Hesiod and Parmenides in Nag Hammadi

Abstract

J. Doresse' and after him A. Bdhlig2 have suggested that the author of NHC II, 5 knew Hesiod's Theogony, was influenced by it, and argued against it. At the beginning of the treatise (II, 5, 97, 24f.) we are promised a demonstration that the common view according which nothing has existed prior Chaos [cf. Th. 116] is mistaken. Ib., 102, 27ff. we are told of an attack upon heaven and of the casting down of the troubler [no further identification] to Tartarus [cf. Th. 617-733]. The most interesting section, perhaps, is that on Eros, II, 5, 109, 1-26 [cf. Th. 120-2]. B6hlig argues that this section is an interpolation in the original Szene von der Seduction des Archontes.3 His [sc. Eros'] masculine nature is (109, 3); Bohlig compares Th. 201, where both Eros and Himeros accompany Aphrodite.4 That what we have here reminds one of Hesiod cannot, of course, be denied. Are we, however, believe that the author of NHC II, 5 had read the whole Theogony,5 and that Hesiod constitutes his main source? The cosmological section of the poem (from Th. 104 onwards) was widely quoted in antiquity by a variety of authors, beginning, for us, with Plato (Symp. 178b; Th. 116-7 + 120).6 In Christian authors such as Theophilus and Hippolytus substantial chunks of poetry are quoted (Theoph., Ad Aut. III 5-6, Hipp., Ref I 26).' Quotations of this size from Th. 617-733, however, are lacking, and even individual lines are only sparsely quoted. Th. 201, which has no organic connection either with the cosmogony or with the theomachy in the Th. and which, moreover, is only a partial parallel the relevant lines in NHC II, 58 is only quoted in the Et. Gen. Consequently, such knowledge of Hesiodic .items as the author of the present version may have possessed is likely be not direct, but tralaticious, although he may have read the cosmogonical section in authors such as Theophilus and Hippolytus (or in the sort of sources or anthologies from which these had derived their quotations).