The fragment reflects the Gnostic idea (of. Bousset's essay in Archiv fur Religionsvnssen- schaft, 1901, p. 155 f.) of the ascent of the soul through the heavens, and the magic pass-words re- quired for the journey, but the characteristic feature is the antipathy to marriage, which agrees with the 2nd cent, conception of Philip the Apostle.
According to Epiphanius, this pseudo-Philip Gospel was used during the 4th cent, by an immoral sect of Egyptian Gnostics to justify sexual vice instead of marriage [ol 5k Aevlrai irap a'urois KoKovfievoi, oil jxiffyovrai yvvai^lv, dWa dWrfKois fiia- yovTai). The Gospel of Philip, which, according to the 6th cent. Leontius of Byzantium [ch Sectis, iii. 2, Xeyovai yap IlvayyeXwv Kara. Qw,aS.y /cat ^i\nnrov, direp 7]/j.eis ovk la-fiev),* was used by the Manichaeans, may have been a special edition of the original Philip Gospel.
The Pistis Sophia (69-70) proves that this Gospel circulated among Gnostic Christians in Egj'pt during the 3rd century. If it was the source of Clement's tradition that Jesus spoke the words of Lk g^" ('Let the dead bury their dead') to Philip {Strom, iii. 4. 25), then the date could be brought back to about the middle of the 2nd centviry. It is no argument against this conjecture to say that the Gospel of Philip did not contain Synoptic material but was a Gnostic speculative work set in the post-Resurrection period. We do not know all that the Gospel contained, and while it professed to have been written bj' Philip on the basis of revelations made to Thomas, Matthew, and him- self by the risen Christ, what Philip ■^^Tote was not only the mysterious visions he was to see but •all that Jesus said and all that he did' — which might (cf. Ac V) readily include an incident like that of Lk 9^". But tlie identification of the anonymous disciple with Philip (which re-appears in the later Acts of Philip) may have been derived from some other source in written or unwritten tradition ; the anti-marriage view of Philip was probably older than the Gospel of Philip, and the latter cannot safely be put much earlier than the last quarter of the 2nd century. It is upon the whole better to place this ^v^iting among the Resurrection Gospels than in the second of our groups.
Philip appears in a curious little Coptic fragment of some Gospel (Revillout, Les Apocryphes copies, 131-132), where he is accused by Herod of seditious conduct ; Herod persuades Tiberius to allow him to confiscate all the Apostle's property. But it is one thing to put Philip into a Gospel — he would naturally appear in any later Gospel of the Twelve — it is another thing to make him the author of a Gospel.
(6) The Gospel of Matthias. — Neither Origen nor any writer after him quotes from the Gospel of Matthias. It is simply branded [e.g. by Eusebius, HE iii. 25. 6) along with the Gospels of Peter and Thomas. But Hippolytus (Philos. vii. 20) declares that Basilides and Isidore claimed to have received Xo7ot dTr6Kpv<poi from Matthias, who had been taught them privately by the Saviour. Hippolytus argues that the contents of these so- called apostolic XoyoL were really borrowed from the philosophj' of Aristotle's Categories, t Again, Clement of Alexandria quotes twice from the Traditions {irapaddaeis) of Matthias, once [Strom.
* These Gospels seem to have been Docetic ; the Incarnation was Kara (fiafTacriai' ; Jesus Changed places with a man (Simon 1), and therefore escaped sufifering on the Cross ; Jesus became invisible when transfigured, etc.
t As it happens, the saying about wonder as the gateway to knowledge occurs in Aristotle (Metaphys, L 2. 15) as weU as in Plato (Thecetet. 155 D).
ii. 9. 45) in illustration of the principle that wonder is the beginning of knowledge ('as Plato says in the Thecetetus and as Matthias advises in the Traditions, " wonder at what is before you," laying this down as the first step to any further know- ledge '), and once to prove the responsibility of a good example : ' If the neighbour of an elect person sins, the elect person sins ; for, had he behaved as the word [6 \6yos] prescribes, his neigh- bour would have so esteemed his life that he would not have sinned ' [Strom, vii. 13. 82). Elsewhere Clement observes that, according to some [\iyovat. yovv), ' Matthias taught that the flesh must be fought against and denied, no indulgence granted to its intemperate lust, and that the soul should grow by faith and knowledge' [Strom, iii. 4. 26).* Are the Traditions the same as the Gospel ? It is not decisive against this, that Matthias is intro- duced as teaching, for both Peter and Philip are represented in their respective Gospels as giving instructions. On the other hand, irapadocreis would be a strange and superfluous title for a writing which was known as a evayyfKwv. Clement, like Hii^polytus, ranks the Basilidians among the Gnostics who put themselves under the segis of Matthias [Strom, vii. 17. 108, tt]v 'MarOiov ai;x<2<ri irpoa-dyecrdai. 56^av) ; but this reference is not conclu- sive, for he adds : ' as the teaching which has come from all the apostles is one, so is their tradition.' He objects to one apostle's teaching being singled out for special purposes by any sect. But his own references to the teaching of Matthias are upon the whole respectful, and their tone does not suggest a Gospel identical with the \6yoL dvoKpKpoi of the Basilidians. We might conjecture that the Gospel of the Basilidians (/card BaaiXid-rjp) was the Gospel according to Matthias. But Origen's evi- dence is against this, and such data as Ave can gather for an estimate of the Gospel of Basilides point in another direction. t Thei-e is no reason why Traditions of Matthias should not have existed alongside of a Gospel of Matthias, and the \6yoi diroKpvcpoi may refer to the former.