Author: gnox

Relative individuality

As Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry point out (1999, 137), the social structures we find among humans (and other ‘higher animals’) are woven together by the mutual recognition of selves. The concept of self is a consequence of this, not a precondition of it: we recognize our selves because we recognize others as individuals (Bogdan 2000 and many others). Continue reading Relative individuality

Whose next?

The disciples said to Jesus, ‘We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.’

— Thomas 12 (Lambdin)

In the Gospel of Thomas, seekers after an authoritative leader do not usually get such a straightforward answer from Jesus; indeed the very next saying (Chapter 6) presents the role of Jesus himself as a mystery. Saying 13 also elevates Thomas, not James, to the highest position. Perhaps, as Helmut Koester suggested, Sayings 12 and 13 were meant to juxtapose James as an exoteric or ‘ecclesiastical’ authority figure with the esoteric understanding represented by Thomas (Valantasis 1997, 74). Or perhaps they are later accretions to the gospel, as DeConick (2007a) argues.

Saying 12 is the only mention of James in the Gospel of Thomas; he may be the brother of Jesus also mentioned in Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3 and Galatians 1:19, but we can’t be sure of that. So perhaps we should read the description of him in this saying as the essential clue to what qualifies him (or anyone) as the right leader for a community in need of one: he is the one ‘for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.’ But this sounds very much like the Tsaddik or ‘Righteous One’ of the Jewish mystical tradition, or Traherne’s ‘sole heir of the whole world’, or the ‘king over the All’ of Thomas 3, which the seeker himself becomes after passing through dismay and astonishment. So for this group of disciples, James is to be the external sign of the primal person.

The bride and the bodhisattva

Arthur Green describes the Zohar, the great classic of Kabbalah, as

a lush garden of sacred eros, filled to overflowing with luxurious plantings of love between master and disciples; among the mystical companions themselves; between the souls of Israel and Shekhinah, God’s lovely bride; but most of all between the male and female elements that together make up the Godhead.

— Green (2004, 3)

Continue reading The bride and the bodhisattva

Coming through

Sioux healer Black Elk told John Neihardt (1932, Chapter 18):

… many I cured with the power that came through me. Of course it was not I who cured. It was the power from the outer world, and the visions and ceremonies had only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.

Continue reading Coming through