Margaret Barker
The Secret Tradition[1]
This is the kind of divine enlightenment into which we have been
initiated by the hidden tradition of our inspired teachers, a
tradition at one with Scripture. We now grasp these things in the
best way we can, and as they come to us, wrapped in the sacred
veils of that love toward humanity with which scripture and
hierarchical traditions cover the truths of the mind with things
derived from the realm of the senses. Dionysius On the Divine
Names 5992B
But see to it that you do not betray the Holy of Holies. Let your
respect for the things of the hidden God be shown in knowledge
that comes from the intellect and is unseen. Keep these things of
God unshared and undefiled by the uninitiated. Dionysius The
Ecclesiastical Hierachy 372A
There was far more to the teaching of Jesus than is recorded in
the canonical gospels. For several centuries a belief persisted
among Christian writers that there had been a secret tradition
entrusted to only a few of his followers. Eusebius quotes from a
now lost work of Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposes:
‘James the Righteous, John and Peter were entrusted by the
LORD after his resurrection with the higher knowledge. They
imparted it to the other apostles, and the other apostles to the
seventy, one of whom was Barnabas.’ (History 2.1) This brief
statement offers three important pieces of evidence: the
tradition was given to an inner circle of disciples; the
tradition was given after the resurrection; and the tradition was
a form of higher knowledge i.e. gnosis. All the arguments in this
area are open to the possibility of being circular, and it may
well be that the later traditions were built upon the evidence in
the gospels for an inner group of disciples, by people who felt
that the post-resurrection period was the ideal time for Jesus to
be giving revelations about the heavenly world, and they used
this as an opportunity to import fashionable Gnostic ideas into
Christianity.
Such insertions were the established practice of those who were
writing apocalypses at the time[2]. The Apocalypse of Abraham,
for example, is an expansion of Genesis 15, but at the point
where the canonical text describes the LORD speaking to Abraham,
the writer of the Apocalypse has inserted a heavenly ascent, a
vision of the throne of God and a revelation of the future. The Apocalypse
of Abraham was probably written after 70CE, since it
describes the destruction of the temple (Ap.Abr.27.3) and, even
though a thorough investigation of the text to determine its
original language has yet to be made, it seems likely that it was
a Hebrew text from the end of the first Christian century. The Ascension
of Isaiah is similar; a Jewish legend has been expanded in
two places by a Christian writer. The first of the visions was
the reason for his being arrested and put to death by the evil
king Manasseh; the second, although forming an appendix to the
book, is set in an earlier period of the prophet’s life, in
the reign of Hezekiah. Again, the original language was probably
Hebrew, and the date about the end of the first Christian
century. Thus it is not impossible that those who were promoting
gnostic ideas within the church should have made additions to the
established picture of the life of Jesus. Inserting visions into
the post-resurrection life of Jesus would have been as acceptable
as inserting visions into the story of Abraham or the legend of
the death of Isaiah.
The matter, however, is not so simple, because it begins with the
assumption that what we call gnosis must have been alien to the
teaching of Jesus, and that all traditions of Jesus teaching this
gnosis must have been fabrications. Since Daniélou has shown so
convincingly that what the second century writers described as
gnosis is none other than the essence of Jewish apocalyptic
speculation in Hellenistic guise[3], the assumption that it must been
alien to Jesus can no longer be made with any confidence.
Furthermore, many of the gnostic elements which Daniélou had
thought were a pagan modification of apocalyptic can now be seen
to have roots in the theology of the Jerusalem temple[4].
The Secret Teaching
There are many passages in the New Testament, both in the gospels
and the epistles, where the suspicion of a secret tradition is
all too apparent. The curious references in the epistles to the
heavenly powers and cosmic struggles, to mysteries, to the
transformation of the believer into a more glorious body, and so
forth, give good grounds for suspecting that what the later
writers described as secret knowledge taught by Jesus may well
have been exactly that. Morton Smith suggested that the Pauline
letters, read literally, give a far clearer picture of early
Christianity than do the gospels. The discrepancies between the
Synoptic picture of Jesus and the apparent beliefs of Paul’s
churches ‘may result from a seepage of secret material into
originally exoteric texts... More of the esoteric teaching is
found in the epistles of Paul, the oldest Christian documents,
and those most surely written for reading within the closed
circles of the churches... Paul enables us to glimpse the true
beliefs of the congregation to which he writes, and he is to be
preferred, as a source of early Christian thought, to the later
comparatively exoteric gospels.’[5] The alternative, as Hengel said,
is to assert that the epistles record an immediate decline from
the original teaching of Jesus into an acutely Hellenised mystery
cult.[6]
If a tradition of secret teaching was known to Clement of
Alexandria who flourished at the end of the second century, and
if this ‘gnosis’ is the key to understanding his
thought[7], can it dismissed as an insertion
into the teachings of the church? As Daniélou also observed, the
later gnostics who presented their (by then heretical) views in
the form of the secret teachings of Jesus ‘attestent du meme
coup l’existence de celles-ci.’[8] Clement does not give the
impression of having been an innovator; rather, he was concerned
with passing on the true traditions of the church. He knew of
people who were making ‘ a perverse use of the divine
words... they do not enter in as we enter in, through the
tradition of the LORD, by drawing aside the curtain’
(Misc.7.17), and goes onto show that Church tradition is older
than heresy. These teachers, he said, ‘preserving the
tradition of the blessed doctrine derived directly from the holy
apostles, Peter, James, John and Paul, the son receiving it from
the father (but few were like their fathers) came by God’s
will to us also to deposit those ancestral and apostolic
seeds.’ (Misc.1.1) This ‘tradition of blessed
doctrine’ is described elsewhere as gnosis, that which has
descended by transmission to a few, having been imparted
unwritten by the apostles.’ (Misc.6.7). It was acquired by
‘drawing aside the curtain’, temple imagery for
access to the presence of God, the privilege of the high priest.
