The Gospel of Philip

1A Jew makes a Jew whom we call a convert. A convert makes no convert.

2Some are and make others like them, while others simply are.

3A slave longs for freedom and doesn’t hope to own a master’s estate.

4A child claims the father’s legacy, but those who inherit the dead are dead.

5Heirs to the living are alive and are heirs to life and death.

6The dead are heirs to nothing.

7How can the dead inherit? Yet if the dead inherits the living, the living won’t die and the dead will survive.

8A gentile doesn’t die, never having been alive to die.

9You who find truth are alive; another may die, being alive.

10Since Christ came the world was made, cities adorned, and the dead buried.

11When we were Jews we were orphans with only a mother.

12When we turned Christian we had a father and a mother.

13Those who sow in winter reap in summer. Let us sow in the world to reap in summer.

14Winter is the world, summer the other realm.

15It is wrong to pray in winter.

16From winter comes summer.

17If you reap in winter you will not reap.

18You will pull up young plants.

19At the wrong season no crop is yours.

20Even on the days of the Sabbath the field is barren.

21Christ came to buy. He rescued and redeemed, redeeming aliens. He made strangers his own.

22He brought his own and made promises, construing a strategy, and gave his life when he appeared and when the world began.

23Then he came and took back what he promised, which fell into the hands of thieves. They captured it, but he rescued it back. Then he redeemed both the good and evil people in the world.

24Light and darkness, life and death, on the right and left, these are children, they are inseparably together.

25But the good are not good, the wicked not wicked, life not life, death not death.

26Each element fades to an original source.

27But those who live above the world cannot fade.

28They are eternal.

29The names of earthly things are illusory.

30We stray from the real to the unreal.

31If you hear the word “god,” you miss the real and hear the unreal.

32Father, son, holy spirit, life, light, resurrection, church.

33These words are not real. They are unreal but refer to the real, and are heard in the world.

34They fool us. If those names were in the eternal realm, they would never be heard on earth.

35They were not assigned to us here.

36Their end dwells in the eternal realm.

37Only one name is not uttered in the world: the name the father gave the son.

38Above the name of all others is the father’s name.

39The son would not be father without wearing the father’s name.

40Those with his name know it but do not speak it.

41Those without his name do not think it.

42Truth made names in the world, and without them we can’t think.

43Truth is one and is many, teaching one thing through the many.

44The rulers wanted to fool us, since they saw we were connected with the good.

45They took the names of the good and gave them to the not good so with names they could trick and rope us to the not good.

46As though doing us a favor, they took names from the not good and placed them on the good.

47They knew what they were doing.

48They wanted to grab those of us who were free and make us eternal slaves.

49There are forces that don’t want us to be saved.

50They act for their own sake. . . .

51If we are saved there will be no sacrifices, no animals offered to the forces.

52Yes, they made sacrifices to the animals.

53They were alive when they offered them, and then they died.

54They offered us dead to god, and we lived.

55Before Christ came there was no bread in the world, just as paradise, with its Adam, had many trees for nourishing animals but no wheat for humans.

56Once we nourished ourselves like animals, but when the perfect Christ came, he carried bread down from heaven so we could eat like humans.

57The rulers thought they had done everything alone, but in secret the holy spirit on her own accomplished it all.

58Truth from the beginning is sown everywhere.

59Many see it sown. Few see it reaped.

60Some say the holy spirit inseminated Mary.

61They are wrong and don’t know what they are saying.

62When did a woman ever get a woman pregnant? Mary is a virgin and no powers dirtied her.

63She is a great repugnance to the Jews who are apostolic, who are the messengers.

64No powers dirtied the virgin.

65They dirtied themselves.

66The lord would never say, “My father who is in heaven” unless he had another father elsewhere.

67The lord said to the students, “From every house you are in, take out possessions, but take things into the father’s house and do not steal what is inside and run off.”

68Jesus is a hidden name, Christ is an open one.

69So Jesus is not a word in any tongue but a name they call him.

70In Syriac the Christ is messias, in Greek he is christos.

71All languages have their own way of calling him.

72Nazarene is the revealed name for what is secret.

73In himself Christ has everything, be it human or angel or mystery and the father.

74Some say the lord died first and then ascended.

75They are wrong. He rose first and then he died.

76Unless you are first resurrected, you will not die.

77As god lives, you would already be dead.

