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I read the Gospel of Thomas a while back, and I marked some of the verses that really stood out to me as profound. One thing I always liked is the church’s stance that the apocrypha has value for us and is a suitable source of study. Here are some of the verses I particularly like (some of them are an interesting twist on familiar verses from the NT). I’ll save my own commentary for a separate box, but I’d love to hear if any of these resonate for you or are of particular interest: 2 Jesus said, “Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the all.”
16 Jesus said, “Men think, perhaps, that it is peace which I have come to cast upon the world. They do not know that it is dissension which I have come to cast upon the earth: fire, sword, and war. For there will be five in a house: three will be against two, and two against three, the father against the son, and the son against the father. And they will stand solitary.”
17 Jesus said, “I shall give you what no eye has seen and what no ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has never occurred to the human mind.”
18 The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us how our end will be.” Jesus said, “Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death.”
22 Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom.”
56 Jesus said, “Whoever has come to understand the world has found (only) a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world.”
80 Jesus said, “He who has recognized the world has found the body, but he who has found the body is superior to the world.”
81 Jesus said, “Let him who has grown rich be king, and let him who possesses power renounce it.”
98 Jesus said, “The kingdom of the father is like a certain man who wanted to kill a powerful man. In his own house he drew his sword and stuck it into the wall in order to find out whether his hand could carry through. Then he slew the powerful man.”
107 Jesus said, “The kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine and looked for that one until he found it. When he had gone to such trouble, he said to the sheep, ‘I care for you more than the ninety-nine.'”
109 Jesus said, “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.”
110 Jesus said, “Whoever finds the world and becomes rich, let him renounce the world.”
112 Jesus said, “Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul; woe to the soul that depends on the flesh.”
And one that is just WEIRD:
114 Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Yeah, it is some weird stuff. When I read the Forbidding Books of the Bible, I was shocked at the stories of Jesus as boy, getting ticked at his friends for minor offenses like rubbing up against him in a crowded street, and striking them all dead or blind. Yep. You heard me correctly.
I think it was in the Book of Thomas, that it took Joseph (Dad) having to discipline his kid to get Jesus to quit doing it. And Jesus response was….wait for it….”do you not know that I am about my father’s business?”
I think it’s important to realize that the Gospel of Thomas was written from a proto-gnostic point of view — that Jesus had secret words (knowledge, gnosis) and would give these to a select group of followers to empower them. This was viewed on later has been heretical fiction (by Eusebius), and after Nicea, most of these writings were destroyed. The Nag Hammadi library was evidently buried later in the fourth century in response to someone who refused to destroy the books. The statements in the text seem to fall into three categories:
1. Those influenced by gnosticism — this is the ‘secret knowledge’ and often, the divisive and special position of those who know (the ‘gnostics’) and those who don’t: hence the dividing of families, etc. I do not accept the validity of these messages as being authentic to Jesus’ original sayings.
2. Those influenced by mystical union – Christ did indeed teach the idea of unity (See Matthew 5-7, John 13-17), and taught in parables and specifically paradox to show the futuility of dualism (see beatitudes in Matthew 5, where opposites are often juxtaposed to teach). Here is where you get the ‘opposites’ statement. I tend to accept the paradoxical statements as authentic to Jesus’ style of teaching.
3. Stuff that cannot truly be understood, although… You’re quote:
Gospel of Thomas wrote:114 Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
I think the message is mistranslated, and Dan Brown used a different translation of this in the DaVinci code, although he had his villian speak the line. What i think is clear, here, is that Peter is saying a misogynistic statement: “women are not worthy of life”. if you swap words: ‘priest’ in place of ‘male’, ‘eternal life’ in place of life,’exalted soul’ in placed of ‘living spirit’, and ‘equal to’ in place of ‘resemble’, you get the following:Gospel of Thomas (wayfarer’s ‘inspired version’) wrote:114 Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of eternal life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her a priest, so that she too may become an exalted soul equal to you male priests. For every woman who will make herself a priest will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Just as an fyi, there is a Christian sect (very small) in Japan that teaches that the symbol of the Bridegroom and Bride is literal in the next life – that all women who are righteous will be married to Jesus, while all men who are righteous will become women and be married to Jesus. Joseph Smith wasn’t all that much of a radical when you compare him to some of the stuff out there.
