Re: The puzzle of Adam

In a message dated 12/3/2004 1:21:41 PM Eastern Standard Time, "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com> writes:

I can't see that Logion 114 says what you think it does. Quoting from the translation in Aland, Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (which includes Thomas as an Appendix): "Jesus said: 'Lo, I shall lead her, so that I may make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself a male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'"
Mary - & other women - are to be made male. It does not say that they are to be made androgynous, or that they are to be made male in addition to being female.
Mary is to be changed so that she "resembl[es] you males." I.e., Peter & the other males are OK already - there is no suggestion that they must be completed by their missing female halves. Instead, woman must be changed to be like them.
Logion 22 OTOH does have a reference to some type of eschatological androgynity: "When you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will <not> be female ..."

Rich responds:
My translation (The Nag Hammadi Library, James M. Robinson, general editor) reads:
They said to him: Shall we then as children enter the kingdom?
Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below and when you make the male and the female one and the same so that the male not be male nor the female female."

Now, George, in the expanded context I have now provided for 22 you can easily see that each of the metaphorical pairs are reconciled. There is no dispossesion or replacement, yet you would prefer to believe that one of those pairs of opposites in the text in 22 is unlike the other stringed metaphors but instead represents a dispossession or replacement of the male with the female attributes, an idea you conclude is then repeated in 114, though in both 22 and 114 what is being described is the method for entering the kingdom of heaven. For your analysis to be correct we wuld have to admit (for the GofT) two contradictory methods of entering "the kingdom," one in which there is a displacement of female by male attributes(114), and one (22) in which there is a reconciliation of male and female attributes. I think your interpetation constitutes a theological conundrum.

George:
Now of course in the Jewish tradition there are ideas about the originally androgyous character of Adam but I don't see any indication that such ideas are being used in 114 - though perhaps in 22. But when all is said and done, I see no reason to accept either those traditions or Thomas as authoritative on this point. Genesis 1 & 2 give no reason to think that Adam was androgynous. If I recall correctly, one thing that gave rise to that idea was trying to read "male and female he created them" of the 1st account into the formation of adham in the 2d.

rich:
Perhaps now with the expanded context I have provided, you can see that 114 does not constitute a replacement of female with male but constitutes a reconciliation of the male and female principles as already foreshadowed in 22. Of course, I can't speak logically to what one feels is authoritative. I simply accept that's your position, but for those a bit more open to speculation, an accurate overall view of the canonical gospels is made more likely when you look at all the available texts from that period. But in fact, we find Matthew 19:4: Jesus says, "Have you never read that the creator made them from the beginning male and female? and he added," For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be made one with his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. It follows that they are no longer two individuals: they are one flesh."
THEY ARE NO LONGER TWO INDIVIDUALS, THEY ARE ONE FLESH. They are reconciled to one another. Male does not replace female. They are one flesh. Jesus is describing the perfect marital state which is literally in the flesh, a reconciliation of male and female. The reconciliaiton of male and female in 22 and 114 in the GofT does not contradict this.
Most importantly, these ideas from the Gof T and indeed the canonical gospels as above from Matthew do not constitute denigration of women but a recognition of female uniqueness and fundamental role in salvation. The texts are not ambivalent about male and female roles as modern society is trying to be.
rich
Received on Sat Dec 4 12:52:10 2004