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It contains several Gnôstic works translated into the Upper Egyptian dialect from the Greek, and probably is as old as the sixth century A.D. The Greek originals were of course much older, that is to say, the MSS. to which the codex ultimately goes back were much older.
"It is historically true that, in the earlier days when the Apostles' Creed was put forth, the phrase 'born of they Virgin Mary' was inserted for the distinct purpose of laying stress on the humanity of Christ, and to controvert the assertion of the Gnostic sect that he was not born at all, but appeared in the world in some miraculous way.
But now I formed a new intimacy, and one of a very singular kind an intimacy with my father, who suddenly woke up to the fact that I was no longer a child. It occurred on my making some pertinent inquiries about a certain Gnostic amulet representing the Gorgon's head, a prize of which he had lately become the happy possessor.
There is, as it were, a degradation a gnostic fall, in thus folding one's wings and going back again into the vulgar shell of one's own individuality. Without grief, which is the string of this venturesome kite, man would soar too quickly and too high, and the chosen souls would be lost for the race, like balloons which, save for gravitation, would never return from the empyrean.
The Gnostic philosophy had many forms and many interdivisions; but most of the "heresies" of the first centuries were branches of this one tree: it rose into prominence, it is said, about the time of Adrian, and among its early leaders were Marcion, Basilides, and Valentinus.
To some of the gnostic sects belongs the teaching quite in accord with the doctrine of the evil nature of the world, that liberation from the 'Law' was one of the first conditions of spiritual freedom.
For that there is a rational soul is evident: or has not every one a cosensation of himself, more clear or more obscure, when converted to himself in the attentions to and investigations of himself, and in the vital and Gnostic animadversions of himself? For the essence which is capable of this, and which can collect universals by reasoning, will very justly be rational.
But a candid perusal of Genesis obliges us to dissent from this view, Adam and Eve were a very childish pair. Whatever intellect they possessed they carefully concealed. Not a scintillation of it has reached us. Shakespeare and Newton are an infinite improvement on Adam and Eve. One of the Gnostic sects, who played such havoc with the early Christian Church, utterly rejected the idea of a Fall.
I think also that the original MS. was based upon the work of one Master, whose name, like that of the order to which he belonged, is lost in the night of time, but that it also contains amplifications and additions by at least one later hand. It will thus represent the mind of a grade of teaching, and possibly contains material dating back to the period of the Therapeutae that Philo knew. In other words, the community may have been an old one before it was Christianised. In any case, it remains the record of a stupendous spiritual adventure, the attempt to produce a race of Divinised men, that is not without the splendour of tragedy, for at some time, like the Holy Cup of Legend, the presence of Masterhood departed, and the external house fell into ruin and its place knew it no more. Perhaps, in the desire to propagate, it admitted unworthy candidates; perhaps it turned to the by-ways of magic in an attempt to arrest the external course of nature and to defy necessity; perhaps there came a day when none could understand the inner meaning of the high and far-shining mysteries, and so amidst party strife the building word was lost. Many a man, no doubt, who called himself a "Gnôstic" was but a sorry rogue; many another was but a student of the letter, not of the life; many another was but a spiritual swashbuckler, pompous in his demeanour and cryptic in his utterance; some, led by an abhorrent fantasy, may have wandered along the path that goes to the Venus-berg and have striven to lisp a formula that would transform the earth into Gehenna rather than into Heaven. But, beside this mass of imposture, of folly, of elegant idleness and of corruption, the
We have seen that, in his "Apology," Tertullian did not think it worth his while to mention it. It originated among the Gnostic heretics. It was not admitted by the Alexandrian theological school. It was never prominently advanced by the Fathers.
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