Breastfeeding Infants and the Kingdom of Heaven

Seeing beyond the divisions of gender

(1) Jesus saw infants being suckled.
(2) He said to his disciples:
“These little ones being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.”
(3) They said to him: “Then will we enter the kingdom as little ones?”
(4) Jesus said to them: “When you make the two into one,
and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside
and the above like the below –
(5) that is, to make the male and the female into a single one,
so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female –
(6) and when you make eyes instead of an eye
and a hand instead of a hand and a foot instead of a foot,
an image instead of an image, (7) then you will enter [the kingdom].”
(Gospel of Thomas 22)

The saying above from the Patterson and Robinson translation of the Gospel of Thomas is one of the most enigmatic of the collection. I’ve previously written about this saying here. That article was concerned mainly with section (6) above. It serves as the basis for a method of interpretation where two consecutive sayings are merged into one. A similar theme is found in this article as well.

In the current article, we will go a bit deeper into this saying, and as such, we will mostly ignore the text in section (6).