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Clement of Alexandria quotes a Gospel parable in which the kingdom is like a man who casts a net and keeps the better fish. Like the Gospel of Thomas, Clement puts a man at the center, but only Thomas has him choose one large fish.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Gospel of Thomas 1:8
Nag Hammadi
7 Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion that the man will eat, so that the lion becomes a man. And cursed is the man whom a lion will eat, and the lion will become a man.” 8 And he said, “The human being is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a large, fine fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear should hear.” 9 Jesus said, “Look, the sower went out, took a handful of seeds, and scattered them. Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock and they did not take root in the soil and did not produce ears. Others fell among thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced good fruit. It yielded sixty per measure and one hundred and twenty per measure.”
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6.11.61
Early Christian
"I must decrease," said the prophet John, and the Word of the Lord alone, in which the law terminates, "increase." Understand now for me the mystery of the truth, granting pardon if I shrink from advancing further in the treatment of it, by announcing this alone: "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not even one thing." Certainly He is called "the chief corner stone; in whom the whole building, fitly joined together, groweth into an holy temple of God," according to the divine apostle. I pass over in silence at present the parable which says in the Gospel: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who cast a net into the sea and out of the multitude of the fishes caught, makes a selection of the better ones." And now the wisdom which we possess announces the four virtues in such a way as to show that the sources of them were communicated by the Hebrews to the Greeks. This may be learned from the following: "And if one loves justice, its toils are virtues.
Date: 195 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... The parable is a parable of wisdom, but the reader is not told who “the man” is that is being compared to the wise fisherman. Some interpreters have conjectured that the parable, in an earlier form, would have started with “The kingdom [rather than “the man”] is like [...] That view has some support from a version of the parable quoted by Clement of Alexandria (ca. A.D. 150–215), who says that it is a parable “in the Gospel” (not saying which one), and it runs as follows: [...] The kingdom of heaven is like a man who cast a net into the sea; and out of the multitude of the fishes caught, makes a selection of the better ones. Yet, in spite of the similarity between the two versions, it is not certain that the parable in the Gospel of Thomas is a parable of the kingdom. [...] In the Parable of the Dragnet in Matthew 13:47-48 the fish that are obtained in the net are both good and bad, and the sorting of them refers to the final judgment. Those features are entirely lacking in logion 8. In the latter the contrast is between the small fish (plural) and the fine large one, and the sorting consists of selecting the latter. ...”
Hultgren, Arland J.
The Parables of Jesus: A Commentary
(pp. 440-441) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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