Loading...We’ve talked about Gnosticism and in the previous post I mentioned Gnostic groups connected with “Thomas,” allegedly the (twin!) brother of Jesus. There are a number of writings written in the name of Thomas, the most famous of which is the Gospel of Thomas discovered at Nag Hammadi. I haven’t talked at length about it on the blog for several years now, so it seems like a good time to return to it here.
This will take three posts. The one today is a broad introduction to what the Gospel is and what it contains. I have taken this from my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.
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The Gospel of Thomas is without question the most significant book discovered in the Nag Hammadi library. Unlike the Gospel of Peter, discovered sixty years earlier, this book is completely preserved. It has no narrative at all, no stories about anything that Jesus did, no references to his death and resurrection. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus.
The sayings are not arranged in any recognizable order. Nor are they set within any context, except in a few instances in which Jesus is said to reply to a direct question of his disciples. Most of the sayings begin simply with the words “Jesus said.” In terms of genre, the book looks less like the New Testament Gospels and more like the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible.
Like Proverbs,
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So when do you think this Gospel is dated or written?
These days it’s usually dated to around 120 CE or so.
Having finished reading your recently published book Armageddon – which I greatly enjoyed and am in the process of writing a review for Amazon – I can’t help wondering whether you know of any evidence that Gnosticism may have emerged, at least in part, as a reaction against Jesus’s neo-Jewish, messianic, Divine Warrior role portrayed in the Book of Revelation.
THere’s nothing to indicate that Revelation had an effect, one way or the other, on Gnostic views. It wasn’t extraordinarily popular in the first couple of centuries, so it seems unlikely that it generated a large reaction.
Hi Dr Ehrman, was just wondering what your opinion is on how many apostles were definitely martyred. I know in one of your previous blog posts it seemed that you seemed sure that at least Paul and Peter were martyred, so was curious if your opinion had changed since that post and also what you think concerning particularly James the brother of Jesus’ martyrdom. When rereading, you seemed to indicate the evidence for James wasn’t good enough to know for sure. So was wondering why you think this is? (providing I have not put words in your mouth.) Lastly was also curious for your thoughts were on Paul’s martyrdom as know in previous posts you mentioned you thought it was legendary because of the milk flowing from Paul’s neck. However I remember Sean Mcdowell in a video mentioned about a medical condition where a milky white substance secretes from the neck which *may* account for the mention of the milk. Therefore, providing Mcdowell is right (although he never cites a source.) Would this make you rethink the historicity of what we know about his martyrdom, or are there other factors that make this account not reliable regardless of the milk?
McDowell: really?!? OK, then. Ha, well, that’s a bit extreme. I doubt if he’s actually studied the Acts of Paul but the scholarship on it is very interesting and no scholar I’ve heard of takes it seriously as a historical account — not just the martyrdom but the whole thing. In it Paul preaches that salvation comes (not by the death of Jesus but) by keeping sexually pure, that is, by not having sex even with a spouse, and he encounters a talking lion in the arena who expresses its gratitude for Paul having baptized it. I wonder if McDowell thinks those are plausible as well?
I do think Peter and Paul were probably martyred — the Gospel of John seems to assume Peter was and Acts that Paul was, and we have a mention of them in 1 Clement. James: Josephus mentions it so it seems completely reasonalbe. James the son of Zebedee — Acts says so and I don’t see much of any reason to doubt it. I don’t think we have much evidence for anyone else, though we do have some great legendary materials from the apocryphal Acts!
Apologies turns out he did cite a source (even if it is Wikipedia) and the condition is called Chylothorax.
Ah, so he thinks lymph spurt out of his neck instead of blood. (Maybe a lymphatic condition was Paul’s thorn in the flesh?) Does anyone really take him seriously when he says things like that? Are we supposed to think that when Paul was beheaded it was lymph mistaken for milk instead of, say, blood?
Good point maybe I won’t include this as evidence for Paul’s martyrdom in my EPQ! -Thanks for the help greatly appreciated!
beautiful!
Is there really anything fundamentally different about the Gnostic Gospels from the canonical ones, other than they were not selected for inclusion in the New Testament?
Yup, they are HUGELY different. Thomas may not be Gnostic. But read something like the Gospel of Philip or the Apocryphon of John and I think you’ll see pretty clearly: this ain’t the same kinda thing!
Although my original comment (i.e., question) concerning this post of Bart’s awaits moderation, I subsequently have realized that I can pose it in a more general way. In Bart’s opinion, are all Gnostic writings evidence of an attempt by formerly pagan Greeks (i.e., gentiles) to elevate their own metaphysically based, Platonic concept of the highest high over the Jewish and subsequently orthodox Christian concept of what, in The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (1993), Prof Jon D. Levenson calls the “theology of chosenness”? Or to paraphrase Jacques Derrida, “Are we Greek? Hebrew? What?”
I”m not sure Levenson and Derrida are often mentioned in support of a position side by side! But yes, I do think Gnosticism comes out of largely gentile traditions (thought there are obvious Jewish connections, especially with the focus on Hebrew Scripture), and it has been ehavily influenced by middle-Platonism. But I don’t think that there was some kind of planned attempt to take on Jewish / Christian views about “chosenness” per se. It’s more that there is a development of chosenness into an almost deterministic sense that only some have a divine spark within and that it is not a matter of effort ti aquire it.
Amazon has just published my five-star review of Bart’s Armageddon. So, here’s a revised comment that combines the contents of the previous two.
Having recently read and five-star reviewed for Amazon your book Armageddon, I can’t help wondering whether you interpret all Gnostic writings as evidence of an attempt by formerly pagan Greeks (i.e., uncircumcised gentiles) to elevate their own metaphysically based, Platonic concept of the highest high over the Jewish and subsequently orthodox Christian concept of what, in The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (1993), Prof Jon D. Levenson calls the “theology of chosenness”? Or to paraphrase Jacques Derrida, “Are we Greek? Hebrew? What?”
Having also read Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief, I also can’t help wondering about a comment in one of your recent posts that she has changed her interpretive position. Please elaborate.
Additionally, Bart can find an extended version of my review of his Armageddon at my Blog post website historyhighjackers.com
Elaine no longer thinks that Thomas is best characterized as a Gnostic text. She’s very firm about that these days, or at least was last time we talked about it a few years ago. Thanks for your review! May your tribe increase.