Long before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices in 1945, the scholarly world already knew a great Gnostic text in Coptic: the Pistis Sophia. Its name, joining the Greek words for "faith" and "wisdom", refers to a heavenly figure whose fall and redemption form the centre of the narrative. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this book was one of the main windows onto Gnostic thought.
The manuscript
The Pistis Sophia survives in a single manuscript, known as the Askew Codex after the English physician and collector Anthony Askew, who owned it in the eighteenth century. After his death the codex was bought by the British Museum in 1785, and it is now held at the British Library.
The text is written in Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt, in the Sahidic dialect. Scholars consider it a translation of a Greek original, probably composed in the third century. The manuscript itself is later, but its precise date is debated.
The narrative frame
The work opens with an evocative setting. After the resurrection Jesus has remained for eleven years with his disciples, teaching them only the first truths. Then, on the Mount of Olives, he is wrapped in an immense light, ascends to the heavens and returns to reveal the deepest mysteries to the disciples.
The text is structured as a long dialogue: Jesus explains, and the disciples ask questions and offer interpretations. Among them, the figure who speaks most often is Mary Magdalene, praised for her understanding. Peter, John, Philip, Thomas, Matthew and others also take part, as do Mary the mother of Jesus and Salome.
The fall of Sophia
The narrative core concerns Pistis Sophia, a spiritual being belonging to a higher region of the cosmos. Drawn by a light she sees below, she mistakes it for the true divine light and rushes towards it. But that light is a deception of an evil power, and Sophia falls into chaos, where she is tormented by hostile forces.
From the depths of her suffering Sophia raises a series of repentances, thirteen in all, each a prayer of grief and hope. Jesus intervenes to free her, and her salvation takes place in stages, through a gradual ascent towards the place from which she fell.
The disciples' commentary
A notable feature of the text is the way the disciples interpret Sophia's repentances. After each prayer, one of them explains that its content had been foretold in a psalm or another scripture. In this way the Pistis Sophia uses the Psalms and the Odes of Solomon as keys for reading the heavenly drama.
The cosmology
The Pistis Sophia describes a highly complex universe, ordered in regions, spheres and powers:
- the Treasury of Light, the highest region;
- the intermediate regions, inhabited by powers of light;
- the aeons and spheres ruled by archons;
- chaos and the lower regions, places of punishment.
Souls must pass through these regions to return to the light, and to do so they need the "mysteries", teachings and rites that Jesus reveals to the disciples. The text also addresses the fate of souls after death and the conditions for their salvation.
The modern rediscovery
The Pistis Sophia was translated into Latin by the German scholar Moritz Gotthilf Schwartze, and his translation was published posthumously in 1851. In 1896 an English translation by George Robert Stow Mead, a scholar linked to the Theosophical Society, appeared and made the text popular in esoteric circles. Since then the Pistis Sophia has had a place in the library of many spiritual seekers.
With the Nag Hammadi discovery scholars gained access to many other Gnostic texts, but the Pistis Sophia retains particular value for its scope and the richness of its system.
How to read it
The Pistis Sophia is a long and repetitive text that demands patience. A few suggestions:
- first read Sophia's story as a symbolic tale of fall and return;
- observe how the psalms are reinterpreted in the light of the heavenly story;
- pay attention to the role of Mary Magdalene and the theme of spiritual understanding;
- treat the cosmology as a symbolic map of the soul.
In short
- The Pistis Sophia is a Coptic Gnostic text preserved in the Askew Codex, bought by the British Museum in 1785.
- It is probably the translation of a third-century Greek original.
- It tells of Sophia's fall into chaos and her thirteen repentances.
- It takes the form of a dialogue between the risen Jesus and the disciples, among whom Mary Magdalene stands out.
- It was rediscovered thanks to the translations of Schwartze in 1851 and Mead in 1896.
