Editing Apocryphon of John (section)

==Overview==
Many second-century Christians, both Gnostic and orthodox, hoped to receive a transcendent personal revelation such as [[Paul the Apostle]] reported to the church at Corinth ({{bible verse|2|Corinthians|12:1-4|KJV}}) or that [[John the Revelator]] experienced on the isle of [[Patmos]], which inspired the ''[[Book of Revelation]]''.<ref>Pagels 2003:97 and bibliography at note 69</ref> As ''Acts'' narrates what happened after the time Jesus ascended to heaven, so the ''Apocryphon of John'' begins at the same point but relates how Christ reappeared to John.

The opening words of the ''Secret Book of John'' are, "The teaching of the saviour, and the revelation of the mysteries and the things hidden in silence, even these things which he taught [[John the Apostle|John, his disciple]]." The author John is immediately specified as "[[John the Apostle|John]], the brother of [[James, son of Zebedee|James]]—who are the sons of [[Zebedee]]." The remainder of the book is a vision of spiritual realms and of the prior history of spiritual humanity.

There are four separate surviving manuscripts of "The Secret Book of John".  One was purchased in Egypt in 1896 (the [[Berlin Codex]]) and three were found in the [[Nag Hammadi]] codices discovered in 1945.  All date to the 4th century and are [[Coptic language|Coptic]] translations from [[Greek language|Greek]]. Three appear to have been independently produced. Two of the four are similar enough that they probably were copied from a single source.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Owens |first=Lance |title=The Apocryphon of John Collection |url=http://gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl_sbj.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070103004500/http://gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl_sbj.htm |archive-date=3 January 2007 |access-date=24 June 2022 |website=Gnostic Society Library}}</ref>  

Although the different versions of the texts have minor variants (the [[Berlin Codex]] has many minor differences with Nag Hammadi II and IV), all texts generally agree on the assertion that the main revealing entity was Jesus.{{citation needed|date=September 2019}}