"When you do these things, he says, my father's kingdom will come." As for "the male with the female," it simply means that a Christian brother should not think of a sister-Christian as female, nor the sister think of him as a male. Here, says the writer in 2 Clement, the two are one when we speak truth to each other the inside is the soul and outside the body, and we should let the soul be evident in good works just as the body is visibly evident. It quotes, as coming from "the master himself," the saying "When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with female neither male nor female," but strips it of mystical meaning and gives it a bland interpretation more palatable to anti-Gnostic Christians. (The document is usually paired in later collections with a letter from Pope Clement I in Rome to the church in Corinth, called l Clement, although there no connection in date or origin or subject matter between the two texts). In the apocryphal Acts of Peter, to explain why he is being crucified upside down, Peter says: "Concerning this the Lord says in a mystery, 'Unless you make on the right hand as what is on the left and what is on the left hand as what is on the right and what is above as what is below and what is behind as what is before you will not have knowledge of the kingdom.'"Ī writing traditionally called 2 Clement, possibly from second-century Egypt, is an anti-Gnostic preaching. In Thomas's long prayer before his martyrdom, he recites his efforts to carry out his mission, and says: "The inside I have made outside, and the outside, and thy whole fullness has been fulfilled in me." The following morning he is puzzled when he puts his left shoe on his right foot. In addition to Mygdonia's words, already quoted, we might remember that her husband Karish dreams of the eagle that snatches up two partridges and two doves. Three variations on it come from the Acts of Judas Thomas.
The theme of two-in-oneness appears repeatedly in Gnostic literature. Jesus replies: "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner as the outer, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male shall not be male, and the female shall not be female. The main interest of Saying 22, however, lies in what follows the disciples' question. (In three other Sayings, Jesus refers to those who will find the kingdom as "children.")
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"Little children," however, became a code-word for the Gnostic elect, who, like them, were or ought to be free of carnal attachments, living lives undistracted by allurements of the flesh. "Shall we then," they ask, "as children, enter the kingdom?" This prologue calls to mind, of course, the familiar saying from the canon: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." He tells his disciples that these infants are like those who enter the kingdom. Saying 22 of the Gospel states most vividly and fully the recurrent theme. | Gnostic Society The Gnostic Apostle Thomas:"Twin" of Jesus When the Two Become One The Gnostic Apostle Thomas: Chapter
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