Life, Knowledge and Language in Classic Gnostic Literature: Reconsidering the Role of the Female Spiritual Principle and Epinoia

Once you begin to look for them, the number of female characters in the Nag Hammadi texts turns out to be great. They appear across a broad spectrum of texts and occupy every cosmological level: from Mary, Norea, and Zoe to Sophia, Epinoia, and Barbelo. Even though these texts operate from within a maledominated worldview, the female figures often seem to hold important roles within the narratives. These roles have been explored a number of times and by different scholars, among whom our jubilarian is one of the most prominent, due to his piercing work on Mary Magdalene.¹ In this