The distinguished Princeton papyrologist AnneMarie Luijendijk has done a great service to scholarship in this edition of a newly discovered text. The Gospel of the lots of Mary is contained in a miniature codex (75 × 69 mm in size; approximately one-ninth the size of a JEH page), and consists of seventy-six pages inscribed with oracles in Coptic. The manuscript comes, Luijendijk estimates, from the fifth or sixth century ce. After a prologue setting out the credentials of the work (‘The Gospel of the Lots of Mary’) there are thirty-seven oracles, each covering a double-page opening. The content of the oracles is in most cases an instruction (for example ‘do not be careless', ‘go immediately’, ‘be brave and endure’), accompanied by a prediction (‘they will trust you’, ‘its time has not yet come’, ‘you will find joy’). The codex, then, is not a mere crystal ball but has a strong ethical thrust, in particular exhorting the seeker, in terms that evoke the Epistle of James, not to be double-minded. Luijendijk has very helpfully supplied a lengthy introduction, covering both the codicology and interpretation of the text. After this, there is a transcription of the text with translation, and annotations covering more technical matters and referring to parallels. The Coptic text – while generally easy – is skilfully translated, and it is excellent at the end of the volume to have such very clear plates of each page. As an aside, one might note that this Gospel of the lots of Mary would be a good, short text to use with students.

One point of interpretation which might be questioned concerns the opening pages which describe the nature of this codex: ‘The Gospel of the lots of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, she to whom the angel Gabriel brought the good news.’ The two distinct issues here are the fictive dramatic setting presupposed for the origins of the text, and the implied narrator of the book. On the former, Luijendijk comments that ‘the incipit relates the lots to Mary as mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, delivered through the archangel Gabriel’ (i.e. the lots are taken here to be delivered by Gabriel to Mary); again, ‘In attributing the divinatory good news to the exchange between Gabriel and Mary, each individual consultation of the oracular answers in the codex becomes an imitation, a reenactment of that divine communication’ (p. 28). It is not clear to me, however, that the lots are supposed to have been delivered by Gabriel to Mary, or that this took place at the annunciation. On the other hand, on the question of the implied narrator of the book, Luijendijk rightly argues that the ‘I’ who delivers the instructions is neither the anonymous author nor God nor the oracle-performer, concluding that the voice is the ‘voice of the lots itself’, functioning therefore as ‘a mediator between the human and the divine’. I wonder, however, if a more economical solution, which I mention merely as a suggestion, is to see Mary as the ‘I’ and the imagined inspirer of the text. Such a conclusion might gain force from some of the evidence supplied in this volume, given Luijendijk's emphasis on Mary's role as hearer of prayers, intercessor and addressee of a divinatory text cited. Perhaps, after all, mother Mary comes speaking words of wisdom.

These are merely questions, however, and one looks forward to the further scholarship that this codex will doubtless attract, especially given its claim to evangelical credentials. As a foundation to this future work, Luijendijk has produced an extremely helpful volume about an intriguing work. The whole book is clearly laid out and the text accurately transcribed. (I only noted one rogue epsilon, creeping into the transcription of p. 36 of the codex, though perhaps it is too small and faint to be visible in the photograph.) The indices of both Egyptian-Coptic and Graeco-Coptic vocabulary are very helpful. This is a volume which will be of great assistance and interest to any scholars interested either in the divinatory (and ‘gospel’) contents of this manuscript or in its fascinating place in the history of the book.