A Quaker Weekly VOLUME 5 APRIL 4, 1959 NUMBER 14 IN THIS ISSUE ~ONER or later lo<t causes win. There is an eter­ nal sense of justice in the world. Right does not always have a. scaffold. One day it Two Strands in Quakerism prevails. Like the mythologi­ . by Henry J. Cadbury cal Greek character who was thrown down each time he came back, rising with new glory, so one day the defeated Internationally Speaking triumph and prevail. The by Richard R. Wood progress of the world is the history of men who would not permit defeat to speak the final word. If you ask the Letter from Iran meaning of defeat, I frankly say I do not know, but I do . by Esther and Edward Jones know that through defeat life's values deepen and are enhanced. -JosEPH R. Srzoo, British Bookshelf On Guard, 1941, Quoted with the permission by Alice B. Thorne of the publishers, T he Macmillan Company The Newly Discovered Sayings of Jesus FIFTEEN CENTS A COPY $5.00 A YEAR 210 FRIENDS JOURNAL April 4, 1959 The Newly Discovered Sayings of Jesus FRIENDS JOURNAL OME information about the Sayings of Jesus, with which S Henry J. Cadbury deals in the "Editorial Comments" of this issue, is listed here for the benefit of readers who may have missed the newspaper story. A large number of the Sayings of Jesus that are part of the documents can also be found word for word in the four Gospels. But Dr. Cullmann stressed the fact that the Gospel of Thomas differs from the canonical four Gospels because it is not set in the narrative form which is so characteristic of our Gospels. The designation as a "gospel" is therefore Published weekly, but biweekly from June 13 to September 19 and December 19 to January 2, at 1615 Cherry Street, hardly justified. Apart from sayings, including parables and Philadelphia 2, Pennsylvania (Rittenhouse 6-7669) By Friends Publishing Corporation the beatitudes, which parallel the Gospel text verbally, and WILLIAM HUBBEN MILDRED A. PURNELL those which only vary from it, just as the four Gospels show Editor and Manager Assistant Editor some variation among themselves, there are some which were MYRTLE M. WALLEN FREIDA L. SINGLETON Advertisements Subscriptions known from the texts of the Church Fathers. The latter group CONTRIBUTING CORRESPONDENTS contains such sayings as, "Raise the stone and you will find RICHARD R. WOOD, Philadelphia me; split the wood and I am there," or "Jesus said, he who is Africa .............. ............. .. Maurice Webb, Durban near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from England ......................Horace B. Pointing, London Joan Hewitt, London the kingdom." Sayings less known, although paralleled by other Germany ....... .. ............... Lottelore Roloff, Berlin sources, arouse our curiosity even more. Cullmann quoted India . ............. .............. Benjamin Polk, Calcutta Japan ........... ................. Hilary Conroy, Tokyo a few of these, such as the following: "Jesus said: If those Lake Erie Association ............... Kenneth Ives, Detroit Lebanon . ....... Calvin W. and Gwendolyn Schwabe, Beirut who lead you say to you: Behold, the kingdom is in heaven, Scandinavia ............ .. Ole Olden, Stavanger, Norway Switzerland .................... .. Robert J. Leneh, Geneva then the birds of heaven will precede you; if they say to you Turkey .. .. ................William L. Nute, Jr., Ankara Midwest (Five Years) ......... .. Russell E. Rees, Richmond that it is in the sea, then the fish will precede you. But the New England ................. Thomas R. Bodine, Hartford Kingdom is within you and it is outside of you." A formerly West Coast ................ Ferner Nuhn, Claremont, Calif. unknown parable reports an answer to Mary (which Mary?), BOARD OF MANAGERS who had asked him about the kind of people the disciples 1956-1969: Howard H. Brinton, Sarah P . Brock, Ruth 0. Maris, Margaret L. Matthews, Lawrence McK. Miller, Jr. were. "He said: They are like small children who have settled 1957-1960: Mary R. Calhoun, Eleanor S. Clarke, Barbara L. Curtis, Arthur M. Dewees, Irving Hollingshead, Emily in a field which is not theirs. When the owners of the field C. J ohnson, Elizabeth H. Kirk. 1958-1961: J. C. Clement Alexandre, Carol P. Brainerd, Daniel D. Test, Jr., Anne come, they will say: Leave our fi eld to us. They are com­ Wood, Mildred B. Young. pletely naked [unarmed?] in their presence, and so they will THE JOURNAL ASSOCIATES are friends who add five dollars or more to their subscriptions annually to help leave it to them and give them their field." The newly found meet the over-all cost of publication. collection adds a significant condemnation of the Pharisees SUBSCRIPTION RATES: United States, possessions, Can­ ada, and Mexico: $5.00 a year, $2.75 for six montha. to the ones known from our Gospels. "Jesus said: Woe unto Foreign countries: $5.60 a year. Single copies: fifteen cents. Cheeks should be made payable to Friends Journal. them, the Pharisees, for they are like a dog lying in the Sample copies sent on request. manger of the cattle, for he neither eats, nor does he let the Second Class Postage Paid at Philadelphia, Pa. cattle eat." A strange illustration of our need to prepare methodically and with continued self-discipline for attaining our goal is this one: "Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a man who wanted to kill an important person; he drew his sword in his house, he pierced it through the wall to see if his hand would be steady; then he killed the im­ Contents Page portant person." This saying may be related to a secular The Newly Discovered Sayings of Jesus ......... ... 