Note 628 — Chapter VI · PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: SIMON MAGUS

Probably this is the meaning of the well-known saying of Jesus, generally quoted as coming from the Gospel according to the Egyptians, in answer to Salome’s enquiry as to the time of the coming of His kingdom: Ὅταν τὸ τῆς αἰσχύνης ἔνδυμα πατήσητε, καὶ ὅταν γένται τά δύο ἔν, καὶ τὸ ἔξω ὡς τὸ ἔσω; καὶ τό ἄρρεν μετὰ τῆς θηλείας, οὔτε ἄρρεν οὔτε θῆλυ. “When ye tread under foot the garment of shame, and when the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female, neither male nor female.” See Hilgenfeld, N.T. extra Canon. recept., Lipsiae, 1884, vol. IV. p. 44. “The outside as the inside” may refer to the body and the rib which was in the Genesis story taken out of it. So the Pistis Sophia (p. 378, Copt.) speaks of “the Light of Lights, the places of Truth and Goodness, the place of the Holy of Holies, the place of the Holy of all Holies, the place in which there is neither male nor female, nor shape, but Light everlasting, unspeakable.” Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 146, Cruice, carrying this a step further, speaks of heaven as a place “where there is neither male nor female, but a new creature, a new man who is androgyne (ἀρρηνόθηλυς).”