The library · Edition and sources
The Secret Book of John
Samuel Zinner, edited by Mark M. Mattison; Other Gospels · Translated text
Reading appearance
Accessibility options
Saved in this browser and shared between texts. Labels and line patterns remain in every theme.
About this reading layout
Source wording, punctuation, paragraph boundaries and supplied line breaks are retained. Long prose also has editorial reading breaks at sentence boundaries. Substantial passages already enclosed in double quotation marks are set apart; this does not identify their source or establish a connection.
These added breaks are reading aids, not claims about the original manuscript’s layout. Poetry is lineated only where the downloaded text supplies line breaks. References and edition notes remain with their text.
Chapter 3 — Berlin Codex
1. [I] also [asked] to understand. He said to me: “[The monad], because it is a unity, and (because) nothing rules higher than it,
2. [is] the God and Father of the All, [the] unseen Holy One, who is higher than the All, who [exists as] his indestructibility, [existing inside] ⟦page 23⟧ pure light, at which no eye-light can gaze.
3. He is the Spirit. It is improper to think of him as a god or as anything similar, because he is more than a god, a ruler over which nothing rules, because nothing exists before he exists, nor does he need them.
5. He does not need life, because he is eternal.
6. There is nothing he needs, because he cannot be perfected, as though he had lacked and so needed to be perfected.
7. Instead, he is forever completely perfect. He is light.
8. He is limitless, given that no one exists before him who could place limits on him.
9. (He is) the unfathomable one, given that there exists before him no one to examine him.
10. (He is) the immeasurable one, given that no one besides (him) measured him, as though they existed before him.
11. (He is) the unseen one, ⟦page 24⟧ given that no one has seen him.
12. (He is) the eternal one, given that he exists eternally.
13. (He is) the unspeakable one, given that no one conceived of him to be able to speak of him.
14. (He is) the one who cannot be named, given that no one existed before him who could name him.
15. He is light beyond measure, the pure one, being sacred and unstained,
16. the unspeakable one, perfect and indestructible.
17. He is neither perfection, nor blessedness nor divinity, but he is highly exalted above these. He is neither without limits, nor with limits, but what he is exceeds these,
18. given that he is neither somatic, nor is he non-somatic.
19. He is not large; he is not small.
20. He cannot be quantified, given that he is not a created being, nor can anyone understand him.
21. He is not in any sense a being, given that he is highly exalted over (all of) them, but not because he as a being is loftier than them, but because ⟦page 25⟧ he is being as such.
22. He participated in no aeon. For him, there is no temporality, because whoever participates in an aeon, others (would have necessarily) made (such) ready for him.
23. Also, he was not assigned a temporal measurement, because he does not obtain anything assigned from another. Also, he is without need, there being no one before him in any sense at all.
24. He is the only one he desires in the perfection of the light.
25. He will study the pure light, the majesty beyond measure,
26. the eternal one who bestows eternity; the light who bestows light;
27. the life who bestows life;
28. the blessed one who bestows blessedness;
29. knowledge who bestows knowledge;
30. the ever-good who bestows good,
31. the beneficent one,
33. not because he possesses, but because he bestows, (being) the mercy who bestows mercy, the gift-bestowing gift, the light beyond measure.
34. ⟦page 26⟧ What is there to speak to you of him, the ungraspable one? This is the way the light appears, to the degree that I could understand, because who is there who will ever understand him?