On the other hand, the parallels between the theology of the _Pistis Sophia_ and that of Valentinus are even closer, and are too important to be merely accidental. The complete identification of Jesus with the First Mystery strongly recalls the statement of Valentinus, rather slurred over by the Fathers, that Jesus was Himself the Joint Fruit or summary of the perfections of the whole Pleroma or Godhead, and is a much more Christian conception than that of the earlier Ophites as to His nature[544]. So, too, the curious theory that each of the lower worlds has its own “saviour” finds expression in both systems, as does the idea that Jesus received something from all the worlds through which He passed on His way to earth. One may even find a vivid reminiscence of the Valentinian nomenclature in the name of Pistis Sophia herself, which combines the names of the feminine members of the first and last syzygies of the Valentinian Dodecad[545], Pistis there being the spouse of Paracletus or the Legate, and Sophia that of Theletus or the Beloved, while the cause of her fall in the present book is the same as that assigned in the system of Valentinus. Hence it may appear that the author of the _Pistis Sophia_, whoever he may have been, was well acquainted with the Ophite and Valentinian theology, and that he continued it with modifications of his own after the innovating habit current among the Gnostics and noticed by Tertullian. In the cosmology of the _Pistis Sophia_, again, the preference given to Valentinian rather than to the older Ophitic views is clearly marked. The cause of the descent of the light into matter in the first instance is no accident as with the Ophites, but is part of the large scheme for the evolution or, as the author calls it, the “emanation” of the universe which was devised and watched over in its smallest details by the First Mystery[546]. Whether the author accepted the wild story attributed to Valentinus by Irenaeus concerning the Fall of Sophia and her Ectroma, it is impossible to say, because, as we have seen, he omits all detailed description of the way in which the two higher worlds which we have called the heavens of the Ineffable One and the world of the First Mystery came into being[547]. But it is plain that both must have been made by or rather through Jesus, because it is stated in the mysterious five words written on the vesture of Jesus that it is through the First Mystery that all things exist, and that it was from him that all the emanations flowed forth[548]. As the _Pistis Sophia_ also says that Jesus is Himself the First Mystery, this corresponds to the opening words of St John’s Gospel, that “by Him all things were made[549].” Hence the author of the _Pistis Sophia_, if confronted with the story of the Ectroma, would doubtless have replied that this was merely a myth designed to teach the danger for the uninstructed of acting on one’s own