Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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Not that saying the naked saying.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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32. His disciples say to him: "On what day wilt thou appear to us, and what day shall we see thee?" Jesus says: "When you strip yourselves without being ashamed, when you take off your clothes and lay them at your feet like little children and trample on them! Then [you will become] children of Him who is living, and you will have no more fear."
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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Stromata 3.92.2 - 93.1

“When Salome asked when she would know the answer to her question the Lord replied, ‘When you trample underfoot the integument of shame, and when the two become one and the male is one with the female, and there is no more male and female.” First then, we do not find this saying in our four traditional Gospels, but in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. 376 Next, he does not seem to me to recognize that allusively the male impulse is temper, the female, desire.
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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Secret Alias wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 3:43 pm Not that saying the naked saying.
Oooohhhh, I misunderstood. Yes, the "naked" saying is very much among the quotations that I have from this text.
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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What I take you to be asking about, Ben, is one of the unsourced "Agrapha" of Jesus that shows up in early Church writers, in this case Origen. You are noticing that Origen said "it is written", and Origen doesn't say where, and that it also shows up in the "Gospel of Thomas". You quoted Origen as saying:
Many have taken in hand to write, but four gospels only are approved, from which the dogmas about the person of our Lord and savior are to be derived. I know a certain gospel which is called according to Thomas, and one according to Matthias, and many others we read, lest we should be seen as ignorant on account of those who suppose they know something if they have knowledge of those.
In that quote, Origen does not specify whether all the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are mistaken, false, or heretical. He says that "we read" it, and Origen never says where "it is written" when he quotes a saying that *happens* to be in the Gospel of Thomas. Certainly, since Origen read the Gospel of Thomas, he would have read the saying in it that you quoted about being near fire. Trying to put the matter simply:
1. Origen read the Gospel of Thomas.
2. Origen read the quote in it about being near fire.
3. Origen said "It is written..." and then quoted that saying about being near fire.

The logical conclusion is that Origen was repeating a saying that he had read in the Gospel of Thomas. And one reasonable explanation is that he did not cite where "it is written" because that citation would undermine the authority of the saying that he was quoting. My guess is that the phrase "it is written" does not always mean that an early Christian writer believed that the source was a Biblical canon or otherwise ecclesiastically authoritative, but I would have to double-check on that.

Of course, this is not the only explanation. Origen could have read the same quote somewhere else like in another apocryphal Gospel. But AFAIK, this is the first place we have in our remaining texts, so the most likely answer would be that Origen found the saying there.

BTW, here is the Early Writings Commentary page on that Saying:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... mas82.html#

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 6:59 amOrigen does make a qualitative distinction (not just a quantitative one) between the canonical four and the others insofar as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John "did not take in hand" (οὐκ ἐπεχείρησεν) to write, but rather wrote "by the Holy Spirit" (ἐξ ἁγίου... πνεύματος). It is also interesting to me that Origen does not list the gospel of the Hebrews in this context, given that elsewhere he holds out the possibility that his readers "may admit the gospel according to the Hebrews" (προσιῆται τὸ καθ' Ἑβραίους εὐαγγέλιον); Eusebius lists this gospel among his nothoi, but he rather cushions its landing by saying nothing worse than that "some indeed catalog also the gospel according to the Hebrews among these." There appears to me to be a gradation, both for Origen and for Eusebius, from the canonical four (at the top, considered inspired) through the gospel of the Hebrews (in the middle, considered useful) and to the rest (at the bottom). In the Latin (which, again, I may have mentally privileged), Origen gives the impression that he reads the other gospels only "lest" he should "appear ignorant" (nequid ignorare videremur).

