Gospel Of Thomas

[Murray]

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html

Just read through it, had some interesting pieces in it not found in the other gospels, and some of the some parables from the gospels in about the same words.

Found in Egypt in 1945 at a place called Nag Hammadi. Found along with 20 other early christian writings. Dating on the books put it in the 1st century.

Great read, pretty short, some good lessons in it. Do you guys believe that this is a legitimate gospel?

[RickD]

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html

Just read through it, had some interesting pieces in it not found in the other gospels, and some of the some parables from the gospels in about the same words.

Found in Egypt in 1945 at a place called Nag Hammadi. Found along with 20 other early christian writings. Dating on the books put it in the 1st century.

Great read, pretty short, some good lessons in it. Do you guys believe that this is a legitimate gospel?

No.

[Murray]

why is that rick? it was written in the first century, probably comprised of 1st or 2nd hand accounts of jesus

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Do you guys believe that this is a legitimate gospel?

It is illigitimate. That said, it is interesting and contains insight into the development of Christianity...like 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-Maccabees are historical accounts. Read all of these as history - only as history - because God has not put them into His Word.

FL

[RickD]

why is that rick? it was written in the first century, probably comprised of 1st or 2nd hand accounts of jesus

Is it in the bible? No. Why isn't it in the bible? Do some research, on why, and you'll have your answer, Murray.

[Canuckster1127]

You may be sorry you asked ... I did my Senior Thesis in 1985 on the Gospel of Thomas by studying all the English academic literature about it and doing some exegetical comparisons with the Kingdom Parables in Matt 13.

It has no narrative to it. It's just a collection of sayings (very consistent with Gnostic literature.) There's sayings of Christ that are the same as the NT. There's sayings of Christ that differ from similar ones in the NT and in every case there's pretty clear evidence why the sayings were changed based on the original contradicting Gnostic "theology" then there are sayings attributed to Christ that appear nowhere else.

When it was first found it generated some excitement because it had been mentioned in other old documents. Also, some Biblical Scholars thought it might represent an independent tradition of Christ's sayings, maybe even the theoretical "Q" document suspected to exist in some textual criticism theories.

Because there's no connecting narrative, each saying pretty much has to be studied and looked at on its own. There's no really serious Bible Scholar that I'm aware of that sees it anymore as something of a curiosity but nothing really of value in revealing anything new about Christ or the New Testament. That's my opinion anyway, but It's been 27 years since I seriously looked at the literature.

[Murray]

Well rick I did some research and the best explanation I have is because the book was found in 1945.

Reading on the Nag Hammadi library might not be a bad thing either...

[RickD]

Well rick I did some research and the best explanation I have is because the book was found in 1945.

Reading on the Nag Hammadi library might not be a bad thing either...

Murray, all my point is, is that if something is not in the bible, there's a reason it's not. If we believe scripture is inspired, and God led those who put the books into the bible, then don't you believe God got everything in there, that He wanted in there? Or do you think God is sitting in heaven saying, "oh crap, that book of Thomas that I wanted in the bible, didn't get put in!"? Read it if you want. Just be cautious. That's all.

[Canuckster1127]

There's nothing wrong with reading apocryphal or pseudopigraphil writings. I've read most of the Nag Hammadi library. I've read a lot of other things including the full apocrypha (the books founf in the Catholic Bible that are not in the Protestant Canon), the Diatesseron and of course a lot of the early Church Fathers.

The question is how you read them. I believe the Canon of the Bible is reliable not because a particular council declared it to be so, but because the early church for a good while before that council had endorsed these works as authentic and they were accepted as being connected to Christ and the Apostles.

Some of the writings outside have some things to add to our understanding that are helpful. The Apocrypha is very much made up of narratives and it gives a very good base to understand what is known as the Intertestamental period of time. The Diatessaron gives good insight into the early Christian community. Then again too, there's some stuff that is patently ridiculous. The infancy narrative of Thomas (different than the one we're talking about) tells stories of Jesus' childhood and has him killing and resurrecting playmates and turning clay figures into birds etc.

