Unique Lines from the Gospel of Thomas Quiz

Answer:

The Gospel of Thomas was discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, along with fifty other Gnostic treatises. Every detail of their discovery is disputed, so I will give the most colorful version: a poor farmer named Muhammad Ali al-Samman and his brother were digging for soil when they encountered an earthenware jar. This being Egypt, their first instinct was that the jar contained a jinn, so they refused to open it. Their second instinct was that the jar contained gold, which overpowered the first instinct. They discovered twelve leatherbound codices, which included Gnostic writings, a translation of Plato, and some texts from Hermes Trismegistus.

The rest of the world came to know of the codices through a long and circuitous path, involving al-Samman's coincidental interrogation for murder, black-market antique dealing, and the involvement of the Egyptian government and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Today the original Codex is stored at Egypt's Coptic Museum. In 1977, the first English translation of the Gospel of Thomas was published by James M. Robinson. It includes no overarching narrative and only a few passages that could be called anecdotes; instead, it consists of 114 sayings, about half of which also appear in the New Testament Gospels.

The Gnostics were an early sect of Christians whose beliefs were considered heretical by the orthodoxy. One of the theories about the Nag Hammadi library's concealment is that those texts were outlawed by Saint Athanasius, the Patriarch of Alexandria, and hidden by a monastic. Gnosticism, in contrast to mainline Christianity, believes that salvation is achieved by knowledge ("gnosis"), particularly self-knowledge, and not by faith in Jesus alone. Many scholars have pointed out that the Gospel of Thomas is more like the canonical Gospels than any of the other works found at Nag Hammadi. Nevertheless, the emphasis on self-knowledge is apparent. Saying 67: "Those who know all, but are lacking in themselves, are utterly lacking."

The author of the Gospel of Thomas is a complete mystery. It is not believed to be Thomas, the Biblical Apostle. The text begins, "These are the secret words with the living Jesus spoke, and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote them down." "Didymus" is a Greek equivalent to "Thomas," both of which mean "twin" - this has usually been interpreted as the author's way of "twinning" himself with Jesus, as the text implores us to do. Thomas did go by Didymus, and in some Syrian texts he appears as Judas Thomas; but "Didymus Judas Thomas" was probably a pseudonym chosen by some other author. It's also unclear whether the Gospel of Thomas was written before or after the canonical Gospels.

Saying 25 tells us, "Love your sibling like your soul." In another saying (also recounted in Matthew and Mark), he declares, "Those here who do what my Father wants are my brothers and my mother." However, much of the Gospel of Thomas seems to contradict itself. Saying 55 instead says, "Whoever does not hate his father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."

The framing of earthly relationships as insufficient matches the outlook of Jesus in Thomas as one who does not find salvation in the world. Saying 56 calls the world a "carcass," and saying 80 is almost identical: "Whoever has come to know the world has discovered the body, and whoever has discovered the body, of that one the world is not worthy." In saying 87, Jesus expands: "How miserable is the body that depends on a body, and how miserable is the soul that depends on these two." Yet another statement appears to tie this to musings on mind-brain dualism. Saying 29 reads, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty."

There is something very kin to Buddhism in this outlook. This Jesus encourages a lack of attachment to things of the world, even things Christians usually think of as profoundly important - family, the soul. This is probably what is meant by his cryptic instruction in saying 42 to "Be passersby." In other words, be like an empty vessel, or a jar which has been emptied of meal, which is mysteriously equated with Heaven in saying 97.

Elaine Pagels, in her introduction to "The Gnostic Gospels," even compares the mysterious quality of the Gospel of Thomas to Zen koans. To my ear, saying 50 even has a similar cadence to many Buddhist parables, in the way it stacks riddles on riddles.

Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where have you come from?' say to them, 'We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established itself, and appeared in their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?' say, 'We are its children, and we are the chosen of the living Father.' If they ask you, 'What is the evidence of your Father in you?' say to them, 'It is motion and rest.'"

The way Jesus is characterized in the Gospel of Thomas is unusually combative - at times, dare I say, feisty. Not only do his sayings seem specifically chosen to confuse, provoke, and surprise, they include many injunctions of the Apostles themselves. "Seek and you will find. In the past, however, I did not tell you the things about which you asked me then. Now I am willing to tell them, but you are not seeking them." It seems that even the Apostles were unwilling or unable to properly receive Jesus' "secret" teachings. Saying 13 recounts a short anecdote where Jesus takes Thomas aside to tell him "three things." When asked what Jesus told him, Thomas replies, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me." This is the only saying in which Thomas is specifically mentioned. Could this have anything to do with why the author chose Thomas for his pseudonym?

I hope this quiz serves as an inspiration for Christians and non-Christians alike to give this mysterious and compelling text some attention. There is plenty to contemplate in this text whether you are a casual reader or a dedicated scholar.