GOSPEL OF THOMAS is AN ANCIENT TESTIMONY TO THE JESUS MYTH
In the book of Wisdom and in Proverbs, Wisdom is talked about like she was a
person. Paul called Heaven, Jerusalem our mother. So personification is a
popular device in the Bible which firmly imbeds it in Jewish and Christian
tradition. Some think Jesus was a similar device.
At Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, the ancient gospel of Thomas was found. It is a
collection of sayings which allegedly came from Jesus. Fragments of this gospel
written before 200 AD were uncovered before that. The sayings of the gospel look
more primitive and therefore older than the related ones in the canonical
gospels. We can tell for they are simpler and seem to show little knowledge of
the context of the sayings that resemble the gospels. The original draft of the
gospel is possibly first century (page 125, The Nag Hammadi Library in English).
This gospel is classed by many as a Gnostic text. Others prefer the notion that it is probably the work of Egyptian mystics who were interested in Jesus. Others worry that the Gnostics were labelled by the early writers but they never would have called themselves Gnostics. In that view, their claims may be seen to be as valid as what the New Testament says.
Themes from the so-called Gnostics such as a light from God
appearing as Jesus to bring us knowledge that ends how we are
trapped here are absent. Thomas never says the world is bad or
anti-God. In fact it says God is in this world with us and the
kingdom of God lives inside us. There are no myths about how a
useless or evil world can appear when there is nothing only a pure
good God. There is nothing about deluded parts of God, the
archons doing harm in the universe.
Anyway this gospel says that Jesus was not a real person but a symbolic teacher of
wisdom. The living Jesus was a symbol just like the Devil is a symbol of wisdom
for the Church of Satan in San Francisco.
The four gospels present a Jesus who goes off on his own to pray, prays with the Jews in the Temple, advises his disciples to pray a lot. He gave the famous Lord's Prayer - Our Father who are in Heaven...at does
Thomas incredibly has Jesus banning prayer. This amounts to calling the gospel Jesus a fiction. Jesus made the sermon on the mount largely about giving particularly almsgiving and preached at length about prayer. In saying 4 Jesus says fasting leads to sin. Almsgiving harms the soul. Prayer gets you condemned. What is left? Meditation or gnosis? Both? A process of elimination is definitely implied. Meditation is not advocated so we assume gnosis. Knowing of the sayings and this Jesus and their meaning guarantees salvation.
In 104, the disciples tell Jesus they need to fast and pray. He asks them what sin he has committed or how he has been overcome that they need to fast and pray? The idea is that if you have Jesus you don't need to pray for you are on the winning side. He doesn't even have any sin to make him unreliable. But he does say they can fast and pray when the bridegroom leaves the bridal chamber. If he will never leave it then they must never pray and fast. If he leaves it they are as good as on their own and need crutches like praying and fasting. This contradicts the gospel promise that Jesus will always be with his disciples. I would tend to assume that as he does not say the bridegroom will leave the bridal chamber, the marriage, it is not until as in "he will leave" but until the cows come home, ie never. The praying and fasting church in any case is not of Jesus.
It reminds us of the gospels where Jesus tells the disciples they don't need to fast for he is the bridegroom and he is with them. I would argue that this shows that Jesus did believe he would go to the same fate as everybody else and not come back to be with his apostles forever. If he was with his apostles as a resurrected invisible being then he is with them more than ever but it is clear that he did not want fasting abolished full stop or on a point of principle as the Thomas Jesus does.
The notion of God becoming a human being, Jesus, is certainly rejected.
It implies the body must be sacred. But the Thomas Jesus hates the body,
“I do marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty!”
(28.3). He hates the material universe too: “Whoever has come to know the world
has found a corpse” (56.1). This Jesus is at core different from the
standard Christian Jesus. It is such a different Jesus from the gospel one
that either one or both of them is a fabrication.
