Gospel of Thomas | Thomas 13

Thomas 13:   Jesus said to his disciples, “Compare me to something and tell me what I am like.”

Simon Peter said to him, “You are like a just messenger.”

Matthew said to him, “You are like a wise philosopher.”

Thomas said to him, “Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.”

Jesus said, “I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended.”

And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, “What did Jesus say to you?”

Thomas said to them, “If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you.”

Thomas 13 is not the first time a religious text has a follower of Jesus claim some kind of privileged knowledge. It happens in the Gospel of Judas, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and in the New Testament when Peter, in Matthew 16:19, is given the keys to heaven. We now know that there are no keys, as there are no gates—the kingdom is everywhere and cannot be contained. It is what we are – a collective consciousness, the singularity. Ironically, the very next story, ‘The First Prediction of the Passion’ (Matthew 16:21-23), sees Jesus rebuke Peter as an obstacle, thinking not as God does but as a man would. People who desired power and control wrote those words, giving Peter autonomy and power. Historically, we know Mark was the first of the Synoptic Gospels, written around seventy to ninety years after Jesus’ death. The other gospels are elaborated, edited, and embellished versions of Mark and Thomas – also known as the Q Source.

In Thomas 13, the author of the gospel wants to make it clear the Gospel of Thomas is like nothing else written about Jesus. This gospel is not a biographical narrative about Yeshua and who He was. It is about His teachings—unedited. This is what makes Thomas’ response believable. Reading the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas requires meditation on the metaphors and symbols they contain. In the period Yeshua spoke these words, the Pharisees and most of His contemporaries would have considered His rhetoric blasphemous and heretical. The Gospel of Thomas essentially negates the existence of a ‘creator god’ outside of the self. Instead, we see that we are connected to the Father/Source—this link is through Its remnant, which we call the soul. Like Jesus, we are Its offspring. We could imagine the other apostles picking up stones and throwing them at Thomas if he had said such things to them. Their entire belief system would have been shaken to its core. The disciples’ understanding of what Jesus was like came from their knowledge of the Torah—The Old Testament. Jesus came to us through the great Jewish tradition and culture, but He was not the Saviour they expected.

The New Testament authors, and their successors, had social and political agendas, stemming from their heritage. These people were either influenced by this heritage or opposed to its adherents, as we see in Luke’s accounts. The lion we find in Thomas 7 had consumed these people, as they either desired to control a growing community or vilified those whom they blamed for Jesus’ death. Consider how Mark 14:21 claims Jesus speaks of Judas: ‘For the Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of him [in the Torah], but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.’ These words appear to be out of character. An enlightened being, such as Yeshua, would not utter such condemnation. Did Judas really betray Him or had he done as Jesus asked of him? The Gospel of Judas purports the latter. If Judas betrayed Jesus, then He would have seen Judas as someone consumed by the lion and taken pity on him. In this sense, we might interpret this statement as a prophetic description of how one person would be blamed for destroying Jesus, as the notion that Jesus did this to Himself would be too difficult to fathom. Thomas was different. He could see Yeshua did not fit the positions within His society the others hoped He had come to fulfil. Yeshua came to liberate the invisible—the thing we cannot comprehend without the knowledge He brought to us—from the realm of the Spirit.

In ultimately giving up the man that clothed Him, Yeshua showed us how we suffer because of the flesh and the materiality it dwells in. Through His sacrifice, we see that the new and everlasting covenant becomes that which is physically left behind. Jesus’ words are the body, the blood He spilled for us becomes a metaphor for the Light which flows through all of us—It is the Source of all things, the Source of life. Through the knowledge we gain in these sayings, we awaken the Spirit and truly ‘live’. This extraordinary symbolic act (seen in this didactic sacrifice) is what makes Jesus someone most people are unable to fathom.

