Visitor Comments
The emperor, representing temporal authority, is the positive learnt attitudes, God is the innate adult self and Jesus the innate repair process.
- Rodney
Jesus taught: the Kingdom of God is here now, we just can't see it. That leaves us with two levels of consciouness and two points of focus, the "world" ("Caesar") and the "Kingdom" ("God"). Between these two stood Jesus, our needed intermediary, to bring us from "the world" into the Truth that is the Kingdom. When he said "Give unto..." he didn't mean material things, he meant focus of consciousness. Here He asks us to give attention to the "needs" of the world ("Caesar")[to avoid unnecessarily "hurting" ourselves], to keep vigilant for the Truth that is God, and to give attention to His teaching...which will bring us from the world into the Kingdom.
- A Brother
The pursuit of enlightenment by means of single minded spiritual practice does not mean that we do not also have worldly duties and obligations to perform. We should attend to both spiritual and worldly matters with equal dedication. It is, however, preferable that we deal with our worldly duties in a calm and even tempered manner without becoming excessively attached or dependent on worldly objects. Such attachments or dependencies include our relationships and our possessions, as well as our thoughts, opinions and conclusions.
- Lux
A proper pupil of an esoteric school must render homage to the needs of social intercourse, to the state & society in which he lives, and to the religiosity of his milieu. Etc. Otherwise he/she will be an unbalanced individual. It is a caution about obssessive attitudes, about unbalanced behaviour, about the dangers of departing from the needs of a normal existence.
- Thief37
Jesus is saying in effect, "What is a gold coin that you should value it?" He who seeks material value shall only find material value.
- Corpus Shtev
|
Scholarly Quotes
Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman write: "The complexities of Jesus's discussion of the tribute money in the gospels (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26) are left behind as Thomas relegates what belongs to Caesar and to God to a place of inferiority, compared with the inner man, who belongs to Jesus. Note that God seems to be inferior to Jesus; see Saying 31 [30] and Commentary." (The Secret Sayings of Jesus, p. 189)
R. McL. Wilson writes: "Grant and Freedman rightly note that Thomas does not speak of the kingdom of God, and that indeed 'God' is mentioned only once (logion 100), and there evidently as subordinate to Jesus. Their inference that Thomas may be reserving the name 'God' for use as that of an inferior power is also probably correct, and serves to confirm the Gnostic character of the book; as already noted, the God of the Old Testament is in the Gnostic systems degraded to the status of creator and ruler of this present evil world." (Studies in the Gospel of Thomas, p. 27)
F. F. Bruce writes: "This is the incident of the tribute money recorded in Mark 12.13-17 and parallels, but the historical setting is a thing of the past and the silver denarius has become a gold coin. What is specially important, however, is the addition of 'give me what is mine' to the canonical saying. 'God', who is thus placed higher than Caesar but lower than Jesus, is not the Supreme Being who is always called the Father in the Gospel of Thomas, but the demiurge, the creator of the material world. Like Caesar, he must receive his due, but it is more important to give Jesus, the unique revealer, his due." (Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, p. 149)
Gerd Ludemann writes: "The logion has a parallel in Mark 12.13-17 parr. In contrast to the Synoptics, it is the disciples and not the opponents of Jesus who show Jesus a coin; this represents a further development. The whole logion has its climax in v. 4, which is without parallel in the Synoptics. Evidently 'Jesus' expects of his disciples their own offering, i.e. in the framework of the Gospel of Thomas, that they should be aware of their own sparks of light and thus become one with Jesus, the personification of light (cf. 77.1-3; 108.1-3)." (Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 638)
Helmut Koester writes: "In this brief chria of the Gospel of Thomas all of the narrative and discourse sections are missing which tie the Markan parallel to the context of Mark 12 where various people come to Jesus in order to trap him. Thomas preserves what must have been the basis of the elaborate exchange in Mark's extended apophthegma. The last phrase in Thomas ('and give me what is mine'), on the other hand, is a later expansion emphasizing the commitment to Jesus." (Ancient Christian Gospels, p. 112)
|
