I love how Gospel of Thomas sayings pop up in other writings and today I am showcasing such an example. Saying 22 from Thomas shows up in 2 Clement. What is 2 Clement you ask? Better known as the “Second Epistle of Clement”, this is an early writing attributed to Clement of Rome (not to be confused with Clement of Alexandria), though it’s authorship may not be correctly attributed, i.e. Pseudo-Clement. Interestingly enough, the Orthodox Tewahedo church in Ethiopia has this book (or at least a version of it) listed in their New Testament canon (which is 35 books compared to the 27 in other traditions). As far as I know, no English translation exists of the Tewahedo bible in its entirety, as the OT extra books can be found in English but the NT books not so much.

Gospel of Thomas saying 22 states the following:

Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom."

They said to him, "Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."

2 Clement addresses this statement in chapter 12 of the epistle, it reads as such:

12:1 Let us, therefore, in love and righteousness expect every hour the kingdom of God, since we know not the day of the appearing of God.
12:2 For the Lord himself, when he was asked by a certain man when his kingdom should come, replied, When two shall be one, and that which is without as that which is within, and the male with the female neither male nor female.
12:3 Now two are one when we speak the truth one to another, and there is, without hypocrisy, one soul in two bodies.
12:4 And by that which is without being as that which is within, he meaneth this: He calleth the soul that which is within, and the body that which is without; in like manner, therefore, as thy body is visible, let thy soul be made manifest by good deeds.
12:5 And by the male with the female neither male nor female, he meaneth this: When a brother seeing a sister doth not in any way regard her as a female, nor doth she regard him as a male;
12:6 when ye do these things, he saith, the kingdom of my Father will come.

Gotta love it! Speaking of Thomas sayings popping up in other works, the recently published oxyrhynchus papyri 5575 has a very interesting Thomas connection. If you do a google search, you’ll see various articles on that. O.P. 5576 and 5577 are gnostic writings, though their translations have not yet appeared online. They are featured in a newly published book though it’s a bit pricey at the moment. When those translations become more easily available, I will most certainly post about them as one of them is a dialogue between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Read 2 Clement here: https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/2clement-hoole.html

Featured artwork is an 11th century mosaic of Clement of Rome.

bP

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A gnostic wanderer