C. Schmidt, Philoktesia: Paul Kleinert zum 70. Geburtstag dargebracht (Berlin, 1907), 315–36. It is
well-known that Schmidt’s edition of the Berlin Codex was destroyed due to a burst water pipe at the printing
house in 1912. It was not until the publication of Till’s edition in 1955 that the text of the Berlin Codex was
widely available. W. C. Till, Die gnostischen Schriften des koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis 8502 (Berlin, 1955).
Pearson, Ancient Gnosticism, 63.
The translation used here is that of Frederik Wisse, “The Apocryphon of John (II, 1 , III, 1 , IV, 1 , and
BG 8502, 2 ),” in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, rev. ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1996),
104–23.
Such apophatic statements may have connections with the Neo-Pythagoreanism philosophy that came
to prominence in the first and second centuries.
On this central element of the cosmology of the Apocryphon, see M. Waldstein, “The Primal Triad
in the Apocryphon of John,” in J. D. Turner and A. McGuire, eds., The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years:
Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 154–87.
As Waldstein states, “In the emergence of Barbelo, the Father acts within himself. Barbelo, by contrast,
gazes into the light of another, the Father. The Father’s light shines actively into her and forms her knowledge
so her offspring comes forth ‘from the Father’ (Ap. John 15.14) and can be called his ‘son’” (Ap. John 15.16).
Waldstein, “The Primal Triad in the Apocryphon of John,” 171.
Waldstein, “The Primal Triad in the Apocryphon of John,” 160.
DeConick provides an excellent diagrammatic representation of the way the divine triad was concep-
tualized in Sethian thought, where the aeons together with the triad form the Sethian pleroma. See DeConick,
The Thirteenth Apostle, 36.
Pearson does not directly suggest that Irenaeus used a shorter form of the Apocryphon but he does
suggest that a shorter pre-Christian form did exist at one stage. He states,
“When we remove the apocalyptic framework at the beginning and the end, together with the dialogue
feature involving ten questions put to Christ by his interlocutor John, we are left with material in which
nothing identifiably Christian remains, except for some easily removed glosses. The first part, containing
the revelation discourse, may have originally been a separate unit. It is precisely this material that is parallel
to Irenaeus’s paraphrase of a text used by the Gnostics” (Against Heresies 1.29). Pearson, Ancient Gnosticism,
Despite this assessment, it is debatable whether these “glosses” are so easily removed from the revelation
discourse.
R. M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997), 19.
On issues surrounding the Diatessaron including its dating, see P. Foster, “Tatian,” Expository Times
120 (2008): 105–18. It is striking that although Irenaeus refers to Tatian (unfavorably) on two occasions (Hae r.
I.28.1; III.23.8), he does not mention the Diatessaron. Whether anything can be concluded from this—Ire-
naeus’s ignorance of this work, or that he did not deem it heretical—is mere speculation.
Both Klauck and Gregory, in their respective treatments of the Gospel of the Ebionites, take the state-
ments in Epiphanius’s Panarion as the principal source of evidence and draw nothing from the writings of
Irenaeus. Hans-Josef Klauck, Apocryphal Gospels: An Introduction, trans. Brian McNeil (London: T&T Clark,
2002), 51–54; Andrew Gregory, “Jewish-Christian Gospels,” 61–66.
Irenaeus, the Scribes, and the Scriptures: Papyrological and Theological Observations
from P.Oxy. 3.405
See C. E. Hill, From the Lost Teaching of Polycarp. Identifying Irenaeus’ Apostolic Presbyter and the
Author of Ad Diognetum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 73–77.
This sentence is not present in the Greek preserved by Eusebius (HE V.8.5) but occurs in both the Latin
and the Armenian, and is judged by Birdsall to be genuine; J. N. Birdsall, “Irenaeus and the Number of the
Beast. Revelation 13,18,” in A. Denaux, ed., New Testament Textual Criticism and Exegesis. Festschrift J. Delobel,
BETL 161 (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 352.
The Latin probatissimus might be translated “most approved,” but here the Greek σπουδαίοις does sur-
vive. LSJ, σπουδαίος, II.2 “good of its kind, excellent... the most elaborate, costliest.”
E. G. Turner, Greek Papyri. An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968, 1980), 110, tells us
that the Alexandrian scholars had categories of “the better” and “old copies” for their Homeric manuscripts,
though “we do not know what significance to attach to these divisions.”
