That was actually the key point in a competing early tradition against the cannonical version we all know.
It basically pushed for people to realize that the guy calling everyone brother and sister wasn’t claiming to be an only child, but that everyone was literally the child of a creator with salvation as their birthright.
The problem was this meant that prayer and fasting and most importantly - giving money to priests and the church - was pointless. You basically got salvation by default because much like in Solomon’s decision, a true parent is the one that wants its child to live and thrive even if it isn’t even known to the child, and it’s the false parent that is willing to see the child suffer and die, only caring about recognition.
Some of the lines from the text this tradition was centered around are great:
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty. […]
If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits. […]
The messengers and the prophets will come to you and give you what belongs to you. You, in turn, give them what you have, and say to yourselves, ‘When will they come and take what belongs to them?’ […]
This text and its perspectives were such a threat to both the church and the Roman empire (one of its sayings called for an end of dynastic monarchy), that after the emperor of Rome put together the canonization at the council of Nicaea in short order this text ended up literally punishable by death to possess it and we only know what it says today because a single complete copy survived buried in a jar for nearly two millennia.
It may have even had Solomon’s decision referenced above in mind given not only its similar perspectives of due inheritance but that the story was about the child of a prostitute and one of its sayings was:
Whoever knows the father and the mother will be called the child of a whore.
(Note: Elsewhere this text stresses to “make the male and female into a single one,” so the ‘Father’ elsewhere may have been a side effect of Aramaic’s binary genders with no neutral ‘Parent’ to have used instead and “father and mother” here in this saying may have been intended more to emphasize the motherly qualities of a singular divine parent than to have been about two separate parents.)
That was actually the key point in a competing early tradition against the cannonical version we all know.
It basically pushed for people to realize that the guy calling everyone brother and sister wasn’t claiming to be an only child, but that everyone was literally the child of a creator with salvation as their birthright.
The problem was this meant that prayer and fasting and most importantly - giving money to priests and the church - was pointless. You basically got salvation by default because much like in Solomon’s decision, a true parent is the one that wants its child to live and thrive even if it isn’t even known to the child, and it’s the false parent that is willing to see the child suffer and die, only caring about recognition.
Some of the lines from the text this tradition was centered around are great:
This text and its perspectives were such a threat to both the church and the Roman empire (one of its sayings called for an end of dynastic monarchy), that after the emperor of Rome put together the canonization at the council of Nicaea in short order this text ended up literally punishable by death to possess it and we only know what it says today because a single complete copy survived buried in a jar for nearly two millennia.
It may have even had Solomon’s decision referenced above in mind given not only its similar perspectives of due inheritance but that the story was about the child of a prostitute and one of its sayings was:
(Note: Elsewhere this text stresses to “make the male and female into a single one,” so the ‘Father’ elsewhere may have been a side effect of Aramaic’s binary genders with no neutral ‘Parent’ to have used instead and “father and mother” here in this saying may have been intended more to emphasize the motherly qualities of a singular divine parent than to have been about two separate parents.)