PROPHECY: Jesus Christ Twin, Twin Towers, Iraq/Iran
OMG, I was laughing so hard when I saw this posted about Jesus having a Twin named Thomas:
For example, the Coeur de la Mer from "Titanic" was a Fictional Piece of Jewelry. However, they decide to make a real one modeled after the movie.
At first it was fake, but they forged it into a True Statement when they made a real one. That same thing applies to the Bible. Maybe it is a Fictional Piece of Literature. However, no one ever said that it couldn't serve as the blueprints to create a real Jesus Christ or make that stuff come true.
The same thing goes for the Gospel of Thomas. Maybe none of it is true as of 9/14/2006. However, you can make it a true statement if someone who has been granted the power to assign such things can turn it into a reality.
When it comes to writing Software Programs, you can make it real or take elements from Informational Resources to make it have components of that story. Such an individual can have the authority to make it.
QUESTION:
What is the brief story of Jesus's twin and also what is the thought of twins in mythology?
REPLY:
I work in Cryptanalysis and the study of Codes in the same way that Robert Langdon in "Da Vinci Code" does code-breaking.
You're technically correct about Jesus Christ having a "twin." It's in both a literal and figurative speech.
Also pay attention to the word First:
The other hint about Christ and Twins is also embedded in the English Language
The same can be seen with the Alanis' Twin Brother Wade:
It's just like in "The Mat(RI)x" where you see the streaming green symbols raining down on the Black Screen and where you can identify what you're looking at.
That's why Elvis Presley died in 1977 on Madonna's b(IR)thday in 1977, which is 77 = IR on the Periodic Table.
Everything's mathematical and boils down to Zeros and Ones including the Life Signs of the Planet.
Judas
Judas! I loved Harvey Keitel as Judas in Scorceses' filmed version of Nicholas Kasantkakis' (horrible spelling, pardon me) "The Last Temptation of Christ"...try finding that at your local video store or, better yet, at the library. The book, as usual, is much better than the movie. But then the book is a true work of literature and not a screenplay.
I know of the Twin tradition from the Gnostic gospels. Most frequently, Jesus's twin is Thomas. Partly, it's an explanation of the Resurrection...supposedly Jesus's twin was executed in his place...partly it's a natural extension of Gnostic Dualism. Then there's that curious story in the book of Revelations about two witnesses who are martyred and the whole world rejoices and exchanges gifts (Christmas?) then they're raised on the third day and taken up into the Heavens. I don't know of any serious theologians who take the idea of Jesus having a twin seriously, but it is popular in the controversial literature.
Historically, the actual existence of Judas is questioned by many. He may well have been a composite figure...of course, outside of Peter, we don't have any historically reliable proof of the existence of any of the original 12 Apostles. Jesus's brother, James, is much more firmly verified as a historical person...even more so than Jesus himself!
The problem is the commonality of the name Judas and the Gospel addition of the last name of Iscariot does nothing to solve the problem. The best explanation...well, the one I favor...of Iscariot is that it is a corruption of Sicarii...remember, when dealing with names and words originating in Hebrew that there were no vowels. Hence Satan, for example, would have been STN. The vowel sounds would have been commonly understood by the person reading since the society was more attuned to oral rather than written transmission of information. But when you read back into the literature from our time, you have to assume vowels.
I prefer the Sicarii explanation of Iscariot because it fits the general tendency of the Gospels to play down the political life of Jesus and to shift the blame for his crucifixion from the Romans to the Jews.
The Sicarii were the earliest terrorists. They carried short, curved daggers under their robes and would move through a crowded marketplace till they were close to an intended target...typically a member of a rival political faction or a quisling cooperating with the Roman occupation... stab them from behind, then be the first one to cry out "Assassin!" They would then escape in the resulting confusion.
If Sicarii is the correct translation of Iscariot, then the Gospel writer's were laying the blame for Jesus's betrayal and death on Jewish Assassins (Judas Iscariot).
Assuming there was only one person and that Judas was not a composite figure, and then this adds weight to the idea of Judas "carrying the purse" for Jesus and his apostles. Peter is spoken of in the Garden arrest as carrying a sword, but he was a fisherman and, since he cut the fellow's ear off, not a trained fighter. If you want someone to guard the money, give it to the real badass in the bunch, Judas the Assassin.
I think there's a further possibility that should be considered.
