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In Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that they are the light of the world. The closest parallel in the Gospel of Thomas is a saying about a person of light, whose light shines on the whole world.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Matthew 5:14
New Testament
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its flavor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by people! 14 You are the light of the world. A city located on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 People do not light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
Gospel of Thomas 1:24
Nag Hammadi
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.” 25 Jesus said, “Love your brother like your soul; protect him like the pupil of your eye.”
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Notes and References
“... The expression [...] occurs only here in the synoptic tradition. John’s Gospel uses the metaphor exclusively about Jesus (“I am the light [of the world])”, e.g. 8,12; 9,4–5; 11,9–10; 12,35–36). Did John deny a saying like Matt 5,14, or is the Johannine tradition an elaboration of Matt 5,14? [...] The frequent use of the light metaphor in the GTh seems to be independent of sayings both in John [...] and Matthew. The closest parallel to Matt 5,14 is GTh 24,3: [...] However, most of the sayings about light in the GTh (“Light exists inside a person of light” and “If he does not shine, there is darkness”) are closer to Matt 6,22 than to Matt 5,14. [...] Early Gnostic texts like the disrupted text in Dial. Sav. 14b (“light is in the darkness“) confirm the importance of the light metaphor. ...”
Baasland, Ernst
Parables and Rhetoric in the Sermon on the Mount: New Approaches to a Classical Text
(p. 101) Mohr Siebeck, 2015
* 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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