Chrestians/Christians?

[GakuseiDon]

It seems to me that the bonâ fide devotee receives the first i.e. proto-gnosis upon baptism. The devotee can then expect to receive superior gnosis later.

Likely this proto-gnosis was a psychological acceptance of the dyad as a redeemer of said devotee. The devotee is thus willing to accept but not necessarily willing to suffer!

Yes, that seems to be the progression AFAICT. To become a "Christ"ian, one must be anointed with chrism, which is a product of the tree upon which the crucifixion took place. This is consistent with the idea that to be a "Christian" one must become a Christ, and presumably suffer in some metaphorical way.

The more I look at GoP, the more I think that the author is using "Chrestians" to refer to the orthodox Christians. They've received the baptism, but haven't suffered to become Christ.

Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing. So also when speaking about baptism they say, "Baptism is a great thing," because if people receive it they will live.

Surely that is consistent with the beliefs of the orthodox Christians of that time, around the end of the Second Century CE?

On the chrism:

Philip the apostle said, "Joseph the carpenter planted a garden because he needed wood for his trade. It was he who made the cross from the trees which he planted. His own offspring hung on that which he planted. His offspring was Jesus, and the planting was the cross." But the Tree of Life is in the middle of the Garden. However, it is from the olive tree that we got the chrism, and from the chrism, the resurrection.

So: the father, a carpenter, planted the tree of life upon which his son was crucified. It is from the tree that we get the chrism, and thus, the resurrection. The Demiurge is often represented as a carpenter, though GoP doesn't appear to have the Good God and Ignorant God duality seen in some gnostic texts.

Also:

In the place where I will eat all things is the Tree of Knowledge. That one killed Adam, but here the Tree of Knowledge made men alive. The law was the tree. It has power to give the knowledge of good and evil. It neither removed him from evil, nor did it set him in the good, but it created death for those who ate of it. For when he said, "Eat this, do not eat that", it became the beginning of death.

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil are themes that often pop up in gnostic texts IIRC.

Anyway: my best guess is that the author is using "Chrestian" to refer to orthodox Christians who have been baptised; and "Christian" to refer to those Christians who have been anointed with chrism, i.e. some kind of suffering or knowledge or perfect understanding that makes them into a Christ.

[mlinssen]

• I think that perhaps Marcion and others saw how Plutarch's Osiris stood for the demiurge/logos and "Negative Demiurgy" and became adversarial to Yahweh as well.

Plutarch certainly is a source of inspiration and text for the Churchians, but not Thomas or *Ev. Thomas just has the father and that father is nothing else but the original and untainted You - there is no religion in Thomas, only anti-religion

John takes that father into a little more than that (cough) but it doesn't come as a surprise how the NHL explodes into a series of Genesis of its own when the Egyptians are confronted with this new religion that has a gaping void when compared to Judaism or Hellenic / Egyptian theistic systems

I'm partial to the idea that *Ev introduced Amun into his system:

34 *Ev likely had οὐ δύνασθε Θεῷ δουλεύειν καὶ Ἄμμων: Amun, the Egyptian god who was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety. The name Amun meant something like “the hidden one” or “invisible”. Once again, μαμωνᾷ is a true hapax legomenon that doesn’t exist anywhere but in these verses. *Ev was hostile to God yet friendly to “the Father”, and with the canonicals repurposing Ἄμμων as μαμωνᾷ, assigning it a negative connotation instead, they also needed to reverse the verbs

The evolution to what's in the canonicals these days:

47.2 and there is not strength of a slave to serve two slaveowners,
47.3 Or he will Honour the one and the other one he will “Hubrize” him;

Thomas certainly knows his Greek! The double entendre loanwords in Thomas (ⲧⲓⲙⲁ for τιμάω and ϩⲩⲃⲣⲓⲍⲉ for ὑβρίζω) will be recognised by anyone who had at least one year of Greek in school, as they are the classical actions of humans to the gods: the gods must always be honoured, yet hubris often is what causes them to be hubrised instead - upon which they naturally retaliate

No slave can serve two masters. For he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Amun

*Ev adds his phrase at the end, in the right order: bad vs good, sketching the consequences of serving two masters; God will be devoted and Amun will be despised, whereas it should be the exact opposite of course

Luke 16:13 No servant is able to serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and he will love the other, or he will be devoted to one and he will despise the other. You are not able to serve God and mammon

1. The canonicals need to change Amun into something else of course, and naturally, God is good in their world so they come up with a negative "Mammon": one of many dozens and hundreds of hapax legomena, or in plain English: non existing words. Then Matthew has Luke do the hard work and precede his Logion with a few verses that mansplain what Mammon means so that he can simply copy Luke's verse and remain concise and elegant as usual - we see the same tactic with the birth narratives, among others
2. The order now is incorrect, so they add the hate and love phrase in front of the original one (and greatly benefit from it in the light of their poverisation strategy aimed at the Chrestians)

A word on Jahveh: I doubt they had anything on him, but naturally the FF needed to lie that they did and were strongly opposed to him.
There was no question of becoming adversial to anything: just read Mark up to 15:37 and stop right there; unthink all the Judaisations in it and what you are left with is a cerebral rebel who is anti-establishment, anti-Pharisee, anti-Judaic and who is as blunt as a Dutchman: a true antihero

Who gets brutally murdered at the instigation of the Judaics while even the Romans testify to his innocence

It was mob rule from the start, and not a single line of text needed to be wasted on any antithesis

[dbz]

Thomas just has the father and that father is nothing else but the original and untainted You - there is no religion in Thomas, only anti-religion

John takes that father into a little more than that...

