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Tlaib | Behind the Mask
Word Play and the 114th Saying
In the past I’ve posted several articles on the structure of certain sayings and intermingling of several seemingly independent phrases within Gospel of Thomas. Sometimes I question whether (or not) some ‘helpful’ scribe or transcriber decided to include their interpretation of a saying or to add information to help the reader to understand what Thomas had written. In other instances I wonder if the entire saying is attributed to Thomas’ writing when it was not his contribution at all.
I’m not a forensic linguist and I don’t have a friggin clue on how to decipher Coptic. The only tools I am capable of leveraging to understand the Gospel of Thomas are my faith, my intuition and my intellect (as weak as this latter attribute may be) .
So I was plodding around in Thomas’ work and read his final saying (114) and here are my thoughts.
Saying 114 in Layton’s translation reads:
(114) Simon Peter said to them, “Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “See, I am going to attract her to make her male so that she too might become a living spirit that resembles you males. For every female (element) that makes itself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
As is my want, I thought to bring some words forward within the saying and to send other words to the background. I came up with this:
Or
Jesus said “I am going to make her a living spirit that will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Now, along with the gazillion of other things I don’t know, I don’t know if this brushes away error and deceit and correctly captures what Thomas originally intended. However, my faith, intuition, and intellect leads me to believe that this is what Jesus would have us know.
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Repetition Intended? | 48 and 106 In the Gospel Of Thomas
There is an important difference between what appears to be two closely related saying in Thomas’ Gospel. Consider sayings 48 and 106.
The relationship (or similarity) between the two raises a lot of questions: Are the repetitive portions of each saying intentional. Are the intentionally presented this way? Why is it that more is gained by considering each saying in light of the other, and (assuming that this is so) why they are separated by so many intervening sayings?
Are these breadcrumbs that lead us along a path?
The sayings (Layton from the coptic) below:
(48) Jesus said, “If two make peace with one another within a single house they will say to a mountain ‘go elsewhere’ and it will go elsewhere.”
(106) Jesus said, “when you (plur.) make the two into one you will become sons of man, and when you say, ‘O mountain, go elsewhere!’ it will go elsewhere.”
A Quick Test
As Good An Explanation As Any Other
Saying 21 In The Gospel of Thomas
Some considerable time ago I wrote about how I thought that the transcribers, a couple of thousand years ago, jumbled up phrases within the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas. My earlier writing on Sayings 5, 6, and 14 are here, and it explains how I thought the author intended on presenting the material.
This week I was reading through other sayings in that gospel and became unsettled on Saying 21. While each of the sentences and each of the phrases makes sense when they stand alone, they fall flat when taken as a whole. It occurs to me that we have the same problem in Saying 21 as we did in Saying 6. Some material extraneous to 21 has wandered over to it. Here is the saying (Layton translation from the Coptic)
Mary said to Jesus, “What do your disciples resemble?” He said, “What they resemble is children living in a plot of land that is not theirs. When the owners of the land come they will say, ‘Surrender our land to us.’ They, for their part, strip naked in their presence in order to give it back to them, and they give them their land. Thus I say that the owner of an estate, knowing that a bandit is coming, will keep watch before the bandit comes and not let the bandit break into the house of the estate and steal the possessions. You (plur.) , then, be on your guard against the world. Arm yourselves with great power lest the brigands find a way to get to you; for the trouble that you expect will come. Let an experienced person dwell in your midst! When the crop had matured, that person came in haste, sickle in hand, and harvested it. Whoever has ears to hear should listen!”
When I break it down to ‘bite size chunks’ I get what is below. I think the first paragraph ONLY belongs to Saying 21. The balance belongs somewhere else.
Mary said to Jesus, “What do your disciples resemble?” He said, “What they resemble is children living in a plot of land that is not theirs. When the owners of the land come they will say, ‘Surrender our land to us.’ They, for their part, strip naked in their presence in order to give it back to them, and they give them their land.