The first saying says, “Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will
not experience death”. So they all have spiritual meaning and if you think hard
enough you can break the code. We have broken the code. We will see that the
author must have been totally sure that Jesus never existed historically for he
takes it for granted that we should be able to see that he is saying that so he
shows that he believes that any open-minded and knowledgable person out there
will agree with him. He presupposes that there are many disbelievers in the
existence of Jesus out there. He knows of plenty. He knows of evidence but he
does not see the need to draw attention to it.
The gospel can be interpreted as monistic, that all things are just the one God,
but we need not go that far and remember the valid interpretation is the
simplest. We need not think it envisages an undivided God without parts which is
the creation so nobody can say that the reason it has an impersonal Jesus is
because it follows a monistic impersonal God. The god of monism or pantheism is
impersonal for he is stones as well as people so he cannot be a person.
Jesus is the leader of the disciples and their spiritual director. He could be a
mental image like the god Hermes was to his fans that God used to give people
visions and revelations inside their heads in their imagination.
Jesus said that the person who will drink from his mouth will become Jesus
himself. If Jesus is a symbol for spiritual insight then the person who achieves
spiritual insight makes it a part of him and kind of becomes it when he follows
it. It may seem that to drink from his mouth means hear the word of God and
absorb it. What it really means is to drink spiritual power or a life-force out
of Jesus so that you become Jesus. Jesus then is a force not a person. He is not
a man. The human Jesus never lived.
Jesus says he is all things and if you break a stone you find him inside (77).
This assertion came after he said that that kingdom of God is like a precious
pearl and since the kingdom is enlightenment he shows he is on about gaining
wisdom. Then after the assertion he said that those who come to him look for
truth. So when he said that we can break a stone to find him he meant that he
was nature and we hear his word through nature and not through a man. There is
spiritual insight in all things or all things are the power of wisdom. So Jesus
is a metaphor for nature and not a man. Obviously, Jesus could not be all things
if he were a real person. I can’t become a stone as well as a person if I am
conscious only of being a person.
Jesus told his followers to make James the Righteous the true leader if he
leaves. Jesus admits that he is the boss. But shortly afterwards, he tells
Thomas that he is not his master and that he only thinks he is his master
because he had not seen the light and is drunk in his ignorance. So if Jesus is
not his real master and yet a master then Jesus does not exist and he only a
symbol for the mental force from God that leads to psychological insight or the
mystical illumination of gnosis. James was named as the brother of the Lord so
the gospel is telling us he was the brother only in the sense that he was close
to the Lord for the Lord is not a real man. Brother of the Lord is a honorary
title. There is much evidence that the gospel is telling the truth and has
inside knowledge of early Christianity.
The author evinces his great regard for Jesus when he says that Jesus wants us
to follow James the Righteous after Jesus is gone. He is saying that Jesus ought
to be listened to. Jesus is a force that will speak through the person of James
in the future. Following James is following Jesus because James will become the
incarnation of Jesus. This implies that Jesus is a spiritual force from God that
is to communicate with man through the imagination. Jesus is saying that ongoing
revelation is necessary and he only gives that revelation through a person.
Jesus criticises the apostles for referring to dead prophets instead of the
living one in front of them which is himself (52). Does this tell us that the
living Jesus is a man of flesh and blood? If the dead men were prophets then a
real live Jesus would have regarded them as voices like his own, he would not
have chastised the apostles. But if Jesus were only a personification in the
imagination through which God speaks it would be preferable for people to go
directly to him instead of to other people. The verse really refutes the notion
of a literal Jesus. A Jesus who speaks last week would be in the same boat as a
dead prophet for his word is in the past. But a non-literal Jesus would speak
and remind and be with you all the time so his word would come first. The living
one just means the force that reveals life and salvation for Jesus made it clear
that it was mystical communion with God who is nature that saves so stones and
men are not important but the divinity in them. So when he said he meant himself
as the road to salvation he was not talking about his human self but the
divinity inside. He was not referring to being human at all. If Jesus was a
divine force speaking through a medium like say James like a spirit would then
how does that square with the message of the gospel that each person has to get
knowledge about Jesus on his own? Jesus speaks through James but you cannot
learn from it unless you experience mystically what Jesus is saying. So to the
person who does have the magical experience it is just hearing words but not the
import of the words.
