Bruce Codex


The Bruce Codex is a Gnostic manuscript acquired by the British Museum. In 1769, James Bruce purchased the codex in Upper Egypt. It was transferred to the museum with a number of other Oriental texts in 1842. It currently resides in the Bodleian Library, where it has been since 1848.

Contents

The Bruce Codex was bound when it was in the possession of the British Museum - in a random order, with some pages upside-down, since no one involved spoke Coptic. It was edited in 1893 by Carl Schmidt, who also translated it into German; it has since been rebound in Schmidt's ordering. Violet Macdermot translated it into English as The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex in 1978.
Schmidt identified two texts in the Codex, both Gnostic mystery texts; he concluded that the first was identical with the Books of Jeu mentioned in the Pistis Sophia; the other had no title. He associated two small fragments with the second Book of Jeu, which is incomplete.