[optormtix]

Some commentaries on the Gospel of Thomas I recently wrote:
I've been reading the Gospel of Thomas and the Zhuangzi lately, and I've discovered I really like them. Thomas has the sort of brevity one would associate with a bunch of quotations (which, indeed, it is) and the Zhuangzi has some of the most poetic prose I've ever seen--prose that mirrors the poetry in the Tao Te Ching. But what is most interesting about Thomas (here) are some of Jesus' phrases. For instance, at Thomas 6, Jesus says:

Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed.
What do you think this verse means? I think what it means is that since God dwells in truth, by distancing oneself from truth one's quite literally distancing oneself from God, from the light. And of course, this verse affirms God's omnipotence and omniscience. God knows, Jesus seems to say.

Another good verse is 18:

The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?"

Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.

Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."
The circularity of the world? Birth and death as part of a cycle? It doesn't figure so much in Gnostic cosmology as the Carpocratians' (the orgiastic sect who believed that to escape from the cycle of rebirth and redeath one had to experience all life had to offer). Yet The beginning is the end and the end the beginning is a prominent feature in nearly all religious traditions (Zen holism, Rev. 1:8, B.G. 11.32, the Hindu trimurti of Brahma creator, Vishnu sustainer, and Shiva destroyer, each necessary for the other, etc.)...Or is it a reflection of TTC 2b ('Being and nonbeing create each other'...)? Or perhaps it's a reflection of TTC 4 ('I don't know who gave birth to it. / It is older than God')? Or both? To me, though, how I see it is a little more nuanced: I actually happen to think that the line [he] who stands at the beginning [...] will know the end is actually in part a) a demonstration of what happens when an enlightened being's eyes are opened (that is, he knows causation), b) a demonstration of the unity of all things, and c) interestingly enough, an allusion (if it can be called that) to interdependent origination, the causality of all things. In the same strand of thinking lies, in my opinion, Thomas 22,

When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom], again a stress on unity, especially in diversity.

Th. 30 ('where there are three deities, they are divine. Where there are two or one, I am with that one') is also interesting: is Christ suggesting that Zoroastrian Ohrmazd and Jewish YHWH are the same? Remember that in Zoroastrian cosmology (replicated later in Manicheanism and the Cathar and Bogomil 'heresies' Ohrmazd was opposed by the only-marginally-less-powerful Ahriman (much as the later theology in Christianity developed, think La divinia commedia and Paradise Lost. Is he suggesting he is a religiously transcendental figure? Relying on my favorite religious crux ('the continuing veracity of the enduring traditions') I believe he is, indeed, saying wheresoever a religious tradition emphasizes unity, he will be there. (Interestingly enough, Christ is nowadays considered an avatar in Hinduism IIRC).

Th. 32 ('a city built on a high hill and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden') raises the Masada question: there was a city built on a high hill, well-fortified, yet nevertheless it fell to the Romans.

Th. 45,

Good persons produce good from what they've stored up; bad persons produce evil from the wickedness they've stored up in their hearts, and say evil things. For from the overflow of the heart they produce evil. suggests karma: good things come to good people and bad things to bad people.

I like Th. 77:

I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.

Split a piece of wood; I am there.

Lift up the stone, and you will find me there. because it reminds me both of John ('I am the light and the life') and the Chandogya Upanishad ('Split it open: the nothingness within: you are that.')

There are bunches more excellent Thomas quotations, but I think I'll stop with this last one, which I dearly like (113):

[The Kingdom of Heaven] will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it.

...I think I'll talk about the Zhuangzi later.