Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Jim Pillen on Wednesday signed an executive order strictly defining a person’s sex.
The order notably does not use the term “transgender,” although it appears directed at limiting transgender access to certain public spaces. It orders state agencies to define “female” and “male” as a person’s sex assigned at birth.
“It is common sense that men do not belong in women’s only spaces,” Pillen said in a statement. “As Governor, it is my duty to protect our kids and women’s athletics, which means providing single-sex spaces for women’s sports, bathrooms, and changing rooms.”
I still don’t understand what business the government has defining sex. How is that in any way the government’s job?? If anything, it could be up to medical organizations, such as the AMA, if they had sound arguments. But, the government? I really try to at least understand everyone’s logic even if I don’t agree with them, but this is just so insane. I don’t get it.
That’s because there is no logic, the people that want the government to define sex have a purely emotional reaction to the very existence of trans people… and most things that don’t align with their narrow life experience and worldview
There’s no logic?
Just because you’re ignorant of the difference between sex and gender are doesn’t mean there isn’t logic…
Sex is very important for the single biggest thing that affects all of our lives, healthcare. Standardizing it literally saves lives.
Except the healthcare needs of trans gender people who have medically transitioned to any degree are often closer to their gender than their sex assigned at birth. The body chemistry differences between men and women are primarily affected by hormones. Unless you’re specifically looking at the organs that are different, you probably need to go by gender.
Again, why is the government involved instead of a letting a leading medical body. Did physicians have a large protest over the lack of a legal definition that is forced outside of medical settings, and the government heard their concerns based on rational logic and ethical medical standards? Does the government define eye color, cancer, gingivitis, premature birth, high IQ, major depressive disorder, and how organizations outside of the medical system can use those terms?
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It’s because they want to incentivize long-term, stable relationships and households because doing so statistically leads to better outcomes for society. The barrier to entry for getting divorced is quite high, so in general people tend to stay together more often if they are married than if they are not.
That all being said, the system is far from perfect for sure. Incentivizing marriages also incentivizes people to stay in bad marriages, among other issues
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Not that I agree with what is happening but they are defining it in legal terms, which is absolutely their job. A simple example might be killing someone is just killing someone, and the government defines what is murder and what is manslaughter.
I understand the point of defining a criminal act, but being a sex isn’t criminal. It’s being a human.
Maybe that was a bad example to use, that is my bad. It was just the first thing I thought of. The government needs to define all sorts of things, not just criminal acts. You say it’s being human. They even define what a human is.. Laws have to be written in such a way as to include explicit definitons so they can be enforced without loopholes. (Or in some cases create loopholes like with the rich and taxes)
Where you get your law degree?
Are you implying it requires a law degree to understand that the government defines what terms mean for legal purposes? If you don’t understand that you have a lot more to worry about than my certifications.
It’s sarcasm. Obviously you didn’t study law.
The fact that laws often define terms does not justify a law defining sex or gender. There’s nothing implicit to concepts of positive law or legislative authority that require legal definitions of gender.
There are so few occasions in law where it’s not a violation of equal protection to discriminate on the basis of gender that there really is almost zero need for law to define it.
Most of those rare occasions are related to reproduction, and even then there’s no inherent reason to define genders, the law could just refer to pregnancy or pregnant persons.
You would have learned all about this if you had studied law. I’m sure they must have these concepts where you’re from.
https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment14/annotation06.html
ITT: Everyone conflating sex for gender…
It’s actually quite important. Your sex are what your chromosomes are, your gender is what you identify as.
Your sex doesn’t change, your gender does.
That’s literally the definition of it.
This is important especially for medical purposes, medication, surgery, emergency care…etc all has variations based on your sex, because different sexes are predisposed to different classes of problems and interactions. This also applies to REPORTING, reporting that a medication affects someone born female different than someone born male is an extremely important distinction.
Incorrect reporting literally costs lives.
It should to be standardized, just like everything else that has significant consequences on well being.
Politics are ruining what should be completed apolitical.
There’s like 8 comments in this topic my straw-chewing friend. You don’t need to copy and paste yours again as if trying to get every iota of value out of typing so much pointless tired Facebook wrap-around sunglasses rhetoric.
Omg, I love you.
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Just a reminder if you are worried about your children being ogled by trans people in the “wrong” restroom: There are ten gays for every one trans person, so the likelihood of being ogled by people in the “right restroom” should be ten times higher. The solution is not to police who uses what restroom, but to design restrooms that don’t allow for ogling!
