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The Sophia The Christ, also known as the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, is a Gnostic text that was first discovered in the Berlin Codex (a Codex purchased in Cairo in 1896 and given to the Berlin Museum which also contains the Gospel of Mary, the Apocryphon of John, and a summary of the Act of Peter). More famously, the Sophia of Jesus Christ is also among the many Gnostic tractates in the Nag Hammadi codices, discovered in Egypt in 1945. The Berlin-Codex manuscript (as opposed to its contents) probably dates to c. AD 400, and the Nag-Hammadi manuscript has been dated to the 300s. However, these are complemented by a few fragments in Greek dating from the 200s, indicating an earlier date for the contents.
While the title may refer to Sophia, Roel van den Broek argues that Sophia should be understood in its ordinary meaning as "wisdom", analogous to the titles Wisdom of Solomon and Wisdom of Sirach.[1]
The text incorporates almost the entirety of the Epistle of Eugnostos, which is also found in the Nag Hammadi codices, but incorporates it into a Christian frame narrative, in which Jesus answers questions from his disciples by quoting from Eugnostos verbatim.[1][2]
- ^ a b van den Broek 2013, p. 64.
- ^ "Sophia of Jesus Christ".