Pistis Sophia
Pistis SophiaPREFACEINTRODUCTIONANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHYTHE FIRST BOOK OF PISTIS SOPHIATHE SECOND BOOK OF PISTIS SOPHIAA THIRD BOOKA FOURTH BOOKA FIFTH BOOKA SIXTH BOOKCopyright
Pistis Sophia
Mead, G. R. S
PREFACE
IN the Introduction (pp. xxxv f.) to the first edition
(1896), the translator wrote:"In presenting the following translation to the
English-reading public, I may say that I should not have ventured
on such an undertaking if any Coptic scholar had undertaken the
task, or I had heard that such a task was contemplated. In a matter
of so great difficulty every possible liability to error should be
eliminated, and it stands to reason that the translation of a
translation must needs be but an apology for a first-hand version.
Nevertheless I am not without predecessors. The Coptic MS. itself
is in the first place a translation, so that even Coptic scholars
must give us the version of a translation. I am persuaded also that
the anonymous and very imperfect French translation (1856) in the
Appendix to Migne's Dictionnaire des Apocryphes (vol. i.)
is made from Schwartze's Latin version (1851) and not from the
Coptic text. C. W. King in The Gnostics and their
Remains(2nd ed., 1887) has also translated a number of pages
of the Pistis Sophia from Schwartze. Some three or four years ago
Mr. Nutt, King's publisher, sent out a notice proposing the
publication of the whole of King's translation, but the project
fell through. Last year (1895) I offered to edit this translation
of King's, but was informed that the literary legatee of the
deceased scholar was of the opinion that it would be unfair to his
memory to publish a MS. that was in so incomplete a
condition."In 1890 I had already translated Schwartze's Latin version
into English and published pages 1 to 252, with comments, notes,
etc., in magazine-form from April 1890 to April 1891. But I
hesitated to put it forward in book-form, and should not have done
so, but for the appearance of Amélineau's French translation in
1895. I then went over the whole again and checked it by
Amélineau's version. I was further induced to venture on this
undertaking, because the narrative, though dealing with mystical
and therefore obscure subjects, is in itself exceedingly simple,
and therefore mistakes cannot so readily creep in as into a
difficult philosophical work. I, therefore, present my translation
with all hesitation, but at the same time think that the English
public, which is steadily increasing its interest in mysticism and
allied subjects, will be better satisfied with half a loaf than
with no bread."A quarter of a century has rolled away; much water has flowed
under the bridges of scholarly research whence the general stream
of Gnosticism has been surveyed with greater accuracy, and much
good work been done on the special subject of the Coptic Gnostic
documents. Though the first edition of this book was quickly
exhausted and many requests were made for a second, I had hitherto
refused to accede to this demand, still hoping that some English
Coptic scholar would take the matter in hand. Indeed, at one time I
was in high expectation that this would be achieved. Shortly before
the War a friend, whom I had interested in the work, completed a
version of the fine Untitled Apocalypse of the Bruce Codex, and was
next to have attempted a translation of the P.S. But pressing
interests and activities of a totally different nature connected
with the War and its aftermath have absorbed all my friend's
energies, and the version of the P.S. has been definitely
abandoned. Nor can I hear of any other project of translation. This
being the case, and as the utility of even a translation of a
translation is evidenced by the keen demand for the volume in the
second-hand market, I have at last decided to repeat my
venture.Nevertheless a reprint of the first edition was not to be
thought of. Introduction and translation needed revision in the
light of twenty-five years' further study of the work of
specialists. To this end the most valuable help, not to speak of
his long labours on the allied documents, is afforded by Carl
Schmidt's admirable German translation of the P.S.
(1905).Schwartze's Latin translation was good for its date (1851),
and scholars still quote it to-day; Amélineau's French rendering
(1895) was somewhat of an improvement; but Schmidt's version is
unquestionably the best. I have therefore revised my prior
Englishing from the former two by the finer work of the latter.
