For the village in Cambodia see Norea, Cambodia

Norea, Cambodia

Norea is a khum of Sangkae District in Battambang Province in north-western Cambodia....

.

Norea is a figure in Gnostic

Gnosticism

Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...

 cosmology. Sometimes she is said to be the syzygy

Aeon (Gnosticism)

In many Gnostic systems, the various emanations of God, who is also known by such names as the One, the Monad, Aion teleos , Bythos , Proarkhe , the Arkhe , are called Aeons...

 of Adam

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...

, or wife of Noah

Noah

Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...

, and daughter of Eve

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...

. Norea is perceived within gnostic thought as Sophia after her fall from grace.

For a long time, Norea was known from a summary of a book called Noria in the Panarion

Panarion

In early Christian heresiology, the Panarion , to which 16th-century Latin translations gave the name Adversus Haereses , is the most important of the works of Epiphanius of Salamis...

(Against Heresies) of Epiphanius of Salamis

Epiphanius of Salamis

Epiphanius of Salamis was bishop of Salamis at the end of the 4th century. He is considered a saint and a Church Father by both the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches. He gained a reputation as a strong defender of orthodoxy...

 (26.1.3-9). According to Epiphanius, the Borborites

Borborites

According to the Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis , and Theodoret's Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium, the Borborites or Borborians were a libertine Gnostic sect, said to be descended from the Nicolaitans...

 identified Norea with Pyrrha

Pyrrha

In Greek mythology, Pyrrha was the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora and wife of Deucalion.When Zeus decided to end the Bronze Age with the great deluge, Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, were the only survivors...

, the wife of Deucalion

Deucalion

In Greek mythology Deucalion was a son of Prometheus and Pronoia. The anger of Zeus was ignited by the hubris of the Pelasgians, and he decided to put an end to the Bronze Age. Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, had sacrificed a boy to Zeus, who was appalled by this savage offering...

 (a Greek figure similar to Noah), because nura means "fire" in Syriac

Syriac language

Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...

. She burned Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...

 three times, then revealed the means of recovering stolen sparks through sexual emissions. Elsewhere (39.5.2) Epiphanius says that the Sethians

Sethianism

The Sethians were a Christian Gnostic sect who may date their existence to before Christianity. Their influence spread throughout the Mediterranean into the later systems of the Basilideans and the Valentinians. Their thinking, though it is predominantly Judaic in foundation, is arguably strongly...

 consider Horaia to be the wife of Seth

Seth

Seth , in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is the third listed son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, who are the only other of their children mentioned by name...

.

More information has been available since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library

Nag Hammadi library

The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. That year, twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local peasant named Mohammed Ali Samman...

 in 1945. In The Hypostasis of the Archons

Hypostasis of the Archons

The Hypostasis of the Archons or The Reality of the Rulers is an exegesis on the Book of Genesis 1-6 and expresses Gnostic mythology of the creations of the cosmos and humanity.- Text's Origin and Content :...

(The Reality of the Rulers), Norea is the daughter of Eve and the younger sister of Seth; both are members of the pure race. The archons (demonic

Demon

call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...

 rulers of the world) decide to destroy the world with a deluge, but their leader, the evil Demiurge, warns Noah to build an ark, which Norea tries to board. Noah stops her, so she blows upon the ark and sets it ablaze. The archons try to rape her, but she cries to God for help. The angel

Angel

Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...

 Eleleth appears and frightens the archons away before revealing her origins; she is a child of God.

Another Nag Hammadi text, the Thought of Norea

Thought of Norea

The Thought of Norea is a brief Sethian Gnostic text. The main surviving copies come from the Nag Hammadi library. The Thought of Norea is sometimes considered to belong to the New Testament apocrypha.-Norea:...

(or Ode on Norea) is a first-person account of Norea's plea to God. On the Origin of the World

On the Origin of the World (Nag Hammadi)

On the Origin of the World is a Gnostic work dealing with creation and end times. It was found amongst the texts in the Nag Hammadi library, in Codex II and Codex XIII, immediately following the Reality of the Rulers, with many parallels between the two texts In particular, it rethinks the entire...

refers the reader to an Account of Oraia and the First Book of Noraia, one of which may be the same as the Book of Noria mentioned by Epiphanius.

She has several similar names, including Orea and Horaia, meaning "beautiful". The name is thought to derive from a translation of Naamah

Naamah

Naamah or Na'amah is used as a female given name in contemporary Israel. Literally, it means "Pleasant One". It can also refer to:-Religion:* Naamah , the daughter of Lamech the Cainite...

, a Hebrew name which means "pleasant". The demon Naamah is called "the younger Lilith

Lilith

Lilith is a character in Jewish mythology, found earliest in the Babylonian Talmud, who is generally thought to be related to a class of female demons Līlīṯu in Mesopotamian texts. However, Lowell K. Handy notes, "Very little information has been found relating to the Akkadian and Babylonian view...

". Both Norea and Lilith call upon God to avoid an unwanted sexual encounter.