The third saying in the Gospel of Thomas has a joke in it. If your leaders tell you the kingdom is up there, Jesus says, the birds will beat you to it. If they say it’s in the sea, the fish will. Then the joke turns, and the kingdom ends up somewhere nobody can fly or swim to.

I’ve quoted that saying on this blog more than once, and I realized recently that I’d been quoting different versions of it without noticing. One post had the kingdom “in heaven.” Another had it “in the sky.” And the version Elaine Pagels quotes has “sons of the living Father” where my usual translation has “children.”

So I put four versions side by side. They’re all honest translations, and they still disagree in a dozen small places.

The Four Versions

Here’s who’s at the table. All four sit on my shelf, and none of them gets the last word.

  • Thomas Lambdin, whose 1977 translation appeared in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. It’s the version Elaine Pagels quotes in The Gnostic Gospels, which means it’s the one a whole generation of readers met first.
  • Bentley Layton, in The Gnostic Scriptures (Yale). Layton is precise to the point of stiffness, and he has a strong opinion about one verb that we’ll get to.
  • Marvin Meyer, in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (HarperOne, 2010). This is the edition I reach for most, and the one most of my posts quote.
  • The Greek fragment. Thomas survives complete only in Coptic, but scraps of an earlier Greek version turned up at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Saying 3 is on a papyrus catalogued as P. Oxy. 654, and Meyer translates it separately. It’s the same saying in a different language, with holes in it.

Meyer’s Coptic version is the baseline, so here it is in full before we take it apart a phrase at a time:

“If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and it is 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 dwell in poverty, and you are poverty.”

Leaders, or Those Who Attract You

Meyer says “your leaders.” Lambdin and Layton both say “those who lead you,” which is close enough. The Greek fragment is the odd one. Layton notes that it has “attract” instead of “lead.”

That’s a small word with a big shadow. A leader is someone you chose to follow, or at least someone with a title. Someone who attracts you is just a force acting on you, the way a magnet acts on a nail. If the Greek is the older reading, the saying may be poking at anybody with a strong opinion about where God lives, credentials or not.

Sky or Heaven

Lambdin’s version, as Pagels quotes it, says “the Kingdom is in the sky.” Layton and Meyer both say “in heaven,” and both keep “the birds of heaven.”

As far as I can tell, the manuscripts agree here. Greek uses one word for both, and so does Coptic, so it’s the English translator who has to pick. “Sky” makes the joke land harder, since birds really do get to the sky first. “Heaven” keeps the religious target in view, since the leaders in question were presumably pointing at the heaven of preaching rather than at the weather.

Pick “sky” and you hear Jesus teasing. Pick “heaven” and you hear him arguing with a doctrine. I think he’s doing both, which is why no single English word quite works.

The Sea, or Under the Earth

Here’s a difference that does come from the manuscripts. The Coptic says the kingdom might be claimed to be “in the sea.” Both Meyer and Layton footnote that the Greek fragment says “under the earth” instead, while the fish of the sea still get there first.

“Under the earth” was where the ancient world kept the dead. So the Greek version may be mocking two places at once, the heaven above and the underworld below, which would make the saying a swipe at the whole map of where the gods were supposed to be. The Coptic flattened that into a tidier pair of sky and sea. Both versions are defensible, and the Greek one bites harder.

Inside of You. And Outside of You.

This is the line people remember, and the translators agree on the words. They differ on the rhythm.

Meyer runs it together, “the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you.” Lambdin does much the same with a comma. Layton breaks it in two:

“But the kingdom is inside of you. And it is outside of you.”

That full stop changes how I read it. In one sentence, inside and outside sound like a single claim about a kingdom that’s everywhere. As two sentences, the second lands as a correction, as if Jesus saw his listeners settle comfortably on “inside” and pulled the rug. The kingdom is out there in the world too, along with whatever you found inside.

The Greek fragment, for its part, says “God’s kingdom” where the Coptic just says “the kingdom.” Both Meyer and Layton bracket the words for God, though, because that part of the papyrus is damaged. The brackets mark scholars filling a gap, and they’re worth noticing every time you see them. I wrote about how to read those marks in a post for newcomers.