210 proverb that existed before Jesus. We may regret that the small group of scholars who had Editorial Comments-Henry ]. Cadbury ....... ..... 211 access to this information did not share it at an earlier date Two Strands in Quakerism-Henry ]. Cadbury ...... 212 with the general public. Yet the excessive speculation that Internationally Speaking-Richard R. Wood ... ... 214 surrounded at one time the Dead Sea Scrolls may have de­ terred the professional scholars from turning over their in­ Letter from !ran-Esther and Edward ]ones ........ 215 formation to the public. Dr. Cullmann assured the public British Bookshelf-Alice B. Thorne ................ 216 that none of the Sayings would alter the picture of Jesus' To Friends Everywhere ........................... 217 ministry as we have it from the four Gospels. He values the findings because they enrich and broaden our knowledge of Friends and Their Friends . 218 the teachings of Jesus and substantiate his image as it al:ways Letter to the Editor ............. ....... ......... 219 has been known to us. FRIENDS JOURNAL Successor to THE FRJEND (1827-1955) and FRIENDS INTELLIGENCER (1844-1955) ESTABLISHED 1955 PHILADELPHIA, APRIL 4, 1959 VOL. 5-No. 14 Editorial Comments· We are greatly indebted to our Friend H enry ] . Sunday supplement, the American Weekly, enterpris­ Cadbury, eminent New Testament scholar, for his ingly published a report from Puech himself as long prompt and expert response to our invitation to edi­ ago as April, 1957. There is here, as elsewhere, the torialize on the recently publicized Sayings of Jesus.­ difficulty of avoiding saying too little as of saying too Editors much about its importance. For sixty years and more so many successive discoveries of early manuscripts have HE public interest in archaeology, especially in been made that both experts and the public should by Tanything bearing upon the Bible and its religion, now be aware of this dilemma. But the following com­ was again made evident when the Associated Press ments may be justified. released on March 19 a story about the Gospel of Such discoveries more often supplement and confirm Thomas, as though it were of a new and unique dis­ our limited picture of antiquity than revolutionize it. covery. It was based upon a lecture given by the dis­ The titles of books are not to be taken too seriously. tinguished French scholar Oscar Cullmann, currently Christian writings frequently used the names of apostles. Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary, New References to a gospel according to Thomas were known York. Actually this is one of forty-four documents in to us and the text of an infancy gospel under his name. thirteen volumes found in 1945 in a single jar in a The newly discovered one begins: "Here are the secret tomb in Upper Egypt some sixty miles north of Luxor words spoken by Jesus the Living and written down by on the Nile. The documents were first scattered and Didymus Jude Thomas." Why Thomas was chosen does only lately re-collected in the fine Museum at Cairo, not appear. except one of the thirteen volumes, which got to the It is evidently not a gospel in the sense of a collec­ Jung Institute at Zurich! They all appear to be in tion of doings as well as of sayings of Jesus. It contains Coptic, the language of ancient Egypt, and written in only sayings. In this respect it resembles in kind, though the third or fourth Christian century. No doubt many exceeding in extent, two fragments of papyrus found in of them had been written earlier in Greek, and trans­ 1897 and 1903 respectively at Oxyrhynchus, further lated. I understand they are each in the form of a codex down 'the Nile. I still have the Bible in which I copied or leaf-book of papyrus bound in leather, not like the carefully at the time their Greek text. The present earlier Qumran or Dead Sea documents in the form of find confirms a prediction of more discoveries of the leather scrolls. same kind, which was made at that time. But instead The full text of these finds is, with one exception, of only a dozen sayings then, the present collection the Gospel of Truth, not yet available to scholars gen­ contains a hundred (103, Puech; or 114, Cullmann).