(This question and answer are congruent)
Thus I say that the owner of an estate, knowing that a bandit is coming, will keep watch before the bandit comes and not let the bandit break into the house of the estate and steal the possessions.
You (plur.) , then, be on your guard against the world. Arm yourselves with great power lest the brigands find a way to get to you; for the trouble that you expect will come.
(Incongruent: These two paragraphs are of a different topic that the original Q&A)
Let an experienced person dwell in your midst! When the crop had matured, that person came in haste, sickle in hand, and harvested it. Whoever has ears to hear should listen!”
(Incongruent: The paragraph is a different topic than both previous topics)
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When You Come To Be Light, What Will You Do?
What’s Real?
The 11th Saying in the Gospel of Thomas is another one of those passages that both comforts and confounds. As odd as this might sound, I like the confounding aspect as much as the comforting one. The Blatz interpretation reads:
This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away; and those who are dead are not alive, and those who are living will not die. In the days when you ate of what is dead, you made of it what is living. When you come to be light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you have become two, what will you do?
The Layton interpretation is slightly different and that slight difference is enlightening because of the word ‘element’. Here is how it reads:
“This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. And the dead (elements) are not alive, and the living (elements) will not die. In the days when you (plur.) used to ingest dead (elements), you made them alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day that you were one, you made two. And when you are two, what will you do?”
Of course there are other differences between the two interpretations, but I thought the addition of the word ‘elements’ changes the passage considerably. One more interpretation, this time by Doresse:
“This heaven will pass away, and the heaven which is above it will pass: but those who are dead will not live, and those who live will not die! Today you eat dead things and make them into something living: <but> when you will be in Light, what will you do then? For then you will become two instead of one; and when you become two, what will you do then?”
I’ve highlighted the two major differences in Doresse from the other interpreters because the way the passage is now stated a lot of the meaning has change. The statement now reads you will be in the Light (note that Doresse capitalizes Light) and that you don’t become two (from one) until you are in the Light.
These three interpretations treat the subject of light differently:
Blatz: you come to be light
Layton: you are in the light
Doresse: when you will be in Light
So, where am I going with this? I am proving the validity of my earlier assertion on confusion and confounding. If we had read the statements in Saying 11 without trying to understand the implication of what the differences between the three ways ‘light’ is treated would we have grown any intellectually? Would we have spent any time today to ponder on life after life?
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I Wasn’t Going to Go There, But I Did
A couple of days ago I posted a comment on how I was hung up on the 4th Saying in the Gospel of Thomas. I said that ‘Problem 2’ was related to time and that I’d not be looking into physics anytime soon to try and unravel my thoughts. I went there anyway.
I contemplated if it were possible (given what little I know about time or space or physics or pretty much anything else for that matter) if a single entity or system of entities could be both ‘young’ and ‘old’ at the same time. Is is possible to exists in two different time lines simultaneously? Before you call bullshit on me, remember that we are just enjoying a little mind candy. And because it’s my candy and your brussels sprouts, you’ve got to dig around on the web on your own if you’d like to read more on each theory or concept.
Einstein called the idea of quantum entanglement ‘spooky action at a distance’. Turns out it’s real and it works the exact same way every time it’s tested. Essentially it means that if two particles are entangled then it doesn’t matter how far apart they are, when you measure one of the entangled particle then the other will measure exactly the opposite. It does not matter how far apart they are nor does it matter how long the two particles have existed. Folks have no idea how these two particles communicate, with the possible exception of David Bohm.
Bohm’s basic assumption is that “elementary particles are actually systems of extremely complicated internal structure, acting essentially as amplifiers of information contained in a quantum wave.” He created a new and controversial theory of the universe based on a model of reality he calls “Implicate Order.” The theory contains an ultra-holistic cosmic view; it connects everything with everything else. In principle, any individual element could reveal “detailed information about every other element in the universe.”