Thomas 13 is extremely important—it is the reason why we have the Gospel of Thomas. When Jesus realised Thomas could not compare Him to anything in his past, Jesus saw in Thomas the future. The language Jesus’ contemporaries had access to came to them from the Old Testament (the Jewish Torah). Their replies to His question (in Thomas 13), demonstrate this clearly. When Thomas claims that his mouth is utterly incapable of comparing Jesus to something, a very important thing takes place—the recognition that a new vocabulary was necessary in order to understand Jesus’ teachings. It was a language that was not fully evolved until the twenty-first century. Ironically, the way Thomas replies to this question placed him in a vulnerable position and he became labelled as ‘doubting Thomas’. This becomes evident in the Gospel of John 20:24-29. Here, the author(s) references Thomas in order to make his case for Jesus having been physically resurrected. It becomes evident the author of John was aware of the Gospel of Thomas and its inferences to a spiritual resurrection, rather than a physical one. The author of John found, in the saying of Thomas 13, a way to justify making Thomas a doubter. The other disciples used language from their heritage to describe what Jesus was like and, to the author of John, this was the only reference point that made sense.

The label of ‘doubting Thomas’ has been detrimental to the Gospel of Thomas, but when we analyse where it came from we see that the label is unfounded. Moreover, we find in Mark 16:12-14 that all the disciples were in fact doubters of Jesus’ resurrection:

‘After this, he showed himself under another form to two of them as they were on their way into the country. They went back and told the others, who did not believe them either. Lastly, he showed himself to the Eleven themselves while they were at table. He reproached them for their incredulity and obstinacy, because they had refused to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.’

Note also, the two disciples on their way into the country experienced Jesus’ presence in another form, which tells us that Jesus was not resurrected in flesh. After all, once the pearl has matured and been extracted from the oyster shell, why would one cover it up in the same shell? The author of the Gospel of John (20:24-29) changes Mark’s account (16:12-14), making Thomas the singular focus of the incredulity and obstinacy. Thomas’ response in Thomas 13 makes it possible for the author of John to attack his faith.

A very important and revealing statement is made by Yeshua when He says: ‘Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended.’ This is the predicament all people find themselves in when they are deep in the woods of the spiritual quest. When they find the pearl, or they catch the large fish, they become overwhelmed by its aesthetic or satisfying qualities. The satisfaction and knowledge they gain from their find makes them drunk. They start to see things that are not there or that in their intoxicated heart and mind become exaggerated. This is what happened to the teachings of both the Buddha and Jesus. These two messengers became the message—their images replaced their message. In Thomas 13, Jesus recognises this human weakness. Shamot Sesju has experienced this drunken state, which is why it has taken so long to see through the fog (that is, this existence) with clarity. The sobering process required taking steps back from the enigmatic words in the Gospel of Thomas, to enable a clear view of all its connections, complexities, and mysteries. This is what other commentaries about this gospel have struggled with. They have tended to use existing texts to decipher Thomas. These people either used Biblical references, or various Gnostic texts to analyse Thomas. This is ironic as it is equivalent to putting the cart before the horse. The Gospel of Thomas was meant to be revealed through language that was evolved enough to make the logical links revealed here. These are the threads that already exist within its intricate tapestry. These are the threads that have created 77^th Pearl: The Perpetual Tree.

Thomas 21 – The Link

The obstacles and diversions we encounter in our daily lives: the suffering under oppressive individuals, who have been consumed by the lion (Thomas 7)—these are the distraction, the thieves who will invade our house (the soul). It is a fact that when our bodies are put under stress, injury, or illness, we become distracted from spiritual concerns. These things steer us away from knowing the nature of our true selves. We can no longer be ‘passersby’ (Thomas 42), or observers of the world; the powerful one (Thomas 98) has consumed us, like the lion consumes its prey. This is why we must guard ourselves against the thieves. We can do this by realising we are above all these obstacles—they cannot harm what we truly are. Our clothes may be damaged or removed, but what is underneath remains whole.