😆 
😯 My own thoughts are similar to wayfarer’s with regard to this stuff. I really like some of it; I LOVE some of it with wording modification; I am amused by some of it; I am appalled at some of it. I also like the Church’s official stance that it’s up to me to interpret and understand it.
I like the Gospel of Thomas a lot. It’s just really interesting to me, with several good one-liners. This used to be my signature line for a long time:
Quote:Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the all.
Wow… if that doesn’t poetically describe a faith transition, I don’t know what does.
A lot of the ones you quote are actually related to, or similar to canonical stuff. I never feel that the LDS church has really addressed the issue of the Apocrypha, or so called Pseudiepigrapha. Strangely enough, smaller Mormon sects have.
Quote:109 Jesus said, “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.”
At some point, I read at the Last Supper when the sacrament was instituted, they passed the wine from mouth to mouth, not taking sips from a cup. Has anyone else heard that or know the source of it?
What Wayfarer said. But I’ll also add a couple of thoughts. I think the Gospel of Thomas has some shadows and echoes of Jesus’ words, but they are hard to cull out because those sayings fell into the hands of the Gnostics who put their own words in his mouth. That’s not unique to them or to the GoT, but the GoT is what we are talking about here. I think the following is a good example:
hawkgrrrl wrote:107 Jesus said, “The kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine and looked for that one until he found it. When he had gone to such trouble, he said to the sheep, ‘I care for you more than the ninety-nine.'”
Here, a familiar saying has been inflated with extra meaning. ‘Jesus came to save us, and he loved us more than all the others, because we are the best of the sheep.’ Generally, not always, but generally, I feel that when you have two forms of a story, one more succinct and one more developed, that usually the shorter is more true to the original, as it is natural for people to expand teachings… Our own stories that we tell at parties get bigger and better, for example. In the above case, Jesus’ own life tells you that the form of the story we have in the canonical gospels is probably more like the original… after all, Jesus was viewed as somewhat of a coo-koo for associating with the lower elements of society. Paul reminded next-generation Christians in Rome that Jesus “died for the ungodly” and that “we were yet sinners” and even God’s “enemies” when Jesus died for us. So 107 sounds like a later, elitist addition.
In the period of early Christianity, there were wildly competing philosophies that make the modern difference between Baptists, Catholics, JWs and Mormons seem inconsequential. You had the issue of whether Christianity was a form of Judaism or no (Christian Jews or Jewish Christians?). There were those that tried to sin as much as possible in order to give extra glory to the power of the atonement. Some thought that the God of the OT was a lesser God. All kinds of weird perceptions of the cosmos (which is where the Gnostics come in). The Gnostics had a belief that there had been secret teachings that Jesus had conveyed only to his most trusted followers, and that this knowledge (gnosis) was necessary for their form of salvation. I’ve heard this compared to our Temple concept, and, indeed, there are interesting parallels… but at the same time, it also seems a little like people that sell non-standard remedies and they always pitch it as “we know secrets that the doctors don’t want you to know… and for only 49.95 a month, we will let you in on it”… that idea of secret knowledge can be a powerful driver…
Unfortunately, Gnostic beliefs are stamped hard onto the Gospel of Thomas, rendering it of marginal value (to me). Oneness (male and female becoming one, among others) is one of those beliefs. Jesus did apparently teach a form of unity, like Wayfarer said, but the Gnostics took it soaring to new heights, so when I see difficult to parse statements like those in 22 and 114, I just shrug my shoulders and wish we had an earlier version of the teaching, if one even existed.
Oh those Gnostic texts do have some wild stuff. I remember when I checked out the Nag Hammadi Scripturesfrom the library and settled in with it, all excited. “Gospel of Thomas”: oh yeah, good stuff here! Then I started reading some of the other books. 😯 I mean, WTF? (you all know the F stands for “freak” right?) The silly stuff I’d read on my mission about “hey the Gnostics had this stuff that shows the apostasy blah blah blah” had not prepared me for aeons, archons, the evil demiurge and all the other bizarre stuff. Kind of like when I tried to read the pseudepigraphic “Book of Enoch” – big disappointment at first, calling for a major shifting of mental gears.
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