There is no Male and Female. The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism

MacDonald D.R.



This dissertation was inspired by a gratuitous discovery in the second floor of the Harvard Divinity School library one afternoon in November of 1975. Under the title “There Is No Male and Female: Galatians 3:26-28 and Gnostic Baptismal Tradition” it was accepted by the faculty of Harvard University in April of 1978 and was recommended for publication in the series Harvard Dissertations in Religion. Inasmuch as almost nine years have interrupted this recommendation and its eventual publication, I have expanded the original work in order to acknowledge the explosion of documentation on the issues and texts germane to the topic. It also seemed appropriate to make some sections friendly to the reader by translating quotations in foreign languages, bumping esoteric discussions to footnotes, lubricating transitions, and so on. The result is a document longer than the original, but faithful to it in organization, argumentation, and conclusions.