The idea that other powers are at play is another obstacle. Human mortality has forced people to measure the physical self, the reference point for knowing what they are, against the immensity of nature. Nature began to take on the face of God, particularly for those who wrote biblical texts, because nature appears to be so powerful in comparison to the vulnerable body. These illusions are also a barrier to a person’s growth as a spiritual being, because they have allowed the robbers to enter their house and steal their possessions. The ‘possessions’ are our understanding of what matters—we are made of the same Light, which springs from the Father/Source and was seen in its fullness in Yeshua.

Interestingly, both the Buddha (Prince Siddhartha Gautama) c. 486 BCE and Jesus (in this gospel) wanted the individual to search within to truly live in peace. In both cases, their followers reverted to creating institutions and the practices surrounding them became the focus. Religions, which have become institutions, tend to serve a peripheral purpose for people seeking spiritual growth. They comfort, but do not sustain, the soul seeking enlightenment. Christian Churches provide solace when people are in mourning, ill, or seeking absolution. The contemporary Evangelical Churches provide dynamic prayer; their pop-music and high tech light shows give followers a hit of communal ecstasy, which parishioners crave like a drug. In both cases, the only time worshippers feel truly connected to their god is when they are in the venue or Church. By themselves, they are less able to attain the same connection; this is what such organisations rely on. The thieves, in this instance, are the leaders of these groups, who focus on how to fill their churches with people, rather than making the pursuit of spiritual realisation the objective. Their sermons are usually about banal human concerns relating to finances, relationships, and their perceived distance from their God. They do not speak of the essence which makes us like Jesus. They do not teach us how to fully realise this potential. Their selective knowledge does not recognise the truth presented in the Gospel of Thomas.

Some Christian Churches use Satan as a tool to scare people into believing in the power of their Church or doctrine. The irony is that people who have aligned themselves with a negative power are worshipping something that does not have power itself—other than what people have given to it. Faith is the Source here. The only negative forces are individuals who have made a poor choice, because they are enamoured of these four dimensions. They want to keep other souls in this realm. This realm is how they define what it is to live. In the Gospel of Thomas the definition of what it is to live is very different.

We should appreciate that in the Jewish faith, Satan is not looked upon as a fallen angel, creating obstacles from his own will or from a malevolent nature. To a Jewish person, Satan, or rather the satan – meaning accuser,  is doing the bidding of their God. His purpose is to improve humanity’s focus on overcoming obstacles with true faith and love of God. Remembering that Jesus was Jewish, we start to see a divide between the Jewish and Christian perceptions of this character and wonder: how did this become so distorted? From this schism, we can see how the authors of the New Testament had been influenced by the Greek myths of a malevolent deity, a deity the Gnostics erroneously saw as the god of the Old Testament. Evidently, these beliefs stemmed from Plato’s Cave allegory. The puppet master became the malevolent demiurge Yaldabaoth. In the New Testament, we see the influence of this allegory appear in Paul’s letters. Paul refers to the elemental spirits (Stoicheia) which he suggests were responsible for creating the Law—which Jesus made redundant. Yeshua saw humans as the only ones capable of true evil. He explains that this happens when the lion consumes the human and then presents as human (Thomas 7). In this state, the human becomes the mythologised Satan, an obstacle to the true self and to others.

We should also consider the conundrum of those who claim they require the rite of exorcism, or are deemed to require this rite. These ‘possessed’ individuals express in their actions the antithesis of the perfect human. The stereotypically abusive and physically violent behaviour is symbolic of the struggle between the intelligent, spiritual human and the primal beast humans evolved from. An analogy would be the battle between the nature of the lion (Thomas 7) and the nature of the lamb. How would it benefit ‘Satan’ to possess people and behave in this way? Logic suggests that if such a ‘fallen spirit’ existed it would be subtle about the way it makes people’s lives difficult. The question then arises: are these ‘possessions’ really manifestations of a malevolent demon, living in darkness and fear, or is it an expression of the individual’s struggle to overcome primal urges and fears? It is likely to be a combination of these two. The Gospel of Thomas points to this ongoing struggle to find and become the perfect human—like Jesus.

