JEÜ, 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), basing himself on the analogies with the Pistis Sophia and on internal criteria, believes that he has identified the two books of J. in a papyrus codex, written in Sa'idic Coptic, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, known as the Codex Brucianus, after the Scottish explorer J. Bruce, who acquired it in Egypt on the recommendation 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 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 third century by the Gnostic sect of the Barbelians (cf. Ireneo, 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 came to completion through his vicar J. Jesus shows the way to reach the heavenly treasures, reveals the secret names, seals, and magic formulas that will open this way, and celebrates liturgical mysteries. These are expanded in the second book, in which, among other things, Jesus administers three Baptisms: of water, of fire, and of spirit. New light on the Gnostic apocrypha is shed by forty-two Gnostic works on Coptic papyri found at Nag Hammadi. Cf. Biblica, Eluchus bibliogr., 31 (1950), pp. 71–417.