Gospel of Philip

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The Gospel of Philip is a presumably Valentine (Gnostic) collection of sayings preserved in the 2nd Codex of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures . From the literary genre concerned it is no Gospel , but rather a sermon. It is a pseudepigraphic script.

The 127 proverbs, which are often unconnected, deal with different topics: reflections on Adam and Paradise , discussions on acts of creation and witness, reflections on the bride and groom (especially the bridal chamber sacrament) and the sacraments in general, and more. Quotations from canonical letters and gospels are interpreted from a Gnostic perspective. Many views are found in the Gospel of Thomas. Mary Magdalene here takes the position of the favorite disciple, which is given to John in the canonical Gospels.

Author, dating

According to the signature ( Subscriptio , p . 86,19) the apostle Philip is the author, which means that the work is to be counted among the pseudepigraphs . Quotations from the Gospels (Matthew and John, possibly also Mark) and the reference to the Gospel of Thomas exclude the Apostle Philip as an author. It is believed that the work was written in the late 3rd century AD by an unknown author in Greek . The proven dependence on the texts mentioned allows the earliest date to be the middle of the 2nd century. Only the Coptic version found in Nag Hammadi is known. A Gospel of Philip is mentioned by different authors (e.g. Epiphanius, Haer. 26,13,2–3), but whether this text is meant by it remains unclear.

Mary Magdalene as Jesus' consort

On the basis of the incompletely preserved Proverb 55 (“And the consort of [Christ] is Maria Madgalena.”) And Proverb 32 (“There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister and Magdalene, who one calls his consort. ”) it was speculated whether Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene . This speculation was fueled in 2012 by the publication of the papyrus fragment Gospel of the Woman of Jesus , which, however, was exposed by experts as a modern forgery.

literature

  • Hans-Martin Schenke: The Gospel of Philip (Nag-Hammadi-Codex II, 3) , Berlin 1997 (translation and explanations)
  • The New Testament and Early Christian Scriptures . Translated and commented by Klaus Berger and Christiane Nord. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1999, pp. 1081–1113. ISBN 3-458-16970-9
  • Hans-Martin Schenke u. a. (Ed.): Nag Hammadi German. Study edition . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2007, pp. 140–163. (Introduction and translation)
  • Eric Segelberg, "The Gospel of Philip and the New Testament." In: The New Testament and Gnosis. Essays in Honor of Robert McL. Wilson. London 1983.
  • Eric Segelberg, "The Antiochene Backgrund of the Gospel of Philip." In: Bulletin de la Société d'Archéologie Copte 18, 1966.
  • Eric Segelberg, "The Antiochene Origin of the 'Gospel of Philip'." Bulletin de la Société d'Archéologie Copte 19, 1967-68.
  • Eric Segelberg, "The Coptic-Gnostic Gospel according to Philip and its sacramental System." In: Numen 7, 1960.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andrew Bernhard: The Gospel of Jesus' Wife: Textual Evidence of Modern Forgery. In: New Testament Studies, Vol. 3/61, (July 2015) pp. 335–355. doi : 10.1017 / S0028688515000077