The upshot of all of this is that, to me, it still appears unlikely that Origen would preface a statement which he knows only (and consciously) from the gospel of Thomas with "it is written" as he appears to do in the homily on Joshua. Either he forgot that it came from Thomas or he knew it from some other source which, like the gospel of the Hebrews, he was more inclined to view favorably. Does that sound fairer as an assessment?
andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Nov 12, 2019 11:25 amYes; I don't think Origen would deliberately say "it is written" when citing Thomas.
rakovsky wrote: Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:04 pmOf course, this is not the only explanation. Origen could have read the same quote somewhere else like in another apocryphal Gospel.
What has occurred to me since this exchange is that the problem would be solved if the saying were in the gospel according to the Hebrews itself. The saying is known both to Origen and to Didymus, both of whom are acknowledged on other grounds to have known the gospel according to the Hebrews.

Perhaps another saying known to (one of) the Alexandrian fathers was found in the gospel of the Hebrews, too:

Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 5.10.63.7: 7 Οὐ γὰρ φθονῶν φησί παρήγγειλεν ὁ κύριος ἔν τινι εὐαγγελίῳ, «Μυστήριον ἐμὸν ἐμοὶ καὶ τοῖς υἱοῖς τοῦ οἴκου μου,» ἐν τῷ ἀσφαλεῖ καὶ ἀμερίμνῳ τὴν ἐκλογὴν ποιούμενος, ἵνα τὰ οἰκεῖα ὧν εἵλετο λαβοῦσα ἀνωτέρα ζήλου γένηται. / 7 For it is not of envyings that it says in a certain Gospel that the Lord announced, “My mystery is for me and for the sons of my house,” making the election to be in safety and beyond worry, so that the household things of which it has taken and chosen might be above jealousy.

Clement, too, is acknowledged on other grounds to have known this gospel. He also knows other gospel texts, such as the gospel of the Egyptians, but he seems more critical of those than of the gospel of the Hebrews.

My hypothetical overall positioning of this lost gospel, based upon two separate pericopes thus far, is a strong one, much like a city guarding an important trade route along one of the only passes across the mountains:

Parable, Jericho, & Capernaum in the Gospel of the Hebrews.png
Parable, Jericho, & Capernaum in the Gospel of the Hebrews.png (102.12 KiB) Viewed 5697 times

Its probable form as a synoptic gospel, along with all attendant similarities to the other synoptic gospels and access to early versions of Mark, could explain why so many of the church fathers both regarded it as early and respected its contents to a certain degree. Its status as a Matthean text early on (if we count it as one of the Greek texts mentioned by Papias) would be enough to keep it firmly subordinate to the more useful Matthean text which was granted entry into the fourfold gospel canon, even if just a bit later all memory that Matthew = Matthias was lost to the Greek and Latin West. Its relatively early date could also make it the source of many of the so called agrapha. Its position of mediation between Matthew and Luke could actually make it Q (albeit it not the precious one reconstructed line by line in some quarters). It could be the source of the resurrection appearances in Judea, just as Mark either is, accounts for, or has absorbed the source of those in Galilee. It could be the source of the Jewish participation in the crucifixion found in the gospel of Peter and hinted at in the gospel of Luke. It could be the source of the physical fraternity of Jesus and James the Just. It could be the source for some of the more unique manuscript variants in the Western text of the gospels: not as free additions, but rather as early harmonizations to the gospel of the Hebrews. It could be one of the gospels lying behind the gospel of the Ebionites, perhaps providing the Jewish elements of the synchronism in Luke 3.1-2, with the Marcionite gospel providing the Greco-Roman elements. It could be the text behind papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840. It could be one of Justin Martyr's apostolic Memorabilia. Some of its readings could have made its way into the Diatessaron.

