A Jesus For The East Monism in The Gospel of Thomas PDF

A Jesus for the East: Monism in the Gospel of Thomas | Jeff Crandall
Monism in the Gospel of Thomas
A Jesus for the East
A PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY
Jeffrey Douglas Crandall
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF LIBERAL STUDIES
May 2001
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
This is to certify that I have examined this copy of a masters project by Jeffrey Douglas Crandall and have found that it is complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the final examining committee have been made.
Name of Faculty Advisor
Signature of Faculty Advisor
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Name of Second Faculty Advisory
Signature of Second Faculty Advisor
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GRADUATE SCHOOL
Jeffrey Douglas Crandall 2001
Table of Contents
PROCESS PAPER
Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 The Compleat Scholar Course .............................................................................................2 The Curriculum: The Gospel of Thomas Study Guide .............................................................5 Section 1: The Discovery and Nature of Thomas................................................................7 Sections 2 and 3: Themes in Thomas ................................................................................8 Theme 1 : Thomas Prologue and Not Tasting Death.....................................................9 Theme 2 : The Kingdom Sayings .............................................................................. 10 Theme 3 : Personal Revelation and Salvation.............................................................. 15 Theme 4 : Thomas Community and the Elect.............................................................. 16 Theme 5 : Motion and Rest........................................................................................ 18 Theme 6 : Becoming a Child ..................................................................................... 19 The me 7 : The Living Father ..................................................................................... 20 Themes 8-11 : Asceticism and World-Negation .......................................................... 23 Theme 12: Thomas Christology ............................................................................... 32 Theme 13: Apocalyptic and Eschatology ................................................................... 34 Section 4: Thomas and the New Testament...................................................................... 37 Section 5: Thomas, Hellenized Judaism, and Gnosticism .................................................. 39 Section 6: Monism in Thomas......................................................................................... 41 Study Guide Appendices............................................................................................... 42 Process Paper Conclusion................................................................................................... 42 Thomas Theology: My Final Thoughts .............................................................................. 44 APPENDIX A: The Gospel of Thomas and Taoist Monism................................................. 50 The Way of The Kingdom: A Taoist Reading of the Gospel of Thomas Introduction ................................................................................................................... 50 The Monistic Universe: Moving from Categories to Completion........................................ 51 Kingdom/Tao: The Ever Appearing/Disappearing Presence............................................... 56 Great Understanding vs. Little Understanding .................................................................. 59 Living Without Possessing .............................................................................................. 62 Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 64 PROCESS PAPER NOTES ................................................................................................ 66 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR PROCESS PAPER................................................... 69
GOSPEL OF THOMAS STUDY GUIDE ..................................................................... 72
Introduction
The following paper describes my final project for the Master of Liberal Studies program at the University of Minnesota. This project is divided into two separate sections: a creative projectthe Gospel of Thomas Study Guideand this process paper, which helps to contextualize my creative project and presents some of my research conclusions. I created the Gospel of Thomas Study Guide as a research and interpretive tool for students in a course I taught in January and February 2001 for the Compleat Scholar, an adult education program at the University of Minnesota. I developed both the Gospel of Thomas course and the study guide using the research I had compiled for a future book on the theological and historical implications of the Gospel of Thomas, a recently discovered text from early Christianity. Now that the study guide is complete, I intend to use it in future courses and seminars, as well as to offer it to other instructors and religious institutions via a web site I am developing for the study of the Gospel of Thomas (www.gospelofthomas.org). Believing that I would be finished with my final project by January 2001, I contacted the Compleat Scholar after discussing the possibility of teaching in the program with Dr. DonnaMae Gustafson, my final project professor. I proposed a course on the Gospel of Thomas and submitted a program description. The Compleat Scholar accepted my course and, after meeting with the program director, I was asked to teach test preparation courses for the GMAT, the GRE, and the LSAT. My course on the Gospel of Thomas was scheduled for the winter session and I began teaching test preparation courses in November. While preparing for the Thomas course, I decided to create a glossary of terms related to the study of Thomas that students could use as a reference tool. This glossary eventually blossomed into the study guide I prepared for the students. Once I started looking through my notes for terms and definitions, I realized that I had compiled copious amounts of information that would be useful to anyone wishing to unravel Thomas 114 sayings. While much of this research,
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Copyright 2001 Jeff Crandall
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especially the categorization of sayings, is original work, I had also compiled a great deal of information from secondary publications on Thomas that would help to create a balanced presentation of current scholarship; therefore, I included some of this secondary material in the study guide. In addition to secondary scholarship, I also decided to include a section on monistic theology, an area not typically explored by Thomas scholars, because my own conclusions centered on monism as the predominant theology of the gospel. In addition to the section on monism, I thought it would be helpful to present sections on the historical and inter-textual relationships between Thomas and Gnosticism, Judaism, and Christianity. Even without preparing all of my conclusions in a research paper format, I believe that my study guide reflects the depth of my research and the amount of time I have put into organizing my work. In order to complete my research and the study guide, I had to rigorously explore several disciplines, all of which pertain to my overall work in the MLS program. In short, my research and reading list includes Postmodernism, Classical Philosophy, Classical Studies, New Testament Studies, Judaism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Taoism, Buddhism, Comparative Religion, Mysticism, and Psychology. Moreover, the format of the study guide itself adds the interdisciplinary element of Education to the aforementioned list.
The Compleat Scholar Course

In the Winter of 2001, I taught a six week course for the Compleat Scholar program called Radical Thinking in Early Christianity: Discovering the Lost Gospel of Thomas. As a part of teaching this seminar, I put together a series of lectures and a study guide to assist students reading the Gospel of Thomas. The intent of the study guide was to provide students with information about the histor ical context in which Thomas was likely written and to familiarize them with theological concepts related to Thomas. The following is the course description I wrote with editorial assistance from Claire Walter-Marchetti, director of the Compleat Scholar Program:
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In the mid-fourth century, the Gospel of Thomas was lost to the world when someonepresumably a sect of Christian monkshid an entire library of Christian manuscripts in the Egyptian desert. Unlike other surviving Christian texts, the Gospel of Thomas is a sayings gospel, entirely composed of quotes attributed to Jesus. And unlike others, Thomas does not present a plot, crucifixion, resurrection, miracles or apocalyptic warnings. In fact, Thomas rejects these notions and instead focuses on the mystical transformation of each individuala theme aligning this work more closely with Buddhism than surviving Christian religion. Surprisingly, many scholars now argue that Thomas preserves the most primitive versions of many of Jesus sayings. What does the 1945 recovery of this text mean to the history of early Christianity? Formerly, this subject was hotly debated by only a small group of scholars. However, with recent translations into many languages, Thomas is now available to people around the world. Through lecture and discussion, we will explore the history and meaning of this amazing archaeological discovery. 1 The primary concern I had in developing this course was to be able to address a breadth of complex theological issues without overwhelming students who are not well versed in New Testament Studies and who have not immersed themselves in Comparative Religion courses. I found this task particularly daunting, because Thomas has theological strands reaching in many directions, including into Gnostic ism, Hellenized Judaism, Christianity, Hermeticism, and a type of Monism that resembles Buddhism or Taoism. Because I conceived the class as a survey course on Thomas and Thomas relationship to related religious traditions, I decided to survey the religio us movements related to Thomas rather than focusing intently in one area. I believed that it was more important to expose the students to the vibrant religious activity in the ancient Near East than to leave students with the impression that the Thomas is merely a Gnostic variant of orthodox Christianity. In addition to examining the relationships between Thomas and other religious texts, the course also focused on several recurring themes in Thomas including, among others, the kingdom of the father, personal revelation and salvation, asceticism and world-negation, Thomas Christology, and Thomas eschatology. These themes are not only important in Thomas, but they also help to establish Thomas theological relationship to the texts and traditions surrounding it. I found that focusing on particular themes was the easiest way to help Thomas speak across the
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centuries in a familiar enough mode to engage modern students, many of whom have a background in modern Christianity, but not in classical or New Testament studies. Focusing on specific themes also kept the class close to the text by providing a natural ground for discussion. In contrast, the comparative sections of the course required much more lecturing and explanation on my part, especially the session we spent discussing Gnosticism! After teaching the course, I was invited by the Compleat Scholar to teach another course in the Spring 2002; consequently, I am currently developing a course description for a related course on Thomas and Taoism, which will be a theme-based course with a short introduction to Thomas and the Taoist texts. The primary intent of this course will be to explore the relationships between a series of parallel themes in Thomas and two Taoist philosophical textsthe Tao te Ching and the Chuang Tzu . Because it is clear that I regard Thomas as a tangible, historical link between what is typically regarded as western and eastern theology, the following will be presented as the primary question for the students of the course: Does Thomas represent a historical, theological link between the monistic religions of the East and the theistic religions of the West? The Thomas and Taoism course will cover a great deal of the research I excised from my Thomas survey course. Moreover, in addition to the new Compleat Scholar course, I have also been approached about lecturing on Thomas at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis, so I will also use sections of the study guide as handouts for that lecture and in the event I that I am asked to give any more lectures on the Gospel of Thomas .
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The Curriculum: The Gospel of Thomas Study Guide

I chose to divide the Gospel of Thomas Companion Study Guide into six sections because the course I taught met for six sessions. In the actual class, I covered the material from Section 4: Thomas and the New Testament, during the second and third weeks; however, after we concluded the course, I rearranged a few sections, because I believed they would have been more effective if I had introduced them in a different order. It also took me a night and a half to finish my introduction to Thomas, because students were very curious about Thomas legitimacy as an ancient text and did not realize, among other things, the depth of Thomas relationship to the New Testament gospels. The primary intent of the study guide is to give students several windows into what might otherwise remain an obscure and historically implausible presentation of Jesus. After introducing the Gospel of Thomas to several friends, I realized that those most familiar with the Jesus of the New Testament were the ones who found Thomas Jesus most alien. Some of these friends regarded Thomas Jesus as fraudulent and unbelievable within the context of their own faith. Their primary complaint about Thomas Jesus is that his words are too esoteric and philosophically laden to be understood by the masses, the people to whom their Jesus is supposed to preach (apparently, this problem is mitigated in John by the close proximity of the synoptic gospels). In addition, Thomas Jesus preaches salvation to the few rather than the many, which is a concept that does not resonate, for instance, with the evangelical-centered faith of many Christians. Consequently, without supplying a context for the study of Thomas, I feared that many readers would simply reject Thomas on its face because it does not immediately resonate with the Jesus of their faith. And yet, I knew something that many of my friends did not; I knew that several scholars believe that Thomas Jesus more closely resembles the historical Jesus than the New Testaments Jesus does. However, rather than creating a face-off between Thomas Jesus and the New
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Testaments Jesus, I thought it best to present a historical and theological context for the study of Thomas, including its discovery, scholarship on its composition, important theological themes, and its relationship to several relevant religious movements. My intent was not to replace the New Testaments Jesus with Thomas Jesus, but to present the historical relevance and theological mystery of the Gospel of Thomas itself. There are several factors that set Thomas apart from other literature produced by the Jesus movement, both in terms of its form and its theology. In terms of form, Thomas is a sayings gospel, a gospel genre composed entirely of wisdom teachings presented without an accompanying narrative; Thomas is the only extant gospel of this kind in the Jesus literary tradition. The only similar text in the tradition is the Q Gospel, a hypothetical source gospel reconstructed by scholars from similarities between sayings found in Matthew and Luke. The discovery of Thomas has helped to bolster arguments in support of the existence of the Q Gospel, because Thomas confirms that early Christians used the sayings gospel form. Moreover, the mutual support generated through form criticism and intertextual comparison of these two texts provides strong evidence that these gospels belong to one of the earliest strata of the Christian literary tradition. Thomas is also theologically unique from the traditions surrounding it. Even though it shares some theological characteristics with the orthodox canonical material and the heterodox Gnostic material, its overall theology does not fit well in either the orthodox or heterodox theological tradition. Thomas also does not merely occupy the border between the orthodox and heterodox texts. Unlike the orthodox and known heterodox varieties of Christianity, Thomas is solely concerned with the living Jesus (Thomas Prologue 2 ) and not the crucified or resurrected Jesus; consequently, Thomas represents an independent theological tradition rather than an amalgamation of known orthodox and heterodox ideas. Moreover, unlike the New Testament gospels, Thomas is decidedly anti-eschatological and apocalyptic only in the context of personal
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revelation and transformation. In fact, in Thomas 113, Jesus corrects his followers who are waiting for the end of the present age and the arrival of the kingdom of the Father; in short, he tells them to change their focus from the social (historical) to the personal (primordial): His followers said to him, When will the kingdom come? It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, Look, here it is, or Look, there it is. Rather, the fathers kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it. Thomas intra-worldly Jesus, father, and kingdom go well beyond the realized eschatology occasionally found in the New Testament, in which the end times and social transformation has already begun but not yet ended. Instead, Thomas focuses on an intangible kingdom that is right in front of our nosesthe kingdom is inside you and it is outside you (Thomas 3)and eternally presentHave you discovered the beginning, then, so that you are seeking the end? For where the beginning is, the end will be (Thomas 18). Thomas kingdom and its Jesus are strongly centered in the mundane, earthly world, and there is little in the text to distract the reader from this immediacy. It is this worldly focus that distinguishes Thomas from the traditions surrounding ittraditions that, in one way or another, posit a God/Kingdom/Father that is separate from human beings and the world of the living. In other words, the Gospel of Thomas is a monistic text surrounded geographically and historically by dualistic religions (i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Greek, Roman, and Egyptian polytheism).
The following is a section-by-section explanation of the Gospel of Thomas Study Guide .
Section 1: The Discovery and Nature of Thomas

I developed Section one to orient students to the historical and archaeological issues relevant to the discovery and dating of Thomas. The chief concerns of this section were to present a timeline of events related to the study of Thomas; related archaeological discoveries, such as the discovery of the Greek fragments of Thomas at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt; a list of formal literary
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features that distinguish Thomas from the canonical gospels; a laundry list of concepts related to Christian theology present and not present in Thomas; and the culmination of ancient, mainstream Christianitythe Nicene Creedwhich helps to establish theological differences between mainstream Christianity, Gnosticism, and Thomas, during the first few centuries C.E. I also developed an introductory lecture to accompany this section that presented scholarship on the composition and unique formal qualities of Thomas.
Sections 2 and 3: Themes in Thomas

