Aeon - In Gnostic cosmology, eternal divine realms or emanations that exist between the unknowable God and the material world. The aeons form the divine hierarchy, with each representing aspects of the divine nature.
Barbelo - The first emanation from the unknowable God in Gnostic thought, often described as the divine Mother-Father or the perfect forethought of God. Represents the highest divine realm accessible to human understanding.
Demiurge - In Gnostic thought, the false creator god who fashioned the material world in ignorance, believing himself to be the supreme deity. Distinct from the true God, the Demiurge traps souls in matter while remaining unaware of the higher spiritual realms.
Yaldabaoth/Saklas - Names for the Demiurge in Gnostic texts. Yaldabaoth possibly means “child of chaos,” while Saklas means “fool” in Aramaic. Both terms emphasize the ignorant, tyrannical nature of the false creator god who rules the material cosmos.
Codex Tchacos - The single damaged papyrus book, copied in Coptic around the 3rd-4th century and rediscovered in the 1970s, that preserves the only known copy of the Gospel of Judas (on its pages 33-58).
Coptic - The latest stage of the Egyptian language, written in a Greek-based alphabet and used by Egyptian Christians in late antiquity. The Gospel of Judas survives only in Coptic, translated from a now-lost Greek original.
Lacuna - A gap in a manuscript where the writing is lost to damage. The cosmology of the Gospel of Judas is full of lacunae, some many lines long.
Gnostic / Sethian - “Gnostic” describes early movements that prized saving knowledge (gnosis) of the divine; “Sethian” is the particular tradition, centered on Seth, whose cosmology this gospel draws on.
Archon - In Gnostic thought, a “ruler” - one of the lower powers who govern the material world under the Demiurge and keep souls bound to it.
Sophia - “Wisdom” - a divine figure whose error, in Gnostic myth, leads to the flawed creation of the material world.
Adamas - The heavenly, perfect prototype of humanity in Sethian myth (from Adam), belonging to the divine realm rather than the material one.
Self-Generated (Autogenes) - A divine being who comes into existence of itself, an emanation of the unknowable God who in turn brings forth the luminaries and aeons.
Nebro - A name (meaning “rebel”) for the bloodstained, fiery angel who appears from the cloud to rule chaos; also called Yaldabaoth.
The Thirteenth - Judas’s title in the gospel: outside the circle of twelve, both cursed by the others and, in one reading, set above them.
Great generation - The holy, immortal “generation” or race that belongs to the divine realm above - the one ordinary mortal humanity cannot reach.