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[personal profile] sophiaserpentia
I made a comment about this yesterday in [livejournal.com profile] challenging_god and realized I haven't done a systematic treatment of this passage.

Following are logia 5, 6, and 14 from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi II-2)

(5) Jesus said, "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."

(6) His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?"
Jesus said, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered."

(14) Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth - it is that which will defile you."

(Thomas O. Lambdin translation)


My instincts tell me that the text has been corrupted here in recopying and translation, and that what we have as logion 14 was originally intended as an answer to the question posed in the first part of logion 6 because it gives a point-by-point answer to the question. The answer to 6 looks like an interpolation, part of which was taken from logion 5. I don't want to entirely discard the answer portion of 6, though.

My proposed reconstruction would look like this:

His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?"

Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth - it is that which will defile you."


Whether Jesus said this or whether someone put these words in his mouth, I think the underlying message is this: the disciples were asking Jesus to lay out a set of religious practices like those with which they were familiar -- fasts, prayers, and alms. In that context the response is seen to suggest that doing such things as religious observances is what Jesus wants to warn the disciples away from.

Taken a bit further, the way the Gnostics would have read this, it suggests that what Jesus offers is freedom from religious orthodoxy. I read this to mean that he did not want his followers to be "observant Jews" or "observant Christians," thinking that ritual practice will bring understanding or salvation -- but instead to be open-minded mystics -- "passers-by" (as in logion 42).

This relates also to comments in some of the Gnostic texts regarding disrobing; in logion 37 Jesus is quoted as telling his disciples "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the Son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid." (I commented on this a while ago.) Here I read "garment" as a reference to religious doctrine, which the Gnostics wanted people to cast aside in favor of gnosis.

I think too that this was intended as an answer to the Gospel of Matthew. This gospel, as is well-known, was intended to defend Jewish observance within Christianity. My reconstructed passage has an obvious intended parallel to the first part of Matthew, chapter 6, wherein Jesus told his followers not to give alms with fanfare as the hypocrites did, or to fast publically as a show of religious piety. "They have their reward," he said of public religious display -- which reward is not a spiritual benefit but simply the social status that goes with the appearance of piety. The authors of GTh wanted to highlight the way they read this passage as a criticism of religious observance not for the sake of personal spiritual growth but solely for social status.

I think too this is what Paul meant when he wrote that "By dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code" (Romans 7:6)

crossposting to [livejournal.com profile] cp_circle

Date: 2004-01-07 09:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yahvah.livejournal.com
That must be one of the many reasons why the gospel of Thomas is not part of the bible. ;-)

Date: 2004-01-07 10:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com
I'm certain it is. The Bible reflects the perfect choice of a self-serving and worldly heirarchy that wants a congregation of sheep, not freethinkers.

Date: 2004-01-07 10:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yahvah.livejournal.com
What exactly is a freethinker, anyway? That term is so ambiguous.

I'd agree with you that God is self-serving, btw.

Date: 2004-01-07 10:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com
Ah. I was commenting off the cuff. What I meant by that particular usage is someone who is willing and able to question authority. The undercurrent of what we see in the patristic-Gnostic debates is a strong feeling of defiance among the Gnostics against a heirarchy of bishops who demanded authority over what was done and said and believe by people within their congregations.

Now, certainly, there is something to be said for bringing some order and unity to an organization. But the Gnostics felt that the church heirarchy was doing exactly what Jesus criticized the Pharisees for doing -- locking up the keys to the kingdom and preventing anyone else from going within. They were replacing mystical acquaintance of divine presence with ritual and doctrine, and doing so in an increasingly heavy-handed way, especially once Constantine I merged the church with the Roman Empire.

BTW it wasn't God I was calling self-serving.

Date: 2004-01-07 10:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yahvah.livejournal.com
It's really sad that the early Christian church did that, too, because it shows the hardness of hearts of people in general. If you go amongst a Christian community like [livejournal.com profile] community, many don't seem all that interested in Torah-based teaching of worship like Jesus taught in all of the gospels. Many are, however, very interested in the Christian church and continuing to glorify it, instead of their Father in heaven. This is what I meant by intellectual idolatry that I've intended to write about for a while. I'm a procrastinator.

I know you weren't calling God self-serving, but if we're made in the likeness and image of God and many of us are self-serving, then we ought to reason about why God is self-serving. That's what I think. At least if I'm around people who attempt to come to reasonable conclusions regarding the words of the bible.

Date: 2004-01-07 10:28 am (UTC)

Date: 2004-01-07 10:34 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com
This is what I meant by intellectual idolatry that I've intended to write about for a while.

I suspect this is a subject we might actually agree on. :-p

I look forward to seeing your thoughts on the subject.


I know you weren't calling God self-serving, but if we're made in the likeness and image of God and many of us are self-serving, then we ought to reason about why God is self-serving.

That could lead to some interesting thoughts. It's beyond the scope of this discussion, but it's worth thinking about.

Canonical Gospel Parallels

Date: 2004-01-07 11:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beowulf1723.livejournal.com
Nag Hammadi Texts and the Bible: a Synopsis and Index by Craig A. Evans, Robert L. Webb, and Richrad A. Weibe (Leiden: Brill, 1993) give the following biblical parallels for these logoi.

(5): Mt 10, 26 = Mk 4, 22 = Lk 8, 17 = Lk 12, 2.

(6): Mt 6, 1-2, 5, 16.

(14): Mt 6, 1-18 (Vs 9-13 is the Lord's Prayer.)

Evans, Webb, and Weibe use the RSV for their biblical quotations. I'm not real happy with this choice, but its probably the best compromise for those not able to go to the original texts directly.

Re: Canonical Gospel Parallels

Date: 2004-01-08 04:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com
Thank you. Online somewhere, someone had at one point started compiling a verse-comparison chart between Thomas and the canonical texts, mostly the synoptic gospels. Elsewhere there is an elaborate argument outlining parallels between GJohn and GThomas, but I didn't find it particularly convincing.

In my own research (I have off and on been working on a commentary to the Gospel of Thomas) I also found an obvious parallel between Thomas 17 and I Corinthians 2:9 (though both could be quotations from the book of Isaiah). There aren't bound to be that many parallels between Paul and Thomas, though, as Thomas is very Jewish-centered in thought while Paul is much more Hellenic in his views.
(deleted comment)

Re: haw

Date: 2004-01-08 04:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com
Well, I *might* have been doing first-hand research on... you know... them. But I probably wouldn't openly admit to doing so.

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