I developed sections two and three to highlight a series of important themes related to the study of Thomas, especially in regard to how Thomas aligns with and distinguishes itself from its Christian, Jewish, Gnostic, and Monist counterparts. My primary intent in these sections was to expose students to sayings clustered around particular themes that help to reveal Thomas prevailing theology, which is discernable in spite of the fact that Thomas is a discursive text that places the responsibility of interpretation and synthesis on the reader. I regard these themes as pointed tools with which students can compare theological concepts that religious texts often present indirectly or symbolically. In teaching the course, I covered Thomas and the New Testament before I covered Themes in Thomas. I thought that this organization would be a good strategy because Thomas shares many sayings with the New Testament gospels and I believed that this overlap would create a natural bridge to understanding Thomas theology. In retrospect, I believe that the class would have flowed more naturally if we had covered Themes in Thomas before Thomas and the New Testament, because students were not properly introduced to Thomas individual theology before moving onto intertextual comparisons. In the future, I would save the intertextual comparisons for the later weeks and focus on Thomas themes in the weeks following my general introduction of the text. I have rearranged the study guide to reflect this change of opinion. By
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covering Thomas themes first, students can get oriented to the theological implications of the text before confronting dissimilar ideas. My primary oversight was to overestimate students general awareness of New Testament scholarship and their familiarity with the New Testaments presentation of Jesus. In the following section, I will identify the themes I highlighted in the study guide and why I chose to highlight them. My own conclusions, while relevant to the compilation of the study guide and to my own research, were not as relevant to the actual content study guide itself, because the study guides purpose was to help students arrive at their own conclusions about the text; however, for the purposes of this paper, I have supplied many of my own conclusions, because these conclusions help to explain why I included each theme in the study guide.
Theme 1: Thomas Prologue and Not Tasting Death The first theme area highlights two separate topics: Thomas prologue and sayings related to not tasting death. Thomas prologue provides a wealth of information that many scholars have used to establish Thomas date and location of composition. The ostensible name of the author of the text, Judas Thomas Didymos, can be translated Judas the twin (Aramaic) the twin (Greek). This curious repetition of the term twin in both Aramaic and Greek provides some evidence for a second century Syrian provenance for the text. In his book, Four Other Gospels: Thomas, Egerton, Secret Mark, Peter, John Dominic Crossan explains: The most important indication of provenance is the very p eculiar name of its apostolic author, Judas the Twin, which in Greek is Judas Didymos, in Aramaic Judas Thomas, and in bilingual redundancy is Judas Thomas-Didymos or some such triad. On the one hand, this conjunction of Judas Thomas-Didymos never appears in the New Testament. In John 11:16, 20:24, 21:2 the name is Thomas, called Didymos. And in John 14:22 when he is called Judas he is identified simply as Judas (not Iscariot). On the other hand, one of the Old Syriac translations of John 14:22 gives that as Judas Thomas. That points the way towards Syriac-speaking Syria as the geographical area where Thomas the Twin was of supreme importance. But this can be specified even more closely because
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it was around Edessa, situated on the Euphrates tributary, the Daisan, that this apostle was known precisely as Judas the Twin (brother of Jesus).3 Because the name ascribed to the text offers the most direct evidence of provenance, Thomas is most often regarded as a product of a first or second century, ascetical Christian sect from Syria. Thomas prologue also establishes two other important features of the gospelthe sayings included are (1) the hidden sayings of (2) the living Jesus. The manner in which these sayings are hidden is an important concept to consider as one interprets these sayings, because a prevalent theme in the text is the effective hiddenness of that which should be manifestthe kingdom. Moreover, the prologue accurately states that the sayings in Thomas contain only the words of living Jesus and, in fact, Thomas does not include any explicit references to Jesus death or resurrection. This exclusive focus on the living Jesus is rare, if not unique, among the texts of early Christianity. Moreover, Thomas focus on the living Jesus reflects the overall theology of the text, which is centered in the primordial, timeless now of the living rather than in the temporality of culture, religion, and meaning that is established in human society. Consequently, the features of the text introduced in the prologue are significant factors to consider as one studies this text. Furthermore, Thomas 1 establishes the readers responsibility to interpret the hidden meaning of the sayings. Thomas 1 reads, Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death. Consequently, not tasting death is at least one explicit goal of the text and it is offered as the reward to those who discover the meaning of Thomas sayings. In the study guide, I ask students to consider how the reader should regard the concept of not tasting death. Should one consider not tasting death as equivalent with supernatural, eternal life (orthodox) or the end of the suffering caused by death and/or the fear of death (similar to monistic concepts found in Buddhism and Taoism).
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Theme 2: The Kingdom Sayings Although not tasting death is the explicit goal of ones performance of the text, the major thematic device used in Thomas to help readers visualize this goal is the kingdom, which is also called the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of the father. The kingdom sayings provide a spatial and temporal metaphor that is much easier for one to contemplate than not tasting death; however, while the metaphor of the kingdom is a common motif in Christianity, Thomas use of kingdom is not equivalent with the New Testaments general use of the same metaphor. Unlike the New Testament gospels, which posit an apocalyptic, socio-historical eschaton that brings about the kingdom of God, Thomas focuses almost exclusively on the individuals change of perception in apprehending a kingdom that is already manifest. To help students come to terms with this important symbol in Thomas, I arranged the kingdom sayings in four thematic
categories: Where is the kingdom and when will it come? What is the kingdom like? How can one enter the kingdom? and Who may enter the kingdom?
Where is the kingdom and when will it come? This question is answered most clearly by Thomas 113: It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, Look, here it is, or Look, there it is. Rather, the fathers kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it. In Thomas 113, the kingdom is presented as a manifest, primordial reality that cannot be fully apprehended by the senses or by normal modes of perception and reason. Thomas 113 does not represent the realized eschatology of Luke, because Thomas kingdom is not related to a socio-historical eschaton; in fact, Lukes occasional references to a realized kingdom (e.g., Luke 17:20-21) might well mirror Thomas primordial kingdom rather than the reverse. Thomas 3 also places the kingdom in the presence of the here and now and yet is careful not to bring the kingdom within the spatio-temporal realm of objects or things. In Thomas 3, Jesus says, If your leaders say to you, Look, the kingdom is in heaven,
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then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, It is in the sea, then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and outside you. It is clear from Thomas 3 that the kingdom includes Jesus followers (inside you) as well as the manifest world (outside you), but that the kingdom itself is neither of these things. The kingdom is not to be found in a place or a person, but it is inclusive of both.
What is the kingdom like? This question is answered by several parables that typically describe the kingdom as something very small that has the potential to become large and powerful if it is apprehended and used appropriately. One of the more telling What is the kingdom like? parables is Thomas 109: Jesus said, The kingdom is like a person who had a treasure hidden in his field but did not know it. And [when] he died, he left it to his [son]. The son [did] not know (about it). He took over the field and sold it. The buyer went to plowing, [discovered] the treasure, and began to lend money at interest to whomever he wished. Thomas treasure parable is related to Matthew 13:44, which maintains a curiously similar presentation. In both Thomas and Matthews version of this parable, the kingdom is something we currently possess (it is hidden in the field we own), but we must work to find it before we can actually take advantage of the particular gifts it brings to us (in the case of treasure, this is money). Therefore, it is only after we seek for and find the kingdom that we can use it for our own benefit (in the parable the person lends money at interest). Each of the fields owners already possess the treasure, just as we possess the kingdom, but it is only the owner who digs up the treasure who actually knows what he possesses. And it is that owner who uses the treasure to his own benefit. This interpretation of Thomas 109 is consistent with Thomas 113; however, in the treasure parable, Jesus offers a method by which one can know what one already possesses. This method is merely a restatement of the seek and find sayings, such as Thomas 2, Let one who seeks not stop seeking until one finds. Thus, Thomas kingdom is something hidden even in
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its apparent presence and bringing it to the foreground takes effort and perseverance. Moreover, a reverse version of Thomas 109 is presented in Thomas 97, the parable of the jarone of two new parables found in Thomas. In the parable of the jar, a woman begins her journey with the kingdom (the meal in the jar) in her possession, but spills it behind her [along] the road as she walks home. When she arrives at her house, she put[s] the jar down and [discovers] that it [is] empty. Because of her inattentiveness, the woman gradually loses the kingdom, which she possessed at the outset and what was once full is now empty and quite useless to her.
How can one enter the kingdom? This question is answered by several related sayings, including Thomas 22, one of the most monistic sayings in Thomas: Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his followers, These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom. They said to him, Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies? Jesus said to them, 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 foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]. Thomas 22 indicates that there is a definite process by which one prepares oneself to enter the kingdom. Moreover, the question Jesus followers ask, rather than simply being ignored by Jesus is, in fact, elaborated on in a way his followers likely would not have anticipated. Even though Jesus never explicitly says it, the process he outlines in Thomas 22 is the process by which one becomes a baby or child againthe very question asked by his followers. By changing our perception of and relationship to the world, we can fully know, appreciate, and take advantage of our participation in the primordial kingdom. The process Jesus outlines in Thomas 22 is the familiar monistic concept of collapsing or resolving difference. When we recognize that categories and oppositions are not essential elements of the world around us, but instead
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functional distinctions created in our own reflection upon what is, we can begin to let go of these provisional realities and become truly open to an authentic experience of life. And the more we can let go of provisional realities, the more fully we can experience the unmediated kingdom. In Thomas, our unmediated existence in the kingdom is equated with infancy. When we resolve the conflict created in our own reflection upon what is, we once again make the two into one. In other words, we dismantle our dualistic, conscious reflection, so that our ongoing, timeless, participative experience of the primordial kingdom (or Tao, source, etc.) comes to the foreground. In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality , Ken Wilber refers to this monistic, participative experience as the non-dual state in which we receive our first taste of the real world. He writes: The real world is not given to you twiceone out there, one in here. That twiceness is exactly the meaning of duality. Rather, the real world is given to you once, immediatelyit is one feeling, it has one taste, it is utterly full in that one taste, it is not severed into seer and seen, subject and object, fragment and fragment. It is a singular, of which the plural is unknown. You can taste the mountain; it is the same taste as your Self; it is not out there being refle cted in herethat duality is not present in the immediateness of real experience. Real experience, before you slice it up, does not contain that dualityreal experience, reality itself, is nondual. You are still you, and the mountain is still the mountain, but you and the mountain are two sides of one and the same experience, which is the one and only reality at that moment.4 Wilber explains the mechanics of the non-dual state as a matter of experience, perception, and reflection. In our everyday experie nce of the world, we simultaneously exist in both the dual and the non-dual states. In fact, we cannot exist outside of the non-dual state, because it is the ground of our existencethe right now or immediacy of our experience in the world. The dual state occurs when we subsume the right now in our ongoing reflection on and categorization of our experiences in the world. In our dual state, our primary task is to make meaning or sense out of our experiences and, in order to do this, we need to delimit the non-dual by bringing it into some sort of meaningful existence for us. Since we cannot delimit all of our experiences in the world, our non-dual existence is necessarily reduced and split into parts that are brought to the foreground and that recede to the background. Moreover, the stuff of experience we bring into the
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realm of meaning remains meaningful only within the dualistic mechanics of meaning; the meanings we ascribe to the non-dual world cannot be said to exist in any meaningful way outside of that particular system. As Chuang Tzu puts it, Understanding stops when it has reached what it does not understand.5 Consequently, when Jesus tells his disciples that they cannot enter the kingdom until they can make the two into one, . . . make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, he is telling them that they need to abandon duality for a state in which all things are of the same stuff. This is the primordial, non-dual, monist, singular, unshattered first taste to which Wilber refers.
Who may enter the kingdom? This question is answered fairly satisfactorily in the sayings related to the preceding question (i.e., those who can accomplish what Jesus instructs them to do in Thomas 22); however, there are a few sayings in Thomas that seem to describe those who may enter the kingdom as a chosen or elect group. The characteristics of this group are that they are poor, alone, chosen, from the kingdom they will return to, not buyers or merchants, and not female or male. In the theme area Thomas Community: The Elect, the concept of a predestined elect is covered more thoroughly, but it is important to note that however one looks at Thomas, those who may enter the kingdom are a select group of individuals who are definitely not from the most prestigious classes of society (unless they are willing to give up their social status!).
Theme 3: Personal Revelation and Salvation

