Intertextuality between the alchemical precepts of Maria

Prophetissa and sayings in the Gospel of Thomas

Lloyd D. Graham

The lifetime of the Egyptian alchemist Maria Prophetissa (Mary the Jewess) was approximately
contemporaneous with the composition of the Gospel of Thomas, which survives solely in a
Coptic manuscript and three Greek fragments found in Egypt. Interestingly, some of the
precepts attributed to Maria are similar in theme and expression to some of the sayings
attributed to Jesus by the author of the gospel.

Kīmiyā, the root of the word “alchemy” has been traced not just to Greek and Chinese origins
but also to km.t, the Egyptian name for Egypt (Coptic kēmi), and early alchemical thought has
been credibly linked to ancient Egyptian theological considerations.1
The Coptic Gospel of Thomas is a collection of the “hidden sayings” of Jesus (Fig. 1);2 many
of its logia possess an alchemical flavour.3 Nevertheless, the specific parallels between some
of its sayings and the precepts of an Egyptian woman later known as Maria Prophetissa4 – one
of the earliest and most important alchemists (Fig. 2)5 – seem to have escaped attention.6 The
intertextuality should be evident from the ensemble of quotations given in the yellow text box
on the following page.

Fig. 1. Incipit of the Gospel of Thomas, as displayed in the Coptic Museum, Cairo.
Author’s photo, Jan 2020.

1
 Fig. 2. Engraving of Maria Prophetissa from Daniel Stolcius (1624) Viridarium chymicum
figuris cupro incisis adornatum et poeticis picturis illustratum, L. Jennis, Frankfurt.
Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0.7

Maria Prophetissa
“One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.”8
“If you do not render corporeal substances incorporeal, and incorporeal substances
corporeal, and if the two are not made one, nothing will be achieved.”9
“Join the male and the female, and you will find what is sought.”10
Gospel of Thomas
“On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will
you do?”11
“When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer* and the
outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female
into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female [...] then you
will enter the kingdom.”12
* “And by the inside like the outside he means this: He means that the inside is the soul
and he means that the outside is the body” [2 Clement 12:4].13

2
As the quotation from 2 Clement (a 2nd-century CE homily)14 makes clear, the “inner” and
“outer” in Jesus’s saying denote spirit (incorporeal) and body (corporeal), respectively, just as
“upper” and “lower” denote heavenly (incorporeal) and earthly (corporeal).15 Maria – for
whom the culinary bain-marie is named16 – was an operative alchemist and was probably
thinking primarily in terms of material transformations, but true alchemy has always been a
profoundly metaphysical, mystical and spiritual process.17 It is beyond the scope of this very
brief report to consider the potential meanings of the enigmatic aphorisms attributed to Jesus
and Maria;18 the aim here is simply to highlight the similarities in theme and expression.
The intertextuality is all the more interesting because of the potential overlap in time and
place for the writings. Maria is believed to have lived in Roman Egypt sometime between the
1st and early 3rd centuries CE.19 Her words survive primarily through quotations (in Greek) by
the late 3rd- / early 4th-century alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis20 (now Akhmim) in Upper
Egypt. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas is a component of the Nag Hammadi library, a
collection of Gnostic scriptures discovered in Upper Egypt in 1945;21 portions of a Greek
version of Thomas had previously been found in Middle Egypt at Oxyrhynchus.22 While the
age of Thomas and its relation to the canonical gospels are still a matter of debate, it seems
safe to say that the prototype was a Greek text composed somewhere between the late 1st and
early 3rd centuries CE.23 Bart Ehrman assigns it to the early 2nd century.24
The date-ranges assigned to Maria’s life and to the composition of the Gospel of Thomas are
almost coterminous. Her origin and workplace in Egypt are not known,25 but Zosimos – “who
refers frequently and in detail to Maria the Jewess”26 – came from Panopolis and may have
worked at Alexandria.27 Panopolis/Akhmim and Nag Hammadi (where the Coptic version of
Thomas was found) are just 90 km apart by road, and Oxyrhynchus (where the Greek
fragments of Thomas were found) lies mid-way between Nag Hammadi and Alexandria.

