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I am a door to thee who knockest at Me. |
Amen! |
I am a way to thee a wayfarer. |
Amen! |
Now answer to My dancing! |
See thyself in Me who speak; |
And seeing what I do, |
Keep silence on My Mysteries. |
Understand by dancing, what I do; |
For thine is the Passion of Man |
That I am to suffer. |
Thou couldst not at all be conscious |
Of what thou dost suffer, |
Were I not sent as thy Word by the Father. |
[The last clause may be emended: I am thy Word; I was sent by the Father.] |
Seeing what I suffer, |
Thou sawest Me as suffering; |
And seeing, thou didst not stand, |
But wast moved wholly, |
Moved to be wise. |
Thou hast Me for a couch; rest thou upon Me. |
Who I am thou shalt know when I depart. |
What now I am seen to be, that I am not. |
[But what I am] thou shalt see when thou comest. |
If thou hadst known how to suffer, |
Thou wouldst have power not to suffer. |
Know [then] how to suffer, and thou hast power not to suffer. |
That which thou knowest not, I Myself will teach thee. |
I am thy God, not the Betrayer's |
I would be kept in time with holy souls. |
In Me know thou the Word of Wisdom. |
Say thou to Me again: |
Glory to Thee, Father! |
Glory to Thee, Word! |
Glory to TheSe, Holy Spirit! |
But as for Me, if thou wouldst know what I was: |
In a word I am the Word who did play [or dance] all things, and was not shamed at all. |
'Twas I who leaped [and danced]. |
But do thou understand all, and, understanding, say: Glory to Thee, Father! |
Amen! |
(And having danced these things with us, Beloved, the Lord went forth. And we, as though beside ourselves, or wakened out of [deep} sleep, fled each our several ways.) |
## Comments |
To me it seems almost certain, as I argued in the first edition of Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, in 1900, that this Hymn is no hymn, but a mystery-ritual and perhaps the earliest Christian ritual of which we have any trace. |
We have a number of such mystery-rituals in the Coptic Gnostic works--the extract from the "Books of the Saviour" appended to the so-called Pistis Sophia document of the Askew Codex, and in the "Two Books of Ieou" of the Bruce Codex. |
In a number of passages the Disciples are bidden to "surround" (that is, join hands round) the Master at certain praise-givings and invocations of the Father, who is addressed as: "Father of all Fatherhood, Boundless Light"--just as the Father is hymned as Light in the last three lines of our opening doxology. |
The "Second Book of Ieou" ends with a long praise-giving, in the inner spaces; for these highly mystical treatises dead with the instruction of the Disciples by the Master out of the body. This praise-giving begins as follows (Carl Schmidt, Gnost. Schrift. . . . aus d. Codex Brucianus--Leipzig, 1892--pp. 187 ff.): |
"And He spake unto them, the Twelve: |
Surround Me all of you! |
And they all surrounded Him. He said unto them: |
Answer to Me [Amen], and sing praise with Me; and I will praise My Father for the Emanation of all Treasures. |