Hey so I decided to translate the Greek version of GThomas (which is much shorter than the Coptic version because it's in fragments). First let me tell you that the Greek is shit. The grammar is mostly fine but it's super informal, has preposition stacking and overuse of pronouns, contains weird Semitisms, and has literal misspellings. So it was a bitch for me to do this. Then again I'm not an expert in Greek (this is coming from a person with two years of Koine) so I'm sure it would probably be easier for someone more experienced. Anyway, here is my translation. Feel free to correct me if I made any mistranslations/mistakes for those who know Greek. I kinda just threw this together. I'll post in parts:1. These are the hidden words which the living Jesus spoke and which Judas Thomas wrote down.2. And he said, "Whoever may discover the interpretation of these words shall not taste death."3. Jesus said, "Let the one seeking not cease to seek until he finds; he will be amazed and, having been amazed, he shall reign and, having reigned, he will rest." 4. Jesus said, "If those leading you shall say to you, 'Behold, the Kingdom is in the sky', the birds of heaven will precede you. But if they say, 'It is under the earth!' The fish of the sea will precede into it before you, and the Kingdom of God is within you, and outside. Whoever shall know himself, he will discover this, and when you know yourselves, you will see that you are sons of the living Father. But, unless you know yourselves, you are in poverty and you are the poverty."5. Jesus said, "An old man will not hesitate to ask a seven day old child about the place of life, and you will live because many who are first will be last, and the last, first, and they will have eternal life."6. Jesus said, "Know that which is before your sight, and what has been hidden from you will be revealed to you. For there is nothing secret which will not become manifest, nor having been buried that will not be raised up."
7. His disciples questioned him and they said, "How will we fast, and how will we pray, and how will we give alms, and what diet will we observe?" Jesus said, "Do not lie, and what anyone hates, do not do. For all things will be full of truth, instead of heaven. For nothing has been concealed which will not be made manifest. Blessed is the one who does not do these things. For everything in illumination will be from the Father who is in heaven."8. Jesus said, "Hypocrite, you see the speck in the eye of your brother, but you notice not the beam in your own eye. Cast out the beam from your eye and then you will see clearly to cast out the speck in the eye of your brother."9. Jesus said, "Unless you shall fast to the world, you shall never find the Kingdom of God. And unless you 'Sabbatize' the Sabbath, you will not see the Father."10. Jesus said, "I stood in the midst of the world and was seen by them in the flesh and I found everyone drunk, and I found no one in them thirsting, and my soul toils over the sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and they see not, because they return into the world as empty ones. And they seek to come again from the world as empty ones. Nevertheless, now they are drunk. When they shall put away their wine, then they will repent." 11. Jesus said, "If flesh came because of the spirit, it is a marvel. But if the spirit is because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. But I marvel about this, that so much wealth dwells in this poverty."
12. Jesus said, "Where there shall be 3 divine beings, they are gods. And where there is only one, I am with him. Raise the stone, there you will find me. Split the wood, I am also there."13. Jesus said, "A prophet is not accepted in his own country, nor does a physician heal for those who know him."14. Jesus said, "A city being constructed on the summit of a high mountain, and being fortified, is neither able to fall nor be hidden."15. Jesus said, "What you hear in your ear, preach from the rooftops." 16. Jesus said, "Do not worry from the morning until evening, from evening until morning; neither in your food, what you shall eat; neither in your clothes, what you shall wear. How much better you are than the lilies which neither grow from their own power nor spin. They never have clothes. What do you lack? Who can add upon your stature? The same will give your clothes to you. 17. Jesus said, "Often you desired to hear the word which I speak to you, and have not the one uttering. And the days will come when you will seek me and you will not find me."18. Jesus said, "The Pharisees and the scribes received the keys of knowledge and they hid them. They neither enter nor have permitted those entering to enter. But be wise as snakes and innocent as doves."
>>42372725Bump for interest
>>42372730>And unless you 'Sabbatize' the Sabbath, you will not see the Father.Wtf does this even mean????
>>42372854It means to be batptize by the fire, by the Shekinah.
>>42373020What kind of Kabbalistic bull are you parroting?
