JEU, Books of. - Gnostic writings attributed to Enoch by the Pistis Sophia (v.; ed. C. Schmidt, Koptisch-gnostische Schriften, Leipzig 1905, p. 158, lines 8-21; p. 228, line 35; p. 229, lines 6, 16).
C. Schmidt, in the work cited here (pp. XVIII-XXVI), relying on the analogies with the Pistis Sophia and on internal criteria, believes he can identify the two books of J. in a papyrus codex, written in Sahidic Coptic, of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, called Codex Brucianus, after the name of the Scottish explorer J. Bruce who acquired it in Egypt on the advice of Woide. E. C. Amélineau published a French version of it in Paris in 1891 (Notice sur le papyrus gnostique Bruce, texte et traduction). C. Schmidt, comparing Woide's transcription with the original text, published a more accurate annotated German version of it in Texte und Untersuch., 8, II, and then in 1905 in the work cited above (pp. 257-329). In the latter he maintains that the two books of J. were written in Greek in the first half of the 3rd century by the Gnostic sect of the Barbelians (cf. Irenaeus, I, 29-31; PG 7, 691-704).
The first book, entitled Book of the great κατὰ μυστήριον λόγος, presents the risen Jesus revealing to the disciples the complex successive emanations of the Supreme Principle which were accomplished through his vicar J. Jesus shows the way to reach the heavenly treasures, reveals the secret names, the seals, the magical formulas that will open that way, celebrates liturgical mysteries. These are amplified in the second book in which, among other things, Jesus administers three Baptisms, of water, of fire, of spirit. New light on the Gnostic apocrypha is revealed by 42 Gnostic works on Coptic papyri found at Nag Hammadi. Cf. Biblica, Eluchus bibliogr., 31 (1950), pp. 71-417.
Bibliography2 works
Pietro De Ambroggi