© Lloyd D. Graham, 2020, excluding third-party quotations. v.02_29.01.21

Cite as: Lloyd D. Graham (2020) “Intertextuality between the alchemical precepts of Maria Prophetissa and
sayings in the Gospel of Thomas,” online at https://independent.academia.edu/LloydGraham.

1
Aaron Cheak (2013) “Circumambulating the Alchemical Mysterium,” In: Alchemical Traditions – From
Antiquity to the Avant-Garde, ed. Aaron Cheak, Numen Books, Auckland, 18-43, at 23; also, in the same
volume, Aaron Cheak (2013) “The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy,” 44-91.
2
Gospel of Thomas, logion 1; Marvin Meyer (1992) The Gospel of Thomas – The Hidden Sayings of Jesus,
HarperCollins, New York, 21. The gospel is now housed in the Coptic Museum, Cairo.
3
E.g., Brian Cotnoir (2006) The Weiser Concise Guide to Alchemy, Red Wheel/Weiser, York Beach, 51; Dennis
W. Hauck (2008) The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy, Alpha/Penguin, New York, 235-242.
4
Sometimes called Mary the Prophetess, Maria the Jewess, Maria Hebraea, Mariya the Sage, or similar.
5
Raphael Patai (1994) The Jewish Alchemists – A History and Source Book, Princeton University Press, New
Jersey, 60 (chronology) & 91 (importance).
6
In January 2021, eight months after the initial release of this paper online, I became aware of a book chapter
published in 2019 which connects Maria’s work with a logion of Thomas different to the ones that I had
selected (see note 18 below).
7
Wellcome Collection WMS 4 MS.257, online at http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1148810.
8
Carl G. Jung (1993) Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 12: Psychology and Alchemy [Bollingen Series 20],
Princeton University Press, 23 & 160. This axiom was quoted well into the Middle Ages; Patai (1994), 66.
9
Cited by Olympiodorus, 5th century CE; Cheak (2013) 33 and Patai (1994), 67.

3
10
Patai (1994), 66.
11
Gospel of Thomas, logion 11; Meyer (1992), 25.
12
Gospel of Thomas, logion 22; Meyer (1992), 33. Logion 106 also advocates making the two into one.
13
Meyer (1992), 91. Clement knew of the saying in logion 22 either from Thomas or from another source.
14
Early Christian Writings – 2 Clement, online at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/2clement.html.
15
Jung (1993), 160 (Fig. 78).
16
Patai (1994), 62, incl. Figs. 5.1-5.3.
17
Cheak (2013), 18-43.
18
Of Maria’s axiom, “One becomes two...” [= yellow text box, first quotation], Peter Marshall writes that “It
reflects the alchemical notion of the union of male and female principles (cf. Gospel of Thomas [NHC II.2],
Log. 114), with the partial unity of the hermaphrodite in turn creating the real unity of the Philosopher’s
Stone.” Peter Marshall (2019) “Alchemy and Gnosis from Antiquity to Early Modern Times: ‘As Above So
Below,’” In: The Gnostic World, eds. Garry W. Trompf, Gunner B. Mikkelsen & Jay Johnston, Routledge,
London & New York, 397-406, at 401.
19
F. Sherwood Taylor (1930) “A Survey of Greek Alchemy,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 50.1, 109-139, at 113
& 116; Patai (1994), 60; Arthur Greenberg (2000) A Chemical History Tour – Picturing Chemistry from
Alchemy to Modern Molecular Science, Wiley, New York, 26 & 71.
20
Patai (1994), 60 & 81-91.
21
James M. Robinson (1990) “Introduction,” In: The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. James M. Robinson, 3rd edn.,
HarperSanFrancisco, 22-26.
22
P.Oxy. 1, 654 and 655; Meyer (1992), 3 & 65-75.
23
Meyer (1992), 5; Ivan Miroshnik ov (2018) The Gospel of Thomas and Plato [Nag Hammadi and Manichean
Studies 93], Brill, Leiden, 258.
24
Bart D. Ehrman (2003) Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, xii.
25
Patai (1994), 60.
26
Patai (1994), 81.
27
Patai (1994), 60.