The gospel of Thomas.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
WillyB
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by WillyB »

I was just looking at what you wrote on Logion 3, and really think you're right (your writing seems convincing) that the kingdom is "of your eye." I'm not sure precisely the meaning (it may be deeper than I can fathom), but I agree the call is for introspection that no one else can do for us. This does NOT equate though to a condemnation of RELIGION. Many religions and sects focus on this inner space...Buddhists, Quakers are two that I know about. I figure the I.S. of Thomas is the Jesus of the Gospels, but if I.S. seems too Buddhist to be Jesus, it may just show how far off track Christianity has gotten?
WillyB
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by WillyB »

On the next logion, in the discussion, you have
and when we grow up we do said expecting ourselves,
which I'm not sure but could this be a typo?
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mlinssen
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by mlinssen »

WillyB wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 12:56 pm I was just looking at what you wrote on Logion 3, and really think you're right (your writing seems convincing) that the kingdom is "of your eye." I'm not sure precisely the meaning (it may be deeper than I can fathom), but I agree the call is for introspection that no one else can do for us. This does NOT equate though to a condemnation of RELIGION. Many religions and sects focus on this inner space...Buddhists, Quakers are two that I know about. I figure the I.S. of Thomas is the Jesus of the Gospels, but if I.S. seems too Buddhist to be Jesus, it may just show how far off track Christianity has gotten?
Thanks Willy, it is of your eye indeed. I hadn't done the Greek fragments back then but I've included them this time, and of course the Greek copy says outside, arguably though as all of it is in a lacuna - but there simply is no place for the Greek "opthalmos"

I draw the line between religion and spirituality at getting told what to do, and as such many spiritual movements would get equated to religion by me, such as Bagwan, mindfulness, and every other New-age folly with a book of rules

Religion is everything that instructs you to do xyz OR ELSE, and the thing is that the xyz frequently does change but the OR ELSE never does.
Listen, I do what makes me happy in the long run, that is my entire philosophy of life. If you want to be religious, go for it. If you want to have the IS of Thomas equate to the Jesus of the canonicals then by all means, eat your heart out. If you want to claim in my presence that they in fact are one and the same, then fine by me

If you seriously want to argue for anything, however, then bring serious arguments - everyone has an opinion on anything, and 99.9% of those are completely devoid of any and all substantiation, which makes them not in the least convincing

Secondly, how could "when we grow up we do said expecting ourselves" be a typo? You've got to be a little more forthcoming Willy, I serve you a lot of info and I would be pleased if you'd repay me the favour - it saves me time and energy
WillyB
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by WillyB »

Sorry my brain finally parsed "when we grow up we do said expecting ourselves."
It is clear enough now. That use of said seems old fashioned but I'm trained as a scientist, not a writer.
I wasn't realizing expecting here was a gerund, I was trying to read it as an adverb...
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mlinssen
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by mlinssen »

WillyB wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 1:49 pm Sorry my brain finally parsed "when we grow up we do said expecting ourselves."
It is clear enough now. That use of said seems old fashioned but I'm trained as a scientist, not a writer.
I wasn't realizing expecting here was a gerund, I was trying to read it as an adverb...
My apologies Willy, I'm not a native speaker, nor a scientist or a writer for that matter. I'll check the Commentary for statements like that, there'll likely be a few of them. Hoping to make it this month, gonna be tight

Thanks for the explanation!
WillyB
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by WillyB »

Martijn I've read more of your commentary that you linked to, and it's an amazing document. It's obvious I'm no match for you as a scholar.
Plus I don't know Greek or Coptic (English is my first, but I studied a couple other languages in school too). I have yet to see a translation of Logion 7 that hit home for me, but your commentary is on the mark. I'm making notes for myself so here's how I altered your literal translation to bring out the joke:

IS said Fortunate is the lion, the one the human will eat
and the lion’s being becomes human.
And unfortunate the human, the one who the lion will eat
and the lion will become human being.

Maybe it's bad but I hope someone likes it...
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mlinssen
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by mlinssen »

WillyB wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 8:21 pm Martijn I've read more of your commentary that you linked to, and it's an amazing document. It's obvious I'm no match for you as a scholar.
Plus I don't know Greek or Coptic (English is my first, but I studied a couple other languages in school too). I have yet to see a translation of Logion 7 that hit home for me, but your commentary is on the mark. I'm making notes for myself so here's how I altered your literal translation to bring out the joke:

IS said Fortunate is the lion, the one the human will eat
and the lion’s being becomes human.
And unfortunate the human, the one who the lion will eat
and the lion will become human being.

Maybe it's bad but I hope someone likes it...
Excellent Willy! I'm not a scholar by the way, just some dude who loves languages and to be nitty-gritty :lol:

Yes, the lion's being is the trick, it's not a verb but noun - I try to stick to the literal translation perhaps a bit too much. The 'being' at the end is too much though as that word isn't there, but I like the match with the first word as it makes it evident and nicely fluid this way :thumbup:

The unfortunate is a fine find too!

And thanks for the praise, I'm glad you like it - Thomas is profound and I hope (or rather, desire) to share that
WillyB
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by WillyB »

I agree it's looser than yours, but I think the online dictionary gave "human being" as a possible translation of the coptic word there. I might try making it less literal still. My wife was a successful, certified translator for a few years, and I sometimes edited her English translations. You are more of a scholar than you realize BTW. I published a fair number of well-cited papers in science, but my faith in that enterprise has dwindled.
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mlinssen
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by mlinssen »

WillyB wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 11:25 am I agree it's looser than yours, but I think the online dictionary gave "human being" as a possible translation of the coptic word there. I might try making it less literal still. My wife was a successful, certified translator for a few years, and I sometimes edited her English translations. You are more of a scholar than you realize BTW. I published a fair number of well-cited papers in science, but my faith in that enterprise has dwindled.
Yup, you're right about that - by the strict finical me would then use 'human being' for every single occurrence of ⲣⲱⲙⲉ :shock:

I have corralled myself in this impossible normalised literal translation Willy, and it has worked wonders for me and still does - but I seem to be unable to escape it at the moment, which is alright really, for the time being.
How did your wife like her work? I always wanted to become an interpreter / translator, went to university for that but got distracted and ended up just doing Spanish and Portuguese with some stuff in the side. Naturally, being not even mediocrily ;-) schooled at anything, I ended up in IT where I've been doing B2B information exchange (EDI) ever since on every conceivable level: that's also translating really, where you work with clients, customers, and suppliers; internal people and external ones, business, IT and key users, and I run the show from Architecture down to Implementation and Test.
A lot of chameleon skills required there, and I like to think that translating is similar but I wouldn't know really - so perhaps you can tell me!

That's also where I got the idea of normalisation by the way, from IT and data modelling. Everyone always thinks they talking about the same product within the same company, but that's where the first bubbles are burst: by making a truly enterprise wide model of a product and all its properties - where indeed full normalisation is the answer to all disputes. And about a hard as normalising Thomas (and it gets really cumbersome for much larger texts I would think)
WillyB
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Re: The gospel of Thomas.

Post by WillyB »

Sounds brilliant. My wife found translating very difficult actually. Some customers were bad. You get paid piece work (per word), so it's intense, and often tight deadlines. Plus the industry is contracting with the rise of machine learning (although there are good tools for hybrid machine/manual translation). Most jobs are boring, legal documents, but occasionally on interesting topics. She did like translating novels when that opportunity arose, but those are hard to find and don't pay the best. And to do that well requires a good editor.
Now she's back in science working on a totally novel kind of Covid test...
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