Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit

Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit
Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit
Date 1st or 2nd century
Attribution unknown
Location
Sources
Manuscripts Nag Hammadi Library
Audience unknown
Theme Seth

Two versions of the formerly lost Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, also inappropriately called the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians[1] (which is quite distinct from the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians), were among the codices in the Nag Hammadi library, discovered in 1945.

The main contents concern the Sethian Gnostic understanding of how the earth came into being, how Seth, in the Gnostic interpretation, is incarnated as Jesus in order to release people's souls from the evil prison that is creation.

It also contains a hymn, parts of which are unusual in being apparently meaningless sequences of vowels (thought to be a representation of early Christian glossolalia), although the vowels of the final paragraph (u aei eis aei ei o ei ei os ei) can be partitioned to read (in Greek) who exists as Son for ever and ever. You are what you are, you are who you are.

Notes

  1. ^ John D. Turner: "Since the late 1940s it has become customary to refer to it inappropriately as the Gospel of the Egyptians." Meyer, Marvin (2007). The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: International Edition. p. 247. 

External links