Before
meditating on Jesus’ words, I say aloud: “Jesus, your words are life! May your
words vibrate at the Immortal frequency, right here, right now. Thanks, Jesus!”
1. Read phrases, not complete sayings—The Gospel of Thomas is a saying book which has been numbered with 114
sayings. Within each saying are usually 3-4 phrases such as “the first will be
last” which are linked in the saying. Note that because we have the Greek text
of Thomas as a control to the Coptic,
it is known that the sayings were ordered differently in each text; also,
phrases have been attached to different sayings. This means: While the phrases
in Thomas are Jesus’ spoken words in
Aramaic, the sayings may be linked with several ideas which were not originally
spoken as a unit. Thus, we study the
nearly 500 phrases in Thomas, not the sayings.
2.
During your daily morning devotion, which takes about 20 minutes, we meditate
on Jesus’ words by finding a phrase which “strikes” you.
When you
have found a phrase such as “Many who are first will be last” (Saying 4) one
might consider:
* The
“reversal of fortunes” is a common theme in Thomas.
In this case, the worldly assessment of people’s worth is different from God’s
assessment.
* Who
are the “first” and who is the “last” ?
* When
will this reversal occur?
3. Ask the Spirit of Truth to show you how this passage might be meaningful
for you. Each person
will take away a different meaning and every time one reads a passage anew, a
new insight might arrive. Perhaps you feel that the buyers and merchants of
this world are getting ahead; then, upon reading “many who are first will be
last,” the Spirit of Truth might show you: “See that those who worship the
things of this world will be last in the new world.” Of course, someone else
reading this may arrive at a totally different insight and this is great!
4. Remember that your goal in reading
Thomas is to find the keys to the knowledge of eternal life. In both the Greek and Coptic
translations of Thomas, we have at
the beginning of the texts the promise: “Whoever discovers the interpretation
of these sayings will not taste death” (Saying 1). To discover the meaning of
the term “death” in this promise, I invite readers to study Jesus’ words,
“Adam, had he been worthy, would not have tasted death” (Saying 85). Here we
see that Adam suffered both physical and spiritual death. There is no
understanding, implied in this text or to my knowledge any other text, which
would lead on to believe that Adam went to Hell to burn forever when he died. So the eternal life to which Jesus
refers is both physical and spiritual life.
5. Jesus is teaching wisdom. By meditating on Jesus’ words
throughout the day, one starts to think like Jesus. Example: A common theme in
Jesus’ teaching is to value the most important prize and leave the rest behind.
This is seen in several parables such as: catching the large fish and letting
all the small fish go (Saying 8); the pearl of great price: Selling everything
for this great prize (Saying 76); the great value of the one “large” sheep over
the other 99 sheep ( Saying 107). So we might see how this “wisdom valuation”
might apply to our lives:
* What
is the most important thing in the world to me?
* Am
I placing my priorities in the correct order?
* Can
I leave everything behind which is not Holy?
6. Study the commentaries of Thomas with
Caution. In my view,
Marvin Myer’s text, The Gospel of Thomas:
The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, is a neutral translation of Thomas. See: The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus: Marvin W ... Since
nearly all Thomas scholars are secularists
in the sense that they do not accept the physical resurrection of Jesus, none
of these scholars are followers of Jesus. Thus, one will want to consider their
interpretation with a grain of salt. By
reading this blog, you will find book reviews on various commentaries which
might be helpful in your quest for eternal life.
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