78No one would hide a beautiful and valuable object under a lovely cover, but often vast monies are held in a bag worth only a penny.

79Consider the soul. It is a precious spirit and it came in a contemptible body.

80Some are afraid that they will ascend from death naked, and they want to climb back to life in their flesh.

81They are unaware that those who wear their flesh are naked, and those who strip are not naked.

82“Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of god.” What will we not inherit? The flesh we wear on us.

83But what then will we inherit as our own? The body of Jesus and his blood. And Jesus said, “Whoever will not eat my flesh and drink my blood has no life within him.” What does he mean? His flesh is the word and blood the holy spirit.

84Who has received these has food and drink and clothing.

85I condemn those who say the flesh won’t rise.

86Then both are wrong. You say the flesh won’t ascend.

87Tell me, what will rise so I can honor you? You say spirit in the flesh and light in the flesh.

88What is the flesh? You say there is nothing outside the flesh.

89Then rise in the flesh, since everything exists in it.

90In this world those wearing garments are better than garments.

91In heaven the garments are better than the wearers.

92Through water and fire this wide realm is purified, and the visible cleaned by the visible, and the hidden by the hidden, but there are elements concealed in the visible.

93There is water within water and fire in the oil of chrism.

94Jesus tricked everyone. He did not appear as he was but in a way not to be seen.

95Yet he appeared to all of them.

96To the great he appeared as great, to the small as small. To angels he appeared as an angel, and to humans as a human.

97And he hid his word from everyone.

98Some looked at him and thought they saw themselves.

99When before his students he appeared gloriously on the mountain, he was not small.

100No, he became great, and he made his students grow so they would know his immensity.

101On the day of thanksgiving prayer he said, “You who have joined perfect light with holy spirit, join the angels with us as a single image.”

102Don’t hate the lamb.

103Without the lamb you can’t see the king.

104You don’t meet the king if you are naked.

105The heavenly man has more children than a man on earth. If the offspring of Adam are many and die, how many more are the offspring of perfect beings who do not die and are born each second? The father makes a child.

106The child cannot make a son. He has not the power to make children. One recently born is not a parent.

107The son has brothers and sisters, not children.

108In this world there is a natural order to birth, and one is nourished by ordinary means.

109We are nourished by the promise of heaven, from the mouth of the word.

110If the word emanated from the mouth, it is perfect.

111By a kiss the perfect conceive and give birth.

112That is why we kiss.

113From the grace in others we conceive.

114Three Marys walked with the lord: His mother, his sister, and Mary of Magdala, his companion.

115His sister and mother and companion were Mary.

116Father and son are single names.

117Holy spirit is a double name and everywhere: above and below, hidden and revealed.

118The holy spirit lives in the revealed.

119It is concealed below. It is above.

120Even evil powers serve the saints.

121The holy spirit blinds the powers who suppose they are treating a simple man when they are treating saints.

122A student once asked the lord for something from the world, and he said, “Ask your mother, and she will give you something from another realm.”

123The messengers said to the students, “Let our offering all be for obtaining salt.” Salt is what they called Sophia.

124Without salt no offering is acceptable.

125But Sophia is barren. She has no child, and so she is called a trace of salt.

126Yet wherever others are will be the holy spirit.

127Her children are many.

128What a father has belongs to his child, but not while the child is still little.

129When the child is grown, however, then the father turns over all he possesses.

130Those who have gone astray are those born of the spirit. And they are usually lost because of the spirit. So from one single breath of spirit the fire blazes and is blackened.

131Echamoth is one thing and Echmoth another.

132Echamoth is simply wisdom, but Echmoth is the wisdom of death, who is the one who knows death, who is called little wisdom.

133Domestic animals may be the bull and the donkey and other species.

134Others are wild and live in the deserts.

135A man plows the field with a domestic animal, and from the fruit of his labor he feeds himself and the animals, tame or wild.

136Compare the perfect human.

137Through submissive powers he plows and prepares for everything to come into being.

138So his world holds together, good or evil, the right and the left.

139The holy spirit shepherds everyone and rules all the powers, those tame and wild and running loose.

140He gathers them and shuts them in so, like it or not, they cannot escape.

141The one who has been created is beautiful, and you would expect his sons to be noble creations.

142If one was not created but engendered, you would find his seed was noble, but now he was created and he engendered.

