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Concept
Zostrianos
Summary
Zostrianos is a Sethian Gnostic text. It is the first tractate of two in Codex VIII of the Nag Hammadi library. It takes up 132 of the 140 pages in the codex, making Zostrianos the longest tractate of the entire library. However the text is extensively damaged, especially in the center, making the document difficult to fully understand. The Coptic manuscript is a translation of a Greek original, likely written in Alexandria in c. 200 AD. In the text, Zostrianos goes on a heavenly journey and receives divine knowledge from the aeons.
The work is likely the same Zostrianos that Porphyry criticized in Life of Plotinus. Like other Sethian Gnostic texts Marsanes, Allogenes, and Three Steles of Seth, its ideas appear more Middle Platonic or Neoplatonic than Christian. However, Porphyry said that these works belonged to Christian heretics. Bentley Layton explains this apparent contradiction with the belief that Zostrianos was written by a Gnostic Christian author who was fascinated with Eastern religious heroes who had special knowledge relating to the divine, such as Zoroaster.
Zostrianos, writing in first person, introduces the text as eternally living words written for the living elect. He rejects material and psychic associations and searches for a place of repose for his spirit outside of the perceptible world. He experiences an initial vision of the perfect child and ponders the relationship between the ideal and phenomenal worlds, but despite diligent attempts to find answers, he is unable to do so. In his despair, he seeks a violent death in the desert but is visited by the angel of the knowledge of eternal light, who tells him that he is a chosen person and that he can be saved. The angel offers to guide Zostrianos to the world of light.
Zostrianos departs from his earthly body with a luminous cloud, which guides him through the atmospheric realm and past the aeonic copies to the self-generated aeons. He undergoes six baptisms of repentance, becoming a contemplative angel, an angel of masculine gender, a holy angel, and a perfect angel.
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