Schmidt is exceedingly careful throughout, and not only have I
taken his decision where Schwartze and Amélineau differ, but have
generally preferred him for consistency in phrasing. In my humble
opinion it will be long before we have a better rendering than that
of this ripe Coptic scholar.But not only has the Translation been thoroughly revised; the
Introduction has been entirely rewritten and the Annotated
Bibliography corrected and brought up to date. The second edition
is practically a new book.The Schwartze-Petermann marginal pagination, which is the
usual scheme of reference, and which in the first edition was shown
in brackets in the text, is now indicated at the side of the page.
I have also adopted Schmidt's division into chapters as an
additional convenience for more general reference, and have
numbered the verses of the Psalms and of the Odes of Solomon for
easier comparison with the Repentances and Songs of Sophia. It
should, of course, be understood that the detailed paragraphing
does not exist in the original, which runs on for the most part
monotonously without break.G. R. S. M.
INTRODUCTION
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. 1770. Art. in Brittische theol. Magazin
(?); see Köstlin below, 13.2. 1773. Woide (C. G.). Art. in Journal des Savants
(Paris).3. 1778. Woide (C. G.). Art. in J. A. Cramer's Beyträge
zur Beförderung theologischer und andrer wichtigen Kenntnisse
(Kiel u. Hamburg), iii. 82 ff.It was by W. that the New Testament, according to the text of
the famous Codex Alexandrinus, was edited, in uncial types cast to
imitate those of the MS., in 1786. In an Appendix to this great
undertaking, in 1799 (see below, 5), he added certain fragments of
the New Testament in the Thebaico-Coptic dialect, together with a
dissertation on the Coptic version of the New Testament. The date
of the C.A. is generally assigned to the 5th cent., and, with the
exception of the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, which
are sometimes assigned to the 4th cent., is the oldest extant MS.
of the New Testament. This being the case, it is of interest to
quote from the Beiträge W.'s opinion on the date of the
MS. of P.S., which was lent to this careful scholar by Dr. Askew
and which he copied from the first word to the last:"It [P.S.] is a very old MS. in 4to on parchment in Greek
uncial characters, which are not so round as those in the
Alexandrine MS. in London, and in the Claromontain MS. in Paris
[Codex Regius Parisiensis, also an Alexandrine text]. The
characters of the MS. [P.S.] are somewhat longer and more angular,
so that I take them to be older than both the latter MSS.,
in which the letters eta, theta, omicron, rho and sigma are much
rounder."Thus W. would date the MS. towards the end of the 4th
cent.4. 1794. Buhle (J. G.). Literarischer Briefwechsel von
Johann David Michaelis (Leipzig), 3 vols., 1794-96, iii.
69.Under date 1773 there is a letter from Woide to Michaelis, in
which the former says in reference to the P.S. Codex that Askew had
picked it up by chance in a book-shop. There follows a description
of the MS.5. 1799. Woide (C. G.). Appendix ad Editionem Novi
Testamenti Græci e Codice MS. Alexandrino . . . cum Dissertatione
de Versione Bibliorum Ægyptiaca quibus subjictur Codicis Vaticani
Collatio (Oxford), p. 137.W. gives the date of the P.S. Codex as about the 4th cent.,
and considers the writer of the Greek original to have been
Valentinus.6. 1812. Münter (F.). Odæ Gnosticæ Salomoni Tributæ,
Thebaice et Latine, Prefatione et Adnotationibus philologicis
illustratæ; (Hafniæ).Bishop Münter, a learned Dane, probably got his text from
Woide's copy. His brief pamphlet is of no particular importance;
nevertheless it was solely upon these few selections, the five Odes
of Solomon, that, with the exception of Dulaurier, scholars formed
their opinion of the P.S. up to the time of the publication of
Schwartze's translation in 1851. Münter believed that the original
treatise belonged to the 2nd cent. For Odes of Solomon see below,
49, 53 and 60.7. 1838. Dulaurier (É.). Art. in Le Moniteur (sept.
27).8. 1843. Matter (J.). Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme et
de son Influence sur les Sectes religieuses et philosophiques des
six premiers Siècles de l’Ère chrétienne (Paris), 2nd ed., ii.