James, the brother of Jesus, was the leader of the early "Christian" community after the death of Jesus. Granted, there is the tradition of Peter being given the Keys of the Kingdom by Jesus, but he is spoken of later on as being subordinate to James. The question of why, if Peter ever was the leader, and when did James take over?
I believe James was always the leader of the Movement, even during the time when Jesus was wandering around in Galilee causing trouble. Jesus was his brother, yes, but he was either, one, a child born out of wedlock...well, while his parents were engaged...and therefore not eligible to inherit his father, Joseph's position...or, two, Jesus was actually James's younger brother and not Joseph's first born at all.
Naturally, this is a radical re-interpretation...I don't think I've heard this possibility raised, definitely not by any serious theologian and not even in the controversial literature...but it is an elegant solution to many of the problems raised by the texts and the historical context.
If, as I have long suspected, Jesus's father, Joseph, was long involved in the Jewish Resistance to the Roman occupation...evidenced in my earlier post concerning the timing of the birth of Jesus to the tax of 6 CE and the manner in which it was resisted (a late date adds further credence to the idea that Jesus was a younger brother to James, by the way)...then his oldest son would have inherited not only his father's estate, but his politically alliances as well.
This theory explains the curious combination of seemingly disparate elements in the Jesus traditions. At one time, he seems to be a flaming radical urging, at the very least, nonviolent resistance to the Roman occupation, then in the very next verse he comes off as a vague, otherworldly character with no concerns about anything on this mundane, temporal plane.
Most theologians attempt to place Jesus either in one camp or the other...or to deny that there was ever a problem at all and that this seeming conflict is the result of our own faulty, 21st Century prejudices and misreading of the texts and the contexts.
My working theory...which is part of an attempt to create a more systematic understanding of the evidence...is that Jesus was born into a family that was heavily involved with the Resistance but, because of the birth problems spoken of above, and a natural reluctance to become involved with religion or politics...he was a Momma's boy, to put it bluntly...he was kept out of Jerusalem and sent to cool his heels in Galilee.
The 12 Apostles were not devoted followers, but rather were, all 12 not just one, Sicarii assigned as bodyguards for the leaders of the resistance. Joseph's son and James' brother, Jesus, had to both be kept out of the action and kept alive, just in case James was arrested and executed and they needed to bring him out of hiding to fill the role that James was being groomed for.
Jesus was not just a Momma's boy, but he was raised in his mother's religion as well, a religion that was not Judaism.
But that story is for another post. I started out talking about Judas and ended up going all the way around the barn to get back to the gate.
[Click Here for Original Link]
Gospel of Thomas
Elaine H. Pagels:
The Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion Princeton University
This book opens with the lines, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and the twin, Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down." Then there follows a list of the sayings of Jesus. Now this raises all kinds of questions. Did Jesus have a twin brother? Actually the name Thomas Didymos -- well, Thomas is Hebrew for twin. Didymos is Greek for twin.... The implication here is that he is Jesus' twin. But this character, of course, also appears in the Gospel of John, he's one of the disciples, the twin. Here he appears as if he's Jesus' twin, and he is one who knows secret teaching, which Jesus hasn't given to all other people. Some of these sayings are familiar. We know them from Matthew and Luke - Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire on the earth." Or "Behold, a sower went out to sow," and so forth.... Others are as strange and compelling as Zen koans. My favorite of these is saying number 70, which says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The gospel opens as Jesus invites people to see....
The Gospel of Thomas also suggests that Jesus is aware of, and criticizing the views of the Kingdom of God as a time or a place that appear in the other gospels. Here Jesus says, "If those who lead you say to you, 'look, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds will get there first. If they say 'it's in the ocean,' then the fish will get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you and outside of you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father."
In this gospel, and this is also the case in the Gospel of Luke, the Kingdom of God is not an event that's going to be catastrophically shattering the world as we know it and ushering in a new millennium. Here, as in Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is said to be an interior state; "It's within you," Luke says. And here it says, "It's inside you but it's also outside of you." It's like a state of consciousness. It's hard to describe. But the Kingdom of God here is something that you can enter when you attain gnosis, which means knowledge. But itdoesn't mean intellectual knowledge. The Greeks had two words for knowledge. One is intellectual knowledge, like the knowledge of physics or something like that. But this gnosis is personal, like "I know that person, or do you know so and so." So this gnosis is self-knowledge; you could call it insight. It's a question of knowing who you really are, not at the ordinary level of your name and your social class or your position. But knowing yourself at a deep level. The secret of gnosis is that when you know yourself at that level you will also come to know God, because you will discover that the divine is within you.
