A Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas

From Interpretations to the Interpreted

Petr Pokorný

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780567507495
• eBook ISBN: 9780567166609
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This commentary is opened by a study offering information about all aspects of the Gospel of Thomas, especially about its relation to other texts of early Christian literature, including the canonical Gospels. The successive commentary is based upon the Coptic version and discusses also all fragments of the original Greek text. The volume is divided into two parts: The first discusses the function of each logion (saying) within the frame of piety and theology of the Thomasine group, for which the Gospel is composed; The second part discusses its literary shape and its history, including its relation to the historical Jesus. The result is a portrait of the Gospel as a radical interpretation of Jesus' heritage, still preserving some forgotten features of his teaching.

II. Commentary

This saying has its Greek parallel in P.Oxy. 654, 1–5; The text there is damaged but obviously corresponds to the Coptic version, with only the cognomen Didymos missing.

A

The reader of the first lines in fact hears three voices and the witness of three persons: Jesus, Thomas, and the narrator. Jesus is proclaiming the words of life, while the two others make the reader aware that it is Jesus who is speaking. All three invite the reader to become their fellow.¹

The hidden words relate to a mystery that is proclaimed by Jesus and can thereby become manifest (log. 5, 6:5–6). The problem is that people are alienated. They “live in drunkenness”; they do not know that the most precious value (“pearl”) is in their possession (log. 76); they do not seek it (log. 92); and they ignore God as the Father: they have not “ears to hear” (see log. 8:4 and 96:3).

The proclaimer is the living Jesus, which means that his words mark out the way of life and are themselves the light (log. 50). To hear and follow them means the resurrection of that which has already come (log. 51). Jesus participates in the power of God.

The words are the individual sayings. Each of them is like a call awakening the reader from his sleep (“the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe”),² but at the same time the words as a whole constitute a wisdom that offers a true orientation in life and may lead the awakened people on the true path. The living Jesus spoke to them: the past tense makes the reader aware of the fact that divine revelation has entered our temporal dimension. It has been comprehended in human words and written in letters and ink at a certain time, with which the proper names Jesus and Thomas Didymos are bound together. Nevertheless, this was not an aspect that the author of the Gospel of Thomas intended to stress. For him, Jesus—who is permanently bound together with God as the Living One—is an ever-present mediator of salvific wisdom. As we noted in the introduction, this author’s christology is different in principle from the christology of death and resurrection, because in his view Jesus is the ever-present mediator between human beings and God. The incarnation has simply made people aware of him as a dimension of God’s being. This is an idea that has its analogy in canonical texts such as 1 Cor 8:6 and hymns such as Col 1:15–20; Heb 1:1–2; or the prologue of the Gospel of John. In the mainstream church, however, the time of Jesus’ temporal life “on earth” is clearly the normative period.

In the canonical Gospels Jesus declared that the time of his presence on earth would be limited by his death (Mark 2:20 and parallels), but here it is instead the spiritual death (the “not seeking”) of individual human beings that limits or disrupts communication with God as mediated by Jesus: “Look for the Living One while you are alive” (log. 59).³

The sayings are eternally valid, since their source is the living Jesus who participates in eternal life. He “has” it (Rev 1:18), because he is the origin of the All; he is omnipresent and practically identical with the All, and still he transcends it (log. 77; cf. John 1:10).

“And he said” may grammatically refer to Thomas, but it is Jesus who speaks here—the Living One. Only the Living One can proclaim the overcoming of death (will not taste death). In the Gospel of John we read the words of Jesus: “I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death” (8:51; cf 5:24). Here this means anyone who finds the meaning or interpretation⁴ (Gr. hermeneia⁵). To find the meaning means to realize that what the living Jesus says is a matter of life and death—the beginning and the end in the eternal sense and at the same time the beginning and end of the Gospel of Thomas: “… he sought the one” (log. 107) and “whoever has found himself” (log. 111:3).⁶

This interpretation presupposes a certain amount of information (teaching), but at the same time it is a matter of inner harmony with the divine truth. In the introduction we noted that in the Hymn of the Pearl from the Acts of Thomas the prince who lived alienated in a foreign country awoke from sleep and recognized the voice of his father, the king, only when he saw his father’s letter. Reading it, he declared, “What was written concerned that which was engraved on my heart” (Acts of Thomas 111)⁷; this later narrative may nonetheless be used as a metaphor for the discovery of the meaning of the written words of the Gospel of Thomas. To find orientation in the alienated world means (1) to know the sayings of Jesus and (2) to achieve an inner resonance with their content, to understand that they mediate the way to God himself, to the Father (see sayings 18 and 19, which also close with the promise of not tasting death).

