Comment by Keith Saylor on 12th mo. 10, 2014 at 1:39pm

Dear Jim,

By way of disclosure, 1. The Gospel of Thomas inspires Presence within me. It is among the very few writings that I enter regularly. 2. I am not interested in the text as a critic in the academic sense. The text is as colleague with whom I share experience and we talk in the reading.

If it be your will, I ask whether you would consider my reply to your recent post. I write with no expectation that you agree with this offering.
With that said, I can understand the last passage of the gospel may be a stumbling block for a good many today. It reads:

Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, as women are not worthy of life."

Jesus said, "I myself will lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter Heaven's Realm.

When I read your words about the anti-female nature of this message I was reminded of a passage very early in the Gospel of Thomas that reads:

Jesus saw infants being nursed.

He said to his disciples, "These infants being nursed are like those who enter the Realm."

They replied, "So then do we enter the Realm like children?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male is not male and the female is not female; and when you make eyes in the place of an eye , and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness, then will you enter the Realm.

Clearly, in this passage Jesus, among the whole of the group of disciples does not single out either male nor female as primary to enter the Realm. His message is one of the two becoming one as primary to entrance into the Realm. Then we move to the last passage and we have Simon Peter, in the presence of Jesus, admonishing Jesus to banish Mary from his presence because she is a women and is not even worthy of living. Now, notice Jesus' reply, mindful of the second quote above. Jesus's words must have echoed through the very core of Peter's being if he himself recalled the other teaching of Jesus.

Jesus said; I will guide her and she will become a living Presence as are you. All women who become male so that they are no longer male or female, losing their former identity, will enter the Realm. Oh, the power of Jesus' reply in light of the second passage quoted! In one small passage Jesus opened eternity to women and at the same time he rebuked Peter, because it goes without saying, and by extension, that Peter must make himself female to enter the Realm. Can't you just see Peter's jaw drop in astonishment and re-cognition?

Oh, what a powerful and loving lesson.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 12th mo. 10, 2014 at 3:31pm

Thomas has some good stuff, though I doubt that much of goes back as far as those few quotes that some scholars consider closer to the form of what Jesus would have said, in that historical role... Neither does it read quite like a 'Gnostic' gospel, of the generic sort.

After I quoted Needleman about gnostic 'Knowing' getting ossified into 'Gnosticisms' -- It occurs to me that people show a strong tendency to define some set of beliefs they can call "Mysticism" but that the point is a mystical connection that such definitions only point towards.

Comment by Jim Wilson on 12th mo. 11, 2014 at 7:07pm

Greetings Keith:

I'm hesitant to get too meticulous about analyses of specific passages.  My experience online is that these kinds of discussions often do not go well.  In a face-to-face encounter I would feel more relaxed about this kind of interaction.  Having said that, I have a few general responses:

Your interpretation makes sense.  I think you can read Thomas in the way that you have. And if Thomas is supportive of your spiritual journey, I think that is more important than theories about what Thomas 'actually' means; assuming that we can recover that.  Like you, I am adverse to textual criticism and its miasmic atmosphere for that reason.

Naturally, and as you would suspect, my own understanding differs.  I see the last saying of Thomas as the climax of Thomas, and that all the other sayings lead up to this last one.  What is revealed in the last saying is that from the perspective of Thomas the 'one' is male.  I suspect that is the big 'secret' that the opening refers to.  I would have been more impressed if in this last saying Jesus said he was going to change Peter into a gal, rather than Mary into a guy.  Now that would have made Peter uncomfortable!  But I freely admit that between your interpretation and mine I do not think there is any objective way of determining which is more accurate.  Perhaps there is some truth in both of them.

As I mentioned, my first response to Thomas (and other Gnostic works) was excited interest.  My first hesitation was over the explicit elitism that opens Thomas.  That doesn't sound like the Jesus of the traditional Gospels.  Then I began to place Thomas in a larger, Gnostic, context, and eventually discovered the critique of Plotinus.  This opened to me that the criticism of Gnosticism by orthodox Christianity was actually well founded.  Plotinus was not a Christian sectarian, he was not arguing from a traditional Christian view, yet his analysis strongly resembles the criticisms written by traditional Christians at that time.  My feeling now is that Gnosticism was not an 'alternative' Christianity; it was, rather, an elitist and somewhat reactionary movement that sought to ride the wave of Christianity's increasing popularity.  These thoughts of mine are not nailed down and are likely to change in the future.

Best wishes,

Jim

Comment by Keith Saylor on 12th mo. 11, 2014 at 7:33pm

Jim, Thank you for your thoughts and consideration. I will certainly spend time with your analysis. 

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