Pistis Sophia
Christian Gnostic text (probably composed between the third and fourth centuries AD) of anonymous authorship, preserved almost entirely in a fourth- or fifth-century Coptic manuscript known as the Askew Codex, acquired in the eighteenth century by the British collector Anthony Askew and now held in the British Museum. The work takes the form of a revelatory dialogue between the risen Jesus and his disciples — among whom Mary Magdalene stands out, posing most of the questions and being granted a strikingly prominent role of spiritual authority, alongside John, Peter and other apostles — taking place eleven years after the resurrection, in a setting where Jesus has acquired additional cosmic powers after progressively ascending through the heavens. The narrative and doctrinal core revolves around Pistis Sophia ('Faith-Wisdom'), an aeon or heavenly spiritual entity who, through excessive devotional zeal, falls from her place in the spiritual fullness (pleroma) into the chaotic regions of the material world, where she is pursued and tormented by hostile powers, until Jesus repeatedly intervenes to rescue her and gradually restore her to her original glory — a narrative that functions both as a cosmogonic myth and as an allegory of the fate of the human soul trapped in matter and in need of gnostic redemption. The text also includes extensive penitential hymns adapted from Old Testament psalms, detailed classifications of the celestial and infernal realms, and ritual instructions for the 'mysteries' enabling the soul to ascend after death. Rediscovered and translated in the West only in the nineteenth century, the Pistis Sophia constitutes, together with the Nag Hammadi library, one of the most extensive primary sources for studying late Christian Gnosticism and the prominent role of female figures within these communities.