I swear, the only proof of a grand gay conspiracy I’ve ever found is the bathtub urinal. Walls, people, real walls, not plywood separators that have gaps between the doors and opening on the bottom.
Also don’t for a second think that they aren’t coming for gay and lesbian people next.
Yeah the Christians are planning that.
That, and like, don’t flatter yourself (person who is afraid of getting hit on by a hypothetical gay guy in a bathroom). Most people, the vast majority, look like 20 lbs of birdshit.
There’s better places to date and get asked out anyways, like a gay bar, or at a fun climbing gym. If you do get asked out (which won’t happen), take it as a compliment for not looking like hell and move on. xD
I think the main concern comes from females not wanting males in their bathroom.
So where do FtMs go then?
Nowhere, which is the whole goal. They want to make it impossible for trans people to live in public
Are you asking me, personally?
I think all bathrooms should be unisex.
I’m glad you don’t appear to share the concern (“concern”) of the transphobes
Me too.
Believe it or not, straight to jail
Please hear me out – wouldn’t requiring females who identify as men and look like men, to use women’s washrooms, be virtually indistinguishable from a cis man using women’s washrooms? It seems like this law might actually result in more manly-looking folks in the women’s washroom, as all trans men would be required to.
Also, how do you enforce that? Is there going to be someone checking ID at the door, but only if you look “manly?” In that case, wouldn’t a male who identified as a woman, and looks like a woman, be able to slip by undetected anyway, or is this “bathroom bouncer” going to check everyone’s IDs?
Even if I agreed with the thesis that people born with penises shouldn’t be allowed in women’s washrooms (and I don’t), any implementation seems like it has far too many flaws to be remotely effective.
Instead, how about bathrooms have actual, private rooms instead of stalls with doors you can see over, under, or around? Wouldn’t that be a more practical solution to the problem of bathroom privacy?
Thanks for reading. I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
I actually agree with everything you say.
Unisex bathrooms with actual rooms would be awesome.
However, a significant amount of women will still have and voice their concerns over having trans women in their restrooms.
I’m not saying they’re right. I actually think TERFs are some of the most deplorable people on the planet. But they do exist and are the driving force behind separation of bathrooms.
Their main excuse is fear, but I actually think it’s sexism. They think men are dirty and barbaric and don’t belong around women in a restroom. I don’t think they’re genuine enough to admit this publicly.
And you think a fucking law will stop that?
I thought it was a bathroom law, not a fucking law…
I mean, no law is 100% effective.
Are you saying we shouldn’t have laws against murder because people will still murder?
We already have laws against sexual assault and harassment. The purpose of this law is to harass trans people not to protect anyone.
It will end up only hurting people, many of whom won’t even be trans. We’ve already seen masculine-looking women getting subjected to this kind of law in other states. It’s nothing more than the government abusing its own citizens.
Trans people taking a dump aren’t hurting anyone.
Murder is bad
A woman having a shit in a stall (whilst having a Y chromosome) is pretty neutral
Anyway, answer the FtM question
I did.
Watch your tone.
I did.
I apologise for missing your comment
We already have laws against spying on people in the bathroom, and it applies to everyone.
Ok, why are you telling me this?
Tell it to the guy who thinks laws don’t work.
Because your argument is invalid either way. This law doesn’t protect women from bathroom predators. We have laws that protect women from bathroom predators, and if they are effective, we don’t need this law, and if they are ineffective, then we don’t need this law.
The purpose of this law is to discriminate against transgender individuals. Any other justification is bullshit.
The purpose of this law is to discriminate against transgender individuals.
Yes, which is effective. If it wasn’t, then why would people be getting upset?
I would like a law that religious figure are no longer eligible to run tax free organizations if they meet at the White House
I mean, churches shouldn’t be tax exempt no matter what.
I am fine with that. Tax them the way we do corporations. Same for any group that lobbies, like CATO. It is obnoxious how the wealthy are able to lobby can get jobs for their nephew by proxy tax avoidance schemes.
Koch wants certain laws passed. Koch gives money to CATO so CATO can lobby for them. CATO is a non-profit.
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No.
Why are you attacking me personally?
Uhhh, you’re the one typing.
Uhh, yeah. It’s a social platform.
That doesn’t mean you can just attack me personally. Especially if you don’t understand what I’m saying, lol.
