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A Roman emperor once wrote in his private notebook that “life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn.” Put that line next to the forty-second saying of the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus says only “Be passersby,” and you’d have a hard time guessing which came from a Stoic and which from a Gnostic gospel. Both tell you to travel light. Both treat fame and possessions as things you rent for a while and give back. ...

The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of Jesus’s sayings discovered in Egypt in 1945, contains 114 teachings. Some are long. Some are paradoxical. Some require extensive commentary. And then there’s Saying 42: “Be passers-by.” That’s it. Two words. The shortest teaching in the collection. It might also be the most radical. What Does It Mean? The Coptic original can be translated literally as “Become yourselves, passing by.” Other scholars render it “Come into being as you pass away.” ...