Loading...This week in my graduate seminar we will be discussing the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, not to be confused with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that I mentioned in a post last week, with which this one has no relation, apart from the fact that both claim to be written by Thomas, a.k.a. Didymus Judas Thomas, i.e., Jesus’ brother Jude.
By far this Gospel of Thomas is the best known, most read, and most significant Gospel from outside the New Testament. It was accidentally discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi Egypt as one of the 52 documents contained in a set of twelve books, with part of a thirteenth, now widely known as the Nag Hammadi Library. Most of these documents are Gnostic.
Like all the others, this one is written in Coptic and is a Coptic translation of a Greek original. The book that contains it was produce in the mid-fourth century CE. But the Gospel itself was originally composed in the early second century CE. It is hard to say when after this the Coptic translation was produced. In a later post I may give the reasons we know this various information. For now I thought it would be interesting just to give part of it to you.
The Gospel is almost nothing but sayings of Jesus, one after the other. Scholars since the first publication of the text (in 1959) give them as 114 sayings; the manuscript itself does not number them. As you will see, some of the sayings are very much like what you find in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Others, well, not so much. Or at all.
Suppose you were picking this up to read it for the first time. Here are the first 18 sayings. What do you make of them? (The translation was done by my colleague Zlatko Pleše, for our book The Other Gospels).
The Gospel According to Thomas
These are the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down.
The rest of this post is for members only. Want to see more? Join the blog! Doesn’t cost much, gives a lot, all the small fee goes to charity. No one loses, and everyone wins!
That is fascinating! Thank you so much Bart. Jesus’ koan-like sayings explode conventional Christianity. They are ripe with new inspiration.
Number 15 is interesting, but not to Mormons. Most Christians believe God always existed as supreme being. Mormons took it a step further. They believe God ( many gods) was a fallen man like us, and worked (perfected) himself to glory, like Jesus. And so, he must of had a mother and ultimately a wife to have his own( personal) kingdom and all these little spirit children inhabiting it. Their main tenet, according to the founder,Joseph Smith’s vision, God and Jesus both appeared to him (Smith) in bodies of flesh and bones. Ironically, definitions of God , related to religions say, 1) (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being. 2) in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity. How fitting!! Beliefs for all. On a personal note, Bart, I always assumed that this gospel of Thomas was referring to the Apostle and not Jesus’s brother. I think many today still think that. Thanks.
My understanding is that the Apostle Thomas (ie Doubting Thomas) is the same person as Jude, the brother of Jesus. ‘Thomas’ just means twin. Or at least some early Christian’s believed that he was.
This text is fascinating, and it vexes me that so little of the Greek is available. There are certainly some Gnostic flavors to it, but it never gets obnoxious about it. The references to understanding special knowledge in order to be saved from death, secret knowledge imparted to Thomas that he couldn’t tell the others, strange riddles, etc. all have that distinct Gnostic “I know something you don’t know” feel to them. In Thomas, salvation comes not from Jesus’ sacrifice, the blind faith of his followers, or good works of the saints, but rather from hearing and understanding the words of Jesus. I can see why it would be included in a Gnostic library but would stop short of saying it’s an outright Gnostic work.
While we’re on the subject, I’m curious as to why scholars often translate #2 above from the Greek fragments and replace “be disturbed” with “wonder.” The only Greek fragment I know of containing the beginning of this work is P. Oxy. 654, and it is too fragmented to make out exactly what it reads … Do you know of a scholarly work where I might find an explanation for this?
And when I ask about a scholarly work I don’t mean to suggest that the book by you and Dr. Pleše doesn’t fit the bill, I have no idea if you dug into that specific question. For the record I ordered it today from Amazon just in case 🙂 If there are others that you recommend however on the textual critical aspect of The Gospel of Thomas I’m all ears.
For text-critical work, see the two-volume work on Thomas by April Deconick.
First issue: It’s a question of what makes a text Gnostic. If the answer is: whether Gnostics used it and found it amenable to their teachings, then the Gospel of John would be a Gnostic Gospel as well.
On the Greek, the word has to be reconstructed, since it occurs twice in the logion, the first time the Greek is lacunose and the second time it preserves only the ending of the word (when what you want is the beginning); but based on the ending it appears that it is probably θαμβηθεὶς (THAMBEHEIS) which means “to be amazed/astounded” rather than “disturbed”
That makes sense, thanks for the details!
Gathercole’s comment on saying 2 in his recent commentary.
