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In Second Maccabees, a man who loses his limbs hopes to receive them back. New limbs allow entry to the kingdom in the Gospel of Thomas, while the Treatise on the Resurrection describes limbs within the body, using the image for another kind of life.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Maccabees 7:11
Deuterocanon
10 After him, the third was made a victim of their mocking. When he was required, he quickly put out his tongue, and stretched out his hands courageously, 11 and nobly said, “I got these from heaven. For his laws’ sake I treat these with contempt. From him, I hope to receive these back again.” 12 As a result, the king himself and those who were with him were astonished at the young man’s soul, for he regarded the pains as nothing.
Gospel of Thomas 22
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.”
Treatise on the Resurrection 8:3
Letter to Rheginos
Nag Hammadi
Let none doubt concerning this. [...] in fact, the visible limbs that are dead shall not be saved, for (in that case) the living [limbs] that exist in them would rise. Then, what is the resurrection? It is the continuing revelation of those who have risen.
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Notes and References
“... The references to eyes, hands and feet are resurrection imagery, though with reference to a new spiritual nature rather than to physical resurrection. [...] (3) Finally, the imagery here is also that of resurrection: in 2 Macc. 7.11, for example, the third brother declares that he will receive back his limbs from God. Closer is the theology of Odes of Solomon, where the saved individual has ‘members in which there is no sickness or affliction or suffering’ (21.4), and of the Treatise on the Resurrection, where there are ‘living members which are within’ in contrast to the dead external limbs (48.1–3). This thought comes to the fore in the next reference, to the ‘images’. ...”
* 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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