• "[T]hat father is nothing else but the original and untainted You..."

Is that similar to the Middle Platonic conception that "the original and untainted You" was originally united as one with the Monad?

• "[T]here is no religion in Thomas..."

Is there a school of philosophy in Thomas, novel for the period and region, that was lost to history?

[T]he author of the Gospel of John uses to describe the creative force that was used to create the cosmos: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn 1:1-3a). This passage later attests that the Logos becomes flesh in the person of Jesus.

In the same vein, Jesus makes indirect claims to be a manifestation of this principle in the Gospel of Thomas, such as in logia 77, 100, and 105. [There are approximately 23 references to the Monad and Dyad in GTh. See GTh 11,13,15,18,19,24,28,30,40,43,59-61,77,84,91-94,100,101,105, and 107.] (pp. 54–55)

---

--Clark, Seth A., "Know Yourself and You Will Be Known: The Gospel of Thomas and Middle Platonism" (2014). CGU Theses & Dissertations. Paper 92.
doi:10.5642/cguetd/92.

[mlinssen]

Thomas just has the father and that father is nothing else but the original and untainted You - there is no religion in Thomas, only anti-religion

John takes that father into a little more than that...

• "[T]hat father is nothing else but the original and untainted You..."

Is that similar to the Middle Platonic conception that "the original and untainted You" was originally united as one with the Monad?

• "[T]here is no religion in Thomas..."

Is there a school of philosophy in Thomas, novel for the period and region, that was lost to history?

[T]he author of the Gospel of John uses to describe the creative force that was used to create the cosmos: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn 1:1-3a). This passage later attests that the Logos becomes flesh in the person of Jesus.

In the same vein, Jesus makes indirect claims to be a manifestation of this principle in the Gospel of Thomas, such as in logia 77, 100, and 105. [There are approximately 23 references to the Monad and Dyad in GTh. See GTh 11,13,15,18,19,24,28,30,40,43,59-61,77,84,91-94,100,101,105, and 107.] (pp. 54–55)

---

--Clark, Seth A., "Know Yourself and You Will Be Known: The Gospel of Thomas and Middle Platonism" (2014). CGU Theses & Dissertations. Paper 92.
doi:10.5642/cguetd/92.

Thomas isn't concerned with anything else but Us, We, You: what is our essence, who are we, what makes us, what drives us? (Radical non duality) is a fine fit as it also doesn't care about anything but ouselves

Seth Clark is one of countless writers on Thomas who makes assertions without providing arguments - and as such is completely unconvincing. A bloody footnote is all he can manage:

130 There are approximately 23 references to the Monad and Dyad in GTh. See GTh 11,13,15,18,19,24,28,30,40,43,59-61,77,84,91-94,100,101,105, and 107.

He talks an awful lot about Plato, Philo, John, and so on. Explains them, links them, etc. But Thomas?

Just look at his crazy piece on daemons, many pages that discuss everything but Thomas, only to end with "141 There are only 3 references to daemons in GTh. See main discussion in chapter 11."
Chapter 11:

"The “field” and the “clothes” symbolically represent the physical earth and bodies that the disciples are utilizing while in their physical forms and the “owners of the field” reflect the respective daemons who manage and own the material realm"

Sure Seth, yeah that is perfectly intuitive and logical and really does not need any further elaboration - oh wait!

Truth be told, there are much worse papers on Thomas, but poor Seth is just yet another Christian desperately trying to make nonsense (sic) of Thomas. There are only two logia in Thomas that mention the word god, none of them even neutral on the topic and especially the taxes to Caesar equates the both of them as mere deities, idols, who need to be pleased via a frequent offering - yet how often does the word God occur in Seth's thesis?
165 times

[StephenGoranson]

The Gospel of Thomas interest in psychology--Jungians are especially drawn to that--might be an indication that is relatively late and not the first Coptic book?

[dbz]

Thomas isn't concerned with anything else but Us, We, You: what is our essence, who are we, what makes us, what drives us? (Radical non duality) is a fine fit as it also doesn't care about anything but ouselves

It is my top priority to disclose the intricacies of Thomas and the beautiful insights in it. In essence, he teaches what today is known as radical non-duality, only 2 millennia earlier.

---

--"Martijn Linssen | Leiden University". Academia.edu.