Sorry you feel otherwise.
Great point! This is exactly why we shouldn’t be forcing ftm trans people to use women’s restrooms.
There are men that you’ve encountered, or even know personally, that were assigned female at birth and you would never have any fucking idea. These people are completely indistinguishable from cis men, and have zero business being in a women’s bathroom.
But no, people like you ignore their existence because it’s inconvenient to the argument you’ve invented to try to justify being a piece of shit.
What do you mean ‘people like me’?
I don’t agree with them.
You are literally in here defending their reasoning and talking about it as if it’s logical and rational.
No I’m not. I literally said I disagree with them.
I am more worried about priests in bathrooms with children.
That’s nice, but most women would probably be more concerned with trans women in their restrooms.
I’m not saying it’s okay. It’s just the world we live in.
Even if true I am not sure when “concerned” suddenly got veto power over my basic rights.
If I could statistically demonstrate that most Western women were “concerned” about certain races using the bathroom I doubt you would be adapting this world-weary tone of “it is what the people want”.
Even if true I am not sure when “concerned” suddenly got veto power over my basic rights.
Yeah, it shouldn’t.
Can’t wait for them to remember that trans men exist. There’s going to be a lot of shocked Pikachu Republicans when men who look like men show up in “women’s spaces” because they’re being forced to.
Wish I could be a fly on the wall to see that fucking awesome scenario.
But seriously, trans folks, you don’t deserve this bullshit and I hate that your existence is the controversy of the moment for Republicans. Be well and take care of yourselves <3.
I recall an article about that exact thing happening - a trans man had to use a women’s restroom because of the local red policy over his birth cert saying female.
People saw a man enter a woman’s restroom, and proceeded to beat the shit out of him.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
Don’t ever forget that for republicans, cruelty is the goal.
It’s designed to put trans people in an impossible position. Use the bathroom you want to and get brutalized by the cops, or use the bathroom you’re legally required to use and get brutalized by private citizens while the cops look the other way.
It’s also gonna suck for any cis women accused of being trans, and subject to invasive “verification”
I remember reading an article of this exact situation happening
It’s not gonna be fun at all because it will involve trans men being threatened and assaulted.
there’s gonna be a lot of
shocked Pikachuviolent Republicans
Intersex is a thing.
Very rare, though.
There are more intersex people in the US than trans people.
Most advocacy groups estimate that 1.7% percent of people are born intersex — the equivalent of about 5.6 million U.S. residents
Polling by KFF and The Washington Post shows that there are nearly 2 million people nationwide who identify as transgender or trans, representing less than 1% of all adults
Source: https://apnews.com/article/how-many-transgender-intersex-laws-0218b75a197f07d8c51620bb73495d55
What percent of the population do you think is trans? Genuinely curious.
Oops, just saw the other reply. The one you ignored and didn’t respond to. Has a source and everything.
Your “argument” here is bullshit, because intersex is less rare than trans. But you’d never know that based on the current political conversation, would you?
So?
So it doesn’t apply to the vast majority of people affected by anti-trans legislation.
Ah yes, just like Martin Niemöller’s poem:
First they came the trans people, and that was totally okay because there was less of them, so it never affected me.
Uhh… no.
And why does that matter?
Because the vast majority of people affected by anti-trans legislation aren’t intersex.
Most people aren’t trans, but anti-trans legislation still affects them. It doesn’t really matter who it affects more, because it is meant as a culture war, but also as a hate tactic to bully people. How do you check that someone is transgender? You really can’t. You could claim they are dressing a certain way that doesn’t match. You could claim they look like they have more of a hormonal type. You could claim they are acting a way that doesn’t match their assigned gender at birth.
But that’s the point. You can pick and choose who to apply this to.
You’re just stating a seemingly irrelevant fact.
sMaLl GoVeRnMeNt
They just want it small enough to fit in your underwear.
Fucking fascist pieces of shit need to go on a pyre.
Christian
Stoned to death then. Is that Christian enough for you?
The original Jesus myth he did die from being stoned, not crucified, so yeah that works.
Oh sorry got to play politically correct. There is a documentation of a guy calling himself the King of the Jews, was born to jewish parents, who claimed to have walked on water, had a trial by the Pharisees, and existed in the first century BC but that is all coincidence and has nothing to do with the guy slightly after with the same story.
