“Therefore I Say, Mary”

Abstract The recently published P.Oxy. 5577 bears such striking similarities to the Gospel of Mary that this article argues that it may be from the missing pages in which Mary recalls her vision of Jesus and their private conversation. By examining the shared themes of cosmology and eschatology, incarnation and divine goodness, baptism and salvation, Jesus appearing as and through the νοῦς , and the privileged role of Mary, this article argues that we see a continuous teaching from the beginning of the extant Coptic Gos. Mary, through the Greek fragments including P.Oxy. 5577, to the end of the gospel. Although P.Oxy. 5577 cannot definitively be identified as Gos. Mary, the correlations are enough to take the suggestion of its likelihood seriously.