Concept
Zostrianos
Overview
Zostrianos is a Sethian Gnostic text. It is the first tractate of two in Codex VIII of the Nag Hammadi library. It takes up 132 of the 140 pages in the codex, making Zostrianos the longest tractate of the entire library. However the text is extensively damaged, especially in the center, making the document difficult to fully understand. The Coptic manuscript is a translation of a Greek original, likely written in Alexandria in c. 200 AD. In the text, Zostrianos goes on a heavenly journey and receives divine knowledge from the aeons.
The work is likely the same Zostrianos that Porphyry criticized in Life of Plotinus. Like other Sethian Gnostic texts Marsanes, Allogenes, and Three Steles of Seth, its ideas appear more Middle Platonic or Neoplatonic than Christian. However, Porphyry said that these works belonged to Christian heretics. Bentley Layton explains this apparent contradiction with the belief that Zostrianos was written by a Gnostic Christian author who was fascinated with Eastern religious heroes who had special knowledge relating to the divine, such as Zoroaster.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Consequently, man (besides being a reasonable being) is also a sensitive being, because he possesses sense-organs. In many respects, he is also a vegetative being; for his body feeds and grows just like a plant. All these powers (reason, sensibility, growth), therefore act together in the man; but it is the best of them that characterizes the totality of the man (so that he is called a "reasonable being"). On…
Plotinus, Plotinos
States what Zostrianos is; the author is tied to Zostrianos in the knowledge graph.
Again, magnanimity is the contempt of every mortal concern; it is the wing by which we fly into the regions of intellect. And lastly, prudence is no other than intelligence, declining subordinate objects; and directing the eye of the soul to that which is immortal and divine. The soul, thus defined, becomes form and reason, is altogether incorporeal and intellectual, and wholly participates of that divine nature…
Plotinus, An Essay on the Beautiful, from the Greek of Plotinus
States what Zostrianos is; the author is tied to Zostrianos in the knowledge graph.
who saith, But the earth was invisible, and without form, and darkness was upon the deep; that is, "that corporeal thing that God made, was as yet a formless matter of corporeal things, without order, without light." Another he who says, The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep; that is, "this all, which is called heaven and earth, was still a formless and darksome matter, of which…
of Hippo Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine
States what Zostrianos is.
Related ideas
- Greek language
- Gnosticism
- Holy Spirit
- Middle Platonism
- Sethianism
- Angel
- Meditation
- Heresy
- Nag Hammadi library
- Neoplatonism
- Reincarnation
- Soul
- Sin
- Salvation
- Truth
- Alexandria
- Adam
- Plotinus
- Cosmos
- Baptism
- Zoroaster
- Coptic language
- Seth
- Christianity
Place in the tradition
Part of Gnosticism.