There’s a reason it’s called by some “the greatest story on earth”, and that’s because versions of it it were told for ages before Jesus or Nazareth. It’s just Joseph Campbell’s monomyth with a literal cult behind it.
I’m curious though who you are referring to. No need to be politically whatever.
The other Jesus in the talmud
Echo
Of fucking course. The law equally prevents the rich and poor from sleeping under bridges.
Does this mean that if there’s a clerical error and your baby’s birth certificate lists the wrong sex, it’s illegal to get it corrected?
Probably not.
This reads a lot like the Indiana Pi Bill. Granted, that one never passed, but it’s a pretty old story: politicians think they know better than experts.
And now that our Supreme Court has thrown Chevron Deference out the window, that old story may have a different, much worse, ending.
Look at how they just forced the EPA to stop protecting over 60% of wetlands in the US. Look at what they’re doing with the FDA and mifepristone.
Bad times ahead.
ITT: Everyone conflating sex for gender…
It’s actually quite important. Your sex are what your chromosomes are, your gender is what you identify as.
Your sex doesn’t change, your gender does.
That’s literally the definition of it.
This is important especially for medical purposes, medication, surgery, emergency care…etc all has variations based on your sex, because different sexes are predisposed to different classes of problems and interactions. This also applies to REPORTING, reporting that a medication affects someone born female different than someone born male is an extremely important distinction.
Incorrect reporting literally costs lives.
It should to be standardized, just like everything else that has significant consequences on well being.
Politics are ruining what should be completed apolitical…
And it looks like lemmy is just Reddit again, except at least on Reddit you can find an informed opinion before the bottom of the thread. This thread is completely devoid of critical thinking…
You didn’t say anything inaccurate, but you also appear to be missing the point almost entirely.
“It is common sense that men do not belong in women’s only spaces,” Pillen said in a statement. “As Governor, it is my duty to protect our kids and women’s athletics, which means providing single-sex spaces for women’s sports, bathrooms, and changing rooms.”
This isn’t about clinical reporting standards. This is about being able to regulate social settings based on sex instead of gender. By legally clarifying the definitions, there can be no confusion when they follow this up with banning male-sexed individuals from female-gendered bathrooms.
Umm… I hate to tell you this but this is propagating some pretty harmful misinformation…
The reactions to medications are actually more closely tied to the hormone balance and body fat distribution of a person than their sex. It’s a common issue in the trans community where birth certificates are non-updatable that a doctor will prescribe meds for a person’s birth sex but because they are fully transitioned through HRT they get the effects more common to their phenotype presentation. This means that treatment is more commonly in line with their gender identity because of their hormonal medication and other procedures like an orchiectomy that make a person more similar to where they transitioned to then where they transitioned from.
With trans paitents by and large the safer way to behave is to go with the “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and talks like a duck… If you are in a pinch and can’t ask them for specifics because they can’t talk - treat them like a duck.” While a lot of doctors aren’t super well versed in trans specific healthcare it remains a huge problem inside the community for trans women particularly being dosed like cis men which often means they respond like cis women to a lot of different things which is on average a little more scary because meds often linger longer than is expected in trans women’s tissues just like cis women. Sometimes this causes some cascading problems.
Pharmacology wise the way trans folks react to different medications is still a bit of a frontier science… But dollars to donuts “just treat em like their birth sex and call it a day” is way too simplistic a take. The lived experience and often physical nature of gender do not stay nicely behind a cordon marked “politics”. Trans ignorance in healthcare can be very scary for someone whose endocrinologist has informed them what they should be given and treated like and then some hotshot resident could just decide to not listen should the trans person in question be placed in a position where they are in extreme distress and have to self advocate and educate the person caring for them on what may be the worst day of their life.
This is important especially for medical purposes, medication, surgery, emergency care… […] Incorrect reporting literally costs lives.
Surely that was the intention 👀
“It is common sense that men do not belong in women’s only spaces,” Pillen said in a statement. “As Governor, it is my duty to protect our kids and women’s athletics, which means providing single-sex spaces for women’s sports, bathrooms, and changing rooms.”
The Nebraska and Oklahoma orders both include definitions for the words “man,” “boy,” “woman,” “girl,” “father” and “mother.”
Also
And it looks like lemmy is just Reddit again, except at least on Reddit you can find an informed opinion before the bottom of the thread. This thread is completely devoid of critical thinking…
This is a really dismissive way to deal with disagreements (also peak reddit behavior, it’s only missing the “edit:”)
They edited it 🤣
Sex is far more complicated than just what is assigned at birth. Especially if you take stuff like hormones into consideration.
