THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS

THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS1
These are the hidden sayings that the living Yeshua spoke and Yehuda Toma the twin recorded.2
(1) And he said,3
Whoever discovers what these sayings mean4 will not taste death.
(2) Yeshua said,
Seek and do not stop seeking until you find. When you find, you will be troubled.
When you are troubled,
you will marvel and rule over all.5
(3) Yeshua said,
If your leaders tell you, "Look, the kingdom is in heaven,"
then the birds of heaven will precede you.
If they say to you, "It's in the sea,"6
then the fish will precede you.
But the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you.
When you know yourselves,7 then you will be known,
and you will understand that you are children of the living father.
But if you do not know yourselves,
then you dwell in poverty and you are poverty.
(4) Yeshua said,
A person old in days
will not hesitate to ask a little child
seven days old8 about the place of life,
and the person will live.9
For many of the first will be last
and become a single one.
(5) Yeshua said,
Know what is in front of your face
and what is hidden from you will be disclosed.
There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.10
(6) His students asked him and said to him,
Do you want us to fast? How should we pray?


1. The Gospel of Thomas: Nag Hammadi library, Codex II,2, pp. 32,10 to 51,28, and in the Greek fragments in Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1, 654 and 655; translated from the Coptic by Marvin Meyer. There are many parallels in the New Testament gospels to the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. The New Testament parallels are not listed in the notes, for reasons of econ­omy of space, but the serious seeker will easily find them.
2. Instead of "hidden sayings," we may translate as "secret sayings," or "obscure sayings" (Coptic enshaje ethep, Greek Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 hoi logoi hoi [apokryphoi]). The Book of Thomas has a similar opening, and the Secret Book of James also calls itself a "secret book." Yeshua is Jesus (here and throughout), and Yehuda Toma is Judas Thomas. The "living Yeshua" is almost certainly not a reference to the resurrected Jesus as traditionally understood, but rather to Jesus who lives through his sayings.
3. The speaker is probably Jesus, otherwise Judas Thomas with an editorial remark.
4. Or, "the interpretation [Coptic hermeneia, from Greek] of these sayings."
5. Greek Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 adds: "and having ruled, you will rest" (partially restored).
6. Greek Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 reads: "it is under the earth,"
7. "Know yourself" (Greek gnothi sauton) was a famous maxim from the oracular center dedi­cated to Apollo at Delphi, Greece.
8. This probably indicates an uncircumcised boy (a Jewish boy was to be circumcised on the eighth day), or else a child of the Sabbath of the first week of creation.
9. Hippolytus of Rome cites a version of this saying from the Gospel of Thomas used among the Naassenes, in his Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.20: "One who seeks will find me in children from seven years, for there, hidden in the fourteenth age, I am revealed."
10. Greek Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 adds: "and nothing buried that will not be raised" (par­tially restored).