From my journal notes in 2005, when I read this book. It was a new acquisition at my previous place of work. Though I am not religious, I always strive to read items about religion to learn more about others as well as about history:

>>This Gospel, along with others, was suppressed by the mainstream church for being against dogma. Yet, upon reading this book, one gets such a better sense of the roots of Christianity, and those roots were for inclusiveness and more egalitarian roles for men and women. Fascinating on the view of the divine as balanced between male and female, and the concept of the nuptial chamber as the holy of holies certainly counters the repressive dogma of mainstream Christianity of sex as sinful. Sex between two people who love each other is not only beautiful, but is an expression of the divine. That Pope Innocent III (1160-1216) stated that "the sexual act is so shameful that it is intrinsically evil" is just repression and hypocrisy at its worst, a "power trip" that seems to get away from nature and likely from Jesus's teachings. After all, Jesus was human as well as divine. If he was human, why would he not love a woman? And even if he did not love Mary Magdalene, would Jesus really condemn married couples and the nature of love? Probably not, and this book seems to make Jesus closer to humans as well as more loving, and the sexual act of love as the beautiful expression it is. That some arrogant pope and a few males seeking to keep their power made such horrible pronouncements that have led so many to feel guilty or dirty over something natural is simply terrible, and in my view, at least, unconscionable. . . . The book overall was good with a solid introduction to put the text in context, and the text itself is short, simple, yet thought provoking. You really get a sense of how early Christians, some at least, were like. ( )

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Leloup-LEvangile-de-Philippe/69322
> Raoul (Amazon) : https://www.amazon.fr/gp/customer-reviews/R18KMNQ334W3M0/

> L’ÉVANGILE DE PHILIPPE, de Jean-Yves Leloup (Albin Michel, 2003). — L’Évangile de Philippe fait partie des textes apocryphes écrits en copte qui furent trouvés, à partir de 1945, dans les grottes de Nag Hammadi en Haute Égypte. Cet évangile gnostique du IIe siècle après J.C., attribué à l’un des disciples les plus proches de Jésus, permet de découvrir une figure peut-être plus humaine, très libre dans ses propos et dans ses attitudes vis-à-vis des hommes et des femmes qui l’entourent. (Spiritualités Vivantes)

EL EVANGELIO DE FELIPE

El Evangelio de Felipe es considerado sin duda alguna
como uno de los textos más importantes de la llamada
biblioteca de Nag-Hammadi. En esta región egipcia,
situada a unos setenta kilómetros al norte de Luxor, fue hallada
en 1945, ocultos en una vasija, una serie de códices escritos en
copto que contenían copias de textos de los primeros tiempos del
cristianismo y que, posiblemente, fueron escondidos por monjes
cristianos en el siglo IV.

El descubrimiento de aquellos textos y su posterior traducción
han aportado una fuente de información enorme sobre el
cristianismo tanto en su vertiente histórica como teológica y
espiritual.

.. el Maestro amaba a María más que a todos los discipulos
y a menudo la besaba en la boca."
los que dicen que el Señor primero murió y después
resucitó yerran, pues El primero resucitó y después
murió...

...el Alma de Adán está animada por el Soplo, su
madre se lo dio.

".... algunos dicen que Maria fue fecundada por el
Espiritu Santo, no saben lo que dicen."
Este Evangelio, de fuerte contenido gnóstico, está compuesto
de sentencias como las anteriores que revelan aspectos ineditos
de las figuras de Jesús y la Magdalena, así como elementos
de controversia respecto a la ortodoxia cristiana tanto en lo que
se refiere al Antiguo Testamento como principalmente al
Nuevo Testamento.

A menudo criptico, otras profundamente revelador, El
Evangelio de Felipe es hoy un texto imprescindible para cual-
quier persona interesada en conocer mejor y más profunda-
mente las enseñanzas de los primeros siglas del cristianismo.

The Gospel of Philip is from the large and important Codex II of the Nag Hammadi Library, and it consists of mystical pronouncements having to do with salvation and the Christian sacraments, notably the nymphon ("bridal chamber"). This edition is one of a set of ancient Gnostic scriptures in double translation being issued by the Inner Traditions imprint; they are translated from the Coptic into French by Orthodox theologian Jean-Yves LeLoup, and in this case Englished by Joseph Rowe. I have previously read and appreciated Leloup's treatment of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. As in that case, the translated text is printed in parallel with a typeset version of the Coptic original. The sequence of the contents is different than I have seen in other editions of the Gospel of Philip, but it evidently follows the first translation by H.M. Schenke (1960). Leloup provides reference to the original codex pagination, and also supplies a division into 127 numbered logia ("sayings") that may be original here.

Again, consistent with the presentation in The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the English edition of Leloup's Gospel of Philip features a foreword by American scholar of religions Jacob Needleman. While I had found Needleman's contribution in the Mary volume to be a bit credulous and underwhelming, he was more restrained and effective in his remarks leading into Philip.

In Leloup's thirty-page interpretive introduction, he is at pains to present the Gospel of Philip as standing in a mutually illuminating dialogue with the gospels of the biblical canon, rather than a heretical deviation or more authentic alternative. His reading (followed by Needleman) is that the nymphon is a mystically enhanced approach to the conjugal act of human sex. To arrive at this perspective, Leloup draws on more recent kabbalistic materials, including Abulafian doctrines, as interpreted by Charles Mopsik. Leloup reads a number of logia as enjoining what I would characterize as magical eugenics.

This understanding is at variance with an interpretation of the Gospel of Philip I have previously encountered in the work of Kurt Rudolph, who took the nymphon to be the site of "the union of the gnostic with his ‘angel image’." I think the translation provided by Leloup can equally support either reading. Furthermore, I think that both readings are likely to be of value to esoteric practitioners of my own neo-gnostic stripe.

An interesting essay by LeLoup introducing the document. We have here sayings and teachings attributed to 'Yeshua" and LeLoup discusses their relationship to both Jewish and New Testament teachings of the time. The translation of the text is shown opposite the actual manuscript and in a number of places he tells us to compare that saying to a particular verse in the New Testament. Those who know more about theology and the early church would probably get more from this book than I did, but I am glad I read it.