Gospel of Thomas? Pre or Post Synoptics?

[Joe Manco]

The introduction to Thomas says:

These are the secret sayings which were spoken by Jesus the Living One, and which Judas, who is called Thomas, wrote down

The introduction claims the text contains the secret sayings of Jesus, not the tradition that is generally known, and he repeatedly emphasizes that the teachings are difficult to interpret. Where the sayings have a setting, it is usually Jesus speaking to his closest disciples, though the crowd makes an odd appearance in saying 79. The author is claiming to have special knowledge available only to a chosen few within the Jesus' movement and is offering the reader the chance to share in it. We should not expect him to be giving a summary of the Jesus tradition as it is generally known; he is deliberately setting his work apart from that.

[toejam]

^Exactly. I agree completely.

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi andrewcriddle,

Thank you for this.

Paul uses the same expression and he certainly does not know about any crucifixion except a metaphorical one.
The saying #55 as it stands now makes no logical sense

55. Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate 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."

Hating your father and mother may be a prerequisite to being Jesus' disciple. This just means that fathers and mothers hate Jesus, so you have to hate them back to be a Jesus disciple.
But hating your brother and sister cannot be a prerequisite to carry a cross to crucifixion. My brother may be a Jesus disciple and is carrying a cross. Why do I have to hate him? That is crazy jibberish.

"Carry a cross" must be a mistranslation"

J.P. Meyer in A Marginal Jew, v. 3, pp. 105-106 n. 75 says, "The key words mathetes (disciple), stauros (cross), and axios (worthy) appear in Greek in the Coptic text."
This sounds to me that somebody is trying to get the Coptic to match the Greek NT saying. Note that the word "disciple" is used 21 more times and the word "worthy" seven more times in the Gospel of Thomas. The word "cross" is never used again.

Is this the only possible meaning of the coptic phrase that has been translated as "carrying the cross"? I am especially thinking of the Aramaic expression that underlies it.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Where or where is the Crucifixion in The Gospel of Thomas? The four NT gospels are all built around the crucifixion. Without the crucifixion the four gospels are a plotless mess. It is the centerpiece. It is what everything leads to or comes from. How could Thomas just ignore it?

Saying 55 in the Gospel of Thomas may be relevant

Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate 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."

It suggests that the author(s) of Thomas were aware of sayings by Jesus alluding to crucifixion, although he/they made little use of them.

Andrew Criddle

[Andrew]

Hi andrewcriddle,

Thank you for this.

Paul uses the same expression and he certainly does not know about any crucifixion except a metaphorical one.
The saying #55 as it stands now makes no logical sense

55. Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate 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."

Hating your father and mother may be a prerequisite to being Jesus' disciple. This just means that fathers and mothers hate Jesus, so you have to hate them back to be a Jesus disciple.
But hating your brother and sister cannot be a prerequisite to carry a cross to crucifixion. My brother may be a Jesus disciple and is carrying a cross. Why do I have to hate him? That is crazy jibberish.
[snip]

Couldn't that saying just be hyperbole and not literal? I've always understood it as meaning that one should be willing to completely reject one's family to follow Jesus, if that is necessary (emphasis on "necessary"). Maybe that's just my Christian bias showing through, but does the Greek allow for this understanding?

[andrewcriddle]

..........................................................................

"Carry a cross" must be a mistranslation"

J.P. Meyer in A Marginal Jew, v. 3, pp. 105-106 n. 75 says, "The key words mathetes (disciple), stauros (cross), and axios (worthy) appear in Greek in the Coptic text."
This sounds to me that somebody is trying to get the Coptic to match the Greek NT saying. Note that the word "disciple" is used 21 more times and the word "worthy" seven more times in the Gospel of Thomas. The word "cross" is never used again.

Is this the only possible meaning of the coptic phrase that has been translated as "carrying the cross"? I am especially thinking of the Aramaic expression that underlies it.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Cross in saying 55 is a staurogram S(TR)OS See cross and the hurtado blog post staurogram It definitely means cross.

Andrew Criddle

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Andrew,

It certainly could be. People use all kinds of different phrases to express all kinds of meanings.
However, I see a systematic problem with the word cross showing up in different places in early Christian literature and just seeming to confuse things, as if something was poorly translated into the word "cross". What I see as another example of this is in the Epistle of Barnabus. We have:

9.8 For it says, "And Abraham circumcised from his household eighteen men and three hundred." What then was the knowledge that was given to him? Notice that he first mentions the eighteen, and after a pause the three hundred. The eighteen is I (=ten) and H (=8) -- you have Jesus -- and because the cross was destined to have grace in the T he says "and three hundred." So he indicates Jesus in the two letters and the cross in the other.

