The Gospel of Mary

A 2nd-century AD dialogue gospel in which Mary (generally taken to be Mary Magdalene) comforts the disciples after the Savior has left them and tells them a vision he gave her alone, of the soul rising past the powers of Darkness, Desire, Ignorance and Wrath. Peter and Andrew refuse to believe that the Savior would teach a woman in secret, and Levi defends her. About half the book is lost: the main copy, the Coptic Berlin Codex (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 5th century, not from Nag Hammadi though of the same kind), is missing pages 1-6 and 11-14, so the text begins mid-conversation and breaks off in the middle of Mary's vision; two small 3rd-century Greek fragments also survive. This is Mark M. Mattison's public-domain translation of the Coptic; chapter numbers are the manuscript's page numbers (7-10 and 15-19) and each paragraph is a verse. Square brackets mark gaps and restorations, parentheses his supplied words, and "/ \" his correction of a scribal error. Not part of any church's canon.