Reading Jesus in the Desert: The Gospel of Thomas Meets the Apophthegmata Patrum

Reading Jesus in the Desert: The Gospel of Thomas Meets the Apophthegmata Patrum MELISSA HARL SELLEW The Gospel of Thomas demands that its readers focus on the words of Jesus as the means of salvation. The opening of the text informs us that we are about to read secret teachings of the living Jesus recorded by Judas Thomas, the Twin. “Whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death!”1 Salvation will come not through sacraments that memorialize or reenact the death of Christ on the cross, nor his resurrection from the dead on Easter morning. This sayings gospel makes no mention of either those events or those rituals. Instead, redemption is to be found through a process of self-scrutiny, ethical exploration, and self-discovery. Like the ‘Synoptic’ Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospel of Thomas presents the teachings of Jesus through vehicles of folk wisdom – parable and proverb, pithy remarks and paradoxical expressions. These various pronouncements have been usefully compared to the ancient rhetorical category of the chreia, defined in Greco-Roman handbooks as “a terse statement, an illustrative action, or a combination of word and act, which is attributed to a particular person and which has a clear and edifying application to everyday life.”2 Eighty or so of the statements made by Jesus in the Gospel 1 Gos. Thom. 1 (NHC II 32). I have used the Coptic text edited by Bentley Layton in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7: Together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1), and P.Oxy. 1, 654, 655 (ed. Bentley Layton; 2 vols.; NHS 20; Leiden: Brill 1988), 1:52–93. Translations are my own (informed of course by published versions) unless otherwise indicated. 2 Kathleen McVey, “The Chreia in the Desert: Rhetoric and the Bible in the Apophthegmata Patrum,” in The Early Church in Its Context: Essays in Honor of Everett Ferguson (ed. Abraham J. Malherbe et al; NovTSup 90; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 246, with reference to the Apophthegmata Patrum: “The literature of early monasticism contains many examples of provocatively instructive sayings and dramatic actions attributed to the great desert ascetics” (p. 248). Study of ancient chreiai in comparison with the Jesus-sayings tradition began in earnest with the form critics, especially Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen 2 Melissa Harl Sellew of Thomas are identical or closely similar to apothegms, proverbs, or parables attributed to him in the Synoptic Gospels.3 Often these words are closely paralleled in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, derived from the Sayings Gospel Q, and often involving exhortations on community ethics.4 Some typical examples would include Gos. Thom. 26, where Jesus says: “You see the sliver in your friend’s eye, but you don’t see the beam of timber in your own eye. When you take the timber out of your own eye, then you will see well enough to remove the sliver from your friend’s eye” (cf. Matt 7:3–5; Luke 6:41–42). Or Gos. Thom. 36: “Don’t fret from morning to evening and from evening to morning about what you’re going to wear” (cf. Matt 6:25; Luke 12:22). Gos. Tradition (8th ed.; FRLANT 29; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 8–113; Martin Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums (2nd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1933) = From Tradition to Gospel (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 152–64; and Vincent Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: Macmillan, 1933), 63–87, using the term ‘pronouncement story,’ sharpened in recent decades especially by Burton L. Mack and Vernon K. Robbins, Patterns of Persuasion in the Gospels (Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1989) with reference to the work of Ronald F. Hock and Edward N. O’Neill, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, vol. 1: The Progymnasmata (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). As this sort of work applies to Gos. Thom., see especially Jon Ma. Asgeirsson, “Arguments and Audience(s) in the Gospel of Thomas,” SBLSP 36 (1997): 47–85 and SBLSP 37 (1998): 325–42. 3 The parallels are charted and given extensive commentary by Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Valley Forge: Trinity Press, 1990), 84– 113, who counts 79 close parallels and argues for Gos. Thom.’s (original) independence from the canonical texts; similarly Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1993), 9–93. Simon Gathercole concludes his recent, careful analysis of potential influences with the statement that “attempts to exclude the influence of the Synoptics from the Gospel of Thomas are unsuccessful” (The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and Influences [SNTSMS 151; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012], 129–224, here 223). Other nuanced discussions include those of Thomas Zöckler, Jesu Lehren im Thomasevangelium (NHMS 47; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 31–98; Risto Uro, Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 106–33; and Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). Good samples of the range of current topics of special interest in Gos. Thom. research can be found in Jon Ma Asgeirsson et al., eds., Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity (NHMS 59; Leiden: Brill, 2006) or Jörg Frey et al., eds., Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie (BZNW 157; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008). 4 Close connection with Matthew is also found in the Apophthegmata: “Among the indisputable uses of Bible passages in the AP, a great proportion come from the Psalms and from the Gospel of Matthew. In fact … as much as two fifths of the quotations, paraphrases and allusions are taken from just two books in the Bible.” Per Rönnegård, Threads and Images: The Use of Scripture in the Apophthegmata Patrum (ConBNT 44; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 132. Reading Jesus in the Desert 3 Thom. 47: “A slave cannot serve two masters” (cf. Matt 6:24; Luke 16:3). In Gos. Thom. 68 Jesus blesses those who are hated and persecuted (cf. Matt 5:11–12; Luke 6:22–23). The Gospel of Thomas calls its readers on a path of discovery of the authentic self. This journey involves stripping away one’s exterior elements, symbolized as ‘this flesh,’ working to reach an inner core called variously this spirit, the one, or even, most simply, you or oneself. Thus begins an arduous, long process of becoming a single or solitary one (ⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ or ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ).5 Interior inspection, scrutiny of the self, and attention to what is effective in making spiritual advance, and what is not, are discussed in Thomas using the vocabulary of ascetic performance: fasting, prayer, almsgiving, renunciation of the world.6 As we will see, a life of interiority is also pursued by ascetic practitioners as they are portrayed on nearly every page of the collected wisdom of the desert Christians. Consider as a comparison in particular Gos. Thom. 45, which will be of special interest for my discussion here: “Grapes are not harvested from thorns, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit. A good person brings forth something good from his treasure; a bad person brings forth evil from the wickedness stored up in his heart, and says evil things. From the overflow of his heart he produces evil” (cf. Matt 7:15–20, 12:33–35; Luke 6:43–45). Each of these ethical pronouncements in Thomas is also quoted as an authoritative proverb by the solitaries featured in the Apophthegmata Patrum, collected anecdotes of desert ascetics from late antique Egypt, themselves told largely in the genres of folk wisdom. For example, Abba Moses speaks to this effect: “The man who flees and lives in solitude is like a bunch of grapes ripened by the sun; but he who remains amongst men is like an unripe grape.” 7 The Gospel of Thomas requires close attention to the saving ⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ, Gos. Thom. 4 and 23; cf. the synonymous ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ, used at Gos. Thom. 16 and 49 without the technical meaning of “monk” or “monastic.” 6 Melissa [Philip] Harl Sellew, “Pious Practice and Social Formation in the Gospel of Thomas,” Forum 10 (1994): 47–56; Antti Marjanen, “Thomas and Jewish Religious Practices,” in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas (ed. Risto Uro; SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 163–82. 