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Pistis Sophia

By G.R.S. Mead

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This is G.R.S. Mead's translation of the Pistis Sophia, the most extensive Gnostic scripture available until the discovery of Nag Hammadi texts in 1945.

The Pistis Sopha is a startling blend of primitive Christianity and Hellenic Paganism, with other elements such as reincarnation, Astrology, Mystery religion and Hermetic magic. The Goddess makes an appearance in the guise of Sophia, a fallen angel.

The text is notable because the female disciples of Jesus are treated as active participants in the discourse, in a way that would be unimaginable in later Christianity. Tensions between the men and women disciples are not glossed over. On p. 47, Peter complains that Mary and the other women disciples are monopolizing the discussion with Jesus: "My Lord, we will not endure this woman, for she taketh the opportunity from us and hath let none of us speak, but she discourseth many times." Later, Mary (p. 135) expresses her misgivings about Peter: "I am afraid of Peter, because he threatened me and hateth our sex."

PRODUCTION NOTES: In the original book, running comments are placed in the margins. The web version of this text uses Cascading Style Sheets and DHTML to emulate this layout. Hence, to get the best view of this you will need a recent browser: older browsers will still produce readable results, though not as pretty.

John Bruno Hare, July 3, 2005.