The Rhetoric of the Dialogue

Saying 1

The dialogue begins with “I have come to bring female works to an end,”^[545] The form is one well known in the Gospel tradition: “I have come + infini­tive.” Luke 12:48: “I have come to throw fire on the earth”; Matt 10:34­35: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth: I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” See also Mark 10:45IIMatt 20:28; Mark 2:17IILuke 5:32.

What are “female works”? If one recalls Proverbs 31, the strong woman there manages the household. Female works are household chores.^[546] But female works could also refer to base and ignoble actions that are often called womanish. When the tyrant Aristotimus was on the point of killing Megisto for her brave words, he was counseled not to do so as such an ac­tion (το εργον) was ignoble and womanish (άγεννε$... και γυναικωδε$ [Plutarch, Mor. 252 D-E]). One could therefore use this say­ing about bringing female actions to an end in the context of acting nobly.^[547] Given that Saying 2 speaks of death and dying, one might also recall the prominent role of women in rituals of mourning and lamentation.

The same saying is found within a complex in Dial. Sav. III. 5. 144.14­24. In this passage surfaces the problem for early Christians of how to in­terpret the saying. The dialogue begins with a question of Judas: “When we pray, how should we pray?” Jesus’s answer is “Pray in the place where there is no woman.” This appears to be a self-contained unit - Judas poses a question and Jesus answers it. Taken at face value, Jesus’s answer could suggest a liturgical rubric whereby men and women are to pray in separate areas as, for example, segregating men and women in churches.^[548]

But in The Dialogue of the Savior a series of interpretative comments on this saying follow. First, Matthew interprets the answer of the Lord by the saying found in The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, where the Coptic is a translation of the Greek but in the imperative: “Bring the female works to an end (εριΚΑΤΑλγε^_ΝΝ[ε] ΖΒΗογεΉτΜΝτεζίΜε).”^[549] But Matthew feels that this interpretative saying itself needs to be explained, namely “there is not another way of bringing forth, but that they will cease indeed giving birth.” Female works thus signify child-bearing, the woman is pri­marily a baby-producer, and the command to end such works explained as a command to stop becoming pregnant. But even Matthew’s interpretation requires further clarification according to Mary, as she further interprets the meaning of καταλύω “bring to an end.” She says, “They will never be wiped out.” Mary insists that, though women might stop giving birth, women will not be done away with. Or is this a question that Mary poses? The text has been interpreted and translated both ways.^[550] Jesus then reenters the discussion, but at this point the manuscript has suffered dam­age, and the further continuation is lost.

The imperative form of the saying used here makes it into a command for the disciples to follow: they have to bring female works to an end, i.e., stop child-bearing. Such a command is very different from the form used in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, where Jesus announces his own mis­sion: “I have come to bring female works to an end.”^[551]

But what is this mission? Is Jesus some early Betty Friedan, calling women to throw off the chains of household chores, to become a wanderer like himself, as in Matt 8:20? Or is he calling on people not to be coward­ly? Or is it to stop child-bearing? Or their role of lament at death rituals? Perhaps closer attention to the relationship of this saying to the other mate­rials from the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians will help resolve the ambigui­ty.

Saying 2

In response to this mission to end female works, a woman, Salome, is de­scribed as posing a question. Rather than focusing on “female” she asks about the verb “bring to an end” καταλύω, and appears to steer the dis­cussion to women’s roles in mourning rituals. The connection between dy­ing and the verb καταλύω is found in 2 Cor 5:1: “If the earthly tent we live in is destroyed.” Saying 2 is found in three formulations:

1. Strom. 3.64.1: How long will men die? As long as women give birth.

2. Strom. 3.45.3: How long will Death be potent? As long as you women give birth.

3. Exc. ex Theod. 67: Up to that point of time is death, as long as women give birth.

There is a slight variation between formulations 2 and 3: formulation 2 is in a dialogue form with the first part spoken by Salome, whereas formula­tion 3 is spoken completely by Jesus.

Formulation 1 of Saying 2 has no personification of Death, just as there is no personification, as in Theodotus, of the genitive of the previous say­ing τη$ θηλεία$ into the Woman from on high η άνω γυνή (Exc. ex The­od. 67.1). Taken in itself, the question-and-answer could be an example of a witty non-response, similar to the answer Jesus gave about whether to pay taxes or not (Mark 12:13-17). Jesus’s answer here does not really answer the eschatological question Salome posed but deftly avoids it. There appears to be a play on words: άνθρωποι can have the general meaning “humans” but also the restricted meaning of “men.” Where Salome asks about the fate of humans, Jesus places all the blame on women.

Silke Petersen chose formulation 2 in her reconstruction of the text of the Gospel.^[553] Her reasons were that formulation 2 is close to that of formu­lation 3 and so is evidenced twice, and that formulation 1 was formulated to allow for an excursus over the meaning of άνθρωπος. However, Say­ing 3 follows closely on formulation 1 of Saying 2 in Clement’s work where Saying 1 occurs at 3.63.2, formulation 1 of Saying 2 at 3.64.1, and Saying 3 at 3.66.2. Saying 1 is explicitly said to be in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, and the closeness of the citation would suggest that Clement is working from this Gospel. On the other hand, formulations 2 and 3 of Saying 2 are not explicitly said to be from this Gospel. I suggest, therefore, that formulation 1 of Saying 2 is more likely to reflect the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians. However, whatever one chooses, the saying picks up on the theme of end and associates it with death, to which Jesus responds with a reference to procreation. The saying thus advances the interpretation of “female works” by classifying them as procreation.

