Analogue 21: Salty Wisdom

 ANALOGUE 21

The apostles said this to their students, “May our offerings be salted.” They called “salt,” wisdom, for without its savor nothing is acceptable. Yet, wisdom herself remains barren without a son. She is called “Mother,” therefore, because in her there is salt which has been found for us by the Sacred Spirit who assists in making many children.

That which the Father possesses belongs also to the children, but as long as they remain in their infancy, nothing is ever entrusted to them. When, however, they mature, all that the Father possesses he willingly gives to them.

• The metaphor of wisdom as salt—salt is essential for many purposes.
• Salt preserves foods and makes them more acceptable or palatable; it relates to feeding. 
• Salt assists Wisdom in making many children (perhaps through the feeding relationship). 
• Wisdom is identified as the mothering principle.
• The goal of divine Wisdom is to bring progeny into existence. Wisdom is barren without birthing and raising children.
• The traditional image of the Mother and child: A child on the lap of the holy Mother. 
• Wisdom is raising children from infancy, through adolescence, to adult maturity. 
• This is the work of Sacred Spirit and her strong mandate (given by the Father/Source)
• Father/Source is in the background of this process with the promise of full inheritance for the sons and daughters of humanity, but only once they have matured. 
• Maturity is of central concern to the Father-Source. The deep relationship to the Source can only be known and the benefits obtained through maturation.

COMMENTARY

This analogue is another clear indication of the Jewish nature and origins of this Gospel. The metaphors used in this analogue are arcane outside of Judaism, making sense primarily in the cultural context of Jewish ritual and tradition. These writings were clearly meant for practicing Jews who know the Torah and were involved in temple ritual and practice. Its readers are Torah-observant followers of Yeshua. In the ancient Hebrew Scriptures it was commanded that the grain or cereal offering be salted (Leviticus 2:13, Numbers 8:19, II Chronicles 13:5). Symbolically this may have to do with the preservative properties of salt and also perhaps ritual purification. It cannot be overlooked, however, that salt is essential to most biological life and is the essence of flavor. Without it, the enjoyment of food is severely diminished, so a mother in the kitchen uses salt wisely and judiciously, not simply for the preservation of food, but for its pleasure and delight. It is also an essential element for proper nutrition, for we know that the body cannot function properly without it. Obviously multiple levels of meaning are being used here that are metaphorically important for the Jewish wisdom tradition. It is interesting, however, that the quality of flavoring is being elevated in this text over its more traditional preservative aspect. This Gospel appears to be more interested in flavor, its savory nature—saltiness used for enjoyment and delight.   

In this section of the Gospel we notice another layer of relationship and teaching in a description of transmission from the Apostles to their own students. The Gospel of Philip, like other Gospels, is being understood as the words and teachings of the Master of Wisdom shared beyond the first circle of students. This Gospel can be seen therefore to be a transmission made by the Apostles for the benefit of those students who are to come later to the circle in order that they might also grasp the teaching of these mysteries. Or, to use the other metaphor highlighted here, Wisdom is being applied like salt so that She may birth other children.

Motherhood concerns, of course, the birthing of children, without which there is barrenness described traditionally as no fruit from the womb. The Mother longs for children, and Sacred Spirit as the mothering principles finds Wisdom (understood also as salt) to assist in making many children. This is the purpose of the mothering principle in its full sapiential role with humankind—to birth things into being. 

However, it is the Father’s wish and desire (the will of the Source) not simply to have a multitude of children, but to create mature and complete human beings, raised by Wisdom to assume adult responsibility. It is the goal of the Source to have heirs and to give what it possesses to its progeny.  However, those sons and daughters must be adequate for the inheritance that belongs to them and the responsibility they bear towards all that the Father longs to give. This accords with an Islamic saying (a Hadith qudsi) where the Divine declares, I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, so I created the world to make myself known. 