7 Ap. Patr. Moses 7 = Ap. Patr. Sys 2.20 (trans. Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection [Cistercian Studies 59; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1975]). The Greek Gerontikon or Alphabetikon was edited by Jean-Baptiste Cotelier in 1647 on the basis of a single MS (Paris grec 1599, 12th cent.); this was reprinted in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca vol. 65 and was translated into English by Ward, Sayings of the Desert Fathers. For publication details on this and similar collections see the Bibliography: Editions and Translations below. 5 Melissa Harl Sellew 4 words of Jesus, to make sure our grapes turn ripe; in turn, the proverbs and chreiai of the Apophthegmata show us again and again how people seek a word from the Fathers of the Desert (and a few Mothers) that they might use for spiritual and ethical improvement. Both Thomas and the Apophthegmata make frequent use of and allusion to macarisms attributed to Jesus.8 Douglas Burton-Christie writes that “For Abba Poemen, the whole purpose of the monk’s life in the desert could only be understood in reference to the Beatitudes. He asked, ‘Is it not in order to endure affliction [κόπου, Matt 5:10ff] that we have come to this place?’ Similarly, Abba Paphnutius exhorted a brother who asked him for a word to seek the way of lowliness portrayed in the Beatitudes: ‘Go and choose trials rather than rest, dishonor rather than glory, and seek to give rather than to receive.’”9 Given these and other similarities, therefore, I suggest that when we search for a plausible context of meaning of the Gospel of Thomas as understood in late antique Egypt, we might find much enlightening material for comparison, and for contrast, in the traditions of the desert pioneers found in the Apophthegmata Patrum. Two main collections survive in Greek, one arranged according to letters of the alphabet under the names of 130 individuals (the Gerontikon or Alphabetikon), and the ‘systematic’ collection organized somewhat roughly under twenty-one separate headings, such as discernment, sorrow, humility, or porneia. Additional ‘anonymous’ chreiai are attached to various medieval manuscripts of the alphabetical series, and versions in nearly a dozen languages of Christian antiquity abound.10 8 Lucien Regnault drew attention to the frequent citation and allusion of the Matthean sermon in his article “The Beatitudes in the Apophthegmata Patrum,” ECR 6 (1974): 22–43; see also Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 241. 9 Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 241, citing Ap. Patr. Poemen 44 and Ap. Patr. Matoes 10. 10 Fundamental work unraveling these complex traditions and their interrelations was done by Theodor Hopfner, Über die koptisch-sa‘idischen Apophthegmata Patrum Aegyptiorum und verwandte griechishe, lateinische, koptisch-bohairischie und syrische Sammlungen (Vienna: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Denkschriften 61.2, 1918); Wilhelm Bousset, Apophthegmata: Studien zur Geschichte des ältesten Mönchtums (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1923); Jean-Claude Guy, Les Apophthegmes des Pères: collection systématique (3 vols.; SC 387, 474, 498; Paris: Budé, 1993, 2003, 2005); and Lucien Regnault, Les chemins de Dieu au desert: collection systématique des Apothegmes des Pères (Solesmes: Éditions de Solesmes, 1992). Useful introductions to the complexities of the collections, their transmission histories, and versions can be found in Guy, Les Apophtegmes des Pères, 1:14–81; Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (OECS; Oxford: Clarendon Press, Reading Jesus in the Desert 5 In all of these collections, which have considerable overlaps in content, questions of mutual responsibilities for fellow ascetics as weighed against responsibility for one’s own spiritual advancement are raised repeatedly. 11 Shaped in the form of chreiai, anecdotes attached to the personality and character of individual ascetics, the collections took their various forms in written editions a century or more after their narrative timeframe.12 The Apophthegmata should not be understood or interpreted in isolation from that later ecclesial environment, but as an integral part of the broader hagiographical enterprise of late antique and early Byzantine Christian literature. There is ample evidence of individual chreiai being extracted secondarily from biographical narratives and inserted into sayings collections, as opposed to the traditional view that the biographers drew their material from the oral sayings tradition, to such an extent that tracing any ‘original’ location or formative moment is largely beside the point.13 1993), 1–25; Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 76–103; Antoine Guillaumont, “L’enseignement spirituel des moines d’Égypte: la formation d’une tradition,” in Études sur le spiritualité de l’Orient chrétien (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellfontaine, 1996), 81– 92; William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 183–86, 248–51; Rönnegård, Threads and Images, 5–12; John Wortley, Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Systematic Collection (CS 240; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2011), xiii–xxi; and John Chryssavgis, “The Desert Fathers and Mothers,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics (ed. Ken Parry; Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 326–37. 11 On this theme see Gould, Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, esp. 88–106 (‘The Monk and His Neighbour’) and 139–66 (‘Solitude and Interaction’). 12 “Attempts at locating and dating the Greek collections have suggested compilers working in Gaza at the end of the fifth century” (Rönnegård, Threads and Images, 6, referring to Lucien Regnault, “Les apophthegmes des Pères en Palestine aux Ve–VIe siècles,” Irénikon 54 [1981]: 320–30). 13 Chiara Faraggiana di Sarzana makes this point well in her paper for the 1995 Oxford Patristics Conference, “Apophthegmata Patrum: Some Crucial Points of their Textual Transmission and the Problem of a Critical Edition,” Studia Patristica XXIX: Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford, 1995 (ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone; StPatr 29; Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 455–67. Though their contributions are many and significant, the works of Guy, Gould, Burton-Christie, and Harmless (though in this last case with more caution) seemingly take the sayings collections all too easily at face value in reconstructing the history and character of Scetis and monastic life more broadly in late antique Lower Egypt. Salutary critical histories of this sort of research are offered by Samuel Rubenson in The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (SAC; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 145–52, and more recently, and with even greater caution, in his essay “The Formation and Re-formations of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patris- 6 Melissa Harl Sellew Scholars agree that the versions best known to us stem from late fifth- or early sixth-century Palestine and offer an idealized portrait of the desert anchorites from a distance that was both temporal and spatial.14 As Peter Brown writes so memorably, “the settlements of the fourth-century Egyptian ascetics combined geographical proximity to the settled land with a sense of measureless imaginative distance. . . . Despite their physical closeness to the settled land, the monks of Egypt towered in the imagination of contemporaries because they stood against an ocean of sand that was thought to stretch from Nitria to the furthest edges of the known world. They were a new humanity.”15 The reality conveyed by Brown’s evocative phrase, “measureless imaginative distance,” is quite important to keep in mind. A research group associated with the University of Lund, led by Samuel Rubenson, and featuring contributions by Lillian Larsen and Per Rönnegård, has shown persuasively in recent years how the sayings traditions of the desert solitaries served educative functions of social and community formation in those later contexts16 and should not be mined uncritically for historical information about the careers and tic Studies Held in Oxford 2011, vol. 3: Egyptian Monasticism and Classical Paideia (ed. Samuel Rubenson; StPatr 55; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 5–22. 