Allogenes

The opening of the text discusses the existence of perfect individuals who are joined together with the mind and a guardian that taught Allogenes. The Triple-Powered One is the power that exists within the individuals and extends itself as word. The Triple-Powered One is a male virginal youth and the first of the Aeons from a unique triple-powered Aeon. He knows himself and the perfect Invisible Spirit and came to be in an Aeon who knows That One. The Triple-Powered One is a perfect, invisible, noetic Protophanes-Harmedon, and Kalyptos, a Triple-Male, empowers the individuals. The passage also describes the invisible, spiritual Triple-Powered-One, who contains all the individuals within himself and is greater than perfect, blessed, and always One. He provides for every power and is a nonsubstantial substance. Individuals can apprehend the Universal One by means of a First Thought, and that Vitality, Mentality, and That-Which-Is are one, although individually they are three. The all-glorious One, Youel, speaks to Allogenes and reveals that he was given a great power by the Eternal before he arrived to distinguish things that are difficult and unknown. She anoints him and gives him power, telling him to guard the information about the Triple-Powered One in great silence and mystery. She describes the greatness of the Universal One that is higher than perfect and the Aeon of Barbelo, which acts within individuals to rectify failures from nature. The text describes the Universal One as being all-encompassing and known through the third silence of Mentality and the second undivided activity in the First Thought. Youel reveals to Allogenes the existence of a powerful being that utters a sound. Youel proceeds to praise this being, calling it by various names and attributing to it great power and divinity. She then praises the Universal One, before Allogenes sees the glories of perfect individuals and all-perfect ones. Youel explains that the Triple-Powered One exists beyond those who exist, as divinity and non-substantiality. Youel reveals that the Triple-Male is beyond substance and that the self-begotten ones exist with it. The text speaks about seeking and knowing the Good within oneself to become divine and perfect. After a hundred years of seeking, Allogenes experiences a revelation of the divine Autogenes, the youthful Savior, and other spiritual beings. He then sees holy powers by means of the Luminaries of the virginal male Barbelo, who guide him to the Vitality and Existence where he can know himself and the Unknown One. Allogenes is advised to still himself and not desire to be active, in order to maintain the inactivity of the Unknown One within him. He is told to be ignorant of the Unknown One even if he knows him, and to not dissipate in order to stand. Allogenes hears the Blessedness that allows him to know his proper self. Allogenes describes his journey of seeking self-knowledge and encountering an eternal, intellectual, undivided motion that pertains to all the formless powers. He experiences a primary revelation of the Unknowable One, which fills him with revelation and power. Allogenes seeks the ineffable and Unknowable God, the Mediator of the Triple-Powered One who subsists in stillness and silence and is unknowable. He is then advised by the powers of the Luminaries to hear about God in so far as it is possible by means of a primary revelation. Allogenes proceeds to describe God as something that exists without Mind or Life or Existence or Non-Existence, incomprehensibly, and as another one superior to blessedness, divinity, and perfection. God is not boundless or corporeal or existent, but self-comprehending and unknowable. Allogenes describes the Unknowable One as having blessedness, perfection, silence, and stillness. These attributes are entities of him that cannot be known and are beyond human comprehension. The Unknowable One is higher in beauty than all those that are good and exists in all things but is unknowable in every respect. Those who do not know God will be judged by themselves for not finding the true origin. The Unknowable One is corporeal but properly incorporeal and exists without any desire. It surrounds and empowers all things, but is an airless place of boundlessness. Allogenes advises not to seek more knowledge of the Unknowable One, but to leave the book upon a mountain and adjure the guardian. Finally, Allogenes, speaking to his son Messos, proclaims the seal for all the books of Allogenes. ==Summary of The Temptation of Allogenes (CT,4)==

In the introduction, Allogenes and his son pray to God for a spirit of knowledge to reveal mysteries and understand where they come from, where they're going, and what they need to do to live, while on a mountain called Tabor. Satan appears and tempts Allogenes to enjoy the material world, but Allogenes refuses and says he seeks his Father who is above all realms. Satan tries to deceive Allogenes many times but ultimately fails and leaves in great shame. Allogenes cries out to God for mercy and help while in a deserted place. A bright cloud surrounds him, and he hears a message from it telling him that his prayer has been heard, and he will be told the gospel before leaving this place. Allogenes is warned that as he ascends he will encounter six powers (Desire, Darkness, Ignorance, Death, Kingdom of the Flesh, and Foolish 'Wisdom' of Flesh), each of which will bind him and demand to know where he is going, but he is instructed to respond that what bound him has been killed and he is going to his Father above, and when he does so he will go over the angels and without fear. ==Origin and concordances==

Although the roughly contemporary opponents of Allogenes literature provide some clues to its origin by virtue of their opinions, there is little concord among scholars in this regard; other than that it is Gnostic, it has yet to be definitively classified. The Temptation of Allogenes is a Christian Gnostic text that places Allogenes in Christ's stead in Matthew Chapter 4, adding Gnostic allusions; he describes "my Father" as "[he] who is raised high above all great Aeons of heavens, each with their own God." The NHC Allogenes is a non-Christian, wholly Gnostic text; it is largely thought to be Sethian, with Allogenes as an allegory for Seth. However, Wire clarifies that the text nowhere mentions Seth or his children. When The Temptation of Allogenes first appeared, there was hope that the new discovery might help to fill in some of the missing lines of Allogenes, but it is clear from what has been published that The Temptation of Allogenes is a wholly independent composition. At least it confirms the plurality of Allogenes books hinted at by Epiphanius, Porphyry and in the closing lines of Allogenes itself: "Proclaim them, O my son Mesos, as the seal for all the books of Allogenes." ==References==