Gospel of Philip · 9 of 13 · tr. Thomas O. Lambdin
Section 1i
His seed was Jesus, and the plant was the cross.” The tree of life in the middle of that garden of paradise is an olive tree, and from the olive tree comes chrism, and from that oil comes the resurrection.
THE WORLD EATS BODIES The world eats bodies, and everything eaten in the world dies.
Truth eats life, but no one fed on truth will find death.
Jesus came and he carried food, giving life to whoever wanted it so they might not die.
ADAM IN PARADISE God planted a garden, and humans were placed in the garden.
They lived among many trees with the blessing and in the image of god.
The things in it I will eat as I wish.
Here in this garden they will tell me, “Eat this or do not eat that, just as you wish.” Here I will eat all things, where the tree of knowledge is.
That tree killed Adam, but here the tree of knowledge made us alive.
The law was the tree.
It has the power to give knowledge of good and evil.
It did not remove me from evil or set me among the good.
It created death for those who ate it.
When they said, “Eat this or do not eat that,” death began.
SUPERIORITY OF CHRISM TO BAPTISM The chrism is superior to baptism.
From the word chrism we have been called Christians, and surely not from the word baptism.
And because of the chrism Christ has his name.
The father anointed the son, and the son anointed the messengers, and the messengers anointed us.
Who has been anointed possesses everything: resurrection, light, cross, holy spirit.
The father gave him this in the bridal chamber.
He merely accepted the gift.
The father was in the son and the son in the father.
This is the kingdom of heaven.
LAUGHING CHRIST The lord said it perfectly: “Some have entered the kingdom of heaven laughing, and they have come out laughing.” They do not remain there: one because he is not a Christian, another because he laments his later acts.
As soon as Christ went down into the water he came out laughing at everything in this world, not because he thought it a trifle, but out of contempt.
Whoever wants to enter the kingdom of heaven will do so.
Whoever despises everything of this world, scorns it as a trifle, will emerge laughing.
So with the bread and the cup and the oil, for above is one superior to all these.
CREATION The world came into being through error.
The agent who made it wanted it to be imperishable and immortal.
He failed.
He came up with less than his desire.
The world was never incorruptible, nor was its maker.
Things are not imperishable, but children are.
Nothing can endure that is not first a child.
Whoever cannot receive surely will be unable to give.
CUP OF PRAYER The cup of prayer holds wine and water.
It is appointed for the blood for which thanks is given.
It is filled with holy spirit and is of the perfect human.
When we drink, we drink the perfect human.
LIVING WATER The living water is a body.
We must put on the living human.
When you go into the water, you strip naked and put on the living human.
A HORSE SIRES A HORSE A horse sires a horse, a human gives birth to a human, a god engenders a god.
Compare the bridegroom and the bride.
Their children were born in the chamber.
No Jew was ever born to Greek parents as long as the world has existed.
And as Christians, we do not descend from the Jews.
There was another people.
These blessed ones were the chosen ones, the chosen people of the living god; and then the true man, the earthly son, and the seed of the earthly son.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text draws parallels between biological lineage (horse sires horse) and spiritual lineage (god engenders god).
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
Entering the kingdom requires despising everything of this world and scorning it as a trifle to emerge laughing.
The reunification of complementary divine principles (male-female, spirit-matter) as a symbol of wholeness and salvation.
[auto] The text explicitly references the 'bridal chamber' where the Father gave the gift to the Son and compares the bridegroom and bride as central to the spiritual lineage.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
A chain of anointing is described: Father to Son, Son to messengers, messengers to us.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The world is said to come into being through error and failure rather than as a positive substance of evil.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
The text reinterprets the tree of knowledge that killed Adam as a source of life for the initiated, reclaiming transgressive knowledge.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The living water is described as a body that must be put on, linking the human form to divine reality.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
Entering the kingdom requires despising everything of this world and scorning it as a trifle.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
Those anointed possess resurrection, light, and the holy spirit, indicating transformation into divine likeness.
Iamblichean ritual practice that engages the gods directly through consecrated material symbols and actions, on the premise that divine power descends into properly prepared matter — distinct from philosophical contemplation alone.
The anointing with chrism is described as a ritual act that confers possession of resurrection, light, and the holy spirit.