We should expect it to concern, inter alia, the Liturgy.
It is important to note that the secret tradition was not written
down. Eusebius implies that Clement did write it down, even
though Origen, to whom we shall return, was always reticent about
committing it to writing. ‘Clement’, wrote Eusebius,
‘in his work on the Pascha declares that his friends
insisted on his transmitting to later generations in writing the
oral traditions that had come down to him from the earliest
authorities of the church (History 6.13). It is the unwritten
nature of this tradition which proves to be the greatest problem
in any investigation which relies entirely on written sources,
there being nothing else to use. We can proceed only by reading
between the lines and arguing from silence, always a dangerous
procedure, but less so if the context of the lines and the
silence be borne in mind.
For Clement, the Son of God has been manifested both as the LORD
in the Old Testament and as Christ the LORD in the New Testament.
In the Old Testament, the Son had been described both as the
Spirit which inspired the prophets, and also as Wisdom[9]; and the significance of
Clement’s teachings about gnosis and the secret tradition
cannot be fully appreciated unless this identification be kept in
mind. Jesus had been the manifestation of the One whom the Old
Testament knew as yhwh, the LORD, the Revealer. Further,
Clement was heir to the teachings of Philo who had demythologised
the ancient traditions of Israel and given them a point of
contact with contemporary Greek philosophy. For Philo, the yhwh
of the Old Testament had been the second God of Israel, the
Mediator, the Revealer, the Word, the Son of the Highest (i.e. of
El Elyon). Clement described Jesus as this second God and thus he
could say: ‘We define Wisdom to be certain knowledge, being
a sure and irrefragable apprehension of things divine and human,
comprehending the past, present and future which the LORD hath
taught us, both by his advent and by the prophets’
(Misc.6.7). He does not distinguish between the LORD of the Old
Testament and the LORD of the New.
‘If then we assert that Christ himself is Wisdom, and that
it was His working that showed itself in the prophets, by which
the Gnostic tradition may be learned, as he Himself taught the
apostles during his presence; then it follows that the gnosis
which the knowledge and apprehension of things present, future
and past which is sure and reliable, as being imparted and
revealed by the Son of God, is Wisdom.’ (Misc.6.7)
Later Clement asks how anyone can be an atheist who has
‘learned the divine mysteries from his only begotten
Son’ (Misc.7.1).
Whilst there can be no doubt that Clement was using the
terminology fashionable in his day, it is necessary to look
closely at what he says about the secret teachings, the gnosis,
in order to identify exactly what this was, and to see if there
is any possibility that it could have come from Jesus as he
claims. First, it was knowledge of past, present and future revealed
by the Son of God (Misc.6.7). Apokaluphtheisa is the
important word, since this immediately places Clement’s
gnosis in the realm of the visionary experience, apocalyptic,
rather than that of pure intellectual inquiry. He implies this
elsewhere by the imagery he uses; those who have the truth enter
in through the tradition of the LORD by drawing aside the curtain
(Misc.7.17). Beyond the curtain in the temple was the heavenly
world and the throne of God, and this was the subject of the
apocalyptists’ visions[10]. Second, the mysteries were
concealed in the Old Testament but revealed by the LORD: ‘On
the one hand, then, are the mysteries which were hid until the
time of the apostles, and were delivered by them as they received
from the LORD, and, concealed in the Old Testament, were
manifested to the saints.’ Paul, he said, ‘clearly
reveals that knowledge belongs not to all... for there were
certainly among the Hebrews some things delivered
unwritten...’ (Misc.5.10), in contrast to the more public
teaching of the church. He declares, in other words, that the
roots of the secret tradition were pre-Christian. Third, he
describes the goal of the Gnostic as contemplation, theoria,
something not available to one who confines himself to
philosophy. He needs instruction in the prophecies such that he
may receive their revelation and attain the goal of
contemplation.
‘And if, too, the end of the wise man is contemplation, that
of those who are still philosophers aims at it, but never attains
it, unless by the process of learning it receives the prophetic
utterance which has been made known, by which it grasps both the
present, the future and the past,... how they are ,were, and
shall be. And the gnosis itself is that which has descended by
transmission to a few, having been imparted unwritten by the
apostles. Hence, then, knowledge or wisdom ought to be exercised
up to the eternal and unchangeable habit of contemplation.’