Obviously, imagining such a position for this gospel text in the absence of evidence, whether positive or negative, can easily lead to abuse. Yet my own investigations into both the parable of the talents and the call of Matthew/Levi/Zacchaeus/Matthias were both independent of each other and innocent of all of the possibilities listed above; my reasoning may easily be mistaken, but there is more to it than just creating the perfect plug to fill a hole of a particular shape in our textual record. And there may be more to some of these possibilities I have listed; I list them in order to spark new directions for investigation, not as anything remotely approaching a final word on the matter. In the case at hand, the presence of the saying about being near the fire in the gospel of the Hebrews would solve a problem created by Origen quoting it with seeming approval. That counts for something in my book, and ought to be kept in mind for future research.
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Nov 08, 2019 8:25 pm In connection with that last possibility I note that the gospel of Thomas probably has (at least) two layers. For one thing, one of the Greek Oxyrhynchus fragments (papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1) inserts saying 77b of the Coptic version in between sayings 30 and 31. For another, the following pair of sayings is rather intriguing:

Thomas 12-13:

12 The disciples said to Jesus, “We know that You will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?” Jesus said to them, “Wherever you are, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.”

13 Jesus said to His disciples, “Compare me to someone and tell Me whom I am like.” Simon Peter said to Him, “You are like a righteous angel.” Matthew said to Him, “You are like a wise philosopher.” Thomas said to Him, “Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom You are like.” Jesus said, “I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated by the bubbling spring which I have measured out.” And He took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, “What did Jesus say to you?” Thomas said to them, “If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up.”

Why does James the Just receive such unequaled praise in saying 12 but Thomas receive such unequaled praise in saying 13? One hypothesis is that a collection of sayings originally circulated under the authority of James later came to be circulated under the authority of Thomas instead. Perhaps saying 82, the one which Origen cites and comments on, was part of the original Jacobian collection, thus explaining why Origen did not know it as a saying from the gospel of Thomas.
The whole James the Just thing is a hoax. It is Jacob the Righteous what it says here, and it's a joke. A vile one

The ignorant disciples ask ignorant questions, and get rebuked

12. say(s) the(PL) Disciple to IS : we know : you will go from-the-hand-of we who? is/are(M) who/which will make-be great upward upon we say(s) IS behold : the place have you(PL) come therein you(PL) will go toward Jacob the Righteous this have the(F) heaven with the earth come-to-be because-of he

IS mentions a place, not a time. It's not a location, but a situation: being left without self reflection. And then, they look for a leader!
So Thomas directs them to the worst possible place: Israel

Israel, the name Jacob received after wrestling with an angel (likely Esau in disguise). Jacob, he who had a dream about a ladder, and erected an altar at that very place "How full of awe is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."

That is the pointer. A dismissal - and no one has ever, to the best of my knowledge, managed to link the awkward "heaven and earth came into being because of him" to the dodgy James the Just who isn't mentioned at all in the Synoptics
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

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rakovsky wrote: Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:04 pm BTW, here is the Early Writings Commentary page on that Saying:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... mas82.html#
Got to love Grant and Freedman with their comment that the fire is what Jesus cast on earth.
It's a different word in Thomas, and the only time that it occurs: right here in logion 82

ⲥⲁⲧⲉ, https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C3762

I've come to link it to logion 9, where your Quest starts. I do believe that the root of the three words is penis / the god Seth: ⲥⲏⲧ
https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C3761
https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C3766

The Sower starts with coming out, and then doesn't cast or sow, but "throw-sows": ⲥⲓⲧⲉ
At the end of the logion we find the riddling 60 / 120 "per measure" but ⲥⲟⲧⲉ is not a measure (Crum has a question mark there), but an arrow: https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C3775

A penis. It ejaculates, that crosses a gigantic distance, and then, at the end, one in thousand meets two in ten thousand and we have a hit, a fusion, magic. Fire? Fireworks, likely

It is far-fetched perhaps, but it also is making the two one.
But the fire of logion 82 has nothing to do with the other three occurrences of the word fire in Thomas
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Re: Origen, the gospel of Thomas, and James the Just.

