Pistis Sophia

Pistis Sophia PISTIS SOPHIA LITERALLY TRANSLATED FROM THE COPTIC BY GEORGE HORNER WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY F. LEGGE, F.S.A. LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE NEW YORK AND TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO. _Printed in Great Britain_ PREFACE The history of Gnosticism, which may be defined as the belief that man's place in the next world is determined by the knowledge of it that he acquires in this, goes back probably to the very dawn of our civilisation; but its importance for most of us is mainly centred round the first three centuries of our Era. Not even Christianity, as Amélineau quotes from Pascal, was able at once to make an angel out of a beast; and no sooner did it emerge from its first home in Judæa into the broader light of the Roman Empire than there sprang up within it many more or less secret schools which sought to combine the truths of the new religion with some of the most pernicious superstitions of the old. Until lately, however, our knowledge of the teaching of these post-Christian Gnostics has been limited to the statements of their opponents. Before the close of the second century, Irenaeus and Tertullian had written against them; and, some two hundred years later, Epiphanius, then Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, repeated their accusations in his huge _Panarion_, with some doubtful additions of his own in a form which at least has the merit of…