Gospel of Thomas

Deleteduserrc

The Gospel of Thomas is an apocryphal gospel, discovered as part of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. It's fun, it's got some of the classic gospel energy, but it's much more infused with mystic koan energy than Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Unlike the canonical gospels, which are often narrative-heavy, it's basically a concentrated collection of cryptic teachings, broken into bite-sized pieces

I've dipped into it every now and then, for a while, but I think it would be fun to just post one or two a day (or maybe semi-weekly) and invite free-association responses, or really any sort of response.

Starting with the beginning:

These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.

(1) And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."

(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." — Gospel of Thomas

The first part lets you know this text is animated by esoteric or underground/samizdat vibes. Maybe it's interesting that they're supposedly taken down by Thomas, the 'doubting' disciple, but I'm not yet versed enough in new testament scholarship to have a strong intuition.

And the first teaching is kind of vague - but, from what I understand, the trope of an esoteric knowledge or experience that will let you transcend death is pretty common. There's the Eleusinian Mysteries, for one (though they famously prohibited writing down the experience) &, I'm learning, many strands of taoism aim for the same thing. Alchemy, and alchemical texts come to mind. Kabbalah. There's something like this anywhere you look.

At the same time, the question of what immortality (or 'not experiencing death') means is always complicated in esoteric or mystic registers - I get the sense that for these 'mystery' traditions, it's much less 'bodies resurrected on the day of judgment' & more 'you see that life persists despite radical - self/ego-annihilating- transformations.'

I think these two parts are sort of setting the tone, genre, register. We're talking about mysticism-inflected teachings. Or at least esoteric teachings.

On to (2)

I like the idea that seeking leads first to being troubled. In modern parlance, maybe we could call this 'cognitive dissonance.' It could also be just the common experience of something going wrong in your life, trying to get to the bottom of it, and realizing you don't understand stuff as well as you thought. In ancient philosophical terms this could be a swerve. In late 20th century post-structural terms this could be an 'event.' In any case, the first experience when you go searching is being 'troubled.' I think of this stage as when the cognitive scaffolding you've implicitly relied on is crumpling. That's scary, but when it does, you're left with a kind of beautiful feeling - "I don't know anything, but there's a powerful feeling coming in to fill that gap" and that's where the astonishment arises.

The last part is complicated. "ruling over the all." I'd like to know what 'ruling' connotes in the source language. & what 'All' is the source language too. It seems unlikely that 'ruling over the all' means like a Ceasar or a Genghis Khan exerting power, but the esoteric meaning isn't clear to me.

Ok, there's the inaugural gospel of thomas post.

Wayfarer

The last part is complicated. "ruling over the all." I'd like to know what 'ruling' connotes in the source language. & what 'All' is the source language too. It seems unlikely that 'ruling over the all' means like a Ceasar or a Genghis Khan exerting power, but the esoteric meaning isn't clear to me. — csalisbury

In Buddhism, 'the all' is the net sum of the psycho-physical constituents of being. It is everything we see, touch, feel, hear and think.

"Monks, I will teach you the All. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak."

"As you say, lord," the monks responded.

The Blessed One said, "What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All. Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range." 1

'Ruling over' means attaining detachment from 'the all':

"Monks, I will teach you the All as a phenomenon to be abandoned. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak."

"As you say, lord," the monks responded.

The Blessed One said, "And which All is a phenomenon to be abandoned? The eye is to be abandoned. Forms are to be abandoned. Consciousness at the eye is to be abandoned. Contact at the eye is to be abandoned. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is to be abandoned. ... 2

The footnote to the above text says: 'To abandon the eye, etc., here means to abandon passion and desire for these things.'

Jesus says - in all the gospels, I think - 'he who looses his life for My sake will be saved.' This is also a reference to 'abandoning the all', i.e. giving up all attachment to the sensory domain.

Valentinus

One of the interesting qualities of the Gospel of Thomas is how the language is very close to the received canon of the Church Fathers. So the "esoteric" messages are important but there is also a down to earth quality in the words to be observed. Consider the 6th verse:

His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"
Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that won't be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed." — From Robert Miller

(translation appears to be a group work product)

Tom Storm

↪csalisbury

There are so many misconceptions about the Gnostic gospels whether it be that of Thomas, Mary, Judas, Phillip - whichever. Because this material is tendentious, scholars are often inaccurate and contradictory on this material too, so you need to be very careful about what you assume from these texts. Why are you attracted to this material?