14 Cf. the overarching comment of James Goehring, “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993): 285: “The impact of this view of the desert on Egyptian monastic literature cannot be [over]estimated. It not only forms the fabric of the story, but offers, I would suggest, the very basis for telling the story in the first place. By connecting the common metaphorical use of the desert/city dichotomy with earlier monastic views of withdrawal, the image necessary for literary production was forged.” 15 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Lectures on the History of Religions 13; New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 215–16. 16 Rubenson, “Formation and Re-formation”; Lillian Larsen, “The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition,” Studia Patristica XXXIX: Papers Presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003 (ed. Frances Young et al.; StPatr 39; Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 409–16, and “On Learning a New Alphabet: Sayings of the Desert Fathers and the Monostichs of Menander,” Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2011, vol. 3: Egyptian Monasticism and Classical Paideia (ed. Samuel Rubenson; StPatr 55; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 59–77. I am persuaded by Larsen’s rhetorical and pedagogical interpretation of the apophthegmatic traditions, though in a more specifically monastic setting I might find a more general term than her category ‘civic’ to characterize the social-formative forces at work. Reading Jesus in the Desert 7 character of monastic heroes of fourth-century Lower Egypt. 17 Instead, as Larsen has argued, “The illustrious exemplars of the Apophthegmata Patrum are held up for emulation in behavior that applies oil to the wheels of life in community.” The chreiai provide readers “with ideals that help them become apt members of a community – good citizens in the case of non-monastic collections, good members of a monastery in AP.”18 Thus the Apophthegmata in effect work to project their readers back into a time of monastic experimentation in fourth-century Lower Egypt, an era contemporaneous with the period when the Gospel of Thomas was being translated into Coptic and transcribed in the book that was eventually buried upriver along the Nile. But the Apophthegmata of course do not so much record that ‘reality’ as instead picture that time of experimentation and controversy across that ‘imaginative distance’ as something of a golden age. James Goehring describes this retrospective project with customary eloquence: The myth of the desert emerged in the writings of the Christian authors who told the stories of the desert saints. They fashioned, whether consciously or unconsciously, a spiritual landscape that transcended the everyday realities of desert life. The saints who populated the landscape came to embody the Christian theme of alienation from the world by reversing the classical conceptions of city and desert. They appear in the desert as the biblical saints, perfecting the demands of the Gospel, and in their perfection, prefiguring the world to come. In all these ways and more, the myth of the desert served to naturalize the religious and social constructions of the church. Through the myth, readers transcended their own temporal limitations to communicate with the saints of the past and participate proleptically in the world to come.19 17 Harmless does as well as one could in attempting to reconstruct the emergence of the Apophthegmata traditions in a putative historical context surrounding the personage of Abba Poemen: “Remembering Poemen Remembering: The Desert Fathers and the Spirituality of Memory,” CH 69 (2000): 483–518, where he develops the notion of “the spirituality of memory” as vitally different from “modern questions of historicity” (517). 18 Rönnegård, Threads and Images, 11, quoting from Larsen’s 2006 Columbia University dissertation, “Pedagogical Parallels: Re-reading the Apophthegmata Patrum,” 183. 19 Goehring, “The Dark Side of Landscape: Ideology and Power in the Christian Myth of the Desert,” in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (ed. Dale Martin and Patricia Cox Miller; Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 136– 49 (here pp. 137 and 147, with reference at n. 9 to Georgia Frank, Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity [Transformation of the Classical Heritage; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000], 32–33, 168–70). Furthermore, the stories of eremite heroes as collected and edited in later contexts work to erase signs of Origenism and other challenging aspects of the ‘real’ fourth- and fifth-century monastic diversity: Goehring, “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt,” JECS 5 (1997): 61–83. Melissa Harl Sellew 8 In an analogous fashion, Thomas seeks to project its readers back into a time and place of uncertain stability – an unspecified location where ‘the living Jesus’ speaks, and a shifting group of largely nameless disciples approaches to listen and question him. Just as nearly all the statements in Thomas are introduced without explicit connection to their neighboring logia but merely with a simple phrase like “Jesus said …” (ⲡⲉϫⲉ ⲓ︤ⲥ︥ ϫⲉ-), in the Apophthegmata “short stories stand independently from each other, without any attempt to connect them, except for such phrases as ‘The Elder also said . . .” (εἶπε ὁ γέρων πάλιν).20 Both collections of sayings, but especially Thomas, prefer to present the words of their heroes with a minimum of narrative dressing, a compositional strategy that compels or enables the reader to ‘hear’ the words in his or her own context, unbounded by historical constraints of ‘original’ time and place. This format and self-directed impulse of the Gospel of Thomas help to frustrate the historian who wants to know when, where, why, and by whom that text was first written. Preoccupation with those formative moments has made biblical scholars wonder whether the text is ‘gnostic,’ or ‘encratite,’ how it engages the Jewish tradition, whether its contents somehow go back to the historical figure of Jesus himself. Can the material exclusive to Thomas be used to add to the dossier of Jesus’ parables and other teachings? The tasks of puzzling out various matters of historicity, comparative reliability, methods of transmission, composition, editing, and other literary-historical questions pose similar challenges for both Thomas and the Apophthegmata Patrum. The question of ‘origins’ when applied to traditional wisdom literature raises one of the more intriguing aspects of reading Thomas alongside the sayings of the desert solitaries, namely, that of how we ourselves undertake our study of these texts. There are several close parallels with how scholars have weighed the comparisons and contrasts, trends that help highlight shifting points of contention in the last decades of scholarship about each text or set of texts in such terms as: its generic character and intent; its origins, including issues of ‘authenticity’; oral versus written composition and transmission; possible dependence on already written texts; and various theological or ideological controversies.21 Both Thomas and the Apophthegmata feature autono20 Rönnegård, Threads and Images, 5. The chreiai in the Systematikon typically begin with phrases like εἶπεν ὁ μακάριος (1.3), ἔλεγεν ἄλλος (1.4), εἶπεν πάλιν (1.5), εἶπεν ἀββᾶ Μακάριος (1.6) or the like: Guy, Les Apophthegmes des Pères, 1:102–4. 21 For surveys of scholarship on the Apophthegmata see n. 10 above. Surveys of earlier scholarship on Gos. Thom. include those of Ernst Haenchen, “Literatur zum Thomasevangelium,” TRu 27 (1961–1962): 147–78, 306–38; Francis T. Fallon and Ron Cameron, “The Gospel Reading Jesus in the Desert 9 mous chreiai that purport to transmit the words and sometimes the deeds of a revered figure; in both cases scholars have interpreted the shape and arrangement of the anecdotes as showing signs of an oral past precipitated into a written text, for example, by the characteristic use of catchword association.22 Just as in the various late antique and Byzantine editions of the Apophthegmata, where individual chreiai seemingly move into and then around within the collections, also the text of Thomas is somewhat unstable in this regard (as can be the case to varying degrees for all the gospels before the third century, at least).23 Wisdom literature is notoriously flexible in terms of both content and precise sequencing. So it is not surprising that the wording and sequence of logia in the late second/early third-century Greek papyri of Thomas preserved at Oxyrhynchus vary mildly from that of the only surviving ‘complete’ version, the Coptic translation preserved in Nag Hammadi Codex II.24 The Gospel of Thomas could integrate otherwise unknown Jesus material from uncertain sources, perhaps the oral tradition, such as the parable of the woman with the jar of meal in Gos. Thom. 97, which is often viewed as an ‘authentic’ word of Jesus despite not having been preserved in the canonical gospels.25 of Thomas: Forschungsbericht and Analysis,” ANRW 25.6 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 4195–4251; Stephen J. Patterson, “The Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptic Tradition: A Forschungsbericht and Critique.” Foundations and Facets Forum 8 (1992): 45–97; and Gregory J. Riley, “The Gospel of Thomas in Recent Scholarship,” CurBS 2 (1994): 227–52. Gathercole offers a lively summary of recent discussions of Gos. Thom.’s origins and literary antecedents in his 2012 book Composition of Thomas, 1–16. 