The Gospel of Philip is one of the texts of the New Testament apocrypha. In a similar manner to the Gospel of Thomas, it is a sayings gospel, a collection of wise sayings, purportedly of Jesus.

The text's misleading title is modern; the only connection with Philip the Apostle is that he is the only apostle mentioned (at 73,8). The text makes no claim to be from Philip.

History and context

A single manuscript of the Gospel of Philip, in Coptic, was found in the Nag Hammadi library, a cache of documents that was secreted in a jar and buried in the Egyptian desert at the end of the 4th century, when Gnostic writings and pagan ones were being burned by the official church.

Among the mix of aphorisms, parables, brief polemics, narrative dialogue, biblical exegesis (especially of Genesis), and dogmatic propositions, Wesley Isenberg has enumerated seventeen sayings (logia) attributed to Jesus, nine of which are citations and interpretations of Jesus' words already found in the canonical gospels (55,33-34; 57,3-5; 68,8-12; 68,26-27; 72,33-73,1; 77,18; 83,11-13; 84,7-9; 85,29-31). The new sayings (55,37-56,3; 58,10-14; 59,25-27; 63,29-30; 64,2-9; 64,10-12; 67,30-35; and 74,25-27), "identified by the formula introducing them ('he said', 'the Lord said', or 'the Savior said') are brief and enigmatic and are best interpreted from a gnostic perspective," Isenberg has written in his Introduction to the text (see link).

Philip emphasizes the sacral nature of the embrace between

In the case of the Gospel of Philip, the sayings are presented more purely than in the Gospel of Thomas, since they have no framing text, the gospel is literally one saying followed by another. Other than the text's introduction and title, there is no reason to assume they have anything to do with Jesus.

Many of the sayings are identifiably gnostic, and often appear quite mysterious and enigmatic:

• Blessed is he who is before he came into being. For he who is, has been and shall be.
• Echamoth is one thing and Echmoth, another. Echamoth is Wisdom simply, but Echmoth is the Wisdom of death, which is the one who knows death, which is called "the little Wisdom".
• Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing.
• Jesus came to crucify the world.

One in particular appears to identify the levels of initiation in gnosticism, although what exactly the bridal chamber represented in gnostic thought is currently a matter of great debate.

The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber. - Gospel of Phillip

Another interpretation of the Gospel of Philip finds Jesus as the central focus of the text. This view is supported by renowned Gnostic scholar, Marvin W. Meyer. Evidence for this belief can be found in the following selection of quotations from the gospel:

• Those who receive the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit.. no longer a Christian, but Christ.
• 'My God, My God, why, lord, have you forsaken me?' spoke these words on the cross, for he had left that place.
• We are born again through the holy spirit, and we are conceived through Christ
  
  
  
  in baptism with two elements. We are anointed through the spirit, and when we are conceived, we were united.
• Jesus revealed himself at the Jordan River as the fullness of heaven's kingdom.
• As Jesus perfected the water of baptism, he poured out death. For this reason we go down into the water but not into death, that we may not be poured out into the spirit of the world.

Thus, according to Meyer, it is clear: without Jesus, the rituals and mysteries mentioned within this gospel would have no context. Furthermore, this text seems to follow the beliefs of the Valentinian Christian sect, a group that worshipped the Gnostic Christ, and is often linked to Valentinius' self-written gospel, The Gospel of Truth.

Mary Magdalene

Recent pop-culture allusions to the Gospel of Philip (see The Da Vinci Code) reference a passage which appears to have been redacted, either to imply or to disguise a reference to Jesus:

As for the Wisdom who is called "the barren," she is the mother of the angels. And the companion of the Mary Magdalene. loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples . They said to him "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Savior answered and said to them,"Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness.

Criticisms

The Gospel of Philip is a text that reveals some connections with Early Christian writings of the Gnostic traditions. It is a series of logia or pithy aphoristic utterances, most of them apparently quotations and excerpts of lost writings, without any attempt at a narrative context. The main theme concerns the value of sacraments. Scholars debate whether the original language was Syriac or Greek. James Robinson, the text's translator, places the date in the 2nd half of the 3rd century and places its origin in Syria due to the traces of Syriac words, eastern baptismal practices and the ascetic outlook. The on-line Early Christian Writings site gives it a date ca 180 – 250 A second or third century dates is the range given in The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook, Marvin W.Meyer editor, 1987 p. 235.

The text has been interpreted by Wesley W. Isenberg (The Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 141) as a Christian Gnostic sacramental catechesis. Bentley Layton (The Gnostic Scriptures, p. 325) identified it as a Valentinian anthology of excerpts, and Elaine Pagels and Martha Lee Turner have seen it as possessing a consistent and Valentinian theology. It is dismissed by Ian Wilson (Jesus: The Evidence, 2000 p.88) who argues that it "has no special claim to an early date, and seems to be merely a Mills and Boon-style fantasy of a type not uncommon among Christian apocryphal literature of the third and fourth centuries."

References

• Leloup, The Gospel Of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, And The Gnosis Of Sacred Union 2004.
• Robinson, James M., The Nag Hammadi Library HarperCollins 1990. The standard translation.
• Smith, Andrew Phillip, 'The Gospel of Philip: Annotated and Explained,' Skylight Paths, 2005.
• Turner and McGuire, Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years,: Martha Lee Turner, "On the coherence of the Gospel according to Philip, pp 223 – 50 and Einar Thomasson, "How Valentinian is the Gospel of Philip?" pp 251 – 279. Evangelio de Felipe

Evangelie van Philipus Evangelho de Filipe