143Is this nobility? Adultery came into being, then murder. One was engendered in adultery, since he was the child of the serpent.

144So like his father he too became a murderer and killed his brother.

145Every sexual act between unlike persons is adultery.

146God is a dyer.

147The good dyes, true dyes, dissolve into things dyed in them.

148So too for things god has dyed.

149His dyes are imperishable because of their colors.

150What god dips he dips in water.

151It is impossible to see anything in the real realm unless you become it.

152Not so in the world. You see the sun without being the sun, see sky and earth but are not them.

153This is the truth of the world.

154In the other truth you are what you see.

155If you see spirit, you are spirit.

156If you look at the anointed, you are the anointed.

157If you see the father, you will be father.

158In this world you see everything but yourself, but there, you look at yourself and are what you see.

159Faith receives, love gives.

160No one receives without faith.

161No one gives without love.

162To receive, believe; to love, give.

163If you give without love, no one derives a thing from what is given.

164Whoever has not accepted the lord is still a Jew.

165The messengers who were before us had these names for him: Jesus, the Nazorean, messiah, that is, Jesus, the Nazorean, the Christ.

166The last name is Christ, the first is Jesus, the middle name is the Nazarene.

167Messiah has two meanings, both “Christ” and “measured.” Jesus in Hebrew is “redemption.” Nazara is “truth.” Christ has been measured.

168The Nazarene and Jesus are they who have been measured.

169If a pearl is thrown into mud, it loses no value, and if rubbed with balsam oil, it gains no value.

170It always is precious in its owner’s eyes.

171Wherever they are, the children of god are precious in the eyes of the father.

172If you say, “I am a Jew,” no one will be moved.

173If you say, “I am a Roman,” no one will be upset.

174If you say, “I am Greek, a barbarian, a slave, a freeman,” no one will be troubled.

175But if you say, “I am a Christian,” they will tremble.

176I wish I had that title. The world will not endure it when hearing the name.

177God is a man-eater. So people are sacrificed to him.

178Before humans were sacrificed, it was animals, because those they were eaten by were not gods.

179Glass decanters and earthenware jugs are both made with fire.

180When a glass decanter breaks, it is redone, since it was made through a breath.

181When earthenware jugs break, they are destroyed, since they were born without a breath.

182A donkey turning a millstone walked a hundred miles.

183When it was set loose, it found itself in the same place.

184Some people travel long but go nowhere.

185At twilight they have seen no cities or villages, no human constructions or phenomena of nature, no powers or angels.

186These miserable ones have labored in vain.

187The eucharist is Jesus. In Syriac it is called pharisatha, which is “one who is spread out,” since Jesus came to crucify the world.

188The lord went into the dye works of Levi and took seventy-two different colors and threw them into a vat. He drew them out perfectly white.

189Wisdom, who is called “barren,” is mother of the angels.

190The companion is Mary of Magdala. Jesus loved her more than his students. He kissed her often on her face, more than all his students, and they said, “Why do you love her more than us?” The savior answered, saying to them, “Why do I not love you like her? If a blind man and one who sees are together in darkness, they are the same.

191When light comes, the one who sees will see light.

192The lord said, “Blessings on you who were before you came into being.

193The superiority of humans is not obvious to the eye but lies in what is hidden.

194Consequently they have mastery over animals who are stronger and larger in ways apparent and hidden. So the animals survive.

195When humans withdraw, the animals slay and devour each other, because they do not find food.

196Now they have food because humans plow the soil.

197If you go down into the water and come up, receiving nothing, and say, “I am a Christian,” you have borrowed the name at interest.

198But if you receive the holy spirit, you have the name as a gift. And a gift you do not pay back.

199But if you have borrowed at interest, you must pay. So it works when you have passed through mystery.

200Great is the mystery of marriage! Without it, the world would not be.

201The existence of the world depends on marriage.

202Think of sex. It possesses deep powers, though its image is filthy.

203Among the forms of unclean spirits are male and female ones. Males have sex with souls who inhabit a female shape, and females mingle promiscuously with souls in a male form. No one escapes those spirits: they seize you, unless you take on the power of male or female, of groom and bride.

204This power resides in the mirrored bridal chamber.

205When wanton women see a man sitting alone, the man is overcome. They fondle him and pollute him. When wanton men see a beautiful woman sitting alone, they overcome her, and she is violated and polluted.

