Some of you may remember that one of the issues in the controversy over the Jesus Wife fragment was that the fragment had left out a letter just where the pdf of my interlinear had left out the same letter. In reviewing this recently, I noticed to my embarrassment that on the line above that spot, I had ventured a guess that I'd since disavowed as to the contents of the lacuna in Th101.3 on line 49:36 (607). Recall that 101.3 reads "my mother [lacuna], but my true mother gave me Life."

My guess at that time (2002) was that the lacuna contained words which I translated as 'begot my body forth'. But that was too many letters (10) to fit the gap on line 607, so at a later point in time, I worked out another alternative onlist here with Sytze van der Laan. Instead of 'my body' (6 letters in Coptic), we decided on 'me' (Mmoei - 5 letters). This brought the number of letters down to 9, within the 8-9 letter range suggested by Layton in his critical study - and could even be reduced to 8 by using 'Mmoi' (iota dieresis) instead of 'Mmoei'. In addition, though, it was a fortuitous move, because if the Greek word 'swma' ('body') were in the lacuna, it would falsify my conclusion that there were 500 occurrences of Greek words and names in Coptic Thomas, composed of 2400 letters.

There matters stood until several weeks ago, when I happened to contact Stephen Emmel, the person responsible for the indices of Greek words and names in Layton's study. When I ran my suggestion by him, he responded that it was ungrammatical. And he was right. The problem is that both my original guess and the later guess used the Coptic verb 'jpo/jpe' ('beget') together with 'ebol'. Turns out that those verb-forms aren't known to have been used with 'ebol' by itself. They have to go.

Turning to DeConick, I see that she agrees with me that Layton and Emmel's guesses are too short to fit the lacuna (which is odd, given that Layton himself had estimated how many letters were required). Interestingly, DeConick's suggestion uses a form of 'jpo', but not that it's put together with 'ebol': Ntas.[jpo.i +.jwk] [eb]ol, which she translates as [my mother] 'who begot me gave death'.

While it's true that, as DeConick says, this "offers a complementary parallel to the final clause" ('gave me Life'), and while it's also true that this would certainly be a reason for hating one's biological parents, I'm not persuaded by it - in the first instance because I can't find 'jwk' as 'death'. As a noun, Lambdin indicates that 'jwk' can mean 'completion, end; total; fulfillment', but he doesn't list 'death'. I suppose that 'end' could be stretched into 'death', but I don't know why DeConick didn't use 'mou', a Coptic word used five times in CGT to mean 'death', and having the same number of letters. Let's suppose she had. I'd still be worried about the grammar. Not that I'm an expert (obviously), but I'm unfamiliar with any construction wherein the 'Ntas-' verbal prefix was used to mean 'who'. If not, though, the two consecutive verbal phrases don't seem to fit properly with each other. To say nothing of the awkwardness of 'gave death'.

Let me suggest another possibility: Ntas.[eine Mmoei] [eb]ol ('she brought me forth'). This time I've checked that 'ebol' can go with the verb. In fact, Lambdin lists eine Mmo. ebol as a legitimate phrase, and 'eine' is used several times in CGT to mean 'bring'. Unfortunately, Lambdin's meanings don't quite hit the mark, but I think that one of those meanings - 'introduce' - indicates that the literal meaning 'bring forth (or out)' isn't too remote to be acceptable.

Finally, let me address the question of how this might relate to Th101's injunctions to "hate" one's parents. (Jack Kilmon takes the Coptic word for 'hate' to be a mistranslation of an Aramaic word for 'set aside', but I won't use that argument, because mistranslation or not, 'hate' is how the Copts understood the word they used.)

What DeConick (and Emmel) seem to assume is that there must be a stark and explicit contrast between what the biological mother is supposed to have done in the lacuna, and what the "true" mother does - which is to give "Life" (the capitalization indicating spiritual life.) But there need not be an explicit contrast; Thomas is very often more subtle than that - relying on the reader to tease out implications. I would suggest that Thomas's view of what the biological mother (and father) have done to merit disregard, even hate, is that they have brought the souls of their offspring from a pre-existing spiritual state into an evil, corrupt, even "dead" material world - a place the seductive lures of which can easily rob the unwary of their natural life eternal.

Mike Grondin

p.s.: The above amended 200130 to change MMOI to MMOEI in my proposed reconstruction. The latter spelling is used twice in the m.s (Th 64.5 and 82.2) while the former isn't used.