The Secret Book of John

The central Sethian text — four copies survive, more than any other Gnostic work, which tells you what it meant to them. It is a revelation dialogue: John, grieving after the crucifixion, is met by a figure that shifts between child, old man and youth, and is told the whole story. The Invisible Spirit; Barbelo, the first thought; the descending aeons; Sophia's solitary act and the misshapen ruler she bears alone; that ruler's boast — I am God and there is no other beside me — answered by a voice from above him that he cannot see; and then the making of the human body, joint by joint, by seven powers, with the spark smuggled in by a ruse from the fullness. Read it as theology and it is a scandal. Read it as a re-reading of Genesis 1–7 by people who knew that text intimately and had begun to distrust its narrator, and it becomes one of the most audacious pieces of biblical interpretation ever written.