The Gospel of Thomas 22-27

22 Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom." They said to him, "So shall we enter the kingdom as babies?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and what is above like what is below, and when you make the male and the female one, so that the male is not male and the female is not female; and when you make eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and an image in place of an image; then will you enter." [Matthew 18:3; Luke 18:17 and Matthew 5:29-30; Mark 9:43-48]

Typical of the cryptic nature of the Gospel of Thomas, this saying takes a perfectly understandable quote from Jesus -- that a person needs to have the faith of a little child to enter into the kingdom of heaven -- and twists it into something so obscure that only a few even know enough about what's being said to not be offended. The idea of female and male changing is one that will come up again in the very last of the sayings (#114). 23 Jesus said, "I will choose you, one from a thousand, and two from ten thousand, and they will stand as a single one."

Ecclesiastes 7:28 also talks about the scarcity of believers in the world: "...while I was still searching but not finding, I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all." The point in Ecclesiastes is not the unrighteousness of women, but the rarity of believers at all. Perhaps there is also a connection to Deuteronomy 32:30.

24 His disciples said to him, "Show us the place where you are, since we must seek it." He said to them, "Whoever has ears, let him hear. There is light within a man of light, and it shines on the whole world. If it does not shine, it is dark." [John 13:36 and Matthew 6:22-23; Mark 9:43-48]

This is much closer to the actual Jesus than most of what is in this "gospel," but it still doesn't point clearly to God himself.

25 Jesus said, "Love your brother like your soul, guard him like the pupil of your eye."

This saying appears to be an interpretation of the summary of the second table of the Law ("Love your neighbor as yourself"). See Leviticus 19:18 (and 34); Matthew 5:44; 19:19; 22:39; and often throughout the New Testament (Gospels, Paul and James).

26 Jesus said, "You see the speck in your brother's eye, but pay no attention to the plank in your own eye. When you take the plank out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." [Matthew 7:3-5; Luke 6:41-42]

This saying is virtually intact from the Gospels. It's an example of the kind of good saying mixed in with the bizzare that makes this book seem better than it is.

Again, the saying is presented with no surrounding context. Jesus follows the "speck and plank" words with "Ask, seek, knock," "The narrow and wide gates" and the parable of the Wise and Foolish builders in Matthew 7.

27 "If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom. If you do not keep the Sabbath as a Sabbath, you will not see the Father."

This curious saying comes closer to the teachings of the Pharisees and perhaps the mysterious Essenes than to the gnostics. On the other hand, once the true path of salvation by faith is abandoned, all religions -- even all forms of Christianity -- degenerate into a righteousness by works, which is no righteousness at all. We can't choose to be righteous. We can't discover righteousness by wishing hard about it. Our righteousness comes to us because Jesus is righteous. We can do nothing apart from Jesus. This is exactly what John meant when he wrote:

If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him (1 John 2:29).