Saying 70: Bring Forth What Is Within You
If you bring out what is inside you, what you bring out will save you; if you do not, what you fail to bring out will destroy you.
Commentary
The most quoted line of Thomas outside saying 3, and a favourite of twentieth-century depth psychology. Note the symmetry: the same interior contents either save or kill, depending on whether they are brought to light.
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 67 Saying 67: Knowing All but Lacking Oneself Whoever knows everything but is lacking in themselves lacks everything.
- Saying 4 Saying 4: The Old Man and the Infant An old man will not hesitate to ask a seven-day-old infant about the place of life, and will live; many who are…
- Saying 59 Saying 59: Look to the Living One While You Live Look to the living one while you are alive, in case you die and then try to see him and cannot.
- Saying 94 Saying 94: The One Who Knocks Whoever seeks will find; whoever knocks will have it opened for them.
- Saying 11 Saying 11: This Heaven Will Pass Away This heaven and the one above it will pass away; the dead are not alive and the living will not die. When…
- Saying 24 Saying 24: The Light Within a Person of Light Asked to show them where he is, Jesus answers that there is light inside a person of light, and it lights the…