Gospel of Mary

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Gospel according to Mary, P. Oxyrhynchus L 3525.

The gospel of Mary is one of the apocrypha of the New Testament . It is a Gnostic script that is dated to around 160 AD.

The Mary who named the Gospel may be Mary Magdalene . Since the text itself only speaks of “Maria” in general, this assignment remains uncertain.

The Gospel is the first part of dialogue between the resurrected Jesus and his disciples and disciples. It also contains a vision of Mary in the second part. The two parts seem to have originally been independent of each other. They are connected by the figure of Mary who appears at the end of the first part. In the second part her role is clearly more pronounced, so that the title Gospel of Mary, strictly speaking, only fits the second part of the Apocryphon. According to this, Mary has a special trust in the Savior and knows special revelations that the disciples do not know, and she communicates these as mediator and preacher of the Gnostic revelation and thus takes a position above the apostles.

According to general research, the original of the script was written in Greek. The gospel is only preserved in fragments. The best preserved text of the work is in Codex Berolinensis Gnosticus 8502 , which dates to the 5th century. The text is written in Sahid , a Coptic dialect. Pages 1–6 and 11–14 of the 18-page document have been lost, so less than half of the original text has been preserved. There are also two Greek fragments that were later found in Oxyrhynchos , Egypt . Papyrus Rylands 463 differs in a few points from the Coptic version, while Papyrus Oxyrhynchus L 3525 agrees with the Coptic text.

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Curt Till: The Gnostic Writings of the Coptic Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, translated and edited . 1971, p. 26.