The sayings in this area focus on the individuals role in salvation. In Thomas, salvation is achieved individually rather than socially, which is an important distinction to make between Thomas (as well as the Gnostics) and the emerging Christian orthodoxy during the first centuries C.E. Rather than positing Gods dramatic intervention in the affairs of human historya scenario
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in which only the Christian prepared surviveThomas shifts the focus entirely to the individual and away from the anticipation of supernatural intervention. Thomas 51 provides a good example of how Thomas Jesus subverts the apocalyptic expectations of his followers: His followers said to him, When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come? He said to them, What you look for has come, but you do not know it. In Thomas 51, Jesus followers present a common first century Judeo-Christian apocalyptic scenario in which a general resurrection of the dead takes place. In his reply, Jesus completely revises this scenario by shifting the burden of change from the extra-worldly (or merely external) back onto his followers themselves. It is clear from the followers question that Jesus idea of rest for the dead and the new world are not visually apparent, since they do not believe these changes have come to pass. In fact, it seems that Jesus followers will need to use something other than their senses to perceive the rest for the dead and the new world to which Jesus refers. As in Thomas 113 (the fathers kingdom is spread across the earth) and Thomas 109 (the treasure parable), what is soughtthe new world, the treasure, the kingdomhas already come to pass. In fact, the things that Jesus followers seek have likely been accessible all the time. Thus, the new world (i.e., the kingdom) is in the same state as the treasure in Thomas 109; the availability of the kingdom to those who seek it is one of the most consistent messages in Thomas, for there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered that will remain undisclosed (Thomas 6).
Theme 4: Thomas Community and the Elect I included the theme Thomas Community and the Elect to provide a counter-position to my own ideas about the origins and uses of the text. While I personally do not believe Thomas presents an articulated hierarchy of initiates, I found Bruce Lincolns ideas on the subject interesting, especially if Thomas was a product of an ascetical Christian sect from second century
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Syria, which is exactly what many scholars argue.6 Although Lincolns hypothesis is not implausible, I used elements from his article because they help to illustrate how scholars usually erect histories around known contexts rather than opening the historical space for new possibilities. It also illustrates how easily new information can be subsumed within those known historic al contexts, even if much of the new information does not exactly fit into any known context. Even though Lincoln is a careful scholar who understands that his ideas are provisional, it appears that many scholars like him are so interested in finding a home for Thomas that they are willing to stretch the sayings into uncomfortable positions to fit the mold. However, the concept of a chosen group merits some individual attention, because it echoes the concept of a predestined elect, which is a decidedly dualistic concept that would problematize a monistic reading of Thomas. The most problematic saying in this group is Thomas 49, in which Jesus says, Fortunate are those who are alone and chosen, for you will find the kingdom. For you have come from it, and you will return there again. Thomas 49 seems to imply a type of predestination in which only certain people are from the kingdom in the first place and, therefore, it is only those people who will find their way back there again. No matter how one reads Thomas 49, it is undeniably elitist in the sense that the salvation Thomas offers is available only to a select few. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish whether Thomas 49 refers to a pre-destined elect or simply to the small group of people who can accomplish the return to the kingdom from which we all have come. It may be that seen in retrospect those who accomplish the return look as if they were made of the right stuff in the first place. It is a razor-thin distinction, yet since Thomas does not generally appear to support the idea that only those who are chosen should be reading and interpreting these sayings (e.g., Thomas 1 and 2 appear to support a more democratic, ad hoc group), it is important to be careful not to rashly apply a potentially foreign concept like predestination to the text. Instead, we should consider how the text of Thomas treats this subject generally.
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Theme 5: Motion and Rest I included the theme motion and rest because this enigmatic theme is repeated several times in Thomas and it connects Thomas with Jewish wisdom speculation on the first chapters of Genesis. The concept of rest, however, is not unique to Thomas; it has analogs in the Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic traditions. For example, Thomas 86 appears to be directly related to the Q saying found in Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58. In Thomas 86, Jesus says, [Foxes have] their dens and birds have their nests, but human beings have no place to lie down and rest. However, the concept of rest presented in Thomas 86 may not be related to the concept of motion and rest articulated by Jesus in Thomas 50. In Thomas 50, Jesus says, If they ask you, What is the evidence of your father in you? say to them, It is motion and rest. Thomas 50 appears to link Thomas to the first creation story in Genesis. It is widely known that in the first creation story, God creates for six days and rests on the seventh, the Sabbath. If the sign of the father in Jesus followers is motion and rest, motion and rest likely refers to the creative activity of the father as described in chapter one of Genesis. This may also be why Jesus says in Thomas 27, If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom. If you do not observe the sabbath as a sabbath, you will not see the father. Because the sabbath represents Gods day of rest after the intense activity of creation, it may well be that Thomas 27 is directly linked to Thomas 50 in that those who find the kingdom are the ones who directly participate in the fathers creative activity and subsequent rest. Moreover, since observing the sabbath as a sabbath appears to be the only Jewish law explicitly advocated in Thomas (although Thomas sabbath should not necessarily be taken as equivalent with the Jewish Sabbath), Thomas 27 appears to be in need of further explanation, which is precisely what Thomas 50 provides.
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Theme 6: Becoming a Child The theme of becoming a child is directly related to the possibility of apprehending and entering the kingdom of the father. It is clear that throughout Thomas the place of children is elevated above the status of adults (Thomas 4, 22, 37, 46); nevertheless, the goal of Jesus followers, presumably adults, is to somehow overcome their adulthood and become a child again. While some of the references to children in the text are not explicitly related to this theme, such as in Thomas 28 when Jesus refers to people as the children of humanity, a few are quite explicit. In Thomas 46, Jesus says, But I have said that whoever among you becomes a child will know the kingdom and will become greater than John [the Baptist]. Becoming greater than John and, later, more powerful than Adam (Thomas 85) seems like a pretty tall order; however, according to Jesus in Thomas 46, the very act of becoming a child is powerful enough to bring about the knowledge of the kingdom, something neither Adam nor John the Baptist had known. In Thomas 4, Jesus provides a clue that might help to explain this theme. In Thomas 4, Jesus says, The person in old days would not hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live. Admiring the tabula rasa of newborns was not a new concept in Jesus time just as it is not a new concept today; however, the significant detail in this saying is the age of the child who, if he is a boy, will be circumcised on the following day according to Jewish custom (Genesis 17:12). The importance of this detail is that the seventh day is the last day the child remains symbolically unsocialized and totally open to an unmediated experience of life. Until he is eight days old, the childs experience is presumably not mediated by culture, language, meaning, thought, or reflection. The child remains naked, undecided, and receptive in the pre-circumcision moment. In Thomas 37, Jesus says, When you strip without being ashamed and take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then [you] will see the child of the living one and you will not be afraid. The idea that by casting off ones clothes an adult may
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become a child again provides more details about the importance of the infants tabula rasa in Thomas 4, because the prospect of casting off ones clothes offers this tabula rasa to adults. In Thomas 37, Jesus followers symbolically reject that which socially and conceptually constrains them by stripping off their clothing. Without their clothing, they are naked, fearless, unworldly and, as such, they are able to apprehend the child of the living one, who may be construed as Jesus, but it is more likely that it is actually themselvesidentical to Jesus, subsumed within the All (Thomas 2, 22, 108). It is as if Thomas 37 seeks to reverse the moment in Genesis 3:7 when Adam and Eves eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.7 The use of clothing (also in Thomas 21) as the symbol of self-awareness, fear, and worldliness certainly helps to link Thomas to the Genesis creation stories.
Theme 7: The Living Father In the entire Gospel of Thomas, the Coptic term for god is only used twice. In his article Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God, Dieter Mueller explains: W. Schrage in his discussion of the two alternatives (Kingdom of God, Kingdom of the Father) . . . pointed out against Fitzmyer that there is not a single instance (sic ) for the use of Kingdom of God in the whole Gospel of Thomas (Evangelienzitate , 258). At first sight, the last argument might seem irrefutable, as it is in full agreement with Gnostic theology, where God is a word not for the Lord, but for the Demiurge. It is therefore carefully avoided in the Coptic text, and occurs only in log. 30 and 100, where the being referred to as God seems to hold a position inferior to Jesus. Wherever the Kingdom is mentioned, the Coptic version displays a marked preference for the absolute use of this term (log. 3, 22, 27, 46, 49, 82, 107, 109, 113), but occasionally substitutes either Kingdom of the Father (log. 57, 76, 96-98, 113) or Kingdom of Heaven (log. 20, 54, 114).8 According to Mueller, Thomas use of God is consistent with Gnostic theology, in which the term is used to denote the creator demiurge and not the ultimate reality of the father. It does appear that Thomas maintains some such distinction, because the Coptic term for God is used
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only in two places, both of which appear to relegate God to a lesser status than Jesus. In Thomas 30, Jesus says, Where there are three deities [gods], they are divine. Where there are two or one, I am with that one. And in Thomas 100, Jesus says, Give Caesar the things that are Caesars, give God the things that are Gods, and give me what is mine. In Thomas 100, Jesus appears to be establishing a hierarchy of importance, from Caesar to God to himself. But, of course, the word for God here is not equivalent with the term father, which is used exclusively to represent the ultimate reality in the gospel; therefore, Jesus appears only to be placing himself above the Greek and Jewish systems and not above the father. Consequently, because father is used in a manner that distinguishes it from God or gods, it is important to approach this concept openly. It seems clear from the distinctions made in Thomas 100 that the father should not be conflated with Yahweh without some investigation into the concept. It is also important not to equate without investigation Thomas distinction between God and father with the Gnostic use of these terms. In Gnostic systems, the father is absolutely transmundane, separate from our earthly reality, non-interfering, and hidden from us. According to scholar Hans Jonas, this separation is the primary feature of Gnostic thought. In The Gnostic Religion, Jonas writes: The cardinal feature of gnostic thought is the radical dualism that governs the relation of God and world, and correspondingly that of man and world. The deity is absolutely transmundane, its nature alien to that of the universe, which it neither created nor governs and to which it is the complete antithesis: to the divine realm of light, self-contained and remote, the cosmos is opposed as the realm of darkness. The world is the work of lowly powers which though they may immediately be descended from Him do not know the true God and obstruct the knowledge of Him in the cosmos over which they rule.9 A major concern regarding the use of father in Thomas is if the father is regarded as absolutely transmundane or if the father essentially belongs to or composes the world of creation. If the father is radically separate from the world of creation, Thomas theology would be dualistic and, therefore, in this regard, it would more closely resemble Gnostic theology;
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however, if the father is mundane, intra-worldly, and essentially bound-up in the world of creation, then Thomas theology is likely monistic. In Thomas, the father is often referred to as the living father. Moreover, Jesus and his followers are referred to as living the child of the living one (Thomas 37), living spirits (Thomas 114), and t he chosen of the living father (Thomas 50). This association with the living closely connects Jesus and his followers with the father. In fact, in some sayings, it is difficult to distinguish between Jesus self-references and his references to the fathera point that may be more revealing than confusing. A few sayings also appear to place the living father or, at the very least, the kingdom of the father, in the immediate presence of Jesus and his followers. In Thomas 3, Jesus mocks those who reduce the fathers kingdom into a reified, spatiotemporal reality. He says, If your leaders say to you, Look, the kingdom is in heaven, then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, It is in the sea, then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and outside you. If the kingdom is inside you and outside you, then it is in ones presence, even if it cannot easily be reduced into a thing in our reflection upon it. In Thomas 52, Jesus speaks of the living one in their presence when his followers say to him, Twenty-four prophets have spoken in Israel, and they all spoke of you. Jesus replies, You have disregarded the living one who is in your presence and have spoken of the dead. Jesus may be referring to himself or to the father when he speaks of the living one in Thomas 52; nevertheless, one would presume that, at the very least, the living one in Thomas 52 refers to one who is within the kingdom and, thus, living from the living one. If that living one is in their presence in the same manner in which the fathers kingdom is in Thomas 113 (the fathers kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it), then the living one in Thomas 52 is not transmundane in the dualistic, gnostic sense; rather, it is trans-conceptual in the monistic sense. The living one or living father, which I equate with the concept of the kingdom, is
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present, yet not fully manifest in ones senses (except, perhaps, when one knows the kingdom, which may be the case in Thomas 19 where the five trees in paradise may correspond to the five senses). The living father in Thomas appears to be something quite different from both Yahweh and the hidden God of the Gnostics, because it takes the role of a wellspring or source that does not intervene specifically in human affairs. Because Thomas refers to the father as both the living father and the living one, it is likely that father in Thomas should be regarded as a wellspring or source of life and fecundity rather than as a hidden source whose access is facilitated by a world-negating asceticism. In Thomas 111, Jesus says, The heavens and the earth will roll up in your presence, and whoever is living from the living one will not see death. Living from the living one is clearly an activity in which one engages during lifein the living, breathing worldand this activity does not appear to involve a rejection of the world of the living, except perhaps the trappings of human society that block our access to an authentic experience of the living one. In other words, one cannot live from a living one that is radically separate; one may, in the Gnostic sense, attempt to free oneself from the lowliness of the created world and make the journey back to the light of the true father. But one cannot look to (Thomas 59) and live from (Thomas 111) what is fundamentally absent and hidden. There are simply too many textual clues that place Thomas father in the immediacy of the now to argue that Thomas father resembles the hidden father of the Gnostics.
Themes 8 - 11: Asceticism and World-Negation One of the largest areas of agreement among scholars is the presence of a strict asceticism in Thomas. As in other important areas, I am in qualified disagreement. It is clear, however, that some brand of asceticism is advocated in the text and that the nature of this asceticism is one of the keys to deciphering what Thomas asks of its readers. The majority position is clearly
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articulated by John Dominic Crossan in his book Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of the Canon. He writes: What Thomas demands is not some periodical fasting from food but a permanent fasting from sex, as in Gos. Thom. 27, If you do not fast as regards the world, you will not find the Kingdom. In all this, Thomas is profoundly basic to the traditions of sexual asceticism in eastern Syria just as later it would fit well within the Pachomian monastic movement in Upper Egypt.10 Like many scholars, Crossan regards Thomas use of the concept world as literally referring to the created world rather than figuratively referring to worldliness. Of course, he does so with some compelling evidence. Most scholars in the field believe that Thomas repudiates the body, sexuality, and the created world, in addition to money, wealth, and power. The evidence for their conclusions is found in sayings such as Thomas 29, If the flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty. Thomas 29 is a difficult saying to overcome if one takes the position that Thomas does not repudiate the body, but rather is asking us to recover our bodies by recovering our senses. Nevertheless, this is the conclusion drawn by James Hesig in his article, Recovering the Senses: Against the Asceticisms of the Age. He writes: Setting the senses beyond the mortifying influence of conventional modes of perception does not mean transcending the world but being in the world but not of it, to use worlds familiar from the Gospel of John. Hence, Jesus advises his disciples to protect themselves from those who would invade their dwelling (sayings 21, 35, 103). The recovery, exercise, and safeguard of the senses from the deprivations of habit is an essential ingredient to insight, if not a measure of its truth: I shall give you what no eye has seen and no ear heard and no hand has touched and what has never occurred to the human mind (saying 17). What Jesus promises is no more noncorporeal than it is nonmental. It is a heightened experience of mind and body. 11 Hesigs conclusions fly in the face of the majority of scholarship about Thomas asceticism, yet his interpretation comes with the force of theological consistency as well as a handful of powerful counter-examples.
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In Thomas 6, Jesus followers ask him, Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe? These pointed questions are likely aimed at Jewish practices, which include dietary restrictions and alms giving. Jesus replies to his followers, Do not lie, and do not do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven (Thomas 6), and in one sentence replaces these Jewish practices with a version of the golden rule. He tells them to be honest and to live by their own principles, presumably whether those principles lead his followers to eating or fasting, praying or getting drunk. Moreover, in Thomas 14, Jesus actually warns his followers about the dangers of what might be regarded as ascetical religious activity. He says, If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits. It is possible to read both Thomas 6 and 14 as indications that Jesus denounced false religious piety; however, if one is to imagine that Thomas comes from a rigorously ascetical sect from Syria, one must also imagine that the members of that ascetical sect periodically fasted and prayed, even if they did not give to the poor. It seems highly unlikely that the instructional materials for such a sect would include prohibitions against what one would imagine are amongst the primary activities of that sect. In Thomas 104, Jesus followers once again bring up the subject of praying and fasting. They say to Jesus, Come, let us pray today and let us fast. And once again, Jesus rebuffs them. He says, What sin have I committed, or how have I been undone? Rather, when the bridegroom leaves the wedding chamber, then let the people fast and pray. For the sake of this argument [i.e., bracketing off the intriguing symbolism of bridegroom and wedding chamber], the importance of this passage is that it contains Jesus second explicit denouncement of fasting and praying. Because these pronouncements are so explicit, their clarity makes for a much tougher argument for those scholars who wish to lump Thomas in with the ascetical texts of the second century. And, to make their argument even more difficult, Jesus offers no explicit counterinstructions to his followers regarding any specific ascetical practice in the entire text of Thomas.
