Greek Gospel of the Egyptians

The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians is a Gnostic religious text. Its title is adopted from its opening line.

Dating

The suppressed Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, (which is quite distinct from the later, wholly Gnostic Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians), perhaps written in the second quarter of the 2nd century, was already cited in Clement of Alexandria's miscellany, the Stromata, where quotations give us many of the brief excerpts that are all that remain; it was also mentioned by Hippolytus, who alludes to "these various changes of the soul, set forth in the Gospel entitled according to the Egyptians" and connects the Gospel of the Egyptians with the Gnostic Naassene sect. Later, that 4th-century collector of heresies, Epiphanius of Salamis, asserts that the Sabellians made use of this gospel; though it is unlikely that he had any firsthand information about Sabellius, who taught in Rome in the mid-2nd century, his connection of the gospel with Sabellius would confirm a date early in the 2nd century, whereas the euphemism, the Word logos, as an appellation of the Saviour, which appears in the gospel, betokens the influence of the Gospel of John, thus suggesting a date ca 120 – 150. No text for it exists outside of these testimonies.

Content

From these few fragments, it is unknown how much more extensive the contents were, or what other matters they discussed, or whether the known fragments present essentially the nature of the whole entity, which is...
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