Gospel of Truth · 18 of 18

Edition and Translation Notes

About this reading edition

This edition presents the Gospel of Truth in Nag Hammadi Codex I, translated from Coptic by Samuel Zinner, edited by Mark Mattison, with technical editing by Rachel Bousfield, for Other Gospels. The work is associated with Valentinian Christianity; attribution to Valentinus himself remains uncertain. The chapter titles and verse numbers are modern aids to reference.

The publisher also displays fragments from Codex XII alongside overlapping passages. Those are a second manuscript witness, not a continuation missing from Codex I. This edition follows the complete selected Codex I sequence and retains its gaps, supplied readings, and difficult syntax. It does not combine the two witnesses into a single reconstructed text.

Square brackets mark gaps or reconstructed wording; parentheses mark explanatory supplies; angle brackets mark editorial intervention in the transmitted wording. These marks belong to the translation and should not be read as evidence that every uncertain passage has been resolved. At 6:12, for example, ‹in› records the translator’s proposed correction of “finite” to “infinite.”

Two English copy errors in the publisher’s transcription are corrected here: the repeated “that” at 5:17 is removed, and “is” is supplied in “where there is unity” at 6:15. Other unusual constructions are retained. The explanations below summarize the publisher’s translation notes in new wording; they are not a verbatim reproduction of its commentary. The publisher’s introduction and the parallel Codex XII text are outside this reading edition.

Translation contexts

1.At 1:1, the source note connects truth with speech, particularly 5:22–24, 7:15, and 16:8–9. Silence is not an absolute prohibition on expressing truth.

2.At 2:3, the mist may hide the Father from the all, or conceal Anger’s activity. Zinner compares 2:11–12 and leaves both readings available.

3.At 2:11, the expression translated “midst” is ordinary spatial language. Zinner cautions against imposing the technical “Middle” of later Valentinian systems; he compares the forms in 4:10 and 7:7, 13.

4.At 2:13, the translated “power” represents the literal word “hand,” used idiomatically.

5.At 5:20–21, the translation deliberately preserves the Coptic passage’s overloaded grammar and meaning. Its unfinished construction is not repaired by inventing a missing conclusion.

6.At 6:12–13, Zinner reads “Jesus” as the delayed subject of the sentence beginning “He sustains,” referring back to the Logos. He identifies Mother with the Holy Spirit, the Father’s bosom or womb. He takes the sweetness as the Father’s, from whom Jesus originates, and uses the Father’s sweetness elsewhere to support his emendation of “finite.” These are the translator’s explanations of difficult wording, not an independently established consensus.

7.At 7:13, “in the midst” may mean in Error’s midst or among Truth’s emanations. The translation leaves the referent open.

8.At 12:12, the repeated “because” is intentional: the translator retains the passage’s chain of reasoning.

9.At 15:1, capitalized “Name” signals personification in the translator’s interpretation.