Texts in Conversation
Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas promises to make Mary male so she can become a living spirit. Philo writes that the female falls short of the male, and Zostrianos, a Nag Hammadi text, calls the feminine insanity and slavery and the masculine salvation.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Philo, On Flight and Finding 51
Classical
51 And he calls Bethuel the father of Rebekkah. How, then, can the daughter of God, namely, wisdom, be properly called a father? is it because the name indeed of wisdom is feminine but the sex masculine? For indeed all the virtues bear the names of women, but have the powers and actions of full-grown men, since whatever is subsequent to God, even if it be the most ancient of all other things, still has only the second place when compared with that omnipotent Being, and appears not so much masculine as feminine, in accordance with its likeness to the other creatures; for as the male always has the precedence, the female falls short, and is inferior in rank.
Date: 20-50 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Gospel of Thomas 1:114
Nag Hammadi
113 His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?” “It will not come by watching for it. They will not say, ‘Look, here,’ or ‘Look, there.’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.” 114 Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for females are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Zostrianos 26:27
Nag Hammadi
Do not baptize yourselves with death, nor deliver yourselves to things that are inferior to you as though they were things superior to you. Run from the insanity and the slavery of what is feminine, and choose for yourselves the salvation of what is masculine. You are not here to suffer.
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Notes and References
“... The disciples’ maleness consists in their being both men and living spirits. Mary becoming male results in her becoming a living spirit like the men, and being able to enter the kingdom. The strong suggestion of the saying is that the male disciples occupy a spiritual position above that of Mary. This is quite in keeping with a number of philosophical traditions according to which women are characterised by deficiency: most famously, Aristotle, but also those closer to Thomas such as Philo and the Valentinian Theodotus. According to the Gnostic Zostrianus, femininity is ‘madness and bondage’, and masculinity ‘salvation’ (Zost. 131,5–8). [...] Fug. 51: ἀεὶ γὰρ προνομίαν τοῦ ἄρρενος ἔχοντος ἐνδεῖ καὶ ὑστερίζει τὸ θῆλυ ...”
* 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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