JESUS IN THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS
The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas does appear rather different from the Jesus we encounter in the others. Because the Gospel of Mark, for example, depicts Jesus as an utterly unique being. This is the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. The Gospel of John says that Jesus isn't even a human being at all, but he's a divine presence who comes down to heaven in human shape.... The Gospel of John says, "God sent his son into the world to save the world." If you believe in him, you're saved, if you don't believe in him you're already damned, because you haven't believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Now, [in the Gospel of Thomas], this Jesus comes to reveal that you and he are, if you like, twins.... And what you discover as you read the Gospel of Thomas, which you're meant to discover, is that you and Jesus at a deep level are identical twins. And that you discover that you are the child of God just as he is. And so that at the end of the gospel Jesus speaks to Thomas and says, "Whoever drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I will become that person, and the mysteries will be revealed to him." Here, Jesus does not take the role of authority and teacher. In the Gospel of Thomas, the disciples say to Jesus, "Tell us, what do you want us to do? How shall we pray? What shall we eat? How shall we fast?" Now if you look at Matthew and Luke, Jesus answers the questions. He says, "When you pray, say, 'Our Father who are in Heaven, hallowed be...' When you fast, wash your face, don't make a show of it. When you give alms do it privately and without being showy." In this gospel, this Jesus does not answer. He says, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for everything is known before heaven." Now this answer throws you and me upon ourselves.... Here Jesus, in effect, turns one toward oneself, and that is really one of the themes of the Gospel of Thomas, that you must go in a sort of a spiritual quest of your own to discover who you are, and to discover really that you are the child of God just like Jesus.
Helmut Koester:
John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School
KNOW THYSELF
One of these documents [found at Nag Hammadi] begins with the scribal note in the margin, "The Gospel According to Thomas." And the first sentence of that document says, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus taught and which Judas Thomas Didymos wrote down." And then they start a total of over 110 sayings, each introduced by "Jesus said...." Some of those sayings have parallels in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Some of these have not. Some of these sayings may go back to a very early period of Christianity, some of them may have been added later. The document itself comes from the fourth century.... As with all gospel text, with this one in particular, we have to remember that these texts were fluid, that scribes could add, that scribes could leave out things, that scribes could add comments, or add an interpretation. So we cannot with certainty reconstruct what did the Gospel of Thomas look like around the year 100 or earlier. But it is very likely that it existed at that time, and that a good deal of the material that's now in that manuscript was already in a Greek manuscript that dates back to the first century. Which of course, is very exciting because here we have a collection of sayings of Jesus, additional sayings of Jesus, that were not known before, and the whole beginning of a new field of studies has opened up....
Now what is typical about these sayings is that in each instance, these sayings want to say that if you want to understand what Jesus said, you have to recognize yourself. You have to know yourself, know who you are. It begins with a saying about the Kingdom of God, "if you seek the Kingdom of God in the sky then the birds will precede you. And if you seek it in the sea, then the fish will precede you, but the Kingdom is in you. And if you know yourself then you know the Kingdom of God." (The Kingdom of the Father, in fact, it always says in the gospel of Thomas. Normally the Kingdom of the Father, not the Kingdom of God.) "But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty." And poverty is understood as the ignorance of a life in its physical existence. Knowledge is understood to be the knowledge of one's divine origin, of the fact that one has come from the Kingdom. That we are on this earth only in a sojourn....
What does it mean really to know oneself? To know oneself is to have insight into one's own ultimate divine identity. You can go back to understand this to Greek models, which certainly exist. "Know yourself" is a very old Greek maxim... that is, you have to know that your own soul is divine, and then you know that you are immortal, whereas the body is the mortal part of human existence. Now this is radicalized in the Gospel of Thomas into saying that everything that is experienced physically and through sense perception, everything in this world that you can perceive in this way is nothing. It is, at best, chaos and, at worst, it doesn't even exist in reality. The only thing that really exists is your divine spirit or your divine soul, which is identical in its quality with God himself. And Jesus is the one who teaches that....
