| Secret Sayings | ||
| We
knew of that this gospel existed before its discovery at Nag Hammadi by a
quotation from Epiphanius (fourth century). Philip is dated as early
as the second century.
A disciple asked Jesus to give him something belonging to the world. Jesus told him, "Ask your mother and she will see that you have someone else's things." Jesus went into Levi's dye works. He took seventy-two different colors and mixed them in a vat. Afterward, the cloth in the vat came out all white. "Even so, the Son of Man has come as one who dyes," he said. The disciples asked Jesus, "Why do you love Mary [Magdalene] more than any of us?" The Savior answered them, "Why don't I love you as much as I love her? Who said that I loved her? When a sighted person goes into a dark place with a blind person, they are both blind. When the light comes, the one who sees perceives it, but the blind man remains in darkness. The truth is that you are blind." "I came to make all things new, as things above are new, and to make the outside things like the inside. I came to bring these things together in one place. "Some say that there is a heavenly man and one even above him. They call the former 'the lower one' and the latter, who knows all hidden things, 'the upper one.' This type of thinking is wrong. It would be more accurate for them to say, 'There is the inner and there is the outer. Then there is the one outside the outer.' For example, the mouthpieces of the Lord called the place of destruction 'the outer darkness' because there is no other greater darkness. Likewise, we pray to the 'outer one,' (known as the Father, 'the one who is in secret'), from inside our own secret places. Yet, the Father, being the outer, is among us all at the same time and is the fullness of deity. So the Father is the one who they mean when they say, 'The man above.'" "Some have entered the kingdom of heaven laughing, and have left laughing, as well." |