DISCRIMINATION AND LANGUAGE

Two preliminary observations I would like to offer. It is an important step, as I understand it, in the Indian system of spiritual teaching to develop the faculty of discrimination, and Hugh McGregor Ross has identified a number of Logia in the Thomas Gospel as demonstrating the use of discrimination. The situation of the Snake in the Rope is familiar to you in India: that coiled, ambivalent thing on a dimly-lit path. But in Thomas Jesus gives the parable of the Wise fisherman who finds in his net a ‘single large and good fish: that wise fisherman he cast all the small fish down to the bottom of the sea, he chose the large fish without trouble’ (Logion 8). In some traditions discrimination is the first thing to be taught as all else depends on it: in the experience of our little Thomas Circle, this discipline has demonstrated its utility at several points in our study.

The second is on language. As may be expected from the very muddled linguistic background – Aramaic, Greek and Coptic at least – against which the Thomas text was written, the end product is somewhat of a mongrel of mixed, though good, pedigrees; compared with the Sanskrit to which readers of the Hindu scriptures are accustomed however, a lack of smoothness and refinement in our text will be evident. This does not mean that there is any lack of precision or power, as you will see. To Indian ears these saying may have an unaccustomed robustness – along with the moments of true glory – born of the confrontational times in which they were written. They are pointed, full of energy, and have an electric quality.

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