The Gospel of Thomas and Plato Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies Editors Johannes van Oort Einar Thomassen Editorial Board J.D. Beduhn – D.M. Burns – A.D. Deconick W.-P. Funk – I. Gardner – S.N.C. Lieu A. Marjanen – L. Painchaud – N.A. Pedersen T. Rasimus – S.G. Richter – M. Scopello J.D. Turner – G. Wurst volume 93 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/nhms The Gospel of Thomas and Plato A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the “Fifth Gospel” By Ivan Miroshnikov LEIDEN | BOSTON This title is published in Open Access with the support of the University of Helsinki Library. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. ISSN 0929-2470 ISBN 978-90-04-36728-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-36729-6 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by the Authors. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. 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Contents Acknowledgements vii A Note to the Reader viii 1 Setting the Scene 1 Middle Platonism: A Debated Concept 4 Early Christian Appropriation of Platonism: The Prologue of John 16 Preliminary Notes on the Gospel of Thomas 25 The Gospel of Thomas and Philosophy: A History of Research 38 2 The Gospel of Thomas and the Platonists on the World 45 The Text of Sayings 56 and 80 45 The World as a Body and as a Corpse 48 Bodies are Corpses 50 What is Alive is Hidden in What is Dead 62 Conclusions 69 3 The Gospel of Thomas and the Platonists on the Body and the Soul 71 Interpretative Notes on Sayings 29, 87, and 112 71 Tripartite Anthropology in the Gospel of Thomas? 74 The Body vs. the Soul 78 Conclusions 89 4 The Gospel of Thomas and the Platonists on Oneness 91 The Androgynous Protoplast? 91 Becoming Asexual? 96 Platonists on Becoming One 105 Aramaic Background of the Term μοναχός? 116 The Meaning of μοναχός in the Gospel of Thomas 118 Conclusions 128 5 The Gospel of Thomas and the Platonists on Stability 130 DeConick, Williams, and Murray on “Standing” in the Gospel of Thomas 131 The Varieties of “Standing” in the Gospel of Thomas 133 Platonists on Transcendental “Standing” 138 Transcendental “Standing” in the Gospel of Thomas 149 Conclusions 160 vi contents 6 The Gospel of Thomas and the Platonists on Immutability and Indivisibility 163 The Setting of the Dialogue 164 The Contents of the Dialogue 170 The Integrity of the Dialogue 184 Conclusions 186 7 The Gospel of Thomas and the Platonists on Freedom from Anger 188 The Text of Gos. Thom. 7 188 Recent Research on Gos. Thom. 7 192 The Lion within a Human is Anger 197 Tripartite or Bipartite? 200 Platonists on Anger 202 The Meaning of Gos. Thom. 7 214 Conclusions 218 8 Thomasine Metaphysics of the Image and Its Platonist Background 221 The Text of Gos. Thom. 83 222 The Two Types of Images in Middle Platonism 226 Εἰκὼν θεοῦ as a Paradigmatic Image 239 The Meaning of Gos. Thom. 83:1 245 The Meaning of Gos. Thom. 83:2 247 The Metaphysics of the Image in Sayings 22, 50, and 84 250 Conclusions 254 9 Concluding Remarks 257 Appendix 1: The Greek Vorlage of Gos. Thom. 12:2 261 Appendix 2: The Secondary Nature of Gos. Thom. 5:3 264 Appendix 3: A Note on Gos. Thom. 77:1 269 Bibliography 274 Index 309 Acknowledgements This book is a revision of my doctoral dissertation, defended at the University of Helsinki in 2016. My supervisors, Antti Marjanen and Risto Uro, both offered me a great number of critical comments and helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to Harold W. Attridge and André Gagné, who were the preliminary examiners of my dissertation, and Attridge especially for serving as the official opponent at the defense. I wish to express my gratitude to Kenneth W. Lai, for his masterly proof- reading of the English text, as well as to all my colleagues who commented on my work, especially Armen Alexanyan, Risto Auvinen, Dmitry Bratkin, Ismo Dunderberg, Niko Huttunen, Stephen J. Patterson, Alexey Somov, and Sami Yli- Karjanmaa. Finally, I thank the editors at the Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies series for accepting this book for publication, as well as the two anony- mous reviewers for their numerous suggestions for improvement. A Note to the Reader Throughout this book, the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas is reproduced from the edition prepared by Bentley Layton.1 I use two English translations of the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas: that prepared by the Berliner Arbeit- skreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften and revised by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson2 and, to a lesser degree, that prepared by Thomas O. Lamb- din for Layton’s edition.3 Whenever I deem it necessary, I modify these transla- tions according to my understanding of the Coptic text.4 The Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas are cited as they were edited and translated by Harold W. Attridge, with occasional modifications.5 I refer to the subunits within the individual sayings of the Coptic version of the Gospel of Thomas according to the versification used by the Berliner Arbeitskreis.6 As for the Oxyrhynchus fragments, I follow the numeration of verses introduced in Q-Thomas Reader,7 with one exception: P.Oxy. 1.1, ll. 27–30 is numbered Gos.Thom. 30:3–4, not Gos. Thom. 77:2–3. My references to the Sahidic New Testament manuscripts follow the SMR (Schmitz-Mink-Richter) citation method. With the exception of the Gospel of Thomas, all texts from the Nag Hammadi codices, Berlin codex, and codex Tchacos are quoted according to the page and line numbers. The abbreviations I use for these texts, as well as for the biblical texts, apostolic fathers, and the so- called Old Testament pseudepigrapha and New Testament apocrypha are the ones prescribed in the SBL Handbook of Style (2nd ed., 2014). All other works in Latin and Greek are cited according to their Latin titles. The titles for the Greek texts are from the online version of the TLG Canon (updated 6 June 2017), with a few exceptions.8 Unless otherwise stated, all quo- tations from the Greek works reproduce the texts of the editions utilized in the 1 See Layton 1989, 1:52–92. 2 See Bethge et al. 2011. 3 See Lambdin 1989. 4 Thus, I prefer to translate ⲡⲉϫⲉ-, ⲡⲉϫⲁ⸗ with the past tense (“he said,” etc.) and not, like the Berliner Arbeitskreis, with the present (“he says,” etc.); for the rationale behind the latter translation, see Plisch 2008, 24–25. 5 See Attridge 1989a. 6 See Bethge et al. 2005. 7 See Kloppenborg et al. 1990, 156–158. 8 For instance, for the sake of brevity, I cite Alcinous’ handbook as Didascalicus, not as Epitome doctrinae Platonicae sive Διδασκαλικός. a note to the reader ix TLG digital library; the editions that are not in TLG are included in the bibliog- raphy. My references to these texts follow the divisions employed in TLG.9 Unless otherwise stated, all translations of ancient sources quoted in this book are my own. Whenever another English translation is cited, the reference to the ancient source is followed by the name of the translator, the publica- tion of whom is included in the bibliography. The translations of the Platonic10 and Aristotelian corpora I cite are mostly from Plato’s Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, and The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes.11 All English translations of Philo and Plutarch are from the Loeb Clas- sical Library,12 with a few exceptions.13 9 Again, with a few exceptions—e.g., I follow the common practice and cite Holl’s edition of Epiphanius’ Panarion according to the chapter, section, and subsection numbers, not the page and line numbers. 10 Throughout this work, I use the adjectives “Platonic” and “Platonist” with a consistent dif- ference: the former is used to mean “pertaining to Plato” (= “Plato’s”), the latter “pertaining to Platonism.” 11 Cooper 1997; Barnes 1995. 12 Colson et al. 1929–1962; Babbitt et al. 1927–2004. 13 For instance, for Philo’s De opificio mundi, I occasionally use the English translation from Runia 2001, 47–93.