Nature doesn’t work in discrete categories. Almost everything in nature is fluid and amorphous to some degree. Exceptions to every rule humans can think of.
And if you talk about sex about purely what gametes you have, then that isn’t really very useful to talk about in practice outside of reproduction. When laymen talk about sex, they mean perceived sex more than anything else (and to prove the point, the article talks about sexed places and such…). Leave anything else to medical professionals.
Yes, and we all know that was the intention behind this order. To protect people from incorrect medical reporting 🙄.
The people you’re seemingly mad at never wanted to make this political. Trans people are just people that want to exist. That’s it.
Your sex are what your chromosomes are
So we need to genetically test all babies at birth?
Otherwise, I don’t know how we would figure out the sex of the ones with Swyer Syndrome- XY but with female genitalia.
And assigning their sex as male at birth doesn’t make much sense to me.
One thing that exacerbates the problem is the values for gender and sex are reused. ‘Male’ can mean ‘I identity as male gendered’ or ‘my chromosomes are XY’ (choose one or both). If sex were consistently represented with different values (maybe as chromosomes XX, XY, others?), that might provide some clarity in good faith discussions. Finally, I’m not in medicine so YMMV.
Update: One thing I wanted to add: I also recognize that many discussions are ‘not’ in good faith and an informed participant will deliberately conflate the meanings of gender’s and sex’s values. Unfortunately, no recommendation can help a person whose mind is closed.
Edit: Added “Update”. Adjusted original comment’s casing.
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you’re making nothing but sense, but you’re getting a lot of hate for it. we should be able to talk about this stuff by now without having to combat an onslaught of angry commenters that didn’t read what you wrote.
It’s literally a carbon copy of reddit. the weird outrage just deflates all common sense.
“assigned”? How can it be assigned when it’s a natural state of being? That’s like saying the kids also get assigned hair color or eye color at birth.
They’re trying to co-opt language “assigned at birth” is a trans phrase
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Fair. As always I defer to what the individual themselves prefer when asked.
Funny thing, both of those can change too. I was blond when I was a kid, now my hair is brown, and when I’m old it’ll be gray.
You’re missing the point. If a kid is born and has brown eyes does the doctor “assign” his eye color? As brown? Or does he observe the eye color as brown?
Saying the doctor “assigns” the eye color could mean it’s up to the doctor to decide, when it really isn’t. The doctor can’t look at brown eyes on a newborn and say, “yup I’m going to assign that as blue”
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Because it’s not always one or the other. Sex and gender are far more complicated than just X or Y.
They’re not.
What’s not?
I see, even the simplest English sentence is confusing for you. No wonder you think the way you think…
No, I just want you yo be explicit about what you believe, because the argument goes in two directions. You’re either confidently ignorant, or you’re a bigot. If it’s the former, you might actually learn something. I don’t waste my time arguing with bigots, though.
Wut?
What about intersex folks? Or folks with mutations on their x and y chromosomes?
Maybe someday, someone will successfully describe the difference between sex and gender to a conservative.
It’s not about being successful. They don’t want to know.
How is it that the US is moving backwards? I am struggling to understand this…
Death throes of a vacuous ideology.
I’m glad Nebraska is taking leadership in handling the real issues of our society. Never mind that millions of families are going hungry, no we gotta make sure Mr. Smith never becomes Mrs. Smith.
Another victory for Christianity
…there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one…
- Galatians 3:28
…when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, […] then you will enter [the kingdom].
- Gospel of Thomas 22
Victory? Meh, debatable.
Two can play at that game.
In like manner also, those women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shame faceless and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which become women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
1 Timothy 2:9-15
the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man
1 Corinthians 11:3
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
Colossians 3:18
Sure sounds like men and women are very different in Christianity to me.
Yes “Paul” could argue with Paul quite effectively.
Gospel of Thomas is not canon it is Gnostic. Not really Christianity. Also not even well written imo. Have you ever read that thing? It is tiny and too simple. I frankly expect better from the 2nd century especially given that the John Gospel predates it. I think the first time I read it I had it done in an hour.
You can quote Galatians but you should keep in mind that it was written by a man who thought the world was ending and everyone was going to become these sexless prayer robots. There would be no human gender because there would be no humans.
