There turn out to be a small number of sayings attributed to Jesus, and not in the spurious "gospels" like "Thomas." Agrapha="non written"
Wikipedia has a list of them. Some of them just don't smell right at all: " Except ye make the lower into the upper and the left into the right, ye shall not enter into my kingdom." Nah, wrong style--bogus.
Others, such as "For ask for the great things, and the small shall be added to you," seem like variants of Gospel sayings.
One which Justin Martyr cites seems on the hairy edge: "In whatsoever things I apprehend you, in those I shall judge you." In other words, what I find you doing when I come or you die, will be used to judge you. That seems a bit out of tune with the rest of His words, except for Mark 13 "Therefore, be on the alert—for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning— in case he should come suddenly and find you asleep. What I say to you I say to all, 'Be on the alert!'" (And, of course, its parallel in Matthew 24.) And there's Ezekiel 18 too. And lots and lots of people who try to clean up their acts at the end of their lives find the principle plausible.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
1 comment:
There was a brief scene in the The Simpsons when everyone thought the end of humanity was coming. The people in the bar ran over to the church while the people in the church ran over to the bar.
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