Boid on the right explanation of the fringes of the garment and the flux of blood in Matthew IX: 20 ff. & Luke VIII: 44 ff

I have always thought myself that the Gospel of Thomas had no reason for its title unless there were some special significance to Judah Thomas himself, as the rightful transmitter of the sayings, that the reader was expected to know. This thought first occurred to me in a vague form when I read the first full English translation in about 1957 in the newspaper. (No, I’m not quite the age that might be thought to make me. I was still at school. I suppose this means I was not a typical young teenager in some respects. Note the quality of the aforementioned newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald).

I would add that the most ancient other Gospel attributed to one of Jesus’s disciples (aside from Matthew, Mark, John) is the Gospel of Philip/Phillip. Philip has been forgotten because the ORIGINAL Church in Samaria has been forgotten. As said before, Justin Martyr, born in Neapolis/Nablus/Shechem, or so he pretends, tries to give the impression that there never had been a Church in Samaria; or otherwise, if there had been a few Christians, they were insignificant in number and depended on some other place for direction. Now think about what the Gospel of Philip says about Maryam Magdalta.

Forget all my tentative comments on the edge of the garment. The correct explanation has always been known. The King James Version translates “flux”, not “flow” to echo its translation at Leviticus XV: 33 ff. where the artificial noun flux straight from Latin medical terminology is in contrast to the normal flow. (Hebrew verb zuv ZAYIN-VAV-BET; noun zavah). The Greek verb in the NT is the same as in the LXX, so the correct understanding goes right back to the editors of the Greek Gospels. Note the deliberate echo of the Torah in the NT by the unexpected use of a verb, not a noun, as in Lv XV: 33 etc. This is an abnormal flow over a period. The Gospel does not say she had been menstruating for twelve years: it says she had been having abnormal flow of blood on and off for twelve years, without any let up long enough for her to be cleansed. BUT the passage can be understood as saying that even NORMAL menstrual flow (niddah and davah; see before this in Lv XV, with the emphasis on noun forms) was a form of imperfection, and that Jesus freed her from that. Now comes the linkage with childbirth. Look at the terminology in Lv XII, the same as in Lv XV, but referring to childbirth. The King James Version then translates “fringes”. This is their standard translation of tsitsit pl. tsitsiyot ציצית. ציציות . See Matthew XIV: 36; Mark VI: 56; Numbers XV: 38 ff; Deuteronomy XXII: 12. In the LXX, the Greek word kraspedon pl. kraspeda is the same as in the NT. I said the correct understanding goes back to the editors of the Greek NT. But look at how many of the Church Fathers try to hide the self-evident, pretending that the woman only touched the hem of the garment. They do this by pointing out that kraspedon can have this meaning, but they don’t tell you (a) that some clearer specification would be have to be added to the sentence in that case; (b) that kraspedon was the STANDARD GREEK NAME FOR TSITSIYOT AT THE TIME; (c) that the linkage to the Torah can only be deliberate on the part of the editors. The tsitsiyot are as you will see from the Torah reminders of all the mitsvot and the Torah itself. Rabbinic Judaism restricted the tsitsiyot to men, and obviously Israelite men. Jesus gave the woman the WHOLE of the Torah, and she was freed from the tyranny of the PART that women were restricted to. Then Jesus gave non-Israelites access to the Torah. Read the opening verses of Dt. XXXIII again, and think of the attenuated Rabbinic explanation that at first all the world had been offered the Torah and only Israel accepted it. What this hides is the implication from the Torah that the Torah is to be offered again, and the second Torah will be accepted by everyone everywhere. What has to be worked out is a tighter explanation of why Jesus’s tsitsiyot had this power. Now we can solve the garbled bit of data in the book of Acts, that people could be healed by touching some bit of cloth used by Paul. What lies behind this is a statement that people were healed by a garment with tsitsiyot that he had worn.