The letter Taf (T) in Greek stands for the number 300. We might refer the "T" as a cross, but would it have made sense in Greek? And why say the cross was destined to have grace in the T. This is very different from saying that the cross in the letter T was destined to have grace in the crucifixion of Jesus. I think I found the answer in Wikipedia when I looked up the letter Taw/Tav which is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Taf. Among the things it says about Taw/Tau is this:

Taw, tav, or taf is the twenty-second and last letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew

In ancient times, Tau was used as a symbol for life and/or resurrection..
In Biblical times, the Taw was put on men to distinguish those who lamented sin, although newer versions of the Bible have replaced the ancient term “Taw” with "mark" (Ezekiel 9:4) or "signature" (Job 31:35).

Ezekiel 9:4 depicts a vision in which the tav plays a Passover role similar to the blood on the lintel and doorposts of a Hebrew home in Egypt.[1] In Ezekiel’s vision, the Lord has his angels separate the demographic wheat from the chaff by going through Jerusalem, the capital city of ancient Israel, and inscribing a mark, a tav, “upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.”

In Ezekiel's vision, then, the Lord is counting tav-marked Israelites as worthwhile to spare, but counts the people worthy of annihilation who lack the tav and the critical attitude it signifies.

If we go back to Barnabus, we see that Mark is referencing not the crucifixion of Jesus when he use the word that is interpreted as "cross", but the circumcision done by Abraham.

9.8 For it says, "And Abraham circumcised from his household eighteen men and three hundred." What then was the knowledge that was given to him? Notice that he first mentions the eighteen, and after a pause the three hundred. The eighteen is I (=ten) and H (=8) -- you have Jesus -- and because the cross was destined to have grace in the T he says "and three hundred." So he indicates Jesus in the two letters and the cross in the other.

If we replace the word "cross" with the word "circumcision," we get a whole lot more sense from the passage:

9.8 For it says, "And Abraham circumcised from his household eighteen men and three hundred." What then was the knowledge that was given to him? Notice that he first mentions the eighteen, and after a pause the three hundred. The eighteen is I (=ten) and H (=8) -- you have Jesus -- and because the circumcision was destined to have grace in the T he says "and three hundred." So he indicates Jesus in the two letters and circumcision in the other.[/quote]

If we take the nomina sacra IH as the name Joshua which means Yahweh Saves, we see that Barnabus is saying that Abraham circumsized precisely 318 men to show that the God Jesus (Yahweh saves) would be saving the Jews in Egypt by circumcising/inscribing a "Z" in their foreheads. The Greek translators of the text, saw the word Jesus and that lead them to mistranslate the Aramaic or Coptic word near it as cross instead of inscribe or circumcise as they should have done.

Thus we get the mistaken impression that Barnabus is writing about the NT gospel character Jesus of Nazareth, when he has never heard of Jesus of Nazareth, but is writing about Jesus/Joshua/Yahweh Saves, who is the son of the God Yahweh. It was this God that was manifested in the flesh of the Jews as a humble servant and was somehow crucified. The Jews manifested Yahweh Saves by acting humble towards the Romans and the Romans crucified them. Now, this God has been reborn in the flesh of the Jews, but this time not as a humble servant, but as someone go is going to strike back.

Just as there is not a real reference to Jesus of Nazareth in the Epistle of Barnabus, but an only seeming reference to the cross and crucifixion, the same appears to be the case with the Gospel of Thomas. That God Jesus too is preparing his people for war. In that context the demand for hatred of Father and Mothers and Brothers and Sisters makes sense. It also suggests that it is prior to the Gosple like the Epistle of Barnabus and the Pauline Epistles in the NT.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Hi andrewcriddle,

Thank you for this.

Paul uses the same expression and he certainly does not know about any crucifixion except a metaphorical one.
The saying #55 as it stands now makes no logical sense

55. Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate 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."

Hating your father and mother may be a prerequisite to being Jesus' disciple. This just means that fathers and mothers hate Jesus, so you have to hate them back to be a Jesus disciple.
But hating your brother and sister cannot be a prerequisite to carry a cross to crucifixion. My brother may be a Jesus disciple and is carrying a cross. Why do I have to hate him? That is crazy jibberish.
[snip]

Couldn't that saying just be hyperbole and not literal? I've always understood it as meaning that one should be willing to completely reject one's family to follow Jesus, if that is necessary (emphasis on "necessary"). Maybe that's just my Christian bias showing through, but does the Greek allow for this understanding?

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi andrewcriddle,

Thank you for this. This is great.
Hurtado says the symbol/sign rho/taf predates the Christian movement. That means it could have had another meaning in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. He says, "The device wasn’t invented by Christians, for there are lots of examples of its use earlier. But the Christians adopt the device and give it their own distinctive meaning/function."

In the same way the ankh symbol was originally Egyptian and stood for eternal life. it was adopted by the book/Movie "Logan's Run" and stood more or less for people renewing/living past the age of 30. It would be incorrect to say that every use of the ankh symbol in a science fiction film refers to the use of the Ankh symbol in "Logan's Run".

