Texts in Conversation
In First Timothy, people enter and leave the world empty of possessions. Jesus uses the same pattern in the Gospel of Thomas for people he calls drunk and blind, so their emptiness concerns what they fail to understand rather than what they own.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
1 Timothy 6:7
New Testament
6 Now godliness combined with contentment brings great profit. 7 For we have brought nothing into this world and so we cannot take a single thing out either. 8 But if we have food and shelter, we will be satisfied with that. 9 Those who long to be rich, however, stumble into temptation and a trap and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is the root of all evils. Some people in reaching for it have strayed from the faith and stabbed themselves with many pains.
Gospel of Thomas 28
Nag Hammadi
27 “If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom. If you do not make the Sabbath a Sabbath, you will not see the Father.” 28 Jesus said, “I stood in the midst of the world, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found them all drunk; none of them thirsted. My soul was pained for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their hearts and do not see. They came into the world empty, and they seek to go out of the world empty. But now they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, they will repent.” 29 Jesus said, “If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Yet I marvel at this: how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.”
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Notes and References
“... 28.3 For they came into the world empty, and they seek still to come out of the world empty. The third image used after drunkenness and blindness is emptiness. This saying is a version of a widely distributed proverb which is both biblical and classical. The ‘emptiness’ in these other proverbs, however, refers to the lack of wealth possessed by the newborn or the dead. In this context in Thomas it is probably more the spiritual deficiency noted in GTh 67: the reference is to emptiness of knowledge. [...] Job 1.21; cf. Ps. 48.18; Eccl. 5.15; Philo, Spec. 1.294–295; 1 Tim. 6.7; Polycarp, Phil. 4.1; cf. Seneca, Ep. 102.25: non licet plus efferre quam intuleris. ...”
* 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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