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Instead of religious asceticism, what Jesus does offer are sayings denouncing various forms of worldliness. Most of his attacks in this area are against buyers, merchants and moneylenders. In fact, Jesus appears to draw a hard line between those who have money and those who do not, although he appears to reserve special vehemence for those in the mercantile class. In Thomas 64, Jesus simply says, Buyers and merchants [will] not enter the places of my father. And in Thomas 78, Jesus questions a group of people, Why have you come out to the countryside? To see a reed shaken by the wind? And to see a person dressed in soft clothes, [like your] rulers and your powerful ones? They are dressed in soft clothes, and they cannot understand truth. If one thing is clear about this text, it is that money and the trappings that accompany it are definite disadvantages to anyone who wants to enter the kingdom. Yet, warnings against money, power, influence, and worldliness do not equate to a world-negating asceticism; therefore, it is important to make an appropriate distinction between the created world and the worldliness that Jesus denounces in Thomas 64, 95, 78, 63, and 65. Almost as a direct answer to Thomas 78, in which Jesus rails against the clothes of the rich, Jesus says in Thomas 36, Do not worry, from morning to evening and from evening to morning, about what you will wear. As was the case with clothing in the sayings related to Becoming a Child, clothing in Thomas 36 also serves as the symbol of worldliness. Clothing is an apt symbol because people use clothing to determine social hierarchy, thus determining h ow they relate to one another. Stripping ourselves of our clothing and, more importantly, of our concern about clothing, symbolically (and to some degree, literally) takes us outside of this hierarchical social system. Our lack of concern for the trappings of society is the very source of our freedom from it. Moreover, being naked in the created world does not mean that we reject our sensuality, our sexuality, and the beauty of the world around us; in fact, it likely means precisely the opposite. In Thomas 114, Simon Peter says, Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life. And Jesus responds to him, Look, I shall guide her to make her male, so that she too may
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become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter heavens kingdom. Aside from presenting a bit of difficulty for those of us who do not believe that Thomas is a male -centered text, Thomas 114 offers the most explicit reference to androgyny in the text (see also Thomas 22). In The Birth of Christianity , John Dominic Crossan writes: The ideal state imagined by the Gospel of Thomas is that of the primordial human being, Adam as one, as single and unsplit, as neither male nor female, as asexual. First came the split, thence came the sexes, thence came sin. The Gospel of Thomas is about returning to that inaugural moment at the dawn of creation, before sin, before serpent, before split.12 On its own, it would seem that Thomas 114 strongly supports Crossans argument. And, to some degree, I agree with Crossans assessment of the text. In the context of Thomas, the act of making Mary male definitely brings to mind the Adam and Eve story. It is as if Jesus is going to put the rib that became Eve back into Adam, thus making her male once again. However, a notable feature of this saying occurs when Jesus says, every female who makes herself male will enter heavens kingdom. Now, it is clear from the rest of Thomas that simply being male does not qualify one for heavens kingdom. In fact, in Thomas 22, both men and women must make the two into one, the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and . . . the male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female. Instead of reading Thomas 114 as contradictory to Thomas 22, it is quite easy to see that both sayings speak to one and the same practice, the act of collapsing difference. In Thomas 114, Jesus glibly plays with Simon Peters final misunderstanding of Jesus message. Consequently, while it is true that Mary can only enter the kingdom by becoming male, it is just as true that Simon Peter can only enter by becoming female the real point is that, like everything else, the male and female need to become a single one. Now, one has the choice of looking upon this collapsing of difference as merely advocating androgyny, sexual abstinence, etc., or looking at it in the larger context of Thomas 22 in which all categories are collapsed. It would seem that, based on Thomas 22, the text makes a more
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encompassing statement than returning men and women to their inaugural moment at the dawn of creation, before sin, before serpent, before split.13 In fact, it seems more to the point that Thomas interprets the Garden of Eden creation story as the fundamental worldly intrusion upon our pristine existence in the kingdom. In the first creation story, when God completes his act of creation and rests on the seventh day, no one is in strife and no one is in need of anything. However, the Garden of Eden story is laden with strife from the outset. First God forms man out of the earth and not in his likeness. Next, God makes rules about what Adam can and cannot do, an activity that is strikingly familiar to the process of socialization. In the Eden story, God also seems to be aware that his creationwhich has supplanted a system in Genesis that was already workingis fundamentally flawed; Moreover, God wants to make sure Adam does not find out what this flaw is. Yet, the flaw that is so crucial to the Eden story is not an issue in the first creation story, because there is no hierarchy established between God and humans in that story. In the Eden story, however, God fears that his creation will be undermined if Adam becomes like God himself. In Genesis 3:20-21, God says, See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. Are humans made in the likeness of God or not? In Genesis second creation story, we are not created in the likeness of God; instead, we are from dust and to dust we shall return (Genesis 3:19). But, in Thomas 61, Jesus says of himself, I am the one who comes from what is whole. I was given from the things of my father. And in Thomas 77, Jesus also says of himself, I am the light that is over all things. I am all: From me all has come forth, and to me all has reached. Split a piece of wood, I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there. Aside from be ing noticeably pantheistic, Thomas 77 and Thomas 61 place Jesus in the company of the father and indicate that Jesus is, in some manner, of the father. In fact, Thomas 77 rather explicitly equates Jesus and the father, because Jesus speaks of himself as the ultimatethe all. It is important to
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note that in Thomas Jesus is also made of the same substance as his followers. This point is clearly driven home in Thomas 108 in which Jesus says, Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to that person. It is not difficult to draw the line from herethe father, Jesus, and those who drink from his mouth (i.e., discovers the interpretation of these sayings) are one and the same. In Thomas, we are not created from the dust of the earth; we are made in the likeness of the father. Thus, instead of returning us to the androgynous beginnings of Adam, Thomas places us in the center of the first creation storyman, woman, God, animals, the things of the worldliving together in harmony. This is why Jesus says of Adam in Thomas 85, Adam came from a great power and great wealth, but he was not worthy of you. For had he been worthy, [he would] not [have tasted] death. If Adam is not worthy of Jesus followers, then they must be greater than Adam. Because Adam is born of a great power, he, like Jesus and his followers, was born in the condition of the first creation story; however, his authentic condition is masked by his socialized condition in the second creation story. The serpent attempts to alert Adam about Adams true condition, but Adam (and Eve) never fully understand the truth of their existential circumstance before God (the demiurge?) thwarts them. Thus, their attempt to fully recognize the ultimate reality is never fulfilled. Adam and Eve never realize that God and man are made of the same stuff. Instead, Adam and Eves act of betrayal creates a chasm between God and man, woman and man, man and animal, etc. This is the dualistic world into which we are born and socialized. And it is precisely this world that Thomas seeks to cast off. It is not androgyny that Jesus asks his followers to find, but a state of authentic living in which differences like male and female are not significant. Consequently, in Thomas 22, Jesus does not simply stop at unification of the male and female; unification is merely the first step. Jesus also tells his followers that they need to 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]. Thus, the goal of Thomas 22 is not to
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create a featureless background in which all things recede into a wash of nothingness; rather, the goal is better articulated as the state of being in which one allows things to be without imposing the weight of meaning upon them. Androgyny, then, is but a half step toward a much larger goal of the text, which resides in the first creation story. The goal of Thomas is the end of death, suffering, and strife, which correlates with our authentic state of being in the kingdom. Even though Thomas is clearer about its rejection of worldliness than it is about the rejection of the world itself and does not appear to present sexual androgyny as an ultimate, the gospel does contain a handful of challenging ascetical passages. Nevertheless, much of the ascetical material in Thomas (Thomas 27, 42, 56, 80, 110, and 111) can be explained as confrontations between worldliness (world) and living authentically (kingdom), a theme that is consistent with Thomas monistic theology. Therefore, in Thomas 27, when Jesus says, If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom, it is not difficult to interpret the world Jesus denounces as the delimited world of human social behavior. Moreover, this interpretation gives fasting from the world a much more specific meaning than fasting in general (Thomas 6, 14, and 61), which is denounced by Jesus. In Thomas 27, fasting from the world is simply another way of saying precisely what Jesus tells his followers in Thomas 36, Do not worry, from morning to evening and from evening to morning, about what you will wear. Jesus does not want his followers to be preoccupied with the trappings that engage them in the world of social strife, because every social advantage, every step into the realm of money and power, only serves to further impede ones recognition of the authentic state of being. In Thomas 39, it appears that Jesus believes the Pharisees and scribes are blocked in such a manner, even though they have seen the truth. Jesus says, The Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them. They have not entered, nor have they allowed those who want to enter do so. Why have the Pharisees not entered the kingdom? Because they will have to give up their social status to do so. In Thomas, world should not be confused with the created world or life itself; unlike
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later Gnostics, Thomas Jesus is much more concerned with the corrosive effects of power and privilege than he is with basic, human sensuality. Yet not every saying in Thomas fits easily into a limited asceticism that promotes kingdom (the natural or given) over and against world (the artificial, hierarchical, and fabricated). While Thomas use of world is consistent, and it is easy to substitute the term worldliness for world in the text, the use of body, spirit, flesh, and soul in Thomas 29, 87, and 112, is more difficult to bring into a monistic frame. In Thomas 29, Jesus says, If the flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty. Oppositions such as flesh and spirit are not foreign to monistic theologies; however, their existence as provisional realities or the products of a troubled, dualistic mindset are typically highlighted. However, in Thomas 29, one may interpret flesh and spirit as fundamental categories of being. In this case, the flesh/spirit opposition is equivalent to the poverty/wealth opposition and, consequently, Thomas 29 fits nicely within a dualistic, world-negating motif. However, the rhetorical point of the saying is marvel and not the opposition of poverty and wealth; therefore, these two partsflesh and spiritbelong together, are revealed together, and are born from each other. When one reads the saying in this way, the wealth of the spirit is revealed through the flesh and, even more surprisingly, the hidden wealth of the flesh is revealed through the spirit. Consequently, this poverty refers to neither flesh or spirit but to an understood target that is not identified in the sayingperhaps the corrupted world from which Thomas offers salvation. When flesh and spirit are interpreted as belonging together, then the monistic potential of the saying opens up. Similarly, Thomas 87 and 112, sayings that closely echo Thomas 29, also appear to present a world-negating motif. In fact, all three sayings all appear to be deeply related. In Thomas 87, Jesus says, How miserable is the body that depends on a body, and how miserable is the soul
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that depends on these two. And again, in Thomas 112, Jesus says, Damn the flesh that depends on the soul. Damn the soul that depends on the flesh. It is difficult to determine which is the core saying, but it is clear that these sayings have some common root. In Thomas 112, the flesh/soul juxtaposition is similar to the flesh/spirit distinction in Thomas 29. In Thomas 112, soul is not privileged over flesh nor flesh over soul; they are presented as categories, but they are made equal in the balanced saying. Therefore, although it is brief and enigmatic, Thomas 112 can be interpreted similarly to Thomas 29, except that the relationship between flesh and soul is not clarified; nevertheless, the saying does not appear to conflict with the monistic thrust of the gospel. However, the oppositions presented in Thomas 87 are difficult to explain in the context of the gospel as a whole; soul appears to be privileged over body, but the use of body twice in the saying is clearly enigmatic. Without more explanation, it is difficult to discern if Thomas 87 introduces dualistic oppositions and body denying, world-negating asceticism into an otherwise monistic theology.
Theme 12: Thomas Christology I decided to introduce the theme of Thomas Christology to highlight the characteristics attributed to Jesus in Thomas. A primary question in this section is whether Jesus nature is unique or if he is essentially made of the same stuff as his followers. Another related consideration is the relationship between the natures of Jesus and the father; if Jesus and the father are intimately connected, what are the implications of this connection on Thomas theology? In Thomas 61, Jesus is given from the things of [his] father, but Jesus does not want his followers to regard his position as unique and unattainable (Thomas 108, whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me). Consequently, one must imagine that the apparent divinity Jesus possesses in Thomas 61 is a characteristic shared by all who can discover the interpretations of his sayings (Thomas 1). And because these attributes are shared by both Jesus
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and his followers, it i s important to consider the metaphorical possibilities of the passages that apply larger-than-life attributes to Jesus. In fact, since Jesus performs no miracles or specific supernatural acts in the text, it is not difficult to take these sayings as monistic metaphors. This is especially the case in Thomas 77 (I am the light that is over all things), which was described above. In Thomas 77, Jesus directly articulates his own divinity within the context of a monistic ultimate; in his vision, he has become that ultimatethe very source and power of life. If you split a piece of wood, he is there; if you lift up the stone, you will find him there (Thomas 77). Consequently, when Thomas 82 (Whoever is near me is near the fire, and whoever is far from me is far from the kingdom) is read in the context of Thomas 77, it is not difficult to understand that Jesus sees himself as equivalent with the father and the kingdom. It is evident that Jesus is distinguished as a teacher in the text, but his attributes are much closer to the Buddhas than they are to the resurrected Christs. In Thomas, Jesus has passed through the mystical wall between our dualistic minds and the monistic ultimate reality and, much like the Buddha, he has come back through the wall to brin g his followers to the other side. In fact, the only sayings that intrude on a monistic presentation of Jesus are Thomas 44 (blasphemes), Thomas 55 (bear the cross) and Thomas 28, in which Jesus took [his] stand in the midst of the world, and in flesh appeared to them (cf. John 1). Thomas 28 recalls the traditional sacrificial Jesus descending from heaven to become flesh, so that he may suffer and die for our sins. This enfleshed Jesus intrudes upon the text by employing the same flesh/spirit distinction of Thomas 29 and 87. In Thomas 44, Jesus says, Whoever blasphemes against the father will be forgiven, whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven, either on earth or in heaven. Thomas 44 not only establishes a dualism of heaven and earth, but it brings to the Gospel of Thomas a traditional Trinitarian concept. Yet, this saying has no supporting context in the form of similar sayings. Moreover, it would be difficult to explain what Jesus means by son in Thomas 44 outside of a Christian
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theology. In the context of a gospel that advocates sonship for all who drink from Jesus mouth (Thomas 108), it is difficult to understand the intent of Thomas 44. It may be that Thomas is using the triad of father, son, and holy spirit in a non-traditional manner, but it would require more information to fully articulate the meaning of this Trinitarian passage in Thomas. It is clearly much easier to imagine that Thomas preserves a handful of sayings consistent with traditional Christian theology that were combined with a much larger body of monistic sayings during the transmission of the text through time.
Theme 13: Apocalyptic and Eschatology I chose to include apocalyptic and eschatological sayings because the general absence of an eschatological perspective in Thomas is indicative of its monistic theology. The absence of this perspective also distinguishes Thomas from the New Testament gospels, which often present specific apocalyptic threats and eschatological scenarios. For example, in Thomas 4 Jesus says, The person in old days will not hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live. For many of the first will be last and will become a single one. It is not at all clear whether this saying is a singular coherent unit or if it is actually the result of the splicing of two unlike sayings; however, its significance in Thomas is that the apocalyptic possibilities of the saying are subverted by its monistic conclusionthe first and last will become a single one. This interpretation of Thomas 4 is supported by the presence of Thomas 18, in which Jesus says, Fortunate is one who stands at the beginning: That one will know the end and will not taste death. The theological thrust of both of these sayings is that the conclusion of our search for the kingdom can only accomplished by returning to the primordial beginnings. However, in all three of the canonical parallels to this saying, the excerpt first and last is included in an apocalyptic eschatological scenario. For example, in Matthew 19:27-30, Jesus says:
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Truly, I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my names sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. As in Thomas, first and last in Matthew has the distinct feel of being an independent passage inserted into another context; however, in Matthew, the context is explicitly apocalyptic. Presumably in Matthews version, the last who will be first are those who sacrifice something of themselves in Jesus name. Consequently, in this age, they are the last, but in the coming age they will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. At the renewal of all things, the last will take their place at the front of the line. In almost every case, Thomas subverts just the kind of apocalyptic scenario presented above. Thomas 113 (the fathers kingdom is spread across the earth), Thomas 109 (the treasure parable), and Thomas 51 (What you look for [the new age] has already come) all subvert eschatological and apocalyptic possibilities by positing a kingdom that is primordially present. In addition, there are a handful of other sayings that are nearly as explicit. In Thomas 91, Jesus followers say to him, Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you. And Jesus replies dismissively, You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine this moment. Jesus followers continually attempt to elevate Jesus above themselves and he continually reminds them that they do not understand his message. In Thomas 91, examining the moment and knowing the one who is in [ones] presence are one and the same activity. Once Jesus followers understand the moment-at-handthe primordial now of the kingdomthey will also understand that Jesus, themselves, and the moment are all one and the same. Throughout the text, Jesus followers never fully grasp Jesus non-apocalyptic, non-eschatological message. It is likely that their confusion is a literary device used in the text to drive home Thomas corrective to apocalyptically-minded
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Jewish and/or Christian groups. Furthermore, it is important to note that sayings like Thomas 18 (beginning/end) go further than to place Thomas kingdom in the here-and-now as a type of realized eschatological event; instead, Thomas 18 places Thomas kingdom outside of our spatiotemporal existence and instead put it in the primordial here-and-now that is always timeless and always present. As was the case with asceticism and Christology, Thomas presents a few sayings that would appear to warn of an imminent end of things (Thomas 21, 41, 47, 57, 79). Of these sayings, few are specific enough to be called eschatological, although when considered in the context of the New Testament gospels, a few appear much more eschatologically driven. In Thomas 21, Jesus says, When the crop ripened, the person came along with a sickle and harvested it. Similarly, in Thomas 57 and 73, the metaphor of a harvest is once again employed. Outside of the context of the New Testament, the harvest remains a salient metaphor, not for judgment day, but for natural, perhaps cyclical, maturity and readiness. Nevertheless, Thomas 57 (wheat and weeds) selects between the fit and the unfit in the same manner in which the parable is presented in Matthew 13:24-30. Consequently, it is difficult to imagine what this saying might mean outside of an eschatological context, except perhaps that some people will enter the kingdom and some will not. If this is the case, however, the harvest cannot come at an appointed time, but instead at a different time for each individual, which would mean that each person is a crop. This interpretation possibly stretches the metaphor of the harvest a bit too far; nevertheless, the meaning of the harvest metaphor is far from clear and any eschatological implications are not specified. As with other seemingly dualistic sayings in the text, these eschatological metaphors do not provide enough specificity or weight to disrupt Thomas general trend toward a primordial, monistic kingdom; but they do provide evidence that orthodox material may have been included at some point in the editing of this otherwise unorthodox text.
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Section 4: Thomas and the New Testament

