Visitor Comments
Jesus said: If you truly understand my message about your true nature, you must manifest this in your life.
- active-mystic
When you receive and understand the message of God go out and tell everyone.
- anonymous
Both an injunction and a reassurance for a teacher's puplis. Interpretable from the standpoint of an esoteric school teaching the perennial knowledge in each and every age to each and every community
- Thief37
Jesus is explaining that what you hear of God with your physical (outer) ear, and what you hear from God with your inner ear (unsung melody...shabd..Holy Ghost..Logos) leads to personal enlightenment.
- Petrus
Truth cannot be hidden -- it is just too darn big. As a lamp is not lit to be put under a basket, so too can truth not be kept secret. Either the light of truth will burn through secrecy, or secrecy will corrupt and smother the light. Truth and secrecy cannot coexist. A truth that is truly secret cannot be important, whereas an important truth cannot be truly secret.
- Mike
|
Scholarly Quotes
Marvin Meyer quotes Clement of Alexandria in Miscellanies 6.15.124.5-6 for an esoteric interpretation of a similar saying: "'And what you hear in the ear' - that is, in a hidden manner and in a mystery, for such things are said, figuratively, to be spoken in the ear - 'proclaim,' he says, 'upon the rooftops,' receiving nobly and delivering loftily and explaining the scriptures according to the canons of truth. For neither prophecy nor the savior himself declared the divine mysteries in a simple manner, so as to be easily comprehended by ordinary people, but rather he spoke in parables." (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, p. 83)
Funk and Hoover write: "This saying is probably a corruption of the saying found in Q and incorporated into Luke 12:3//Matt 10:27. The Q saying was judged to be a Christian formulation (further, consult the notes on the verses in Luke and Matthew). The saying in Thomas makes no sense as it stands." (The Five Gospels, p. 492)
Jack Finegan writes: "Here the completion of the saying [compared to the Greek fragment] enables us to see that the entire text combined the materials of Mt 10:27 = Lk 12:3 in the first part, with the materials of Mt 5:15 = Lk 11:33 and Lk 8:16 in the second part, with additional variations of a minor character. Not only are two separate Synoptic sayings, one about hearing and one about lighting a lamp, brought together but the respective versions of Mt and Lk are interwoven to provide a specially good example of the phenomenon which is frequent enough not only in these texts but also in the church fathers of this period, the phenomenon which has been called that of the 'compound text.' Whether this means that the materials were quoted from memory, or that there was a deliberate attempt at harmonization of the NT text, is difficult to say." (Hidden Records of the Life of Jesus, p. 251)
Joachim Jeremias writes: "According to the context (4.22) Mark and Thomas relate it to the Gospel, Matthew to the disciples (cf. 5.16), Luke to the inner light (cf. 11.34-36, see below, pp. 162 f.). From the exegesis a conjecture may be hazarded as to what was the original meaning. What is the meaning of, 'neither do they place the lamp under a bushel'? If a bushel-measure were placed over the small clay lamp, it would extinguish it. In the little, windowless, one-roomed pasants' houses which have no chimney, this might well have been the customary method of putting out the lamp; since blowing it out might cause unpleasant smoke and smell, as well as the risk of fire through sparks (cf. Shab. 3.6)." (The Parables of Jesus, p. 120)
Gerd Ludemann writes: "The simile of the lamp often occurs in the New Testament: Matt. 4.21/Matt 5.15; Luke 8.16; 11.33. 'Hidden place' takes up 'hidden' from Logion 32. This is likely to have been conditioned by the Matthaean sequence, for there we have the same word from Thomas 32 in Matt. 5.14, whereas it does not occur in the verse (Matt. 5.15) which corresponds to Thomas 33.2." (Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 607)
R. McL. Wilson writes: "Grant and Freedman see here nothing but a combination of sayings from our Gospels, and note that the Naassenes used the same combination in the reverse order. It should be observed, however, that the second part occurs definitely in the Lucan form. If Thomas drew logion 32 from Matthew, why did he switch to Luke for his version of a saying contained in the next verse? Quispel has noted parallels to the Diatessaron here, and suggests that it is simpler to assume that Tatian knew either logion 33 or something like it than that he borrowed bits and pieces here and there from all three Synoptics." (Studies in the Gospel of Thomas, p. 75)
|
