 Welcome back to another episode of We Are Being Transformed, a podcast where we explore the myriad of ways that people are transformed and in turn shape the culture around them, whether that be through ritual, lore, religion, etc. And today I just want to give a trigger warning. The content in this episode will be quite graphic at times. We discuss acts of sexual violence and human trafficking at moments. So if you or someone you know is a victim of sexual violence, please contact RAINN. You can contact them at 1-800-656-4673. Similarly, if you or someone you know is a victim of human or sex trafficking, please contact the National Human Trafficking hotline at 1-888-373-7888. And we will include the links in the description. Hello. So with that being said, I would like to welcome back to the show the one, the only Dr. Celine Lilly. How are you tonight? I'm doing well. Thanks Jason. How are you? I am fantastic. Honored to have you back on the show. Awesome. So in our last discussions, we really talked and got into the meat of the matter with Roman self-definition and the violence that entailed through mapping that masculine self-definition. We also, in another episode, we tackled how the Nag Hammadi texts like On the Origin of the World, Reality of the Rulers, and The Secret Book of John really tended to act as a sort of cultural critique. What these texts have in common, just academically how they're grouped together, they're usually considered not, sorry, cut, Neil. Okay, so three, two, one, okay, start here. So these texts, they're usually grouped together in academia as quote unquote, Scythian texts. They share a certain lore, certain aspects of the mythology, if you will. There's a story as Dylan Burns would say with all this that's going on. So I think what's interesting is that even though you have a very, how shall I say, a very complex cosmology here, cosmogony, it's not just like these patriarchal figures that are the figurehead of things. There are, for lack of a better term, Eve, Noria, Sophia are more or less, in a very real sense, savior figures. So I was wondering if you could expand upon that a little bit. Yeah, it's really interesting to see the ways, and especially just even thinking about, they get called Scythian literature. And like Scythian basically doesn't show, I mean, his name is mentioned once in reality of the rulers. And I'm trying to think of these mentioned at all on the origin of the world. Like Scythian is so minor there, he plays a little bit larger role in secret revelation of John. But in these two texts in particular, it's really, really Eve. And then obviously in reality of the rulers is the one where Noria shows up. And I think one of the things that I found really interesting. So A, so yes, just this fact that we have these female, these female figures that really form this conglomerate of these shifting names of, you know, the wisdom Sophia, Zoe life, Eve. The beast or the serpent who's also called the instructor is part of this kind of female androgynous, like it's an interesting thing to so much of the time. In these ancient texts, you get androgynous figures, but they tend towards the masculine. And here we get these androgynous figures who kind of tend towards the feminine. And particularly is named that in on the origin of the world. And so it's just a real, you know, in thinking about it, it excites me. There's so much that I could say about it. It's hard to kind of pick one track. But I guess maybe the two things that I'd say that are really interesting are in on the origin of the world in particular, when the rulers make their atom to try and seduce her. And as Karen King kind of always jokes, you know, they huff and they puff and they can't get they can't get Adam to stand up. And first, he's given a soul. And then he but he still can't stand. And Eve says to Eve says to him, you know, Adam arise stand. And the text actually says, and her word became a work. So much like the God at the beginning of Genesis, her words are actually efficacious. And she's able to save Adam from kind of from from this spiritless form that he has at this point. She's also the one technically who, you know, again, and what a melgoma of this, it's it's interesting. But he is also saved through the eating of the fruit through these this amalgam of figures, the tree, the serpent, the beast, the instructor, the the fleshy Eve. And also then to think about just these resonances with you know, with the Christ figure, if these indeed are Christian stories, which I think there's so much more we could say about that. But, you know, you have a penetrated, feminized savior figure in Jesus. And that was one of the things about crucifixion is that it was emasculating because it was penetrative. And here you have the same thing through sexual violence, and that, again, you know, these children end up becoming kind of the saviors of humanity, specifically with, with Noria, who we can say a lot more about. Yeah, and even just getting back to Eve for a second, I mean, it's not just this came out of thin air. I mean, if if you read the Septuagint and the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, you'll notice that in the first three chapters, she's not named Eve. She's called Zoe. She's so this is not something that they're just kind of making up. It's something that they're they're gleaning from the text, and they're interpreting in their own way, which I, you know, I just find that fascinating. You know, I love that. But yeah, we could talk more about that, but maybe that's for another time. What I really wanted to ask you about was what can we kind of gather what little we can what can we gather about the communities who circulated these texts from these markers of these strong importance, female savior figures, like if anything at all? I mean, I think there, you know, I think there's so much speculation that we could there's so much that we could speculate. What can what can we know for sure? Who knows? But I think, you know, two, I was gonna say two, but there's probably there's probably three or more that I'll list. But some of the things that I think we can notice are that these are folks who are interested in they are interested in gender. There is a bunch of gender fluidity that's going on in these texts. Again, something, you know, in On the Origin of the World thinking about they have there's like this hymn to eve that mirrors thunder perfect mind. And, you know, which also has a bunch of gender fluidity in it. And so noticing noticing these this interesting playfulness around this that happens there. Noticing the ways in which they they talk about gender and violence that it really upends this hierarchical model that we have in the in the Roman system. And so there is there are they're definitely interested in having what they would consider. And I don't I don't necessarily want to speculate the scope of this, but they are interested in justice. Despite the fact that many folks think that they're only interested in kind of the people who wrote these texts are only interested in evacuating this world, you know, the sparks get liberated back, you know, into the heavens. I think they're very interested in what happens in this world. And although I do think that they may when I look at the ends of some of the texts where there seems to not be there seems to not be a lot of hope around the possibility of things