Origen, in his first Homily on Luke, speaks of those who took in hand or attempted to write gospels: such were those who composed the Gospel which is written according to the Egyptians and the Gospel entitled of the Twelve.
2Whence it is with reason that after the Word had told about the End, Salome saith: Until when shall men continue to die?
3And it is advisedly that the Lord makes answer: So long as women bear children.
4And why do not they who walk by anything rather than the true rule of the Gospel go on to quote the rest of that which was said to Salome?
5For when she had said: I have done well, then, in not bearing children? the Lord answers and says: Every plant eat thou, but that which hath bitterness eat not.
6When Salome inquired when the things concerning which she asked should be known, the Lord said: When ye have trampled on the garment of shame, and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female.
7In the first place, then, we have not this saying in the four Gospels that have been delivered to us, but in that according to the Egyptians.
8For the Lord himself being asked by some one when his kingdom should come, said: When the two shall be one, and the outside (that which is without) as the inside (that which is within), and the male with the female neither male nor female.
9The Lord said to Salome when she inquired: How long shall death prevail? As long as ye women bear children: not because life is an ill, and the creation evil: but as showing the sequence of nature: for in all cases birth is followed by decay.
10And when the Saviour says to Salome that there shall be death as long as women bear children, he did not say it as abusing birth, for that is necessary for the salvation of believers.
11They are contained, I think (or I take it), in the Gospel according to the Egyptians; for they say that the Saviour himself said: I came to destroy the works of the female; by female he means lust: by works, birth and decay.
12The Naassenes say that the soul is very hard to find and to perceive; for it does not continue in the same fashion or shape or in one emotion so that one can either describe it or comprehend it in essence; and they have these various changes of the soul, set forth in the Gospel entitled according to the Egyptians.
13Their whole deceit (error) and the strength of it they draw from some apocryphal books, especially from what is called the Egyptian Gospel, to which some have given that name; for in it many suchlike things are recorded as from the person of the Saviour, said in a corner, purporting that he showed his disciples that the same person was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.