Post by mlinssen »

mlinssen wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 8:41 am That is the pointer. A dismissal - and no one has ever, to the best of my knowledge, managed to link the awkward "heaven and earth came into being because of him" to the dodgy James the Just who isn't mentioned at all in the Synoptics
For the lazy who can't be bothered to download my ATP :lol:

The Jesus of Thomas is miffed and lashes out at the dumb disciples who desire any teacher, as long as there is one; that is most definitely not what Thomas has in mind. Where the disciples ask a question about a certain moment in time, Thomas directs them to a place, a physical
location, and pigeonholes them: if you seek a rabbi then just go to Judaism! He points them to Jacob, the poster child of Judaism, and Israel:

Genesis 25: 21 And Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren. And the LORD granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. 22 The children struggled together within her, and she said, "If it is thus, why is this happening to me?" So she went to inquire of the LORD. 23 And the LORD said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger." 24 When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. 25 The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau. 26 Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them. 27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. 28 Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. 29 Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, "Let me eat some of thatred stew, for I am exhausted!" (Therefore his name was called Edom. ) 31 Jacob said, "Sell me your birthright now." 32 Esau said, "I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?" 33 Jacob said, "Swear to me now." So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

And thus, Jacob acquires the birth right of Esau. ֵםָּ ֵת is usually translated with 'blameless', not 'quiet' - and so should it be here. Jacob is quite the character, really:

Genesis 27:1 When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, "My son"; and he answered, "Here I am." 2 He said, "Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. 3 Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, 4 and prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die." 5 Now
Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, 6 Rebekah said to her son Jacob, "I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, 7 'Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food, that I may eat it and bless you before
the LORD before I die.' 8 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. 9 Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. 10 And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless
you before he dies." 11 But Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, "Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. 12 Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing." 13 His mother said to him, "Let your
curse be on me, my son; only obey my voice, and go, bring them to me." 14 So he went and took them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared delicious food, such as his father loved. 15 Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob her younger son. 16 And the skins of the young goats she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. 17 And she put the delicious food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob. 18 So he went in to his father and said, "My father." And he said, "Here I am. Who are you, my son?" 19 Jacob said to his father, "I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, that
your soul may bless me." 20 But Isaac said to his son, "How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?" He answered, "Because the LORD your God granted me success." 21 Then Isaac said to Jacob, "Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are
really my son Esau or not." 22 So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, who felt him and said, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." 23 And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. 24 He said, "Are you really my son Esau?" He answered, "I am." 25 Then he said, "Bring it near to me, that I may eat of my son's game and bless you." So he brought it near to him, and he ate; and he
brought him wine, and he drank. 26 Then his father Isaac said to him, "Come near and kiss me, my son." 27 So he came near and kissed him. And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, "See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the LORD has
blessed! 28 May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. 29 Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord
over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you!"

Three explicit lies in a row, on top of all the deceit - against his father, of all people. That is not the end of it, but it earns him the blessing of his father. Esau doesn't take it all lightly, and understandably so:

Genesis 27:36 Esau said, "Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing." Then he said, "Have you not reserved a blessing for me?" 37 Isaac answered and said to Esau, "Behold, I have made him lord over you, and all his brothers I have given to him for servants, and with grain and wine I have sustained him. What then can I do for you, my son?" 38 Esau said to his father, "Have you but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father." And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. 39 Then Isaac his father answered and said to him: "Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be, and away from the dew of heaven on high. 40 By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother; but when you grow restless you shall break his yoke from your neck."

Not a future filled with prosperity and happiness for Esau, and he is determined to kill Jacob after this - for which their mother warns Jacob. She advises him to flee, and surprisingly so Isaac agrees to that, blesses him and gives him some instructions for on the way. Shortly after,
Jacob has a dream:

Genesis 28:11 And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. 12 And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! 13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. 14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." 16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it." 17 And he was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." 18 So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19 He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.
20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, 21 so that I come again to
my father's house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, 22 and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house. And of all that you give me I will give a full
tenth to you."

