Over the years numerous scholars have expressed their frustration at its impenetrable language and sometimes have just advanced a broader descriptions of the text, without venturing analytical or hermeneutic comments. Similar to the way the Ethiopian Catholic Church use than language of Ge’ez, rather than Latin. It is written in Coptic (translated from Greek), the language of the Ancient Egyptians, rather than Latin, the language of the ancient Romans. The Pistis Sophia still remains an inner teaching of the Coptic and the Northern African Christian communities today. It becomes very clear why the established religious powers of that day attempted to obliterate the Gnostics and any knowledge of the Pistis Sophia. This scripture is remarkable for its profound mysticism, its rebuke of unethical behavior and its perspective on the spiritual role of women. The “Pistis Sophia" is a sophisticated and deeply mystical teaching given by Jesus Christ to his Apostles about the suffering of Sophia (the Devine Feminine) as she attempted to ascend to the highest spiritual truth. It was during those times that the Pistis Sophia was hidden away in a secret void in the floor of a Coptic Christian Church in Egypt. At which time the Pistis Sophia literature was withdrawn from all Christian teaching, after the Gnostics had been persecuted and eliminated by the early Christian Church. The Pistis Sophia appears to have been written during the period before the early Roman Christian Church became established as the "official religion" of the Roman Empire in 325 C.E. This article will endeavor to provide the main features of the Sophia myth, which, like the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke's Gospel and the Hymn of the Pearl in the Gnostic Acts of Thomas, is a profound revelation of the pilgrimage of the soul. The other two components of the text are the narrative of the story of Pistis Sophia and additional instructions to the disciples in the form of a dialogue. Henceforth, he starts to instruct his disciples about his experiences during that death and Ascension and with information of other occult matters. After thirty hours, Jesus returns, surrounded by three orbs of light, with a brighter glow than when he had ascended. Suddenly, in the midst of thunder and lightning, Jesus is elevated to the heights of Heaven in the midst of an intense, blinding light. According to this and other Gnostic texts, the resurrected Jesus spent some time instructing his disciples before making his final ascension to heaven. In the first, Jesus is with his disciples for eleven symbolic years (perhaps eleven months) after his return from the dead, at the Mount of Olives. The text is divided into three major parts. This teaching was given to the Disciples of Christ (including Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Martha) by Jesus during the 11 years after his resurrection, but before his final Ascension. The Devine Feminine of God (the Goddess) makes an appearance in the guise of Sophia, a fallen angel of the Enoch story. The Pistis Sophia is a mesmerizing blend of primitive Christianity and Hellenic Paganism mixed with other elements such as reincarnation, Astrology, ancient Egyptian mystery religions and Hermetic magic. There were many Greeks in Egypt at the time the Pistis Sophia is believed to have been written, as General Ptolemy of Alexander the Great of Mesopotamia’s Army, and his descendants, had become the Rulers and Pharaohs of Egypt. It was the most extensive Gnostic scripture available until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts, a collection of Christian and Gnostic texts discovered in that Upper Egyptian town of in 1945. The earliest version we have is the translation of that ancient Greek text into the aforesaid Coptic, the ancient Egyptian language. The original text is believed to have been written in Greek around 150-300 C.E. It contains parts of five “books,” none of which are complete. The pages are numbered in Coptic characters, establishing the fact that only four leaves-eight pages-are missing since the manuscript was bound. The manuscript consists of 346 pages, written on both sides of vellum in two columns, and is bound much like a modern book. and discovered in 1773 hidden in an underground void under the floor of a Coptic Christian Church in Egypt that was undergoing renovation. The Pistis Sophia (meaning: “Faith wisdom”) is a translation and commentary of a special collection of 2,000 year old Coptic manuscripts in a Gnostic text possibly written before 325 C.E. The primary interest in this Gnostic Bible is that it portrays women as equals with men, unlike the Roman Catholic Bible which portrays woman as lesser than, subservient and unequal to men.
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