Valentinus

↪Tom Storm

Are you "attracted" to this material?

Tom Storm

↪Valentinus

Not attracted. Interested.

Deleteduserrc

↪Wayfarer

Very cool - This is where I wish I wasn't bound to one language. I'd love to know the relation between what's being translated as 'All" in this text and what's being translated as 'all' in the buddhist texts. I like your reading - if you sync it with (2) it would be something like: seeking - disturbed - astonished - released from attachment. & that would fit with (1).

Deleteduserrc

There are so many misconceptions about the Gnostic gospels whether it be that of Thomas, Mary, Judas, Phillip - whichever. Because this material is tendentious, scholars are often inaccurate and contradictory on this material too, so you need to be very careful about what you assume from these texts. Why are you attracted to this material? — Tom Storm

I'm attracted to - or interested in - the text because it's rich. It's a particularly good text for eliciting reactions, and interpretation - like a good poem. It's hard to say what's interest and what's attraction, or what that differentiation means, but I've just found it's a good text to get people talking irl, and I imagine that will translate to the web too. The experience is definitely enhanced in certain ways when you know the background, just as it's enhanced in certain ways if you have a broad grasp on religion and mythology cross-culturally. There's so much you can bring to it. What do you make of the first couple parts?

Valentinus

↪Wayfarer

The biggest departure of this Gospel from the others is a matter of timing. We are in the changed place rather than waiting for it to be changed. So I am not sure if the comparison with "outside of time" hits the mark.

Tom Storm

↪csalisbury

What do you make of the first couple parts? — csalisbury

I don't have any views on it as I don't remember the documents well enough. I read some of them in the 1980's and I knew one of Carl Jung's offsiders when the Jung Codex was put together. We spent a good deal of time discussing their significance to early Christianity. Nothing you won't find in Elaine Pagle's famous book (The Gnositc Gospels).

Deleteduserrc

One of the interesting qualities of the Gospel of Thomas is how the language is very close to the received canon of the Church Fathers. So the "esoteric" messages are important but there is also a down to earth quality in the words to be observed. Consider the 6th verse: — Valentinus

Strongly agree. I think one of the things I like about this Gospel is how it fluidly skates across a lot of different domains. Now it might be foolhardy to try to bracket things in a fixed way, but I was thinking, going in, to present it as sort of a one thing at a time - advent calendar, sort of - and build from there. I think you're right to bring in the sixth verse here, but If possible I want to keep the one part at a time vibe.

Deleteduserrc

I don't have any views on it as I don't remember the documents well enough. I read some of them in the 1980's and I knew one of Carl Jung's offsiders when the Jung Codex was put together. We spent a good deal of time discussing their significance to early Christianity. Nothing you won't find in Elaine Pagle's famous book (The Gnositc Gospels). — Tom Storm

Interesting, why are you attracted to this approach to the gnostic gospels (perhaps, mysticism in general?) I notice you're using autobiographical detail, proper names, and indications of your inclusion in a kind of a sanctified, certified community. What does this approach do for you?

Valentinus

↪csalisbury

I really like the advent calendar approach. One doesn't have to understand the whole world by looking out of a particular window.

Deleteduserrc

↪Valentinus

Exactly ! But it's tricky- because your point is very good, & i think clarifies what comes before- but I think the one-part-at-a-time opens it up for a sort of slow-burn interpretation.

Tom Storm

↪csalisbury

Interesting, why are you attracted to this approach to the gnostic gospels (perhaps, mysticism in genera?) I notice you're using autobiographical detail, proper names, and indications of your inclusion in a kind of a sanctified, certified community. What does this approach do for you? — csalisbury

I wouldn't assume so much. No proper names used. The tiniest of autobiographical fragments that contextualize my interest in this subject. As to 'inclusion in a kind of sanctified certified community' - sounds like you worked hard at a kind of put down, but I shouldn't assume. What does it do for me? Conversation helps me understand where others are coming from. Mysticism is the one off shoot of religion I have found most interesting over the years, probably its the use of allegory. But it is very easy to get marooned in nonsense too.

Deleteduserrc

↪Tom Storm

Well, I welcome you aboard if you have interest. I can't tell if you do. I am sure you're soberer than some people on the forum, if that helps. You will be accorded proper respect (we won't tell Elaine Paige her name isn't proper)

Tom Storm

↪csalisbury

Pagels (who doesn't sing) is a reference to one of the seminal writers on this subject - surely this name is copasetic. Her work on the Gospel of Judas was revelatory to me (no pun intended). The notion of Judas being the most loved and significant of all the disciples (because he had a key role in setting the divine plan in motion) is a compelling idea. A beatific betrayal, if you like. This was also echoed in the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, another extraordinary mystical interpretation of the story.