The central underlying theme of Bohm’s theory is the “unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders.” Now I’m not much of a ‘without borders ‘ kinda guy given what’s happening at ours, but the theory latches well with some of the saying (more aptly stated as some interpretations of the sayings) we find within the Gospel of Thomas. Or perhaps it could be said that the Gospel of Thomas makes more sense when the reader has a cursory understanding of Implicate Order. Or not.
As is my want, I scratched at the Spooky Action at a Distance idea to see if it would accommodate the modulation of time. Could a coupled particle exist in a different timeline than it’s coupled counterpart? It seems to me that it could. Suppose that a coupled particle was separated from its counterpart a billion years ago. One particle came to earth, one to a planet that had 10 times the mass of earth. Each particle would experience time at different rates. Suppose then the particle on the Earth X 10 planet was shaken loose and traveled to our Earth. Would we end up with entangled particles on two different timelines or would Bohm’s Implicate Order machinations spoil the fun?
Y’all enjoy your Monday evening, I’m going to go back to scratching my head.
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Elsewhere In Our World
An arraigned marriage in Nepal (2013). The bride looks as if she is having a little trouble with the whole concept.
The 4th Saying and Thought Amalgamation
It’s been a good while since I posted one of the sayings from the Gospel of Thomas. The last was on saying 4 and, as I pondered on this relatively simple (at least simple on the surface) saying, things got a little complicated. Here is how:
For some reason or other I (I suppose all others as well….but really don’t know) find that most of my thinking is limited by my vocabulary. That is to say as I rationally think my way through a problem I use language. That folks, may not be a good thing when we are trying to understand what purportedly is to be ‘what no eye has seen and what no ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has not entered into the heart of man ‘ (Saying 17). In other words, if I am to understand Christ more fully I’ll not get there with my current way of thinking (using words to express thought or perhaps more aptly stated by using thoughts constructed of words). Let’s call this word/thought conundrum ‘Problem 1 ‘.
Problem 2 is ‘time ‘. Time is a big friggen deal. I am not talking about the time it takes to ponder on Christ and his meaning, I’m talking about the physics of time, whether it exists, whether it exists in all frames of reference, and if it doesn’t then the existence we are experiencing isn’t the truth. How did ‘time ‘ and physics suddenly poke their respective noses into the esoteric sayings provided by Thomas? Saying 4. Saying 4 and many other sayings imply (at least in my mind) that time may not really exist or that it exists in a way/form that is counter to how we experience it. Of course this problem only exists in Saying 4 if the old man and the child of seven days are the same person (or of the same person). In any case Problem 2 loops back to Problem 1 in that the old man and the child are working without the benefit of language to express thoughts unless that language, and those thoughts, are distinctly different that those I employ.
Importantly, the closer I get to thinking without words the more difficult it becomes to express to others (using words) what those thoughts are. If you’re poking around the Gospel of Thomas and it just doesn’t make any sense, try thinking about what he has written without formulating thoughts made of words. As for Problem 2, maybe it’s just not the right time for me to be wrestling with this. One thing for certain in this regard, I’ll not be taking any physics courses!
Finally, before I close out for the evening, I do enjoy the depiction of the Apostle Thomas touching the wounds of Christ (above). What I enjoy most about it is that it tells us Thomas did not lack faith in Christ, rather he did not believe the other disciples. He thought them capable of creating falsehoods. What a damning testimony to the credibility of those men.
John 20: 24-29, reads: Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
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Missing the Meaning
It’s odd how we can look at something many times and think that we know the nature of the thing; that we have learned all that we can about an object, phrase, or concept only to find later we may have been blind to its true nature. Perhaps we become so familiar with those things that surround us that we no long really think of them in any meaningful way. They become furnishings or structures in our lives that no longer command our interest, things no longer worthy of our thoughts.
