(Above image of the Gospel of Thomas courtesy of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont Graduate University)
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The Nag Hammadi Library
Thunder
Translated by Willis Barnstone
This original translation of Thunder (Nag Hammadi Codex VI, 2) is presented in the Gnostic Society Library by permission and under license from Dr. Willis Barnstone, who retains all copyright. Dr. Barnstone's translations of the Nag Hammadi texts are published in The Gnostic Bible, (c) 2003 Willis Barnstone & Marvin Meyer.
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Thunder
I was sent out from the power
and have come to you who study me
and am found by you who seek me.
Look at me, you who study me,
and you who hear, hear me.
You waiting for me, take me into yourselves.
Don’t banish me from your vision.
Don’t let hatred enter your voice against me
or let anger enter your hearing.
In no place, in no time, be unknowing of me.
Be alert. Don’t be ignorant of me.I am the first and the last.
I am the honored and scorned.
I am the whore and holy.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and daughter.
I am the members of my mother
and the barren one with many sons.
I have had a grand wedding
and have not found a husband.
I am a midwife and do not give birth.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am bride and groom,
and my husband produced me.
I am the mother of my father
and sister of my husband,
and he is my offspring.
I am a slave of him who prepared me
and ruler of my offspring.
He produced me earlier yet on my birthday.
He is my offspring to come,
and from him is my power.
I am the staff of his power in his youth
and he the rod of my old age,
and whatever he wants happens to me.
I am a silence incomprehensible
and an idea remembered often.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.Why do you who hate me love me
and hate those who love me?
You who deny me confess me,
and you who confess me deny me.
You who tell the truth about me lie about me,
and you who lie tell the truth.
You who know me,
be ignorant of me, and those who have not known me,
let them know me.I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and fearlessness.
I am shameless and ashamed.
I am strength and fear.
I am war and peace.
Hear what I say.
I am the disgraced and the grand being.
Consider my poverty and wealth.
Don’t be arrogant when I am cast down on the earth,
and you will find me in those who are to come.
Don’t stare at me lying on a dung heap.
Don’t run off and cast me away.
In the kingdoms you will find me.
Don’t stare when I am cast with the disgraced
in the most sordid places
or laugh at me.
Don’t throw me out among those violently slaughtered.
I am compassionate and cruel.Be careful.
Don’t hate my obedience
or love my self-control.
When I am weak, don’t forsake me
or fear my power.
Why do you despise my fear
and curse my pride?
I am a woman existing in every fear
and in my strength when I tremble.
I am a woman, weak,
and carefree in a pleasant place.
I am senseless and wise.Why have you hated me in your counsels?
I will be silent among the silent
and appear and speak.
Greeks, why do you hate me?
Because I am a barbarian among the barbarians?
I am the wisdom of Greeks and knowledge of barbarians.
I am the judgment of Greeks and barbarians.
My image is great in Egypt, and I have no image among the barbarians.
I am hated everywhere and loved everywhere.
I am called life and you have called me death.
I am called law and you have called me lawlessness.
I am one you pursued and seized.
I am one you scattered and gathered together.
I am one before whom you are ashamed,
and to me you are shameless.
I am the woman who attends no festival
and whose festivals are many.
I am godless and one whose god is great.
I am one you studied and you scorn me.
I am unlettered and you learn from me.
I am one you despise and you study me.
I am one you hide from and you appear to me.
When you hide I show.
When you appear I hide. . . .Take me into understanding from grief,
and take me from understanding and grief.
Receive me into yourselves from other places
ugly and destroyed.
And steal from the good even in their ugliness.
Out of shame take me to yourselves shamelessly.
Without shame and with shame, rebuke what is mine
in you
and come to me, you who know me
and you who know my members,
and make great ones among small first creatures.
Come to childhood
and don’t despise it, because it is small and tiny.
Don’t turn away the great in parts from the small,
for the small is known from the great.
Why do you curse and honor me?
You wound me and have mercy.
Don’t separate me from the first you have known.
Don’t cast out or turn away,
turn away and not know. . . .
I know the first ones,
and those after them know me.
I am perfect mind and rest. . . .
I am the knowledge of my search,
the finding of those who look for me,
the command of those who ask about me,
the power of powers
in my knowledge of angels sent at my word,
and of gods in their seasons sent by my counsel,
and of spirits of all who exist with me
and of women who live in me.I am one who is honored, praised, and scornfully despised.
I am peace, and war has come because of me.
I am alien and citizen.
I am the substance and one without substance.Those unconnected to me are unfamiliar with me,
and those in my substance know me.
Those close to me are ignorant of me,
and those far away have known me.
On the day I am close to you, you are far,
and on the day I am far, I am close to you.I am . . . within.
I am . . . of natures.
I am . . . of created spirits,
the request of souls.
I am control and the uncontrollable.
I am union and dissolution.
I abide and dissolve.
I am below and they come up to me.
I am judgment and acquittal.
I am sinless,
and the root of sin comes from me.
I am lust outwardly, yet within me is control.
I am hearing for all, and my speech is indecipherable.
I am an unspeaking mute
and enormous in my many words.Hear me in gentleness and discover me in roughness.
I am the woman crying out
and cast upon the face of the earth.
I prepare bread and my mind within.
I am the knowledge of my name.
I am the one who cries out
and I listen.
I appear . . . walk in . . . I am . . . the defense.
I am called truth and iniquity. . . .You honor me and whisper against me.
You, the vanquished, judge those who vanquish you
before they judge you,
because in you the judge and partiality exist.
If you are condemned by one, who will acquit you?
If acquitted by him, who will arrest you?
What is in you is outside,
and one who fashions you on the outside
shapes you inside.
What you see outside you see within you.
It is visible and your garment.
Hear me, hearers,
and find out about my words, you who know me.
I am the hearing all can reach;
I am speech undecipherable.
I am the name of the sound
and the sound of the name.
I am the sign of the letter
and the designation of the division.
I . . . light . . . great power . . . will not move the name . . .
to the one who created me.
I will speak his name.Look at his words and all the writings completed.
Be alert, hearers and angels and those sent
and you spirits arisen from the dead.
I alone exist and have no one to judge me.
Many pleasures exist in many sins,
uncontrolled passions and disgraceful desires
and brief pleasures
embraced by people until they sober up
and float up to their place of rest.
There they will find me and live, and they will not die again.