Valentinus

Nothing you won't find in Elaine Pagels' famous book (The Gnositc Gospels). — Tom Storm

That work is a good element to bring into the discussion. While noting the difficulties of confirming texts that so much energy went into erasing from history, Pagels also presented a defense of Pauline Christianity in the face of the new information. It was her dime and I appreciate the argument. But I wouldn't hire her for the best advocate to present a different view.

Wayfarer

↪Valentinus

↪Tom Storm

I was going to mention Pagels’s book Beyond Belief. Important book on this subject.

Tom Storm

↪Valentinus

In the days before the internet it was so hard to get good information on this subject and Pagels was so helpful if you could get her book on order. You kind of needed to have select friends in University religious departments to learn more. The snobbery against Gnosticism was pretty strong. The first translations from the Jung codex had to be ordered from overseas and some were still to be properly completed.

Valentinus

↪Tom Storm

I remember that time (being kind of old) but let us take up the topic as well (or as poorly) as we can in the present moment with whatever resources that are available to us now.

Valentinus

↪csalisbury

One of the windows is how sexuality is referred to as not being important in some passages while others call for everyone to be "male."
It sounds like a local difficulty being related to a universal one.

Deleteduserrc

Pagels (who doesn't sing) is a reference to one of the seminal writers on this subject - surely this name is copasetic. Her work on the Gospel of Judas was revelatory to me (no pun intended). The notion of Judas being the most loved and significant of all the disciples (because he had a key role in setting the divine plan in motion) is a compelling idea. A beatific betrayal, if you like. This was also echoed in the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, another extraordinary mystical interpretation of the story. — Tom Storm

I don't know her, or admittedly much about any scholarship around this area. This is a new subject for me. In my first incarnation on the forums, I was much more a German Idealism/Psychoanalysis guy.

I very much invite any insights from her works that bear upon the text. (I'll trade a name - Borges' Three Versions of Judas has been a touchstone for me for a long time, along the same lines you're discussing.)

I picked up a vibe early that you were coming in with a kind of detached psychological/analytic approach - kind of therapist-used-to-probing-others-while-their-own-views-remain-safely-unspoken - that just felt deeply counter to the kind of conversation I'm interested in. I pushed back accordingly. But, if you have real interest & some extratextual insight, I'm down for it. What do you make of the first couple sections?

Deleteduserrc

One of the windows is how sexuality is referred to as not being important in some passages while others call for everyone to be "male."
It sounds like a local difficulty being related to a universal one. — Valentinus

I'm going into pantomime mode - I only know the text presented so far, and can only work from that. Granted, it's my own idealized approach, and once a thread's out there, it's out there. But I like the fiction as a kind of interpretive heuristic.

Valentinus

↪csalisbury

Understood. I will take a few days to ponder the parts of the text I have in mind before opining something.

norm

That's scary, but when it does, you're left with a kind of beautiful feeling - "I don't know anything, but there's a powerful feeling coming in to fill that gap" and that's where the astonishment arises. — csalisbury

There's a Christian theme about loss and disaster being the path itself, the door. It's as if we have to be broken open, humiliated. Our pride in our knowledge of trivia and mastery of ritual blinds us and binds us. 'Astonishment' is a nice word here. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. There's a vague, dark reading of that that appeals to me.

I've been reading Cioran lately (The Trouble with Being Born), and the intersection of the dark and the light seems important here. If I live in some sense like I'm already dead, if I'm not so pathetically fucking thirsty for the recognition and ultimately envy of others, there's a new kind of life in that, while it lasts. Perhaps one does not taste death because the dying ego is no longer functioning as a center. It's the space between mortals that's interesting. I cough up my boring biographical trash only as a symbol, as a bridge, and not as of inherent interest. 'I' am nothing. 'I' am already dead. 'We' know this and are therefore more alive than ever, infinitely and bottomlessly alive. But we remain mortal and faulty, without a cure for the world beyond a little graffiti that may or may not signify for others and help them get over themselves now and then and feel less alone.

He said to them, "What you are looking forward to has come, but you don't know it."

