AN IMPORTANT BIBLICAL FIND

Several most important discoveries have just been made in Cairo bearing upon the history of the Christian Church in the first two centuries of the era. Among them is a manuscript from the fifth century which is a Coptic translation of three original gnostic writings of the second century. Its value consists not only in the fact that it hands down old gnostic writings that have hitherto been unknown even by name, but, above all, in the circumstance that one of them was known to Irenæus and epitomized by him, without any statement of the source from which he had derived it. The discovery of this manuscript enables us for the first time to test the accounts of the gnostic system as given by the Church Fathers in the light of the original manuscript. It contains three independent treatises entitled "The Gospel According to Mary or the Apocryphon of John;" second. "The Wisdom of Jesus Christ;" third, "The Practice of Peter." "The Gospel of Mary" is the document used by Irenæus and consists mainly of the Revelation of John. "The Wisdom of Jesus Christ" consists of questions addressed to him by his disciples and his answers. "The Practice of Peter" is a narrative of one of Peter's miracles of healing.