Chapter IV.—Account given by the heretics of the formation of Achamoth;
origin of the visible world from her disturbances.
1. The following are the transactions which they narrate as having occurred outside of
the Pleroma: The enthymesis of that Sophia who dwells above, which they also term
Achamoth,63 being removed from the Pleroma, together with her passion, they relate to
have, as a matter of course, become violently excited in those places of darkness and vacuity
[to which she had been banished]. For she was excluded from light64 and the Pleroma, and
was without form or figure, like an untimely birth, because she had received nothing65 [from
a male parent]. But the Christ dwelling on high took pity upon her; and having extended
himself through and beyond Stauros,66 he imparted a figure to her, but merely as respected
substance, and not so as to convey intelligence.67 Having effected this, he withdrew his in-
fluence, and returned, leaving Achamoth to herself, in order that she, becoming sensible of
her suffering as being severed from the Pleroma, might be influenced by the desire of better
things, while she possessed in the meantime a kind of odour of immortality left in her by
Christ and the Holy Spirit. Wherefore also she is called by two names—Sophia after her
father (for Sophia is spoken of as being her father), and Holy Spirit from that Spirit who is
along with Christ. Having then obtained a form, along with intelligence, and being immedi-
ately deserted by that Logos who had been invisibly present with her—that is, by Christ
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—she strained herself to discover that light which had forsaken her, but could not effect
her purpose, inasmuch as she was prevented by Horos. And as Horos thus obstructed her
further progress, he exclaimed, Iao,68 whence, they say, this name Iao derived its origin.
And when she could not pass by Horos on account of that passion in which she had been
involved, and because she alone had been left without, she then resigned herself to every
sort of that manifold and varied state of passion to which she was subject; and thus she
suffered grief on the one hand because she had not obtained the object of her desire, and
fear on the other hand, lest life itself should fail her, as light had already done, while, in ad-
63 This term, though Tertullian declares himself to have been ignorant of its derivation, was evidently formed
from the Hebrew word חָכְמָה—chockmah, wisdom.
64 The reader will observe that light and fulness are the exact correlatives of the darkness and vacuity which
have just been mentioned.
65 As above stated (ii. 3), the Gnostics held that form and figure were due to the male, substance to the female
parent.
66 The Valentinian Stauros was the boundary fence of the Pleroma beyond which Christ extended himself
to assist the enthymesis of Sophia.
67 The peculiar gnosis which Nous received from his father, and communicated to the other Æons.
68 Probably corresponding to the Hebrew יהוה ,Jehovah.
Chapter IV.—Account given by the heretics of the formation of Achamoth; origin of the visible world from her disturbances.
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Chapter IV.—Account given by the heretics of the formation of Achamoth;…