(Misc.6.7)
This contemplation which gives knowledge of things past present
and future seems to have been Clement’s way of describing
the goal of the apocalyptists’ ascents, namely the vision of
God and the knowledge of all things past, present and future
which were the result of that experience. As the Hebrews (gazed)
upon the glory of Moses and the prophets of Israel on the vision
of angels, so we also become able to look the splendours of truth
in the face.’ (Misc.6.15)
This can be illustrated from the two first century apocalypses
mentioned above. In the Apocalypse of Abraham the
patriarch is taken up to the Eternal One by Iaoel (yhwh-EL).
Having been granted a vision of the throne, the patriarch is told
to look down and see the whole plan of history - past present and
future - unfolding beneath him (Ap.Abr cc.21-32). The Ascension
of Isaiah also describes how the prophet was taken up into
the seventh heaven by a glorious angel, and then saw the whole
mystery of the Incarnation, past, present and future (Asc.Isa.
chapters 10-11).
The apocalyptists’ vision of God did not only give
knowledge; it also transformed the mystic into an angelic being,
one whose life was that of the other world, even though he might
have continued to live for a while on earth as a messenger from
God. The Gnostic, too, enjoys a new life, says Clement; he is
transformed and becomes divine. ‘(Gnosis) leads us to the
endless and perfect end, teaching us beforehand the future life
that we shall lead, according to God and with gods... Then,
having become pure in heart and near to the LORD, there awaits
them restoration to everlasting contemplation; and they are
called by the appellation of gods, being destined to sit on other
thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their
places by the Saviour.’ (Misc.7.10)
On this wise it is possible for the gnostic already to have
become God: ‘I said ye are gods and sons of the
Highest.’ (Misc.4.23).
This is exactly the transformation experience at the heart of the
apocalyptists’ tradition. Enoch had ascended to the throne
and been transformed into a ‘son of man’ (1 En.71). The
Enochic histories describe how Noah and Moses, depicted as
animals, had been transformed into ‘men’, in
Noah’s case after he had been instructed in a secret by
one of the four archangels; Elijah (? the people are not named)
had been taken up to heaven (1 En.89.1, 36, 52; c.f. 1 En.93.4,
5, 8 where Noah, Moses and ?Elijah are the three ‘men’
in Israel’s history). In visionary texts, ‘man’ is
the conventional description of an angelic being: Daniel 9.21 has
‘the man Gabriel’; Daniel 10.5 ‘a man clothed in
linen’; and Revelation 21.17 ‘a man’s measure,
that is an angel’s’. 2 Enoch described how Enoch
was anointed and clothed in the robes of glory: ‘And I
looked at myself and I had become like one of the glorious
ones...’ (2 En.22.10). 3 Enoch says that the great
angel Metatron, enthroned in heaven and given the divine Name,
had been Enoch in his earthly life (3 En. cc.4,10,13). Isaiah was
told on his heavenly ascent that he would receive his robe and
then be equal to the angels (Asc.Isa.8.14). Philo described how
Moses had been transformed into ‘God and King’ when he
ascended Sinai (Moses 1.157). It is clearly the same tradition.[11]
The belief that human beings, as a result of their mystical
vision, were transformed into angels was neither new nor the
teaching of an unrepresentative minority. When Clement’s
gnostic hoped for divinity as a result of his
‘contemplation’ he was only putting into the language
of his own day what the ancient religion of Israel had been
saying for many centuries, first of its priest kings and then of
the various heirs to that tradition. He even spoke of the angelic
hierarchies of Israel’s older mythology and knew that they
were associated with the role of the high priest. ‘Gnostic
souls, that surpass in the grandeur of contemplation the mode of
life of each of the holy ranks... reckoned holy among the holy...
embracing the divine vision not in mirrors but in the
transcendently clear and absolutely pure insatiable vision which
is the privilege of intensely loving souls... Such is the vision
attainable by the pure in heart. This the function of the
gnostic, who has been perfected, to have converse with God
through the great high priest.’ (Misc.7.3). To say that such
contemplation of the face of God is an element drawn from
‘the vision of the mysteries, a Hellenistic literary
touch’ or that ‘certain elements of (Clement’s
gnosis) undoubtedly derived from Hellenism, notably those of
vision, contemplation and archetypes’[12], is unnecessary and opens up a
false gap between this gnosis and anything known to have been
associated with Jesus, who had himself said: ‘Blessed are
the pure in heart for they shall see God’ (Mat. 5.8).
Seeking the face/presence[13] of the LORD had been at the
heart of the temple cult (1 Chron.16.11; 2Chron.7.14; Pss. 17.15;
24.6; 27.8-9; 41.12; 105.4 etc.).
