this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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Something you might find interesting given our past discussions is that the way that the Gospel of Thomas uses the Greek eikon instead of Coptic (what the rest of the work is written in), that through the lens of Plato's ideas of the form of a thing (eidelon), the thing itself, an attempt at an accurate copy of the thing (eikon), and the embellished copy of the thing (phantasm), one of the modern words best translating the philosophical context of eikon in the text would arguably be 'simulacra.'
So wherever the existing English translations use 'image' replace that with 'simulacra' instead and it will be a more interesting and likely accurate read.
(Was just double checking an interlinear copy of Plato's Sophist to make sure this train of thought was correct, inspired by the discussion above.)
Hmm
Traditional Translation: "When you see your likeness, you rejoice. But when you see your images (eikons) that came into being before you and that neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!"
New Translation: "When you see your likeness, you rejoice. But when you see your simulacra that came into being before you and that neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!"
I think I see it. Jesus in this gospel is arguing that "y'all are so happy when you look in the mirror, just wait until you meet all platonic forms of yourself. Your mind is going to get blown because you will know that the distance between you and your mirror image is far smaller than you and your platonic forms."
Is that what you are driving at?
So one of the interesting nuances is that it isn't talking about the Platonic forms. If it was, it would have used eidos.
The text is very much engaging with the Epicurean views of humanity. The Epicureans said that there was no intelligent design and that we have minds that depend on bodies so when the body dies so too will the mind. They go as far as saying that the cosmos itself is like a body that will one day die.
The Gospel of Thomas talks a lot about these ideas. For example, in saying 56 it says the cosmos is like an already dead body. Which fits with its claims about nonlinear time in 19, 51, and 113 where the end is in the beginning or where the future world to come has already happened or where the kingdom is already present. In sayings 112, 87, and 29 it laments a soul or mind that depends on a body.
It can be useful to look at adjacent sayings, as the numbering is arbitrary from scholars when it was first discovered and they still thought it was Gnostic instead of proto-Gnostic.
For 84, the preceding saying is also employing eikon in talking about how the simulacra visible to people is made up of light but the simulacra of the one creating them is itself hidden.
This seems to be consistent with the other two places the word is used.
In 50, it talks about how light came into being and self-established, appearing as "their simulacra" (which is a kind of weird saying as who are they that their simulacra existed when the light came into being - this is likely why the group following the text claim their creator entity postdates an original Adam).
And in 22 it talks about - as babies - entering a place where there's a hand in place of a hand, foot in place of a foot, and simulacra in place of a simulacra.
So it's actually a very neat rebuttal to the Epicureans. It essentially agrees that maybe there isn't intelligent design like they say and the spirit just eventually arose from flesh (saying 29), and that the cosmos is like a body, and that everything might die. But then it claims that all that already happened, and that even though we think we're minds that depend on bodies, that we're the simulacra - the copies - not the originals. And that the simulacra are made of light, not flesh. And we were born into a simulacra cosmos as simulacra people.
From its perspective, compared to the Epicurean surety of the death of a mind that depends on a body, this is preferable. Which is why you see it congratulate being a copy in 18-19a:
The text employs Plato's concepts of eikon/simulacra to avoid the Epicurean notions of death by claiming that the mind will live again as a copy and we are that copy, even if the body is screwed. This is probably the central debate between this sect and the canonical tradition. The cannonical one is all about the body. There's even a Eucharist tradition around believers consuming Jesus's body to join in his bodily resurrection. Thomas has a very different Eucharistic consumption in saying 108, where it is not about drinking someone's blood but about drinking their words that enables becoming like someone.
It's a very unusual philosophy for the time. Parts of it are found elsewhere, but the way it weaves those parts together across related sayings really seems unique.