I developed section four to highlight the relationship between Thomas and the New Testament gospels. For this section, I prepared pages on the scholarly reconstruction of the Q Gospel, the work of the Jesus Seminar in regard to Thomas, and selected sayings found both in the New Testament and in Thomas. Perhaps not surprisingly, Thomas and Q have more parallel sayings than Thomas and any other text in the Jesus tradition; however, Thomas also has parallels to material in all four of the canonized gospels. The following is a breakdown of Thomas relationship to the New Testament gospels found in John Dominic Crossans book The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus: Out of 132 units in Thomas 28% (37 sayings) parallels with Q 37% (37/101 sayings) of Q parallels with Thomas 12% (16 sayings) parallels with special Matthew 7% (9 sayings) parallels with Specia l Luke 9% (12 sayings) parallels with John 12% (16 sayings) parallels with Mark 9% (11 sayings) parallels with Q-Mark14 It is this multi-faceted relationship that leads some scholars to argue for Thomas complete dependence upon the canonized New Testament as a source for its parallel material. In all, over 50% of Thomas is found in parallel sayings from the New Testament. This parallel material accounts for a significant number of Thomas sayings, but does not significantly contribute to Thomas overall theology. In fact, Thomas preserves many of these parallel sayings in short, nonChristianized, and non-apocalyptic forms that have led some scholars to consider the possibility that Thomas preserves an oral tradition that is independent of Q and the New Te stament gospels. This debate over Thomas dependence or independence accounts for much of the scholarship devoted to Thomas. Over the past fifty years, the dating of the text has moved further and further into the past. Early estimates were conservative, dating the text in the fourth century; however, Henri-Charles Puechs realization that Hunt and Grenfells Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which have been
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dated to around 180 C.E., were related to the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, greatly problematized estimates for Thomas composition. 15 It is now well accepted that the writing of Thomas was finalized somewhere between 100 CE and 200 CE; however, there is a growing number of scholars who argue that at least some of the material in Thomas pre-dates our existing gospels. In fact, the members of the Jesus Seminar argue that an earlier edition [of Thomas] may have originated as early as 50-60 C.E., 16 which would make parts of Thomas contemporaneous with the writings of Paul, the earliest extant writings of Christianity. These early daters believe that Thomas preserves the most primitive versions of several parallel sayings and argue that Thomas presents two new parables (Thomas 97 and 98) that are quite possibly authentic sayings of the historical Jesus. In Thomas 97, Jesus tells his followers a parable in which he compares the kingdom to a woman who carries a jar of meal and does not notice that she has spilled the meal along the road until she reaches home. And in Thomas 98, Jesus compares the kingdom to an assassin who puts someone powerful to death after practicing his attack beforehand. The dating debate is far from concluded and it is unlikely that a significant scholarly majority will emerge on this matter in the near future. Regardless, Thomas 97 and 98 are unquestionably independent and in a parabolic form that was not repeated in the Jesus tradition outside the New Testament and the Apocryphon of James, another text found with Thomas in the Nag Hammadi Library. The existence of these new parables has excited many scholars and lends support to the independence of other sayings in Thomas. As a part of the section on Thomas and the New Testament, I created handouts comparing several parallel sayings. The intent of these handouts was to explore the trajectory of editing in the parables. Having access to several versions of the same saying allows for deep comparisons and discussions of redactive traits. It is harder to conclude which sayings are, in fact, closer to the historical Jesus than the others, because one first has to create a profile of the historical Jesus before one can make decisions about what he may or may not have said. In general, however, the
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different texts carry the telltale marks of their respective editors and sayings tend to be edited in the general theological direction of the gospel as a whole. For example, sayings that have eschatological overtones in Matthew and Luke are often merely enigmatic or cast as instructions for personal revelation in Thomas. In general, there is also a tendency toward additional critical commentary in the New Testament as sayings pass from Mark to Matthew and Luke. In Thomas, however, there is no commentary on the meaning of the sayings, which gives Thomas the appearance of preserving the oldest and most unadulterated versions of a handful of sayings.
Section 5: Thomas, Hellenized Judaism, and Gnosticism

