New Sayings of Jesus and Fragment of a Lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus

...convincing, we think that a fairly good case can be made out in favor of our general interpretation. The basis of it is the close parallelism which we have supposed to exist between line 15 ("draw you, and the kingdom of Heaven") and, on the other hand, line 10 ("they that draw us") followed in line 11 by ("the kingdom in Heaven"), whereby we restore "they that draw" at the end of line 14. If this be granted, lines 9-16 divide themselves naturally into two parallel halves at the lacuna gap in line 11, lines 9-10 corresponding to lines 12-15, and line 11 to lines 15-16.

How is this correspondence to be explained? The simplest solution is to suppose that lines 9-11 are a question to which lines 12-16 form the answer; hence we supply "who" in line 9; compare the 5th Saying, which is an answer to a question. A difficulty then arises that we have "draw us" in line 10 but "draw you" in lines 14-15. This may be a mere accident due to the common confusion of "we" and "you" in papyri of this period, and perhaps "you" should be read in both cases. But "us" in line 10 can be defended in two ways, by supposing either that Jesus here lays stress rather on His human than on His divine nature, and associates Himself with the disciples, or that the question is put into the mouth of the disciples, i.e., the word before "who" was "ye ask" or the like.

There remains, however, the greatest crux of all, the meaning of "draw." A favorable sense is here much more likely than the reverse; compare John 6:44, "No man can come to me except the Father which sent me draw him," and 12:32, "I will draw all men unto myself." A phrase such as "to the kingdom" is required to explain "draw," though even with this addition the use of that word in such a context must be admitted to be difficult. The idea in lines 12-16 seems to be that the divine element in the world begins in the lower stages of animal creation, and rises to a higher stage in man, who has within him the kingdom of Heaven; compare Clement's discussion (Stromata 5.13) of Xenocrates' view that even irrational creatures possibly had some notion of the Divine, and the curious sanctity of certain animals in the various Apocryphal Acts non-canonical narratives of the apostles, e.g., Thecla's baptized lioness, Thomas's ass, Philip's leopard and kid buried at the door of the church. The transition from the inward character of the kingdom to the necessity for self-knowledge (lines 16-21) is natural. Since the kingdom is not an external manifestation but an inward principle, men must know themselves in order to attain to its realization. The old Greek proverb "know thyself" is thus given a fresh significance.