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In Luke, Jesus says no one will point to the kingdom here or there, because it is already in their midst. The Gospel of Thomas builds on that pattern, ruling out the sky and the sea before placing the kingdom both inside and outside the disciples.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Luke 17:21
New Testament
20 Now at one point the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God was coming, so he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, 21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” 22 Then he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.
Gospel of Thomas 1:3
Nag Hammadi
2 Jesus said, “Let the seeker keep seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will be troubled. When he is troubled, he will be astonished, and he will reign over the All. And once he has reigned, he will rest.” 3 Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and you are that poverty.” 4 Jesus said, “The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same.”
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Notes and References
“... Whoever these ἕλκοντες are, Thomas’s polemic is against the localisation of the kingdom of God in some particular heavenly or earthly sphere. [...] Replacing this localised view of the kingdom is the counter-statement that it is ‘inside you and outside you’, in other words, anywhere and everywhere. [...] The kingdom, then, is simultaneously all around (cf. GTh 113.4) as well as within. [...] The point is that the kingdom is both readily accessible but can never be pinned down to a location. The structure ‘neither X—nor Y—but within you’ derives from Luke 17.21 (cf. GTh 113), and Thomas has combined Luke 17.21 with Deut. 30.11–14/ Rom. 10, as Tertullian was later to do (Adv. Marc. 4.35). ...”
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