"Thrice-Male...Thrice-Powerful": Gender and Authority in Apocryphon of John

Abstract

The following paper examines Apocryphon of John through two different analytic frameworks that make this complex and at times, seemingly bizarre 2nd century C.E. Egyptian text intelligible: (Middle) Platonism and gender. First, the text is analyzed in continuity with the ideological content and rhetorical strategies of contemporary Middle Platonic literature. Next, the text is analyzed as a gendered piece of literature, with attention paid to the rhetorical usefulness of gender in deploying motifs of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny in Apocryphon of John and other contemporary literature. Each mode of analysis shows how Apocryphon of John sets up an oppositional narrative framework that promotes a valuation of two competing social hierarchies and systems of authority, with one positioned as inherently and irrevocably superior to the other. The comparative work of the paper that focuses on Apocryphon of John’s integration of contemporary philosophical and gendered ideologies and rhetorical strategies mediates early approaches to Nag Hammadi literature, and more broadly, so-called gnostic literature, that on the one hand, analyze these texts primarily if not exclusively within the ideological framework of (heretical) Christianity, and on the other hand, see women’s liberation behind the feminine imagery included in the texts.