Like it or not Christianity is anti-LGBT, at least as long as they continue to use their Bible to be the source of what they believe.
It’s not Gnostic. That was a misinterpretation of the text for about 50 years after it was discovered which finally started to fall apart with Michael Allen Williams’ Rethinking Gnosticism in the late 90s.
As a result, the tautological dating of anything with a whiff of ideas considered Gnostic was also revisited, and the core of Thomas probably dates to the first century.
Personally I think there’s an excellent case for that core predating Paul’s first letter to Corinth even, and suspect it may even be Papias’ lost logia Gospel of Matthew. I’d guess the association with Thomas was a second century addition after the Gospel of John given the two times he is mentioned in the work are both associated with secrecy, which is internally conflicting with saying 33 as well as all the other sayings referring to two ears.
It almost certainly predates canonical Matthew and likely Luke-Acts as well given the nuances to some of the shared material.
While it is a short work, I think it’s probably one of the most incredible surviving texts from antiquity, though I agree that it’s fairly obtuse without the proper context.
The biggest “ah ha” in my researching it was realizing that it seems to have significant familiarity with Leucretius’s De Rerum Natura, a link that’s even more explicit in the records of its followers in Pseudo-Hippolytus’s Refutations V.
So when you look at a line like this:
Jesus said, “Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass, of that person the world is not worthy.”
- Gospel of Thomas saying 56
It’s useful to know that 50 years before Jesus was born a very popular work in the Roman empire was saying this:
To resume: I’ve reached the juncture of my argument where I Must demonstrate the world too has a ‘body’, and must die, Even as it had a birth.
- Leucretius, De Rerum Natura book 5 lines 64-67
De Rerum Natura was the only surviving book from antiquity explicitly describing ideas ranging from survival of the fittest to a relationship between uncertainty of quantized matter and free will. And the Gospel of Thomas is the only theological text in Christianity (or as far as I know outside of it in antiquity either) that was building on top of those ideas.
It can be read in an hour, but even after over four years now of it being my main research focus, I’m still surprised and impressed by what that short little document yields.
And yes, Paul thought the world would soon be ending. But the perspective in Thomas was that it already had long ago, which may give a bit more context for the comments in 2 Timothy 2:18 and 2 Thessalonians 2:2. I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that Paul in Galatians is writing such a similar phrasing before the other was composed. He had a habit of overlapping with Thomas, and in a few of those cases explicitly mentioned he was citing something else.
What a minute this isn’t fair. You can’t introduce original research and get on my case that I don’t subscribe to your theory. The consensus is that it is Gnostic. I see your argument that the consensus might be wrong but you can’t just assert that I am wrong. I do see your point that since it is so context independent people must have known the context and at the same time lacking other features of the myth hints that it predates the myth. So yeah it could be pre-Mark but that you can’t just assert that.
I don’t know if I agree that Paul used it since that breaks the traditional timeline of his conversion within 2-3 years of the crucification and it isn’t likely that someone could have written it during the ministry. The overlap could easily be that they were both using the same source.
This is all besides that point. Christianity doesn’t consider this canon so it doesn’t get to be used in an argument about what Christianity is about.
The consensus is not that it’s Gnostic and hasn’t been for nearly two decades now. Here is Princeton’s Elaine Pagels (author of Gnostic Gospels) on the topic in a recent email debate:
Both of your points are assumptions all of us, I would guess, were taught in graduate school. The earliest editors of “Gnostic” texts thought that they were dualistic, escapist, nihilistic, involving “esoteric ideas about aeons and demiurges,” as you yourself write. As my former teacher at Harvard, Krister Stendhal, said to me recently about these texts, “we just thought these were weird.” But can you point to any evidence of such “esoteric ideas” in Thomas? Anything about “aeons and demiurges”?
Those first editors, not finding such evidence, assumed that this just goes to show how sneaky heretics are-they do not say what they mean. So when they found no evidence for such nihilism or dualism-on the contrary, the Gospel of Thomas speaks continually of God as the One good “Father of all”-they just read these into the text. Some scholars, usually those not very familiar with these sources, still do.
So first let’s talk about “Gnosticism”-and what I used to (but no longer) call “Gnostic Gospels.” I have to take responsibility for part of the misunderstanding. Having been taught that these texts were “Gnostic,” I just accepted it, and even coined the term “Gnostic gospels,” which became the title of my book.
