Give all for all, look for nothing, ask nothing in return: rest purely and trustingly in Me, and you shall possess Me. Then you will be free in heart, and no darkness will oppress your soul. Strive for this, pray for this, desire this one thing - that you may be stripped clean of all selfishness,and naked follow the naked Jesus, dying to the self that you may live to Me for ever. Then will all vain fantasies be put to flight, and all evil disorders and groundless fears vanish. Then will all fear and dread depart, and all disordered love die in you. [The Imitation of Christ, Book III, Chapter XXXVII: How Surrender of Self Brings Freedom of Heart]Many of you may be aware that I discovered a very old tradition which survives in the early medieval rabbinic literature about Marcus Julius Agrippa being the true messiah of Israel and especially of Daniel 9:26. I inevitably find myself confronted with idiots who tell me that it is impossible that any of these remembrances could be anything other than inventions of later Jewish interpretation. Yet I don't believe that for a minute because we find Origen making specific reference to Jewish historical chronologies (clearly Justin of Tiberias's lost Chronicle) that say the same thing.
I am beginning to think that the same thing might have been at work in Christian monasteries with respect to 'Secret Mark' from the time of Jerome onward.
The facts are that it might be possible that Thomas is here just collating and expanding upon traditions that date back to Jerome. Yet even this is not completely worthless information. He might have brought into the mix texts and traditions which are no longer available to us. We simply don't know other than it is impossible to believe that Thomas or Jerome simply 'invented' the nudus nudum concept. Organized religion doesn't work that way. Innovation is tantamount to heresy (except in the American evangelical Church it would seem). What find instead is an endless recycling of old theological ideas in new languages and new dressings.
The bottom line is that Thomas's ideas here sound strikingly similar to the literary context of LGM 1. It should not surprise us that if we went through the chain of transmission of the nudus nudum concept that many of the ideas represented here could be traced back to the fourth century and Jerome. Standing here we are only a few steps away from Origen and his 'naked Logos' concept and with Origen, his teacher Clement of Alexandria.
