8 - From hidden to revealed in Sethian revelation, ritual, and protology

Summary

In this essay I offer a treatment of the concept of revelation in the Sethian literature from Nag Hammadi, in particular as a designation for the movement from “hidden” to “revealed” or “manifest” in two contexts. First, as the transmission of some kind of cognitive content or ritual action essential to the enlightenment and salvation of the recipient, and second as a fundamental ontogenetic concept in the protological metaphysics and mystical epistemology of Sethian and related literature in the first several centuries of the common era.

In the first part of this essay, I treat the notion of revelation as an epistemological category, as the transmission of discursive information – even though it is sometimes said to be “ineffable” and “unknowable” – with special attention to the Trimorphic Protennoia, and in the second part, I explore revelation or “manifestation” mainly as an ontogenetic concept, but also in the epistemological context of mystical union with the primordial source of all reality in the Sethian Platonizing treatises Zostrianos and Allogenes. It turns out the latter revelation is a form of self-knowledge and knowledge of God that is entirely devoid of cognitive content.