Nonduality and interconnectedness (monism)

According to Espín and Nickoloff, referring to monism, "nondualism" is the thought in some Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist schools, which, generally speaking, "teaches that the multiplicity of the universe is reducible to one essential reality." The idea of nondualism as monism is typically contrasted with dualism, with dualism defined as the view that the universe and the nature of existence consists of two realities, such as the God and the world, or as God and Devil, or as mind and matter, and so on. In Advaita Vedanta, nonduality refers to monism, the nonduality of Atman and Brahman.

In a more general sense, nonduality refers to "the interconnectedness of everything which is dependent upon the nondual One, Transcendent Reality," "the singular wholeness of existence that suggests that the personal self is an illusion."

---

"Nondualism § Nonduality and interconnectedness (monism)". Wikipedia. retrieved 26 April 2023.

[mlinssen]

The Gospel of Thomas interest in psychology--Jungians are especially drawn to that--might be an indication that is relatively late and not the first Coptic book?

Yes, Stephen, Jungian most certainly is a fitting contemporary label to Thomas, as it does pertain very specifically to the interrelationship between slaveowner and slave, master and servant, or in Jungian terms Ego and Self

The two that we create are precisely that, and we are neither: we are the living father, who has gone into hiding

Can you elaborate on your conclusion? To the best of my knowledge Socrates was already concerned with who we are, and IIRC Socrates dates to 500 BCE

[mlinssen]

Thomas isn't concerned with anything else but Us, We, You: what is our essence, who are we, what makes us, what drives us? (Radical non duality) is a fine fit as it also doesn't care about anything but ouselves

It is my top priority to disclose the intricacies of Thomas and the beautiful insights in it. In essence, he teaches what today is known as radical non-duality, only 2 millennia earlier.

---

--"Martijn Linssen | Leiden University". Academia.edu.

Nonduality and interconnectedness (monism)

According to Espín and Nickoloff, referring to monism, "nondualism" is the thought in some Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist schools, which, generally speaking, "teaches that the multiplicity of the universe is reducible to one essential reality." The idea of nondualism as monism is typically contrasted with dualism, with dualism defined as the view that the universe and the nature of existence consists of two realities, such as the God and the world, or as God and Devil, or as mind and matter, and so on. In Advaita Vedanta, nonduality refers to monism, the nonduality of Atman and Brahman.

In a more general sense, nonduality refers to "the interconnectedness of everything which is dependent upon the nondual One, Transcendent Reality," "the singular wholeness of existence that suggests that the personal self is an illusion."

---

"Nondualism § Nonduality and interconnectedness (monism)". Wikipedia. retrieved 26 April 2023.

Thanks dbz

Thomas keeps it minimal, so to say, and focuses on personal duality: Ego and Self

We all are split, dualised, separated. Observe Logion 74: we all struggle with separation but none of us considers himself sick, diseased. Grondin has a minor paper as usual on Gathercole's there:

https://www.academia.edu/35895901

The only thing that Thomas is concerned with is ourselves, our dualised selves, the children of the father that we made (Logion 11). Not the universe, nor where we came from: all that is irrelevant of course, and luxury armchair philosophy

You are not who you think you are, nor are you who you think you are not - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

False Core / False Self: Stephen Wolinsky

The personal self is an illusion, yes. The personal ego is an illusion as well, but I think that most embrace that one thought

5. IS said know him who is within the presence of your(SG) outward face and he who is hiding to you(SG) will uncover outward to you(SG). There is not anyone Indeed who, while he is hiding, will not reveal outward.

He who is in the presence of your face is the Ego; he who is hiding is the father

[dbz]

Thomas keeps it minimal, so to say, and focuses on personal duality: Ego and Self

How sophisticated is the Thomas material?

If it was overly sophisticated for the un-sophisticated masses, then at some point a "For Dummies" book will be published.

In her was life, and that life was the light of men
[Simon] came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.
He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light
The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life
When [Simon] spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me [only], but in the one who sent me.

A prophet can and usually does speak in the first person it doesn't mean they are claiming to be the principle itself

The connection to Philo's Word and Logos yes sure and really being the same as wisdom and holy spirit and all the others, not so much as a philosophical explanation of creation but for the direct experiential 'presence' personified - cause most people do they care how the universe got made? no they don't it has no bearing on their lives this is a minority interest but of key importance in John because its the personal experience that matters there i recon

[dbz]

Chrestianity is what *Ev contained, a movement free from Judaics and Judaism just like Philip describes: Hebrews, not Judeans or Judaics is what they were

Plutarch certainly is a source of inspiration and text for the Churchians, but not Thomas or *Ev. Thomas just has the father and that father is nothing else but the original and untainted You - there is no religion in Thomas, only anti-religion

John takes that father into a little more than that...

• Is John an example of the "Churchians" production of materiel reliant on Thomas or *Ev.?

Are Chrestians oriented in a monistic direction...

There are no signs of that, the gospel of Philip contains what can be relied on...

• Is John oriented in a monistic direction?

Philip certainly comes after Mark with regards to the resurrection, yet after LukeMatthew with regards to the virgin birth - although there are other texts that relate both events

Chrestianity is what *Ev contained, a movement free from Judaics and Judaism just like Philip describes: Hebrews, not Judeans or Judaics is what they were