The Stranger's Book

Often called Allogenes ("the Stranger", "one of another race"): Stranger prays with his disciples on Mount Tabor, rejects Satan's temptation, is caught up in a bright cloud, and is taught how his soul will pass the Powers of Desire, Darkness, Ignorance, Death, the Kingdom of the Flesh and the Foolish "Wisdom" of the Flesh on its way up to the Father. A Gnostic work, probably of the 3rd century AD, preserved only in Coptic as the fourth tractate of Codex Tchacos, the same codex as the Gospel of Judas; it is a different text from the Allogenes of Nag Hammadi Codex XI. Badly damaged: pages 59-66 survive, then an unknown number of pages are lost, then one final fragment. This is Mark M. Mattison's public-domain translation; chapter numbers are the manuscript's page numbers (59-66) and each paragraph is a verse. The last chapter (67) is that final fragment: its real page number is lost, so 67 only marks its place at the end. His section headings are not reproduced; square brackets mark gaps and restorations. Not part of any church's canon.