Satan was initially represented as a member of an angelic group, but then in successive narratives became an accuser who suggests, and later creates, obstacles for humans and for Jesus. As mentioned previously, the Jewish community continues to see this angel in a more positive, functional position. The Jewish text refers to ‘the satan’ which means prosecutor, who is working on behalf of Yahweh (YHWH). Nowhere in the Old Testament (Torah) is ‘the satan’ a source of evil, or referred to by the proper noun, Satan. This characteristic is erroneously linked to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, through the New Testament. The snake/serpent was the shrewdest creature in all creation. It was the antagonist in the Garden of Eden narrative, tempting Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. This narrative reflects the way humans wrongly perceive their predicament in this existence as punishment for sinning. It makes sense that this sin might involve people’s tendency to succumb to inherent egotism, insulting their creator by wanting to be like a god. Through the Gospel of Thomas, we see this narrative in a very different way. The snake/serpent represents the same qualities we see in the lion from Thomas 7. Its inability to disconnect from the surface (the earth, or forbidden tree in this narrative) is metaphoric—it is the problem humans struggle with constantly. However, we are creatures that have taken to walking on two legs, so that our head is the furthest from the ground. This is symbolic of our potential to be connected to the Spirit realm—we can think and feel beyond the parameters of day-to-day survival. It is also the reason birds are considered spiritual entities—they possess the ability to rise above this earthly plane. The serpent in the Garden of Eden offers what most people want: a quick solution to life’s conundrum. If they were like God, they would want for nothing and know everything. Jesus tells us, the journey through this realm will have its difficulties, but these can be used to enrich our understanding and appreciation of the Spirit. Through this process, humans learn they are the wealth. The shell people inhabit keeps their heart and mind on the ground–this is the cause of the poverty.

In the Christian version of the Jewish text (Old Testament) we see the proper noun of ‘Satan’ replace ‘the satan’. In changing the word for this character’s purpose (being the accuser) to a name, the name becomes imbued with negativity. This angel no longer works for Yahweh, he works for himself. Satan becomes an adversary of God and humans, working from his own volition. In the narrative of Job 1:6 we see Satan referred to as one who serves God: ‘One day when the sons of God came to attend to Yahweh, among them came Satan.’ Satan suggested to God that Job would not remain loyal if everything he had was taken away. The implication was that Job only loved God because he had material wealth and good health—his love of God would cease if he lost these things. God agreed to test Job and put everything Job had in Satan’s control. This was the beginning of Satan’s career as the source of evil—the adversary of man and God too. Here, we must recognise our definition of what is good is tainted by the natural world, which is not in itself evil. It is an obstacle because of its chaotic and unpredictable nature. As such, defining natural disasters as works of evil is incorrect—only humans and entities inhabiting other realms are capable of evil. Sometimes humans are Satan, working only for the self (Thomas 7). God does not place one person or group above another; the situation one exists in is reliant on chance. What one does with this situation is completely up to the individual. It can be a place of great wealth.

