What survives opens mid-conversation, with the Saviour answering questions about matter, about the nature of sin, and about where sin comes from, the answer being that sin as such does not exist but is produced by acting against nature. He tells the disciples not to lay down rules beyond what he has given them, warns them against being led astray by claims that the kingdom is here or there, commissions them to preach, and departs.
They are afraid. If he was not spared, they reason, how will they be. Mary stands up, turns their minds from grief and tells them his grace will protect them. Peter then asks her to tell them the words of the Saviour that she knows and they do not, since the Saviour loved her more than other women. She describes seeing him in a vision, and being told that where the mind is, there is the treasure.
The account of the vision then breaks off. When the text resumes, the subject is the ascent of a soul past a series of hostile powers that try to detain it. The soul answers each in turn and is released: darkness, then desire, then ignorance, and then a seventh power in seven forms, usually called wrath. To each the soul gives an account of what has been bound and loosed, and it rises to rest in silence.
The dispute follows immediately. Andrew objects that the teaching is strange and he does not believe the Saviour said it. Peter objects on different grounds, asking whether the Saviour really spoke with a woman privately and preferred her to them, and whether they are all now to turn and listen to her. Mary weeps and asks whether Peter thinks she invented it. Levi rebukes Peter for his hot temper, says that if the Saviour made her worthy the disciples are not entitled to reject her, and that the Saviour loved her more than them. The book ends with the disciples going out to preach, though the Coptic and the Greek differ on whether Levi goes alone or they all go.