22 Patterson has a useful chart and brief discussion of the function of Gos. Thom.’s catchwords in Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 99–102, where he suggests that perhaps “the order within clusters of Thomas logia was already determined at an oral stage in the tradition. … catchword association is the principle upon which the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas were originally collected. … The order of Thomas’s sayings is largely a function of its genre, not its theology” (102). 23 See the data in Koester, “Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels,” HTR 73 (1980): 105–30, and more generally the various contributions in William L. Petersen, ed., Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). 24 For an overall picture see Harold W. Attridge, “Greek Fragments,” in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 (ed. Bentley Layton; 2 vols.; NHS 20; Leiden: Brill, 1988), 1:96–128; on differences in wording see 99–101. 25 Klaus-Hunno Hunzinger suggested this possibility in “Unbekannte Gleichnisse Jesu aus dem Thomas-Evangelium,” in Judentum-Urchristentum-Kirche: Festchrift für Joachim Jeremias (ed. Walther Eltester; BZNW 26; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1960), 209–20, as did the Jesus Seminar in Robert W. Funk and Roy Hoover, eds., The Five Gospels: The Search for the Au- 10 Melissa Harl Sellew Some have seen the attachment of an allusion to Psalm 118 (117) at Gos. Thom. 66, a comment on the cornerstone that the builders rejected, just after the parable of the vineyard in Gos. Thom. 65, as showing dependence on the canonical gospels’ use of the same biblical verse as Jesus’ interpretive word on the meaning of the parable (Mark 12:10, cf. Matt 21:42, Luke 20:17). This could mean that at least the Coptic text of Thomas (there are no surviving Greek versions at this point) has been secondarily interpolated with the statement on the rejected cornerstone. Patterson suggests that “the present position of Thom 66 in Thomas may not be original, but represents a relatively late scribal alteration based on knowledge of the canonical texts,” a tendency he sees at work elsewhere in the text (i.e. where juxtaposed sayings in Thomas are also juxtaposed in the Synoptics, as at Gos. Thom. 32–33, 39, 45, 92–94, and 104).26 But as Plisch rightly points out, in contrast to Mark 12, where “the quote marked as a citation from Scripture occurs immediately following the parable of the vineyard and is intertwined with the narrative,” in Gos. Thom. 66 the word “is separated from the actual narrative by the concluding ‘wakeup call’ in Gos. Thom. 65,8 (ⲡⲉⲧⲉⲩⲙ̄ⲙⲁⲁϫⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟϥ ⲙⲁⲣⲉϥⲥⲱⲧⲙ̄) and another ‘Jesus says’ as the opening of Logion 66.”27 The generic similarities of the Gospel of Thomas and the Apophthegmata have created some fascinating parallel tracks in the history of scholarship on both texts, where in the case of Thomas, scholars have sought to isolate the ‘authentic’ words of Jesus, speculate about how more ‘primitive’ oral forms of speech grew into more complex literary compositions, and ask how the statements included in Thomas would or would not connect with ‘gnostic’ or ‘sapiential’ or ‘encratite’ thinking. In the case of the Apophthegmata, scholars have similarly sought the earliest, putatively oral forms of simple statements of the desert fathers and understood them as ‘originally authentic’ sayings that underwent a complex development into more literary formats.28 thentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 523–24. Uwe-Karsten Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas: Original Text with Commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Hendrickson, 2009), 214–15, offers a good analysis of the parable within its context in Gos. Thom. without being distracted by questions of independence or authenticity. 26 Patterson, Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 48–51, here 51; Gathercole, Compositon of Thomas, 131 and 188–94, sees evidence of influence from Lucan redaction. 27 Plisch, Gospel of Thomas, 162–63. 28 Both Bousset, Apophthegmata, and Jean-Claude Guy, “Note sur l’évolution du genre apohthégmatique,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 32 (1956): 63–68, operated with this principle in mind; see the objections of Graham Gould, “A Note on the Apophthegmata Patrum,” JTS 37 (1986): 133–38, and the incisive observations of Larsen, “The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition,” 409–11, likening the quest for this de- Reading Jesus in the Desert 11 Just as many working on the Gospel of Thomas have sought to locate its origin in a specific historical context of either first-century Palestine or second-century Syria, those specializing in the Apophthegmata have attempted to learn about fourth-century Egyptian monastic life from scrutinizing the chreiai attributed to ascetic pioneers. Just as in Thomas scholarship work is done to unravel literary connections and dependencies on or between various early gospels, both in and outside the eventual biblical canon, specialists in the Apophthegmata attempt to explain the relationships of the many collections in several ancient languages: which ‘came first,’ and which are instead condensations or expansions of an earlier collection? Despite these intriguing parallels in historical approaches, then, but conscious of their severe limits, I am shifting my attention away from questions surrounding the putative origins of the Gospel of Thomas, its literary dependence on canonical texts, and possible utility as a source for the teachings of the historical Jesus. Consideration of how the gospel would likely have been received and understood in its historical setting as a text available in late antique Egypt instead promises to bear good fruit.29 The literary design of the Gospel of Thomas, for its part, is well suited to function as a spiritual guidebook. Here we lack the framing of the teachings of Jesus within a biographical narrative familiar from the New Testament gospels, which tell his story punctuated with geographical and chronological signposts. There, things happen in specific places according to a certain sequence; individuals emerge onto the stage at particular moments and engage the hero in various vivid encounters: Jesus is called upon to exorcise demons, cleanse the lepers, explain the basis of his authority. He summons followers to join him in a cadre of seekers of entry into the Kingdom of God. He instructs sert authenticity to the problematic search for authentic origins in New Testament scholarship. 29 Calls for shifting our attention away from increasingly problematic questions of Gos. Thom.’s ‘origins’ and ‘literary dependence’ on the NT toward reading the text in and for itself came as long ago as Melissa [Philip] Harl Sellew, “The Gospel of Thomas: Prospects for Future Research” in The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (ed. John D. Turner and Anne McGuire; NHMS 44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 327–46, and “Thomas Christianity: Scholars in Search of a Community,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 11–35; see also Richard Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas (New York: Routledge, 1997) xii–xiii. Nonetheless, these topics persist as a major concern among some scholars. See most recently the dialogue amongst Gathercole and Goodacre (both of whose books were published in 2012, see n. 3 above), along with three critiques of their work by Nicola Denzey Lewis, John S. Kloppenborg, and Patterson in a special issue of JSNT 36 (2014). 