206But when spirits see a man and his wife sitting together, the female spirits cannot enter the male, nor the male the woman. When the image and angel are joined, none can force themselves on the man and woman.

207When you leave the world, nothing can stop you because you were in the world. You are above desire and fear. You are master of envy. If someone does not leave the world, the forces grab and choke him.

208How can one escape those great grasping rulers? How can one hide from them? Some say, “We were faithful,” to escape the filthy spirits and demons.

209But if they had the holy spirit, nothing filthy would cleave to them. Have no fear of the flesh.

210Don’t love it. If you are fearful, it will gain mastery over you. If you love the flesh, it will swallow and paralyze you.

211Either someone will be in this world or in the resurrection or in the middle place.

212God forbid that I be found in the middle! In this world there is good and evil.

213Its good is not good, and evil not evil.

214But there is evil after this world that is truly evil—which is called the middle.

215The middle is death.

216While we are in this world it is best to acquire resurrection for ourselves so when we strip off the flesh we may rest and not walk in the middle.

217Many go astray on the way.

218It is good to leave the world before one has sinned.

219Some have neither the will nor the ability to act.

220Others, even if they have the will, are better off if they do not act, for the act of the will makes them sinners.

221But even if they have no will to act, justice may be concealed from them, whether they have the will or not.

222Will, not action, is always primary.

223A messenger in a vision saw people locked up in a house of fire and bound with fiery chains, lying in a flaming ointment.

224He asked them, “Why can’t they be saved?” “We did not desire it,” they told the messenger, “but we got this place of punishment.

225Soul and spirit came into being from water and fire.

226From water and fire and light came the attendant in the bridal chamber.

227Fire is chrism. Light is fire. I am not referring to flame, which has no form, but to another kind of fire, whose appearance is white, which is luminous and beautiful and gives beauty.

228Truth didn’t come into the world naked but in types and images. Truth is received only that way. There is rebirth and its image.

229They must be reborn through image.

230What is the resurrection? Image must rise again through image.

231The bridegroom and image enter through image into truth, which is restoration. It is right that those who don’t have it take on the name of the father and son and the holy spirit.

232But they have not done so on their own.

233If you do not take on the names for yourself, the name “Christian” will be taken from you.

234You receive them in the oil of the chrism, the aromatic unction of the power of the cross.

235The messengers called this power “the right and left.” You are no longer a Christian but Christ.

236The lord did everything through mystery: baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber.

237The lord said, “I came to make things below like things above, and the outside like the inside.

238I came to join them in one place.” He revealed who he is through types and images.

239Those who say, “There is a heavenly person and one even higher,” are wrong.

240Who is seen in heaven is the heavenly person, who is called “the one below,” and the one to whom the hidden belongs is called “higher.” It is best to say “inner” and “outer” and “what is beyond the outer.” So the lord called destruction “the outer darkness.” There is nothing beyond.

241He said, “My father who is in secret.” He said, “Go into the chamber and shut the door behind you, and pray to your father who is in secret,” the one who is innermost.

242But what is within them all is the fullness.

243Beyond it there is nothing inside.

244Before Christ, some came from a realm they could not reenter, and they went where they could not come out.

245Then Christ came.

246Those who went in he took out.

247Those who went out he took in.

248When Eve was in Adam there was no death.

249When she was cut from him, death came into being.

250If he enters what he was and takes her in him fully, death will disappear.

251“My god, my god, O lord, why have you abandoned me?” He said these words on the cross.

252But not from that place. He was already gone. . . .

253The lord rose from the dead.

254He became as he was, but now his body was perfect.

255He possessed flesh, but this was true flesh.

256Our flesh isn’t true.

257Ours is only an image of the true.

258Animals don’t have a bridal bedroom, nor do slaves or dirtied women.

259Bedrooms are for free men and virgins.

260Through the holy spirit we are again engendered, but conceived through Christ.

261We are anointed in the spirit.

262When we were conceived we were united.

263No one will be able to look at oneself either in water or in a mirror without light, nor see in light without water or mirror.

264So it is fitting to baptize in light and water.

265Now the light is the chrism.

266There were three buildings in Jerusalem, one facing west called “the holy,” another facing south called “the holy of the holy.” The third facing east was called “the holy of the holies,” where only the high priest enters.

267Baptism is the holy building.

