PART TWO: REVELATIONS 1

In 1971 or ‘72, after visiting Le Salon (The Adult Bookstore) on Polk St., San Francisco, to see if my books  were selling well (they were) I was walking up Polk and passed a little Gay hippie boutique which had a big sign in the window: "THE GAY GOSPEL! " with a display of several new copies of a small hardcover book, the first mass publication of an ancient manuscript, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, called: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS. One of several posters in the window, quoting the book, read:

"Jesus said: Let whoever seeks not cease seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will be troubled. When he has been troubled, he will marvel. Then he will reign over The All."

 I distinctly remember getting a very strange, goosebumpy feeling as I read that. I had just published two books with ALL in the titles: I WANT IT ALL and ALL OR NOTHING.  I was currently working on the third book of the "ALL Trilogy" called ALL IS WELL. I had recently experienced three separate encounters with what I had called in my notes "The All Mind" - each time after having taken LSD. The word ALL resonated in my head like a tuning fork hitting just the right note.

I bought The Gospel According to Thomas, took it home like an unexpected treasure, read it several times – and many times since then – and it’s effect on my thinking has been profound. It has explained many things, answered many questions I’ve had, all or most of my life. It has changed my opinion of myself and of all other Gay men & Lesbians.

The manuscript which became known as The Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, and is dated at around 340 AD. It contained 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, supposedly written by a disciple of Judas Didymos Thomas, "Doubting Thomas." No one knows who the writer, or scribe, actually was. However, those 114 sayings probably come closer to the actual words of Jesus than any other representation we have today. It also becomes clear why half of his sayings never made it into the Christian Bible, and why those that did make it have been twisted and turned inside-out, trying to make them conform to Christianity as we know it.

The Gospel of Thomas contains many of the sayings also found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, although their forms have often been changed, slightly or greatly, twisting and changing their meanings -- and in the 4 canonical books, they had been embedded in a narrative of religious propaganda. Out of that context, they suddenly became meaningful. I had recently decided that I was Gay because Jesus was a homosexual, and many of the sayings attributed to him by Thomas validated and justified that idea. Especially the final entry, #114:
  

Simon Peter said to him: "Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life."

Jesus said "Look, I will guide her to make her male,

so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males.

For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven."

That statement was radically anti-Christian and obviously, to me, pro-Lesbian. They had called it "The Gay Gospel" in the Gay Hippie Bookshop for good reason.  

I want to examine some of those sayings, and will do precisely what the priests and scribes have done with Jesus’ words for the past 2000 years: that is pick and chose the ones I understand, and that make sense to me, and promote the theory I’m promoting: that Jesus was a homosexual – arguably the world’s first Acid-Head Hippie – who preached the end of Judaism, not of the world, tried to teach love instead of hate, forgiveness instead of judgment and The Kingdom of Heaven now, not as an afterlife above the clouds, as angels, with wings, flying around, playing harps, praising God and singing "Alleluia!"

According to Judas Didymos Thomas, whoever he was, Jesus said:

"Let whoever seeks not cease seeking until he finds.

When he finds what he is seeking, he will be troubled.

When he has been troubled, he will marvel.

Then he will reign over The All." (2)

* * *

"If your leaders say to you,

‘The Kingdom of Heaven is in the sky,'

then the birds of the sky will precede you.

If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,'

then the fish will precede you.

But I tell you: the Kingdom of Heaven is inside you and outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known,

and you will understand that you are children of ‘The Living Father.’

But if you do not know yourselves,

then you live in poverty,

and you are that poverty." (3)

* * *

"The sower went out with a handful of seeds,

and scattered them.

Some fell on the road,

and the birds came and ate them.

Some fell on rocks, and did not take root.

Others fell among thorns, which choked the seeds,

and the worms came and ate them.

But some fell on good fertile soil

and produced a large crop, bigger and better than expected." (9)

* * *

"I have cast a fire upon the world,

and watch, I guard it until it blazes." (10)

* * *

"I shall choose you, one from a thousand

and two from ten thousand,

and you will stand as a single one." (23)

  

* * *

"If the flesh came into being because of spirit,

that is a marvel,

but if spirit came into being because of the body,

that is a marvel of marvels.