“while the Greek has the sequence ‘find → be astonished’ in the middle of the saying, the Coptic has in its place ‘find → be troubled → be astonished’. The Coptic perhaps emphasises the unsettling nature of the process of discovery. On the one hand, however, while ϣⲧⲟⲣⲧⲣ̄ is more consistently negative than θαμβέω, the Coptic ϣⲧⲟⲣⲧⲣ̄ could easily be a translation of it; on a rough count of the 24 instances in the Sahidic translation of the Synoptics, four are translations of θαμβέω or its cognates”.
So there is no reason why the Coptic may not simply translate the one Greek term twice.
Do critical scholars write commentaries on the Gospel of Thomas the way they do on the canonical gospels? If so could you recommend one, or a really good book on the subject? Just the name of a reputable critical expert would get me started. A search online reveals that the swamis and mystics have landed on the GoT with both feet!
Thank you!
Not commonly, but there are a few. You might check out the commentary by Uwe-Karsten Plisch.
This will be an especially good challenge for Stephen, who delights in waiting to find scholarly works at reasonable prices. Currently on Amazon a new copy of Plisch’s commentary on the gospel of Thomas can be had for $864.56 and a used copy in “acceptable” condition is only $775.
Hey, if understanding these teachings means you “will not taste death,” it’s a bargain.
Meanwhile, there’s a copy on eBay for $22 + SH
https://www.ebay.com/i/133508238373?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&itemid=133508238373&targetid=935083617067&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9004009&poi=&campaignid=10454521883&mkgroupid=104612010380&rlsatarget=pla-935083617067&abcId=2146002&merchantid=6296724&gclid=CjwKCAjw74b7BRA_EiwAF8yHFEPt3zZKCCHQ2gPjcREZzluSsxnrfu_LeRWCPneUzNt5iT871S4XoxoCNBQQAvD_BwE
If the sayings are all from Jesus why isn’t it called the Gospel of Jesus.
Because the actual title is “The Gospel according to Thomas” (i.e. it’s his version)
“On the day when you were one, you became two; but when you become two, what will you do?”
This parts fun to say 🙂
I see displacement, a forced transfer of self and identity to an inward gaze by displaced and dispossessed people. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And I see John Dominic Crossan doing this too, forced to metamorphize everything to metaphor because the realities above ground just aren’t bearable any longer. And Lao Tze leaving the same way, and trying to find an alternative life. In a word, the kingdom of heaven had been taken by force for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt or assimilate. Eventually Chuang Tze would invert completely too and say things like the butterfly dream, and that none has lived longer than a dead child.
So yeah, on a first reading I see severe trauma and desperation. We could dress it up as something sage by abstracting the suffering onto some inverted neoplatonic parallel plane, but if we don’t see the stresses forcing this then any further analysis wouldn’t have any ground. Maybe that’s what makes Judaism unique as compared with Orientalism and Hellenism–it’s earthy and still tethered to real bodies. Without that, one wouldn’t know whether they’re not just being schizophrenic.
I often enjoy reading the comments even when I know I’m not going to participate. Every once in a while there’s one like this (that seems to be from another thread) and rubs my nose in what an amateur I am.
“On the day when you were one, you became two; but when you become two, what will you do?”
What? Is this referring to the duality of matter and spirit?
That’s my view.
Since this gospel was written so long after the original four gospels, why should we think that anything in it that contradicts or modifies the original gospels is valid? Seems we are skating on thin ice here. Sometimes conjecturing based on a significantly later source is tenuous at best.
It depends what you mean as “valid.” Do you mean “more likely to be historically accurate”? If so, then the idea is that this writer may have heard sayings of Jesus spoken orally that he recorded that were preserved more accurately in the stream of tradition than the same sayings preserved in the streams of tradition known to the Gospel writers (rather than having taken the sayings from the Gospels and modifed them). It’s certainly possible that the story tellers who informed *him* were more accurate than those who informed Luke, for example, even if he was living a couple of decades later. At least one has to consider it as a serious option, on a case by case basis.
Are there any sayings in the gospel of Thomas that you think are more primitive than what is found in the canonical New Testament?
I really don’t know. Just because they are pithier (e.g., the version of the blind leading the blind) doesn’t make them older. Same with most of the criteria one typically uses.
,,, for the first time ,, well it is a long time ago I first read it, but how would I read these sayings 1-18) today was the first time??
* First and foremost, I think the saying is very beautifully and intelligently written, partly esoteric and poetic
* The Gnostic “soul descends” and “ascends” (says 18, and also 49 a little later in the gospel) seems to shine through, even in these first 18 sayings,
For me, the saying 7 has a kind of esoteric dimention and the “lion” has been associated with the four beasts i.e. Daniel,/Revelation . The 4 earthly elements which has been used in a wide range of belief systems, including Buddism (as one out of several). In those systems the 4 elements (earthly qualities) have a capasity to become “beasts” which a man has to overcome. The might of the lion have been use both as dangerous and positiv.