Section five of the Study Guide contains pages on the creation stories from Genesis, an overview of Gnosticism, scholarly commentary on Thomas and Gnosticism, sayings i n Thomas related to Gnosticism, and a short section comparing Thomas and two potentially related texts from the Nag Hammadi Library. I included the section on Genesis to refresh students on the actual accounts of creation in Genesis, which can be quite different from the imagined accounts of the Genesis creation stories we keep in our heads. It seems likely that Thomas presents an unraveled, allegorical exegesis of the Genesis creation stories that we have to reconstruct in order to successfully interpret the text. In Thomas unraveled exegesis, the process by which we can return to the primordial authenticity of the first creation story is not clearly outlined. In fact, the process by which one can achieve this return remains outside the text. Instead, Thomas sayings present the spuriousness of the social human condition and our need to restore our natural condition or first, primordial state of being; therefore, Thomas never fully brings the concept of the ultimatethe kingdomfully into the discrete realm of meaning. Kingdom, the place or condition of our return, remains outside of categorization. This evasive presentation of kingdomour authentic state of being in the first creation storyis consistent with other monistic texts. The ultimate reality cannot be brought into the realm of meaning and,
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consequently, it must remain in the realm of intuition and first-hand experience. The fact that the Genesis material remains a sub-text of Thomas and is not clearly identified helps to open up the possibility of kingdom to the reader without reifying it. Therefore, kingdom appears to be purposefully kept in the background for those readers who can discover the meaning of these hidden sayings of Jesus (Prologue and Thomas 1). The remainder of Section 5 covers Thomas and Gnosticism, a deep topic that could really stand to be a course of its own. The section provides a brief overview and definition of Gnosticism, which is cursory and only suffices to cover a few general themes that recur in the various Gnostic schools. The subsequent pages highlight scholarly opinions about Thomas relationship to Gnosticism and Jewish wisdom speculation. The majority of scholars appear to agree that even though Thomas was discovered in a library of predominantly Gnostic texts, Thomas itself does not show deep affinities with any of the known Gnostic schools. In his book The Gospel of Thomas, Richard Valantasis provides a passage representative of the current scholarly trend away from Thomas Gnostic proclivities: The scholars who want to identify the theology of Thomas as gnostic, begin with the assumption of its gnostic nature and then proceed to justify that characterization through establishing parallels with the theology and mythology of later and fully developed gnosticism. . . . Almost every one of these scholars acknowledges, however, that the Gospel of Thomas does not contain any of the known systems or theologies of the gnostic writers . . ., and yet they will insist that the document comes from the same period of historic al theology. 17 It is now widely agreed that Thomas does not articulate a full-blown Gnostic theology; however, the depth of the Gnostic influence on the text is unclear, because it is likely that Thomas passed through Gnostic redactors on its way to its final version. Crossan argues that the text is more concerned with asceticism than gnosticism and while such a document could easily be read within gnosticism or even drawn more and more deeply into its sphere, in itself it stands on the borders between Catholic and Gnostic Christianity.18 The pages in the study guide that compare Thomas to other texts in the Nag Hammadi Library are particularly instructive, because they
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highlight the Gnostic texts complex Christology, well developed asceticism, and a cosmic hierarchy that are simply not present in Thomas. Consequently, it seems unlikely that Thomas theology is Gnostic, but instead that Gnostic redactors added a handful Gnostic concepts and symbols to an existing text that grew out of a more primitive tradition.
Section 6: Monism in Thomas

The section on Monism in Thomas grew out of extensive thematic parallels I noted in Thomas and two Taoist philosophical texts, the Tao te Ching and the Chuang Tzu the two primary texts of philosophical Taoism. In preparing this section, I also studied the Bhagavad Gita (Hindu), the Dhammapada (Buddhist), the Hermetic Corpus and several secondary texts on Buddhism, Taoism, and Monism. For the purposes of the course, I decided to distill this information into a general section on Monism; however, I have included a short comparative paper, The Way of the Kingdom: A Taoist Reading of the Gospel of Thomas , as an appendix to this paper to highlight my conclusions about Thomas relationship to Taoist Monism. Instead of using my comparisons with the Taoist texts for the study guide, I decided to include information from articles and books related to monistic mysticism, including the work of Ken Wilber, John Sahadat, and James Hesig. The pages of the study guide entitled Prominent Features of Monistic Religions outline a series of attributes consistent in a variety of monistic religious traditions and the section entitled Prominent Monistic Features in Thomas details how Thomas exhibits these attributes. In addition, the area covering specific monistic sayings contains brief interpretations of selected sayings. I chose to be more explicit about my conclusions in this area, because monistic theology is unfamiliar to most students and it is philosophically esoteric. Consequently, I believed that more explicit explanation was required. I also included a brief section on the dualistic pairs used in Thomas, because it is important to consider whether pairs such as earth and heaven, good
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and evil, and light and dark, are fundamentally opposed or collapsible within a larger monistic theology.
Study Guide Appendices

I included several appendices in the curriculum to help clear up terminology, abbreviations, and symbols used in the guide and to provide supplemental information to assist in the study of Thomas, Gnosticism, Monism, and early Christianity. The glossary I compiled actually served as the genesis of this project and I completed the bulk of it before arranging and compiling the other material in the study guide. I also developed much of the annotated bibliography in an independent study for Dr. Stephen Daniel before completing the additional sections. I decided to include the appendices on enigmatic symbolism in Thomas and the Greek and Coptic terms at the request of students in my course, many of whom were quite interested in particular symbols used in Thomas, such as the five trees in paradise, and alternate translations of the Greek and Coptic terms used in the two extant versions of Thomas.
Process Paper Conclusion

The Gospel of Thomas Study Guide proved to be a powerful tool for instructing students in the nuances of Thomas theology and in the variety of themes presented in Gnostic, Christian, Jewish, and monistic religious texts. Students were engaged by the material and used the study guide in class as we went over each section. After completing the Compleat Scholar course, however, I evaluated the various areas I covered in the course and realized that the study guide was overly complex and that some of the scholarly arguments were unnecessary for students who do not wish to study archaeological and historical context issues. Consequently, I removed some of this material from each section so that the remaining material would be clearer and easier to
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follow. Overall, the introduction, the themes sections, and the Thomas and the New Testament section were the easiest to teach to my Compleat Scholar students; when we remained close to the text of Thomas, the course flowed smoothly and the entire class was engaged. Neverthele ss, most of the students were also highly interested in the historical and religious implications of the text and, therefore, I lectured on current New Testament scholarship, scholarship on Thomas, and the attributes of neighboring religious traditions. I also included some of this information in the study guide. In general, students had a harder time grasping my general overview of Gnosticism than they did other material that seemed more philosophically complex. Because the presentation on Gnosticism came during the fifth week of the course and I had already presented large amounts of new information to them, I regarded the students confusion as a sign of fatigue as much as a sign of over-complexity on my part. However, because of their fatigue and confusion, I decided to significantly shorten the sections on Gnosticism and Monism when I revised the study guide. The monist section, which I presented during the sixth week of the course, clearly engaged the students, but I felt very rushed covering it (as I did Gnosticism) and, therefore, I significantly shortened this material and presented only the highlights in the revised study guide. Both Gnosticism and Monism are esoteric philosophical subjects that require a great deal of time and attention to unfold; nevertheless, these are important subjects to broach in any serious study of the Gospel of Thomas. The fact that Thomas was found with so many Gnostic texts and clearly bears the marks of Gnosticism makes it difficult to ignore this major area. Moreover, because Thomas exhibits so many monistic theological principles, it is difficult to present Thomas theology without covering this crucial theology. After the course, I was not certain how to respond to the difficulties some students had understanding Thomas theology and the complexity of the ideas presented in the study guide. Thomas itself is an obscure gospel; in fact, it appears that it is purposefully obscure (Prologue and
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Thomas 1). Many scholars have poured over its pages and yet, in my opinion, few have begun to complete the puzzle Thomas presents the reader. And even if one of these scholars might be right about Thomas theology, there are so many opposing scholarly opinions that a consensus in any area is hard to find. If scholars have so many difficulties with this text, one cannot presume that non-professionals would be able to readily tie all of Thomas thematic strings together. Consequently, I struggled with the possibility of excising this sort of scholarly ambiguity from the study guide and, in the end, I decided to dispose of some of it. My compromise was to clarify scholarly debates where I could and to drop a few contentious areas, such as liberal and conservative debates about Thomas date of composition. I decided to that it was more important to retain the heart of Thomas theology and its connections to related religious traditions than to lose students in the intricacies of historical debates and form criticism. As a result, my revised study guide is much more streamlined and focuses more intently on Thomas theology and less on historical and archaeological scholarship than my original study guide. Thus, the revised study guide is also more suited for a general audience. Overall, the Gospel of Thomas Study Guide is a useful research tool that I hope will benefit students and scholars who wish to penetrate the words of this historically important and theologically surprising gospel.
Thomas Theology: My Final Thoughts