The 4th saying in the Gospel of Thomas has me thinking along those lines; that we become too familiar with the ‘furnishings’ in our lives. You know, the essence of a thing can slip right past us while leaving us with the false belief that we have mastered its meaning or understand its nature.
The 4th saying: “The person old in days won’t hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live. For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one.”
Beyond the esoteric message within this saying, what had completely slipped past me was the term ‘place of life’ ( in Doressee’s translation ‘Place of Life’). I had always thought that the author was alluding to ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ or ‘reason’ for life. As we look at every translation of the saying (translations, reader thoughts, and scholarly quotes here) it reads ‘place’. It may very well be that he was speaking of an actual place. The saying could then mean that the child knows of the place that the aged has somehow lost awareness of.
‘Bracketing’ The Garden
Folk that have spent time in the Army or Marines, particularly those in combat arms, know that the term ‘bracketing’ has to do with adjusting indirect fire onto a target or registration point. Essentially this means that as you make corrections to where you want the next round to land, you don’t adjust the second round in a very precise way, you move it enough so that it hits on the other side of the target. That is where I’m at on my second year of the garden. Last year I put it in too early and had frost damage. This year it’s not so much late as it is behind where it could have been. I’m pleased with the way it’s progressing but not all things will time out the way they need to.
Here are a couple of picks to show how its going.
A Simple Lesson
I took wifey’s car in for an oil change and thought it would be good to balance and rotate the tires as well.
Some few days later we were traveling to Huntsville AL (about 50 miles away) and went using Interstate 65. Sure as shit, once I got over 60 miles an hour there was a hint of a shutter. At 70 it was more pronounced, not really bad but enough to know that the knuckleheads didn’t balance the tires right.
The next morning I’m looking over the tires and notice that there are 3 large (about 3 inch long each) weights on the left front and two of the same size on the right front. Some of the weights were put on when I purchased the tires, some were place there on the most recent balancing.
Off I go to a different service center and explain the issue to the mechanic there. Here is how I relearned a simple lesson. The mechanic removed the tires and then removed all of the weights from every tire. He then ran each tire on his machine and added weights as needed to bring each tire into balance. He would add a weight, check for balance, and then add another as needed. Essentially, he discarded all of the errors that had accumulated over time and started from scratch; checking each change he made as he worked.
It strikes me as odd how such a simple lesson can have an esoteric character to it. Over many years I’ve been trying to reconcile all that I have been taught (or have otherwise learned) about Christ and God with other things, taught or learned, about Them. The incongruences were/are pronounced and enduring.
So I’ve begun to remove all of the weights and am starting again. Here is what I know absent any weights (influences): There is a God and Christ walked/taught among us. Both continue to exist. The nature of their existence and the relationship of my existence to Theirs is my great unknown. For me it’s uncharted territory. I’m very excited about the journey and know. with the weights removed, I’ll find the true balance I’ve searched for.
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The 50th Saying
“If they say to you, ‘Where did you come from?’, say to them, ‘We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.’ If they say to you, ‘Is it you?’, say, ‘We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the sign of your father in you?’, say to them, ‘It is movement and repose.'”
50th Saying in The Gospel of Thomas
Who are ‘they’? Who are the ‘they’ that can understand the answer to their first question? Who are the ‘they’ that can formulate such questions and understand the so very esoteric answers? Are ‘they’ the common man as he existed 2000 years ago? Are ‘they’ some type of being between this world and the next? Who needs to know the signs of my father within me?
Huffpo Looses Its Mind
The 17th Saying
“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.”
The 17th Saying in the Gospel of Thomas
The 46th Saying in the Gospel of Thomas
“Among those born of women, from Adam until John the Baptist, there is no one so superior to John the Baptist that his eyes should not be lowered (before him). Yet I have said, whichever one of you comes to be a child will be acquainted with the kingdom and will become superior to John.”
The 29th Saying
“If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.”