[When one truly knows oneself], one understands that one is divine, but also one understands that one is mortal. In such a way, you recognize that this mortality is really meaningless, as physical existence is meaningless. And therefore, death is no longer a problem, but death is a solution, because in death finally all this mortality will fall away, and the true self will be liberated to an independent existence that's no longer dependent on physical existence. And on everything that goes with physical existence, sickness and poverty and so on. And so physical existence is often described as poverty. But when you know yourself you are no longer in poverty.
Read the Gospel of Thomas.
[Click Here for Original Link]
- I said Bliss is CHRISTine Thomas
- Thomas = "Twin" in Hebrew
- I said 8/16/2006 that my Godfather is named Thomas
- I said Bliss and I areboth Gemini Twins
For example, the Coeur de la Mer from "Titanic" was a Fictional Piece of Jewelry. However, they decide to make a real one modeled after the movie.
At first it was fake, but they forged it into a True Statement when they made a real one. That same thing applies to the Bible. Maybe it is a Fictional Piece of Literature. However, no one ever said that it couldn't serve as the blueprints to create a real Jesus Christ or make that stuff come true.
The same thing goes for the Gospel of Thomas. Maybe none of it is true as of 9/14/2006. However, you can make it a true statement if someone who has been granted the power to assign such things can turn it into a reality.
When it comes to writing Software Programs, you can make it real or take elements from Informational Resources to make it have components of that story. Such an individual can have the authority to make it.
QUESTION:
What is the brief story of Jesus's twin and also what is the thought of twins in mythology?
REPLY:
I work in Cryptanalysis and the study of Codes in the same way that Robert Langdon in "Da Vinci Code" does code-breaking.
You're technically correct about Jesus Christ having a "twin." It's in both a literal and figurative speech.
- Christ = C+H+R+I+S+T
- C+H+R+I+S+T = 3 + 8 + 18 + 9 + 19 + 20
- 3 + 8 + 18 + 9 + 19 + 20 = 77
- 77 = IR on the Periodic Table
- FIRe
- MIRacle
- VIRgin
- (Holy) SpIRit
- IRaq = IR/Aq
- IR = 77 = Christ
- Aq = Aquarius
- We moved out of the Age of Capricorn into the Age of Aquarius
- IRan
- IRaq
- Ronald Reagan (RR/2 x R/Twin R) was secretly sending aid to IRan
- The Twin Towers went down on 9/11
- It's in New York
- New York = Emp(IR)e State
- 9 = Letter I
- 11 = II in Roman Numerals
- 9/11 = I/II = III = 3 = 3rd Sign = Gemini = Twins
- Gemini = th(IR)d Sign
- Mercury = Ruling Planet of Gemini
- Mercury = f(IR)st Planet
- Mercury = Ruling Planet of Virgo
- Virgo = V(IR)-Go = V(IR) IR(Go-Spanish)
- Rhode Island = RI (Opposite of IR
- Rhode Island was inducted 5/29
- Rhode Island = th(IR)teenth state
- Wisconsin was inducted 5/29
- Wisconsin = da(IR)y state
Also pay attention to the word First:
- First = F/IR-St.
- F = 6th Letter
- Virgo = 6th Sign
- Virgo = Virgin
- St. = Saint
- F/IR-St. = Virgin Christ Saint
- 1 divides evenly into everything
- "God defines Law"
- Theoretically, 1 = God
- Valentine's Day falls in the month of February
- February starts with Fe
- Fe = IRon on the Periodic Table
- Fe = 26th Element
- 26 = 20 + 6
- 20 = XX in Roman Numerals = Female DNA Strand
- 6 = 6th Sign = Virgo
- God starts with GO
- Go = IR in Spanish
- D = 4th Letter = 4th Sign = Cancer = Eternal Mother
- God = Go/D = IR Mother
- Alanis Mo(RI)ssette plays a Female God in "Dogma"
- Alanis Morissette, in real life, has a Fraternal Twin named Wade
- She made the song "IRonic" with IR in it
- She was with Virgin Records with Madonna (Virgin Mother)
The other hint about Christ and Twins is also embedded in the English Language
- Gemini = II
- 2 = Pair
- Notice how IR is in the word Pair
- You have "God the Father"
- Pa = Father
- PA = Pennsylvania
- Pennsylvania was inducted 12/12
The same can be seen with the Alanis' Twin Brother Wade:
- Wade starts with WA
- WA = Washington State
- Washington State was inducted 11/11
- It's the 42nd State
- 42 = Answer in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
- James Cameron made "Titanic"
- Titanic sank 4/15
- 4/15 = Tax Day = IRS
- Notice the IR in IRS
- James Cameron = JC = Jesus Christ
- Leo DiCaprio is born 11/11
vWashington State was inducted 11/11
- Sun = Leo's Ruling Planet
- Kate Winslet = KW = Aquarius(K/11) Final(W/Omega Symbol)
- Aquarius = Opposite of Leo on the Zodiac Pie Chart
- James Cameron is born 8/16
- Madonna is born 8/16
- Steve Carell who played the "40 Year Old Virgin" is born 8/16
- 8/16 = 8/(2x8) = 8/88 = 3 x 8 = Gemini(3) x 8
- 8 = Non-Infinity
- Finite = Non-Infinite
- 8 = Finite
- Gemini 8 = Communication Finite
It's just like in "The Mat(RI)x" where you see the streaming green symbols raining down on the Black Screen and where you can identify what you're looking at.
