Texts in Conversation
In Mark, faith without doubt can throw a mountain into the sea. In the Gospel of Thomas, the mountain moves for those who make the two one, so the power comes from that union and not from faith.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Mark 11:23
New Testament
22 Jesus said to them, “Have faith in God. 23 I tell you the truth, if someone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 For this reason I tell you, whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Gospel of Thomas 1:106
Nag Hammadi
105 Jesus said, “Whoever knows the father and the mother will be called the child of a harlot.” 106 Jesus said, “When you make the two one, you will become children of man, and when you say, ‘Mountain, move!’ it will move.” 107 Jesus said, “The kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, wandered off. He left the ninety-nine and sought the one until he found it. After he had labored, he said to the sheep, ‘I love you more than the ninety-nine.’”
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Notes and References
“... LOGION 106 106:1 Jesus said, “When you make the two into one, you will become children of humankind, 2and when you say ‘Mountain, move from here!’ it will move.” Logion 106:2 has independent parallels in Matthew 17:20, Mark 11:23 and 1 Corinthians 13:2. The binary saying of 106:1 has a parallel only in Thomas 48. The promise to be able to move mountains (or, in Luke 17:6, trees) on the basis of faith had wide currency in the traditions of the Jesus movement. It is not necessary here to make a judgment about whether it goes back to the historical Jesus. The point is that Thomas demonstrates its redactional concerns in making the ability to move mountains the reward for union of a binary pair. This union concern is paralleled in Thomas 48, where the promise is made on the condition that two make peace in a single house. ...”
Marshall, John W.
"The Gospel of Thomas and the Cynic Jesus" in Arnal, William E., and Michel Desjardins (eds.) Whose Historical Jesus?
(p. 51) Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997
* 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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