''The Thought of Norea'' is a brief

Sethian The Sethians were one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd and 3rd century CE, along with Valentinianism and Basilideanism. According to John D. Turner, it originated in the 2nd century CE as a fusion of two distinct Hellenistic ...

Gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...

text. The main surviving copies come from the Nag Hammadi library. The ''Thought of Norea'' is sometimes considered to belong to the New Testament apocrypha. It is one of the shorter texts of the Nag Hammadi collection and is estimated to have been written in the second century C.E.

Norea

The text, consisting of 52 lines (or 4 paragraphs), is an ode to Norea, one of the ''emanations'' in Gnostic

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...

, the syzygy of

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

, and

Sophia Sophia means "wisdom" in Greek. It may refer to: *Sophia (wisdom) *Sophia (Gnosticism) *Sophia (given name) Places *Niulakita or Sophia, an island of Tuvalu *Sophia, Georgetown, a ward of Georgetown, Guyana *Sophia, North Carolina, an unincorpor ...

after her fall from

grace Grace may refer to: Places United States * Grace, Idaho, a city * Grace (CTA station), Chicago Transit Authority's Howard Line, Illinois * Little Goose Creek (Kentucky), location of Grace post office * Grace, Carroll County, Missouri, an uninco ...

. Norea has several identities within Gnosticism: she can be Eve’s daughter and Seth’s wife and sister, or she can be Noah or Shem’s wife. In the Thought of Norea, she is connected to Sophia. She furthermore exemplifies the journey of the soul to acquire the divine knowledge necessary for salvation

Sethian Gnosticism

The text is thought to be from the Sethian sect of Gnostics, the sect who view biblical

Seth Seth,; el, Σήθ ''Sḗth''; ; "placed", "appointed") in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mandaeism, and Sethianism, was the third son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, their only other child mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible. A ...

as their hero, who was reincarnated as Jesus. Their other texts include the Apocalypse of Adam,

Apocryphon of John The ''Apocryphon of John'', also called the ''Secret Book of John'' or the ''Secret Revelation of John'', is a 2nd-century Sethianism, Sethian gnosticism, Gnostic Christian pseudepigrapha, pseudographical text attributed to John the Apostle ...

, the Three Steles of Seth, the Trimorphic Protennoia, and the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians.

Text

"Father of All, Ennoia of the Light, dwelling in the heights above the (regions) below, Light dwelling in the heights, Voice of Truth, upright Nous, untouchable Logos, and ineffable Voice, incomprehensible Father! It is Norea who cries out to them. They heard, ndthey received her into her place forever. They gave it to her in the Father of Nous, Adamas, as well as the voice of the Holy Ones, in order that she might rest in the ineffable Epinoia, in order that hemight inherit the first mind which hehad received, and that hemight rest in the divine Autogenes, and that she (too) might generate herself, just as she also has inherited the living

Logos ''Logos'' (, ; grc, wikt:λόγος, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric and refers to the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive ...

, and that she might be joined to all of the Imperishable Ones, and speak with the mind of the Father. And she began to speak with the words of Life, and heremained in the presence of the Exalted One, possessing that which she had received before the world came into being. She has the great mind of the Invisible One, and she gives glory to erFather, and she dwells within those who re actively awakewithin the Pleroma, and she beholds the Pleroma. There will be days when she will behold the Pleroma, and she will not be in deficiency, for she has the four holy helpers who intercede on her behalf with the Father of the All, Adamas. He it is who is within all of the Adams, possessing the thought of Norea, who speaks concerning the two names which create a single name."

References

{{The Nag Hammadi Codices , state=collapsed Sethian texts Coptic literature Nag Hammadi library