And yet I marvel at how this great wealth

has come to dwell in this poverty." (29)

* * *

"No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket,

or puts it in a hidden place.

Rather, one puts it on a lampstand

so that all who come and go will see its light.

What you hear in your ear – the ‘Other Ear’ –

proclaim from the rooftops. (33)

* * *

"Within a person of light, there is light,

and it shines on the whole world.

If it does not shine, it is dark." (24)

* * *

"When the blind lead the blind

they will all fall into a ditch." (34)

* * *

"The Pharisees and the scholars

have taken the keys of knowledge

and have hidden them.

They have not entered,

nor have they allowed those who want to enter

to do so." (39)

* * *

Damn the Pharisees!  They are like dogs, sleeping in a manger,

who do not eat, nor allow the cattle to eat." (102)

* * *

"What you are looking for has already come,

but you don’t know it." (51-2)

* * *

"Show me the stone that the builders rejected:

that will be the corner-stone." (66)

* * *

"If you bring forth that which is within you,

what is within you will save you.

If you do not have it within you,

that which you do not have

will kill you." (70)

 

* * *

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman

who took a little leaven,

and hid it in dough,

and made it into large loaves of bread." (96)

* * *

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman

who was carrying a jar full of meal.

While she was walking along the road,

the jar broke,

and the meal spilled behind her.

She didn’t know it,

she hadn’t noticed the problem.

So when she got home and put the jar down,

she discovered that it was empty." (97)

* * *

"The Kingdom of Heaven will not come by watching for it.

It will not be said: Look here! Or Look there!

Rather, the Kingdom of Heaven is spread out upon the earth

but people can’t see it." (113)

***

"Do not give your holy objects to dogs;

they might take them and throw them on the dung heaps.

Don’t give pearls to pigs." (93)

* * *

"The disciples said to him:

‘Your brothers and your mother are standing outside.’

Jesus told them:

‘Those here who do what my Father wants,

they are my brothers and my mother.’ "(99)

 * * *

"Love your friends like your own soul." (25)

* * *

"Whoever drinks from my mouth

will become like me;

I myself shall become that person,

and the hidden things

will be revealed to him." (108)

  

* * *

"A woman in the crowd said to him:

'Blessed is the womb that bore you

and the breasts that fed you.'

He said to her: Blessed are they who have heard

the word of the Father, and truly kept it.

For there will be days when you will say

'Blessed are the womb that has not conceived,

and the breasts that have not given milk.'" (79)

* * *

"Simon Peter said:

‘Make Mary leave us,

for females don’t deserve life.’

Jesus replied: ‘Watch, I will guide her to make her male,

so that she too may become

a living spirit like you males.

For every female who makes herself male

will enter the domain of Heaven." (114)

* * *

According to the author, these are the "secret words" or "words with secret, hidden, higher meanings" that Jesus spoke and that Judas Didymos Thomas wrote down. The author may have been the "Doubting Thomas," of canonical scripture, but more likely, a scribe writing down sayings originally attributed to Thomas, which had been passed down by oral tradition for several hundred years. Some of those sayings have made it into the "authorized" cannon, The Holy Bible, but the telling clue is in those that were not, or were apparently altered from the original, changing their meanings to suit Christian doctrine.  Neither "Christ" nor "Messiah" nor Virgin-Birth are mentioned.  Thomas Gospel says nothing about "Resurection," but begins: "Whoever perceives the meaning of these sayings will not taste death."  It isn't clear if it was Jesus or Thomas, or the scribe, who made that claim.

There are  many versions of The Gospel According to Thomas online, along with many learned discourses on its pertinence and significance, each of them with slightly different translations of certain words. But all of them that I have read have based their interpretations and conclusions on their assumption that Jesus was, in fact, the heterosexual Jewish Messiah: "Christ."  As far as most Christians are concerned, his full name is "Jesus Christ."
 

I have a very different theory about who he was and what he was trying to do – and I’m going out on a very thin limb by prophesying that perhaps he has, in fact, accomplished what he set out to do some 1977 years ago – according the Christian calendar; there is no actual physical record that Jesus ever existed.