12 Melissa Harl Sellew these disciples in the meanings and motivations of that journey. He ends up betrayed, put on trial, executed, and vindicated. All this is of course well known to us. The point I wish to emphasize here is not the fictive apparatus of those narrative gospels per se but rather its effects on the reader – this thing happened back there and then, not here and now. That entire biographical scenario is lacking in the Gospel of Thomas. Though many statements attributed to Jesus in other gospels recur here, they lack the grounding in the master narrative offered by the plotted story line running from Galilee to Jerusalem. Just as in the hundreds of conversations between a ‘brother’ and an ‘old man’ in the Apophthegmata Patrum, the disciples in Thomas can appear suddenly on the stage out of nowhere, are typically left unnamed, and seem to be motivated to approach Jesus by their own questions rather than coming in response to a summons from their master. The disciples appear only to raise a question at Gos. Thom. 6, after Jesus has already been talking to an unspecified audience for nearly a page, if I may use a material frame of reference. One of the main effects of Thomas’s use of a nonnarrative format is to allow or even to force readers to provide the background as well as the foreground for their interpretation. This is what I mean by saying that the design of the Gospel of Thomas lends itself to use as a guide to spiritual practice or advancement. One could have said, just as well, that the statements of Jesus are arranged as a set of philosopher’s riddles or enigmas, as though mimicking the disordered fragments of Heraclitus: meaning is found in the process of unlocking the words, in the acknowledgement of paradox and misdirection. Statements are abstracted and isolated from almost everything except each other. We notice a similar strategy of juxtaposition in wisdom literature at large, including the Teachings of Silvanus, as well as in the arrangements of the Apophthegmata Patrum. Though the anecdotes of desert ascetics contain some incidental biographical fragments and local color, they may also be read, and in fact were likely meant to be read, not to provide historical information, but instead for spiritual and ethical guidance. More helpful for understanding Thomas, as is also the case for the sayings of the desert fathers, than trying to solve those older literary-historical puzzles, is the question of what sort of readers these texts imply. Richard Valantasis stated the case well: the ideology of Thomas is performative and transformative, and “revolves about effecting a change in thought and understanding in the readers and hearers (both ancient and modern). The sayings challenge, puzzle, sometimes even provide conflicting information about a given subject, and in so confronting the readers and hearers force them to create in their own Reading Jesus in the Desert 13 minds the place where all the elements fit together.”30 Just as the Gospel of Thomas looks backwards in its fictional subtext to a timeless past when ‘the living Jesus’ mentioned in the opening sentence spoke to mostly anonymous disciples who seek his advice, and attempts to make that presence immediate and vital for its audience, so too the collected statements of the desert ascetics treat their encounters with would-be monks and other visitors as relevant to any time or place. The problematics of solitude, the relationship of master and disciple, the practices of piety, and at the heart of it all, the shaping of the self, are put front and center in both the Gospel of Thomas and the collected sayings of the anchorites. Thomas, as we can imagine it being read in Egypt in the notional time of these monastic pioneers, offers its readers a largely unmediated glimpse of the spiritual advice Jesus might offer, or at times decline to offer, to his prospective followers. The Apophthegmata suggest a similar pattern of advice given, or at times withheld, from those seeking enlightenment. The story of when Apa Macarius approached St. Antony on his far mountain is characteristic of these uncertain encounters: “One day Abba Macarius the Great came to Abba Antony’s dwelling on the mountain. When he knocked on the door, Antony came out to him and said to him, Who are you? He replied, I am Macarius. Then Antony went inside and shut the door, and left him outside. Later, once he saw his patience, he opened the door and received Macarius with joy, saying to him, I have wanted to see you for a long time, having heard about you. He rendered him all the duties of hospitality.”31 The similar formats of the Gospel and the Apophthegmata validate readings unattached to particular historical circumstances. Texts that fail to offer a plotted narrative setting for their material open themselves up to readers who find themselves in many situations, or in no one setting in particular. From the start of scholarly discussion of the Coptic books found near Nag Hammadi, however, including of course the Gospel of Thomas in Codex II, attention has been paid to the possibility of connections of the codices with the cenobitic monks of the Pachomian federation. It was the proximity of the monasteries to the find, together with the often ascetical and mystical contents of the texts, and even more decisively, the scraps of letters and documents used to produce the book-bindings, that made such a connection tangible.32 And yet much of 30 Valantasis, Gospel of Thomas, 7. Ap. Patr. Macarius 4 = Ap. Patr. Sys 7.14. 32 For a recent and compelling reading of the Nag Hammadi texts within the world of late antique cenobitic monasticism, see Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). 31 Melissa Harl Sellew 14 the spirit of the Gospel of Thomas is not readily applicable to monastic communities like those led by Pachomius or Shenoute. If anything the perspective of Thomas might fit better with the ascetic who takes up life as a single one just on the outskirts of his village, close to his former life, and yet separated from it, as we see enacted in such texts as Ap. Patr. Macarius 1 in the Alphabetikon or in the Life of Antony. The Gospel of Thomas stresses the values of solitude and autonomy over community and subordination, and it does so most decisively. Leaders and leadership are disparaged, while singleness and the solitary state are championed.33 Though Jesus’ interlocutors are explicitly called ‘students’ or ‘disciples’ (ⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥ), any traditional discipline of obedience of a student to a master is challenged: Jesus even protests “I am not your master!” when Thomas addresses him as ⲡⲥⲁϩ (master, or teacher) at Gos. Thom. 13: ⲁⲛⲟⲕ ⲡⲉⲕⲥⲁϩ ⲁⲛ. The focus on singleness clearly privileges a specifically male performative asceticism, despite the text’s putative ideal of sexless true humanity, as in Gos. Thom. 22: ⲉⲧⲉⲧⲛⲁⲉⲓⲣⲉ ⲫⲟⲟⲩⲧ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡⲓⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ, “when you make the male and the female into the single one” then you will enter the Kingdom. Three rather edgy encounters with potential female disciples underline this point. Just before Jesus’ comments on making male and female into the single one, Mary had asked him to compare “your disciples” with someone or something in Gos. Thom. 21 (ⲉⲛⲉⲕⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲥ ⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲛ̄ⲛⲓⲙ). Salome asserts her identity as Jesus’ host and disciple in Gos. Thom. 61 (ⲁⲛⲟⲕ ⲧⲉⲕⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥ), but Jesus’s response, whether that would have been positive, negative, or ambiguous, is lost in the damage near the bottom of the page (NHC II p. 43). And of course Mary’s very presence in the group of those “worthy of life” is challenged by Simon Peter at the end of the text, Gos. Thom. 114 (ⲙⲁⲣⲉ ⲙⲁⲣⲓϩⲁⲙ ⲉⲓ ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ⲛ̄ϩⲏⲧⲛ̄ ϫⲉ ⲛ̄ⲥϩⲓⲟⲙⲉ ⲛ̄ⲡϣⲁ ⲁⲛ ⲙ̄ⲡⲱⲛϩ), and Jesus’ retort, that he himself will “lead and make Mary male,” that is, into a “living spirit resembling you males” (ⲟⲩⲡⲛ︤ⲁ︥ ⲉϥⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲱⲧⲛ̄ ⲛ̄ϩⲟⲩⲧ), merely underscores the equation of “single one” with “living spirit” and thus also with “male.” The point of becoming a single one or a solitary one is perhaps not merely to achieve an uncomplicated simplicity of heart, mind, and soul, though this is surely part of the project, but also to negotiate