EARLY WISDOM GOSPELSWhen you are troubled,
you will marvel and rule over all.^5(3) Yeshua said,
If your leaders tell you, "Look, the kingdom is in heaven,"
then the birds of heaven will precede you.
If they say to you, "It's in the sea,"^6
then the fish will precede you.
But the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you.
When you know yourselves,^7 then you will be known,
and you will understand that you are children of the living father.
But if you do not know yourselves,
then you dwell in poverty and you are poverty.
(4) Yeshua said,
A person old in days
will not hesitate to ask a little child
seven days old^8 about the place of life,
and the person will live.^9
For many of the first will be last
and become a single one.
(5) Yeshua said,
Know what is in front of your face
and what is hidden from you will be disclosed.
There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.^10
(6) His students asked him and said to him,
Do you want us to fast?
How should we pray?
- Greek Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 adds: "and having ruled, you will rest" (partially restored).
- Greek Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 reads: "it is under the earth."
- "Know yourself" (Greek gnothi sauton) was a famous maxim from the oracular center dedi-
cated to Apollo at Delphi, Greece. - This probably indicates an uncircumcised boy (a Jewish boy was to be circumcised on the
eighth day), or else a child of the Sabbath of the first week of creation. - Hippolytus of Rome cites a version of this saying from the Gospel of Thomas used among
the Naassenes, in his Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.20: "One who seeks will find me in children
from seven years, for there, hidden in the fourteenth age, I am revealed." - Greek Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 adds: "and nothing buried that will not be raised" (par-
tially restored).