while in the other version, where it arises with Sophia’s work itself, it becomes the unintended cause of the “darkness” beneath itself—which becomes “matter,” in which Sophia then carries on her “work”: in this unintended aspect it rather recalls the “fog” of the Gospel   of Truth which in its turn recalls the Valentinian doctrine that Sophia, falling into ignorance and formlessness, “brought into being the Void-of-Knowledge, which is the Shadow [i.e., the cone of darkness produced by her blocking the light] of the Name” (Exc. Theod. 31.3 f.). Thus, where the “curtain” is not spread by the Father but directly results from Sophia’s error, it forms a link in the genealogical deduction of darkness from that primordial error, if by a somewhat extraneous kind of causality. We have here the incipient or cruder form of that derivation of matter from the primal fault whose perfected form we encounter in the Valentinian doctrine of the origin of psychic and hylic substance out of—not merely in consequence of—the mental affections of Sophia herself. In the Gospel of Truth, this subtle doctrine seems presupposed. Again the new texts permit us to measure the step which Valentinianism took beyond the more primitive level of its general group.

c) The passion of Sophia. This step is also apparent in the meaning given the suffering of Sophia, i.e., in whether it is incidental (however movingly told) or, as a second phase, crucial to the cosmogonic process. As that process was initiated by the “error” which somehow gave rise, in the first phase, to a darkness and chaos that were not before (thus providing the monistic turn in the theory of dualism), there was ample cause, without further purpose, for distress, remorse and other emotions on the part of the guilty Sophia. It is obvious that these formed part of the story before their speculative use was seized upon. What do the Coptic sources tell us in this respect? In the Apocryphon of John, Sophia’s distress arises over the creative doings of the demiurge, her son—a comment on, not an originative factor in the cosmogonic process, by now well under way (though a factor in her own conversion and provisional redemption). In the Pistis Sophia, let us remember, the long drawn out, dramatic epic of this suffering is wholly for its own emotional sake (cf. p. 68 above). But in the Origin of the World, noted before for its awareness of the theoretical implications of the Sophia theme, a substantive and originative role is assigned to her very distress, which accordingly there precedes the demiurgical stage: Sophia, beholding the “boundless darkness” and the “bottomless waters” (= Chaos), is dismayed at these products of her initial fault; and her consternation turns into the apparition (upon the waters?) of a “work of fright,” which flees away from her into the Chaos (147:23-34): whether this is the male-female Archon, later mentioned, himself or his first adumbration, the future creator of the world is either mediately or directly a projection of the despair of “Wisdom.” This comes closest to the hypostasizing role which the “affects” of Sophia assume in Valentinian speculation; also the two-step development (first chaos, then demiurge) adumbrates the differentiation into a higher and a lower Sophia. Yet it is still a marked step hence to the definite derivation of the several psychic and hylic elements of the universe from those passions; and nothing so far in the new texts suggests the existence of something as subtle outside the Valentinian circle: the latter’s originality stands forth again and again.