Who Wrote and Read the Secret Revelation of John?
We can start to answer the question of who may have written and read this work by tracing the history of the Secret Revelation of John from its rediscovery in Egypt back to the time and place of its composition and then forward through history to the present. The Secret Revelation of John was completely unknown to the modern world until 1896, when a fifth-century papyrus book appeared on the antiquities market in Cairo. It was purchased by the German scholar Carl Reinhardt and taken to Berlin.’ It contained not only the Secret Revelation of John, but three other works as well: the Gospel of Mary, the Sophia of Jesus Christ, and the Acts of Peter.’ All were written in the Coptic language, which is the last stage of ancient Egyptian transcribed into Greek letters (with a few additional letters from Demotic). The Egyptian dealer from Achmim who sold the book to Reinhardt told him that a peasant had found the book in the niche of a wall. This story cannot possibly be true, since no manuscr