a posture of masculine solitude and self-reliance over against the world, presumably over against one’s larger human community, 33 Marjanen calls this theme in Gos. Thom. one of ‘masterless’ Christian identity; see e.g. his essay “Is The Gospel of Thomas Gnostic?” in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas (ed. Risto Uro; SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 107–39 (here 120). Uro himself addresses the Thomasine polarity of authority and autonomy in his fine book Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context, 80–105. Reading Jesus in the Desert 15 including the call of family life, figured as sexual temptation related to the problematic presence of women.34 Or in the language of the Desert Fathers, not so much self-reliance as reliance on God alone, a search for inner peace or hesychia, the subject of Book 2 of the Systematikon and also of the Latin Verba Seniorum attributed to Pelagius and John.35 The goal of solitude, single-mindedness, and serenity is threatened in part, we might note, by performance of ascetical regimes that do not conform with one’s inner disposition: the very sort of performances typically demanded in the defining disciplines of communal monastic life. The Coptic text employs the Greek word ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ at Gos. Thom. 49, “Blessed are the solitaries (ϩⲉⲛⲙⲁⲕⲁⲣⲓⲟⲥ ⲛⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ), and at Gos. Thom. 16, precisely where the single one stands alone after division has come at Jesus’ word to his community or his house: father is ranged against son, and son against father (ⲡⲉⲓⲱⲧ ⲉϫⲛ̄ ⲡϣⲏⲣⲉ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡϣⲏⲣⲉ ⲉϫⲙ̄ ⲡⲉⲓⲱⲧ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲥⲉⲛⲁⲱϩⲉ ⲉⲣⲁⲧⲟⲩ ⲉⲩⲟ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ). Perhaps we might re-state: Abba against disciple, or brother versus Abba? One of the most pervasive themes of the Apophthegmata Patrum is the need to subsume the desire of one’s self, the will, within the disciplined demands of one’s guide, called the old man (γερών, ϩⲗ︤ⲗ︥ⲟ) or the father (πατήρ, ἀββᾶ, ⲁⲡⲁ), referring not necessarily to advanced age so much as to attainment and experience. This sort of dependence is denigrated throughout the Gospel of Thomas, beginning with logion three, where one’s hapless leaders are shown to be ignorant and clueless about the true place of the Kingdom of Heaven. The very next thing that Jesus says in Thomas is that “The person old in days (literally ⲡⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲛϩⲗ︤ⲗ︥ⲟ ϩⲛ̄ⲛⲉϥϩⲟⲟⲩ) will not hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live” (Gos. Thom. 4). The monk, the old man, ⲡϩⲗ︤ⲗ︥ⲟ, must rely on the newcomer for this vital information. Only rarely in the Apophthegmata, and then pointedly within anec34 “Among the monks of Egypt, the problems of sexual temptation were most often seen in terms of the massive antithesis of ‘desert’ and ‘world.’ Sexual temptation was frequently treated in a somewhat off-hand manner, presented as if it were no more than a drive toward women, toward matrimony, and hence toward fatal conscription, through marriage, into the structures of the settled land.” Brown, Body and Society, 217, citing Ap. Patr. Paphnutius 4. Only three female monastics are quoted in the Apophthegmata Patrum. 35 Though the subject of much scholarly discussion since Hopfner and Bousset as to its connections with the Greek collections and their possible precursors, this Latin text has not been reedited since Heribert Rosweyde’s edition of the Vitae patrum V–VI: Verba seniorum (Antwerp, 1615) and reprinted in Migne PL 73:855–1022. For an English translation see Benedicta Ward, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (London: Penguin, 2003), and for further details see Rubenson, Letters of Antony, 145–52, 237; Harmless, Desert Christians, 184; and Rubenson, “Formation and Re-formations,” 8–14. Melissa Harl Sellew 16 dotes that characterize the virtue of humility, do we see this inversion of the honorable term old man or monk, as for example when Antony marvels at the spiritual power of a very young monk who magically commandeered some donkeys to help carry tired old men along the road.36 This is not at all the same thing. Several anecdotes preserved in the Apophthegmata picture a beginner in the ascetical life who hubristically sets himself up as an autonomous agent, only to be humbled by his failures. These stories end with the young brother’s repentance and submission to a more experienced monk. The best-known case is probably that of John the Little, who bragged to an older brother that he was ready to ‘live like the angels’ in the desert, free of concern for human needs. After a week of hunger and thirst, he crawls back to the cell, but the older monk makes him wait outside until he admits his lack of humility.37 The Gospel of Thomas, far from honoring those old in attainment, frequently symbolizes the goal of simplicity and knowledge with the image of the child, especially the newborn child, as in Gos. Thom. 22: “Jesus said to his disciples, These nursing babies are like those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” which is followed by his call to undergo a transformation likened to rebirth or even new creation: making the two into one, the inside like the outside, the male and female no longer male and female, all to become a single one, called as stated here and elsewhere ⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ. The Apophthegmata, to be sure, also validate renewal and reshaping of the self: for example, Abba Alonius is quoted in the Alphabetikon as follows: “He also said, If I had not destroyed myself completely, I should not have been able to rebuild and shape myself again.”38 Monastic readers of the Gospel, as we might conjure them up from among the characters appearing in the Apophthegmata, would find much of interest for the process of spiritual transformation, whether as confirmation or as challenge, in the words recorded there. Seeking, we read in Gos. Thom. 2, will lead to finding, but the process will not end there. Finding leads to disturbance, wonder, and ultimately to rule: meaning, I take it, rule over oneself. Monastic readers would resonate with the insistence in the Gospel of Thomas on the conflict between the spirit and the fleshly body of the ascetic. In Gos. Thom. 29 Jesus says, “If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a marvel. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this great poverty.” 36 Ap. Patr. Antony 14. Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 2 = Ap. Patr. Sys 10.36. 38 Ap. Patr. Alonius 2. 37 Reading Jesus in the Desert 17 In the Alphabeticon, Abba Macarius says, “If slander has become for you the same as praise, poverty as riches, deprivation as abundance, then you will not die.”39 The opposition of spirit or soul with flesh or body is a constant in the Apophthegmata, as for example in this statement attributed to Apa Daniel: “The body prospers by the extent to which the soul is weakened, and the soul prospers by the extent to which the body is weakened.”40 More pointedly, Antony says, “Hate the world and all that is in it. Hate all peace that comes from the flesh. Renounce this life, so that you may be alive to God. . . . Despise the flesh, so that you may preserve your souls.”41 The themes of struggle against porneia and impure thoughts so prominent throughout the Apophthegmata42 are missing from the surface conversations in Thomas. Still, one of the most striking aspects of the Gospel is its thoroughly negative view of the material world in which we live, which suggests a rejection of sexuality and reproduction along with married life. Both Thomas and the desert fathers perceive the world around them as a place of death, and use the image of death as a powerful symbol of estrangement and spiritual loss. Readers are called to turn away from the evils of the world, called a corpse in Gos. Thom. 56 and 80, to find God within oneself, and to reject the world, in hopes of returning home to true divinity above (Gos. Thom. 51).43 A small collection of advice from John the Little concludes with these words: “Shut yourself in a tomb as though you were already dead, so that at all times you will think death is near.”44 One famous anecdote tells how Macarius the Great instructs a brother who comes to him seeking the path to salvation to “go to the cemetery and abuse the dead,” and then, after receiving no response from the tombs, to return the next day and praise the dead. 39 Ap. Patr. Macarius 20. Ap. Patr. Daniel 4 = Ap. Patr. Sys 10.22. 