[2] Codex Tchacos, also written in Coptic, is likely older than NHC XI based on radiocarbon dating,[6] but it is unknown exactly when the original texts were composed.
The all-glorious One, Youel, speaks to Allogenes and reveals that he was given a great power by the Eternal before he arrived to distinguish things that are difficult and unknown.
After a hundred years of seeking, Allogenes experiences a revelation of the divine Autogenes, the youthful Savior, and other spiritual beings.
He then sees holy powers by means of the Luminaries of the virginal male Barbelo, who guide him to the Vitality and Existence where he can know himself and the Unknown One.
Allogenes describes his journey of seeking self-knowledge and encountering an eternal, intellectual, undivided motion that pertains to all the formless powers.
[8] In the introduction, Allogenes and his son pray to God for a spirit of knowledge to reveal mysteries and understand where they come from, where they're going, and what they need to do to live, while on a mountain called Tabor.
A bright cloud surrounds him, and he hears a message from it telling him that his prayer has been heard, and he will be told the gospel before leaving this place.
[2] Although the roughly contemporary opponents of Allogenes literature provide some clues to its origin by virtue of their opinions, there is little concord among scholars in this regard; other than that it is Gnostic, it has yet to be definitively classified.
"[9] Wire[10] identifies concordances between Allogenes and the Greek Corpus Hermeticum or Hermetica, Apocryphon of John, Trimorphic Protennoia, Epistle of Eugnostos, the Sophia of Jesus Christ and the NHC Gospel of the Egyptians.
Porphyry identified Allogenes in the same breath as Zostrianos, and in this purely Gnostic context, Wire adds the Untitled Text of the Bruce Codex, Marsanes and The Three Steles of Seth.
Nevertheless, based on the considerable Neoplatonic content and negative theology of Allogenes, Wire concludes that the text that we have is the same one read by Plotinus and his school in the 260s.
John Douglas Turner suggests that Allogenes was written in direct response to the Neoplatonists' rejection of Zostrianos; Porphyry notes that his colleague Amelius wrote a 40-volume refutation to that text, which no longer survives and may have appeared around 240 CE.
On the other hand, Dylan Burns separates from the rest in proposing that the NHC Allogenes is a post-Plotonian redaction of an earlier Greek text and is therefore not the same as the one known to Plotinus.
David Brons identifies the NHC Allogenes as "Non-Valentinian," but used by the school, and the Nag Hammadi Codex in which it has been recovered is otherwise devoted exclusively to Valentian texts.