The Gnostic believer changes from unbelief to faith, then from
faith to knowledge and love, and then ‘ such an one has
already attained the condition of being equal to the
angels’. The Gnostic presses on towards his heavenly home
‘through the holy septenniad (of heavenly abodes) to the
LORD’s own mansion’ (Misc.7.10). Again, this is exactly
the belief of the apocalyptists: those who ascended through the
heavens and saw the throne of God were transformed.
Clement knew the temple setting of the apocalyptic tradition; it
is no accident that the image of the high priest’s entering
the holy of holies was used to describe the Gnostic entering the
state of knowledge. The high priest’s golden plate
represented his body which he left behind when he entered the
holy of holies, said Clement. Thus he passed through the veil
which represented the intelligible world and into the world
beyond[14]. The possession of knowledge or
wisdom had long been the sign of the angelic state; even the
serpent in Eden knew as much when he said to Eve that she would
become like the gods knowing good and evil. It is hostility to
this wisdom tradition which underlies much of the transmission
and editing of what we now read as the canonical Old Testament.
That ‘gnosis’ existed and had an honourable place in
the beliefs of some (most?) of the heirs of Israel’s ancient
religious tradition should come as no surprise, nor should the
hostility to it which emerged very early in the history of the
church.
If Clement knew the temple tradition, then he will also have
known that the Jerusalem temple was a ‘copy’, and that
everything in it represented some aspect of the heavenly world.
Buildings, furnishings and temple servants were all copies of
heavenly originals; Moses had been told to make a tabernacle in
accordance with the pattern he had been shown on the
mountain(Exod.25.9, 40), and David gave to Solomon a plan of the
temple he had to build, every detail of which had been given to
him by the LORD (1 Chron.28.11-19). ‘On earth as it is in
heaven’ became one of the principal elements of the
apocalyptists’ temple rooted traditions, and thus Clement
was able to show how the degrees of glory in heaven corresponded
to the ranks within the church (Misc.6.13). This feature in
Clement’s thought is not a sign that he had drawn Platonic
archetypes into his gnosis. He may have used terminology drawn
from that philosophy, as did Philo, but the heavenly world had
long been known in the temple as the plan which determined
everything below. This view is known to have survived at Qumran;
it is presupposed in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice
and the Blessings. Thus again it is unwise to open up
unnecessary gaps between the gnosis of Clement and anything that
could conceivably have come from Jesus. When Clement declared he
had a secret tradition from Jesus, he could have been telling the
truth.
Clement knew many of the texts we now call apocalypses. He
mentioned 1 Enoch several times in connection with the
fallen angels (Inst. 3.2; Misc.1.17; 5.1), the Assumption of
Moses (Misc.6.15), and, significantly, the Apocalypse of
Zephaniah, a work which is otherwise unknown to us. He quotes
a passage from this text describing a heavenly ascent to see the
angels (‘LORDSs’) sitting on their thrones in the
sanctuary of salvation, praising God Most High[15]. It may well be that those
elements of his gnosis, which we still cannot place with
certainty within the apocalyptists’ scheme as we have
reconstructed it from material available to us, may be elements
which came from texts and traditions no longer known to us.
Clement also knew two gospels which presumably were used by the
Alexandrian Christian community, the so-called Gospel of the
Egyptians and the Gospel according to the Hebrews
(Misc.3.45, 63, 64, 66, 68, 91, 97; Excerpts 67 and Misc.2.9;
5.14 respectively). Of the former, little is known for certain
beyond the quotations in Clement which deal largely with the
questions of marriage and bearing children. There is, however,
one quotation from it in Epiphanius (fourth century), which says
that the Gospel of the Egyptians was a book ‘in which
many strange things were handed down as having come secretly from
the Saviour, such as that he revealed to the disciples that the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one and the same person
(Epiphanius Panarion 62). Of the Gospel of the Hebrews
more is known; it is usually described as having
syncretistic-gnostic elements on the basis of its having material
not found in the synoptic gospels, but found in gnostic texts[16].
There is a possibility that there has been here, too, a tendency
to prejudge issues as to what could and could not have been
‘original’ to Christianity. The Holy Spirit is
described in this Gospel as Jesus’ mother who came to him at
his baptism and said that she had been waiting for him, her first
born who would reign for ever. In him she had at last found her
‘rest’. There had been a division of opinion as to
where Wisdom had found this ‘rest’ in the past; Ben
Sira had described how Wisdom, after her long search, found her
rest in Israel (b.Sira 24.7), but the tradition of the
apocalyptists was very different. They said that Wisdom had found
no place in Israel and had taken her place again among the angels
(1 En.42). The tradition of Wisdom’s exile was perpetuated
in the Gnostic writings, and a Gospel which declared that wisdom
had finally found her rest in Jesus would have been the link
between the ancient traditions of Israel and the later Gnostic
writings[17]. In the Gospel of the Hebrews,
Jesus described how his mother lifted him up by the hair and
carried him to Mount Tabor. To those who read only the synoptic
gospels, these seem fantastic statements; but the belief that the
Holy Spirit was both feminine, as, as Wisdom, the mother of the
Messiah, was both ancient and widely attested.[18] She appears throughout Gnostic
literature as Sophia, and the setting of these texts places both
her and the tradition firmly within that of ancient Israel.
