Adam (the first man) was a misbegotten android, spawned when Yaldabaoth tried to duplicate and enslave a reflected vision of Immortal Man which startled the Rulers when it appeared in the waters of paradise.
“Now the Rulers took some soil from the earth and modeled their Man, after their body and after the Image of God that had appeared to them in the waters.”1
Adam’s orgins are spectacularly undignified: in one version of the story, the Archons created him by masturbating into a mud puddle:
“…the First Father gave those who were with him a false intention concerning the man. Then each one of them cast his seed on the midst of the navel of the earth. Since that day, the seven Rulers have formed the man: his body is like their body, his likeness is like the man who appeared to them. His molded body came into being according to a portion of each one of them. Their chief created his head and the marrow.”2
Another describes Adam as a pathetic, spineless creature who crawled on his stomach:
“The (first) human being was a creation of angels [but was] unable to stand erect because of the angels’ impotence, and rather writhed on the ground like a worm….”3
Not only was Adam’s body freakishly flawed, but Yaldabaoth wasn’t even confident enough in his power to risk bringing his experimental golem to life – instead he left him comatose and inert, like a lobotomized chimp in a cage:
“Because of this deed… [the Chief Ruler] was afraid lest perhaps the man come into his molded body and rule over it. Because of this, he left his molded body forty days without soul. And he withdrew and left him.”4
“For Adam was a laughingstock, since he was made a counterfeit type of man by the Rulers.”5
- “The Hypostasis of the Archons.” The Other Bible. Ed. Willis Barnstone. Harper San Francisco, 1984. 76. [↩]
- “On the Origin of the World.” The Other Bible. Ed. Willis Barnstone. Harper San Francisco, 1984. 69. [↩]
- “Satorninos.” The Gnostic Scriptures. Trans. Bentley Layton. Doubleday /Anchor, 1995. 161. [↩]
- “On the Origin of the World.” The Other Bible. Ed. Willis Barnstone. Harper San Francisco, 1984. 69. [↩]
- “The Second Treatise of the Great Seth.” The Nag Hammadi Library. Ed. James M. Robinson. HarperCollins, 1978. 363-71. [↩]
