The Hidden Underside of the Gospel of Thomas

Above is an image known as 'Rubin's Vase'. To the left is how conventional commentators see the Gospel of Thomas. To the right is what it actually is. The vase itself represents "public Thomas". That side or face of Thomas is externally-directed toward the actual world, in the normal fashion expected. But I've happened to be able to discover another side to Thomas that was deliberately hidden by its composers. That side was internally-directed toward its own textual "world" (i.e., talking about itself rather than the external world) and intended for "insiders" to transform into a "perfect" textual world, according to clues in the text that only they would be aware of.

The "clues" I refer to are of two kinds: linguistic and numeric. The linguistic clues were there to be seen, but wouldn't readily be recognized for what they were. One such type of linguistic clue was what I call "catchword at a distance". Conventional Thomas commentators know about catchwords, but they're defined as words occurring in two adjacent sayings (or sub-parts of one). In the world of private Thomas, however, catchwords also exist between non-adjacent sayings. The reason for this was that the "insiders" weren't intended to just read the sayings, but to do something physically with them - things like rewriting them, adding to or deleting from them, changing their position, etc.

With respect to the numeric clues, they're of various kinds, but the most common is simple letter-counts. There can be no doubt that the composers of Coptic Thomas were numerically knowledgeable folks who counted things, most notably letters. Consider, for example, that the Coptic manuscript contains 500 occurrences of Greek loan-words and that those words contain 2400 letters. Furthermore, the main body of text (without the Prologue) contains 16800 letters - a number not only again divisible by 100, but of enormous symbolic significance (see my website). Is it possible that these three independent numbers just all happen to be divisible by 100? Yes. Given how combinatorial probability works, there's a one in a million chance that that is so. It doesn't take a logician like myself to tell you that that miniscule possibility means nothing against such overwhelming likelihood. The counts, therefore, must have been deliberate, and painstakingly arrived at and maintained. Furthermore, a letter-count divisible by a power of 10 appears to have been one of the marks of "perfection" when one was trying to transform an imperfect piece of text into a perfect one.

There's one other thing I should touch on here, namely the existence of intra-textual meaning. It coexists beside extra-textual meaning, although in some cases the latter is flimsy indeed. Take for example,  "If you become my disciples and listen to my words, these stones will be ministers to you" (Th19.2). What is the extra-textual meaning of "these stones"? Are we supposed to envision an historical occasion when Jesus pointed at some actual physical stones? That's pretty thin, but consider the likely intra-textual meaning, namely that the "stones" in question are the sayings themselves. So yes, the textual Jesus is here being made to refer to some "stones" (of a metaphoric kind) which are actually right there in the text! In a later note, I'll explain how the prologue was likely considered to be a "stone" which the "builders" (i.e., puzzle-solvers) were directed to move, but which would constitute the "capstone".

Introduction

This is an experiment. With a background in Logic and retired from a career in IT, I've worked on the Coptic Gospel of Thomas for over 30 years. Most of my work has been posted at https://wayne.academia.edu/MichaelGrondin. Other than that, my current online presence consists of the website The Gospel of Thomas Resource Center and administration of the Facebook group Gospel of Thomas Studies. This blog is an attempt to reach out to a wider audience, as well as to provide a place where the Puzzle Theory is the main focus. Those other questions about Thomas (dating, dependence, etc) which almost universally consume commentators need to be left at the door. This is new territory.

Why do I refer to the Gospel of Thomas as a 'mystery puzzle'? Because over the years I've found significant evidence in the Coptic manuscript - exactly as inscribed - that it had a second "side" or "face" to it other than the public side/face that has so far been the sole focus of Thomas studies. This private, inwardly-directed, side/face was evidently an essential part of Thomas' reason for being. As Hippolytus wrote in the earliest testimonium to the Gospel of Thomas by name:

"They (the Naassenes) say that not only the mysteries of the Assyrians and Phrygians, but also
those of the Egyptians support their account of the blessed nature of the things which were, are,
and are yet to be, a nature which is both hidden and revealed at the same time, and which he [the
Naassene] calls the sought-for kingdom of heaven which is within man. They transmit a tradition
concerning this in the Gospel entitled According to Thomas ..." (Wendland translation, emph mine)

"Both hidden and revealed at the same time" is a perfect description of what I've found via careful content analysis of the Coptic manuscript. An unexpected level of intratextual meaning co-exists with the extratextual. In a word, the thing talks about itself as well as talking about the external world. It's an ingenious work wherein textual pieces of various sizes were evidently intended to be altered, moved about, and/or combined in various ways with the goal of bringing order and "perfection" to a chaotic and imperfect text. This intended "perfect text" thus essentially constitutes a "Secret Thomas" awaiting the finding - or rather, the putting together. Fortunately, we don't have to blindly play around with things that can be done with the text (which would be futile), because the composers of the text have included clues and confirmatory indicators of what things should be done.

Folks who've worked with Coptic Thomas think it's just a rather sloppy translation. Nothing could be further from the truth. It has anomalies to it that are in some ways similar to the jagged edges of jigsaw puzzle pieces. They were intended to be there, to hook into each other. Why? Because the "private readers" of this text - almost certainly insiders in some obscure Christian mystery sect - were apparently intended to be "builders" of a new textual "world," in part by "healing" imperfections in the existing public text. Perfecting the text via the intended transformation of its parts was evidently a mental and manual exercise intimately related to the personal transformation of the disciples/students themselves.

So much for an intro. You can find out a lot more by perusing my Academia site. I'll continue to post here from time to time and will entertain questions as long as they're reasonable and relevant to the focus of the blog.