268Redemption is the holy of the holy.

269The holy of the holies is the bridal chamber.

270Baptism includes resurrection and redemption.

271Redemption happens in the bridal chamber, but the bridal chamber is part of something superior to it and the others because you will find nothing like it.

272Those familiar with it are those who pray in spirit and in truth for they do not pray in Jerusalem.

273There are some who pray in Jerusalem, awaiting the kingdom of heaven, called the holy of the holies.

274Before the veil was rent we had no bridal chamber but the image of the bridal chamber above.

275So its veil was torn from top to bottom.

276It was right for some below to ascend.

277The rulers do not see you who wear the perfect light, and they cannot seize you.

278You put on the light in the mystery of union.

279If the woman and man had not come apart, they would not know death.

280Christ came to repair the split, there from the beginning, and join the two and give them life who had died because of separation.

281Now the woman and man are one in the chamber with the bed, and those so joined will not come apart again.

282Eve and Adam separated because when they joined it was not in the chamber with the bed.

283The soul of Adam came into being through a breath blowing into him. Breath is spirit.

284The element given him is his mother.

285Soul became spirit. When he was joined to spirit, he spoke words incomprehensible to the powers.

286They envied him, excluded from the union of the spirit.

287Their exclusion spurred them into fashioning the bridal chamber where lovers would come and be defiled.

288Jesus appeared at the Jordan River with the fullness of the kingdom of heaven.

289He was born before there was birth.

290He was anointed once and was anointed anew.

291He who was redeemed redeemed the world.

292It is good to speak of mystery, especially because the father of all joined with the virgin who came down, and on that day a fire shone over him.

293He came to the bridal chamber.

294So on that very day his body came into being.

295And on that day he left the chamber with the splendor of what passed between the bride and bridegroom.

296Through this force Jesus did everything.

297It is good for each of his students to go into the chamber and rest.

298Adam came into being from two virgins: from the spirit and from the virgin earth, and Christ was born of a virgin to heal the initial fall.

299Two trees are growing in paradise.

300One bears animals, the other bears people.

301Adam ate from the tree that bore animals and became an animal and brought forth animals, and so Adam’s children worship animals.

302The tree whose fruit Adam ate is the tree of knowledge.

303So his sins increased. If he had eaten fruit from the tree of life, the one bearing people, the gods would worship man and woman, for in the beginning god created man and woman.

304Now they create god. In the world humans make gods and worship their creation.

305A man does what he has the skills to do.

306He has the ability to make children.

307He does it easily in a few seconds.

308His accomplishment shows in his children.

309They are the image.

310He was also made after the image, doing things with his physical strength and producing his children with ease.

311In this world the slaves serve the free.

312In the kingdom of heaven the free will serve the slaves, and the attendants of the bridal chamber will minister to the wedding guests.

313The attendants of the bridal chamber have one name, rest, and need take no other form because they meditate and comprehend by insight.

314They are many, since they do not store their treasures in things below, despicable things, but in unknown glory.

315It was necessary for Jesus to descend into the water so that he could perfect and consecrate it.

316So also they who have received baptism in his name may be perfect.

317He said, “It is right in this way to perfect all that is just.”

318When you say you will die first and then rise, you are wrong. If you are not resurrected in life, you will receive nothing when you are dead.

319Great is baptism. Enter the water and live.

320Philip the messenger said, “Joseph the carpenter planted a garden of paradise because he needed wood for his trade.

321He made the cross from the trees he planted, and his seed hung from what he planted.

322His seed was Jesus, and the plant was the cross.” The tree of life in the middle of that garden of paradise is an olive tree, and from the olive tree comes chrism, and from that oil comes the resurrection.

323The world eats bodies, and everything eaten in the world dies.

324Truth eats life, but no one fed on truth will find death.

325Jesus came and he carried food, giving life to whoever wanted it so they might not die.

326God planted a garden, and humans were placed in the garden. They lived among many trees with the blessing and in the image of god.

327The things in it I will eat as I wish.

328Here in this garden they will tell me, “Eat this or do not eat that, just as you wish.” Here I will eat all things, where the tree of knowledge is.

329That tree killed Adam, but here the tree of knowledge made us alive.

330The law was the tree.

331It has the power to give knowledge of good and evil.

332It did not remove me from evil or set me among the good.

