The Books of Jeu and the Pistis Sophia as Handbooks to Eternity: Exploring the Gnostic Mysteries of the Ineffable

by Erin Evans

In The Books of Jeu and the Pistis Sophia as Handbooks to Eternity Erin Evans offers an in-depth examination of the Coptic Books of Jeu and Pistis Sophia, demonstrating their system of cosmology and ritual practice, and their relationship to other contemporary Gnostic myths and ideas.

294 pages, ebook

First published August 10, 2015

Reviews

[Fred Kohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book I would love to add to my library, but it is $174 on Amazon. (All the books in this series are very expensive!) It gave me the opportunity to reread G R S Mead's translation of Pistis Sophia and add some highlighting and notes to my Kindle edition of that work. I don’t have a copy of the books of Jeu, but the commentary on those books was clear enough. This was true also of the third and fourth books of Pistis Sophia (although I benefitted greatly by rereading them in light of the commentary). The cosmology of 1-2 Pistis Sophia is very convoluted and confusing, and I ended up reading the relevant chapters in the commentary a total of three times. The first time I read it I was very confused, so I went back and read chapters 1 and 95 in Pistis Sophia, which are key chapters for understanding the author's cosmology. After reading the commentary a second time, I went back and read all the relevant chapters in Pistis Sophia. After reading the commentary a third time I think I have a pretty good handle on the cosmology, but it is all pretty arcane. Evans sums up this cosmology by saying that it is composed of "at the very least the firmament, the first sphere, the Heimarmene, the twelve aeons, the thirteenth aeon, the midst, the place of the light, the Treasury of Light, and the Spaces of the Ineffable." Hard to get a handle on, for sure!

The discussion of the Pistis Sophia myth is very helpful, especially for those familiar with the myth of the fall of Sophia in the Apocryphon of John, from which it differs considerably. Again, it was necessary for me to reread this commentary after rereading the relevant chapters in Pistis Sophia. My next project is to reread the Apocryphon of John so I can compare the two myths.

This book also helped clarify the various characters who appear in Pistis Sophia. One thing that is confusing is that apparently there are three characters named Sabaoth and two characters named Jeu!