Pistis Sophia

Pistis Sophia — G. R. S. Mead — Section 26

Antoninus Pius (138), The latest limit is amved at by the passage about persecution on page 277, which leads Harnack to conjecture that the author was writing at a time when the Christians were still lawfully persecuted ; but on the other band the author does not seem to have written in a persecution he had gone through. Thus Harnack eliminates the persecution of Maximin and arrives at the 302 limit. But all this is very unsatisfactory ; and deductions made from internal evidence, though an essential part of the higher criticism, are in this case based on too slender premises. The method of Amelineau, who compares the known fragments of Valentinus with the text of Pistis Sophia, is the only really satisfactory test. But what of the fragments from the Books of the Saviour which have been inserted in and added to ^, The the text of the Pistis Sophia proper 1 On pages Books 246 and 354 mention is made of certain Books °^ .^ 1 • T • 1 Saviour, of leou, which Jesus promises to give to his disciples when he has finished the teaching on which he is engaged. In the first case, a few pages later on (2.53) the first short extract is inserted in the text, and in the second, almost immediately after, the Pistis Sophia treatise is concluded (page 357), and we find the rest of the MS. devoted to a far longer extract from the Books of the Saviour. These extracts bear a remarkable similarity to the contents of the Coptic Papyrus, which the famous Scottish traveller Bruce brought to England in 1769 from Upper Egypt, and bequeathed to the care of the Bodleian Library. This Papyrus consists of 78 leaves, each containing from 27 to 34 lines, 29 centimetres high by 17 wide, not in roll but in book form. It is written in Greek characters and is in the Thebaico-Coptic dialect like the Pistis Sophia. XXXn INTEODUCTION.