333It created death for those who ate it. When they said, “Eat this or do not eat that,” death began.

334The chrism is superior to baptism.

335From the word chrism we have been called Christians, and surely not from the word baptism.

336And because of the chrism Christ has his name.

337The father anointed the son, and the son anointed the messengers, and the messengers anointed us.

338Who has been anointed possesses everything: resurrection, light, cross, holy spirit.

339The father gave him this in the bridal chamber.

340He merely accepted the gift.

341The father was in the son and the son in the father.

342This is the kingdom of heaven.

343The lord said it perfectly: “Some have entered the kingdom of heaven laughing, and they have come out laughing.” They do not remain there: one because he is not a Christian, another because he laments his later acts.

344As soon as Christ went down into the water he came out laughing at everything in this world, not because he thought it a trifle, but out of contempt.

345Whoever wants to enter the kingdom of heaven will do so.

346Whoever despises everything of this world, scorns it as a trifle, will emerge laughing.

347So with the bread and the cup and the oil, for above is one superior to all these.

348The world came into being through error.

349The agent who made it wanted it to be imperishable and immortal.

350He failed. He came up with less than his desire.

351The world was never incorruptible, nor was its maker. Things are not imperishable, but children are. Nothing can endure that is not first a child. Whoever cannot receive surely will be unable to give.

352The cup of prayer holds wine and water.

353It is appointed for the blood for which thanks is given.

354It is filled with holy spirit and is of the perfect human.

355When we drink, we drink the perfect human.

356The living water is a body.

357We must put on the living human.

358When you go into the water, you strip naked and put on the living human.

359A horse sires a horse, a human gives birth to a human, a god engenders a god.

360Compare the bridegroom and the bride.

361Their children were born in the chamber.

362No Jew was ever born to Greek parents as long as the world has existed.

363And as Christians, we do not descend from the Jews.

364There was another people.

365These blessed ones were the chosen ones, the chosen people of the living god; and then the true man, the earthly son, and the seed of the earthly son.

366In the world these are the true people.

367They are the attendants of the bridal chamber.

368In this world, power and weakness mingle when man and woman have sex.

369Joining is different in the eternal realm, though we use the same names to speak of it.

370There are names beyond the ordinary ones and stronger than showy brute strength.

371Yet all is the same, and this is incomprehensible to hearts of flesh.

372Should you who possess everything not know yourself? If you do not know yourself, you will not enjoy what you own.

373But know yourself and what you have enjoy.

374The perfect human can neither be restrained nor seen.

375If they see him, they can stop him, so there is no way to grace but to put on the perfect light and become perfect.

376All who put on that garment will enter the kingdom.

377This is the perfect light.

378We must become perfect before leaving this world.

379Who is rich and has not thrown it off will not share in the kingdom but will go as imperfect into the middle.

380Only Jesus knows where that will end.

381The priest is fully holy, including his body.

382Does one take bread and make it holy? Or the cup or anything drunk? Are they sanctified? If so, why not the body too?

383By perfecting the water of baptism, Jesus emptied it of death.

384We go into the water but not into death, so we are not poured out into the wind of the world.

385Whenever that wind blows, winter comes.

386When the holy spirit breathes, summer blows in.

387Whoever has knowledge of the truth is a free being, but the free human doesn’t sin.

388“Whoever sins is the slave of sin.” Truth is the mother, knowledge the father.

389Those who think that sinning does not apply to them are called free by the world.

390Knowledge of the truth can make one arrogant, giving meaning to the words “being free.” It makes them feel superior to the world.

391But love builds up.

392Who is really free through knowledge is a slave because of love for those who have not yet attained the freedom of knowledge.

393Knowledge makes them capable of freedom.

394Love never calls something its own, yet it too may possess the same thing.

395Love never says, “This is mine,” or “That is mine,” but “All these are yours.”

396Spiritual love is wine and fragrance.

397Those nearby also enjoy it from those who are anointed.

398But if the anointed withdraw and leave, then those unanointed, who are hanging around, remain in their bad odor.

399The Samaritan gave nothing but wine and oil to the wounded.

400Only the ointment. It healed the wounds, for “love covers a multitude of sins.”

401The children a woman gives birth to resemble the man who loves her.

402If her husband loves her, then they are like her husband.

403If affections comes from an adulterer, then the children are like him.

