34 EARLY WISDOM GOSPELS
used within educational systems into the Byzantine period and far beyond,
even into the modern world, in educational systems in Europe and the Amer-
ican colonies. Jewish wisdom literature is included within the Hebrew Bible
and elsewhere. Some of the prominent books of Jewish wisdom are Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach, as well as the
tractate Pirke aboth (Sayings of the Fathers), which is included in the Talmud.JESUS THE JEWISH SAGE
Within this dynamic world of ancient wisdom, Hokhmah, Sophia, Jesus of
Nazareth (or Yeshua, using his Semitic name) was born to humble beginnings
in Galilee, in Israel. In later christology Jesus would attain the stature of di-
vinity, but his actual life may have been closer to that of a wisdom teacher—
that is, a rabbi. The Christian gospels and other theological statements describe
Jesus as the Christ, the messiah, the anointed, the son of god and son of man
(or earthly son, human son, human child—several translations are used in
this collection). According to the Gospel of John, Jesus is the word of god,
god in human flesh. The Apostles' Creed proclaims that he was born of the
virgin Mary, raised from the dead on the third day, and taken up into heaven,
and the Nicene Creed acclaims him as "true god of true god, begotten not
made, of one substance (homoousios) with the father."^4 Thus Jesus was pro-
moted to be a full member of the godhead, the second person of the divine
trinity, composed of god the father, Christ the son, and the holy spirit. Sev-
eral texts comment on the possibility of the holy spirit as the mother—the
true mother—of Jesus, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip,
and the Secret Book of James in this collection.
But the dogmatic Christ of the Nicene Creed and the other Christian
creeds is hardly the same person as Jesus of Nazareth. Precisely who Jesus was
as a historical person continues to be debated among scholars, and there is no
consensus. During much of the twentieth century it was assumed, following
Albert Schweitzer, that Jesus was an apocalyptic visionary who foresaw—mis-
takenly—the end of the world and the dawning of the kingdom of god.
- The Greek word homoousios was hotly debated at the Christian church councils, at Nicaea
and elsewhere, and some people preferred the word homoiousios, "of a similar substance," to
the word destined to be voted in as the orthodox term. What a difference a single letter in a
Greek word, the modest Greek iota (z), can make! No wonder that some parties in the christo-
logical debate protested the use of any such Greek word in confessions about Christ. Use only
biblical terms, they pleaded, but they were destined to lose the battle.