Untitled Text

The Bruce Codex was purchased near Medinet Habu, Upper Egypt, around 1769.[4] It contained text in Coptic, Arabic, and Geʽez.[4] Carl Gottfried Woide transcribed the entire codex in 1776.[5] The Bodleian Library obtained the codex in 1848, and in 1886 they bound the texts together.[6] Between Woide's transcription of the codex and the 1970s, seven leaves disappeared altogether, and there is significant damage throughout the manuscripts.[7] Among the texts in the Bruce Codex were the Untitled Text and the Books of Jeu.[8] It is among the few Gnostic works in the Coptic language known before the Nag Hammadi library was discovered.[9]

The existing Coptic manuscript of the Untitled Text probably dates to around 350 CE, and an original Greek manuscript may date to the late third century.[10] It is written in the Sahidic dialect.[11] It contains 31 leaves in uncial script on dark, reddish papyrus, including eight fragmentary leaves and four missing leaves.[8] There are five leaves that do not clearly correspond with any portions of the text, so they have been variously placed by editors at the beginning or end of the text.[12] The text may be several texts compiled together; in Schmidt 1978's edited sequence, chapter 21 is possibly a different version of the text that recounts the same stories as earlier chapters.[13]

It discusses several Gnostic concepts, including the Aeons, Demiurge, Michar and Micheau, pleroma,[upper-alpha 2] and Setheus.[14] It writes God as being outside of knowledge and unable to be understood by people,[15] and it is filled with imagery of crowns, a common motif of Jewish apocalyptic literature (such as in 2 Enoch): Monogenēs is surrounded by them, and the baptised and the Demiurge wear them.[16] While many scholars place it in the Sethian school of Gnosticism, it was likely written after other Sethian works and has influences from Valentinianism (such as two divine mothers).[17] It shares a significant amount of wording and theology with Zostrianos, an apocalyptic and neoplatonist text found near Nag Hammadi.[18] The similarities are so substantial—their shared descriptions of Aeons, of celestial "judges", of Michar and Micheau, and occasional identical wording—that scholar Dylan M. Burns writes that the texts demonstrate "literary dependence, although its direction cannot be ascertained".[19] It also shares theological similarities with Numenius of Apamea, particularly Numenius's conception of a second god, which was common in late Platonist philosophy.[20]