Unearthing the Solitary: An “Old Philology” Note on Gos. Thom. 61,5

The article contests the scholarly consensus that the text of Gos. Thom. 61,5 as transmitted by NHC II needs emendation. On a strictly “old” philological basis, I argue instead that the Coptic reading šēf should be maintained as it is, and that it originated as a translational error from Greek. I suggest that this semantic diffraction proves that the whole saying probably circulated in Greek before being rendered into Egyptian. Some provisionary conclusions are finally drawn about the linguistic facies and the grammatical interpretation of the reconstructed logion, leading to a new English translation of both the Coptic and the divined Greek texts.