Saying 42: Be Passers-By
Be passers-by.
Commentary
The shortest saying in the book and among the most discussed. It has been read as a call to itinerancy, to detachment from the world, and — via a possible Semitic idiom — as “be transients”, people who do not settle anywhere.
Parallels
This saying has no close parallel in the canonical gospels. Roughly half of the Gospel of Thomas is material of this kind, found nowhere else in the early Christian record.
Sayings on the same themes
- Saying 60 Saying 60: The Samaritan and the Lamb Seeing a Samaritan carrying a lamb to Judea, Jesus observes that the man can only eat it once it is dead and…
- Saying 112 Saying 112: Woe to the Flesh and the Soul How wretched is the flesh that depends on the soul; how wretched is the soul that depends on the flesh.
- Saying 110 Saying 110: Finding the World and Renouncing It Whoever has found the world and become rich should renounce the world.
- Saying 30 Saying 30: Where There Are Three Where there are three deities they are divine; where there are two or one, I am with that one.
- Saying 37 Saying 37: When You Strip Without Shame Asked when he will appear to them, Jesus answers: when you undress without being ashamed, and trample your clothes underfoot like little…
- Saying 53 Saying 53: Is Circumcision Useful? If circumcision were useful, fathers would produce sons already circumcised; the true circumcision, in spirit, is what profits.