Saying 3

This emphasis is continued in the following saying: Salome has done well not to procreate. Jesus’s answer resonates with the command of God to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.^[554] That the eating in the Eden story involved bitterness is found in Ap.John III.1.21.17-35:

And the archons took him and placed him in paradise. And they said to him, “Eat, that is, at leisure,” for their luxury is bitter and their beauty is depraved. And their luxury is deception and their trees are godlessness and their fruit is deadly poison and their promise is death. And the tree of their life they had placed in the middle of paradise. And I shall teach you what is the mystery of their life, which is the plan they made together, which is the likeness of their spirit.

Through this echoing of Eden, Salome should see herself in the same condition as Adam and Eve confronting the tree. For her, the tree re­presents sexual procreation and is to be avoided.

Saying 4

Thanks to the similarity to 2 Clem. 12:2 and Gos. Thom. ##22, 37, as well as Gal 3:28, the content of this saying has been thoroughly explored and there is no need here to go into detail.^[556] Suffice it to say that echoes of Genesis have been found - Gen 2:25: “the two were naked and were not ashamed (qa/uvovTo)”; 3:21: “the Lord made for Adam and Eve garments of skin and clothed (eveSuoev) them”; 2:24: when a man cleaves to his wife, “the two will be one flesh”; 1:27: “God made the human, he made him according to the image of God, male and female he made them” - and well noted. The sense of gender separation leading to death is clear in Gospel of Philip:

In the days when Eve was [in] Adam, death did not exist. When she was separated from him, death came into existence. If he [reenters] and takes it unto himself death will not exist. (Gos.Phil. II. 3. 68.24-26)

If the female had not separated from the male, she and the male would not die. That being's separation became the source of death. The anointed (Christ) came to rectify the separation that had been present from the beginning and join the two (components); and to give life unto those who had died by separation and join them together.^[557]

So the content of the saying connects again ending with beginning. The discussion about the specific formulation of the saying in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians has tended to center around its “late” character, as the Gospel of Thomas has one saying about treading on garments and another, quite separate saying about making the two one. The assumption lying be­hind such divisions of early and late is that a version which contains only one content element must necessarily precede a formulation which com­bines different content elements. Within an oral culture, such an assump­tion is suspect. Authors can draw upon a stock of traditionally known say­ings and combine and reformulate them as seems best to them and to their audience.

In the saying before us, it is interesting how scholars have latched onto the difference between the second person plural of the first verb (“you trample”) and the third person singular second verb (“become”), and so concluded that something is amiss, a bungled mixing of two originally in­dependent sayings. But one could also read the contrast of the two verbs another way: The plural verb highlights the notion of multiplicity, while the singular verb stresses unity. Salome is not being wrongly addressed with a plural verb; rather, through her all humans are addressed, and the plural verb resonates with the plurals in Saying 2. Only when the many trample will the oneness appear. Read in this way, the author has patterned verb usage to content issues in a highly sophisticated way.

Another consideration is the way the formulation in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians differs from those in 2 Clem. 12:2 and Gos.Thom. 22. 2 Clem. 12:2 reads: “When the two will be one and the outside as the inside and the male and the female neither male nor female.” Here the author has heightened the contrast between the two - the outside and the inside are contradictory in a way that male and female are not. Contrary perhaps but not contradictory. Gos.Thom. 22 goes much further:

When you make the two one, and when you make the inside as the outside and the out­side as the inside and the upper side as the lower side, and when you make the male and the female into a single one so that the male will not be male nor the female be female; when you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an image, then you shall enter [the kingdom].

In both 2 Clem. 12:2 and Gos.Thom. 22, the opposition between the two elements is heightened. In the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, the focus remains squarely on the male-female relationship, on overcoming the divi­sions of Genesis and returning to primordial unity. Such a focus is signifi­cantly different from that in another motif found in the Gospel of Thomas, that of “becoming male”: “Jesus said, ‘See, I am going to attract her to make her male so that she too might become a living spirit that resembles you males. For every female (element) that makes itself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’”^[558] That motif privileges the category “male.” Howev­er, the saying in the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians suggests that both cat­egories will be set aside, or rather, that somehow they will be combined. A similar sense of an androgyne is found in the opening section of the Apocalypse of Adam:

After God had made me of earth, along with your mother Eve, I used to go about with her in glory.... And we resembled the great eternal angels. For, we were superior to the god that had made us, and to the powers that are with him, which we had not (yet) become acquainted with. Next, god the ruler of the aeons and the powers angrily gave us a com­mand. Next, we became two aeons, and the glory that was in our hearts - your mother Eve's and mine - left us. (Apoc.Adam V. 5. 64: 6-27)

Here the two elements coexist, not quite in the comic form described by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium. By using such a motif, rather than the male-privileged one, the Gospel of the Egyptians reverses the misogynism of the first saying.

C.