Pistis Sophia

37. See pp. 364-371, Copt.

38. See pp. 372-376, Copt.

39. See pp. 379-387, Copt.

40. See pp. 387-389, Copt.

41. See pp. 389-390, Copt.

42. That Valentinus, unlike Marcian, only wished to found a school within the Church and not to set up a rival one in opposition to it, is shown in Forerunners, p. 125.

43. Our MS. is not only without any heading of the kind, but lacks any of the coloured or illuminated initial letters used in the religious texts of its period. A good specimen of their practices is seen in Budge’s Coptic Apocrypha, passim. In the Pistis Sophia all this is absent, the paragraphs being marked with a single sign, while the gaps are filled by the simplest possible ornament corresponding to our dots.

44. The belief that knowledge of the name of a person or thing gave its possessor power over it appears in nearly every chapter of the Book of the Dead as well as in the story of the Places of Râ. Hence it is probable that many of the names given in our text are only pseudonyms borrowed, perhaps, from other sects. Thus the names of Iao and Maskelli are expressly said to be those by which they are called by “the demons” and to correspond to those of certain wicked “Rulers.”

45. Cf.P. S. B. A., 1903, p. 304.

46. Pierrot, Livre des Morts, 1882, p. 555.

47. F. C. Burkitt in P. S. B. A., 1901, p. 78. Prof. Burkitt thinks the Homily was probably written by Isaac of Antioch. Cf. the thirty-sixth Canon of the Council of Laodicea quoted by Lightfoot. Colossians, p. 69.

48. Cf. the elaborate colophon to the Apocalypse of Paul in Budge’s Miscellaneous Coptic Texts, p. 1084 and Pl. XL.

49. P. 8, Copt.

50. See last note.

51. P. 127, Copt.

52. Pp. 120 f., Copt.

53. P. 128, Copt.

54. Pp. 11 f., Copt.

55. Pp. 248, 249, 251, Copt.

56. P. 22, Copt.

57. P. 336, Copt.

58. P. 360, Copt.

59. Pp. 336 f., Copt.

60. Pp. 336 ff., Copt.

61. There are many other discrepancies which I have found myself obliged to omit here, lest this Introduction should unduly delay the reader on his way to the text. I believe nearly all of them are to be found referred to in the Notes.

62. In the five Words or Addresses in the Vesture of Light.

63. For the Excerpta, see Clem. Alex. III., pp. 107 ff. of Stählin’s text or c. VI. of Migne’s. For the Bruce Papyrus, see Amélineau, Notices et Extraits XXIX., 2nd Ptie., p. 106; or Schmidt, Koptisch Gnostische Schriften, p. 343.

64. Ptolemy and Heracleon were contemporary and flourished about 170-200 A.D.

65. Prof. Harnack (op. cit.pp. 26, 27) gives a long table of supposed quotations from the Fourth Gospel which he thinks are to be found in our text. There is not one of these which might not equally well be taken from the Synoptics until we come to our Fourth Document with two exceptions. One of these is given above; the other is on p. 11 (First Document) where Jesus says to His disciples: “Wherefore I said to you in the Beginning that you are not of the Cosmos. I also am not of it.” This Harnack wishes to identify with the words of John xvii. 16: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The words “in the Beginning” frequently used by our author seem to us to show that the quotation must be referred to an entirely different time and place from those of the Gospel verse.

66. P. 321, Copt.

67. P. 373, Copt.

68. P. 374, Copt.

69. P. 177, Copt.

70. As I have shown in Forerunners (II. 45 n. 1; 104 n. 4, etc.) all the Sophias, pre-Christian as well as Gnostic, in some way or other typify the Earth.

71. According to M. Cumont (Astrology and Religion, American edition, p. 96), Astral religion reached its zenith under the Severi, or from A.D. 193 to 235.

72. P. 199, Copt.

73. P. 252, Copt. He here refers also to the promised revelation on the “Distribution of the Universe.”

74. Maspero, Hyp. Poy., pp. 178 ff.

75. 1 Cor.xii, 12.

76. P. 280, Copt.