[646]. Cf. Maspero, Hypogées Royaux, passim, esp. pp. 157 and 163.
[647]. Schmidt’s study of the Bruce Papyrus with a full text and translation was published in the Texte und Untersuchungen of von Gebhardt and Harnack under the title Gnostische Schriften in Koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus, Leipzig, 1892. He republished the translation of this together with one of the Pistis Sophia in the series of early Greek Christian literature undertaken by the Patristic Committee of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences under the title Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften, Bd I. Leipzig, 1905. His arrangement of the papyrus leaves makes much better sense than that of Amélineau, but it is only arrived at by eliminating all passages which seem to be inconsequent and attributing them to separate works. The fragments which he distinguishes as A and B and describes as “gnostischen Gebetes,” certainly appear to form part of those which he describes as the two “books of Jeû.”
[648]. Amélineau, “Notice sur le Papyrus gnostique Bruce,” Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibl. Nat. etc. Paris, 1891, p. 106. This would seem to make matter the creation of God, but the author gets out of the dilemma by affirming (op. cit. p. 126) that “that which was not was the evil which is manifested in matter” and that while that which exists is called αἰώνιος, “everlasting,” that which does not exist is called ὕλη, “matter.”
[649]. Amélineau, op. cit. p. 231.
[650]. This word arrangement (οἰκονομία) occurs constantly in the Pistis Sophia, as when we read (p. 193, Copt.) that the last παραστάτης by the command of the First Mystery placed Jeû, Melchisedek, and four other powers in the τόπος of those who belong to the right hand πρός οἰκονομίας of the Assembly of the Light. There, as here, it doubtless means that they were arranged in the same order as the powers above them in pursuance of the principle that “that which is above is like that which is below,” or, in other words, of the doctrine of correspondences. From the Gnostics the word found its way into Catholic theology, as when Tertullian (adv. Praxean, c. 3) says that the majority of simple-minded Christians “not understanding that though God be one, he must yet be believed to exist with his οἰκονομία, were frightened.” Cf. Hatch, H.L. p. 324.
[651]. Perhaps the House or Place of Ἀλήθεια or Truth many times alluded to in the Μ. τ. σ.
[652]. Aerôdios is shortly after spoken of as a person or power, so that here, as elsewhere, in this literature, the place is called by the name of its ruler.
[653]. This word constantly occurs in the Magic Papyri, generally with another word prefixed, as σεσενγεν βαρφαραγγης (Papyrus Mimaut, l. 12, Wessely’s Griechische Zauberpapyri, p. 116), which C. W. King (Gnostics and their Remains, 2nd ed. p. 289) would translate “they who stand before the mount of Paradise” or in other words the Angels of the Presence. Amélineau (Notices, etc. p. 144, n. 2) will have Barpharanges to be “a hybrid word, part Chaldean and part Greek” meaning “Son of the Abyss”—which is as unlikely as the other interpretation.
[654]. p. 143, Amélineau (Notices, etc.); p. 361, Schmidt, K.-G.S.
[655]. According to Amélineau, op. cit., “The Book of the Great Word in Every Mystery.”