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Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas both tell of a dragnet pulled from the sea. In Matthew the bad fish are thrown away, as angels will remove the wicked at the end of the age. In Thomas a wise fisherman keeps one large fish and throws back the rest.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Matthew 13:47
New Testament
47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea that caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, they pulled it ashore, sat down, and put the good fish into containers and threw the bad away. 49 It will be this way at the end of the age. Angels will come and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Gospel of Thomas 1:8
Nag Hammadi
7 Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion that the man will eat, so that the lion becomes a man. And cursed is the man whom a lion will eat, and the lion will become a man.” 8 And he said, “The human being is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a large, fine fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear should hear.” 9 Jesus said, “Look, the sower went out, took a handful of seeds, and scattered them. Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock and they did not take root in the soil and did not produce ears. Others fell among thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced good fruit. It yielded sixty per measure and one hundred and twenty per measure.”
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Notes and References
“... This parable is found, in a quite different form, in Matthew (Matt. 13.47–48), and there are other parallels in early Christian literature, and in fable traditions. There are two main options for the interpretation of the parable. (1) It is possible that this is a parable about divine election: the selection of the one great fish and the discarding of the many others could be seen as aligning with the statement about divine election in GTh 23 (‘I shall choose you, one out of a thousand …’). This interpretation of the parable is unlikely, however. The parable is quite different from its parallel in Matthew, where God is the fisherman (Matt. 13.47–50), nor do the other extra-biblical parallels shed much light on the meaning in Thomas. (2) There are three reasons in particular for seeing the parable, as most scholars do, rather as about the human choice of the kingdom. [...] The net here is a dragnet, as in Matthew’s parable and the Aesopic fable (Babrius 4 = Perry 282). [...] Matthew and Aesop both have σαγήνη. ...”
* 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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