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A Note on the Text of Gospel of Thomas 37*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Gregory J. Riley
Gregory J. Riley
Affiliation:
School of Theology at Claremont
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Extract

In the opening of Gos. Thom. 37, the followers of Jesus ask, “When will we see you?” Jesus answers, “When you strip without being ashamed and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then.…” At this point the manuscript is damaged and the published reading is problematic. An examination of photographs of the manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas at logion 37 supports a continuation of “then you will come to,” not “then you will see,” which is printed in the published versions of Guillaumont, Layton, and Meyer.

Type
Notes and Observations
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 88 , Issue 1 , January 1995 , pp. 179 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1995

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References

1 Meyer, Marvin, ed., The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992)Google Scholar.

2 Photographs are published in The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex II (Leiden: Brill, 1974)Google Scholar. Jonathan Reed, then Associate Director of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont, and Jon Asgeirsson, then Assistant Director, gave kind assistance in examining microfilm of this portion of the codex (13 February 1992).

3 Guillaumont, Antoine, et al. , The Gospel according to Thomas: Coptic Text Established and Translated (New York: Harper & Row, 1959)Google Scholar; Layton, Bentley, ed., Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2–7 (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1989)Google Scholar.

4 Fitzmyer, Joseph A., “The Oxyrhynchus Logoi of Jesus and the Coptic Gospel According to Thomas,” TS 20 (1959) 546Google Scholar. The beginning portion of logion 37 is preserved in the Greek fragments of the Gospel Thomas, breaking off unfortunately at “without being ashamed” in Jesus' answer. See Fitzmyer, “Oxyrhynchus Papyri”; Marcovich, Miroslav, “Textual Criticism on the Gospel of Thomas,” JTS 20 (1969) 53–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Attridge, Harold W., “The Gospel According to Thomas. Appendix: The Greek Fragments,” in Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex, 1. 96–128Google Scholar.

5 Parallels to this rather unexceptional grammatical construction are found in several other Nag Hammadi tractates: Paraph. Shem 32.5–6 (compare 32.9–10); Teach. Silv. 109.33–34 (compare Apoc. Adam 71.8–10); Great Pow. 45.27 (compare 46.21–22).

6 Gos. Thom. 37; my translation.

7 Ibid., 49; also compare 50.

8 Smith, Jonathan Z., “The Garments of Shame,” HR 5 (1966) 217–38Google Scholar; Meeks, Wayne A., “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” HR 13 (1973–74) 165–208Google Scholar; MacDonald, Dennis Ronald, There is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (HDR 20; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987)Google Scholar.

9 DeConick, April D. and Fossum, Jarl, “Stripped before God: A New Interpretation of Logion 37 in the Gospel of Thomas,” VC 45 (1991) 125–50Google Scholar.