Gnostic Sermonette: The first Gnostic and the real identity of Jesus Christ

In his seven hundredth year Adam said to his son Seth,
      “Listen to my words:
When god created me out of earth along with Eve, your mother,
      I went about with her in a glory
      from the world which we had come forth.
She taught me the world of knowledge of the Eternal God
      and we resembled great angels,
      for we were higher than the gods who had crated us;
Then the god who is ruler of these worlds separated us;
      the glory fled from us, and knowledge of the Eternal Realm,
      but it entered into the seed of the great realm.
For this reason I myself have called you by the name of that   man
      who is the seed of the great generation or from whom it      comes.
After those days, the eternal knowledge of the God of Truth withdrew
      from me and your mother Eve.
Since that time, we learned about dead things, like men.
We recognized the god who had created us, and served him,
      and darkness came upon our eyes.”

--Excerpt from ‘The Revelation of Adam’--

This Sethian scripture is a testimony of how Gnostics radically re-interpreted the Old Testament, their mystic journeys that uncovered a history before Creation, and their revelations of who truly were the Biblical heroes.

‘The Revelation of Adam’ relates how Adam and Eve have awoken from the spell of ignorance after they have given birth to Seth (Hebrew for ‘appointed’). Seth is their first real child, since many Gnostics believed Cain and Abel were conceived when the Creator God raped Eve in the Garden of Eden. They have slowly realized their true nature of being ‘higher than the gods’ and that their true home is in the ‘Eternal Realm’.

Yet Adam and Eve understand that the restoration of humanity does not lie in their hands but with the ‘appointed’. Seth is destined to become father of the Gnostics--those who will liberate mankind with the truth, including the reality of the demented Creator God (also known as Jehovah, Yaldabaoth, Samael or, in ‘The Revelation of Adam’, Saklas, which means ‘childish god’ in Greek).

Adam not only reveals to his only enlightened son the history before Creation, but also his visions of the future of mankind.

The descendants of Seth will spread Gnosis (that knowledge of ‘being higher than the gods’). This holy information will awaken other human beings from the nightmare of ignorance and fate. Adam prophesizes that Jehovah will attempt to eliminate the Gnostics with such atrocities as The Great Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But divine intervention from the 'Eternal Realm' will always save the ‘Seed of Seth’, as the Gnostics were also called.

Yet Earth will continue to be populated with more dormant slaves of the Creator God, many of them the Jewish Patriarchs like Noah and his sons.

Adam assures Seth that all will not be loss. The culmination of the passing down of Gnosis will come in the arrival of a Redeemer who will once and for all save the self-actualized from the wheel of time, even as the Creator God destroys his physical form.

The Redeemer is known as Jesus Christ. But Sethian Gospels call him other names such as Melchizedek, Allogenes or simply The Savior.

The Sethian Gnostics were likely an ancient Jewish sect that later adopted Jesus Christ as the last descendent of Seth, if not his actual reincarnation. ‘The Revelation of Adam’ is just one of many variations of the Sethian saga of human liberation, although there are predominant themes in most of them:

--Sophia, the wisdom of the ‘God of Truth’ of the ‘Eternal Realm’ (or Pleroma), falls from grace for different reasons and conceives the Creator God.
--The Creator God manufactures a flawed universe after stealing his Mother’s powers; Jehovah’s greatest creation is Adam and Eve, his first slaves and often adversaries.
--The complete truth is revealed to Seth, who becomes the father of all Gnostics and possibly the universal Messiah later on.
--Sophia or other angelic entities assist the Gnostics throughout history in order to free humanity and remove the omnipotence of the Creator God.
--Biblical heroes are often villains and vice-versa. Or, like in ‘The Secret Book of John’ and as Saint Paul alludes to in ‘Galatians’, Moses and the other Patriarchs have either been deceived or incorrectly interpreted the message of the ‘God of Truth’.

In some versions, Seth has a counterpart, Norea--either his sister or wife--who appears throughout history in different disguises to also aid the Gnostics and hinder the Creator God.

How do you know if you are perhaps the ‘Seed of Seth'? If old man Adam seems to be directly speaking to you and your inner destiny, if you feel a seed of something divine growing within you as you read this eternal epic, then you probably know the answer.

(‘The Revelation of Adam’ of the Nag Hammadi Library translation from Michael Grondin, with further translation help and inspiration from June Singer’s ‘A Gnostic Book of Hours’).

Other Sethian Gospels:

The Secret Book of John
The Nature of the Rulers
The Second Treatise of the Great Seth
The Tree Steles of Seth

Other Gnostic Sermonettes:

A prayer of thanksgiving

The Theodotus Excerpt

The Gospel of Thomas Saying #18