41 ff., 350 ff. The first edition appeared in 1828 and contains no
reference to P.S. In Dörner's German translation the references are
ii. 69 ff. and 163 ff.M. rejects the authorship of Valentinus, though he bases
himself otherwise entirely on Woide. He vaguely places the date of
the original treatise between the end of the 2nd and the end of the
5th cent., but gives no opinion as to the school to which it
belongs (p. 352).9. 1847. Dulaurier (É.). Art. in the Journal
Asiatique, 4 e série, tom. ix., juin, pp. 534-548,
' Notice sur le Manuscript copte-thébain, intitulé La Fidèle
Sagesse; et sur la Publication projetée du Texte et de la
Traduction française de ce Manuscript.'D. had prepared a translation of the P.S. He writes: "The
translation of the Pistis Sophia and the glossary which forms a
complement to it are finished, and will be sent to the printers,
when I have convinced myself that I have fulfilled the requirements
that this task imposes, taking into consideration the present state
of science and my own capabilities. The MS. from which I have made
my translation is a copy which I have taken from the original,
during my stay in England in 1838-1840, when I was charged by MM.
De Salvandy and Villemain, successive ministers of public
instruction, with the commission of proceeding to London to study
this curious monument." (p. 542). D., however, did not publish his
labours, nor have I as yet come across any record of the fate of
his MS. He ascribes the treatise to Valentinus.10. 1851. Schwartze (M. G.). Pistis Sophia, Opus
Gnosticum Valentino adjudicatum, e Codice Manuscripto Coptico
Londinensi descriptum. Latine vertit M. G. Schwartze, edidit
J. H. Petermann (Berlin).In 1848 Schwartze made a copy of the Codex in London, but
unfortunately died before the completion of his labours on the
P.S., and the MS. translation he left behind contained a number of
blanks and passages which he intended to fill up and correct. His
friend Petermann confined himself in his notes strictly to verbal
corrections and suggestions as to variæ lectiones. The
consequence is that we have a translation without the notes of the
translator and without a word of introduction. P. says the task of
editing was so severe that he frequently suffered from fits of
giddiness. In spite of numerous blemishes this first edition is
said to be 'an outstanding achievement.' S. considers the original
treatise, as we see from the title of his work, to have been
written by Valentinus; but P. is of the opinion that it is the work
of an Ophite, and promises to set forth his reasons at length in a
treatise, which has unfortunately never seen the light. A review of
S.'s work appeared in the Journal des Savants of 1852 (p.
333).11. 1852. Bunsen (C. C. J.). Hippolytus and seine Zeit,
Anfänge and Aussichten des Christenthums and der Menschheit
(Leipzig), i. 47, 48. Hippolytus and his Age (London, 1852), i. 61,
62."Great, therefore, were my hopes in 1842, that the ancient
Coptic manuscript of the British Museum, inscribed Sophia, might be
a translation, or at least an extract, from that lost text-book of
Gnosticism [the work quoted by Hippolytus, sub Valent.]:
but unfortunately the accurate and trustworthy labours of that
patient and conscientious Coptic scholar, Dr. Schwartze, so early
taken away from us, have proved to me (for I have seen and perused
his manuscript, which I hope will soon appear), that this Coptic
treatise is a most worthless (I trust, purely Coptic) offshoot of
the Marcosian heresy, of the latest and stupidest mysticism about
letters, sounds and words."B.'s Marcosian theory has been partially revived by Legge
(below, 57), but is supported by no one else, and we doubt whether
B. could have read Schwartze's MS. with any great
care.12. 1853. Baur (F. C.). Das Christenthum and die
christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (Tübingen),
notes on pp. 185, 186, and 205, 206.B. evidently added these notes at the last moment before
publication. On page 206 he leans to the idea of an Ophite
origin.13. 1854. Köstlin (K. R.). Two arts. in Baur and Zeller's
Theologische Jahrbücher (Tübingen), xiii. 1--104 and
137--196, ' Das gnostische System des Ruches Pistis
Sophia.'K. was the first to make an exhaustive analysis of the
contents of the treatise, with the special object of setting forth
the system of P.S., and his labours were used later by Lipsius in
his art, in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian
Biography(below, 20). He assigns its date to the first half of
the 3rd cent., and thinks that it is of Ophite origin. In a note to
page 1, K. writes:"The MS. from which the work is published belongs to the
collection of MSS. collected by Dr. Askew of London during his
travels in Italy and Greece, of which The British Theological
Magazine ( Das Brittische theol. Magazin) for the
year 1770 (vol. i. part 4, p. 223) gives more
particulars."We know nothing of these travels, and there is no such
magazine in the catalogue of the British Museum. The
Theological Repository for 1770 contains no information on the
subject; and no permutation of names solves the mystery. There were
very few magazines published at that early date, so that the choice
is limited.14. 1856. An Anonymous Translation in Migne's
Dictionnaire des Apocryphes, tom. i. app. part. ii. coll.
