Gospel of Philip

Definition

The Gospel of Philip is a Coptic collection of meditations, sayings and short arguments from Nag Hammadi Codex II, usually read as a Valentinian Christian anthology from around the third century. It tells no story of Jesus. Its subjects are the sacraments, above all the bridal chamber, and the claim that a person becomes what they truly see.

Primary source

You saw the Spirit, you became spirit; you saw Christ, you became Christ

— The Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 61.29–31, trans. Mark M. Mattison (2017), a public-domain translation from the Coptic published at Gospels.net. Open-access copy

Deep Understanding

Philip is the third text of Codex II, directly after the Gospel of Thomas, and it is a gospel mostly by its closing title. The apostle Philip is named once inside it. There is no plot and no single speaker: the text moves between sayings of the Lord, readings of Genesis, wordplay on names and brief teachings, often changing subject from one paragraph to the next. Many scholars read it as excerpts gathered from the school of Valentinus.

The quoted line sits inside an argument about seeing. Just before it, the text says no one can see what truly exists without becoming like it, unlike a person in this world who sees the sun without turning into a sun. Then comes the sequence of Spirit, Christ and Father, and the tense shifts at the end: of the Father it says you will become father, a step still ahead. Knowledge, for Philip, changes the knower. That is the gospel's working sense of gnosis.

The sacraments carry that change. Philip says the Lord did everything in a mystery and lists five: baptism, chrism, Eucharist, redemption and the bridal chamber. It ranks the chrism above baptism, since Christians take their name from the anointing, and it treats the bridal chamber as the place where the light is received. Whoever does not receive that light here, it warns, cannot receive it in the other place.

Philip is also the source of the popular claim that Jesus kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth. The page is damaged at exactly that point. What survives says he loved her more than the disciples and kissed her many times, and the word for where he kissed her falls in a gap. The mouth is a modern restoration; the cheek, the forehead and the hand have all been proposed. Elsewhere the text calls Magdalene his companion.

Often confused with

Bridal Chamber: the sacrament that Philip ranks highest, where the Gospel of Philip is the text that describes it. Hieros Gamos: the sacred marriage as a pattern across religions, where Philip gives one early Christian reading of it.

Stefan's Alkimia. (2026, October 1). Gospel of Philip. Pleroma Guide. https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/gospel-of-philip

Stefan's Alkimia. “Gospel of Philip.” Pleroma Guide, 1 Oct. 2026, pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/gospel-of-philip.

Stefan's Alkimia. “Gospel of Philip.” Pleroma Guide. October 1, 2026. https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/gospel-of-philip.

@online{alkimia2026gospelofphilip,
  author = {{Stefan's Alkimia}},
  title = {{Gospel of Philip}},
  organization = {{Pleroma Guide}},
  date = {2026-10-01},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/gospel-of-philip},
  langid = {english}
}