Further, one only has to read Ezekiel’s account of his
heavenly journey to Jerusalem to see that the Spirit was
described there, too, as having carried the prophet by his hair
(Ezek.8.3). It was doubtless the conventional way for such an
experience of rapture to be described, but the very fact that it
was conventional should warn against assuming that such
descriptions could not have been part of the original tradition
about Jesus. The real question raised by such material is not:
Where did it come from and why? But: Why did it disappear from
the public form of the tradition? Clement, who knew a secret
tradition at the end of the second century CE, knew all this
material and used it freely.
It was fashionable for a long time to dismiss as ridiculous
anything which does not conform to the modern Church’s idea
of what the original Christianity must have been. Hanson has an
excellent survey of the state of things forty years ago, before
the Nag Hammadi finds made their impact on scholarly certainties.
Clement’s secret tradition had been dismissed as an
‘ecclesiastical Christianity, mystically coloured.’
Scholars made no secret of their ‘entire disbelief in the
authenticity of this secret tradition’ and denied any
authority to Clement’s conception of a secret tradition.
Hanson himself regarded Clement’s claim as ‘entirely
untrustworthy’ on various grounds: first, it consisted of
theological speculations with a ‘suspiciously Alexandrine
ring to them’; second, Clement seems to have been following
in the footsteps of Philo; and third, he had been influenced by
the allegorical exegesis found in the Letter of Barnabas[19] to such a degree that that
‘he persuaded himself that this supposed secret teaching of
Barnabas had been maintained independently of the New Testament
up to his own day’ These three reasons are a good
illustration of how an issue cane be decided by the premises one
brings to the argument. Hanson concluded: ‘Clement’s
teaching did, as far as we can reconstruct it, consist of
speculations, intuitions and inspired (or not so inspired)
theologising, which had no connection with any oral teaching
given by our LORD or his apostles’. [20]
Much of Clement’s secret tradition was widely known among
the earliest Christian writers. Or, to put it another way, there
appeared very early in Christian writings, references to beliefs
that are nowhere recorded in the New Testament and yet clearly
originated in the tradition we call apocalyptic. As more is
discovered about this tradition, so more and more points of
contact can be found between the beliefs of the ancient temple
theology and what became Christianity[21]. The secret tradition of the
priests probably became the secret tradition of early
Christianity; the visions and angel lore suggest this, as does
the prohibition in Deuteronomy 29.29. What had the secret things
been that were contrasted with the Law? What had been meant by
saying that the Law was neither too hard nor too distant? The
comparison suggests that there had been something both hard and
distant which had been brought from heaven by someone who had
ascended (Deut.30.11-12). This suggests that a secret tradition
had been banned by the Deuteronomists who were the temple
reformers at the end of the seventh century BCE, and we do not
have to look far to discover what this tradition must have been.
They offered their Law as a substitute for Wisdom (Deut .4.6
c.f.Gen.3.5, the Wisdom that made humans like gods). They also
said that the LORD was not visible in human form (Deut 4.12),
even though a contemporary priest Ezekiel had had a vision of a
human figure on the throne (Ezek.1.26-28), and Isaiah had seen
the LORD (Isa.6.5) and someone, of sufficient repute to have his
words included in Scripture, had described the vision of God on
Sinai (Exod.24.10).
On whose authority did Christianity suddenly adopt all these
apparently strange views? Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, writing at
the beginning of the second century, described the Incarnation as
the advent of a great star before whom all magic and evil
crumbled away (Ignatius Ephesians 19). He claimed to know
‘celestial, secrets and angelic hierarchies and the
dispositions of the heavenly powers and much else both seen and
unseen’. (Trallians 5). How did he know this and from whom?