Jacob has some nerve, negotiating with God after all that that same God told him in his dream!
A ladder to heaven, this is the place where heaven and earth come into being because of Jacob: the gate to heaven, according to Jacob.
At least Jacob keeps his promise, although he does do quite a bit of altar building all over the place:

Genesis 32:24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, "Let me go, for the day
has broken." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." 27 And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." 28 Then he said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed." 29 Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered." 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip on the sinew of the thigh.

It is the dreaded confrontation between Jacob and - arguably - Esau. The 'man wrestling' is an angel, supposedly, who gives him a new name, Israel, and even blesses him. The odd story including the hip socket gets quite a make-over in Audlin's restoration of John - that, on a side note. Let it be noted that Jacob loses the struggle yet demands a blessing before letting go of the man! Where normal people would surrender, Jacob even makes demands.

Genesis 35:6 And Jacob came to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him, 7 and there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. 8 And Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Allon- bacuth. 9 God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. 10 And God said to him, "Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name." So he called his name Israel. 11 And God said to him, "I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. 12 The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you." 13 Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. 14 And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it. 15 So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him Bethel.

A lot of altar building, a lot of naming places, sometimes even twice just like here. There is much more to the story of Jacob, the unrighteous deceiver, who gets the full righteous treatment from God on every single occasion. The twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve sons of Jacob: this is where it all started, and this is where Thomas' Jesus tells the ignorant disciples to bugger off to: the 'Israel' that Thomas so greatly despises.
It has nothing to do with the supposed leadership of the supposed brother of the supposed Jesus, the supposed James the Just - of course. Logion 12 is not in the least in conflict with logion 13 where Thomas gets all the credits; logion 12 is a marvellous putdown by Thomas to the Jews, Judaism; Israel as a whole. And in the light of my explanation of logion 46 where Johannes the Immerser sees the light, that shouldn't come as a surprise now.
On a side note, there is an enormous amount of nuances and subtleties to the story of Jacob, where his heel-grabbing is a metaphor for him being serpent-like, cunning as the serpent of Eden. Isaac, about the bless his firstborn, would actually break the covenant by doing so, and the intervention of Rebekah where she conspires with Jacob against her husband, is actually 'doing the right thing' in the eyes of God. There is even much more to it than that but the point is that 'Jacob the Righteous' points to all of Israel and Judaism, and thence is where the Jesus of Thomas dismisses the rabbi-aspiring disciples to.
Thomas makes great sense, if only not read through a Christian lens, and certainly not a Jesus lens. Take the text of Thomas, replace all occurrences of 'Jesus' by 'IC', 'Victor' or any other connotation-free word, erase your brain as much as you can, and then look at it all. And take Grondin's translation please, or that of Paterson Brown.

It has always greatly baffled me how people can think that it is about the canonical Jesus, the Churchian Jesus. Even people who embrace his self-seeking, who believe he has a 'Gnostic' touch, even those think that this is that Jesus, they think that Thomas tells us about the canonical Jesus.
Granted, the translation of Thomas has been corrupted from the start, made by people who also read him through a Christian lens, a Gnostic lens, and simply 'emended' the text where they failed to understand it. Guillaumont, Doresse, Quispel, Plisch and everyone who came after them: they read into the text as far as the limits of their imagination could carry them, and simply changed what fell outside that margin: Doresse translates Jacob the Righteous to Jacques le Juste, Guillaumont translates with James the righteous, Quispel translates to Jacobus de rechtvaardige (and that's a literal translation in Dutch, and also the identification for James the Just in Dutch), Plisch uses Jakobus der Gerechte, and that is also the German name used for James, the brother of Jesus. Half of them doesn't pay attention to the odd "heaven and earth" phrase, the other half comes up with a tentative explanation by pointing to something vague and unverifiable.
As tempting as it is to translate the Coptic Greek to the cognomen for the "brother of Jesus, James", the logion itself should be ground enough to opt for a literal translation: if the context doesn't fit the content, don't change the content! Don't change the content, period, if it is in a text that you can make little sense of.
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