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Apocryphal gospel From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians (Greek: Ἑλληνικὸν Εὐαγγέλιον τῶν Αἰγυπτίων) is an early Christian religious text. Its title is adopted from its opening line.
The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, distinct from the later, wholly Gnostic Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians, is believed to have been written in the second quarter of the 2nd century. It was cited in Clement of Alexandria's work, the Stromata, where quotations provide many of the brief excerpts that are all that remain. Additionally, Hippolytus mentions it, alluding to "these various changes of the soul, set forth in the Gospel entitled according to the Egyptians," and connects it with the Gnostic Naassene sect. Later, Epiphanius of Salamis, a 4th-century collector of heresies, asserts that the Sabellians made use of this gospel, although it is unlikely he had firsthand information about Sabellius, who taught in the early 3rd century.
From these few fragments, it is unknown how much more extensive the contents were, or what other matters they discussed, or whether the known fragments present essentially the nature of the whole entity, which is apparently a "sayings" tradition worked into the familiar formula of a duologue. Also, due to the fragmentary nature, it is unknown whether it constitutes a version of some other known text.
The Gospel of the Egyptians was apparently read in Egyptian churches in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
The known fragments of text takes the form of a discussion between the disciple Salome and Jesus, who advocates celibacy, or, more accurately, "each fragment endorses sexual asceticism as the means of breaking the lethal cycle of birth and of overcoming the alleged sinful differences between male and female, enabling all persons to return to what was understood to be their primordial and androgynous state" (Cameron 1982). The familiar question of Salome— "How long shall death prevail?" provoking Jesus' famous answer "As long as women bear children"— has echoes in other 2nd and 3rd century apocrypha and is instanced by Theodotus of Byzantium as if it were commonly known: "67. And when the Saviour says to Salome that there shall be death as long as women bear children, he did not say it as abusing birth, for that is necessary for the salvation of believers." This saying must have had a wide circulation, though it did not suit the purpose of any canonical Gospel. A similar view of the body as an entrapment of the soul was an essential understanding of Gnosticism. The rejection of marriage was also supported by the Encratites and many of the other early Christian groupings praised celibacy, and therefore it is difficult to tell from what group the text originated.
Another comparable verse appended to the Gospel of Thomas, probably in Egypt, reads:
The Second Epistle of Clement (12:2) closely paraphrases a passage that was also quoted by Clement of Alexandria (in Stromateis iii):
The trope appears in the Gospel of Thomas, saying (37):
For a somewhat later Gnostic work assigning a prominent role to Jesus' female disciples, see Pistis Sophia.
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