The Gospel of Mary

Recovered not at Nag Hammadi but in a codex bought in Cairo in 1896; still incomplete — ten of nineteen pages are simply gone. Mary Magdalene consoles the frightened disciples and reports a vision; Peter objects that the Savior would not have spoken privately to a woman; Levi answers that if the Savior made her worthy, who is Peter to reject her. In the surviving fragment of the teaching, the soul rises past the powers and each one challenges it — Darkness, Desire, Ignorance — and the soul answers rather than fights: What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been overcome … from this time I will attain to the rest of the time, of the season, of the aeon, in silence. The gate is passed by SAYING something true, not by force. The Hekhalot ascents work the same way, with seals and names — and this text is older than any of them that survive.