Date of composition

• Mid- to late 100s.
• It was included in the Nag Hammadi Gnostic collection of the 300s.

Biography of Jesus?

• No. It consists of both small and large paragraphs that are not connected. It appears to be a collection of various writings and sayings joined together in one book. One saying might be several paragraphs long, whereas another idea might be one sentence long.

Type of Apocrypha (heretical or in error (made up))

• Heresy. Contains many Gnostic and Docetic teachings

Length

• 36 double-spaced pages. We have the complete writing.

Summary

• The book describes the teachings of the Gnostic teacher Valentinus (d. c. 170) and perhaps other Gnostic teachings.
• It contains perhaps 100 different sayings from various sources that we have no record of.
• (Note: Many books were written before AD 200 that have been lost to the passage of time. This book is a good example: it records sayings from other writings that no longer exist.)
• It also contains supposed words of Jesus not found in the Four Gospels, which the Gnostics created and placed in this writing.

Noteworthy from the book

1. Three women were always at Jesus's side: His mother, Mary, Jesus's sister, also named Mary, and Mary Magdalene.
2. Philip is only mentioned once.
3. Jesus often kissed Mary Magdalene, so much so that the Apostles became jealous and asked Jesus why he loved Mary Magdalene more than them.
4. States that Christ came to ransom some, save some, and redeem some.
5. Some people are concerned about being raised from the dead because they will be naked.
6. Even though Docetism taught that Jesus came as a spiritu, in this writing, Christ did not come as he a spirit but in physical form so that people could see him (This is different than the Christian idea of the incarnation, with Christ taking on human form to be able to accept the sins of the world at the cross).
7. The Father begat the Son, but the Son does not have the power to begat other sons; therefore, he came to earth and made brothers for himself.
8. Interestingly, it contains a variation of the story about the boy Jesus throwing cloth into a vat. Here, Jesus is a man who throws clothing dyed in seventy-two colors into a dyer's vat and pulls them out white.
9. Joseph, Jesus's earthly father, planted a grove of trees because he needed their wood for his work as a carpenter. Later, he made a cross from some of those trees (apparently for someone who had ordered a cross to be made), and Jesus was crucified on that cross.