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In Irenaeus, Saturninus has angels make the first man, who could not stand until the Power above sent him a spark of life. The Gospel of Thomas also gives Adam a high source, saying he came from great power and great wealth.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Gospel of Thomas 1:85
Nag Hammadi
84 Jesus said, “When you see your likeness you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before you and that neither die nor are revealed, how much you will have to bear!” 85 Jesus said, “Adam came from great power and great wealth, but he did not become worthy of you. For had he been worthy, [he would] not [have tasted] death.” 86 Jesus said, “The foxes have their holes and the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head and rest.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.24
Early Christian
1 Arising among these men, Saturninus (who was of that Antioch which is near Daphne) and Basilides laid hold of some favourable opportunities, and promulgated different systems of doctrine — the one in Syria, the other at Alexandria. Saturninus, like Menander, set forth one father unknown to all, who made angels, archangels, powers, and potentates. The world, again, and all things therein, were made by a certain company of seven angels. Man, too, was the workmanship of angels, a shining image bursting forth below from the presence of the supreme power; and when they could not, he says, keep hold of this, because it immediately darted upwards again, they exhorted each other, saying, Let us make man after our image and likeness. He was accordingly formed, yet was unable to stand erect, through the inability of the angels to convey to him that power, but wriggled [on the ground] like a worm. Then the power above taking pity upon him, since he was made after his likeness, sent forth a spark of life, which gave man an erect posture, compacted his joints, and made him live. He declares, therefore, that this spark of life, after the death of a man, returns to those things which are of the same nature with itself, and the rest of the body is decomposed into its original elements.
Date: 175-190 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... Although sometimes evil (e.g. in ‘classical’ Gnostic works such as Ap. John and Gos. Jud.), two points reinforce the positive valuation of Adam’s creator here (whether Jesus or a demiurge): first, wealth of a spiritual kind is positively valued in Thomas (29.3; 81.1), as elsewhere in early Christian literature (and Nag Hammadi texts); secondly, the point of referring to this origin of Adam is to highlight the drastic nature of his fall into death (probably) from such an exalted position. Thomas may be consciously taking a position in the discussion of Adam’s origins (even if that position is not completely clear to us). [...] Thomas may be closer to the view of the Valentinians as reported in Irenaeus: ‘they declare that Paradise, situated above the third heaven, is a fourth archangel, from whom Adam derived certain qualities while he conversed with him’ (AH 1.5.2). Closer to Thomas is the view which Irenaeus attributes to Saturninus, namely that man was created by the angels, but being too weak to stand, he was given a spark of life by ‘the Power’ (AH 1.24.1). Hippolytus’s Naassenes see Adam as enlivened by ‘many powers’ (Ref. 5.7.6). How much Thomas is in continuity with the older view of the supreme creator God as the maker of Adam, explicitly upheld in e.g. Theophilus (Autolyc. 2.18), is unclear. ...”
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