In any case there is a great gulf fixed between these Acts and the thoroughly Greek Gnostic Acts of John. According to the Acts of John the highest gift of the true Christian is spiritual insight to perceive the hidden meaning of that which is hidden from the uninstructed believer. "Behold Me," Christ says there to St John, "in truth that I am, not what I said, but what thou art able to know … The things that they say of Me I had not, and the things that they say not those I suffered. Now what they are I will signify unto thee, for I know that thou wilt understand[1]." The language of the Acts of Judas Thomas is quite other than this. Not philosophy but ethics is here the essence of Christianity: the chief aim of the writer is to produce a change of conduct, not spiritual enlightenment. St Thomas knows that the mysteries of life cannot be rightly uttered in human speech, but so far as may be he expounds them to all the people. There is no intentional concealment of doctrine, no inner circle of Illuminati.
- ↑ Acta Iohannis xv (James, Apocrypha Anecdota ii, p. 20 ff.).