One might also think of the way the Nazis expropriated the symbol of the swastika. As Wikipedia says:

Swastikas have been used in various other ancient civilizations around the world including Turkic, India, Iran, Armenia, Nepal, China, Japan, Korea and Europe. It remains widely used in Indian religions, specifically in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, primarily as a tantric symbol that invokes Lakshmi - the Vedic goddess of wealth, prosperity and auspiciousness...
The symbol has a long history in Europe reaching back to antiquity. In modern times, following a brief surge of popularity as a good luck symbol in Western culture, a swastika was adopted as a symbol of the Nazi Party of Germany in 1920, who used the swastika as a symbol of the Aryan race."

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

..........................................................................

"Carry a cross" must be a mistranslation"

J.P. Meyer in A Marginal Jew, v. 3, pp. 105-106 n. 75 says, "The key words mathetes (disciple), stauros (cross), and axios (worthy) appear in Greek in the Coptic text."
This sounds to me that somebody is trying to get the Coptic to match the Greek NT saying. Note that the word "disciple" is used 21 more times and the word "worthy" seven more times in the Gospel of Thomas. The word "cross" is never used again.

Is this the only possible meaning of the coptic phrase that has been translated as "carrying the cross"? I am especially thinking of the Aramaic expression that underlies it.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Cross in saying 55 is a staurogram S(TR)OS See cross and the hurtado blog post staurogram It definitely means cross.

Andrew Criddle

[PhilosopherJay]

picture from http://www.simchajtv.com/king-herod-a-messiah/

This coin is from 37 B.C.E. and was issued by Herod. Note on one side of this coin (left in the picture) next to the incense burner in the center, we get a staurogram, the combination of T (Taf) and P (Rho) together. It looks a little like the Egyptian ankh symbol, but it is different. This symbol much have had an important and well known meaning for Jews.
The symbol obviously did not mean crucifixion as it did in later Christian times. Why would Herod be issuing a coin with a crucifixion symbol?
The epistle of Barnabus tells us that the T (taf) symbol was the mark inscribed on jews in Egypt to distinguish them from Egyptians and this mark saved their life. The T (taf) therefore was some kind of symbol of salvation or life. The problem is with understanding the letter P (rho) which is combined in the pictogram. This symbol was used in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. Could it have had the earlier Jewish meaning the Jewish Taf-Rho symbol depicted in the coin and not the meaning of cross/crucifixion that it later came to mean in Christian texts. Thus we have a symbol in the Gospel of Thomas that may not have meant cross or crucifixion despite the Christian copyists who later interpreted it that way. Since there is no other mention of the crucifixion in the Gospel of Thomas, we should assume that it probably did not have the meaning of cross.
Thus the translation of 55 should be
(55) Jesus said, "Those who do not hate their fathers and their mothers cannot be disciples of me, and those who do not hate their brothers and their sisters and take up their [unknown symbol] like me will not become worthy of me."

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

[andrewcriddle]

Just to clarify: In the Gospel of Thomas and other early Christian texts we are dealing not just with the tau-rho ligature (which you correctly state does not necessarily refer to a cross) but with the use of the tau-rho ligature as part of an abbreviated form of stauros i.e. s(tr)os.

I don't see how this can refer to anything other than a cross (stauros).

Andrew Criddle

[maryhelena]

picture from http://www.simchajtv.com/king-herod-a-messiah/

This coin is from 37 B.C.E. and was issued by Herod. Note on one side of this coin (left in the picture) next to the incense burner in the center, we get a staurogram, the combination of T (Taf) and P (Rho) together. It looks a little like the Egyptian ankh symbol, but it is different. This symbol much have had an important and well known meaning for Jews.
The symbol obviously did not mean crucifixion as it did in later Christian times. Why would Herod be issuing a coin with a crucifixion symbol?

Wow............Herod the Great puts a cross symbol on his first coins - a coin dated from 37 b.c. - a year in which he was responsible for sending Antigonus to Marc Antony, in Antioch. Marc Antony, re Cassius Dio, putting Antigonus on a cross prior to executing him. My, my - that must have gone down well with the Hasmoneans....

The cross, for Herod, a symbol of his victory over the Hasmoneans?

I've not yet read the links - will be doing so....
---------------------
Quote from one of the links....

The tau-rho staurogram, like other christograms, was originally a pre-Christian symbol. A Herodian coin featuring the Staurogram predates the crucifixion. Soon after, Christian adoption of staurogram symbols serve as the first visual images of Jesus on the cross.

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dail ... taurogram/

Now goodness me - is Herod's coin with the cross symbol the smoking gun? A smoking gun against the theory that the gospel crucified Jesus figure of around 30/33 c.e. was a historical figure?

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<snip>

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Rather than derail this thread any further - I've posted the above in a new thread. Any comments on this post please post to the new thread.