Concept
The Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex—also called the Untitled Treatise, the Untitled Apocalypse, and The Gnosis of the Light—is a Gnostic text. When James Bruce acquired the codex in Egypt in 1769, "very little knowledge" was available about this period of Gnostic Christianity. It was one of the few known surviving Gnostic works until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. Carl Schmidt described the text's author as having "full knowledge of Greek philosophy" and being "full of the doctrine of the Platonic ideas." James Bruce purchased the Bruce Codex near Medinet Habu, Upper Egypt, around 1769. It contained text in Coptic, Arabic, and Geʽez. Carl Gottfried Woide transcribed the entire codex in 1776. The Bodleian Library obtained the codex in 1848, and in 1886 they bound the texts together. Between Woide's transcription of the codex and the 1970s, seven leaves disappeared altogether, and there is significant damage throughout the manuscripts. Among the texts in the Bruce Codex were the Untitled Text and the Books of Jeu. The manuscript in the Bruce Codex is a Coptic translation of an older Greek original. The existing Coptic manuscript of the Untitled Text probably dates to around 350 CE, and an original Greek manuscript may date to the late third century. It is written in the Sahidic dialect. It contains 31 leaves in uncial script on dark, reddish papyrus, including eight fragmentary leaves and four missing leaves. There are five leaves that do not clearly correspond with any portions of the text, so they have been variously placed by editors at the beginning or end of the text. The text may be several texts compiled together; in 's edited sequence, chapter 21 is possibly a different version of the text that recounts the same stories as earlier chapters. The opening of the text describes the First Father as the king of unassailables and the first source who cannot be understood. He gave form to the All within himself and is the source of all. The demiurge is the Father of the All and oversees the aeons, which are a crown upon his head.