Saying 38

English

Jesus said, ‘You have often longed to hear the words that I speak to you, and you have no one else from whom to hear them. Days are coming when you will seek me, but you will not find me.’

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Interpretation

While it is possible the first half of Saying 38 could come from an early version of Thomas, in which Jesus mentions the private nature of his teachings, the second half shows knowledge that Jesus is absent from the world. His followers explained his absence with the explanation that he had been taken into heaven by God, and they appealed to passages of the Hebrew Bible to justify this perspective. The second half of this saying was taken from Prov 1.28. The similarity with Saying 37, that Christians ‘will not find’ Jesus because they are looking in the wrong place, puts at least part of Saying 38, if not the entire thing, comes from a later stage of the book’s development.

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Parallels

Proverbs

1.28 ‘Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but will not find me.’

Matthew

13.16–17 ‘But your eyes are favored, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.’

Luke

10.23–24 Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, ‘Favored are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.’

John

7.34 ‘You will search for me, but you will not find me, and where I am, you cannot come.’