42 EARLY WISDOM GOSPELS
Christian gospel. In 1 Corinthians Paul argues this point with vigor, and he
does so in opposition to the Corinthian Christians, who champion wisdom and
a gospel of wisdom; these wisdom Christians may even have used something
like Gospel of Thomas 17 (see below, with the note). The Gospel of John, then,
like the synoptic gospels and Paul, is quite unlike the sayings gospel Q and the
Gospel of Thomas, which show little or no interest in the crucifixion of Jesus.^9
John's account of the crucifixion of Jesus puts his own theological spin on
the story. In the high priestly prayer in John 17 (which is neither high priestly
nor a prayer, but instead a commentary on the crucifixion story), Jesus an-
nounces that the hour or time has come—the hour or time of his death. The
hour of death, however, is not to be an hour of darkness, as in the synoptics,
where darkness overshadows the crucifixion of Jesus. Rather, it is an hour of
glory and of light. As Jesus says to god,
Father, the hour has come.
Glorify your son so that your son may glorify you.
I glorified you on earth
by completing the work you gave me to do.
And now glorify me, father, with yourself,
with the glory I had with you before the world was. (17:1, 4-5)The scandal and the sting of the crucifixion are nearly gone in the Gospel
of John. Jesus' death is glory, a homecoming, a return to god's heavenly pres-
ence above. The light that had fallen, like a shooting star, into the world of
darkness, may now return back to god and the fullness (Greek pleroma, as in
John 1:16) of light above. It is a story reminiscent of the personified wisdom,
Hokhmah, Sophia. We shall see this story told about a variety of gnostic re-
vealers and saviors, including Jesus, in the gnostic sacred literature included in
this volume.- On the crucifixion of Jesus in gnostic sources, see particularly the Letter of Peter to Philip,
the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, the Secret Book of James, the Round Dance of the
Cross, and the Second Treatise of the Great Seth; on the resurrection in gnostic sources, see
particularly the Treatise on Resurrection.