Eventually, this ethereal being called Satan becomes an antagonist who seeks to make people’s lives miserable out of jealousy and spite. This concept also comes through the Islamic tradition—the angel who would not bow down before man, as God asked him to. In the Synoptic Gospels, Satan becomes a symbol of Jesus’ destruction and a way for the gospel writers, after Mark, to vilify the Jewish people. This is evident in the way each of the gospels successively shows that the Sanhedrin, rather than the Roman Emperor (through his people) was the cause for Jesus’ execution. The vilification of the Jewish community climaxes in Luke, written by a gentile who felt marginalised by the Jewish Christians. Elaine Pagels ‘The Origin of Satan’, First Vintage Books Edition, May 1996, develops an extensive analysis and discussion on this topic. Furthermore, we see in the Gospel of John a very disturbing statement, which some Christians have interpreted as giving Satan the position of a deity—the Antichrist. In John Chapter 14:30-31, Jesus says: ^‘I shall not talk to you much longer, because the prince of this world is on his way. He has no power over me, but the world must recognise that I love the Father and that I act just as the Father commanded.’ When we look at this statement through the lens of the Gospel of Thomas, we see that it is not about Satan, the Antichrist; it describes the men who have been consumed by the lion. The context of this pronouncement would place the Emperor or Caesar of the time in the position of ‘prince of this world’. The author of Revelations also made these references, calling the Emperor Nero the beast and identifying him with the numbers ‘666’. The early Christians used this number coding method so that the non-Christians would not know to whom they were referring. This hostile rhetoric could have gotten them killed in a most barbaric way.

In the ‘Temptation of Jesus’ narrative, Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms and riches of the world, mirroring a common experience of all humans. The symbol of a malevolent spirit, who claims the earth for his own, reflects the writer’s struggle to explain what may have happened during Jesus’ forty days and nights in the desert. The disciples would have been aware of this event, but it was apparently not passed onto the gospel authors. This is evident when we look at how this event is embellished in successive gospels. In Mark 1:12-13 (the first gospel written), Jesus is baptized by John, then goes into the desert where Satan tempts Him. This is where the story ends. In Matthew 4:9, the narrative is extended to describe how Satan said to Jesus: ‘I will give you all these…’ In the last Synoptic Gospel, The Gospel of Luke, the author corrects the implication that Satan is the owner and ruler of earth. In Luke 4:6 Satan says to Jesus: ‘I will give you all this power and their splendour, for it has been handed over to me, for me to give it to anyone I choose.’ The author of Luke links the way God hands over Job’s wealth to Satan in the Old Testament story—enabling the elaboration on the sojourn into the desert narrative, but ignoring that the satan  was a heavenly accuser in the original Job myth.

Jesus’ temptation by Satan is a metaphor representing this world. Jesus was flesh and blood; like any man, He would have experienced pleasures and pain associated with this world (Thomas 28). He knew that He could have had an affluent and powerful role on this planet with the committed followers He was accumulating. Withdrawal from the world is common practice by ascetics in significant cultures. It is a pathway to knowing the true nature of self, away from the distractions of everyday life. However, as we shall see, it is not a necessary process for all to experience (Thomas 27). The root cause of “Satan” is the world and its deceptive beauty, power, and pleasures. It is also primal man, who is still within humanity. The fears primal man experienced is the trouble humans may expect. They arrive in our everyday interactions with the physical world and each other. The writers of the Synoptic Gospels only had the Satan of Job as a reference point—they would not have understood such a metaphor. This reinforces the notion that they were influenced by Greek myths. Through 77^th Pearl: The Perpetual Tree, the Gospel of Thomas opens our eyes to these truths.

In Mark 8:31 Jesus openly states: ‘the Son of man was destined to suffer grievously…and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again’. Peter argues with Jesus, who rebukes him: ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are thinking not as God thinks, but as human beings do.’ Jesus is telling us that the nature of Satan is to think as one who is infatuated by this world. This person’s decisions are driven by its allure. This also confirms that people had become the adversary of the Spirit of Yeshua. Instead of an accuser (the satan) making an individual assess their love of God, people had inadvertently become the persona, ‘Satan’. The direction people take is intrinsically connected to the way they perceive this life; they alone can make these choices. Humans need to be on guard against the robbers, which manifest in various forms and have the same goal—to get in our way, to block our path.

When you are on your Sabbath, look past this world and its distractions to The Perpetual Tree, which is beyond the horizon. When you are not in a place of rest (Sabbath), use the soil you are in to grow and flourish