That's why Elvis Presley died in 1977 on Madonna's b(IR)thday in 1977, which is 77 = IR on the Periodic Table.
- IR = I/R
- I = 9th Letter
- R = 18th Letter
- 18 = 2 x 9
- I/R= 9/(2x9) - 9/9+9 = 999
- 999 = Opposite of 666
- 666 = Anti-Christ
- 999 would be Christ
- C+H+R+I+S+T = 77 = IR
Everything's mathematical and boils down to Zeros and Ones including the Life Signs of the Planet.
Judas
Judas! I loved Harvey Keitel as Judas in Scorceses' filmed version of Nicholas Kasantkakis' (horrible spelling, pardon me) "The Last Temptation of Christ"...try finding that at your local video store or, better yet, at the library. The book, as usual, is much better than the movie. But then the book is a true work of literature and not a screenplay.
I know of the Twin tradition from the Gnostic gospels. Most frequently, Jesus's twin is Thomas. Partly, it's an explanation of the Resurrection...supposedly Jesus's twin was executed in his place...partly it's a natural extension of Gnostic Dualism. Then there's that curious story in the book of Revelations about two witnesses who are martyred and the whole world rejoices and exchanges gifts (Christmas?) then they're raised on the third day and taken up into the Heavens. I don't know of any serious theologians who take the idea of Jesus having a twin seriously, but it is popular in the controversial literature.
Historically, the actual existence of Judas is questioned by many. He may well have been a composite figure...of course, outside of Peter, we don't have any historically reliable proof of the existence of any of the original 12 Apostles. Jesus's brother, James, is much more firmly verified as a historical person...even more so than Jesus himself!
The problem is the commonality of the name Judas and the Gospel addition of the last name of Iscariot does nothing to solve the problem. The best explanation...well, the one I favor...of Iscariot is that it is a corruption of Sicarii...remember, when dealing with names and words originating in Hebrew that there were no vowels. Hence Satan, for example, would have been STN. The vowel sounds would have been commonly understood by the person reading since the society was more attuned to oral rather than written transmission of information. But when you read back into the literature from our time, you have to assume vowels.
I prefer the Sicarii explanation of Iscariot because it fits the general tendency of the Gospels to play down the political life of Jesus and to shift the blame for his crucifixion from the Romans to the Jews.
The Sicarii were the earliest terrorists. They carried short, curved daggers under their robes and would move through a crowded marketplace till they were close to an intended target...typically a member of a rival political faction or a quisling cooperating with the Roman occupation... stab them from behind, then be the first one to cry out "Assassin!" They would then escape in the resulting confusion.
If Sicarii is the correct translation of Iscariot, then the Gospel writer's were laying the blame for Jesus's betrayal and death on Jewish Assassins (Judas Iscariot).
Assuming there was only one person and that Judas was not a composite figure, and then this adds weight to the idea of Judas "carrying the purse" for Jesus and his apostles. Peter is spoken of in the Garden arrest as carrying a sword, but he was a fisherman and, since he cut the fellow's ear off, not a trained fighter. If you want someone to guard the money, give it to the real badass in the bunch, Judas the Assassin.
I think there's a further possibility that should be considered.
James, the brother of Jesus, was the leader of the early "Christian" community after the death of Jesus. Granted, there is the tradition of Peter being given the Keys of the Kingdom by Jesus, but he is spoken of later on as being subordinate to James. The question of why, if Peter ever was the leader, and when did James take over?