Tom Storm

[

I picked up a vibe early that you were coming in with a kind of detached psychological/analytic approach - kind of therapist-used-to-probing-others-while-their-own-views-remain-safely-unspoken - that just felt deeply counter to the kind of conversation I'm interested in. I pushed back accordingly. — csalisbury

I have to watch how I come across. I certainly can be detached and analytical just as you say. The problem with forums is the conversation can feel impersonal and veiled and because philosophy and cultural studies can hit controversial subjects, it is often hard to know what tone to strike.

The interesting thing about the opening of Thomas is that it has the familiar tropes of mysticism that frankly seem designed to appeal to personal vanity. Secret knowledge/ key to personal transformation. This is right out of Hermetic wisdom or the Kabbalah. But frankly the same proposition is made in Scientology. Is it the case that secret or hidden teachings are the classic refuge of the dispossessed and marginalized? (think I first read that in Isadore Epstein's Judaism - his take on Kabbalah).

What is appealing about mainstream Christianity is the surface appeal of the myth. Jesus is the least mystical of religious teachers. A key teaching is about loving the poor, the weak, the scorned - so detested by Nietzsche and so many modern sensibilities - is actually a powerful idea with far reaching repercussions. There is no need for secret teaching or initiation. That's refreshing. This to me is where orthodoxy (for want of a better term) has the edge on the more secretive Gnosticism. Making something a secret doesn't mean it is more profound, but it sure seems that way.

Perhaps the Gnostic stuff appeals more to people with hierarchical machinations on their mind. "How can I access the real wisdom and the key to ever lasting life?" (or whatever the reward underpinning the doctrines might be) Is it not interesting that the Gnostic teachings also pivot on an idea that is so prevalent now. That the world is coming unstuck and the truth is hidden by design and that only some with the right mindfulness can access this truth. It makes you wonder if QAnon is today's apocalyptic nascent religious tradition with a baroque line in hidden internet based scripture - waiting to be rediscovered in 2000 years and reinterpreted for the times.

Oops, that was more of a flight of ideas than a coherent view.

Count Timothy von Icarus

Bit of a caveat, Thomas was discovered in it entirety in 1945 but scholars knew about it long before. Thomas likely predates a the later synoptic gospels, Mark and Luke, while likely being put down after Mark. It is almost certainly older than John.

Luke and Mathew quote Thomas as length, or at least quote the same source. Scholars hypothesize a Q document that served as a repository of Christ's words, that was later added to narratives from people who knew his life's story.

Anyhow, I think the biggest misnomer with Thomas is that it is a Gnostic gospel. John has far more explicit Gnostic themes. From God as Word, (a decidedly Platonist theme), to the elevation of the spiritual above the material. Paul's letters also have more Gnostic themes. You can see how the idea.of hylics, psychics, and pneumatics could be drawn from Paul's discourse on those born of spirit in I Corinthians. He also personifies wisdom (Sophia), which became a Gnostic trope (Wisdom is even more fully personified in Proverbs).

The best way to think of the Gnostics is as a wide range of Jewish and Christian sects with overlapping beliefs. You can define Gnostic as a belief in a Demiurge, a flawed or evil creator of the material world who is below the true God of ideas and forms, or more broadly as early Christians who saw salvation as a form of holy enlightened, rather than atonement. The themes reappear later, with the Albegensians and Cathars.

I think people get led off track with the very strange cosmology of the Apocryphon of John and the Hypostasis of the Archons, which posit Yahweh as a demonic force called Yaldaboath or Secclus, who gang rapes Eve with his Archons and tries to blind humanity. Christ's main appearance is to bring the Fruit of Knowledge to Adam and Eve in the Garden. Jewish Gnostics further focused on Seth, Eve's third son, as the lineage of enlightenment.

But this is hardly a universal cosmology. That is what makes them so fascinating. The modern American Protestant churches I've been too seem to fetishize the early church a bit. I always take this in stride remembering that the early church had no bible for Sola Scriptura, indeed the New Testament quotes Enoch, and also had an active melange of Gnostic beliefs. A Gnostic was almost Pope. Orthodoxy had to be enforced after the fact, with the sword.

Wayfarer

I'd love to know the relation between what's being translated as 'All" in this text and what's being translated as 'all' in the buddhist texts. — csalisbury

In this translation of The Gospel of Thomas, 'the all' appears five times in three of the 'sayings':

(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."

(67) Jesus said, "If one who knows the all still feels a personal deficiency, he is completely deficient."

