Unlike many other texts found at Nag Hammadi, The Treatise on the Resurrection is not pseudepigraphical since the author does not pretend to be an apostolic figure who received a special revelation.
One excerpt states, "Therefore, we are elected to salvation and redemption since we are predestined from the beginning not to fall into the foolishness of those who are without knowledge, but we shall enter into the wisdom of those who have known the Truth.
There is general agreement that the extant Coptic text can be dated to the fourth century before it was hidden in response to Athanasius’s 39th festal letter in 367 CE,[8] which defined the scope of the New Testament.
W. C. Van Unnik (1963) supposed an uncertain second-century date but suggested that the early-Church context led to the treatise's more orthodox view of the resurrection than other Gnostic texts.
[14] Arguing for a much later, fourth-century date, Edwards (1995) suggests that the combination of orthodox and heterodox elements in the text reflects a later, more developed Valentinianism that sought unity after the Arian controversy in the mid-fourth century.
[15] However, Craig (2012) notes that this fourth-century date leaves little room for the original Greek manuscript to circulate and be translated before being hidden around 367 CE.
[16] She finds it is for that reason, given the Pauline tendencies already present in earlier Valentinianism, and the arguments of Puech, Quispel and Van Unnik, that the second-century date is generally preferred.