“Children Dwelling in a Field”: Age, Gender, and the Exegesis of Creation in Gospel of Thomas 21

Abstract

The Gospel of Thomas includes a parable in logion 21 that refers to ϩⲛ̄ϣⲏⲣⲉ ϣⲏⲙ (“little children”), who might at first glance appear indistinguishable from the ϩⲛ̄ⲕⲟⲩⲉⲓ (“infants”) in logion 22. Yet philological analysis of Thomas’s childhood terminology indicates a meaningful age distinction between the children dwelling in the field and the nursing infants entering the kingdom. Attending to this age gap reveals the gospel’s subtle exegesis of creation in logion 21: by depicting the disciples as older children rather than infants, the saying articulates their current condition in the world shaped by the second creation account (Gen 2:4b–3:24). This interpretation also clarifies the parable of the thief in logion 21, which explains how the primordial human of Gen 1:27 became divided into two genders and how each disciple must return to—and guard—their babylike oneness. Through intratextual analysis and comparative engagement with external sources, I show that the idea of regression toward infancy illuminates Thomas’s backward reading of Gen 1–3, through which the gospel addresses the anthropological and cosmological differences between the two creation accounts.