41 Ap. Patr. Antony 33 = Ap. Patr. Sys 3.1. 42 For example, Book 5 of the Systematikon contains 54 statements on porneia. 43 I discuss these themes in Sellew, “Death, the Body, and the World in the Gospel of Thomas,” in Studia Patristica XXXI: Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1995: Preaching, Second Century, Tertullian to Arnobius, Egypt before Nicaea (ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone; StPatr 31; Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 530–34, and “Jesus and the Voice from Beyond the Grave: Gospel of Thomas 42 in the Context of Funeral Epigraphy,” in Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas (ed. Jon Ma. Asgeirsson et al.; NHMS 59; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 39–73. 44 Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 34. 40 Melissa Harl Sellew 18 Macarius suggests that to be saved the brother must “become a dead man … take no account of either the scorn or praises of men.”45 It is not difficult to imagine an ancient ascetic pondering the statements of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, though he would require some time and effort before gaining much confidence as to their exact import. This hesitation and diffidence on the part of the disciple is thematized both in Thomas and in the Apophthegmata, where we often find the monk in training, frequently called the brother, puzzled by an obscure word from his Abba, then going away to consider its implications, perhaps to return later for some clarification or confirmation. Often, as we have seen in the case of Antony’s door-slamming response to Macarius, a monk neglects to give any particular word or reply at all, at least initially. Various chreiai suggest that a monk would respond or keep silence depending on the state of mind or soul of the brother seeking conversation.46 We read that when Antony himself was visited by a group of monks, he tested them by asking them to expound upon a verse of Scripture. Starting with the youngest, they each in turn “began to speak according to his own ability,” but the eldest, Abba Joseph, declined to say what the verse meant. Said Abba Anthony, “Abba Joseph indeed found the way when he said, ‘I do not know.’”47 We notice the same pattern in Thomas. Jesus asks his disciples at Gos. Thom. 13 to compare him with someone. Peter and Matthew fail by comparing Jesus to a righteous angel or a wise philosopher, whereupon Thomas succeeds by claiming that his mouth is incapable of making the right comparison. Silence is sometimes golden. The need to conduct one’s ascetical work in the proper frame of mind and to the proper ends is underlined by the interrupted series of questions and replies that begin at Gos. Thom. 6. “His disciples asked him, Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet should we observe?” Jesus speaks only indirectly at first: “Do not lie, and do not do what you hate, because all things are disclosed under heaven.” Only at Gos. Thom. 14 does he offer further clarification: “If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give alms, you will harm your spirits.” Fasting and sin are also connected at Gos. Thom. 104. This connection is reminiscent of the advice given in the Alphabetikon in the name of Apa Isidore the Priest: “If you fast regularly, do not be inflated with pride, but if you 45 Ap. Patr. Macarius 23 trans. Ward 132. Ap. Patr. Macarius 31; cf. Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 32. 47 Ap. Patr. Anthony 17 = Ap. Patr. Sys 15.4 trans. Wortley. 46 Reading Jesus in the Desert 19 think highly of yourself because of it, you are better off eating meat.” The famously enigmatic remark of Jesus in Gos. Thom. 27 also seems to advise that ascetic performance be pursued only in the proper frame of mind: “If you do not fast with regard to the world, you will not find the kingdom; if you do not keep the sabbath as sabbath, you will not see the father.” A similar perspective is found in a statement attributed to Antony: “Some have afflicted their bodies by asceticism, but they lack discernment, and so they are far from God.”48 Excessive fasting is a frequent topic in the Apophthegmata, though admittedly not as much as the frequent urgings not to eat. Still, ascetics as centrally important as Abba Poemen sometimes advise eating a little bit every day instead of trying to go several days without any food.49 A monk called Longinus, presumably the anti-Chalcedonian abbot, told his teacher Lucius that he wanted to fast. The old man replied, “Isaiah said, If you bend your neck like a rope or a bulrush, that is not the fast I will accept; rather, control your evil thoughts.”50 When Macarius is asked how one should pray, he says, “There is no need at all to make long discourses,” and as for pious practice more generally he counsels simply, “Do a good deed! Say a good word.”51 Lack of selfunderstanding is called poverty, a term sometimes given positive value by the hermits, and also by Jesus in Gos. Thom. 54 (“blessed are the poor”), but in Gos. Thom. 3, by contrast, poverty seems to symbolize one’s distance from God. In Gos. Thom. 67, Jesus says, “The one who knows all (ⲡⲧⲏⲣϥ), but is lacking in himself, lacks everything.” The monastic sources consistently validate physical labor in the process of spiritual discernment. This is emphasized from the very first paragraph of the Alphabetikon, which imagines Antony the Great as beset by sinful thoughts and accidia, something like ascetic estrangement or depression. “He said to God, Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved? A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Antony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray.” 52 Salvation is found through the interweaving of work and prayer. Here our imagined eremite reader of Thomas would also find 48 Ap. Patr. Antony 8. Patricia Cox Miller offers an insightful study of ancient Christian ascetics’ performative use of their bodies in her article “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere,’” JECS 2 (1994): 137–53. 49 Ap. Patr. Poemen 31. 50 Ap. Patr. Longinus 1. 51 Ap. Patr. Macarius 19, 39. 52 Ap. Patr. Antony 1. Melissa Harl Sellew 20 some nourishment. In Gos. Thom. 58 Jesus says directly, “Blessed is the man who has worked (ⲡⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲛⲧⲁϩⲓⲥⲉ): that one has found life.” Throughout the gospels, including Thomas, Jesus makes remarks about the quality of fruit as evidence for the character of the tree or bush. As was mentioned above, at Gos. Thom. 45 Jesus says, “Grapes are not harvested from thorns, nor are figs gathered from thistles.” Agathon applies a tree metaphor to the question of ascetic performance: “Someone asked Abba Agathon, Which is better, bodily asceticism or interior vigilance? The old man replied, Man is like a tree, bodily asceticism is the foliage, interior vigilance the fruit. According to that which is written, ‘Every tree that does not produce good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire,’ it is clear that all our care should be directed towards the fruit, guard of the spirit; but it needs the protection and the embellishment of the foliage, which is bodily asceticism.”53 John the Little is quoted as follows in a statement published by J.-C. Guy from a collection supplemental to the Alphabetikon: “Abba Poemen said that Abba John said that the saints are like a group of trees, each bearing different fruit, but watered from the same source. The practices of one saint differ from those of another, but it is the same Spirit that works in all of them.”54 A famous anecdote of a tree and its water associated with this same John centers on the so-called Tree of Obedience, the dry stick of wood that the inexperienced disciple is called upon to water every day until it becomes a tree and bears fruit. In the Alphabetikon, John the Little faithfully waters the dry stick for three years, at the cost of much effort every night to fetch the water from afar, and finally it does become a tree bearing useful fruit.55 William Harmless draws attention to parallel stories in Sulpicius Severus, without John’s name attached, and in Cassian’s Institutes book 4, a more lengthy narrative that ends rather differently: Here the old monk demands that John water the dry wood twice a day (the river is closer in this version). A year later, “once convinced of John’s humble and sincere obedience,” the old man plucks the dry stick out of the ground, since in this case it had not transformed itself into a fruitful tree, and throws it away into the trash heap.56 The mention by Jesus of “five trees in Paradise” in Gos. Thom. 19 has long puzzled scholars. In his recent commentary, Uwe-Karsten Plisch connects the motif to “the broad range of Jewish-Christian Genesis speculations in Late 53 Ap. Patr. Agathon 8. Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 41 trans. Ward. 55 Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 1. 56 Harmless, Desert Christians, 222–23. 54 Reading Jesus in the Desert 21 Antiquity. The biblical background can be seen in the function of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life in the temptation story of Genesis 3.”57 Plisch mentions “impressive theological interpretations of the trees” found in the Gospel of Philip, in the unnamed treatise On the Origin of the World, the Manichaean Book of Psalms, and the collected works found in the Askew and Bruce codices, such as the Pistis Sophia and the Two Books of Jeu. But in the context of the late ancient wisdom of the desert, Gos. Thom. 19 sounds less like scriptural speculation and more like symbolic ethical instruction. In any case there is little evidence that Thomas made direct use of Jewish Scriptures – all or nearly all of its allusions seem to have been mediated by other Christian authors.58 “Jesus said, If you become disciples of mine and listen to my words, these stones will serve you. For you have five trees in Paradise that do not bend in summer nor winter, and their leaves do not fall. Whoever comes to know them will not taste death.” The bending of trees in winter storms is a frequent theme of desert wisdom. Amma Theodora, one of three female ascetics whose sayings were collected in the Apophthegmata, is another one of those who practiced tree symbolism. Theodora is shown as particularly skilled at interpreting biblical statements for an ethos of ascetical practice. In the Alphabetikon we read, “Amma Theodora said, Let us strive to enter by the narrow gate. Just as the trees, if they have not withstood the winter storms, cannot bear fruit, so it is with us; this present age is a storm and it is only through many trials and temptations that we can obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.”59 The Gospel of Thomas is a difficult text to place or to interpret. Comparative readings with the wisdom of the desert help us imagine how Coptic Thomas might have fit within the context of late antique Egyptian Christianity. Many aspects of the Gospel fit the general category of a spiritual guide, but let 57 Plisch, Gospel of Thomas, 19. There is a searching though brief discussion of this distinctive feature in Gos. Thom. in Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels, 187–91. Gathercole notes how the use of Psalm 118 (117) in Gos. Thom. 66 “reflects a greater distance from the Psalter than do the Synoptic quotations, both in its initial statement . . . and in its attribution of the statement straightforwardly to Jesus” (Composition of Thomas, 191). My former student Ian (Nelson) Mills built on those observations in his fine senior thesis at the University of Minnesota, entitled “Thomas and the Jewish Scriptures: Mediated Scripture in the Gospel of Thomas,” the results of which he presented at the Upper Midwest Regional Meeting of the SBL, St. Paul MN, April 5, 2014. Such markers of distance from the ‘Old Testament’ as we see in Gos. Thom. must represent a deliberate move on the part of the gospel’s formative author or authors; to my mind they reflect the text’s decidedly non-Jewish character. 59 Ap. Patr. Theodora 2. 58 Melissa Harl Sellew 22 me sharpen that terminology to say that Thomas can best be read in the desert as a guide to ethics and a proper attitude toward the work of reshaping the self. Much of what Jesus says in this Gospel the ascetic pioneers who are brought to life by reading the Apophthegmata might find of great value, especially the words about avoidance of hypocrisy in the practice of piety, the goals of simplicity and self-knowledge, and the search for the presence of God within the inner spaces of one’s own heart. As mentioned, both Thomas and the desert ascetics perceive the world around them as a place of death, and use the image of death as a powerful symbol of estrangement and spiritual loss. Other aspects of Thomas could be more troublesome, especially, I would imagine, its attack on the privileged place of the master-disciple relationship. Still, despite this insistence on spiritual autonomy, some awareness of community concerns has been discerned from the symbolism of parables found in Thomas, and especially in its ethical teachings about adopting a loving attitude toward one’s wayward brother, such as we find in Gos. Thom. 25 and 26: “Love your brother like your own soul.”60 Humility and forbearance of judgment of one’s brother are constant themes in the Apophthegmata. Perhaps we should see these as sibling texts that help to interpret one another. It seems that readers of Thomas in fourth- and fifth-century Egypt would have found at least some nutritious grapes or figs growing amongst its more prickly thorn trees and thistles. Bibliography: Editions and Translations Attridge, Harold W. “The Greek Fragments [of the Gospel of Thomas].” Pages 96–128 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, vol. 1. Edited by Bentley Layton. Nag Hammadi Studies 20. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Chaîne, Marius. Le manuscrit de la version copte en dialect sahidique des “Apophthegmata Patrum.” Bibliotheque d’Études coptes 6. Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1960. Cotelier, Jean-Baptiste. Apophthegmata patrum collectio alphabetica, in Monumenta Ecclesiae Graecae, vol. 1 (Paris 1647), reprinted in Patrologia graeca 65:71–440. [AP = Greek Alphabetic Collection.] Guy, Jean-Claude. Les Apophthegmes des Pères: collection systématique. 3 vols. Sources chrétiennes 387, 474, 498. Paris: Budé, 1993, 2003, 2005. [AP Sys = Greek Systematic Collection.] 60 See e.g. Karen King, “Kingdom in the Gospel of Thomas,” Foundations and Facets Forum 3 (1987): 48–97; Patterson, Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 121–57. But cf. the cautions offered in Sellew, “Thomas Christianity,” and Uro, Thomas: Historical Context, 77–79. Reading Jesus in the Desert 23 Layton, Bentley, ed., and Thomas O. Lambdin, trans. “The Gospel According to Thomas.” Pages 52–93 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7: Together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1), and P.Oxy. 1, 654, 655, vol. 1. Edited by Bentley Layton. Nag Hammadi Studies 20. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Nau, François. “Histoires des solitaires égyptiens,” Revue d l’Orient Chrétien 12–14 (1907–1909) and 17–18 (1912–1913). [AP N = Greek Anonymous Collection.] Regnault, Lucien. Les chemins de Dieu au desert: collection systématique des Apothegmes des Pères. Solesmes: Éditions de Solesmes, 1992. [AP Sys = Greek Systematic.] Rosweyde, Heribert. Vitae patrum V–VI: Verba seniorum (Antwerp, 1615) reprinted in Patrologia latina 73:855–1022. [Latin thematic (= PJ, Pelagius and John).] Ward, Benedicta. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Cistercian Studies 59. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1975. [AP = Greek Alphabetic.] –. The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks. London: Penguin Books, 2003. [Latin Thematic (= PJ, Pelagius and John).] Wortley, John. The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Systematic Collection. Cistercian Studies 240. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2012. [AP Sys = Greek Systematic.] –. The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. [AP N = Greek Anonymous.] Bibliography: Studies Asgeirsson, Jon Ma. “Arguments and Audience(s) in the Gospel of Thomas.” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 36 (1997): 47–85 and 37 (1998): 325–42. Asgeirsson, Jon Ma., April D. DeConick, and Risto Uro, eds. Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 59. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Bousset, Wilhelm. Apophthegmata: Studien zur Geschichte des ältesten Mönchtums. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1923. Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. Lectures on the History of Religions 13. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Bultmann, Rudolf. Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 29. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1921, 8th ed. 1970. Burton-Christie, Douglas. 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