404Often, if a woman sleeps with her husband out of need, while her heart is with the adulterer with whom she also has sex, her child will look like the adulterer.

405You who live together with the son of god, love not the world but the lord, so your children will look not like the world but like the lord.

406Humans have sex with humans, horses with horses, donkeys with donkeys.

407Those of one sort usually linger with those like them.

408So spirit mingles with spirit and thought consorts with thought and light shares light.

409If you are born a person, a person will love you.

410If you become a spirit, a spirit will join with you.

411If you become thought, thought will mingle with you.

412If you become light, light will share you.

413If you are of those from above, one of those from above will rest in you.

414If you become a horse or a donkey or bull or dog or sheep or another animal that is wild or tame, then neither a person nor spirit nor thought nor light can love you.

415None of those from above or within can rest in you, and you have no part in them.

416Those who are enslaved against their will can be free.

417Those who are freed by favor of a master but have sold themselves into slavery can no longer be free.

418Farming in this world demands four elements.

419A harvest is collected and taken into the barn as a result of water, earth, wind, and light.

420God’s farming also has four elements: faith, hope, love, and knowledge.

421Faith is our earth in which we take root.

422Hope is the water through which we are nourished.

423Love is the wind through which we grow.

424Knowledge is the light through which we ripen.

425Grace exists in four ways: earthborn, heavenly, from highest heaven, and living in truth.

426Blessings on one who never harms a soul.

427That person is Jesus Christ.

428He came to the whole earth and distressed no one.

429Blessings on one like him, the perfect person.

430This is the word.

431Tell us about the word, since it is hard to define.

432How shall we be able to accomplish such a feat? How will he comfort everyone? Especially, it is improper to cause anyone distress, whether that person be great or small, infidel or believer.

433It is improper to comfort only those who enjoy good deeds.

434Some find it useful to comfort one who is lucky.

435You who do good deeds cannot comfort them, for it goes against your will.

436You cannot cause them distress, since you are not afflicting them.

437Yet you who are lucky in life sometimes cause distress unintentionally.

438but the source is not you but the other person’s wickedness.

439Whoever has the qualities of the perfect human is happy in the good.

440Yet some are enormously put out by these distinctions.

441There was a householder who had every possible thing, be it son or slave or cattle or dog or pig or wheat or barley or chaff or grass or castor oil or meat or acorn.

442He was sensible and knew what each one’s food was.

443He served children bread and meat.

444He served slaves castor oil and meal.

445He threw barley and chaff and grass to the cattle.

446He threw bones to the dogs, and to pigs he threw acorns and scraps of bread.

447Compare the student of god.

448If you are sensible, you understand the nature of learning.

449Bodily forms will not deceive you, since you will look at the condition of each person’s soul and speak with that form.

450There are many animals on earth in human form.

451When you identify them, then you throw acorns to swine, barley and chaff and grass to cattle, and bones to the dogs.

452To slaves you will give only what is preliminary, but to children you give what is complete.

453There is the earthly son, and there is the son of the earthly son.

454The lord is the earthly son, and the son of the earthly son is he who is created through the earthly son.

455The earthly son received the capacity to create from god.

456He also had the ability to engender.

457He who has the ability to create is a creature.

458He who has the ability to engender is an offspring.

459But he who creates cannot engender.

460He who engenders also has the power to create.

461Now they say, “He who creates engenders,” but his so-called offspring is merely a creature; therefore his children are not offspring but creatures.

462He who creates works openly and is visible.

463He who engenders does so in private. . . .

464No one can know when the husband and wife have sex except those two.

465Marriage in the world is a mystery for those who are married.

466If there is a hidden defilement in the marriage, how much greater is the true mystery of the undefiled marriage! It is not fleshly but pure.

467It belongs not to desire but to the will.

468It belongs not to the darkness of the night but to the day and the light.

469If a marriage is open to the public, it has become prostitution, and the bride plays the harlot not only when impregnated by another man but even if she slips out of her bedroom and is seen.

470Let her show herself only to her father and her mother and to the friend and attendants of the bridegroom.

471They are permitted to enter every day into the bridal chamber.

472But let the others yearn just to listen to her voice and to enjoy her fragrant ointments, and let them feed on the crumbs falling from the table, like dogs.

473Bridegrooms and brides belong to the bridal chamber.

474No one shall be able to see the bridegroom or bride unless one becomes a bridegroom or bride.

