The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians

is a Gnostic religious text, its title adopted from its opening line; it should not be confused with the Coptic "Gospel of the Egyptians", also known as "The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit" which is a separate Gnostic text. The Greek Gospel was probably written in the second quarter of the 2nd century.

Clement of Alexandria refers to it in the "Stromata", including a number of quotations which are all that remains of the actual text. 

It is also mentioned by Hippolytus in his "Philosophumena", where he speaks of "these various changes of the soul, set forth in the Gospel entitled 'according to the Egyptians'"; he connects "The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians" with the Gnostic Naassene sect, of whom we have no other information save Hippolytus, and in all probability he had mis-heard Essene; he tells us they were taught their beliefs by Mariamne, a disciple of James the Just; that they followed the Ophites closely; that they called their divinity the Son of Man, but named him Adamas, linking him back to the First Man.

All the above now need some elaboration. As follows:

Naassenes: As noted above, they have no other mention anywhere in history except Hippolytus, and if they were called Naassenes, then it should be written Na'assenes. The small amounts that he tells us about them suggest that, like the hippies of the 1960s, the Essenes were, so to speak, the Woodstock crowd, where the Ophites hung out in Haight-Ashbury, John the Baptist's followers preferred to ride the Merry Prankster into New Mexico, but all wore jeans, smoked dope, grew their hair down below the shoulders, and listened to Jim Morrison. So there were multiple sects then too, but really the distinctions were as insignificant as a preference for cannabis over hashish, or how much L you took with S and D. Nor is my analogy entirely satirical, for these cults really were the peace-and-love hippies of their day.

Mariamne: The name is Greek but the root is the same one that yields Mary, Mir-Yam (Miriam), Martha, Maria, Marja in the Polish, the source being Mount Mor-Yah (Moriah), where Av-Raham took Yitzchak but didn't sacrifice him, where the Christian God took his beloved son, and did. "The bitter tears of the goddess Yah." The context here infers that Mariamne was the Mary Magdalene aspect, the new moon, rather than Mother Mary, the Madonna aspect, the full moon.

The "Ophite Diagram"
(click here to learn more)

Ophites: Scholars down the centuries have looked for a possible basis of reality in the name Na'asenes, usually by trying to connect it to the Yehudit word for a snake or serpent, which is Nachash, and which serpent has all manner of mythological connotations, from the dawn of Creation onwards (my notes on the subject can be found here). Each of the links that follow will take you to such attempts to explain the Ophites as Na'aseneses, or vice versa, this one Jewish, this one Christian, this one secular. More important, if we want to understand the Ophites, and through him to understand why that perfectly legitimate serpent connection (click here for the original Ophis), we need to know who Marcion was, as all these also insist that the Ophites were his followers; and for him, the same three source works, but different pages, this one the Jewish, this one the Christian, this one the secular; but first go to my page, which contains his book, "The Gospel of Marcion".

Adamas: Click here, and/or here.

In his list of heresies, published in the 4th century, Epiphanius of Salamis states that another sect, the Sabellians, also used this gospel. The Sabellians were followers of Sabellius, who preached what is called Modalism, an anti-Trinitarian view which claims that God may have three faces, or even three masks, but that they are nonetheless aspects of the same and single Oneness, and that the three - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - are simply a human inability to see the Oneness. Epiphanius does not seem to have been aware that Hippolytus knew Sabellius personally, even mentioned him in the "Philosophumena", and though he knew that Sabellius was opposed to Trinitarianism, nevertheless ascribed Modalism not to him but to Noetus, a priest of Smyrna in the early 3rd century CE who was excommunicated for his heretical views.

The Greek Gospel uses the word, or rather the Word "logos" for Christ, which suggests some influence at least of the Gospel of John. The text was used in Egyptian churches in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The fragments that remain (or at least "remain known, through Clement and Hippolytus' quotations) offer a discussion between Jesus and the disciple Salome - not the daughter of King Herodias, but the Salome referred to in Mark 15:40 as one of the women who were present at the Crucifixion, and later sat guard at his tomb.

"The purpose and method of the discussion is a Socratic dialectic on the subject of celibacy, with Jesus' avowed purpose on Earth being to end the cycle of continuous multiplication which is the first commandment of Judaism, to bring people to complete sexual asceticism, and thereby to overcome sin by taking away the attractive distinctions between the male and the female"¹ - a practice that would presumably end the human race within a hundred years, but perhaps Jesus' medical training only included miracles and did not extend to genetics or reproductive organs. "Salome asks: 'How long shall death prevail?', to which Jesus replies: 'As long as women bear children, for I come to end the works of the female'". One can only wonder if his mother and Mary Magdalene were aware of this.

As to the text itself, nothing, not so much as a burned parchment. Just these handful of quotes, the certainty that it once existed, and that it too is now no more.

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¹ This is a reduced version of a quote that one of my students found, and when pressed for a source would only admit to taking it from Wikipedia, which was officially banned in that educational institution. Wikipedia being an automated machine that trawls the Internet for other people's data, it is not itself a quotable source, and my somewhat lethargic attempts to find the original have been unavailing. I believe it to be accurate, but cannot identify it. Sorry.

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