The story presented in these two documents, although uncompleted, is, so far as it goes, perfectly consistent, and presupposes belief in a Gnostic system resembling at once those of the Ophites and of Valentinus. An introduction in narrative form informs us that Jesus, after rising from the dead, spent eleven years in teaching His disciples the arrangement of the heavenly places “only so far as the places” of a power whom He calls “the First Mystery,” and declares to be “before all mysteries,” and to be “within the veil,” being “the father of the likeness of a dove[465].” The result of this limitation was, we are told, that the disciples were ignorant not only that any power existed higher than the First Mystery, but also of the origin of the “places” or worlds of those material and _quasi_-material powers who, here as in the earlier systems, are responsible for the governance of the world and the fate of mankind. While the disciples are sitting with Jesus on the Mount of Olives, however, He is carried away from them into Heaven by a great “power” or shape of light which descends upon Him. On His return, He tells them that this shape was “a vesture of light” or His heavenly nature which He had laid aside before being born into this world[466]. He also informs them that, when He first came into this world before His Incarnation, He brought with Him twelve powers which He took from “the Twelve Saviours of the Treasure house of Light[467],” and planted them in the mothers of the twelve Apostles, so that when these last were born into the world they were given these powers instead of receiving, like other men, souls “from the archons (or rulers) of the aeons[468].” He also describes how He appeared among the archons of the Sphere in the likeness of the angel Gabriel, and found among them the soul of “Elijah the Prophet[469].” This He caused to be taken to “the Virgin of Light,” that it might be planted in Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist[470], and He adds that He bound to it a power which He took from “the Little Iao the Good, who is in the middle.” The object of this was, we are told, that John the Baptist might prepare the way of Jesus and baptize with water for the remission of sins. Jesus then proceeds to describe His own Incarnation. When speaking, still in the shape of the angel Gabriel, with Mary His “mother after the body of matter,” He planted in her the first power he had received from “Barbelo,” which was the body He had worn “in the height[471]”; and, in the place of the soul, a power which He received from “the Great Sabaoth the Good, who is in the place of the right.” After this digression, He resumes His account of what happened after His receiving the vesture of light on the Mount of Olives, and declares that He found written in this vesture five mysterious words “belonging [viz. in the language of] to the height[472],” which He interprets to His disciples thus: