The Thunder, Perfect Mind

The Thunder, Perfect Mind is an exhortatory poem discovered among the Gnostic manuscripts in the Nag Hammadi library in 1945.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.

The Thunder, Perfect Mind [1]

For the Current 93 album, see Thunder Perfect Mind (Current 93 album). For the Nurse with Wound album, see Thunder Perfect Mind (Nurse with Wound album).

Form
For it is I who am acquaintance: and lack of acquaintance.
It is I who am reticence: and frankness.
I am shameless: I am ashamed.
I am strong: and I am afraid.
It is I who am war: and peace.

The Thunder – Perfect Intellect, Lines 26-31 from another translation.[2]

The Thunder, Perfect Mind (the title may alternately be translated The Thunder, Perfect Intellect) takes the form of an extended, riddling monologue, in which an immanent divine saviour speaks a series of paradoxical statements alternating between first-person assertions of identity and direct address to the audience. These paradoxical utterances echo Greek identity riddles, a common poetic form in the Mediterranean. Moreover, it is a non-epistolic, non-narrative unmediated divine speech.[3] There are some translations to the right from the same section of the poem. Line numbering is different in different translations.

Dating

As to dating, Anne McGuire writes: "Thunder, Perfect Mind exists only in the Coptic version found at Nag Hammadi (NHC VI,2:13,1-21,32). The author, date, and place of composition are unknown, but a cultural milieu like that of second- or third-century Alexandria is plausible. In any case, it is clear that the text was originally composed in Greek well before 350 C.E., the approximate date of the Coptic manuscript."[3]

Structure and language

The work as a whole takes the form of a poem in parallel strophes, and the author, it may be surmised, has drawn on a tradition of such poems in both Egyptian and Jewish communities, in which a similarly female divinity (Isis or aspect of the divine Sophia respectively) expounds her virtues unto an attentive audience, and exhorts them to strive to attain her. Patricia Cox Miller suggests that it is the "self-revelation of a powerful goddess" [4].

Some examples of the genre may be found in Old Testament, such as the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, or apocryphal literature.

The riddles of the poem may presuppose a classical Gnostic myth, such as the one found in the Reality of the Rulers, or in the Secret Book of John.

The original language of the poem was Greek, though only a Coptic version survives in the Nag Hammadi library; the manuscript resides in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.

gollark: Obviously I should be promoted to superadmin as a replacement.
gollark: Which is weird, because according to the supreme political compass *I'm* basically the anti-C4. Almost as if it could be something other than an entirely accurate model of politics, which is of course heresy.
gollark: It was a perfect metaphorical storm of opposing ideologies.
gollark: … no?
gollark: There are many other issues but that's one of them.

References
  1. MacRae, George W. (tr.) (1990). "The Thunder, Perfect Mind". In Robinson, James M. (ed.). The Nag Hammadi Library. San Francisco: HarperCollins. ISBN 0060669357.
  2. Layton, Bentley, ed. (1987). "The Thunder – Perfect Intellect". The Gnostic Scriptures. Doubleday. ISBN 0385174470.
  3. McGuire, Anne, ed. (2000). "The Thunder: Perfect Mind". Diotima.
  4. Patricia Cox Miller, "In Praise of Nonsense," in World Spirituality , Vol. 15: Classical Mediterranean Spirituality , ed. by A. Hilary Armstrong (New York: Crossroads/Continuum Press, 1986), pp.481-505
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