The Thunder: Perfect Mind: A New Translation and Introduction

194 Pages·2010·1.769 MB·English

by  Hal Taussig, Jared Calaway, Maia Kotrosits, Celene Lillie, Justin Lasser (auth.)

T T : P M
HE HUNDER ERFECT IND
T T : P M
HE HUNDER ERFECT IND
A NEW TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION
Hal Taussig
Jared Calaway
Maia Kotrosits
Celene Lillie
Justin Lasser
palgrave
macmillan
THE THUNDER: PERFECT MIND
Copyright © Hal Taussig, Jared Calaway, Maia Kotrosits, Celene Lillie,
and Justin Lasser, 2010.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-10563-8
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the
United States - a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the
World, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan
Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998,
of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above
companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United
States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-29006-2 ISBN 978-0-230-11477-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230114777
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thunder, perfect mind. English 2010.
The thunder : perfect mind : a new translation and introduction /
Hal Taussig . . . [et al.].
p. cm.
1. Gnosticism. 2. Intellect. I. Taussig, Hal.
II. Nag Hammadi codices. VI, 2. III. Title.
BT1391.A3 2010
229'.9—dc22 2010012676
Design by Integra Software Services
First edition: November 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Transferred to Digital Printing in 2013
C
O N T E N T S
Preface vii
Preface to the Translation ix
Acknowledgments xi
The Thunder: Perfect Mind 1
1 An Introduction to The Thunder: Perfect Mind 7
2 What Kind of Literature is Thunder? 15
3 Degnosticizing Thunder 21
4 Literary Patterns 29
5 Gendering Thunder, Thundering Gender 41
6 Rumbling Cultural and Social Order 53
7 Violence, Subjectivity, and Identity 61
8 Style and Poetic Artistry 69
9 Performing Thunder 83
10 Making Meaning of Thunder in Ancient and
Contemporary Contexts 93
The Thunder: Perfect Mind, Annotated Coptic Text and
English Translation 102
Notes 155
Works Consulted 175
Text Index 183
Subject Index 185
P
R E FA C E
I am she whose wedding is extravagant and I didn’t have a husband
I am the midwife and she who hasn’t given birth
I am the comfort of my labor pains ….
I am the slavewoman of him who served me
I am she, the lord of my child …
Do not stare at me in the shit pile, leaving me discarded
You will fi nd me in the kingdoms ….
Because I am a barbarian among barbarians …
I am she who they call law
And you all called lawlessness ….
I am she who is revered and adored
And she who is reviled with contempt
I am peace and war exists because of me
I am a foreigner and a citizen of the city
I am being
I am she who is nothing
This evocative, gender-bended, and ever-twisting self-portrait in the
ancient document The Thunder: Perfect Mind sustains itself for some
nine pages of papyrus. Sometimes commanding the scene like a god-
dess, other times disdained and thrown down in the dirt, she keeps
challenging those around her. Still other times, she shape-shifts into a
masculine form or intentionally contradicts conventional expectations
of her previous utterance.
Like many other important ancient scripts, The Thunder: Perfect
Mind was discovered in rural Egypt, where the dry air inhibits decay
of ancient material. Thunder belongs to the increasingly famous Nag
Hammadi collection of what appear to be mostly early Christian doc-
uments, all found in the same jar in the hills above the Nile. It is
likely that the Nag Hammadi documents had been collected by an
early desert monastic community. Found in the mid-twentieth cen-
tury and translated within several decades afterward, these documents
were initially published in English in 1977, but only accessible to the
general public within the last generation. Thunder was one of 52 Nag
Hammadi documents.
viii PREFACE
Thunder has nevertheless already distinguished itself in public con-
sciousness. It stands vigil at the beginning of award-winning novelist
Toni Morrison’s works Jazz and Paradise. Umberto Eco also cited it
in his novel Foucault’s Pendulum. Julie Dash’s award-winning 1991
feature fi lm, Daughters of the Dust, opens with a long citation from
Thunder. Its text also anchors a 2005 fi lm by Jordon and Ridley
Scott,1 whose shortened version has appeared widely as a commercial
for Prada women’s fashions.2 Numerous music groups and composers
have set Thunder to music.3
Curiously enough–and in contrast with the Gospel of Thomas, the
other document from Nag Hammadi known more broadly to the
public–Thunder has never been published in book form in English.
The Gospel of Thomas has been published as a single book in at least
20 editions. This work marks the fi rst book-length publication and
treatment of Thunder in English.
This book has four major purposes:
(1) To make the text of this extraordinary ancient work available to as
broad a public as possible. This text in translation is presented in
the opening section of the book.
(2) To provide a translation of this work that does careful justice to
the original Coptic and whose English is fresh and poetic in keep-
ing with the poetic quality in the Coptic.
(3) To introduce basic historical and literary contexts for the study of
this text on any level.
(4) To refl ect on the powerful meanings of Thunder in relationship to
society, gender, violence, and identity through the ways in which
it has been written and performed.
This book also provides an extensive annotated translation that allows
scholarship for the next several decades to be aware of technical issues
within the Coptic, that helps readers take into account variant trans-
lations and meanings not refl ected in the main translation, and that
offers additional historical and literary information for the under-
standing of this text.
This project originated in a year-long Coptic study at Union
Theological Seminary in New York. It is also a part of a longer-
range effort at Union to provide advanced study in the literature
