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In Job, a human born of woman lives only a few days. Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas flips the idiom and describes the Father as one who was not born of woman.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Job 14:1
Hebrew Bible
1 “Man, born of woman, lives but a few days, and they are full of trouble. 2 He grows up like a flower and then withers away; he flees like a shadow and does not remain.
Gospel of Thomas 1:15
Nag Hammadi
14 Jesus said to them, “If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves; if you pray, you will be condemned; if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and travel about in the countryside, if they receive you, eat what they set before you and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you; rather, what comes out of your mouth is what will defile you.” 15 Jesus said, “When you see one who was not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship him; that one is your Father.” 16 Jesus said, “People perhaps think I have come to cast peace upon the world, and they do not know that I have come to cast divisions upon the earth: fire, sword, war. For there will be five in a house: three will be against two and two against three, the father against the son and the son against the father, and they will stand as solitary ones.”
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Notes and References
“... When you see the one not born of woman. The phrase ‘one born of woman’ is a standard idiom for a human being (Job 14.1; 15.14; 25.4; Matt. 11.11/ Lk. 7.28/ GTh 46), perhaps especially a human qua mortal. Having been born of a woman may, in Thomas’s view, be a contributory factor to the poverty of humanity if GTh 101.3 assigns a negative quality to human maternity (see ad loc. below). [...] See the various passages in Plisch, 68–69. Less likely, since sin is not a prominent theme in Thomas, is the human qua sinner (Grant & Freedman, 135); Nordsieck, 81 and Hedrick, 44, suggest human frailty. ...”
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