How you read them is that Scripture has authority and anything outside of that might help or give some helpful insight somewhere but it's not authorative in the same way.

That's how I see it anyway.

[Murray]

I never really spoke it's reliably or that it should be in the bible, I just thought It was really cool how a book dated from the 2nd century contains so many parables similar to those in Matthew mark Luke and john. Just kind of further confirms that their were multiple eyewitnesses to Jesus.

[Canuckster1127]

I never really spoke it's reliably or that it should be in the bible, I just thought It was really cool how a book dated from the 2nd century contains so many parables similar to those in Matthew mark Luke and john. Just kind of further confirms that their were multiple eyewitnesses to Jesus.

The GofT doesn't prove anything of this nature unless it's proven to be an independent tradition or accounting of Christ.

Each Logia (seperate saying of Christ) has to be looked at alone at a low level for any sense of whether there is something there that is new. On a high level these are the things that would indicate that it is not an independent tradition but is in fact the gnistic community taking, modifying or attributing sayings to Christ just as they did to many other public figures of their day.

1. The GofT didn't have a high distribution in Christian Community. This is why it isn't mentioned very much in other literature and the literature that does mention it is on the outer edges of Christian Community.

2. The GofT was found in a Gnostic Library. Nag Hammadi's documents and the codices they were on were:

Codex I (also known as The Jung Codex):
The Prayer of the Apostle Paul
The Apocryphon of James (also known as the Secret Book of James)
The Gospel of Truth
The Treatise on the Resurrection
The Tripartite Tractate

Codex II:
The Apocryphon of John
The Gospel of Thomas a sayings gospel
The Gospel of Philip
The Hypostasis of the Archons
On the Origin of the World
The Exegesis on the Soul
The Book of Thomas the Contender

Codex III:
The Apocryphon of John
The Gospel of the Egyptians
Eugnostos the Blessed
The Sophia of Jesus Christ
The Dialogue of the Saviour

Codex IV:
The Apocryphon of John
The Gospel of the Egyptians

Codex V:
Eugnostos the Blessed
The Apocalypse of Paul
The First Apocalypse of James
The Second Apocalypse of James
The Apocalypse of Adam

Codex VI:
The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles
The Thunder, Perfect Mind
Authoritative Teaching
The Concept of Our Great Power
Republic by Plato - The original is not gnostic, but the Nag Hammadi library version is heavily modified with then-current gnostic concepts.
The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth - a Hermetic treatise
The Prayer of Thanksgiving (with a hand-written note) - a Hermetic prayer
Asclepius 21-29 - another Hermetic treatise

Codex VII:
The Paraphrase of Shem
The Second Treatise of the Great Seth
Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter
The Teachings of Silvanus
The Three Steles of Seth

Codex VIII:
Zostrianos
The Letter of Peter to Philip

Codex IX:
Melchizedek
The Thought of Norea
The Testimony of truth

Codex X:
Marsanes

Codex XI:
The Interpretation of Knowledge
A Valentinian Exposition, On the Anointing, On Baptism (A and B) and On the Eucharist (A and B)
Allogenes
Hypsiphrone

Codex XII
The Sentences of Sextus
The Gospel of Truth
Fragments

Codex XIII:
Trimorphic Protennoia
On the Origin of the World

Of the documents that were found, in particular the Republic by Plato, there were significant edits and changes that took place to make the documents more gnostic and suitable to the mystery approach employed by the Gnostics. Now Nag Hammadi was probably a Christian Gnostic group, meaning that there was a significant Christian element or focus that they had. John, which is the last Gospel written has evidence that even by the time it was written (in the 80s or 90s AD) Gnostisism was already a growing movement within the broader Christian community. Many suspect that the reason John 1 focuses so strongly on going to great Pains to establish Jesus Christ as the Word (John 1:1,14) was in response to the "threat" of Gnosticism which separated spirit from body making spirit good and the physical evil. John 1 makes clear that Jesus was physical and completely tied in his divinity to the physical. John is different from the other Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark and Luke) in that John is less about being a narrative of events and more about what Jesus said and how what He said, taught and did demonstrate his divinity and the incarnation.