I believe James was always the leader of the Movement, even during the time when Jesus was wandering around in Galilee causing trouble. Jesus was his brother, yes, but he was either, one, a child born out of wedlock...well, while his parents were engaged...and therefore not eligible to inherit his father, Joseph's position...or, two, Jesus was actually James's younger brother and not Joseph's first born at all.
Naturally, this is a radical re-interpretation...I don't think I've heard this possibility raised, definitely not by any serious theologian and not even in the controversial literature...but it is an elegant solution to many of the problems raised by the texts and the historical context.
If, as I have long suspected, Jesus's father, Joseph, was long involved in the Jewish Resistance to the Roman occupation...evidenced in my earlier post concerning the timing of the birth of Jesus to the tax of 6 CE and the manner in which it was resisted (a late date adds further credence to the idea that Jesus was a younger brother to James, by the way)...then his oldest son would have inherited not only his father's estate, but his politically alliances as well.
This theory explains the curious combination of seemingly disparate elements in the Jesus traditions. At one time, he seems to be a flaming radical urging, at the very least, nonviolent resistance to the Roman occupation, then in the very next verse he comes off as a vague, otherworldly character with no concerns about anything on this mundane, temporal plane.
Most theologians attempt to place Jesus either in one camp or the other...or to deny that there was ever a problem at all and that this seeming conflict is the result of our own faulty, 21st Century prejudices and misreading of the texts and the contexts.
My working theory...which is part of an attempt to create a more systematic understanding of the evidence...is that Jesus was born into a family that was heavily involved with the Resistance but, because of the birth problems spoken of above, and a natural reluctance to become involved with religion or politics...he was a Momma's boy, to put it bluntly...he was kept out of Jerusalem and sent to cool his heels in Galilee.
The 12 Apostles were not devoted followers, but rather were, all 12 not just one, Sicarii assigned as bodyguards for the leaders of the resistance. Joseph's son and James' brother, Jesus, had to both be kept out of the action and kept alive, just in case James was arrested and executed and they needed to bring him out of hiding to fill the role that James was being groomed for.
Jesus was not just a Momma's boy, but he was raised in his mother's religion as well, a religion that was not Judaism.
But that story is for another post. I started out talking about Judas and ended up going all the way around the barn to get back to the gate.
[Click Here for Original Link]
Gospel of Thomas
Elaine H. Pagels:
The Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion Princeton University
This book opens with the lines, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and the twin, Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down." Then there follows a list of the sayings of Jesus. Now this raises all kinds of questions. Did Jesus have a twin brother? Actually the name Thomas Didymos -- well, Thomas is Hebrew for twin. Didymos is Greek for twin.... The implication here is that he is Jesus' twin. But this character, of course, also appears in the Gospel of John, he's one of the disciples, the twin. Here he appears as if he's Jesus' twin, and he is one who knows secret teaching, which Jesus hasn't given to all other people. Some of these sayings are familiar. We know them from Matthew and Luke - Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire on the earth." Or "Behold, a sower went out to sow," and so forth.... Others are as strange and compelling as Zen koans. My favorite of these is saying number 70, which says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The gospel opens as Jesus invites people to see....
The Gospel of Thomas also suggests that Jesus is aware of, and criticizing the views of the Kingdom of God as a time or a place that appear in the other gospels. Here Jesus says, "If those who lead you say to you, 'look, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds will get there first. If they say 'it's in the ocean,' then the fish will get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you and outside of you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father."
In this gospel, and this is also the case in the Gospel of Luke, the Kingdom of God is not an event that's going to be catastrophically shattering the world as we know it and ushering in a new millennium. Here, as in Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is said to be an interior state; "It's within you," Luke says. And here it says, "It's inside you but it's also outside of you." It's like a state of consciousness. It's hard to describe. But the Kingdom of God here is something that you can enter when you attain gnosis, which means knowledge. But itdoesn't mean intellectual knowledge. The Greeks had two words for knowledge. One is intellectual knowledge, like the knowledge of physics or something like that. But this gnosis is personal, like "I know that person, or do you know so and so." So this gnosis is self-knowledge; you could call it insight. It's a question of knowing who you really are, not at the ordinary level of your name and your social class or your position. But knowing yourself at a deep level. The secret of gnosis is that when you know yourself at that level you will also come to know God, because you will discover that the divine is within you.
