Pistis Sophia: A Gnostic Miscellany
Historical edition · 1921 · 122,147 words
Mead's revised English translation of a major Coptic Gnostic work, presenting revelations, dialogues, and the story of Sophia. Includes his historical introduction and annotated bibliography.
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'' In presenting the following translation to the English-reading public, I may say that I should not have ventured on such an undertaking if any Coptic scholar had undertaken the task, or I had heard that such a task was contemplated. In a matter of so great difficulty every possible liability to error should be eliminated, and it stands to reason that the translation of a translation must needs be but an apology for a first-hand version. Nevertheless I am not without predecessors. The Coptic MS. itself is in the first place a trans- lation, so that even Coptic scholars must give us the version of a translation. I am persuaded also that the anonymous and very imperfect French translation (1856) in the Appendix to Migne's Dictionnaire des Apocryphes (vol. i.) is made from Schwartze's…
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