The library · Edition and sources
On the Origin of the World
Samuel Zinner, edited by Mark M. Mattison; Other Gospels · Translated text
Reading appearance
Accessibility options
Saved in this browser and shared between texts. Labels and line patterns remain in every theme.
About this reading layout
Source wording, punctuation, paragraph boundaries and supplied line breaks are retained. Long prose also has editorial reading breaks at sentence boundaries. Substantial passages already enclosed in double quotation marks are set apart; this does not identify their source or establish a connection.
These added breaks are reading aids, not claims about the original manuscript’s layout. Poetry is lineated only where the downloaded text supplies line breaks. References and edition notes remain with their text.
Chapter 18
1. Then the Primal Parent next delivered an opinion regarding the man to those who dwelt with him.
2. Each one of them then cast his sperm into the center of the navel of the earth.
3. From that day, the seven archons have fashioned man together with his body to resemble their (own) body, yet his likeness resembles the man who had appeared to them.
4. His shaping occurred one part at a time, and their leader formed the brain as well as the nervous system.
5. He appeared afterwards like the one who was prior to him.
6. He became ⟦page 115⟧ a man possessing a soul, and he was called Adam, that is, “Father,” in accord with the name of the one who had existed prior to him, and when they had completed Adam, he forsook him like a lifeless vessel, given that he had taken on form like an abortion, without a spirit inside him.
7. When the chief archon recalled the speech of Pistis, he feared in case the true man might enter into his shaped form and become its lord.
8. This is why for forty days he departed from his shaped form, which (then) lacked a soul, and he retreated and forsook it.
9. On the fortieth day, Sophia Zoe sent her breath into Adam, who was without soul.
10. He began to move on the ground, and he was unable to stand erect.
11. Next, when the seven archons arrived, they saw him, and became deeply troubled.
12. They approached him, and seized him, and he spoke to the breath inside him: “Who are you?
13. And from where did you come to here?”
14. It answered, and said: “I have come from the force of the man in order to ruin your work.”
15. Upon hearing this, they glorified him, because he granted them respite from the fear and the apprehension in which they found themselves.
16. They then called that day “Rest,” because they had rested from work, and when they saw that Adam was able to stand erect, they rejoiced, and they took him and placed him inside Paradise, and they retreated up to their heavens.