REVIEWS

Bentley Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2-7, I, ix + 336 pages, II, ix + 281 pages, $160, not separately available. Leiden, Brill, 1989.

These books contain the Coptic text and the English translation of the following writings: the Gospel according to Thomas, the Gospel accord- ing to Philip, the Hypostasis of the Archons, On the Origin of the World, the Expository Treatise on the Soul and the Book of Thomas the Athlete (= the Ascetic). The editor, of , tells in the preface how a collection of his irreplaceable notes were in a lot stranded in Nicosia at the outbreak of the Turkish-Greek Cypriot War of 1974. The case containing them had to be abandoned in the downtown home of an Armenian travel agent, which unexpectedly fell within no man's land between the opposing forces. It was later rescued and transported to Cairo through the personal intervention of the commanding officer of the United Forces, who dispatched an officer to lead a neutral convoy to the building and fetch the notes. These codices seem to be doomed: again and again a war breaks out when they are about to be published. Layton also discusses the patron of the Codex and launches the plausible theory that its Greek archetype was composed by a Valenti- nian. It is true that it contained one originally Valentinian work, the Gospel according to Philip, but this closely parallels the Gospel accord- ing to Thomas, suggesting the attractiveness of "Thomas", and the Jude Thomas tradition, to Valentinian . Moreover, to a Valentinian reader the myths of the Apocryphon of John and the Hypostasis of the Archons, though "Sethian" (= originating in the very special sect of the Gnostikoi) would have seemed familiar. The Expository Treatise on the Soul, though perhaps not Gnostic at all (hear! hear!), would surely bear a Valentinian reading in the light of the Valentinian sacrament of the bridal chamber. I add that the was probably written in the first half of the third century in Antioch. There Axionicus was according to Tertullian (Adversus Valen- tinianos IV) the only one who had preserved the original doctrine of the Master. Axionicus could be the author of the Gospel of Philip. The Coptic of Codex II appears to consist of a random mixture of 79 forms from the Sahidic and Subachmimic dialects. In the British Library, fragments were identified of the book On the Origin of the World (also contained in Codex II) which were written in pure Subachmimic, and that seems to be the original version. Subachmimic, the dialect of Assiout or Lykopolis, was generally used for writings of doubtful orthodoxy. Layton suggests that the scribe of Codex II attempted artificially to conform to Sahidic, the orthodox dialect of the Nile Valley and monasticism, in order to mask its affiliation with the Valentinian heresy and make its texts more accessible to the (Catholic) reading public. The presentation of these volumes is magnificent. This time there are, as far as I can see, no omissions in the transcription of the Coptic, no misprints, no transgressions against grammatical rules and the accen- tuation of the Greek language. Layton has constituted the Coptic text with the greatest caution. This text would seem to be definitive. This may even be the case with the frankly Subachmimic British Library fragments rediscovered by Dr. Christian Oeyen and here reconstructed carefully. The introductions to the several writings are apodictic. There is no commentary, not even in the form of a volume of notes, as was the case in the Claremont edition of the Jung Codex, here called Codex I. The "Aryan World Saviour", once a stock theme of some of the authors, is nowhere mentioned any more. made excellent indices. The translations were made by different experts and are said to replace in part provisional versions published in The in English and now to represent the final and definitive wishes of their respective translators. Generally speaking they are much too free. In some cases they are anachronistic: the nervous system had not yet been discovered at the time these writings originated. Sometimes they are completely faulty. A random choice of a few examples may prove this to be the case: 1) Logion 61 of the literally runs as follows: Two will rest on a bed: the one will die, the one will live. This is a parallel to Luke 17.34: 6 etq ?ap