He was, after all, the bishop who constantly emphasised the need
for churches to act only in accord with their bishops and to shun
‘the teachings and time worn fables of another people’
(Magnesians 8). ‘To Jesus alone as our high
priest’, he wrote, ‘were the secret things of God
committed’ (Philadelphians 9). Why was it to Jesus as
the high priest that these things had been committed? Presumably
because it was a temple tradition. The anonymous Letter to
Diognetus knew that the way to life was through knowledge,
and that Adam and Eve were condemned not for having knowledge,
but for misusing it. ‘Without knowledge there can be no
life, and without life there can be no trustworthy
knowledge’ (Diognetus 12). Irenaeus, at the end of the
second century, wrote his Demonstration of the Apostolic
Preaching. He described it as a manual of essential teaching
(Dem.1), since he was conscious of the threat of heresy and the
need ‘to hold the rule of faith without
deviation’(Dem.3). The first major topic on his list of
essentials was a description of the seven heavens, the powers and
the archangels in them, the relationship of the cherubim and
seraphim to the Word and Wisdom of God, and the role of the
sevenfold Spirit. He knew that the symbolism of the temple had
enshrined this teaching in the seven branched lamp which had
represented the seven heavens. This material based on temple
symbolism was, for Irenaeus, the first essential of the apostolic
preaching, but where is it found in the New Testament? There
are allusions to such things in the epistles and in the Book of
Revelation, but nowhere are they spelled out. It may be
significant that rabbinic writings are curiously reticent about
temple symbolism.[22]
Temple symbolism, the great high priest and a secret tradition
were especially associated with liturgical customs, for which
there was no obvious authority in the New Testament. Writing in
the first half of the third century, and therefore long before
developments in the time of Constantine had put great emphasis on
temple tradition, Origen compared certain Christian practices -
praying towards the east, baptismal, rites and the certain
customs in the Eucharist - to secrets of the temple ‘within
the veil’ [23]which had been guarded by the
priests. Explaining the role of the family of Kohath, who carried
the tabernacle through the desert (Num.4), Origen emphasised that
they were not permitted to see what they were carrying. The high
priest Aaron and his sons had to wrap all the sacred furnishings
of the tabernacle and thus veil them before entrusting them to
others. The mysteries of the Church were similar: ‘handed
down and entrusted to us by the high priest and his sons’.[24] Origen does not name the high
priest, and so we assume it was Jesus, but it is possible that
there had been a continuity with the temple priesthood. Many
priests had joined the young Church (Acts 6.7). Origen’s
theme of the temple secrets becoming those of the Church was
taken up by Basil of Caesarea in his Treatise On the Holy
Spirit. There were, he said, certain practices ‘handed
own to us in a mystery (en mysterio) from the tradition of
the apostles.’ He mentions first signing with a cross,
facing east to pray, and the words of epiklesis[25]. The tradition ‘kept in
silence and in secret’ concerned ‘liturgical customs,
prayers and rites of the sacraments and other Christian universal
customs... (and) the theological doctrines implied in the
liturgical rites and prayers...’[26]
If the secret tradition did concern the practice and meaning of
the sacraments, and if this tradition was rooted in the symbolism
of the temple and the teachings of the ancient priesthood, its
recovery is of more than simply academic interest. It has been
all too easy for sola scriptura scholars to dismiss such a
claim, and then find themselves constructing theological
positions which are not even biblical, because they have ignored
the environing traditions which could have illuminated the
meaning of the biblical texts. An extreme example would be R.P.C
Hanson’s assessment of Basil: ‘Behind this unfortunate
and totally unjustifiable claim for a genuine apostolic origin
for liturgical and customary practice of the contemporary Church,
lies an uncertainty about how to use biblical material.’(!).[27]
Origen knew a great deal about secret tradition, but for him it
was not, apparently, an oral tradition. He claimed that Bible,
both Old Testament and New Testament, was the source of the aporreta,
the forbidden, secret or ineffable teaching. There can be little
doubt that what he described in this way was the tradition which,
in another context and at another period, we should have called
apocalyptic, so much of which has a temple setting and concerns
the secrets of the holy of holies, ‘revealed’ to the
seer. ‘Origen has discerned quite clearly’ wrote
Daniélou, which elements in the Old and New Testaments are
apocalyptic in character; and their very presence authorises him
as he sees it, to conclude that Scripture itself contains
teachings reserved for the select few.[28] The prophets and the apostles
had been enlightened through the Word to understand the
unspeakable mysteries: ‘And in the first place we must point
out that the aim of the Spirit... was pre-eminently concerned
with the unspeakable mysteries concerned with the affairs of
men...’ (First Principles 4.2.7). These dealt with Trinity,
the Incarnation, and the origin of evil; and Scripture concealed
this teaching ‘in words forming a narrative that contained a
record dealing with the visible creation.’ (First Principles
4.2.8). To seek such hidden meanings in historical narrative
would have been the next logical step from the position of the
apocalyptists who saw in everything the correspondence of earth
and heaven; if in temple symbolism, why not in historical events
also?
Origen’s use of 1 Enoch, (a deposit of priestly
material), whether by quotation or allusion, is a clear testimony
to knowledge of this tradition (First Principles 1.3.3; 4.4.8;
Homily on Numbers 28.2) , although he recognised that it was not
regarded as Scripture (Celsus 5.54; Homily on Numbers 28.2). He
was emphatic that mysteries of the apocalypses concerning the
heavenly gates for the soul were rooted in Scripture, and owed
nothing to influences from Persia and the Mithras cult as Celsus
had maintained. ‘Let him peruse’, he wrote, ‘at
the end of Ezekiel’s prophecies, the vision beheld by the
prophet, in which gates of different kinds are enumerated... and
let him peruse also from the Apocalypse of John, what is related
of the city of God and its foundations and its gates’
(Celsus 6.23). The extent of his understanding of the apocalyptic
tradition can be seen in his speculations about the angelic
state. Whilst discussing the Sadducees’ question in Matthew
22.23, he wonders whether some people can become angels before
the general resurrection. This was the belief of the
apocalyptists.
Origen saw the secret teaching of Jesus as part of this
apocalyptic tradition rooted in the Old Testament.