I agree with you that we have no evidence for what we call “Gnosticism” from the first century, and have learned from our colleagues that what we thought about “Gnosticism” has virtually nothing to do with a text like the Gospel of Thomas-or, for that matter, with the New Testament Gospel of John which our teachers said also showed “Gnostic influences.”
It used to be what scholars thought, but it’s one of the big recent instances in Biblical scholarship of “oops, our bad” and is now definitely an obsolete position, particularly by anyone specializing in Gnostic studies.
As for Paul’s use of it, I’m not saying he was reading it prior to his conversion, simply that he’s likely read it or become familiar with it by the time he’s writing 1 Cor given the overlaps, which given their nuances indicate that the core text was present in Corinth when he’s writing to them. I suspect it is the “other gospel/other version of Jesus” he’s chiding them for accepting in 2 Cor 11, as well as what was behind the schism in Corinth that 1 Clement was written in response to. So it’s not necessarily influencing Paul 2-3 years after the crucifixion, but more around 50 CE shortly before he’s writing those letters.
And there’s unique sayings or context in Thomas that fit parts going back all the way to the time of a historical Jesus.
For example, saying 81 doesn’t only parallel 1 Cor 4:8, it especially fits Pilate’s time because it was then that Tiberius, who inherited the throne, had abandoned ruling to party but didn’t relinquish the position to someone else. So “let someone who has become wealthy reign, and one who has power relinquish it” sounds a lot like a critique of dynastic rule and a call for Tiberius to pass the torch to someone that will do the job. It also sounds like the kind of thing that might have gotten someone killed by the Roman state.
Or the context of Leucretius as a foundation, present across Thomas, happens to fit one of the most well known parables. Look at Leucretius’s language in describing failed biological reproduction:
For a woman prevents pregnancy this way, resisting it, […] By doing this, she turns the furrow away from the straight and true Path of the ploughshare, and the seed falls by the wayside too.
- De Rerum Natura book 4 lines 1269-1273
The book elsewhere explicitly described the idea that only what survived to reproduce would multiply.
So you have the sower parable about randomly scattered seed that fails to reproduce when it falls by the wayside of a path, and only what successfully reproduces multiples. The Naassenes, following Thomas, claimed this parable was referring to the scattering of seeds like indivisible points that make up all things (almost verbatim Lucretius’s “seeds of things”). In Thomas, it immediately followed two sayings about how no matter if lion ate man or man ate lion humans would be the eventual result, and that the human being was like a large fish selected from smaller fish.
Yet in canon the saying is given a secret explanation about proselytizing. One that in Mark clumsily interpolates into a public speech at the shore (you’ll notice they never return to the shore after 4:20, but are back there in 4:35-36).
So one version of the tradition around what’s regarded as one of the most likely sayings to go back to a historical Jesus effectively has Jesus citing Leucretius’s metaphor in describing survival of the fittest, and the only other version from antiquity is instead saying that he explained this public saying in secret (at odds with John 18:20’s “I said nothing in secret”) and it was about proselytizing.
In parallel to this, you can see that Paul is first talking about sown seeds in relation to human bodies in 1 Cor 15:35-49 where he also discussed a first and second Adam (a core aspect of the later Naassenes’ beliefs), but then switched to discussing sown seeds in relation to proselytizing and collections in 2 Cor 9:6-10. (Here’s a paper exploring Epicurean influence on the opposition to the physical resurrection in 1 Cor 15, btw.)
Is all of Thomas dating early? No - there’s even evidence that parts of Thomas post-date other parts of it, such as 110 combining the adjacent 80 and 81. But there’s a case that parts of it go back much further than most people might think (in part because of terrible scholarship for about 50 years leading to misinformation regarding it).
Look I fully admit I am not prepared to argue about it’s dating. I have a copy of the Gnostic texts and it has it in it and I have only read it a few times, not studied like you have. There is no way I can even respond to this other than point out that it is not part of the bible and thus really not part of Christianity. You can argue that it should have but that decision is about 17 centuries too late.
My only real questions are how do you explain that it was in Greek and that Paul doesn’t mention it given this revised timeline. You point out the allusions but not a citation. Core Paul got his information from talking to people if he is to believed.
Good luck on your thesis defense, not like you will need it. This is way above and beyond what I expected to read today.
Fun fact: every US president has been Christian.
The idea that the US is not a nation run by Christians is just wrong.