>>42373051It means to hold your trauma and cry it out and not hide from the burning inside. This world must be burned away within you so the spirit can enter and plant roots. You're never gonna understand anything about the kingdom if you keep coiling around the identity lens you view the world with. It's all connected. It all matters. It's like the wheat and the weeds. You don't solve the paradox of things or yourself you think about them and let the thoughts and feelings flow where they naturally want to no matter how much it hurts. That's the essence of Thomas really. Alchemy.
Silence. You do not know me.
>>42373090This is schizo-tier rambling and has nothing to do with what Jesus is saying here. Fuck off schizo.
>>42373051Shabbath is simply to realize the fire inside you, the illumination. How do you achieve illuminate ? By fasting of the world. (On the 7th day God took a rest.)Simply meditate and sacrifice the animal inside you : the Ego.
>>42373249Retarded. Jesus is saying we need to put rest to the Sabbath itself i.e. abolish it. It is the product of the demiurge who is called the Sabbath in Gnostic texts.
>>42373187What do you think it means the kingdom is within you and outside of you? You do understand Jesus is an archetype of the soul yes? If God is within where else could it possibly come from? You're too dependent on this worlds logic and meaning. If you can hold both then learn instead.
>>42373429We are all Jesus on this blessed day.
>>42373296The bible replaced the Sabbath with the crucifixion, you have to embodie Jesus, then sacrifice yourself (with your cross), between the good and bad thief. The passion of the Christ is simply the Solomon temple written as a story, a description : step by step on how to enter the kingdom of the father.
>>42373429Jesus is uttering the classical maxim, "Know thyself." His point is that first you must turn inward to know the nature of God, because we ourselves are divine, and only then can we see the divinity in the outer world. The kingdom will not come as a visible, physical, earthly city or state, but will come when you gain gnosis of the true Father by coming to know yourself and your true origins from the divine fullness.
>>42373447You are a schizo.
>>42373463The sacrifice never meant to be physical but in spirit during a prayer or meditation. This is all that means. You can't be reborn in a new body, if you can let go of the old body.
>>42372854Exodus 20:8-10Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.Keeping in mind the phrase "works of the law" Paul likes use for things like sabbath observance, as in Galatians 3:10, "For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law," if it that phrase wasn't entirely peculiar to him, the idea of sabbatizing the sabbath could be a way of saying that you should apply the rule, "you shall not do any work" to the work of observing the sabbath itself. Imo this wouldn't mean abolishing the sabbath so everyone should be required to work on saturdays, but it would mean the sabbath shouldn't be treated as a work in itself. Similar to Mark 2:27, "The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath."Of course, both the canonical saying and the Thomas saying are at odds with the Torah, where in Numbers 15:33-35 God recommends the death penalty for some guy who was found gathering sticks on the sabbath.
>>42373621>reincarnationYeah you are definitely a Kabbalist schizo.
>>42373659(cont.) The idea that *unless* you sabbatize the sabbath, you won't see the Father, could be a consequence of the idea that feeling obligated to obey the various ritualistic aspects of the Jewish law amounted to being enslaved to one or more spiritual entities in this world who were hostile to humanity but pretended to be our god(s). And obviously being enslaved to lower entities who you mistake for God is going to be obstacle to recognizing the true God.
>>42373659>>42373731By the way, I would never have thought of this interpretation of the saying going by any other translation online like those here, which don't use the weird "sabbatize the sabbath" phrase: https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas/gospelthomas27.htmlSo thanks OP, you're doing good work for the cause of identifying Thomas as a properly Gnostic gospel, something which I believe it's popular for academics to doubt lately.
>>42373830You're welcome. Yeah I saw it in the Greek and was like "wtf?" I just translated it as it literally is in the Greek, "Sabbatize the Sabbath." Academic translators like to try and interpret it as "keep the Sabbath" or "hold the true Sabbath" or something along those lines. But I was happy to find by looking in secondary sources that it is indeed literally "Sabbatize the Sabbath", so my translation choice is basically correct. It's not that the interpretations in the other translations are "incorrect", but they are just that. Interpretations. I just rendered it literally.
>>42373659>but it would mean the sabbath shouldn't be treated as a work in itself.By this I meant that the Sabbath shouldn't be understood as *requiring* that you observe the Sabbath. It becomes an option rather than a requirement, because treating it as a requirement would mean working on the Sabbath, which would ruin the point of the Sabbath.
>>42373970>Let no man therefore judge you in meat or drink, or in respect to a holy day or the new moon or the Sabbath days. Colossians 2:16>One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.Romans 14:5Interesting.
