The Gospel of the Egyptians is no longer extant but was mentioned by Hippolytus and Epiphanius. Most of our citations come from Clement of Alexandria, and there is also a reference in the Excerpts of Theodotus. The gospel was apparently used in Egypt in the second and third centuries.
Ron Cameron provides these comments in his introduction in The Other Gospels:
Despite the paucity of the extant fragments, the theology of the Gospel of the Egyptians is clear: each fragment endorses sexual asceticism as the means of breaking the lethal cycle of birth and of overcoming the alleged sinful differences between male and female, enabling all persons to return to what was understood to be their primordial and androgynous state. This theology is reflected in speculative interpretations of the Genesis accounts of the Creation and the Fall (Gen. 1:27; 2:16-17, 24; 3:21), according to which the unity of the first man was disrupted by the creation of woman and sexual division. Salvation was thus thought to be the recapitulation of Adam and Eve's primordial state, the removal of the body and the reunion of the sexes. This return to the primordial state was said to be accomplished - or at least symbolized - by baptism. In this respect, the Gospel of the Egyptians is to be compared with Paul's letter to the Galatians (Gal. 3:26-28) and the Corinthians (I Cor. 12:13), which presuppose this baptismal theology but use the tradition differently, interpreting the theme of unity as a social category to refer to the unity of Jews and Greeks, slaves and freedmen, males and females.
Cameron goes on to note that the the "compositional technique" of expanding sayings into short dialogues is similar to that found in the Gospel of Thomas and in the Dialogue of The Savior "both in terms of form and structure and in terms of subject matter and content." Cameron states concerning dating, "The earliest possible date for composition of this gospel would be in the middle of the first century, when sayings traditions such as those attested in I Corinthians were being circulated. The latest possible date would be in the middle of the second century, when certain gnostic groups appropriated this gospel, making use of these sayings which shortly thereafter were quoted by Clement. Based on compositional parallels in the morphology of the tradition, a date in the late first or early second century is most likely."
Origen, in his first Homily on Luke, speaks of those who 'took
in hand' or 'attempted' to write gospels (as Luke says in his prologue). These,
he says, came to the task rashly, without the needful gifts of grace, unlike
Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke himself. Such were those who composed the Gospel
entitled 'of the Twelve'.
Apart from this there are but few mentions of the book. A series of passages
from Clement of Alexandria is our chief source of knowledge. They are as
follows:
Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. 9. 64.
Whence it is with reason that after the Word had told about the End, Salome saith: Until when shall men continue to die? (Now, the Scripture speaks of man in two senses, the one that is seen, and the soul: and again, of him that is in a state of salvation, and him that is not: and sin is called the death of the soul) and it is advisedly that the Lord makes an answer: So long as women bear children.
66. And 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: for when she had said, 'I have done well, then, in not bearing children?' (as if childbearing were not the right thing to accept) the Lord answers and says: Every plant eat thou, but that which hath bitterness eat not.
iii. 13. 92. When 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. In 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.
(The so-called Second Epistle of Clement has this, in a slightly different form, c. xii. 2: For 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 themale with the female neither male nor female.)
There are allusions to the saying in the Apocryphal Acts, see pp. 335, 429, 450.
iii. 6. 45. The Lord said to Salome when she inquired: How long shall death prevail? 'As long as ye women bera 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.
Excerpts from Theodotus, 67. And 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.
Strom. iii. 9. 63. But those who set themselves against God's creation because of continence, which has a fair-sounding name, quote also those words which were spoken to Salome, of which I made mention before. They are contained, I think (or I take it) in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. For they say that 'the Savior himself said: I came to destroy the works of the female'. By female he means lust: by works, birth and decay.
Hippolytus against Heresies, v. 7. (The 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 its essence. And they have these various changes of the soul, set forth in the Gospel entitled according to the Egyptians.
Epiphanius, Heresy lxii. 2 (Sabellians). Their 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 (or attributed) 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.
All this goes to show that this Gospel was a secondary work with a distinct doctrinal tendency. It resembles later Gnostic books such as the Pistis Sophia in assigning an important role in the dialogues with Christ to the female disciples.