When I first read the Gospel of Thomas, I identified it as theologically monistic rather than ascetical, traditionally Christian or Gnostic. In fact, when I investigated what other scholars were saying about Thomas, it struck me as odd that most scholars do not regard Thomas theology as monistic. Most scholars regard the gospel as deeply ascetical, world negating, and dualistic. Most scholars also believe that the text was the product of an incipient Gnostic or ascetical sect. Because of my surprise that so many scholars believe Thomas to be an ascetical text, I wrote Stevan Davies, a prominent scholar in the field, about the possibility of monism in Thomas. His
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reply was enlightening; he wanted to know what I meant by monism. It turns out that Davies interpretations of the text have assisted me greatly in my study of Thomas, yet he is unfamiliar with monism, which may also mean that he is unfamiliar with the theology of monistic religions, such as Taoism and Buddhism. This lack of familiarity may help to explain why Davies and other New Testament scholars have not come to the conclusion that Thomas theology is monistic. The difficulty with Thomas monism is that it does not fit very nicely into the known history of the Near East during the period in which Thomas was likely written. It is fairly clear that Thomas was used at some point by both Orthodox Christians and Gnostic -Christians and that Thomas bears the marks of these relationships; however, it is unclear what role HellenizedJudaism plays in the text, except that the apparent allegorical exegesis of Genesis is more likely the product of Hellenized Jews (e.g., Philo of Alexandria) than any other group. According to most New Testament scholars, both Christians and Gnostic -Christians were intractably dualistic: traditional Christians fixated on Jesus resurrection, his unique divine nature, and the coming of a new world, while the Gnostic -Christians believed the world to be the evil creation of a demiurge who emanated from a transcendent, hidden father. Thomas simply does not fit into the frame we have created for either of these religious traditions. Nor does Thomas Jesus easily merge with the modern portrait of Jesus as a social revolutionary igniting the underclass. Clearly, Thomas Jesus is a social revolutionary who wishes to reform Judaism in a manner similar to the Jesus of the New Testament. But Thomas Jesus is not motivated by social reform, nor is he an evangelist advocating a worldwide religious crusade. Instead, Thomas Jesus focuses on the individuals role in his own salvation regardless of changes that may occur in the society as a whole. He is also philosophically opaque, inaccessible even to his followers, and certainly not the miracle -making man of the people we see in the New Testament. Nevertheless, Thomas Jesus has helped New Testament scholars assemble our latest portrait of the historical Jesus. Thus, it is clear that the peasant revolutionary is, to some degree, present in Thomas, even though Thomas Jesus does
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not fully resemble an evangelistic, Cynic philosopher. Rather, Thomas Jesus advocate s a policy of personal resistance. Rather than overthrowing social hierarchy, he asks us to turn our backs on the false promises of society and to open our minds to the amoral, lawless truth of our primordial human condition. Only when we can fully open ourselves to the unmediated openness of the kingdom can we live outside of strife, opposition, and suffering (Thomas 1, 2, 22, 106, 109) and when we recognize that we are all (Thomas 77), then we become whole (Thomas 61, 72). Thomas Jesus presents a message that is surprisingly consistent given the seeming randomness of the gospels sayings. And like the philosophies of other monistic religions, the life philosophy presented in the gospel is also attainable for the few who can personally come to terms its meaning. Even though Thomas has made a large impact on New Testament studies over the past fifty years, there remains an expansive gulf between the impact Thomas should have on the study of Christian origins and the impact Thomas has really achieved. Thus far, Thomas has primarily been used by scholars to bolster arguments for a non-apocalyptic Jesus who is primarily interested in spiritually redeeming an underclass that is oppressed by unfair religious and social hierarchies. While this is an appropriate use for Thomas, the parts of the gospel that are not closely related to the New Testament are most often regarded as secondary material. In The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan argues that Thomas has at least two strata one written in the 50s C.E. in Jerusalem under James authority and another written in the 60s or 70s in Syria under Thomas authority. 19 While editorial stratification seems likely in the text, it seems that the kind of division proposed by Crossan is motivated by the perception that many of Thomas sayings are ascetical. To Crossan and others who support an early compositional date, ascetical material seems foreign to the most consistent profile they have developed for the historical Jesus. Consequently, the relegate the apparently ascetical material to a later date in the same manner that
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they relegate the apocalyptic material from the canonized gospels to the period following the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in the 70s C.E. However, if Thomas primary theology is monistic rather than ascetical, the date and place of composition is very much called into question. The monism that appears to be present in Thomas seems much more consistent with Hellenized Jews than ascetical Syrians. In fact, it is possible that a great deal of the material in Thomas precedes Jesus and the movement he spawned. But wherever Thomas was written, it was likely a place where a variety of cultures lived in close contact, such as Alexandria, Jerusalem, or Edessa. Because of the dearth of indigenous, monistic religions in the Near East at the time, it is also probable that Jews and Christians in the first century C.E. were exposed to Buddhism or Taoism in a large cultural center. But one also cannot rule out the possibility that monist variants of Judaism existed in the first century C.E. or that other local philosophies, such as Hermeticism (if, in fact, Hermeticism can be dated this early), pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, or an unknown pantheistic religion, may have had monistic tenets that were popular in the first century C.E. What does seem likely is that some form of monism was combined with Jewish wisdom speculation and a Jesus-inspired religion of personal salvation (although in Thomas, as in other monistic religions, wisdom speculation and personal salvation are really inseparable from monism). Consequently, the compositional date for all of Thomas sayings is questionable. The wisdom material and exegesis of Genesis may well have preceded Jesus rather than followed him. Because there is evidence that this sort of intellectual activity was occurring in Alexandria during the century preceding Jesus, it is not difficult to imagine that wisdom sayings might be attributed to another person at a later date. If Thomas is truly monistic rather than ascetical, which seems to be the case, there is no reason to believe that the monistic material is separate from the sayings that parallel the New Testament or that these monistic sayings were written in the late-first or second century C.E. Although much of this material bears
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the marks of Hellenized Judaism, the date and provenance of nearly every saying in Thomas is wide-open. For all we know, Jesus may have been a monist philosopherinspired by a local or Eastern variant of monistic theologywho was misinterpreted as an apocalyptic messiah by many of his own followers who were looking for such a person. After all, Matthews treasure parable (Matthew 13:44) alludes to a kingdom that one can individually discover and personally benefit from during ones life. In this p arable, The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. This concept of a precious hidden reality that is found by those who search for it is prevalent in Thomas and in several of Jesus canonical parables. In fact, in Matthew, Jesus attacks Jewish notions of a general resurrection by telling his followers that God is the God not of the dead but the living (Matthew 22:32). He also tells his followers that few people find life because of rigors of the journey (Matthew 7:13). Both of these passages focus on the here-andnow and, as such, both are consistent with Thomas intra-worldly focus. Furthermore, in Luke 17:20-21, Jesus says, The kingdom of God is not coming with the things that can be observed; nor will they say, Look, here it is! or There it is! For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you. Scholars refer to this sort of pronouncement realized eschatology, but it is a difficult saying in an apocalyptic text, because it creates the need for a laborious explanation of a kingdom that is both manifest AND that will arrive at an undisclosed time in the future. This passage from Luke strongly echoes Thomas 113, in which Jesus says, The fathers kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it. Sayings such as these seem improbable for a preacher of apocalyptic doom, because they focus on individual revelation in the living world rather than social transformation and the world to come. How can one account for such sayings in texts that fairly consistently present an apocalyptically-minded messiah? There is a strong likelihood that these (and other similar sayings) are monistic sayings embedded in otherwise dualistic,
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apocalyptically motivated gospels. Consequently, recognizing monism in Thomas might be a crucial key to developing a framework for Thomas historical priority over the New Testament gospels. Evidence of monism in the New Testament clearly provides more legitimacy an early compositional date for Thomas and for the possibility that Thomas may more closely reflect the philosophy of the historical Jesus than any other Christian text. Our understanding of Christian origins is really quite tentative. For all that has been written about the historical Jesus and his followers, we are unfortunately dependent on a handful of texts whose intent is much more theologically than historically motivated. Independent testimony from non-Christians, such as Josephus, is scant, secondhand, and not particularly reliable. What does seem clear from both the New Testament and the apocryphal texts is that there was a great deal of confusion about the core philosophy of Jesus message even in the most primitive stages of Christianity. This confusion may reflect the complex mind of an enigmatic man or it may reflect the goals of the various people who were intrigued by Jesus words or his legend. It seems most likely that if Jesus existed, he probably presented a coherent philosophy to his followers that was altered as it was transmitted through time and space. Whether or not Jesus core message was monistic or dualistic is difficult to discern, because the parallel material tends to be monistic in Thomas and dualistic (apocalyptic) in the New Testament. Yet, there is a possibility that Jesus was as Thomas presents him: A monistic sage who embraces life while rejecting social divisions, luxuries, and constraints; a peasant philosopher who believes that we are born into the kingdom with everything we need; and a teacher who believes that if we can live without fear and in harmony with the authentic reality of our existence, the kingdom will eternally provide for us and sustain us.
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Appendix A: The Gospel of Thomas and Taoist Monism
The Way of the Kingdom: A Taoist Reading of the Gospel of Thomas