29th Saying in Gospel of Thomas
Uncle Joe to Germany
I saw this over at Stilton’s place and could not resist. His site is here
Pondering on the Third Saying
Gospel of Thomas per the Lambdin translation:
(3) Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.”
Topic isolated:
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father
Moved from the future to the present (mostly) and simplified:
Know yourself and become known. You are the sons of the living father
Greatly simplified:
Know yourself, you are the son of the living father.
Ouch
The Kingdom in Thomas
Here is a very shallow look at how the ‘kingdom’ is treated in the Gospel of Thomas.
Thomas has some pretty sketchy things to say about what the ‘kingdom’ is like (not where it is or how to get in, etc). I use the term ‘sketchy’ because I found them pretty hard to reconcile one against another and with how the term ‘kingdom’ is used.
There are 8 sayings where Jesus says what the kingdom is like. While I assume they are all talking about the ‘kingdom of heaven’, they are not titled that way, the sayings identify ‘it’ (I’m not sure that heaven is being used in this gospel the same way I think of heaven) three different ways and the ‘kingdom of heaven’ are words that are not spoken by Jesus in this gospel, they are spoken by the apostles.
The apostles only ask one question on what the kingdom of heaven is like, it is in the 20th saying . Jesus responds by saying it is like a mustard seed. In every other mention (7 mentions) of the ‘kingdom’, Jesus compares it to a person (both male and female).
In every other instance where he describes what the kingdom is like, it is not in response to a question (although I suppose there was some question asked that he was responding to). The ‘kingdom of the father’ is used 5 times ( 57, 76, 96, 97 and 98). and It is described as a person with some attribute or performing some action.
Kingdom of the Father
–a man who had good seed
— a merchant who had a consignment
— a woman who took a little leaven
–a woman who was carrying a jar
–a man who wanted to kill
Twice Jesus describes what ‘the kingdom’ is like. Not the kingdom of heaven, and not the kingdom of the father, just the kingdom. These occur in Sayings 107 and 109.
— a shepherd who had a hundred sheep
— a man who had a hidden treasure
I’m not even close to figuring out what these sayings mean. I strongly believe that they may mean different things to different folk (frame of reference and all that). In any case these words have me pondering on the nature of God and, while I lack the capacity to understand the full nature of Him, the contemplation does yield good fruit, even if that fruit is the contemplation itself
Behind the Green Curtain
The Kingdom
I’ve named the last category of questions by the disciples in the Gospel of Thomas as ‘The Kingdom’. Again, these are just the questions.
What I think is important to consider about these questions is the disciples thought Jesus knew the answers. Unlike the questions that I grouped in the area titled ‘Blindness’, where the apostles wrestled with understanding who Jesus was, in these questions they understood who he was and believed that he knew of the ‘Kingdom’. If this is so, then it reinforces my assertion that the sequence in which the sayings of Jesus are presented in the Gospel of Thomas is not the sequence in which they occurred. (Else wise how could the questions that exist sayings 20 and 22 be asked by someone who later asked the questions in sayings 43 and 91.)
The Kingdom:
(18) Tell us how our end will be.
(20) Tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.
(22) Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?
(51) When will the repose of the dead come about, and when will the new world come?
(113) When will the kingdom come?
Housekeeping
Within the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas there were three sayings, containing six questions, that are ‘housekeeping’ in nature. By housekeeping I mean that they were either about how the disciples were to conduct themselves or what rituals were to be observed.
Again, because I’m less interested in the answers to the questions right now than I am in what these folk asked of Him, I’ll pass on providing His responses other than to opine on what I believe the meaning of His responses, at a high level, indicates: He provided no directions for forming or maintaining a ‘church’ or an organized following.
Keep in mind that the answers to the questions asked in Saying 6 are found in the first two sentences of Saying 14 (this is my take). Without a drum roll or further blathering, the questions were:
(6) Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?”
(12) We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?
(53) Is circumcision beneficial or not?