Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians

Two versions of the formerly lost Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians (which is quite distinct from the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians), were among the codices in the Nag Hammadi library, discovered in 1945.

A sub-title the text appears to have in addition to Gospel of the Egyptians, is The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit.

The main contents concern the Sethian Gnostic understanding of how the earth came into being, how Seth, in the Gnostic interpretation, is incarnated as Jesus in order to release people's souls from the evil prison that is creation.

It also contains a hymn, parts of which are unusual in being apparently meaningless sequences of vowels (thought to be a representation of early Christian glossolalia), although the vowels of the final paragraph (u aei eis aei ei o ei ei os ei) can be partitioned to read (in Greek) who exists as Son for ever and ever. You are what you are, you are who you are.

External links

• Gnostic Society Library: translated text
• list of heavenly beings in the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit

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Last updated on Wednesday March 12, 2008 at 21:24:31 PDT (GMT -0700)
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