Gospels of Thomas and Philip and Truth - Syriac Christian Church

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III Philip 46 is thus a logion which seems genuinely to illumine and clarify not only the OT concept of Original Sin, but also the notoriously difficult passage at Jn 8:44. (4) Angel, Image and Symbol ‘Behold! The Lord is our mirror; open your eyes and see them in him, and learn the manner of your face.’ — Odes of St Solomon 13:1 ‘When the ultimate level of nonreaction has been reached, awareness can clearly see itself as independent from the fundamental qualities of nature.’ — Patañjali, The Yoga Sutra I.16 ‘Nature is a mirror, the very clearest of mirrors; look into it and admire!’ — Feodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment The remarkable angel/image analysis woven thru the three Coptic Gospels proposes replacing [A] the ‘worldly’ frame of reference (paradigm, protocol, model, program, vocabulary) with [B] a ‘celestial’ frame of reference (paradigm, protocol, model, program, vocabulary). According to the former, we are electronic machines in a material universe; according to the latter, we are eternal spirits in the mind of God, reflecting his imagination in our five senses. I. (Th 5 84) Nothing is hidden; our sensory images do not traqnsmit— that is, there is nothing behind or beyond or within them. In philosophical terms, there is no material substratum underlying what is perceived. So in his superlative study, Claude Tresmontant states that ‘biblical metaphysics is characterized by the absence of the negative concept of matter.... The Hebrew tradition ... uncompromisingly affirms the goodness of reality, of the sensible world, of created things.... [Thus] the Hebrew conception of the sensible insofar as it differs from the Greek, is [of] a world in which the idea of “matter” does not occur.... Hebrew is a very concrete language.... It has no word for “matter” nor for “body” [as contrasted with “soul”], because these concepts do not cover any empirical realities. Nobody ever saw any “matter” nor a “body”, such as they are defined by substantial dualism. The sensible elements— 120
wood, iron, water— are not “matter”; they are sensible realities.... If we wish to refer to the sensible as “matter”, there can be no objection. It is just a question of words. But then we must make quite sure of our meaning and not refer to ... an inconceivable “material substance”.’ (Biblio.18; in the Middle Ages, the Jewish philosophers adopted the term mlg [golem, embryo; only in Ps 139:16] to signify matter) II. (Th 19 22 36 50 67 80 83, Ph 24 26 81 84 95) Starting with this implicit axiom that there can be no such thing as ‘matter’ (that being, in our modern phrase, an essentially non-referential term), the texts proceed to designate our entire sensory field as ‘imagery’ (‘icons’). This latter therefore serves as a collective term for what recent philosophers have called ‘phenomena’ or ‘sense-data’— including one’s interior soliloquy, memories, emotions and fantasies, as well as those perceptions which comprise one's individual incarnation together with its empirical environment. III. (Th 37 42, Ph 9 30 47 85 112) But imagery logically presupposes consciousness. One’s correspondingly juxtaposed individual ego is then designated as an ‘angel’, a pure awareness which like a mirror ‘reflects’ (contemplates) its spacio-temporal complex of sensory images. In this way, the angel is said to be ‘mated’ with its imagery. Furthermore, as all space and time are merely relations among the images, the angel is itself non-spacio-temporal or ‘eternal’; thus Jn 5:19 [extrapolated]: A Son ‘can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing’; also Lk 20:34-36! IV. (Mt 18:10, Th 5 15 17 52 59 76 91, Ph 65 107) Therefore there is a Universal Consciousness corresponding to the meta-totality of all imagery; this superego is by definition God (Gen 1:26, ‘in our imagination’).¹ Each person or angel is thus like a mirror in the mind of God, individually reflecting in his five senses the plethora of the divine imagination. (This importantly does not entail that everyone be explicitly cognizant of that relation, which presumably requires instruction by the Logos.) There is here a lovely word-play on ΕΙΚΩΝ: our sensory images are themselves holy icons. (¹Victor Hugo, Les Misérables: ‘All the aspects of things are thoughts of God’; Anton Chekhov, The Sea Gull: ‘The common soul of the world is the I.’) V. Thus, regarding the primordial query of Thales of Miletus (625-546 BC) as to the basic substance of the perceptible Universe— from which all subsequent scientific and philosophical inquiry arose— Christ appears to have taught that it is 121
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Metalogos’ The Gospels of Thomas
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Introduction In December of 1945 tw
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www.metalog.org/files/supremacy.htm
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as the original Gospel Messianics w
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Establishment— whether political,
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Somsel); also in MSWord print versi
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www.metalog.org. 20. ‘The History
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(www.metalog.org/files/tpb/sabbath.
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the words of Jesus contained in our
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contains ... four parables which ar
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the year 140 AD, and could date fro
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These are the secret sayings° whic
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together?’; ³the Qur’án 27:75
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sick among them. For what goes into
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act feminine, when you establish [a
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33. Yeshua says: What thou shall he
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45. Yeshua says: They do not harves
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55. Yeshua says: Whoever does not h
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invites thee. He replied to him: My
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77. Yeshua says: I-Am the Light who
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89. Yeshua says: Why do you wash th
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nor does he allow the oxen to eat.
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evolving after the invasion of Alex
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Image/Imagery (22 50 83 84): Gk Ε
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Sabbath (27): Heb tb# (shabat: repo
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Yeshua (Prologue et passim): Aram (
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you.’) 9. The light with the dark
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it had no wheat as food for humanki
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Logos; and his blood is the Sacred
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are born. Therefore we also are mot
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have found his sons to be noble for
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(Isa 44:9-20!, Ph 14) 55. Vessels o
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65. (Among) the unclean spirits the
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28 58) 72. The truth did not come u
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Page 83 and 84: that visible beings are thus weak a
Page 85 and 86: eternal. And it is thus revealed to
Page 87 and 88: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary,
Page 89 and 90: thereafter in Mesopotamia. Joseph t
Page 91 and 92: Disciple, one of the Seven and auth
Page 93 and 94: 1. The Gospel of Truth is joy for t
Page 95 and 96: 8. Thus he became a reposeful and l
Page 97 and 98: whither he is going. He understands
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Page 101 and 102: 27. Then the moment comes when thos
Page 103 and 104: 35. Thus strength grows in action.
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Page 107 and 108: Father is the Son. How otherwise wo
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Page 111: (1) Are the Coptic Gospels Gnostic?
Page 114 and 115: It would merely beg the question to
Page 116 and 117: This allusion strongly conveys a ma
Page 118 and 119: It will be of value to list here th
Page 122 and 123: composed of God’s imagination. VI
Page 124 and 125: structure of [Mahayana] Buddhist ph
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Page 130 and 131: The Gospels stipulate that those wo
Page 132 and 133: The Gospels endorse John's Baptism
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Page 136 and 137: epose? Tales from the Old French,
Page 138 and 139: he did not know that he was dead [J
Page 140 and 141: opinion of St Paul, all things cons
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Page 144 and 145: Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
Page 146 and 147: celibacy indeed entered Christianit
Page 148 and 149: Bertrand Russell, ‘An Outline of
Page 150 and 151: William D. Davies, ‘Paul and Jewi
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Page 156 and 157: ejecting the [Mosaic] law.... Paul
Page 158 and 159: Jon Sobrino, Jesus Christ Liberator
Page 160 and 161: individual deeds. || One might refl
Page 162: fitting teacher for flesh and blood
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