If this all sounds familiar from the New Testament, it should. Meyer’s note on the line points to Luke 17:20-21, where Jesus tells the Pharisees the kingdom won’t come with signs to watch for. The King James Version renders the end of that verse “the kingdom of God is within you.” The NIV says “in your midst” and puts “Or is within you” in a footnote.

The Greek word in Luke can go either way, and translators have argued about it for centuries. Thomas doesn’t make you choose. It says inside and outside, which reads to me like someone who knew the argument and refused to take a side.

Know, or Become Acquainted

Self-knowledge drives the second half of the saying. Meyer says “when you know yourselves, then you will be known,” and Lambdin’s version is nearly identical. Layton goes his own way:

“When you become acquainted with yourselves, then you will be recognized.”

He gives “know yourselves” in a footnote as the alternative, so he’s not hiding anything. Throughout The Gnostic Scriptures he prefers “acquaintance” for the knowledge the Gnostics cared about, and his introduction to Thomas describes its salvation as “acquaintance with oneself.” His point is that gnosis works like knowing a person you’ve spent time with, and you can’t cram for that.

I find “become acquainted” clunky, and I also think he’s right. “Know yourself” has been carved on so many things since the Delphic oracle (Meyer’s note mentions the inscription there) that it slides past without friction. “Become acquainted with yourself” makes you stop and ask how you’d even do that. That’s the same distinction I tried to draw in gnosis versus information.

Sons, Children, and Poverty

Lambdin’s version promises that “you will realize that you are the sons of the living Father.” Meyer and Layton both say “children.” That’s mostly the decades between them, since English translation in general moved toward inclusive wording. The saying is talking to everyone who knows themselves, and “children” says so.

Meyer ends with “you dwell in poverty, and you are poverty.” Lambdin and Layton both add an emphasis Meyer smooths out. In Lambdin, as Pagels quotes it, “it is you who are that poverty.” Layton has nearly the same, “it is you who are the poverty.”

That “it is you who” construction points a finger. Meyer’s version describes a condition, and the other two aim an accusation at the listener. They also mirror an earlier line in Layton’s version, “it is you who are children of the living father,” so the saying ends with two matching options. Either it’s you who are the children, or it’s you who are the poverty.

The Greek adds one more sentence that the Coptic doesn’t have. In Meyer’s version of the fragment, with several words restored in brackets, “[Whoever] knows [oneself] will find this.” So self-knowledge is the way into the kingdom, spelled out where the Coptic only implies it.

How to Read With More Than One Translation

You don’t need Coptic to get most of this. You need two books and some patience.

  1. Keep two translations open. Meyer and Layton make a good pair because they disagree in useful ways. Lambdin’s older version is still widely available online.
  2. Underline every place they differ. Most differences are style. A few, like “under the earth,” come from the manuscripts. The footnotes will usually tell you which is which.
  3. Read the brackets as gaps. Anything in square brackets is a scholar’s best guess at missing text. Hold those words more loosely than the rest.
  4. Let the disagreement stand. When two good translators split, as with “sky” and “heaven,” both readings are often there in the original. You get to keep both.

I did this with saying 3 over a few evenings, and it changed how I hear the line about the kingdom spread out around us. In the version I’d memorized, inside and outside sounded like a nice paradox. In Layton’s broken-up sentences, it sounds like a teacher catching a student halfway out the door and adding one more thing.

The Gospel of Thomas (NHC II,2) and the Greek fragment P. Oxy. 654 are quoted from Marvin Meyer’s translations in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (HarperOne, 2010), including his notes on “under the earth,” Luke 17:20-21, and the Delphic inscription. Bentley Layton’s translation and notes are quoted from The Gnostic Scriptures (Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library). Thomas Lambdin’s 1977 translation is quoted as it appears in Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (Random House, 1979). Luke 17:21 is quoted from the King James Version and the New International Version.