THE NHL contains two documents of this title, I,3 and IX,2. The latter is short and fragmentary with many incomplete lines. I,3 treated here is long and elaborate. This text is not to be confused with IX,3 The Testimony of Truth, a long but also extensively damaged document which however presents a couple of highlights worthy of attention. See Addendum below.
Addendum: IX, 3 The Testimony of Truth.
This tractate opens with a condemnation of Judaism and the Law (nomos), including an explicit identification of the Archons as gatekeepers of the matrix. It runs to almost 80 pages, making it the longest text in Codex IX although ten or so pages are almost completely demolished. It condemns carnal generation which it associates with the Law, that is, Talmudic scripture and morality. In a strange twist, it equates the river Jordan with “the desire for sexual intercourse (synousia)” and advises that genuine spiritual practice requires making the Jordan flow backwards — hence, sublimating Eros. What follows seems to be an attempt to describe anti-Judaic Christian mysticism with the unusual detail of the full spelling of CHRISTIANOS although Christ is still written in code, XC with the overline.
It is one of the earliest texts to use the word heretikos. The word testimony is a trope of martyria or martyr, literally “witness.”
What is noteworthy about this tract is the way some of its features prefigure the Christian mysticism that eventually come to expression in the alternative theology of the Middle Ages (Boehme, Meister Eckhart, Hildegarde of Bingen) and finally in the esoteric Christianity of Anthroposophy. For instance, Steiner talked endlessly about the special status of John the Baptist (oddly called “the archon of the womb” in IX, 3, 31.4) and the divine birth of Christ in human form, as well as the descent of Christ into Hades.
Most of the text concerns an interpretation of the Judaic legend of Eden, citing verbatim from Genesis: “But the serpent was wiser / than all the animals that / were in paradise, and / persuaded (peithein) Eve.” The note here (CGL V, p. 157) cites a uniquely significant line in Greek from Epiphanius (37.5.3) on the Ophites or snake-worshipers. “And the serpent persuaded them and brought knowledge (gnosis), and taught men and women all the knowledge of the heavenly mysteries (mysterion to pan tes gnoseos).” The commentators note the exact Coptic word that occurs in Hyp. Arch. and Orig. World, which looks something like this: REFTAMO. It means “instructor.”
The serpent power is the instructor of the Ophites as it is of Shaktas today.