Texts in Conversation
In Jeremiah, God promises to take one from each town and two from each family and bring them back to Zion. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus makes a similar promise to a tiny few, choosing one from a thousand and two from ten thousand.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jeremiah 3:14
Hebrew Bible
13 However, you must confess that you have done wrong and that you have rebelled against the Lord your God. You must confess that you have given yourself to foreign gods under every green tree and have not obeyed my commands,’ says the Lord. 14 “Come back to me, my wayward sons,” says the Lord, “for I am your true master. If you do, I will take one of you from each town and two of you from each family group, and I will bring you back to Zion. 15 I will give you leaders who will be faithful to me. They will lead you with knowledge and insight.
Gospel of Thomas 1:23
Nag Hammadi
22 Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, “These little ones being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.” They said to him, “Then shall we enter the kingdom as little ones?” 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 will not be male and the female not be female—when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].” 23 Jesus said, “I shall choose you, one from a thousand and two from ten thousand, and they will stand as a single one.” 24 His disciples said, “Show us the place where you are, since it is necessary for us to seek it.” He said to them, “Whoever has ears should hear. There is light within a man of light, and it lights up the whole world. If he does not shine, he is darkness.”
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Notes and References
“... This saying combines three soteriological images in a compressed manner: (a) election, focusing on the activity of Jesus and his initiative in salvation, (b) ‘standing’, which highlights the spiritual power and stability of the saved disciples, and (c) the identity of the saved as a unity. There is an additional aspect of the ‘saved’, that they constitute a tiny minority: the proportions here communicate the extremity of the contrast between the number of true disciples and that of the rest. [...] 23.1 One out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand. The image here is the common-place of the small minority of the saved by contrast to the massa perditionis. The proportions of 1:1000 and 2:10000 appear first in Deut. 32.30, with a similar view expressed in Jeremiah 3.14, where redemption is also involved: ‘I will take you, one from a town and two from a clan, and I will bring you to Zion.’ ...”
* 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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