shifting at times where the only thing that they can imagine is kind of a fiery ending. And yet at the same time, there does seem to be a real community feel in a lot of these texts that it's not about individuals, but particularly with the relationship even between all of these female figures that that help one another with even Adam that there is something very, very important that it's saying about relationship and partnership and how people should be with one another and treat treat one another. And so these are communities that that at least care about striving for these things. Well said. Well said. Thank you for that answer. You were mentioning Thunder Perfect Mind and it kind of brought to mind. There's a section in Reality of the Ruler is a very graphic scene where after assaulting Eve, these rulers, these archons quote unquote defile Eve's voice. And it reminded me of Thunder Perfect Mind and there's because there's a section in there. And one of my favorite lines in there and the character or the figure goes, I am hearing adequate for everyone and speaking that cannot be repressed. And that just really kind of stood out to me. I was wondering what you thought the significance of these archons trying to silence Eve by defiling the voice, but they can't at the end do it. So I was wondering your thoughts on that. I do wonder and again, this is the place where I have to say, I'm a modern person in the modern world. And so this may be anachronistic, but I do wonder if some of it is really about silencing her that these types of violence are supposed to be unspeakable to protect the people who perpetrate them. And if that really is a piece of this, and I think, quite frankly, they're pissed at her because this female voice calls them out. And this is again, not part of this imperial system. And I think it's one of the things that I find really compelling about the way that Karen King talks about this, that somehow, you know, Sufi is this fallen character and yet, and yet she's the one that's constantly calling out these male power dynamics. And so there's something really, there's something, there's something really fascinating happening with this where, where, and I think that moments like that really point to this place of parody, critique, how we think about satire in the contemporary world, that those places where there are disjunctures where it's like, this doesn't make logical sense. Well, when you start to put it in these other contexts and notice that it's trying to poke fun at something, all of a sudden there are these other, you know, a myriad of other possibilities for interpretation. Right, absolutely. It's kind of like, I mean, even like something like 20 years ago, like my son can still look at like a trailer for airplane and find that funny, but he's not going to get all the, all the subtle satire. And they're the same thing if you're reading Aristophanes, right? You're not going to get all of the parody that's in Lizzie Strato, right? So, unless like you understand the politics of the time. So yeah, a little said, final question for you. Why is it important, do you think, for readers today to know and discover figures like Noria, Eve, and Sophia? I think that they continue to intervene into the binary gender dynamics that we have inherited in so many ways. I think, you know, though in, you know, in Jewish tradition, God has no image, we have really managed to image God as a male, as a particular type of father figure that I actually do think also the early Christian texts subvert kind of what this father figure is supposed to be in certain ways. But again, this gets co-opted, gets co-opted by the empire. So I think there are pieces there that are so, that are just so, so very important about having this myriad of images that different people can relate to and see themselves in the story. The one thing I do think I just really want to say about Noria before we go is there have been, and I really understand these critiques, and it's something that I wrestle with, but this idea that as the rulers are threatening her, she cries out to the divine realm and O'Lelleth steps in and saves her. And there have been interpretations of this kind of saying, you know, once again, it's the male coming in to save the day for this female figure. And I just keep wondering, like, is there a way to think about this? And I do, I talk about this in my book as well, like, why is it that, why is the bravery of crying out for help and actually being met in that a bad thing? And I think this is one of the ways in which we, I myself do this too, tend to map our hyper individualistic society onto these constructs. And I just think that, you know, anybody, if there is a possibility of intervening on your own behalf in violence that's coming at you, by all means cry out for help to whoever is there. And if somebody comes to meet you all the more the better, that that's something that's empowering to use your voice in that way, rather than having it, you know, be this, oh, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm like the poor damsel in distress, who's, you know, once again calling in a male savior for myself. And I think the thing that I also just want to point out about this is that, you know, it does say when she's born, the text says, so this is reality of the rulers, that she is the virgin who the rulers don't defile. So these are two things that go hand in hand, but it's so important to remember that being a virgin in the ancient world isn't just about sex, it's also about kind of being able to be autonomous. So if we think about like Artemis and what Daphne was actually trying to do, she didn't want to get married because she wanted to run around with Artemis or Diana and she wanted to hunt and she wanted to be carefree and she didn't want to be yoked to a man in a family. So because that was a really difficult position for some folks in the ancient world. So just to really think about this expansive, the expansive possibilities around someone like Noria, who might have been an example on more levels than is just obvious in the text. Well said, well said. Thank you for that. So Dr. Lilly, this has been another amazing discussion. I hope to have you back soon. But in the meantime, before we part, where can people find you? Thanks very much, Susan. It's just been really great to be here with you again. And people can find me at the University of Colorado Boulder, where they can find me at the Wester Institute. So westerinstitute.org. And the Wester Institute has some courses coming out, correct? So we will have we are starting an academy that will be that will begin in fall of 2023. And they also have ongoing opportunities to hear folks like John Dominic Crossen, other scholars. We have seminars that we run where the public can actually listen in on scholars debating a myriad of different issues in contemporary scholarship. So please check them out on a bunch of levels. It's a really interesting organization that keeps trying to push kind of into new areas of scholarship. Amazing, amazing. So yes, I encourage you all to check that out. Another forward public facing opportunity for you to learn more about the subject if you're interested. I know I like to take advantage of these things when I can. So you should as well. So until next time, Dr. Lilly, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. We will see you next time. Thanks.