THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Book of Thom. the Contender [7] 9 0 2 5 1 2
Dialogue of the Saviour [27 (-)] 0 0 0 9 7 3
Apocryphon of James [16] 0 0 9 18 1 2
1st/2nd Apoc. of James [39] 0 0 6 3 3 9
Apoc. of Peter [14] 0 0 1 9 0 2
Gospel of Mary [12] 0 0 1 4 8 5
This chart is intended to generally indicate hermeneutic patterns with respect
to the way in which Gnostic texts are called upon in exegesis. The above
demonstrates the weight of emphasis here or there in terms of numbers, but has
nothing to say about the quality of those references.
Category 1 contains those texts that are clearly non-Christian, while Category
2 contains texts that, at best, display marginal Christian glosses. Taken together, these
two categories present us with the main textual evidence that we have for non-
Christian Gnostic thought. Category 3 lists texts with a more pronounced Christian
frame-story although it should be noted that a work’s earliest manifestation can still
be considered by many scholars to have been non-Christian, as with the Apocryphon
of John or The Sophia of Jesus Christ for example. Category 4, in contradistinction to
all of the above, shows no emanationist content, but rather focuses upon the figure of
Jesus and the Christian content appears to have been part of the original composition.
The number of pages for each tractate is listed in square brackets after the title. A
minus sign indicates a fair number of lacunae in the text.
The six titles are all recent representative major works within Gnostic Studies,
and all approach the phenomenon of Gnostic thought in an “overview” fashion; i.e.
advancing broad theories as to the nature and appearance of Gnostic thought in
general; as such, reference to the full breadth of Gnostic texts is de jure. While the
first three works are single-authored, the remaining three involve multiple
submissions for a total of 100 separate contributions used in this survey overall. The
numbers differ in exact meaning from column to column but may be generally taken
to indicate the number of main references to a specific tractate within a given work.
The exact numbers are therefore not to be compared from column to column for any
sort of meaningful result; rather, the ratio within each column is combined with the
others to obtain the following:
Total number of references to Categories 1 & 2 929
Categories 3 & 4 856
The two groups are thus on par; however, there is a disparity in the pages of original
manuscript represented by the two groups.
Total number of pages of original manuscript in Categories 1 & 2 1068
Categories 3 & 4 284