JESUS IN THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS
The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas does appear rather different from the Jesus we encounter in the others. Because the Gospel of Mark, for example, depicts Jesus as an utterly unique being. This is the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. The Gospel of John says that Jesus isn't even a human being at all, but he's a divine presence who comes down to heaven in human shape.... The Gospel of John says, "God sent his son into the world to save the world." If you believe in him, you're saved, if you don't believe in him you're already damned, because you haven't believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Now, [in the Gospel of Thomas], this Jesus comes to reveal that you and he are, if you like, twins.... And what you discover as you read the Gospel of Thomas, which you're meant to discover, is that you and Jesus at a deep level are identical twins. And that you discover that you are the child of God just as he is. And so that at the end of the gospel Jesus speaks to Thomas and says, "Whoever drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I will become that person, and the mysteries will be revealed to him." Here, Jesus does not take the role of authority and teacher. In the Gospel of Thomas, the disciples say to Jesus, "Tell us, what do you want us to do? How shall we pray? What shall we eat? How shall we fast?" Now if you look at Matthew and Luke, Jesus answers the questions. He says, "When you pray, say, 'Our Father who are in Heaven, hallowed be...' When you fast, wash your face, don't make a show of it. When you give alms do it privately and without being showy." In this gospel, this Jesus does not answer. He says, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for everything is known before heaven." Now this answer throws you and me upon ourselves.... Here Jesus, in effect, turns one toward oneself, and that is really one of the themes of the Gospel of Thomas, that you must go in a sort of a spiritual quest of your own to discover who you are, and to discover really that you are the child of God just like Jesus.
Helmut Koester:
John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School
KNOW THYSELF
One of these documents [found at Nag Hammadi] begins with the scribal note in the margin, "The Gospel According to Thomas." And the first sentence of that document says, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus taught and which Judas Thomas Didymos wrote down." And then they start a total of over 110 sayings, each introduced by "Jesus said...." Some of those sayings have parallels in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Some of these have not. Some of these sayings may go back to a very early period of Christianity, some of them may have been added later. The document itself comes from the fourth century.... As with all gospel text, with this one in particular, we have to remember that these texts were fluid, that scribes could add, that scribes could leave out things, that scribes could add comments, or add an interpretation. So we cannot with certainty reconstruct what did the Gospel of Thomas look like around the year 100 or earlier. But it is very likely that it existed at that time, and that a good deal of the material that's now in that manuscript was already in a Greek manuscript that dates back to the first century. Which of course, is very exciting because here we have a collection of sayings of Jesus, additional sayings of Jesus, that were not known before, and the whole beginning of a new field of studies has opened up....
Now what is typical about these sayings is that in each instance, these sayings want to say that if you want to understand what Jesus said, you have to recognize yourself. You have to know yourself, know who you are. It begins with a saying about the Kingdom of God, "if you seek the Kingdom of God in the sky then the birds will precede you. And if you seek it in the sea, then the fish will precede you, but the Kingdom is in you. And if you know yourself then you know the Kingdom of God." (The Kingdom of the Father, in fact, it always says in the gospel of Thomas. Normally the Kingdom of the Father, not the Kingdom of God.) "But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty." And poverty is understood as the ignorance of a life in its physical existence. Knowledge is understood to be the knowledge of one's divine origin, of the fact that one has come from the Kingdom. That we are on this earth only in a sojourn....
What does it mean really to know oneself? To know oneself is to have insight into one's own ultimate divine identity. You can go back to understand this to Greek models, which certainly exist. "Know yourself" is a very old Greek maxim... that is, you have to know that your own soul is divine, and then you know that you are immortal, whereas the body is the mortal part of human existence. Now this is radicalized in the Gospel of Thomas into saying that everything that is experienced physically and through sense perception, everything in this world that you can perceive in this way is nothing. It is, at best, chaos and, at worst, it doesn't even exist in reality. The only thing that really exists is your divine spirit or your divine soul, which is identical in its quality with God himself. And Jesus is the one who teaches that....
[When one truly knows oneself], one understands that one is divine, but also one understands that one is mortal. In such a way, you recognize that this mortality is really meaningless, as physical existence is meaningless. And therefore, death is no longer a problem, but death is a solution, because in death finally all this mortality will fall away, and the true self will be liberated to an independent existence that's no longer dependent on physical existence. And on everything that goes with physical existence, sickness and poverty and so on. And so physical existence is often described as poverty. But when you know yourself you are no longer in poverty.
Read the Gospel of Thomas.
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