One might add the “wisdom aspect”, which may have a tendency to a Gnostc aspect (but not necessary, so since this is also found in the canonized Bible).
In my mind, it is great stuff !
Bart, this is off topic. The heretic Marcion’s proposed New Testament canon included a version of Luke’s Gospel, but not the Book of Acts. Did Marcion have a problem with Acts (written by Luke), or did he even know about Acts? Thanks!
It’s usually thought that he didn’t know about it.
This is my favorite of all 5 gospels. But my question is: why is it assumed that Thomas was the brother of Jesus? We know that Jesus had a brother named Jude (or Judas) and that Didymus means “twin.” I think you even said in one of your books that he was claiming to be Jesus’ own twin. Is it possible that his name means “twin brother of Judas”? But I would like to know the evidence that he’s claiming blood relation to Jesus.
Because we have other traditions also probably from Syria that explicitly talk about Thomas as Jesus’ twin brother (e.g., the Acts of Thomas).
Was floored when I today read The Atlantic’s exhaustively researched article on the sale of stolen papyrii by Dirk Obbink to the Greens. I remember watching your debate with Dr. Wallace on Youtube where he claimed a very early manuscript was about to be published. Do you have any views on this? Frankly, I find the private ownership of historical artifacts to be wrong. These all should be part of a shared world heritage accessible by all scholars.
The Atlantic article is spot on; and the author Ariel Sabar has just published an entire book on it called Veritas. Very interesting indeed .
Isn’t it ironic that the gospels written in the names of various disciples (Thomas, Peter, etc.) were rejected as inauthentic, but four anonymously written gospels made the cut. I’m guessing content was considered more important than the attached name. I suspect that the reason it worked for the forged letters of Paul is that those works were in line with orthodoxy at the time they were written. As for the Gospel of Thomas, was the main importance of its discovery that it showed the possibility of source documents that were not full gospels, like the proposed Q, L and M sources?
That was one element of its significance; also the fact that here we have an author with a very different thology from that in the NT Gospels, from not long afterward, meaning that different Christian communities had very different views, early on; and as well that some of the sayings may in fact go back to the historical Jesus.
I suppose that a few hours after the converting the 150 or so gallons of water into wine at the wedding in Cana, maybe Jesus did say stuff like “blessed is the lion that the human will eat so that the lion becomes human”. Maybe based on the accusations in Matt 11:19, Jesus even said a lot of other weird things that he wanted to retract later (but some of them ended up in gThomas). 🙂
But on another note, wouldn’t Matt 11:19 imply that Jesus used the phrase “the Son of Man” self-referentially (as a cosmic judge probably wouldn’t be referred to as a glutton, drunkard and a friend of tax collectors) … unless “Son of Man” here refers generically to “a human”, and/or the gospel writer put this whole line on Jesus lips.
Yes, in the Gospels Jesus frequently uses the title Son of Man self-referentially.
Question. Note 22, since it seems to reference 1 Corinthians, written much earlier. Is it possibly the case that both Paul and the author of Thomas were writing from some source (oral or written) that never made it into the canonical gospels? Is it similar to where Paul seems to quote from pre-existing traditions in his other genuine letters?
Paul doesn’t quote it as a saying of Jesus (1 Cor. 2:9); I believe Origen claimed that the saying comes from the Apocalypse of Elijah. It’s not clear if Gospel of Thomas is quoting Paul or teh Apocalypse of Elijah, or if both Paul and the author of Thomas have simply heard the same saying.
It seems that the majority of scholars would agree that the Gospel of Thomas is the most important gospel outside of the New Testament. That’s not something new to me but, I’m curious to know what would the second most important gospel be outside of the New Testament? In your scholarly opinion is there anything else that comes close to the Gospel of Thomas?
It’s a bit hard to say — i guess it depends on what counts as “important.” historically the Proto-Gospel of James, and the Gospel of Nicodemus, were both more important — in that they affected Christian thinking sifnificantly through the middle ages. Thomas is “important” for modern scholarship on Jesus. After that, who knows — maybe the Gospel of Peter?
Bart; to me the most intriguing issue in these initial eighteen sayings is raised in number 13; where Simon Peter and Matthew are singled out as the leading ‘wrong’ disciples, where Thomas is the ‘right’ disciple. That the author of Thomas would wish to diminish Peter (and by extension those Christian traditions that venerated him) is not surprising. But why Matthew too? Matthew features not at all in the epistles; and within the Gospels and Acts, only in the lists of the Twelve.
For most Christians, the answer would be obvious; Peter is included as the most prominent leader of the Church; while Matthew is included as the author of the most prominent Gospel. And indeed there is no other ready explanation – as Simon Gathercole points out in his recent commentary.