1181--1286; this tome forms vol. xxiii. of his third
Encyclopédie Théologique.The translation is a sorry piece of work, more frequently a
mere paraphrase from Schwartze's version than translation; there
are also frequent omissions, sometimes as many as 40 pages of
Schwartze's text; e.g. pp. 18, 19, 36 ff., 50, 51, 72, 73,
86-90, 108-135, 139, 157-160, 162, 171, 179, 180, 184-186, 221-243,
245-255, 281-320, 324-342. These are some of the omissions; but
there are many more. It is, therefore, entirely useless to the
student. The anonymous writer vaguely suggests a late date for the
treatise because of the complicated nature of the
system.15. 1860. Lipsius (R. A.). Art. ' Gnosticismus,' in
Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopädie, separately published at
Leipzig, 1860, pp. 95 ff. and 157 ff.L. considers P.S. an Egypto-Ophite treatise, and with Köstlin
assigns its date to the first half of the 3rd cent. See his Art. in
Dict. of Christ. Biog. (1887).16. 1875-1883. The Palæographical Society, Facsimiles of
MSS. and Inscriptions, Oriental Series, ed. by William Wright
(London).Plate xlii. The editor says that the original is later than
Valentinus, and places the MS. in the 7th cent. There is a careful
analysis of the text from the technical standpoint, and the
facsimile is of f. 11 a.17. 1877. Jacobi (H.). Art. ' Gnosis,' in Herzog's
Theolog. Real Encyclopädie (Leipzig), 2nd ed., 1888;
Translation (New York), 1882, 1883.J. believes in an Ophite origin.18. 1887. King (C. W.). The Gnostics and their Remains,
Ancient and Mediæval (London), 2nd ed. The first ed. appeared
in 1864, but contains no reference to P.S.K. regards the P.S. as the most precious relic of Gnosticism.
Besides many references scattered throughout the volume, there are
translations from Schwartze of pages 227-239, 242-244, 247-248,
255-259, 261-263, 282-292, 298-308, 341, 342, 358, 375. K. does not
venture an opinion on either the date or author.19. 1887. Amélineau (E.). Essai sur le Gnosticisme
égyptien, ses Développements et son Origine égyptienne, in Annales
du Musée Guimet(Paris), xiv.See the third part for system of Valentinus and of P.S., pp.
166-322.20. 1887. Lipsius (R. A.). Art. 'Pistil Sophia,' in Smith and
Wace's Dict. of Christ. Biog. (London), iv.
405-415.A still valuable study. "We may regard ourselves as justified
in assigning (with Petermann and Köstlin) the book Pistis Sophia to
one of the large groups of Ophite sects, though nevertheless the
system it contains is not identical with any one of the other
Ophite systems known to us." Of importance is L.'s suggestion that
P.S. may be indirectly one of the sources of the Manichæan
religion. In any case, "it may be assumed as probable that the book
Pistis Sophia was written before the time of the Manichæan system,
and therefore before A.D. 270. Moreover, as the system contained in
it is evidently more recent than the other Ophitic systems known to
us, we shall have, with Köstlin, to assign its composition to the
first half of the 3rd cent." (p. 414b).21. 1888. Hyvernat (H.). Album de Paléographie Copte
(Paris-Rome).