Christian Sefirot

# The Valentinian Sefirot


“I will speak my mystery to those who are mine and to those who will be mine. Moreover it is these who have known him who is, the Father, that is, the Root of the All, the Ineffable One who exists as Oneness. He dwells alone in silence, and silence is tranquility since, after all, he was in fact One and nothing existed before him. He also exists as Twoness and as a Pair, and his partner is Silence. And he possessed the All dwelling within him. And as for Intention and Persistence, Love and Permanence, they are indeed unbegotten.” (*A Valentinian Exposition*, Nag Hammadi Library).


In this passage the Valentinian writer describes the emanations of the Root of the All, who first exists as Oneness, then extends himself as Twoness with Silence, and then further multiplies into additional emanations. The text continues:


“God came forth: the Son, Mind of the All, that is, it is from the Root of the All that even his Thought stems, since he had this one (the Son) in Mind. For on behalf of the All, he received an alien Thought since there were nothing before him. From that place it is he who moved \[...] a gushing spring. Now this is the Root of the All and Oneness without any one before him. Now the second spring exists in silence and speaks with him alone. And the Fourth accordingly is he who restricted himself in the Fourth: while dwelling in the Three-hundred-sixtieth, he first brought himself (forth), and in the Second he revealed his will, and in the Fourth he spread himself out.” (*A Valentinian Exposition*).


Here the Root spreads himself out first into Two, then into Four, and finally into Three Hundred Sixty, the ultimate extent of the Pleroma. Yet in another sense he remains restricted within the primal Four. These four emanations are reminiscent of the four worlds (*Olamot*) of Kabbalah, as well as the four letters of the divine name YHWH. In Jewish mystical tradition, the Tetragrammaton could be permutated into the seventy-two names of God, the *Shemhamphorash*, by recombining its letters. The Valentinians seem to have understood their fourfold emanation in parallel to this mystical structure.


Jewish mysticism often presented the divine names not merely as words but as emanations, hypostases of the divine attributes themselves. The angels were originally personifications of these emanations, their names ending in *-el* to indicate their origin in divine power: Micha-EL, “the loving-kindness of God”; Rapha-EL, “the healing of God.” In Kabbalah, these angelic functions crystallized into the *sefirot*, the ten divine emanations. Similarly, in Valentinian thought, the Pleroma unfolded through syzygies, male-female pairs that expressed divine aspects in personal form.


The *sefirot* are ten vessels, emanations of God’s powers and virtues: wisdom, knowledge, mercy, justice, and so on. They are symbolized in the synagogue menorah, where the seven lamps correspond to the seven visible attributes but point back to the totality of the ten. “The seven lamps allude to the branches of human knowledge, represented by the six lamps inclined inwards towards, and symbolically guided by, the light of God represented by the central lamp.” Between the ten *sefirot* run twenty-two paths, corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, making in total thirty-two paths of wisdom. This tree-like structure reflects the “image of God” in man: “I see men as trees walking” (Mark 8:24).


Samuel Zinner observes:


“Moreover the name Theudas is curiously reminiscent of Syrian Jewish-Christian tradition and this might explain the many Jewish (actually; Jewish-Christian) Kabbalistic elements in the Valentinian system. Traditional scholarship over-emphasizes Hellenistic aspects of Valentinus’ thought. We therefore now turn to an examination of the possible Jewish components found in his metaphysics. First in the Valentinian system Logos and Zoe (Word and Life) emit ten emanations whereas the celestial Son of Man and Ecclesia (Church) emit twelve emanations. These numbers correspond precisely to the ten sefirot and the twelve tribes of Israel which Kabbalists add together in order to arrive at the number of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.” (*The Gospel of Thomas*, Samuel Zinner).


Later Valentinian schools, such as that of Ptolemy, preserved this Jewish coloring. Zinner notes: “In the later Valentinian school of Ptolemy we encounter a doctrine of two Sophias precisely paralleled in the Kabbalah: upper and lower Shekhinah, the upper being wholly righteous, the lower being morally ambiguous.” (*The Gospel of Thomas*). In the same way the Jewish-Christian Ebionites distinguished between the heavenly Savior and the earthly Jesus, so the Valentinians distinguished between higher and lower Sophia.


The *shi’ur qomah* traditions of Judaism described God in terms of measure and extent. Likewise, Valentinus spoke of the Father’s measure and of emanations such as Sophia as the last of the aeons, “precisely as Shekhinah is the final sefirah in Kabbalah” (*The Gospel of Thomas*). Ptolemy even taught that the aeons were “Words,” just as the ten *sefirot* corresponded to the ten creative words in Genesis.


Gematria also played a role. Zinner comments: “The Valentinian use of gematria in the Greek name *Iesous* is also indicative of typical Kabbalistic procedures. Although gematria was by no means confined to Jewish circles, in light of the other extensive specifically Jewish parallels in Valentinus’ thought it is more natural to associate his practice of gematria with Judaism than with Hellenism.” (*The Gospel of Thomas*).


The *Gospel of Truth*, likely authored by Valentinus himself, displays strong Jewish-Christian features. Zinner notes its avoidance of the word “God,” suggestive of Jewish reverence for the divine name, and its attribution of emanational qualities that parallel the *sefirot*: Wisdom, Knowledge, Forbearance, Crown, Glory, Love. Even the feminine bosom of the Father is described as the Holy Spirit, in a triad of Father, Mother, and Son. Folio 38-39 declare that the Son is the Name of the Father—another deeply Jewish-Christian theme.


Paul writes: “And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10). The image of God is expressed in twelve aspects, reflected in the twelve disciples. In Valentinianism, the aeons of the Pleroma are aspects of the divine mind, attributes that can be manifested in believers.


Thus the Valentinian system of emanations stands in close relation to Jewish mystical tradition, particularly the *sefirot* of Kabbalah. Both traditions portray the divine as unfolding in stages, through attributes or hypostases, by which the invisible is made manifest. The syzygies of the Pleroma and the emanations of the *sefirot* are two branches of a single mystical tree, rooted in the same soil of Jewish-Christian esotericism.


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