Early Christian Writings Gospel of Thomas Saying 86 Previous - Gospel of Thomas Home - Next

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Nag Hammadi Coptic Text Funk's Parallels
Luke 9:57-62, Matt 8:18-
22.

BLATZ LAYTON DORESSE

(86) Jesus said: [The foxes
have] the[ir holes] and the
birds have [their] nest, but
the Son of Man has no place
to lay his head and rest.
(86) Jesus said, "[Foxes
have] their dens and birds
have their nests. But the son
of man has nowhere to lay
his head and gain repose."
90 [86]. Jesus says: "[The
foxes have holes] and the
birds have [their] nests but
the Son of Man has no place
to lay his head and rest."

Visitor Comments Scholarly Quotes

You are not of the world and
you have no worldly home.
You are of the Living One
and your home is with the
Father.
- Simon Magus
The restlessness of the
human condition, the central
anguish.
- commentor
When we become Christ
(which is the same as being
one with Christ), we are no
longer a natural part of the
world. The world is for the
illusion of physical life,
wealth, power and status; all
these things lose meaning
when one becomes Christ.
- The Monist
86
Alias:
Marvin Meyer quotes Plutarch's Life of Tiberius Gracchus 9.4-5 on the homeless
soldiers of Italy: "The wild animals that range over Italy have a cave, and there is a
lair for each of them to enter, but those who fight and die for Italy have a share in the
air and the light and nothing else, but, having no house or abode, they wander about
with wives and children." (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, p.
101)
Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman write: "Something has been lost at the
beginning, but this saying is nothing but a repetition of the gospel statement about the
Son of Man and his life of detachment from the world (Mathew 8:20; Luke 9:58).
What is characteristic of the Son of Man must also be characteristic of his disciples,
who are 'sons of men' (Saying 103). The place of 'rest' (Thomas adds 'to rest' to the
saying; cf., Sayings 51, 52, and 90) is not on earth but within." (The Secret Sayings
of Jesus, p. 182)
J. S. Kloppenborg Verbin writes: "Koester notes that GThom 86 (=Q 9:58) uses 'Son
of Man' in a nontitular way, and with Bultmann (1968:98; also Todt 1965:122)
argued that this saying is a proverb in which Son of Man is no honorific title, but
simply means 'man,' as contrasted with the animals. He wonders: 'The decisive
question is whether Thomas presupposes a stage of the Synoptic tradition in which a
titular usage of the term Son of Man had not yet developed' (1971:170-71 n 34)."
(Excavating Q, p. 384)
Funk and Hoover write: "As in Q, the version in Thomas employs the phrase 'son of
Adam.' In addition to its well-known technical sense, it can also mean simply 'human
being.' Since Thomas probably does not empty that phrase in its technical,
apocalyptic sense, the translators of the Scholars Version have rendered it simply as
'human beings' (the plural form makes it refer unambiguously to persons rather than
to the heavenly figure of Daniel 7, who will come on the clouds at the end of time to
pass judgment on the world). If Jesus is referring to himself in this saying, as some
scholars think, it suggests that Jesus is homeless - a wanderer, without permanent
 address, without fixed domicile. Jesus thus ranks himself even below the animals,
much less below settled, civilized human beings. In Q, Jesus makes this saying a
warning to potential followers. In Thomas, the saying has been modified in a very
subtle way to refer to the gnostic notion of salvation, which was summed up in the
term 'rest.' Compare saying 51, where the disciples ask Jesus when the dead will
achieve 'rest.' The Greek fragment of Thomas 2 states that the ultimate goal of the
gnostic is to find 'rest.'" (The Five Gospels, p. 519)
J. D. Crossan writes: "There is, first of all, the immediate formal difference in that,
Post the Note while Q was an aphoristic dialogue [Mt 8:19-20 // Lk 9:57-58], this is an aphoristic
saying. And, since this eliminates any discrepancy between comment and response,
Discuss it now at AMC that is between voluntary wandering and involuntary rejection, the meaning of Gos.
forums! Thom. 86 is not and was not necessarily that of Q. Therefore what Bultmann said
long before Thomas was discovered must now be recalled: 'it is plain that the
dominical saying could have circulated without any framework. That must indeed
have been the case if ho huios tou anthropou has been incorrectly substituted for
'man.' And 'man' must have been in fact the original meaning; man, homeless in the
world, is contrasted with the wild beasts' (28). Koester, citing Bultmann, notes that
Thomas never 'uses the title "Son of Man" for Jesus or any other figure,' so that 'the
decisive question is whether Thomas presuppoes a stage of the synoptic tradition in
which a titular usage of the term Son of man had not yet developed' (Robinson and
Koester: 170, 171 note 34). As with the saying in Gos. Thom. 42, 'Become passers-
by,' so also does this saying bespeak a homelessness for humanity within this world.
And, although this has been denied (Strobel: 223), the addition of 'and rest' after 'to
lay his head' points the aphorism towards a gnostic interpretation (Gartner: 60-61).
This is true not so much of the text itself, even with that addition, but of its
contextual association with the theme of Rest or Repose in Gos. Thom. 2 (Oxy P
654.2), 50, 51, 60, and 90 (Vielhauer, 1964:292-299). Indeed, there are 'two terms,
the Place and the Rest (or Repose)' brought together in Gos. Thom. 86, and even
though 'both are found in the New Testament, though usually in a general and non-
technical sense,' they are used in Thomas in a more specific and gnostic
understanding (Turner and Montefiore: 110). In other words, Gos. Thom. 86 is much
more contextually than textually gnostic (Robinson and Koester, 140-141)." (In
Fragments, pp. 241-242)
J. D. Crossan writes: "The first version [Thomas 86], however, retains the earlier
format of a Jesus saying without any dialogue framework. It also retains, more
significantly, a saying in which 'son of man' is neither titular nor circumlocutionary.
It does not mean Jesus but the generic or indefinite 'human being.' We can be
relatively sure on this point because, while the Gospel of Thomas is, as we saw
earlier, emphatically anti-apocaylyptic, that apocalypticism did not contain the theme
of Jesus as the Son of Man, else that Gospel would surely have avoided or glossed
this present saying. In other words, Gospel of Thomas 86 uses 'son of man' for
'human being' without any fear of apocalyptic misunderstanding, just as Gospel of
Thomas 106 uses the plural 'sons of man' for 'human beings' (Koester 1989a:43). The
saying in Gospel of Thomas 86 asserts, and it is an assertion capable of diverse
interpretations, that the human being, unlike the animal or the bird, has no fixed
abode on earth. I leave aside, by the way, that terminal 'and rest,' which is, in the light
of other sayings on rest and repose such as Gospel of Thomas 2, 50, 51, 60, a major
 theological theme within the redaction of that Gospel (Vielhauer). Apart from that
final gloss, the saying goes back to Jesus, although, as just mentioned, its meaning
will demand much further context for final interpretation. But its existence means
that the Sayings Gospel Q had at least one traditional unit in which Jesus spoke of
'the son of man' and that, in conjunction with the other traditional theme of Jesus as
apocalyptic judge from Daniel 7:13, facilitated the creation of Jesus speaking of
himself as the apocalyptic Son of Man." (The Historical Jesus, p. 256)
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