No wonder Jesus didn't get a fair trial...
No wonder Jesus didn't get a fair trial...
Last words on the cross:
"Well...so much for nepotism!"
That was actually the key point in a competing early tradition against the cannonical version we all know.
It basically pushed for people to realize that the guy calling everyone brother and sister wasn't claiming to be an only child, but that everyone was literally the child of a creator with salvation as their birthright.
The problem was this meant that prayer and fasting and most importantly - giving money to priests and the church - was pointless. You basically got salvation by default because much like in Solomon's decision, a true parent is the one that wants its child to live and thrive even if it isn't even known to the child, and it's the false parent that is willing to see the child suffer and die, only caring about recognition.
Some of the lines from the text this tradition was centered around are great:
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty. [...]
If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits. [...]
The messengers and the prophets will come to you and give you what belongs to you. You, in turn, give them what you have, and say to yourselves, 'When will they come and take what belongs to them?' [...]
This text and its perspectives were such a threat to both the church and the Roman empire (one of its sayings called for an end of dynastic monarchy), that after the emperor of Rome put together the canonization at the council of Nicaea in short order this text ended up literally punishable by death to possess it and we only know what it says today because a single complete copy survived buried in a jar for nearly two millennia.
It may have even had Solomon's decision referenced above in mind given not only its similar perspectives of due inheritance but that the story was about the child of a prostitute and one of its sayings was:
Whoever knows the father and the mother will be called the child of a whore.
(Note: Elsewhere this text stresses to "make the male and female into a single one," so the 'Father' elsewhere may have been a side effect of Aramaic's binary genders with no neutral 'Parent' to have used instead and "father and mother" here in this saying may have been intended more to emphasize the motherly qualities of a singular divine parent than to have been about two separate parents.)
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we only know what it says today because a single complete copy survived buried in a jar for nearly two millennia.
That's crazy.
(Also: Could you explain what your last quote means? I'm not sure how to put it in context.)
7So in Hebrew and Aramaic, words have only two genders: male or female. Unlike many other languages, there's not a neutral gender.
So you have 'mother' or 'father' but not 'parent'. Or 'son' or 'daughter' but not 'child.'
One of the sayings (#22) in this text has the following line:
When you make the two into one, [...] and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female
There's a fragmented reference to what appears to be a "true mother" in saying 101 in contrast to a human mother, and then in saying 105 quoted above it refers to knowing a father and mother, much as it regularly refers to 'knowing' one is the child of a "living Father" elsewhere in the work.
One interpretation of the sayings about a mother or a father would be that it's referring to two different entities. You see this crop up with later Gnostics (this text is pre-Gnostic).
But in light of saying 22 and knowing about the constraints of a possible Hebrew or Aramaic origin for sayings contained here, another interpretation (and the one I'm inclined to) was that these aren't sayings about an exclusively masculine 'Father' or a feminine "true mother" but are still within the context of monotheism with the perspective of a dual natured single 'Parent' that has characteristics of both a father and mother.
This would be in keeping with the later followers of this text who saw the divine itself as broght forth by an original hermaphroditic (i.e. both male and female) primordial Adam, but here we're veering off into the dualistic cosmology of this text and group which is much too complicated for this already lengthy comment.
Hopefully this helps clarify?
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and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.
Huh? Is this about obligatory alms/tithes or is it about any kind of help to others, or both?
7It's a good question. In part it's difficult to answer because it isn't clear which sayings or parts of which sayings in Thomas are original vs added later on. So a saying unique to it about if you have enough money to lend it at interest it would be better to give it away without expecting it back could be from a different time period from this one here.
But my guess would be this is about alms/tithes and charity to the church.
First, it's paired with the obligations of fasting and prayer which has a religious context.
Second, you see Paul arguing in 1 Cor 9 with the group in Corinth about his rights to make money from them, indicating they had a contrary perspective. The people in Corinth also had the view "everything is permissible for me" similar to other attitudes in Thomas and there's actually a fair bit of overlap in the letters to Corinth and z Thomas beyond the scope of this comment.
Finally, the notion the church could collect money appears to be one of the later edits to canon.
You see in all the Synoptics Jesus tells the apostles they can't carry a purse when spreading the word which would have prevented monetary collections. A similar saying about only accepting food and shelter is found in Thomas. But in Luke at the Last Supper Jesus explicitly reversed this, basically saying "remember when I said don't carry a purse? Well carry one now."
Thing is, that part is absent from Marcion's version of Luke which is probably the earliest surviving copy.
So there's a fair bit of supporting evidence that a historical Jesus didn't look kindly on collecting money in a religious context and this was changed later on (it also makes sense the surviving version of the tradition would have been the one to change this).
And given the Gospel of Thomas elsewhere has a unique saying about giving money away if you have enough to be lending it at interest, I suspect in this case about charity it's a narrow scope specifically about the notion of obligation to give to charity for everyone including the poor as opposed to the merits of giving away money for the rich who are just going to die with a bunch leftover (the topic of saying 63 about an old man who kept saving up for the future and then just died).
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all powerful people should do this, suffer in poverty for a few months every couple of years.
19There are points in history where a privileged person would live amongst the people or a high-ranking officer would pretend to be a regular soldier and it permanently changed their perspective on life.
Probably why they don't do it anymore.
20Agreed. 12 months per year sounds reasonable
10That's the intent behind fasting during Ramadan for Muslims
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I think that was supposed to be the point.
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