The Gospel of Philip shares the same viewpoint—to birth and bring children to maturity in order that everything can be fully shared. In this sense, humanity needs to become “vested” and made ready for the full disclosure of the divine Reality to its heirs and progeny. This self-disclosure is its greatest treasure and ultimate goal. The world of humankind is being made ready for this final revelation. That outcome will happen as long as we do not remain in our infancy. Understood in this way, Analogue 21 is both a promise and a warning. We are hearing the mysteries of the divine heart in its masculine and feminine forms and are coming to understand the activity of the Sacred Spirit as She attempts to fulfill the Father’s will. 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. How does the Jewish metaphor of salt and its purposes strike you? Why do you think the quality of flavor is being highlighted in this analogue? 
2. How do you understand Wisdom to be salty or savory? Is it also preservative in some way? 
3. How might you understand the qualities of salt being related to the mothering principle or the process of birth, either physically or metaphorically?
4. How do you think the Wisdom-Mother finds salt for us? How has wisdom salted your experience? Describe that in a journal entry. 
5. What are the differences between the desires of the feminine principle or Mother and those of the masculine principle or Father? Describe them.  
6. If it is the desire of the Source as Father to distribute and share everything out of its treasury as an act of self-disclosure, why is it essential for the heirs to be mature? 
7. What does maturity mean here? How can you tell the difference between infancy and maturity? 
8. Why is self-disclosure so important to God as Source and Father? Here we are beginning to understand something of the inner experience of the divine Reality itself. How might you describe that Reality differently with that understanding? 

Notes for further Reference or Study

1. The Covenant of Salt is described in the Hebrew Scriptures. Read the descriptions of salting a cereal offering described in Leviticus 2:13, Numbers 18:19, and II Chronicles 13:5. The practical reasons for this act may not be fully known. Perhaps it was to preserve the grain in some way, or it may have had a purely symbolic meaning, but it is clear that the readers for whom this text was written did understand in some way these references as ritual acts. Later in time, after the destruction of the Temple and its practices, these references would have far less impact. In our day we need to do some cultural archaeology to recover their meaning and value as sapiential metaphors. 
2. In the sacred tradition of Islam there is a whole genre of sayings that are preserved, although they are not found in the text of the Qur’an itself. These have been transmitted through the centuries as a sacred corpus of revelation outside the Qur’an and made available through oral tradition. If one of these sayings is understood to have been uttered by the Divine as direct revelation it is called in Arabic Hadith Qudsi, or holy tradition. One such saying is well known in Islamic teaching and spiritually. It is quoted above concerning the divine self-disclosure of the hidden treasury necessitating the creation of the world and humankind. The longing (or divine desire) of God to reveal what is hidden and make it known to humanity is, according to Islamic tradition, the reason for creation itself. These two Abrahamic traditions are in deep accord on this point, and here in this analogue the preparation necessary to receive the treasure comes into sharp focus—the spiritual maturation of human beings. 
3. It is interesting that the word for salt is also the word for angel in the Semitic languages — malakh. Could this relate to the work of Sacred Spirit along the vertical axis when Angels act as messengers, ascending and descending to bring messages of communication and revelation? Perhaps from the perspective of this analogue, if sustenance, pleasure and delight are central, then Angels, acting like salt, are instruments of both the heavenly mother and father—the masculine and feminine Sources of humanity.   

Notes for the Translation

1. In the sentences beginning with “So she is called Mother...” there is a small section missing from the original text which makes this sentence difficult to translate. This translation is one possible recreation of the text. Other translations say that “salt is found in the place where they shall be as they have been...they themselves being found by the Holy Spirit.”
2. As has been noted earlier, the term “Father” is used in this and in many early Christian texts to mean, primarily, the “Source” or “Origin” of created being.
3. The term “son” in the text signifies many possibilities: Logos as first manifestation from the Source, as the manifestation of Being or creation which is the “child of the Source.” The term can also refer to the spiritual body of humanity, and Yeshua as the appearance of the Son of Humanity who is the archetype for all other human beings. Since “son” stands for all human beings, as used at the end of the Analogue’s first paragraph, it is possible to translate it as a plurality of sons and daughters, or children, as has been done here.