Apocryphal books (New Testament); Christian heresies -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Gnosticism
The sum total of the periods of punishment for cursing which are
administered in all the different hells does not amount to more than
four years as against the 133 assigned to it in the Fourth Document; and
the penalty for slander is here given as no more than 30 years as
against the same period of 133. The Receiver of Sabaoth Adamas, leader
of the rebellious Rulers, now administers the cup of oblivion instead of
as in the Third Document, the “Rulers of the head of the Æons,” and he
is given the name of Ialuham, while the Receivers of Ariel, who are here
mentioned for the first time in our text, are named Abiuth and Kharmon.
The case of the uninitiated but righteous dead is also dealt with in
answer to a question from John, but in a different manner from its
treatment in the Third Document, as here the soul on coming out of the
body is met by the Receivers of Bainkhookh or the planet Mercury, while
the cup which takes away the baleful effect of the cup of oblivion is
administered by a Receiver of the planet Jupiter[40]. It is also to be
noted that in this Document for the first time the division of mankind
into “righteous” and “wicked” bodies, which find or do not find, as the
case may be, the mysteries of light, is made to depend entirely on the
periodic disposition of the stars. When, it is said, the two beneficent
planets Jupiter and Venus come before the Virgin of Light and the two
maleficent Saturn and Mars behind her in the revolution of the Sphere,
all the souls sent into the world will be good, and when the position is
reversed, all will be wicked.[41] Here, too, for the first time, we are
told that the form of the body on reincarnation depends on the sins
committed by the soul in its last life,—that the soul of the proud man
will be put into a body dumb and deformed, the soul of the thief into
one lame and maimed and blind—and so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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