Dr. Schmidt’s fellow-countrymen Drs. Lichtenhau and Preuschen have already attacked some of these positions in the _Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie_[14] and elsewhere, and after mature consideration, the present writer feels himself compelled to dissent from all three. The reasons for doing so will be best given when we come to consider the composition and authorship of the MS. Before leaving this branch of the subject, however, it may be said that beside the work of Köstlin, Lipsius, and Dr. Schmidt, the _Pistis Sophia_ has been treated of at some length in Father Giraud’s _Ophitus_ (1884), and in a special work by Prof. Harnack in the _Texte und Untersuchungen_ above mentioned (1891). More recently, it has also been dealt with by M. Eugène de Faye in his _Introduction à l’Etude du Gnosticisme_ (1903) and his _Gnostiques et Gnosticisme_ (1913), by Dr. James Moffat in his article under its name in Hastings’ _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_, and by the present writer in his _Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity_ (1915).[15] The late Sir Gaston Maspero and Prof. Lieblein (of Christiania) have also stated their conviction that it could only have been written by persons intimately acquainted with the old Egyptian religion, on which point none could speak with greater authority than they.[16] 2. THE DOCUMENTS IN THE MS. As has been said above, Dr. Schmidt speaks of our text as a miscellany, and the phrase by no means overstates the case. It contains indeed no less than six documents, only the two first of which are directly connected or can be taken as necessarily intended to be read consecutively. The second of these breaks off in the middle of a conversation, the third has neither beginning nor end. The opening sentence of the fourth implies that it is the continuation of a conversation which cannot be certainly identified with any that has gone before, and the same document concludes with a sentence which does not seem likely to be the end of the extract. The fifth begins with what is clearly a fresh narrative without reference to anything that has preceded it and must have ended in the _lacuna_ caused by the missing pages, while the sixth, whose beginning has been lost in the same _lacuna_, ends in the middle of a phrase. Of these six documents, the third only covers one and a half pages of the MS. and is manifestly a fragment of some document which has somehow strayed over into this place; but as it appears directly after the words: “A Part of the Books of the Saviour,” I hesitate to say that it never formed part of any of the other documents in the text, and I shall therefore speak of it hereafter as “The Interpolated Fragment” merely. Only the two first of the six, also, can claim to be included under the title of the _Pistis Sophia_, but they are by far the largest and take up between them more than half the volume. This arrangement follows strictly the rule of