Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 15:53:36 -0500 (EST)
From: William Arnal <warnal@chass.utoronto.ca>
cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Thomas, God and ego eimi

On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Brian E. Wilson wrote:

> You wonder whether the Gospel of Thomas uses "ego eimi".
> 
> In Thomas, Saying 70 reads,  "Jesus said: I AM THE LIGHT which is over
> everything.  I AM THE ALL, the All came forth from me and the All has
> reached to me.  Split the wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you
> will find me there."  

Of course the difficulty with identifying "ego eimi" in Thomas is
that the phrase is Greek and Thomas as we have it (or most of it) is
not Greek. "ego eimi" means more than just "I am"; it is a
particular way of emphasizing the "I" in the equation. The text
cited above, #70 (actually # 77), is a likely candidate, though: the
Coptic is "anok pe" which probably translates "ego eimi". #30 also
uses an emphatic (and grammatically unnecessary) anok.
Interestingly, these two sayings are juxtaposed in the Greek POxy
fragments -- which of course also means that we DO have Greek text
for them, and can check whether they actually do read "ego eimi" --
but I don't have the Greek POxy here: anyone out there able to
oblige?

>  The commentaries I have read on this indicate that here Thomas gives a
> Gnostic view of Jesus, and is pantheistic in line with much of the other
> Gnostic writings from Nag Hammadi, for instance the Gnostic Gospel of
> Eve and the Martyrdom of Peter chapter 10. Thomas is certainly not in
> line with the understanding of Jesus in the canonical gospels or the
> letters of Paul.

This is more evidence (as if we needed any!) of how bad the
commentaries on Thomas actually are! Wasn't Ron Cameron supposed to
be writimng one? What happened to it?
	I see no evidence whatsoever that #77 is pantheistic in its
intention: as I've suggested before, the stone and wood refer to
idols, false gods, so Thomas is here saying something analogous to
what the author of Acts attributes to Paul in Athens: behind the
false gods lurks the impulse toward the true God.
	And if # 77 WERE pantheistic, that would be -- as Davies has
rightly argued -- actually evidence against a Gnostic Thomas,
evidence that Thomas is not world-denying as is usually supposed.

Bill