(77) Jesus said, "It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

How this expression is interpreted is obviously the key question. What comes to my mind are similar expressions of the encounter with 'the Self' in Advaita Vedanta, or the 'to hen' of Plotinus. Of course many will say that it's just mysticism, where 'mysticism' is a byword for woolly-headedness or obfuscation. But note the extreme brevity of these expressions; they're very terse and exact. I think they indicate the visionary state of 'union with the ultimate'. They reflect, in the parlance of popular Eastern spiritual teachings, one who is a 'realised being', who sees the ultimate reality of existence.

Perhaps the Gnostic stuff appeals more to people with hierarchical machinations on their mind. "How can I access the real wisdom and the key to ever lasting life?" (or whatever the reward underpinning the doctrines might be) Is it not interesting that the Gnostic teachings also pivot on an idea that is so prevalent now. That the world is coming unstuck and the truth is hidden by design and that only some with the right mindfulness can access this truth. — Tom Storm

I encountered the Gnostic Gospels doing undergraduate studies in comparative religion, late 70's early 80's. At the time, I was self-consciously engaged in the spiritual quest, or so I liked to think. As such, I had been initiated into meditation by a secularly-oriented self-awareness group. I formed the view that the kind of experiential insight that purportedly arose from meditation was very much the kind of thing the gnostics understood and taught. I also felt that this had been deliberately suppressed in the mainstream tradition of Christianity, but that you could still find it in the kind of counter-cultural spirituality that had become prevalent in the 1960's.

That's why Pagel's book, Beyond Belief, appealed to me, as it confirmed this narrative. According to Pagels, Thomas' gospel was markedly different to the Gospel of John, in that it stressed the experiential nature of Christ's teaching and downplayed the idea of Jesus as an ultimate authority. But the powers-that-be coalesced around the Johannine intepretation - principally, I thought, because it is considerably easier to manage believers. Consequently, we only ever read about the gnostics through the writings of those who vanquished them, like Iraneus and Tertullian. That is why the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts was such a revelation.

During those years, I gave a paper on the 'centripental' nature of orthodox Christianity, with all power flowing to and from the central authority - the Papacy - distinguishing it from the 'centrifugal' tendencies in the more gnostic-oriented movements, which were based on the idea of empowerment and the transmission of insight (for example in Ch'an/Zen) -more like a network than an hierarchy with a titular head. I also argued that the ascendancy of the 'pistic' forms of Christianity have had grave consequences for the nature of religion in the modern West, and that had more latitude been given to the gnostic interpretation, 'religion' would have a very different meaning today.

Tom Storm

That's why Pagel's book, Beyond Belief, appealed to me, as it confirmed this narrative. According to Pagels, Thomas' gospel was markedly different to the Gospel of John, in that it stressed the experiential nature of Christ's teaching and downplayed the idea of Jesus as an ultimate authority. But the powers-that-be coalesced around the Johannine intepretation - principally, I thought, because it is considerably easier to manage believers. We only ever read about the gnostics through the writings of those who vanquished them, like Iraneus and Tertullian. That is why the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts was such a revelation. — Wayfarer

Certainly some Gnostic schools (and early Christianity more generally) suggests that Jesus is a mortal man with Gnosis, not the Holy Spirt galvanizing him. Jesus is seen as an exemplar of the man who transitioned spiritually through knowledge, but not in a literally divine sense. But does this mean we are not to see Jesus as a type of Bodhisattva, I have never quite determined what to conclude.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Tom Storm

I believe you chronology is a bit off. Kabbalah was developed centuries after the Gnostics were genocided by their coreligionists out of existence. Schloem has connected Kabbalah to Gnostic mysticism and Hermeticism, but it came after the heyday of the Gnostics.

Gnosticism was of course influenced by Platonism. The two have a connection there. Platonism itself had influences from older Greek traditions, as well as ones from the east and Egypt. We don't know where the idea of the transmigration of souls filtered into Greece, but it seems it could have come from India. We now know that Plato's Theory of Forms pre-dates him by generations in Memphite Theology, and the four elements, as well as the semiology of opposites also seem to come from Egypt. The Orphic Cult might have been a vehicle for eastern mysticism into the Greek world.

In any case, I don't think you're entirely correct about these being somehow more elitist traditions. The Cathars were beggars and rejected material wealth. The Gnostics as well forsake material possessions and preached amongst the poor. Indeed, it was their rejection of temporal power that paved the way for their massacre by the forces of orthodoxy.

Gospel of Thomas

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