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Clement of Alexandria reports teachers who read the two or three of Jesus' promise as husband, wife and child under the Creator, while the Saviour is with the single chosen one. The Gospel of Thomas also sets three against Jesus being with one.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Gospel of Thomas 1:30
Nag Hammadi
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.” 30 Jesus said, “Where there are three gods, they are gods; where there are two or one, I am with him.” 31 Jesus said, “No prophet is accepted in his own village; no physician heals those who know him.”
Early Christian
But who are the two or three gathered in the name of Christ in whose midst the Lord is? Does he not by the "three" mean husband, wife, and child? For a wife is bound to her husband by God. If, however, a man wishes to be undistracted, and prefers to avoid begetting children because of the business it involves, "let him remain unmarried," says the apostle, "even as I am." They explain that what the Lord meant was this. By the plurality he means the Creator, the God who is the cause of the world's existence; and by the one, the elect, he meant the Saviour who is Son of another God, the good God.
Date: 195 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... There is almost certainly some sort of relationship between Thomas’s saying and and the roughly contemporaneous options for interpreting Matthew 18.20 as reported by Clement of Alexandria. One interpretation which he notes records the demiurge being with the three, i.e. husband, wife and child (cf. 30.1), but that the saviour God is present with the single elect (cf. 30.2). It is difficult to know the precise relationship between Clement’s report and GTh 30, however. [...] Strom. 3.10.68–70. Clement reports various explanations of the ‘three’. [...] Additionally, the Greek makes best sense as referring to three people. A polemical reference to a family of husband, wife and child, as we saw discussed by Clement, is a possibility. ...”
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