(2 of 2)
Some of the similes are familiar, e.g., The Kingdom of the Father is like a woman who has taken a little leaven and has hidden it in dough and has made large loaves of it. Whoever has ears let him hear. But others have a surprising new emphasis, like the saying which immediately follows the above and seems to indicate that one can lose one's chance to enter the Kingdom through ignorance: The Kingdom of the Father is like a woman who was carrying a jar full of meal. While she was walking on a distant road, the handle of the jar broke. The meal streamed out behind her on the road. She did not know it, she had noticed no accident. After she came into her house, she put the jar down, she found it empty.
What is the meaning of Jesus' well-known words about children and the King dom of Heaven? In a cryptic "saying," the Gospel of Thomas seems to suggest that it has something to do with psychological unity: Jesus saw children who were being suckled. He said to his disciples: These children who are being suckled are like those who enter the Kingdom. They said to Him: Shall we then, being children, enter the Kingdom? Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one . . . then shall you enter the Kingdom.
A similar theme occurs in conjunction with a familiar biblical echo: The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a little child of seven days about the place of Life, and he will live.For many who are first shall become last and they shall be come a single one . . . When you make the two one, you shall become sons of Man, and when you say: "Mountain, be moved," it will be moved.
Fire upon the World. Gnosticism was strongly influenced by Oriental and Greek ideas, with their circular conception of time, as opposed to Judaism's linear time. The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us how our end will be. Jesus said: Have you then discovered the beginning so that you inquire about the end? For where the beginning is, there shall be the end. Blessed is he who shall stand at the beginning, and he shall know the end and he shall not taste death.
Gnostic contempt for creation—the exact opposite of the Christian belief that the Creator—hence creation—is good, though flawed by man's disobedient self-will—is clear in this passage: If the flesh has come into existence because of the spirit, it is a marvel; but if the spirit has come into existence because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. But I marvel at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.
Christians will treasure many of these sayings for their restatements of familiar themes (It is impossible for a man to mount two horses and to stretch two bows, and it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters), as well as for their beauty and ring: Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I guard it until the world is afire.
* A. Guillaumont, Henri-Charles Puech, Gilles Quispel, Walter Till, Yassah 'Abd al Masih.