This author is best-known for his long association with Living Spiritual Teacher and best-selling spiritual writer Cynthia Bourgeault. Together with Bourgeault, Ward Bauman began the Wisdom Schools in the upper Midwest twenty-plus years ago. Cynthia writes in her foreword to this book about the feeling at that time around rediscovering the non-canonical gospels: “The main channel of scholarship steered overwhelmingly toward the Gospel of Thomas, arguably the most important text in the collection. Ward Bauman headed like a bee toward honey toward the Gospel of Philip. His loyalty to this text has remained unflagging … and like all faithful and committed love journeys, it has yielded rich results.”
Bauman’s book is then divided into three parts: (1) A substantive twenty-five-page introduction to the discovery of the Gospel of Philip, its author, the community that gathered around its early reception, the major themes, and their meaning for today. (2) A new and original translation of the work — “reordered,” because we lack an authoritative manuscript, and so Bauman explains, “I set about restructuring the text into a somewhat coherent entity based on the sequence found within the text: the prologue, baptism and anointing, eucharist, the bridal chamber, and the great restoration.” (3) Five essays in a final section called “The Philip Mysteries Explained.” These all center around ideas and images such as the Jerusalem Temple and the Holy of Holies, and how the Philip Gospel aimed to counter the imperial Church, established by Constantine, focusing believers instead on how the mysteries of Christ are to be born anew, in people, in communities of committed people, with hope for a future restoration of Earth as a paradise.