The fact that Christianity and Taoism are not the sameare ultimately irreducible to each otheris undeniable. Philosophical Taoism does not admit of a personal creator-deity who is source of life and object of devotion. Elements of Christian life and thought such as prayer, sin, grace, redemption and salvation cannot be transposed into the life and thought of philosophical Taoism without the near dissolution of their original meanings. Christian mystical experience presupposes an immutable transcendent reality and a contingent but real world, whereas Taoism holds to an intraworldly mysticism that aims to see this one and only existing world in a new way. 20 This quote, which I excerpted from the recently published Tao of Jesus, nicely frames the comparative reading I will present through the course of this paper. While I generally agree with the authors conclusions regarding the cultural differences between Chinese Taoism and Pauline Christianity, the 1945 discovery of The Gospel of Thomas and other early Gnostic -Christian manuscripts tremendously weakens the rigidity of their eastern and western cultural divides. While these archeological discoveries do not erase the timeworn practices of mainstream Christianity, they do make abundantly clear the theological and philosophical diversity of early Christian groups. In contrast to the typically dualistic perspectives found in the canonized gospels, The Gospel of Thomas consistently presents a monistic perspective. Among other things, Thomas monism suggests the absence of a personal creator-deity and promotes, like Taoism, an intraworldly mysticism rather than one based on an unchanging transcendent reality. Furthermore, The Gospel of Thomas does not highlight any of the aforementioned Christian practicesprayer, sin, grace, redemption, or salvation. Consequently, these objections should not constitute insurmountable obstacles for this comparative reading. One liberating feature of The Gospel of Thomas is the absence of a corresponding interpretive tradition. Certainly, the unavailability of authorial information and a detailed cultural context
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provides significant roadblocks for historians and historically minded Christians; however, social and cultural contexts can just as readily impede interpretation by constructing arbitrary or politically motivated boundaries. Consequently, no one reading of any of these ancient texts would suffice, despite the abundance or dearth of circumstantial evidence. Consequently, this comparative reading will focus on widespread textual similarities rather than attempt to prove the cultural and historical confluence of ancient China and first century C.E. Judea. Thus, this project is quite distinct from historical, sociological or anthropological readings; instead, I consider it a comparative literary reading strongly motivated by personal interests. In this paper, I will compare the words of Thomas Jesus with passages from two important Taoist philosophical traditio nsthe Lao Tzu (Tao-te-ching ) and the Chuang Tzu, although I will primarily focus on the latter. Throughout the paper, I will continually interpret Thomas Jesus against a Taoist framework to draw out Thomas consistently monistic themes. The Monistic Universe: Moving from Categories to Completion Where there are [three, they are without] God, and where there is only [one], I say, I am with that one. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there. Split the piece of wood and I am there.21 This short sayin g, believed to be a fragment of a Greek manuscript of The Gospel of Thomas, was published in 1897. Dated around 200 C.E., this fragment (called POxy1) suggests that the later Coptic translation of Thomas (ca. 350 C.E.) does not implant a monistic worldview into an earlier dualistic framework, even though the Coptic version rearranges and rewords this older material. 22 The POxy1 fragment can be interpreted in the following manner: 1) Being with one corresponds to being with God and 2) Being with one/God al so corresponds to being in all places and in all things, no matter how trivial. Although this fragment could be interpreted differently, when one reads it in the context of the full Coptic manuscript, it fits well into Thomas consistent focus on singularity and pervasiveness.
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The concept of a pervasive singularity is the cornerstone of philosophical Taoism. In the Tao-te-ching (Chapter 14), Lao Tzu writes: Onethere is nothing more encompassing above it, And nothing smaller below it. Boundless, formless! It cannot be named, And returns to the state of no-thing. . . . Hold on to the Way of the present To manage the things of the present, And to know the ancient beginning. This is called the beginning of the thread of the Way.23 In this passage, Lao Tzu establishes the ultimate One as an all-encompassing singularity that, besides being boundless, formless, and unnamable, cannot be properly considered a thing. Consequently, One is simultaneously the smallest and the most encompassing reality, and it belongs completely to the always of the present. In the second verse, Lao Tzu introduces Tao (the Way). While Tao is never explicitly defined in Taoist texts, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu use the term liberally in various poetic and anecdotal contexts. Additionally, the term appears to represent many aspects and features of Taoist philosophy; at times, it refers to the ultimate itself while, at others, it refers to ones free and natural participation in the ultimate. This multiplicity of contexts, however, should not be regarded as a confusion of principles, because in philosophical Taoism, the ultimate and ones participation in it are equivalent. Consequently, no distinctions need to be made between them. In fact, Lao Tzus and Chuang Tzus liberal use of Tao and other representative metaphors (e.g., the Great Clod, the Not-Even-Anything Village, the Field of the Broad and Boundless, etc.) may be motivated by a willfulness to keep Tao just out of reachfamiliar enough to provoke contemplation, yet too variable to associate with any one metaphor. In one of his more complete articulations of Tao, Chuang Tzu describes it as an ultimate break with categorical thinking in which all difference comes to be regarded as sameness. He writes:
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Whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Hsishih, things ribald and shady or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment. No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again. Only the man of far-reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories], but relegates all to the constant. . . . This is called the Way. 24 The role of the man of far-reaching vision is to orient his mind such that all things, no matter how unique, become valueless (i.e., of the same stuff). In fact, Chuang Tzu not only argues that all difference should be regarded as sameness, but he also considers the entire world of difference (i.e., the world of human beings in language) as something that comes into being with each of us over and against the sameness of Tao. Thus, reflective thought itself alienates human beings from the sameness of Tao. Chuang Tzu argues that difference, sameness, and reflective thought arrive in the world together. He writes, Heaven and earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me.25 Not only is difference (i.e., the dualistic coupling of Heaven and earth) inevitably locked in a synergistic relationship with awareness, but all things (i.e., the ten thousand things) belong to each other in the absence of reflective thought. Consequently, ones perception of the monistic whole is dependent upon ones ability to conceptually move beyond the world of categorical discriminations. Several key passages from Thomas echo this Taoist theme. In Thomas 61, Jesus engages in a dialog with Salome, a female disciple who feeds Jesus and allows him to stay with her, presumably to share his teaching. A section of their conversation proceeds as follows: Salome said, Who are you, man, that you, as though from the One, . . . have come up on my couch and eaten from my table? Jesus said to her, I am he who exists from the Undivided. I was given some of the things of my father. Salome said, I am your disciple. Jesus said to her, Therefore I say, if he is undivided, he will be filled with light, but if he is divided, he will be filled with darkness.26 In this dialog, Jesus focuses on the divided and undivided in a manner not unlike Chuang Tzu. For Jesus, the Undivided is equated with the father, which again is equated to the One. Because
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he is given some of the things of his father (i.e., elements of the Undivided), Jesus presents two possible responses: 1) A person may ignore the things of the father and remain divided (i.e., impaired and in the dark) or 2) A person may pursue a reunion with the Undivided and become filled with light. Thomas is filled with dualistic references similar to these light/dark and divided/Undivided oppositions, yet these oppositions always appear to refer to attitudinal choices one makes regarding ones relationship with the all-encompassing whole (which is always aligned with light). In Thomas 77, Jesus says, It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the All. From me did the All come forth, and unto me did the All extend.27 Because of these oppositions, Thomas maintains a provisional dualism that appears to resolve when one participates in the Undivided, the All, the One, or the light. The Taoists maintain a similar provisional dualism by separating Heaven and earth.28 In fact, Chuang Tzu even evokes this same light/dark opposition in a description of the sages liberation from dualism. He writes, Where there is recognition of right there must be recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light of Heaven.29 As in Thomas, the Taoist sages association with light symbolizes his escape from the limitations of a dualistic perspective. Several passages in Thomas suggest that ones reunion with the Undivided occurs when one readjusts ones psychological perspective. This observation resonates with Chuang Tzus description of the man of far reaching vision. Ones change of perspective depends on ones ability to mentally collapse opposites until the this and the that cannot be found. Chuang Tzu refers to this fusion as the hinge of the Way. He writes, A state in which this and that no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly.30 Jesus description of the psychological adjustments necessary for entrance to the Kingdom is quite similar. In Thomas 22, Jesus explains to his disciples:
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When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then you will enter the Kingdom. 31 None of the remaining 113 sayings found in Thomas contradict a reading of this passage that highlights the importance of ones ability to conceptually collapse opposites before entering the Kingdom. Moreover, Jesus again points out the necessity of rethinking opposites when he announces in Thomas 3, The Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.32 As in the earlier passage, the possibility of ones entrance into the Kingdom revolves around a necessary conceptual collapse of the this and the that. Furthermore, when ones conceptual metamorphosis is completed, one begins to understand that the Kingdom is universally distributed, as in POxy1 (Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.). Consequently, the Kingdom cannot be regarded as existing in a particular locale or as being exclusively personal. 33 The final lines of Thomas 22 are cryptic, however, and they may suggest a deeper level of understanding beyond the mere collapsing of oppositions. When Jesus says, fashion . . . a likeness in place of a likeness, it is difficult to construct a plausible context for what he could possibly mean here. Chuang Tzu, however, presents a similar nuance when he asserts that the hinge of the Way occurs when the this and the that no longer find their opposites. Consequently, this phrase suggests that instead of completely collapsing into no-thingness, the this and the that become freed from their belonging relationship to their opposites (i.e., the mediating system of meaningful relationships is removed) and, thus, merge into the whole without becoming part of a flat and characterless background. When opposites are no longer
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found, dualism collapses, which suggests a monistic frame; however, within this frame, a variety of distinguishable things may remain in play. When Jesus instructs his disciples to fashion a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, he may be referring to ones potentially undivided and undetermined relationship with the things of the world. If this is the case, Thomas monism, like Taoism, does not deny variation within the material world; rather, it suggests that the sum total of mutual relationships within the varied yet conceptually indeterminate are equivalent to the whole itself. Kingdom/Tao: the ever appearing/disappearing presence Jesus said, Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest.34 One of the primary mysteries of monistic philosophies is how such a manifest reality can hide itself right under our noses. As crazy as it may seem, more traditional conceptions of intervening and transcendent God(s), even if they are meant to be imageless and unspoken, are more tangible (perhaps to the ir detriment) than an ultimate that transcends the conceptual and yet thoroughly encompasses everything that is (including the conceptual). Certainly, this idea can be explained and even understood to some degree, yet it remains truly imageless in its utter comprehensiveness. While the conception of a monistic ultimate is deeply creative, these imaginings can only provide entry points and conceptual paths that help to orient ones mind toward a holistic experience; however, the experience itself remains outside of the text. And, because of the atextuality of the experience, the monistic ultimate also remains outside of the text. The monistic whole is something one personally intuitsand even these moments are difficult for the sage to sustain. Ones ability to grasp the whole continually slips away at the very moment of thoughtful reflection. An understanding of monism is something that is always on the tip of ones tongue, yet never quite utterable. It is in this sense that Jesus Kingdom is simultaneously
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hidden and in sight. The Kingdom is a reality in which one participates every single day, yet one need not be aware of anything but the mere appearances of the whole in its abundance of parts. Jesus attempts to free his disciples from their fixation on familiar modes of thinking about the world by continually exposing them to paradoxes. He tells them that the Kingdom is inside of them and outside of them, over here and over there, everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing, abundant and present yet hidden. This is how Jesus expresses the Kingdom to his disciples in Thomas 113: His disciples said to him, When will the Kingdom come? Jesus said, It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying Here it is or There it is. Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.35 Clearly, Thomas Jesus focuses on a Kingdom that is fully present, yet unseen by most. He believes that our minds and spirits are generally darkened by conflict and, consequently, we are unable to conceive of all difference as belonging together in a unified whole. In one of his more philosophical descriptions of Tao, Chuang Tzu describes the interplay between Taos many features, including its all-encompassing presence, visual absence, timelessness, and conceptual transcendence. He writes: The Way has its reality and its signs but is without action or form. You can hand it down but you cannot receive it; you can get it but you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root. Before Heaven and earth existed it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave spirituality to the spirits and to God; it gave birth to Heaven and to earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty; it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot say it has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you cannot call it old. 36 Chuang Tzu describes Tao on many levels in this passage. For the teacher, Tao is something that can be taught (i.e., a conceptualized reduction of Tao), yet Tao cannot be received by the student; the student must get it on his own. However, even after one gets it, one still cannot see it, because it exists nowhere in particular. Therefore, Tao is uncontextualized; it exists before Heaven and earth, beyond the highest point, and beneath the limit of the six directions. As an
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unseen and unspeakable reality, it also hides itself in spite of its presence. Moreover, Tao is also the source of all that is, including the spirituality of the spirits and God and the birth of Heaven and earth; it is the ever-present, timeless singularity that eternally fuels the world of difference. In an abstract sense, this description resonates with Jesus self-description in Thomas 77 in which he proclaims, It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the All. From me did the All come forth, and unto me did the All extend.37 These two passages, in particular, exhibit the absolute comprehensiveness of these monistic conceptions. In Thomas 77, because Jesus belongs to the All, he, in fact, becomes the All. Thus, Jesus also assumes the Alls complete significance, because the conceptual distance between his ego and the singularity has been eliminated. Similarly, when one participates in the formless reality of Tao, one becomes Tao. Chuang Tzu describes this transformation as becoming the Reservoir of Heaven, a source that remains conceptually unaware of itself. He writes: Understanding stops when it has reached what it does not understand. Who can understand discriminations that are not spoken, the Way that is not a way? If he can understand this, he may be called the Reservoir of Heaven. Pour into it and it is never full, dip from it and it never runs dry, and yet it does not know where the supply comes from. This is called the Shaded Light.38 In this passage, Chuang Tzu conflates the one who understands unspoken discriminations, etc., with the Reservoir of Heaven and the Shaded Light. Each of these descriptions can be read as metaphorical faces of Tao. Using the metaphor of the Reservoir of Heaven, Chuang Tzu describes the sage who moves beyond understanding to completion, because he is never full and can never be emptied. When the sage reaches completion, there is no longer any difference between the sage and Taothey have become one. The Reservoir in this passage serves as one of the most salient metaphors for Tao. Tao is never full, such that it remains undecided or indiscriminate, and it never runs dry, such that it continually ushers forth the world in which we come into being and pass out of being. While Tao itself is formless and devoid of meaning, it gives rise to all form and
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meaning and, as such, is essentially creative. Chuang Tzu calls the sage the Shaded Light, because Tao can never be brought fully into presence despite the fact that its presence is everywhere. Consequently, the sage never knows the source of lifes creativity. In this sense, Tao is the source of all that is and all that is not; all that has been and all that has not been; and all that may be and all that may not be. All of these possibilities are what Chuang Tzu means by the creativity and completion of Tao. Thomas Jesus uses descriptive images that are similar to Chuang Tzus metaphor of the Shaded Light. In Thomas 83, Jesus says, The images are manifest to man, but the light in them remains concealed in the image of the light of the Father. He will become manifest, but his image will remain concealed by his light.39 While this saying is very enigmatic, it may refer to ones inability to bring the source of the light fully into presence, because the light itself, which makes apparent the things one sees, inevitably renders impossible ones imagining of its source. In other words, one can see the parts that suggest the whole, yet one can only bring the whole (the Father) to an adequate sense of completion through a more intuitive or, possibly, meditative state. While recognizing that this interpretation is somewhat less than conclusive, the interplay between light and concealment in each of these passages is curious. For me, this interplay evokes a connection with these texts prevalent descriptions of a manifest reality that remains conceptually unseen. In fact, this manifest reality may more accurately be described as a self-effacing realitya presence that hides itself in its self-presentation. Clearly, the circumstantial evidence suggests that these passages play on this same paradox. Great understanding vs. little understanding The Way has never known any boundaries. . . . So, [I say], those who divide fail to divide; those who discriminate fail to discriminate. What does this mean, you ask? The sage embraces things. Ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discriminations before others. So I say, those who discriminate fail to see. 40
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Each of these texts alternate between philosophical discussions of the amoral (i.e., valueless, indeterminate) ultimate and how our understanding of this ultimate affects our lives and potential. In effect, each text argues that our relationship with the ultimate determines our personal power and effectiveness. As in the passage above, Chuang Tzu often juxtaposes those who divide and discriminate with those who embrace and unite. When he writes, those who discriminate fail to see, Chuang Tzu evokes the words of Jesus when Jesus proclaims to Salome that the undivided will be filled with light and the divided will be filled with darkness. This opposition between dividers and embracers is articulated most fully in Chuang Tzus distinction between great understanding and little understanding. He writes: Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy. Great words are clear and limpid; little words are shrill and quarrelsome. In sleep, mens spirits go visiting; in waking hours, their bodies hustle. With everything they meet they become entangled. . . . Their little fears are mean and trembly; their great fears are stunned and overwhelming. . . . They drown in what they doyou cannot make them turn back. They grow dark, as though sealed with sealssuch are the excesses of their old age. And when their minds draw near death, nothing can restore them to light.41 Instead of positing values and defining the good and the bad, Chuang Tzu would rather have one wander aimlessly amidst the whole while taking in its every aspect and splendor. Moreover, Chuang Tzu warns us not to seek fame, create schemes, profess wisdom or undertake projects. Each of these practices is imbued with values and compromises ones ability to seek fulfillment. Chuang Tzu also suggests that values we create stem from our penchant for self-promotion. He argues that we should drop all pretense of wisdom and instead use emptiness as a mirror to reflect all that is. Therefore, instead of being a storehouse of knowledge, we should learn to respond genuinely to lifeto move and act with spontaneity and freedom. In this way, we will not injure Tao with discriminations. He writes, Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal viewsthen the world will be governed.42 Chuang Tzu does not trust those who
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discriminate, because he views them as people who parade right and wrong around as if they have the key to truth. According to Chuang Tzu, values can never account for Tao. Discriminations are for the shortsighted and not for the sage, because the shortsighted are blind to the indeterminacy of Tao. Only those of great understanding discover the secret of caring for life and, consequently, understand that the world is governed by their very ability to let things be. In Thomas, Jesus also describes the power possessed by one who can embrace things and make them one. In fact, Thomas 106 suggests the possibility of ones authority over nature. In Thomas 106, Jesus says, When you make the two one, you will become the sons of man, and when you say, Mountain, move away, it will move away.43 This idea of personal power and authority parallels Chuang Tzus many descriptions of the authority and natural poise possessed by those of great understanding. He calls this authority being whole in power. He writes: Life, death, preservation, loss, failure, success, poverty, riches, worthiness, unworthiness, slander, fame, hunger, thirst, cold, heatthese are the alternations of the world, the workings of fate. . . . If you can harmonize and delight in them, master them and never be at a loss for joy, if you can do this day and night without break and make it be spring with everything, mingling with all and creating the moment within your own mindthis is what I call being whole in power.44 Being whole in power, then, is ones ability to find pleasure and richness in all things. Chuang Tzu argues that if one can harmonize all things, one shall never be at a loss for joy. If one meets life with the power of a complete spirit, does not love life or hate death, and forgets about the self, one will be okay. In Thomas, as in Chuang Tzu, the idea of personal and universal authority are blended into a singular conception of power. Moreover, each of these texts presents the monistic whole as the source of great fears that are stunned and overwhelming, yet ultimately lead to great understanding. Thomas Jesus also presents astonishment and disturbance as prerequisites for governing the All. In Thomas 2, Jesus says, Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All.45 Ruling over the All in this passage again suggests a combination
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of personal and universal authority that corresponds with ones psychological dissolution into the whole. Living without possessing Hold on to all you have received from Heaven but do not think you have gotten anything. Be empty, that is all. The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing. Therefore he can win out over things and not hurt himself.46 Critical to the idea of personal power is the concept of living without possessing, because it more tangibly expresses how ones understanding of the ultimate can affect ones practical relationship with the world of things. As an alternative to the conservatism, possessiveness, and divisiveness of those who possess little understanding, Chuang Tzu posits the Perfect or True Man, an image that serves as a positive archetype of primordial being. Using this archetype rhetoric ally, Chuang Tzu describes a man who is whole in power, not overly concerned with matters of life and death, and who finds pleasure in all things. And yet, this archetypal man does not cling to the things he encounters in pathetic attempts to preserve their presence in his life. Instead, he hands them back again to Tao. Chuang Tzu writes: The True Man of ancient times knew nothing of loving life, knew nothing of hating death. He emerged without delight; he went back in without a fuss. He came briskly, he went briskly, and that was all. He didnt forget where he began; he didnt try to find out where he would end. He received something and took pleasure in it; he forgot about it and handed it back again. This is what I call not using the mind to repel the Way, not using man to help out Heaven. 47 Chuang Tzus True Man lives in the full presence of Tao and does not relegate Tao to an existence behind the determinations of values and meaning. Moreover, the True Man has no need to fear the whims of change, because he values no aspect of his life more than any other; life is good and the True Man is the master of all things. In this manner, he does not forget his relationship to the beginning in Tao, because he is not motivated by anxieties about his own transience. Consequently, the True Man does not need to live defensively or conservatively.
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In Thomas 18, Jesus follows a similar train of thought when he says, Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death.48 Again, this passage is cryptic and could be interpreted in very different frames; however, the reference to death is likely psychological and metaphorical and, consequently, suggests a reading that focuses on a symbolic primordial beginning rather than a temporal one. In this case, the one who can become as he was at the beginning will understand that the end is the same as the beginning. Where there is no definitive beginning, there is also no definitive end; there is only change and flux, appearing and disappearing within the whole. In other words, without our egos, we do not experience a loss of self. Furthermore, in a parable similar to one found in the synoptic gospels, Thomas Jesus speaks to his disciples about the preposterousness of living too conservatively and rigidly. In Thomas 63, Jesus tells a short, pointed tale about a rich man who arrogantly attempted to make his life totally secure. In this passage, Jesus says, There was a rich man who had much money. He said, I shall put my money to use so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouse with produce, with the result that I shall lack nothing. Such were his intentions, but that same night he died.49 Jesus clearly warns against the excesses of warehousing things to protects us against life. This warning mirrors (in reverse) Chuang Tzus depiction of the True Man who takes what life gives him and then hands back what he does not use. True living, then, from both Taoist and Thomasine perspectives, emerges out of a natural and quite unconscious trust in the well being of the whole; for the divided, however, participation in the whole is dependent upon our ability to dissolve our selfcentered preoccupations with personal well being and death.
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Conclusions The existence of Thomas Jesus is a true fascination. Whether or not the interpretations I have presented make a convincing argument for a Taoist reading of the gospel, I believe that the gospels monistic worldview is consistent and apparent. While particular ideas found in the gospel may be explained through other local traditions, it seems more difficult to explain many of the surprisingly similar philosophical preoccupations shared among these texts. Perhaps these concerns are a natural outgrowth of thinking in a monistic frame, yet there are other of thematic correspondence that do not seem necessarily attached to monism, especially when one explores secondary layers of thematic correspondence (e.g., passages that relate to living as children, the importance of repose, and the role the wandering, homeless sage) not detailed in this paper. In my estimation, these philosophical nuances far outweigh textual differences that naturally arise when one analyzes such apparently disparate traditions. As I have already stated, this paper is not a comparative historical exercise and it is also not an attempt to promote a worldwide mythology based on intraworldly mysticis m. However, these choices do appear to be the logical options. Perhaps they are both correct in their own way and each can account for different levels of correspondence that are not only found in the Thomasine and Taoist traditions, but also in a myriad of other cultural texts. Clearly, it is also important to allow disparate traditions to express variation, even if ones goal is to expose large-scale correspondences. This paper has thus far only explored similarities and has sidelined several areas of divergence between these texts. I chose to highlight similarities because of space limitations and my own interests and purposes. However, it is important to make clear that Thomas Jesus was not a Taoist, and that the writers of this gospel were not likely exposed to Taoism in any direct manner. Yet, they would not need to be either, because similar monist ideas were concurrently thriving in the Middle - and Far East. Monistic philosophies may also have had proponents in the Near East, Egypt and southern Europe. In fact, if a historical
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connection does exist between The Gospel of Thomas and other monist traditions, the connection would more likely be with Hinduism or Buddhism. However, it is difficult to know for sure, but it seems clear from Thomas that Jesus does not merely represent a serene and wise sage. Moreover, unlike the Taoist sage, Thomas Jesus sometimes uses violent and divisive imagery and proclaims that he has come to cast upon the earth: fire, sword, and war.50 For this reason, it is important not to confuse Thomas Jesus with a Taoist sage, even if he presents a similar philosophical understanding of the monistic ultimate. Jesus political and social objectives are not made clear in Thomas, because the gospel simply presents his teachings and does not provide a historical or cultural context. Nevertheless, my reading of textual correspondences is not undermined by the suggestion that Jesus was a politically motivated or revolutionary figure. Rather, my reading is literary and a self-consciously constructed cross-cultural exercise meant to draw out possible themes and interpretations. And, after all, Thomas Jesus can still be a good monist, even if he is a lousy Taoist. But I prefer to think that he is rather good at both.
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Notes
1. University of Minnesota, Compleat Scholar Course Catalog, Winter 2001. 2. All sayings from the Gospel of Thomas used in this paper, except where specified, are from the Marvin Meyer translation. Marvin Meyer, The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), 22-65. Sayings are identified within the body of the paper by their standard logion number rather than with a footnote and page number in the Meyer translation. 3. John Dominic Crossan, Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon (Sonoma, California: Polebridge Press, 1992), 9. 4. Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995), 228. 5. Chuang Tzu, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 40. 6. Bruce Lincoln, Thomas-Gospel and Thomas-Community, Novum Testamentum XIX, 70-76. 7. All quotations from the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament are from The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version , Ed. Wayne A. Meeks (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1993). 8. Dieter Mueller, Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God, Vigiliae Christianae 27 (1973), 272. 9. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), 43. 10. Crossan, 17. 11. James W. Hesig, The Recovery of the Senses: Against the Asceticisms of the Age , Journal of Ecumenical Studies 33:2 (Spring 1996), 233. 12. John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999), 267. 13. Idem. 14. Idem., 248-249. 15. Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 470. 16. Idem., 474.
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17. Richard Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas (London: Routledge, 1997), 14. 18. Crossan, Four Other Gospels, 14. 19. John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), 427. 20. Joseph A. Loya, Wan-Li Ho, and Chang-Shin Jih, The Tao of Jesus: An Experiment in Inter-Traditional Understanding (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998), 1-2. 21. Funk, The Five Gospels, 489-490. 22. Idem., 470, 474. 23. Lao Tzu, Te-tao-ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Trans. Robert G. Henricks (New York: Random House, Inc., 1989), 66, Chapter 14. 24. Chuang Tzu, 35-36. 25. Idem., 38. 26. The Other Bible: Jewish Pseudepigrapha, Christian Apocrypha, Gnostic Scriptures, Kabbalah, Dead Sea Scrolls, Ed. Willis Barnstone (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1984), 304, Thomas 64. 27. Idem., 305, Thomas 77. 28. Lao Tzu, 77, Chapter 25; Chuang Tzu, 35. 29. Chuang Tzu, 35. 30. Idem. 31. Barnstone, 302, Thomas 22. 32. Idem., 300, Thomas 3. 33. Funk, 489-490. 34. Barnstone, 300, Thomas 5. 35. Idem., 307, Thomas 113. 36. Chuang Tzu, 77. 37. Barnstone, 305, Thomas 77.
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38. Chuang Tzu, 40. 39. Barnstone, 306, Thomas 83. 40. Chuang Tzu, 39. 41. Idem., 32. 42. Idem., 91. 43. Barnstone, 307, Thomas 106. 44. Chuang Tzu, 70. 45. Barnstone, 300, Thomas 2. 46. Chuang Tzu, 94-95. 47. Idem., 74. 48. Barnstone, 301, Thomas 18. 49. Idem., 304, Thomas 63. 50. Idem., 301, Thomas 16.
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Selected Bibliography
Abhayananda, S. History of Mysticism: The Unchanging Testament. Olympia, Washington: Atma Books, third revised edition, 1996. Armstrong, Karen. A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Arnal, William E. The Rhetoric of Marginality: Apocalypticism, Gnosticism, and Sayings Gospels. Harvard Theological Review 88:4 (1995), 471-94. Balangoda, Ananda Maitreya. The Dhammapada (The Path of Truth) . Berkeley, California: Parallax Press, 1995. Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, sixth paperback ed., 1991. The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishnas Counsel in Time of War . Trans. Barbara Stoler Miller. New York: Bantam Books, 1986. Borg, Marcus. Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings. Berkeley, California: Ulysses Press (Seastone), 1997. Borg, Marcus. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary Faith. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. Callahan, Allen. No Rhyme or Reason: The Hidden Logia of the Gospel of Thomas. Harvard Theological Review 90:4 (1997): 411-426. Copenhaver, Brian P. Hermetica: the Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3d paperback ed., 1998. Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. Trans. Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. Churton, Tobias. The Gnostics. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1997. Crossan, John Dominic . The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. Crossan, John Dominic. Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon . Sonoma, California: Polebridge Press, 1992. Crossan, John Dominic. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. Davies, Stevan. The Christology and Protology of the Gospel of Thomas. Journal of Biblical Literature 111:4 (1992), 663-682. DeConick, April D. and Jarl Fossum, Stripped Before God: A New Interpretation of Logion 37 in the Gospel of Thomas. Vigiliae Christianae 45 (June 1991), 123-150. DeConick, April D. The Yoke Saying in the Gospel of Thomas 90. Vigiliae Christianae 44 (Spring 1990), 280-294. Desjardins, Michel. Where was the Gospel of Thomas Written? Toronto Journal of Theology 8:1, (1992), 121-133. Ehrman, Bart D. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Freke, Timothy and Peter Gandy. The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharoahs . New York: Most Tarcher/Putnam, 1999. Funk, Robert W., Roy W. Hoover and the Jesus Seminar. The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993.
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Grobel, Kendrick. How Gnostic is the Gospel of Thomas? New Testament Studies 8 (July 1962), 367-373. The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version . Ed. Wayne A. Meeks. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. Harris, Stephen L. The New Testament: A Students Introduction . 3d ed. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing, 1999. Harvey, Andrew. The Essential Mystics: Selections from the Worlds Great Wisdom Traditions. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). Ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. Heidegger, Martin. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Hartford: Yale University Press, 1959. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977. Henricks, Robert G. Introduction to Te-tao-ching by Lao Tzu. New York: Random House, 1989. Hesig, James W. The Recovery of the Senses: Against the Asceticisms of the Age . Journal of Ecumenical Studies 33:2 (Spring 1996), 216-237. Huxley, Aldous. The Perennial Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1970. Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity . Boston: Beacon Press, 1991. King, Karen. Kingdom in the Gospel of Thomas. Foundations & Facets Forum 3:1 (March 1987), 48-97. Kohn, Livia. Eternal Life in Taoist Mysticism. Journal of the American Oriental Society 110:4 (1990), 622-640. Lao Tzu. Te-tao-ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts. Trans. Robert G. Henricks. New York: Random House, 1989. Lincoln, Bruce. Thomas-Gospel and Thomas-Community. Novum Testamentum XIX, 70-76. Loya, Joseph A., Wan-Li Ho, and Chang-Shin Jih. The Tao of Jesus: An Experiment in Inter-Traditional Understanding . Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998. Mack, Burton L. The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. Scepticism and Mysticism. Journal of the American Oriental Society 105:3 (1985), 479-484. Meyer, Marvin. The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. Miller, Robert J. The Inside is (Not) the Outside. Foundations & Facets Forum 5:1 (March 1989), 92-105. Mueller, Dieter. Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God. Vigiliae Christianae 27 (1973), 250-276. Neller, Kenneth V. Diversity in the Gospel of Thomas: Clues for a New Direction? The Second Century 7 (Spring 1989), 1-17. The Other Bible: Jewish Pseudepigrapha, Christian Apocrypha, Gnostic Scriptures, Kabbalah, Dead Sea Scrolls, Ed. Willis Barnstone. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1984. Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters . Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1992. Perkins, Pheme. The Rejected Jesus and the Kingdom Sayings. Semeia 44 (1988),79-94. Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli and Charles Moore. A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957.
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Robinson, James M. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Revised ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990. Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature & History of Gnosticism. Trans. Ed. Robert McLachlan Wilson. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1987. Sahadat, John. The Interreligious Study of Mysticism and a Sense of Universality. Journal of Ecumenical Studies 22:2 (Spring 1985), 292-311. Smith, Huston. The Worlds Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. Revised ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991. Snodgrass, Klyne R. The Gospel of Thomas: A Secondary Gospel. The Second Century 7 (Spring 1989), 19-38. Stroker, William D. Extracanonical Parables and the Historical Jesus. Semeia 44 (1988), 95120. Swami Prabhavananda. The Spiritual Heritage of India. Hollywood: Vendata Press, 1979. Tam, Ekman P.C. Another Look at the Theory of Common Core Mysticism. Dialogue & Alliance 11:2 (Fall/Winter 1997), 31-42. Three Initiates. The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece. Chicago: Yogi Publication Society, 1940. Valantasis, Richard. The Gospel of Thomas. London: Routledge, 1999. Watson, Burton. Introduction to Basic Writings by Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass . New York: Penguin Books USA, 1980. Wilber, Ken. A Brief History of Everything. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1996. Wilber, Ken. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995.
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A Jesus for the East: Monism in the Gospel of Thomas | Jeff Crandall

Monism in the Gospel of Thomas

A Jesus for the East

Jeffrey Douglas Crandall

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Jeffrey Douglas Crandall 2001

GOSPEL OF THOMAS STUDY GUIDE ..................................................................... 72

The Compleat Scholar Course

The Curriculum: The Gospel of Thomas Study Guide

The following is a section-by-section explanation of the Gospel of Thomas Study Guide .

Section 1: The Discovery and Nature of Thomas

Sections 2 and 3: Themes in Thomas

Theme 3: Personal Revelation and Salvation

Section 4: Thomas and the New Testament

Section 5: Thomas, Hellenized Judaism, and Gnosticism

Section 6: Monism in Thomas

Study Guide Appendices

Process Paper Conclusion

Thomas Theology: My Final Thoughts

Appendix A: The Gospel of Thomas and Taoist Monism

The Way of the Kingdom: A Taoist Reading of the Gospel of Thomas

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