Note 21 — INTRODUCTION

Mary Magdalene appears as the chief interlocutor in the dialogues with the Saviour, asking, it is said, thirty-nine questions in all out of a total of forty-six. A Gnostic work is mentioned by Epiphanius in his twenty-sixth Heresy, as being used by a sect which he calls “the Gnostics” only, and bearing the title [the great] “Interrogations of Mary.” Hence Harnack (Über das gnostische Buch Pistis Sophia, pp. 107 ff.) concludes that this may have been the original title of our text or of some part of it, and Schmidt seems to agree with him. But the practices which Epiphanius attributes to his Gnostics are expressly condemned in one of the later Documents of our text, nor do any of the tenets which he assigns to them agree with those here described.