>>42373970>treating it as a requirement would mean working on the Sabbath, which would ruin the point of the Sabbath.requiring it for salvation would make a works based practice, but it is possible to require certain things without straying into that kind of thing. Take modesty and sexual abstinence commitments at many Christian colleges etc - those are not for salvation but are required of a person to remain part of that community.But yeah, its nice to see some conception of what the Gospel actually means in these threads. this too >>42373986
The 4chan version of Thomas? I call it the 4CV. Will there be 4CV-onlyists now?
>>42373830How does rejecting the Jewish Sabbath make it properly Gnostic though? Regular Christians reject the Sabbath.
>>42372725I’m so happy you made this thread because according to historians these were recorded in “koine greek” hieroglyphs and not “greek” hieroglyphs. So sad to watch this world crumble because simple lack of awareness and critical thinking skills exist. Happy to know that there is no letter for letter translation from any other language to english. So the the people who believe in these stories are just living in their own world. That is okay I have no problem with there beliefs fortunately we all don’t think the same way. Good luck.
>>42373677It's not reincarnation, it's about becoming a vessel for the will of the father, so you minestery as the son can begin. The Ego is that block the will of the father manifesting in you. When the will descend upon you, you'll be baptized by the fire of the holy spirit then you'll be able to begin the minester of the Christ. (This is the second coming that appear through you.)
>>42374540Regular christian aren't supposed to do Sabbath Because it's the priest duty to do it, the priest invoke the holy spirit and let the father will manifesting only then regular christians receive the father will that give life and heal. The priest is the son that channel the will of the father in a clean or purified spirit.The holy spirit is when your spirit has been cleansed (purgatory) from sins by the fire. (it feel like a fire.)The purgatory isn't a place, it's a step in a process. The Secret Teaching of the Bible teach you how to become an apostle, how to become the hand of God, the one who is the bridge between heaven and earth.
>>42374714Good luck out there bro
Hello, OP here. Just want to issue one slight correction and another more major correction to my translation. For the slight one,First in 7 which should be:>7. His disciples questioned him and they said, "How will we fast, and how will we pray, and how will we give alms, and what diet will we observe?" Jesus said, "Do not lie, and what anyone hates, do not do. For all things will be full of truth, before heaven. For nothing has been concealed which will not be made manifest. Blessed is the one who does not do these things. For everything in illumination will be from the Father who is in heaven.""anti tou ouranou" could be read as "instead of heaven" but doesn't make much contextual sense. Probably means something more akin to being "facing heaven" locationally, as in opposite to e.g. "my face is opposite to yours", so "before heaven". It could also be "for heaven" or "in heaven's place."
Then there is 16 which I admit I botched slightly, mainly because some parts of the word order were confusing to me, and the punctuation in the reproduced Oxyrhynchus papyri didn't help at all. I think it's better rendered as:>Jesus said, "Do not worry from the morning until evening, from evening until morning; neither in your food, what you shall eat; neither in your clothes, what you shall wear. How much better you are than the lilies which grow but do not spin. Not having clothes, what do you lack? Who can add upon your stature? The same will give your clothes to you."I got confused with "oude" in the Greek which typically is used like a negative connector like oute, "neither, nor". But it can also mean something like "and not" or "but not", or "not at all." As a consequence I tried to interpret the point about growing and spinning but I think it just fails lol. For some reason a lot of translations of the Greek in the academic literature follow Matthew 6:28 and have "neither card not spin" which also confused me. I don't know why they do this. Again I am NOT, I repeat I am NOT a scholar. I am an amateur. I don't know if the Coptic agrees with Matthew I do not read Coptic. Also, the punctuation threw me off for "meden echonta enduma" in the reproduced Greek copy, so I had no idea how to relate it to the rest of the passage. After looking at some academic translations into the English they have it as "When you have no clothes, what do you lack?" Not sure why it's punctuated the way it is in what I'm reading from. Now I think for the academic English translations they translate it like this because it makes more sense with the rest of the context of the logion, "He/The same will give your clothes to you." I just put a really literal rendering of it in English which probably looks shitty but whatever.
>>42374794Is this why priests also have to pray the liturgy of the hours and the laity don't?