Jesus proclaimed that it was for James that Heaven and earth were created. This
would have to be truer of Jesus than James if Jesus is a real person. So Jesus
is not real and James is real. James will be the symbolic Jesus’ main mouthpiece
after Jesus ceases to talk to the apostles. Think about this. What if Heaven and
earth were made for James because he would be the only spiritual medium through
which Jesus would speak? When Jesus leaves James, James will be boss. This has
to be the correct understanding. Remember how the gospel condemned listening to
prophets from the past. Then it says that we must listen to Jesus. Jesus then
was not a prophet in the past at any time. He is a spiritual force that we
commune with right now. It is the present voice not the past that matters.
Thomas rejects any other gospel but Thomas for Thomas says we must listen to
Jesus now and feel him inspiring us. Gospels with any different message and with
stories of Jesus are not to be depended on.
Since Heaven and earth were made for James it suggests that James alone will
give the pure word of God. This also is a hint that there was no historical
Jesus. It is definitely a hint of great age for the saying about James is so
strange and unnecessary there is no other explanation but that the saying was
created when James was alive.
When it is James alone, Jesus is denying the gospel portrait of a saviour who
came for all and who speaks to all by the power of the Holy Spirit and who had
loads of followers. This is another indication of a pre-gospel origin because it
ties in with the earliest strata that express the fact that the predecessors of
the gospels did not have Jesus as a Palestinian superstar. A fact that was too
well covered up to have been thought up later. And it was a fact for it was
commonsense that nobody like Jesus would have been tolerated for five minutes by
the authorities.
Salome asked Jesus who he was when he came up on her couch and ate from her
table (61). Jesus told her that he was the one who exists from the undivided.
God is the undivided and God is all therefore he who exists outside God is not a
real person but a myth, a symbol.
Now it may be objected that a real Jesus could be used as a symbol and image and
this means that the gospel is not challenging his real existence.
This is incorrect. It is not likely that a person will do that without making it
clear that he does not intend his symbol to represent the true Jesus.
Why would anybody pick out sayings of a real Jesus that had no relevance for him
and put them in this book in the mouth of a symbolic Jesus? There is no reason
and no way it could happen! Jesus was a symbol that was taken too seriously by
some that they turned him into a man.
Jesus said that Adam was not worthy of the apostles which was why he died (85).
This hints that Jesus himself never died. When Jesus told the apostles that when
they see a man who was not born of woman they will know that he is their father
and they must worship this man (15). He means God and himself as the
manifestation of God. He is saying he is not born of woman meaning he is not a
real man or a real person. Since they have to know God in a mystical experience
they have to know that same way that the man did not have a human origin. Since
salvation is partly delivery from human ways of thinking and takes you to the
abstract the man is not a man at all for a man is a block to salvation. Jesus
means personified force by man not man the material being. He demands worship so
he is saying he is a personified force as well.
Jesus says that only the solitary will be saved (75) indicating that depending
on Jesus if he was a man or on apostles is wrong. You only use them to learn
that you must do it on your own or as examples. This is a denial that the death
or resurrection of Jesus saves us and the gospels which have a social Jesus.
Saying 30 claims that Jesus will be with the gods who seem to be enlightened
human beings. He says that where there are three gods there are gods but where
there is less he will be with them. This implies that very few can be saved by
Jesus. Jesus is saying that he can get nobody to rest in. That is, there is
nobody who fully accepts his principles.
In saying 86, Jesus says that foxes and birds have to rest but he has nowhere to
rest. Since the gospel claims to have an oblique interpretation Jesus must mean
he has nobody to rest in. This Jesus who kept his ministry quiet fits the
evidence from the first century that Christianity was not founded by a popular
well-known person.
So we have found a first century witness that Jesus was not a real person but a
myth in the sense of a meaningful symbol - a vehicle of expression.