of early Christianity without regard to canonical boundaries or
prerogatives.
P T
R E FA C E T O T H E R A N S L AT I O N
In translating The Thunder: Perfect Mind, we wanted to create above
all a crisp, readable, and evocative piece of writing in English that
refl ects Coptic meanings (and their implications) responsibly. We
wanted to avoid a “trendy” translation that serves particular contem-
porary interests at the expense of important ancient meanings. But
we also wanted to go beyond strictly literal renderings or antiquar-
ian attachments such as replicating exact syntax. In this vein, treating
Thunder as a poem was crucial to us, and while literalisms can be
useful to a certain point, respecting the text as poetry means also hon-
oring the metaphorical, associative, and evocative functions of both
English and Coptic.
There are a number of aspects of Thunder, though, that demand
very specifi c representation in English. The poetic nature of the text
meant retaining, for example, some of the alliteration and rhyme
(though not in the very same phrases as the Coptic), and attending
to the shifts in tone and content through stanza breaks. On the other
hand, in order to keep the lines as sharp as possible, words that func-
tion to aid or indicate performance in an ancient context (the words
“and” or “for/since”) were eliminated unless they were necessary
syntactically or gave a cue in meaning.
Translating grammatical gender in Thunder was also a task that
required meticulous treatment. As we elaborate in various places
throughout this book, gender has been universally under-translated in
Thunder, and so we have attempted to address the various diffi culties
involved in translating the often subtle, often palpable gender play
throughout Thunder. The “I am” (anok te/pe) structure was most
diffi cult in its understated and elusive reference to gender. While we
believe this structure contributes meaningfully to Thunder with regard
to gender, we decided not to translate the gender in these phrases. We
found no feasible way to include it without destroying its subtlety, and
inadvertently weakening some of the more emphatic interests in gen-
dered language. Otherwise, we have never translated neutrally where
the text cites a gendered “one.”
x PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION
Similarly, past translations primarily have read Thunder as specula-
tive or cosmological in ways that support a “gnostic” categorization
for the text.4 While Thunder’s philosophical concerns are clear, we
have also found that it has strong investments in making meaning for
its particular social situations. So where words or phrases suggest pri-
marily concrete or “earthy” meanings, we have heeded those mean-
ings rather than presume cosmological meanings (“when I am thrown
onto the ground” as opposed to “when I am cast out upon the earth”
[15.2–3]).
Regarding lacunae in the manuscript and word reconstructions
made by scholars, we have made our own decisions for each of these
on a case-by-case basis. Some careful and important work has already
been done on textual reconstruction of Thunder, most of which we
have accepted. It was nevertheless vital to let ambiguous lacunae
stand, because of the text’s tendency to surprise the reader with unan-
ticipated turns in meaning and syntax.
Translation is a task that necessarily gives and takes away poten-
tial for meaning. We tried to be conscious of our gains and losses at
every stage, and we have provided annotations (in the “Annotated
Coptic Text and English Translation,” beginning on page 102) to
track where our decisions have been disputed among us or where our
decisions might be better understood by readers. We hope that this
translation offers an opportunity to scholars as well as artists, those
who pray texts as well as casual readers, to rethink both Thunder itself
and the circular safety of the canon.
A
C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
This book is a product of a serendipitous and exciting collaboration
of teacher and students at Union Theological Seminary. As a part of
our study of Coptic together, we selected The Thunder: Perfect Mind
as the major text for our spring semester work in 2007. Our fascina-
tion with the text, our discovery that existing translations had not
paid attention to key elements of the text, and the lack of any major
work on Thunder in English combined to propel us into a whirl of
research and writing. We are grateful especially to our editor, Burke
Gerstenschlager, for his sustained support of this project.
We also want to thank Union Theological Seminary for its sup-
port of us, especially for its sponsorship of the joint Union/Columbia
Ph.D. Seminar in New Testament and Early Christianity, where much
of this work was done, and its support during the summer of 2007.
Above all within the Union community, we thank Fred Weidmann for
his instruction in Coptic. Professor Brigitte Kahl deserves gratitude
for ongoing conversations, as well as much credit for her encourage-
ment and interest.
Karen King and her scholarship have often guided us in our work,
and we continue to see her as the leading scholar of Nag Hammadi
literature. A special thanks to April DeConick for her instruction in
Coptic and her pioneering scholarship in Coptic and Nag Hammadi
Codices research. We are grateful to Anne McGuire for her insight-
ful response to this book and for her decades of work on Thunder,
to Davina Lopez for her substantive insights on our approach to
Thunder, as well as to Nicola Denzey for her gracious hosting of our
presentation at the 2008 Society of Biblical Literature.
We acknowledge the support of William Hoover, Marian Hoover,
Father Parthinias, Louis Lasser III, Marcia Lasser, the Kotrosits and
Shelly families, Susan Cole, Julia Haines, Linda Noonan, Ann Therese
Ortiz, Gerald and Jane Calaway, Jaynanne and Ron Calaway-Habeck,
and Ann Wallace. Thanks to John Russo, Sarah Tofte, and Jen
McGuire, whose insights have all been important catalysts; Carol, Ted,
and Katie Lillie and Marilyn and Rick Duistermars for their endless