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Scholarly Quotes

Marvin Meyer writes: “Compare Gospel of the Egyptians 5 (cited at saying 22); Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.44 (cited at saying 21); Gospel of Thomas 21; especially Manichaean Psalm Book 99,26-30; ‘The saying (or, word) of Jesus the redeemer came to [me (?), as] is appropriate: “The vain garment of this flesh I have stripped off, and I am saved and purified; I have caused the clean feet of my soul to trample upon it confidently; with the gods that are clothed with Christ have I stood in line.”‘ This list text, like saying 37, combines referenecs to stripping and to trampling. In his article ‘The Garments of Shame,’ Jonathan Z. Smith argues that such stripping and trampling reflect early Christian baptismal practice.” (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, pp. 84-85)

Gospel of Philip 75:21-25 states: “The living water is a body. It is fitting that we put on the living person. For this reason, when one is about to go down to the water, one strips so that one may put on that one (that is, the living person).”

Cyril of Jerusalem in Mystagogical Catechesis 2.2 states: “So then, once you entered, you took off your garment, and this was an image of taking off the old person with its deeds. Having taken this off, you were naked. . . . How marvelous! You were naked in the sight of all and were not ashamed. For truly you were bearing a copy of the first-formed Adam, who in paradise was naked and not ashamed.”

Augustine in Sermon 216.10-11 states on prebaptismal instruction: “In such great masses of troubles, then, clothe yourselves with goatskin and humble your souls through fasting. What is denied to pride is restored to humility. Indeed, when you were examined and the one who instigates flight and desertion was duly rebuked by the omnipotence of the awesome trinity, you were not clohted with goatskin, yet your feet sotod mystically upon it. Vices and skins of she-goats are to be trampled under foot; cloth from perverse kids is to be torn apart.”

Marvin Meyer writes: “As is hinted at by Cyril of Jerusalem, the ultimate source of these motifs of stripping and trampling may be the book of Genesis (2:25; 3:14-15). In their article ‘Stripped before God,’ April D. De Conick and Jarl Fossum concur that these motifs derive from the Genesis story, but they challenge Smith’s suggestion that saying 37 provides an interpretation of early Christian baptism. Instead, they note that stripping commonly refers to the removal of the fleshly body (compare saying 21), and trampling clothes ina childlike way may be understood as the renunciation of the flesh, so that the one who strips off and tramples upon clothes behaves like a child and achieves a childlike purity and innocence. De Conick and Fossum observe that in two Nag Hammadi documents, On the Anointing and Reality of the Rulers (’Hypostasis of the Archons’), such trampling is said to aid in overcoming the world and the powers of the world, and in these two texts trampling is discussed in the context of anointing. Thus, they conclude, saying 37 describes the means employed (perhaps including anointing) for embracing purity and attaining a vision of the divine.” (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, pp. 85-86)

Joseph A. Fitzmyer writes: “This question recalls that put in the mouth of ‘Judas, not the Iscariot’ (most likely Judas Thomas, the alleged compiler of this Gospel), by the writer of the fourth canonical Gospel, ‘Master, how does it happen that you are going to show yourself to us and not to the world?’ (Jn 14:22).” (Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, p. 410)

F. F Bruce writes: “The disciples’ question is reminiscent of the questions of Matthew 24.3 (cf. Mark 13.4; Luke 21.7) and Luke 17.20; but the answer is quite different from anything found in the canonical Gospels. As the primal sin in Eden was followed by a sense of shame at the awareness of being naked, so (it is implied) the restoration of primal innocence will be marked by the removal of such a sense of shame. For the reference to small children cf. Saying 22; for ’sons of the Living One’ cf. Saying 3.” (Jesus and Christian Origens Outside the New Testament, p. 128)

Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman write: “Whereas in the Church’s gospels such questions are not really answered, Thomas answers them by stating that the kingdom has come; it need only be recognized. Here the disciples are to become ‘naked’ (Saying 21) by stripping off the body; they are to become ‘like little children.’ Such stripping is mentioned by the Naassenes (Hippolytus, Ref., 5, 8, 44); while treading on the grament of shame was found in the Gospel of the Egyptians (Clement, Strom., 3, 92, 2). The disciples will be ’sons of the Living Father’ (see Saying 2).” (The Secret Sayings of Jesus, p. 153)

Joseph A. Fitzmyer writes: “In this saying, at least as it is preserved for us in the Coptic version, we find the characteristic Gnostic ideas about sexual asceticism that were current in the second and third centuries A.D. These ideas force us to classify this saying in the category of J. Jeremias’ ‘tendentious inventions’.” (Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, p. 410)

Funk and Hoover write: “The removal of one’s clothes can be understood in different ways, as we noted in the comments on Thom 21:4. It may be interpreted as an allusion to Christian baptism, where the naked candidate is reborn; it may be understood as a return to the heavenly state in which humans have shed their bodies; or it may denote the primodial state of andogyny in which the sexes are not differentiated. It is striking that in 37:3 Jesus speaks about himself; this is rare among sayings attributable to Jesus. His response is, of course, correlative with the question posed in the introduction in 37:1, which presupposes an understanding of Jesus as the messenger from heaven - a typical Thomean perspective. These sayings are not correctly attributed to Jesus.” (The Five Gospels, p. 494)