>>42374540It doesn't by itself, but the full saying, substituting my interpretation of the second half, would be something like:>Unless you shall fast to the world, you shall never find the Kingdom of God. And unless you avoid becoming a slave to the Jewish law, you will not see the Father."And to me this pairing, in a gospel devoid of elaborate discussion about how Jesus perfectly followed the law and got punished by God in your place, so now you're free to disregard most of it and in fact should disregard most of it if you don't want to be ungrateful (roughly what regular Christians think Paul thought), more readily suggests that the reason the Jewish law is an obstacle is because it corresponds to enslavement to the "god of this world" (or one of the gods of this world) instead of the true God, which is the Gnostic angle on why the Jewish law doesn't need to be obeyed. So fasting from the world and freedom from the law go together.I guess without going too many layers deep of mind-reading the author's intention like I have, it can't be ruled out that the Regular Christian idea of how it works is what's intended. Or, going by the one of the usual translations, that this a random saying where Thomas' Jesus wants you to observe the sabbath like a normal Jew. Or, more in line with the rest of Thomas, that Jesus is *only* spiritualizing the Sabbath like he does circumcision, without going as far as to say that observing the Sabbath as a requirement is an obstacle.But that an anti-demiurge interpretation of the saying could be viable is still one small point in favor of Thomas being Gnostic in that sense, or at least it preserves the possibility. Maybe I'm just a schizo idk.
>>42375178It's interesting to note how Paul compares following the Law with idolatry, he berated the Galatians for returning to the "elementary principles" of the world when they Judaized. He says that Law is a curse and not directly given by God but by angels. See Galatians 3.
>>42372730>because they return into the world as empty ones. And they seek to come again from the world as empty onesThe "return" and "come again" suggest a repetitive process in a way that other translations of the saying don't, which if accurate could be meaningful https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas/gospelthomas28.htmlAnother Gnostic characteristic I've tried to find evidence of in Thomas aside from the demiurge/inferior law-giver belief is reincarnation. Maybe that's subtly implied here? The only place I previously thought it might be hiding is in saying 71, what I believe is Thomas' variant of the "I will destroy this temple and in three days I will build it again" saying where the temple is metaphorically his body (Mark's variant has the rebuilt temple being different from the one that was destroyed). Unfortunately the Thomas saying is missing some words, but one translator's attempt to fill in the gaps results in,"I will des[troy this] house, and none shall be able to build it [again]."And there, using the house/temple = body correspondence, would mean that the thing we should be impressed with is that Jesus' physical body *won't* be brought back, maybe implying that that's the usual state of affairs, which sounds like reincarnation.
>>42375577I dont think the logion you cited shows reincarnation. It is indeed the Thomasine variation of the canonical logoi "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up" (which is probably closer to the original saying). Instead it simply reflects the socio-political milleu of the author where hopes that the Jewish Temple would ever be rebuilt had faded. This suggests something like a mid second century dating composition. Whoever started this compilation of logoi was likely a Jewish Christian, probably outside the catholic churches through the network of bishops taking charge over regions of house-churches. The presence of semitisms suggests this, the concern for esoteric interpretations of Jewish law (halakha) does as well, and its association with Judaizing Gnostic groups like the Nassenes by the Church Fathers. Interestingly, the Manicheans also received the text, and their prophet Mani had come from a Judaizing Gnostic Christian group.
>>42375667*logia not logoiMy mistake.
>>42375667I take it you reject the possibility that the temple/body correspondence could've been intended in the saying from the beginning, even though Jesus often spoke in obscure parables and Paul also makes this correspondence? (1 Corinthians 6:19, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you...")>Judaizing Gnostic groupsI'm not sure what you mean by this. My understanding is that most Gnostics were interested in strange interpretations of the Tanakh because they believed that the true God did speak through it in certain places and that higher truths could be found in it by interpreting it allegorically. It was only really the Marcionites who seem to have wanted to throw it out entirely.
>>42375821 (cont.)>even though Jesus often spoke in obscure parablesEven explicitly to hide what he meant, in Mark 4
>>42372725Damn, sun god looking FIRE
>>42375952Allahu akbar
>>42375080The purpose of priesthood is also to be the guardian of the knowledge, only a few will consiously made the will descend unto them. The church designed those rituals so no one have to think about it, but to trust or have faith. (the thinking mind block the invocation process.) Also, praying liturgy for hours weakened the thinking mind and facilitate the invocation.
