The Gospel of Philip

is dated to the 3rd century but was lost until an Egyptian peasant rediscovered it by accident, buried in a cave near Nag Hammadi, in 1945. In appearance it is very similar to "The Gospel according to Thomas"; however, it is not a collection of sayings so much as of Gnostic teachings and reflections, probably connected to the Valentinian sect, though they had their own "Gospel of Truth". Unusually for a Gnostic text, it preaches the sacrament of marriage as a virtue, and was one of the earliest to hint that Jesus may have been married to Mary Magdalene, describing her as his "lover" and claiming that "he used to kiss her often on the mouth”; sadly these are not in any of the Nag Hammadi fragments.

The title is a modern invention, based on the fact that Philip is the only apostle mentioned (at 73:8); it makes no claim to be by Philip.

The text contains seventeen sayings (know as Logia) attributed to Jesus, nine of which can be found in the Canonical Gospels. The other eight speak of the origin and nature of Humankind, baptism, unction and marriage, regarding sexual relations within marriage as both sacred in the physical and allegorical of spiritual union: a concept known as the coniunctio spirituum. The eight Logia, prefaced by the phrase "The Lord said" are:

"Blessed is he who is before he came into being. For he who is, has been and shall be";

"He who has knowledge of the truth is a free man, but the free man does not sin, for 'He who sins is the slave of sin' [John 8:34]. Truth is the mother, knowledge the father";

"Echamoth is one thing and Echmoth, another. Echamoth is Wisdom simply, but Echmoth is the Wisdom of death, which is the one who knows death, which is called 'the little Wisdom'";

"Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing";

"Jesus came to crucify the world";

"Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not appear as he was, but in the manner in which they would be able to see him. He appeared to them all. He appeared to the great as great. He appeared to the small as small. He appeared to the angels as an angel, and to men as a man";

"It is not possible for anyone to see anything of the things that actually exist unless he becomes like them... You saw the Spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw the Father, you shall become Father. So in this place you see everything and do not see yourself, but in that place you do see yourself - and what you see you shall become";

"Adam came into being from two virgins, from the Spirit and from the virgin earth. Christ therefore, was born from a virgin to rectify the Fall which occurred in the beginning".

"The Gospel of Philip" ends with the promise that "If anyone becomes a 'son of the bridechamber' he will receive the Light. If anyone does not receive it while he is in these places, he cannot receive it in the other place. He who receives any Light will not be seen, nor can he be held fast. No one will be able to trouble him in this way, whether he lives in the world or leaves the world. He has already received the Truth in images, and the World has become the Aeon. For the Aeon already exists for him as Pleroma, and he exists in this way. It is revealed to him alone, since it is not hidden in darkness and night but is hidden in a perfect Day and a holy Night."

This text has caused untold problems to Christian theologians, and led to all manner of nonsense among the Mormons, in both cases because they cannot begin to fathom what is meant by the bride-chamber. That is why this BibleNet is so necessary! The bridal-chamber in Yehudit is the Ohel Sarah; beyond the Yehudit we only have to look at the rites of Asherah, or Inanna, or Eshet (Isis) or Astarte, or Demeter, any indeed of the fertility cults, or even take a look at "The Gospel of Eve", and the problem of understanding will disappear in a moment.

Alas, Christian theologians, like Talmud scholars, do not like to look outside the narrow realm of their catechism, lest they find something that upsets the doctrinal complacency. The sacred mystery of the coniunctio spirituum, by the way, does not require a formal wedding ceremony; it is about the creation of the hermaphrodite-androgyn, the absolute and total union and unison of two bodies, two hearts, two souls, two spirits, become one, the coalescence of the male and female spirits. Which is actually what orthodox Christianity preaches; it just doesn't like to express it in such a - such a Gnostic way. And this, of course, is why the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is so important to the gospel; as the bringer of absolute love to Earth, Jesus needed to live it, in order to model it.

"Philip" states that there were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion (David was also referred to as "the Companion" in the stories of Sha'ul). His sister and his mother and his companion were all named Mary, and you now need to go to the entry on Moriah (Mor-Yah) to follow this non-coincidence through.

The passage in "Philip" is complicated by the fact that it first speaks of Mary's sister, but then changes its mind and calls her Jesus's sister; the suggestion is not unique - Mark 6:3 suggests a plurality of sisters as well as four brothers - but it does raise again the problem of Mary's virginity, which orthodox Christianity regards as having been continuous after the birth of Jesus. Mary Magdalene is here called variously Jesus' companion, his partner and his consort, using the word "koinônos (κοινωνός)", which is Greek, as well as "hôtre", which is Egyptian. It is amusing to learn that there is a hole in the manuscript after the phrase "and used to kiss her often on her...." which we have to assume was the work of a prurient censor rather than an accident of entropy in time. The passage is clearly describing Jesus kissing Magdalene on the mouth (recent translations have tended to prefer the hand!), but it also describes her as "barren" and "the mother of the angels" at the beginning of the same paragraph, which is entirely expected, as both notions are intrinsic to an understanding of the bridal-chamber and the manner of the ancient fertility cults. What we have in "The Gospel of Philip" is not the Jewish Rabbi who became the Messiah, but the Rebirth of Tammuz, with Mary Magdalene playing the role of Rivkah (Rebecca) to Jesus' Yitschak (Isaac), though Yitschak manages to survive being taken to the Calvary on top of Mount Mor-Yah.

To read the Seventeen Sayings, which are all that still exists of "The Gospel of Philip", click here.

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