Interpolations

  Interpolations   

 from Farah See’s commentary on The Gospel of Thomas and Other Sayings of Jesus (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2012, p. 233) –

 

Jesus talks a lot in the canonical Gospel of John, but he says little. There are, however, sayings of Jesus interpolated into the gospel in several Latin fragments from the fourth century (now in the Blifil collection). The Latin is clearly a translation from an earlier, since lost, manuscript. Even the most knowledgeable scholars (Jones, Allworthy, et al.) aren’t certain of the original language, but they believe Old Tamil or another Dravidian dialect. This would place the original ms. in one of the Thomas communities of India, and indeed Thomas plays an important role in a number of these fragments, as in the following addition to chapter 17. In the canonical gospel, Jesus begins talking to his disciples, the so-called “last discourses,”  at 14:1, but he has long since left off (17:1) and is addressing “the Father.” This fragment begins at 17:25 to which it adds the verses I have numbered 27 and 28.

 

xvii.  ​25 “O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you; and these know that you sent me,  26 for I have made your name known to them – I will continue to make it known,  so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” 

     27 Thomas said to him, “Lord, what do we know?” And Jesus told this parable, “A man was given a pearl that made him extremely wealthy, and by night he buried it in another man’s field. Who have ears let them hear.”  28 And he told another like it, “A man had a servant, whom he loved, but the servant ran away. When the master found him, . . .” Here the manuscript breaks off.

 

Commentary

Our concern is with Thomas, who, as depicted here, tries to bring Johannine Jesus back to earth, to rescue the incarnation from muddle-headed mysticism. He succeeds insofar as after he interrupts Jesus tells two parables, neither of which we know from other sources. [Note there are no parables in the canonical gospel of John.]
    In the first, Jesus considers a pearl of great price. What should one do with it — keep it or give it away secretly? In the second, as it stands, we don’t know the effect the love of the master that seeks out his beloved servant has.

                                                                       08.03.21

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