B

The Gospel of Thomas concentrates more on the teaching of Jesus than on his person, because his teaching is the revelation of eternal wisdom. This reflects the pre-Easter mode of tradition, even if the individual sayings may have been reinterpreted or even formulated in the post-Easter period.

In Mark 4:10–12 we also find some elements of the concept of mystery as expressed in the sentences of the Gospel of Thomas. That the sayings have been written down is in fact a hint that they have been selected from a much broader tradition (cf. John 21:25). Thomas is already an interpreter who offers what in his opinion are the most important elements of the tradition.

Literature

Meyer 1991.
Hedrick 1994: 117–18.

This saying has its Greek parallel in P.Oxy. 654, 5–9; the differences: “… will be [dismayed. When] he will be dismayed, he will be king. [And being king, he will attain re]st.”

A

The general exhortation to seek linked to the promise of finding is repeated in log. 92 (second sentence in 94) and is explicated by parables: seeking the largest sheep (log. 107), finding a big fish (8), finding a pearl (76:1–2), or seeking (76:3) and finding a treasure (109). The concept of seeking implies the notion that it is not the result of human activity and creativity but that passivity is not a proper attitude either. Seeking is the proper activity in relation to a precious subject, which is in this case identical with God and eternal life. Real life is sometimes compared to a path, but the concept of search is an even more precise expression of this deep movement.

Finding is the counterpart of seeking,⁹ but it is surprising that it is described as a shock: “When he finds, he will be dismayed, astonished.” This is the result of the encounter of a human being who has grown up in the alienated world with the holiness of God (mysterium tremendum). In the Greek version, the reaction is expressed by the verb thambeuomai, which can mean both admiration (Acts 3:11) and fear (Mark 10:24). The fact that in Coptic we find two verbs (to dismay = šterter and to be astonished = ^er špēre) may be explained as an attempt to express both dimensions of the Greek expression.¹⁰ A parallel expression of astonishment from the mouth of Thomas appears in log. 13:4: “Teacher, my mouth cannot bear at all to say who you are like.” The Gospel of Philip promises that even the name Christian will evoke a similar reaction: “If you say, ‘I am a Christian,’ the [world] will tremble” (NHC II, 62, 26–35[esp. 32–33]).¹¹ This indirect reference to Jesus can clarify our understanding of astonishment as a response to an encounter with God: it is an astonishment at the fact that God can be encountered by humans at all: “Jesus says: If the flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a wonder. But if the spirit (came into being) because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders” (log. 29).

The person who is astonished is called “the ruler.” The translator decided on the expression “be king” as equivalent, since this has to be understood as a signal that the divine kingdom is being realized in the inner encounter with God. According to Luke 22:29–30, the disciples of Jesus will inherit the kingdom of God and become rulers and judges. They “will attain rest” (Greek, anapauomai). This is the passive dimension of becoming king. The rest is the counterpart of any activity; it is the content of the seventh day, of the Jewish Sabbath (Exod 20:8–11). In the Letter to the Hebrews 3:11, 18 (cf. 2 Clement 5:5) heavenly rest is identical with the kingdom of God. It is the fulfillment of human life (log. 51; cf. 90). Death is the end of life, while “rest” is its fulfillment and salvation (log. 60:6).

In the Coptic version the final step is the ruling over All. Since God is the Lord over All, to participate in his rule means to be king over All. The All clearly means the visible and invisible world (Eph 1:22).

B

The second sentence of the saying has a parallel in the Gospel of Hebrews (fragment I: Clem. Alex. Stromata II.9.45.5, cf. V.14.96.3). The compiler of the Gospel of Thomas may have been dependent on the Gospel of Hebrews or else may have shared a common source with it.

Compared with the parallel to the first p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Preface
• Dedication
• Abbreviations
• Sigla
• I. Introduction
• II. Commentary on Sayings 1 to 114
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects and Themes
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Footnote