Our prophets did know of greater things than any in the
Scriptures, which they did not commit to writing. Ezekiel, for
example, received a roll written within and without... but at the
command of the Logos he swallowed the book in order that its
contents might not be written and so made known to unworthy
persons. John also is recorded to have seen and done a similar
thing (Rev.10.9). Nay Paul even heard ‘unspeakable words
which it is not lawful for a man to utter’. And it is
related of Jesus who was greater than all these, that he
conversed with his disciples in private, and especially in their
secret retreats, concerning the gospel of God; but the words
which he uttered have not been preserved because it appeared to
the evangelists that they could not be adequately conveyed to the
multitude in writing or speech (Celsus 6.6).
Jesus ‘ who both beheld these weighty secrets and made them
known to a few’ (Celsus 3.37), had had knowledge of angels
and demons. This emphasis on Jesus having had a secret teaching
which he passed on to only a few of his disciples appears time
and again in Origen’s writings. In the Preface to
First Principles we read: ‘The following fact should be
understood. The holy apostles, when preaching the faith of
Christ, took certain doctrines, namely those which they believed
to be necessary ones, and delivered them in the plainest terms to
all believers, even to such as appeared to be somewhat dull in
the investigation of divine knowledge... there were other
doctrines, however, about which the apostles simply said that
things were so, keeping silence as to how or why....’
(Preface 3)
Origen wrote of ‘the doctrines which were spoken in private
by Jesus to his genuine disciples’ (Celsus 3.60), and said
something similar of John the Baptist who had given his special
teaching on prayer to his close disciples only, and not to
everyone he baptised (On Prayer 2.5). Paul also knew secret
things. Discussing his teaching about the resurrection in 1
Corinthians 15, Origen wrote: ‘The apostle wished to conceal
the secret meaning of the passage which was not adapted to the
simpler class of believers... then, knowing that there was secret
and mystical meaning in the passage... he subjoins the following,
‘Behold I show you a mystery’; which is his usual style
in introducing matters of a profound and more mystical nature and
such as are fittingly concealed from the
multitude...’(Celsus 5.18).
Most significant of all, Origen says that Jesus gave the secret
teaching to his disciples after the resurrection. Explaining
‘I have yet many things to say to you but you cannot bear
them now’, (John 16.12), he says that Jesus found it
impossible to take his disciples beyond the surface meaning of
the Jewish law and ‘postponed such a task to a future
season, to that namely which followed his passion and
resurrection’ (Celsus 2.2). Thus Peter was enabled by the
Spirit of truth to see beyond the Jewish food laws when he had
his vision at Joppa (Acts 10.9-16). ‘And so, after that
vision, the Spirit of truth which conducted Peter into all truth,
told him many things which he was unable to bear when Jesus was
still with him in the flesh’ (Celsus 2.2).
There are hints of this in the gospels, for example after the
Transfiguration: ‘They kept silence and told no one in those
days of what they had seen’ (Luke 9.36). But had the
transfiguration originally been a resurrection appearance? Was
something revealed to the inner circle of the disciples after the
‘exaltation’ of Jesus? The Fourth Gospel emphasises the
exaltation of Jesus and links it firmly to the crucifixion (John
3.14; 8.28; 12.32-4), but the earlier tradition of exaltation had
been a mystical ascent such as that of Moses when he was made
‘God and King’ (Philo, Moses 1.155-158). The similar
tradition in 1 Enoch, where he is transformed by the heavenly
vision, and then declared to be Son of Man cannot be dated (or
even read) with any certainty, but it is closer to the priestly
style of writings than is Philo (1 En.71.14)[29]. The pattern in the much later 3
Enoch is quite clear; Enoch had been exalted and transformed into
the Lesser yhwh. The older tradition of exaltation must
have originated in temple theology where the one who was raised
up saw the throne in heaven and became yhwh the Son of God
Most High[30]. With his divinity came the gift
of Wisdom. There is an echo of this in Philippians 2.9, where
Jesus is exalted and given the great Name i.e.yhwh. Romans
1.4 is similar: Jesus is designated Son of God after the
resurrection. It would appear that the transformation into a son
of God by means of the mystical ascent and enlightenment became
associated in Christian thought with the exaltation after the
crucifixion. Presumably there had been a similar tradition of
enlightenment in the post-resurrection period.
It is possible, however, that the exaltation and enlightenment
had been part of Jesus’ own experience as a mystic, and not
simply the church’s post Easter interpretation of the
crucifixion. There are many examples which point to this,
especially in the Fourth Gospel: being born from above, entering
and seeing the Kingdom of God (John 3.3, 5), the descent of the
Son of Man (John 3.13), the one who comes from above and tells
what he has seen (John 3.31-2), the claim that Jesus was not of
this world (John 8.23). We have no proof that the Johannine Jesus
was not drawn from life. ‘For John’, wrote Morton
Smith, ‘Jesus is the incarnation of the pre-existent Logos.