475When Abraham rejoiced in seeing what he was to see, he circumcised the flesh of his foreskin, teaching us that it is proper to destroy the flesh.

476As long as they are hidden, most things in the world are upright and live.

477If they are revealed they die, as is clear by the example of the visible person: as long as the intestines are hidden, a person is alive.

478When the intestines are exposed and come out, the person will die.

479So also with a tree.

480While its root is hidden, it sprouts and grows.

481If its root is exposed, the tree dries up.

482So it is with every birth that is in the world, not only with the revealed but also the hidden.

483As long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is powerful.

484But when it is recognized, it is dissolved.

485When it is revealed, it perishes.

486That is why the word says, “Even now the ax lies set against the root of the trees.” It will not merely cut—what is cut sprouts again— but the ax penetrates deeply until it brings up the root.

487Jesus pulled out the root of the whole place while others did it only partially.

488As for us, let each one dig down after the root of evil that is within us and pluck it out of our heart from the root.

489It will be uprooted if we recognize it.

490But if we are ignorant of it, it takes root in us and produces fruit in our heart. It masters us.

491We are its slaves. It takes us captive to make us do what we do not want; and what we do want we do not do.

492It is powerful because we have not recognized it.

493While it exists it is active.

494Ignorance is the mother of all evil.

495Ignorance will eventuate in death, because those who come from ignorance neither were nor are nor will be.

496But those who are in the truth will be perfect when all the truth is revealed.

497For truth is like ignorance: while hidden it rests in itself, but when revealed and recognized, it is praised in that it is stronger than ignorance and error.

498It gives freedom. The word said, “If you know the truth, the truth will make you free.” Ignorance is a slave, knowledge is freedom.

499If we know the truth, we shall find the fruits of the truth within us.

500If we join it, it will fulfill us.

501Now we have the manifest things of creation.

502We say, “The strong are they who are held in high regard, and the obscure are the weak who are despised.” Contrast the manifest things of truth: they are weak and despised, whereas the hidden things are strong and held in high regard.

503The mysteries of truth are revealed, though, in type and image.

504The bridal chamber remains hidden.

505It is the holy in the holy.

506The veil at first concealed how god controls creation, but when the veil is torn and things inside are revealed, this house will be left desolate, or rather it will be destroyed.

507But the whole inferior godhead will not flee from these places into the holies of the holies, for it cannot mix with the pure light and the perfect fullness.

508Rather, it will be under the wings of the cross and under its arms.

509This ark will be the salvation of people when the floodwater surges over them.

510If some belong to the order of the priesthood, they will be able to go within the veil with the high priest.

511So the veil was not torn at the top, since it would have been open only to those above.

512Nor was it torn at the bottom, since it would have been revealed only to those below.

513But it was rent from top to bottom.

514Those above opened to us who are below, that we may go in to the secret of the truth.

515The truth is what is held in high regard, since it is strong.

516But we shall go in there by means of lowly types and forms of weakness.

517They are lowly when compared with the perfect glory.

518There is glory that surpasses glory.

519There is power that surpasses power.

520Therefore, the perfect things have opened to us together with the hidden things of truth.

521The holies of the holies has been revealed, and the bridal chamber has invited us in.

522As long as the seed is hidden, wickedness is ineffectual, but it has not yet been removed from the midst of the seed of the holy spirit.

523Everyone is a slave of evil.

524But when the seed is revealed, the perfect light will flow out on everyone.

525And all those who are in the light will receive the chrism.

526Then the slaves will be free and the captives ransomed.

527“Every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be uprooted.” Those who are separated will be joined and filled.

528Everyone who enters the bridal chamber will kindle the light, for it burns just as in marriages performed, though they happen at night.

529That fire burns only at night and is put out.

530Yet the mysteries of this marriage are perfected rather in the day and the light.

531Neither that day nor its light ever sets.

532If you become an attendant of the bridal chamber, you will receive the light.

533If you do not receive it while in those places, you cannot receive it in the other place.

534You who receive the light will not be seen nor detained.

535And no one will be able to torment you even while you live in the world.

536And when you leave the world you have already received the truth in the images.

537The world has become the eternal realm, because the eternal realm is fullness for you.

538This is the way it is. It is revealed to you alone, not hidden in the darkness and the night but in a perfect day and a holy light.