The other writings present on the same Codex with the GofT are decidedly Gnostic.

Even though the GofT is just sayings strung together with no narrative, the introduction to it is strongly gnostic. Here it is:

These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke,
and that Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And He said:
"Whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death."

Gnostic clues are:

Hidden: this is a dominent theme in Gnosticism. The meaning of the sayings is hidden and only accessible to those who are higher in their knowledge and able to pierce the veil.

Didymus: this refers to twins. Gnosticism ties special significance to twins.

The last phrase is a dead give away. Eternal life isn't tied to Christ Himself but to the sayings (disassociation from the physical incarnation.) Eternal life is found in the esoteric meaning of the words, not Jesus Himself. It's only the chosen few versed enough in the secret meaning who can open things.

In recent times, theres been something of a revival of Gnosticism and a strong push to establish gnosticism as a separate Christian tradition with as much validity as that which was in the end declared "orthodox." Elaine Pagels is a key leader in this and there's a group that has tried in multiple areas to present that some of what we call the pseudopigrapha (literally false writings or meaning books written under the name of another) is in fact an independent tradition with as much historical validity as "orthodox" christianity and what happened in Christian History is that one side "won" and another "lost".

I'm not as familiar with all the work that's been down by these "scholars" as a lot of it has been done after my strong focus on GofT. My general impression is that it's not independent, scholarship. It's partisan in the sense that many of these writing articles and essays have a personal desire to establish another tradition in order to weaken the claims of orthodox Christianity. As such, it makes it hard to take the claims seriously. Even atheist or agnostic scholars don't give it strong credibility. Bart Ehrman who is an agnostic and strong textual scholar puts the GofT in the 2nd century and written or compiled by a gnostic writer.

It's a curiosity piece. Textually however there's just not much there. You have to really want to believe there's something there to build a case and no serious Biblical Scholar who doesn't have an agenda to cast doubt on historical Christianity while building an esoteric, apocalyptic type independent tradtion, gives it a great deal of serious attention.

I can see how it looks cool. I found it really interesting when I focused in on the common material between it and and Matt 13. There's just not much there that makes it particularly textually valuable. Without narrative text and given everything else that points to it just being a gnostic collection of sayings within other gnostic documents and evidence of the traditions willingness to modify or create new sayings to meet the needs of the gnostic methodology in place then.

[rcjones]

HI, ...new here. This topic popped up in my Google alerts because of my particular interest in the GOT.

If the Gospel of Thomas is read literally, much of what is said about it is true: It appears to be gnostic, it should not be in the Bible, etc.

However, if it is read as a 'dark saying', that is a riddle, then a different conclusion may be drawn.

One of the most difficult sayings is about Mary becoming male. This riddle is common in other writings: The female must become male. The Sikhs extend it saying that males must become virgins, and Jeremiah has a prophecy closing the riddle circle saying that men will become pregnant.

The riddle is discerned from Paul's saying that the woman was deceived. The female represents those who do not see clearly (the blind), and the saying merely says that the blind will see, or those who do not understand will understand. In the extension, the male becoming a virgin just says that those who understand will become the bride of Christ. That men should become pregnant just says that the bride of Christ will be fruitful and multiplying. The fruitfulness from the virgin means that our fruitfulness is not in having physical children but in preaching the gospel.

If they are simple childish riddle, which God calls 'wisdom', then Thomas agrees with the Bible and in fact teaches us how to read the riddles of the Bible.

Matthew says there are 42 generations in the genealogy of Jesus but only lists 41. Why is there no record of an early outcry that Matthew couldn't count? Because everyone knew it was a riddle.
Yeshua means God's salvation NOT God with us, yet Matthew tells us that it fulfills the prophecy. How? The pun Yah- shuwach means "God humbled" referring to his incarnation. Just another riddle.

Thomas may be class notes on reading the riddles of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the Old Testament.

If you would like to see more evidence before deciding the matter, let me know.