But this does not prevent John from preserving and reworking
material that has come to him from an earlier and more historical
tradition, and to such material we owe the recollection that
Jesus in his lifetime claimed to have gone up to heaven and to
speak of it from first hand knowledge’[31]. Similarly, the synoptic gospels
describe a Jesus who saw the heavens open (Mark 1.10), who spoke
with Satan and saw all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of
time, and was taken (how?) to a pinnacle of the temple (Luke
4.1-13), who saw Satan fall from heaven (when, where ? Luke
10.18).
Origen distinguished between the hidden and the ineffable
knowledge. Of some matters he could say: ‘these are
hidden’; but of others he said: ‘If anyone is worthy to
know the ineffable things he will learn the Wisdom hidden in the
mystery which God established before the ages (Commentary on
Matthew 7.2). This Wisdom concerned the heavenly powers of which
Paul wrote in Colossians. According to Origen: ‘The Jews
used to tell of many things in accordance with secret traditions
reserved to a few, for they had other knowledge than that which
was common and made public’ (Commentary on John 19.92).
Daniélou concluded that Origen’s ineffable mysteries were a
continuation of the Jewish mysteries and dealt with the same
matters. He suggested that some of this knowledge might have been
the names of the angels which were part of the secret teachings
of the Essenes.[32]
A clear and significant pattern emerges from even so brief a
survey as this. Origen and Clement both believed that Jesus had
given secret teachings to certain disciples both when he withdrew
with them from his public ministry, and also after the
resurrection. Hints in the gospels suggest that Jesus himself had
had mystical experiences associated with the secret knowledge.
This teaching dealt with heavenly mysteries and was the tradition
of the apocalyptists. There are, of course, hints of this in the
synoptic apocalypses, but had that been the full extent of the
teaching, there would have been nothing to call hidden. We are
reduced to the dangerous business of speculation, as to what that
teaching might have been, and what happened to it.
[1] First published in the Journal of
Higher Criticism 2.1 1995 pp.31-67. This present version has some
corrections and additions to the references.
[2] It is inappropriate to distinguish
too sharply between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’
in the years immediately after the beginning of the church: see R
Murray ‘Jews, Hebrews and Christians. Some needed
distinctions’ Nov Test. 24 (1982)
[3] J.Daniélou Gospel Message and
Hellenistic Culture. A History of Early Christian Doctrine before
the Council of Nicea London and Philadelphia 1972 vol.2
pp.458ff, 486ff.
[4] See my book The Great Angel
London 1992
[5] M Smith Clement of Alexandria
and a Secret Gospel of Mark Cambridge MA 1973 p.251
[6] M.Hengel Son of God London
1976 p.2
[7] Daniélou op.cit.n.3 p. 447
[8] Daniélou ‘Les traditions
Secretes des Apotres’ Eranos Jahrbuch 31 (1962) p.203
[9] See my book The Great Angel
op.cit.n.4
[10] See my book The Gate of Heaven
London 1991 pp150-177
[11] W.A.Meeks ‘Moses as God and
King’ in Religions in Antiquity. Essays in Memory of
E.R.Goodenough ed.J.Neusner Leiden 1970.
[12] Daniélou op.cit n.3 pp 451,453.
[13] Hebrew panim can be
translated either face or presence.
[14] See my book The Gate of Heaven
op.cit,n.10, pp150-177
[15] Text in J.H.Charlesworth ed. The
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha vol 1, London 1983
[16] W.Schneemelcher New Testament
Apocrypha, Cambridge 1991, p.173
[17] I worked out this theme in more
detail several years after this article was published; in my book
The Revelation of Jesus Christ Edinburgh 2000, pp. 109-13,
where the letter to the church at Laodicea Rev.3.14-22 depicts
the heavenly LORD as Wisdom returning to dwell with those who
open the door.
[18] G.H.Dix ‘The Influence of
Babylonian Ideas on Jewish Messianism’ JTS 26 (1925)
pp.241-256
[19] By tradition a Levite, Acts 4.36,
and so with temple roots
[20] R.P.C.Hanson Origen’s
Doctrine of Tradition London 1954 pp 67-69, 71
[21] See my books The Gate of
Heaven (1991) op.cit.n.10 and The Great Angel (1992)
op.cit.n.4.
[22] E.R.Goodenough Jewish Symbols
in the Greco-Roman Period vol.4 New York 1953, p.88; also my
book The Older Testament London 1987 p 221.
[23] Num.18.7 and LXX Num.3.10
[24] On Numbers Homily 5
[25] On the Holy Spirit 66
[26] E.Amand de Mendieta The
Unwritten and Secret Apostolic Traditions in the Theological
Thought of St Basil,of Caesarea SJT Occasional Papers 13
1965, p.41
[27] R.P.C.Hanson Tradition in the
Early Church London 1962 p.184.
[28] Daniélou op.cit.n 3 p 488
[29] If that is what the verse means,
but in the overall pattern of priestly tradition, a
transformation experience seems likely.
[30] See my book The Great Angel
op.cit.n.4
[31] Smith op.cit.n.5 p. 247
[32] Daniélou op.cit.n.3. p.493
Josephus War 2.8.7
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