Esoteric Texts
Pistis Sophia
Gnostic Texts
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A late Gnostic scripture in which the risen Christ, over many years, reveals to his disciples the secrets of the higher realms, the aeons, and the fall and repentance of the divine being Sophia. Much of the text consists of Sophia thirteen penitential hymns and their mystical interpretation. It offers an elaborate map of the soul ascent through the heavens.
Facts
Origins
Era of Composition Era of CompositionGenerally placed in the third or fourth century CE on grounds of language and doctrine, making it later than the classic Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi and one of the last major works of the Gnostic literary tradition to be composed. 2 Origin of the NameIts title, meaning Faith Wisdom, names the text's own central figure, Pistis Sophia, a heavenly being distinct from the higher aeon Sophia whose fall and repentance the narrative recounts. 3 Attributed Author / CompilerAnonymous Gnostic author 1 Text
Literary Form Scholarship
Critical EditionCarl Schmidt's German edition of the Coptic text appeared in 1925. Violet MacDermot's English translation, paired with Schmidt's text and issued by Brill in 1978 as part of the Nag Hammadi Studies series, is the standard modern scholarly edition used in English language scholarship. 2 First PublishedA Latin translation by M. G. Schwartze, published in 1851, first brought the Coptic text to modern scholarly attention, decades before Carl Schmidt's more complete German edition. 1 Transmission
Manuscript TraditionSurvives complete in a single Coptic manuscript, the Askew Codex, acquired by the British Museum from the estate of the physician Anthony Askew in 1785, one of only three substantial Gnostic codices known before the 1945 Nag Hammadi discovery. 2 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteA Gnostic text surviving only in Coptic translation, it stages an extended dialogue in which the risen Christ answers Mary Magdalene's questions about the fall and restoration of the aeon Pistis Sophia, giving scholars one of the fullest surviving pictures of Gnostic cosmological myth. 1 Learn More
A Late Gnostic Revelation in a Coptic Codex
Pistis Sophia is a lengthy Gnostic scripture surviving in the Askew Codex, a Coptic manuscript acquired by the British Museum in 1785, so, unlike the Gospel of Thomas, it was known to scholars long before the Nag Hammadi find. In it the risen Christ, over eleven or twelve years of post-resurrection teaching, reveals to his disciples (with Mary Magdalene prominent among the questioners) the structure of the higher realms, the aeons, and the fall and repentance of the divine being Sophia ("Wisdom"), much of the text consisting of her penitential hymns and their allegorical interpretation. It is a late work, generally dated to the third or fourth century CE, and represents a developed, systematising phase of Gnostic thought rather than its beginnings. Its elaborate cosmology, numerology and long ritual and astrological passages made it a favourite of nineteenth- and twentieth-century occultists and Theosophists, for whom it was one of the few substantial Gnostic texts available; G. R. S. Mead's English translation (1896) carried it into the esoteric revival.
A Very Long Question and Answer Session
Pistis Sophia is a revelation dialogue and it is a long one. Its setting is the risen Jesus remaining with the disciples for eleven years after the resurrection, teaching them, and the bulk of the text is his answers to their questions, with Mary Magdalene asking more of them than anyone else and receiving explicit praise for her understanding.
Its central narrative is the fall and restoration of Sophia, a divine figure who through error descends from her proper place, is oppressed by the archons, and utters a sequence of repentances from which she is progressively raised. Those repentances are given in full and are followed each time by a disciple interpreting them through a psalm, so a considerable part of the book is exegesis of the Psalms placed in the disciples' mouths.
The rest is a mapping of the invisible world in great detail, with names, ranks and the specific mysteries needed to pass each station after death, and a long treatment of the fate of souls that is unsparing.
The manuscript, the Askew Codex, was bought by the British Museum in the eighteenth century and was for a long time almost the only substantial gnostic text available in the original rather than in the words of its opponents.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
A late Gnostic scripture revealing the secrets of the aeons and the fall and repentance of Sophia.
Originates in Language
Same As
The same work is already catalogued among the Esoteric Texts; what is described here is the Scriptures & Texts framing, placed by religion and judged for canonicity, where the Esoteric Texts entry dates it within a Western-esotericism frame and makes no canonicity judgement. Neither entry supersedes the other; see "Where This Collection and the Scripture Listing Disagree."
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