But, of course, as you have repeatedly emphasized; the date when the Gospel of Matthew came to be attributed to ‘Matthew’ is highly problematic.
So it is most interesting that the author of Thomas (assuming Gathercole is correct), both recognised the Gospel of Matthew as the leading ‘rival’ Gospel, and believed that ‘Matthew’ wrote it.
(30) Jesus said, “Where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two or one, I am with him.
Jesus there! Gods! Gods are one with
With one are Gods. Gods there! Jesus!
Do you think the Gospel of Thomas makes the idea of Q more probable as both include sayings?
Do you think Papias, when speaking about Matthew, was thinking of a document like one finds in the GoT or Q?
I think it makes it plausible, but not more probable. The probability of Q has to be based on evidence for its existence, not on the existence of some other text. And yes, Papias seems to be speaking of a document that listed jesus sayings, but in Hebrew. So he could not be talking about our Matthew or Q or Thomas (unless, which is also possible, that he simply didn’t know what he was talking about)
What do you think about Stevan Davies and his views? He seems to poses many well argumented alternative and even opposite views with yours. For example he says following about dating the Gospel of Thomas:
“It may perhaps have been written before 62 A.D., for there is a hint of a date in that period in the Gospel of Thomas itself: saying 12 commends Jesus’ brother James to be the leader of the Christian movement after Jesus himself is no longer on earth. James died in the year 62 A.D. It follows that a saying recommending his leadership would probably not have been incorporated into Thomas after that year.”
He’s on the blog! But no, I don’t think we can date it to the first century. Some *sayings* certainly go back to the first century (some of htem are like, or actually are, the things Jesus himself said). But that does not mean that the published collection of all the sayings inthe form of a book was first century. I too could quote sayings from the 60s CE, along with sayings frmom the 1960s; it wouldn’t show I was writing in the 60s!
If theologically manipulative scribes altered the canonical text, the same likely happened with the Gnostic text, right? Wasn’t there also a gnostic flavour added into fragment of Plato’s Republic found in Nag Hammadi? Hence, is a Gnostic flavour reliable argument for dating these texts? Maybe the original Gospel of Thomas written in Greek in 60s was also less Gnostic like Plato’s Republic 400 years earlier.
In theory there could have been, yes; but so far as I know, no, there were no Gnosticizing changes in the REeublic fragment.
The reason many of the sayings in Thomas are so enigmatic to 21st century Christians is because understanding them has been enormously complicated by fifteen centuries of church doctrine that has created a water-to-a-fish gestalt so all-pervading that most are no longer even aware of the orthodox blinders they are wearing.
Such sayings as #4, #5 and #6, as well as #10, #11, #15 and #17 make better sense if you recognize the radical dualism (including physical-spiritual dichotomy) of the Essene worldview that appears to have informed both Jesus and John the Baptist. I suspect in fact (though I know Prof. Ehrman disagrees on this) that both of them were erstwhile monks at Qumran who felt compelled to leave the monastery on a mission to preach the apocalyptic message they believed the masses urgently needed to hear.
Such sayings as #7 and #18 make better sense if you recognize that the concept of reincarnation was axiomatic in the theology of many early Christians. The aforementioned sayings #4, #11 and #15 also come into better focus when viewed in the context of striving for spiritual perfection over the course of many lifetimes, rather than the one-shot, all-in presupposition of orthodox doctrine.
It is worth noting that Jesus as portrayed in the canon explicitly embraces the concept of reincarnation at one point (maybe two), and does not repudiate it in another.
In Mk 9:11-13//Mt 17:10-13 Jesus describes John the Baptist as having been the reincarnation of Elijah. Matthew elsewhere recounts Jesus affirming the Elijah > Baptist idea following his (peculiar) observation about violent people taking the Kingdom of Heaven “by force” (Mt 11:13-14). This comment (which must have lost some important context along the way) is also attested by Luke (Lk 16:16), but with that author, however, pointedly omitting the reference to the Baptist being the reincarnation of Elijah.
There is also, of course, the oft-cited pericope in John where the disciples ask Jesus if a man born blind might be bearing the consequences of some sin he committed in a previous life (Jn 9:1-3). Jesus discounts the connection — but neither dismisses nor corrects the premise.
This idea of “samsara” is in fact not only integral to Buddhism and Gnostic Christianity. It is fundamental to the theologies of fully one-fourth of all believers throughout the world — a percentage BTW that holds for Christians in the US (official church doctrine notwithstanding.)
I thought that “Lost scriptures” named book, by you was about extra biblical gospels, but if “The other Gospels” is about that, what’s up with “Lost Scriptures”? Thanks
Lost Scriptures gives selections of various kinds of ancient Christain books (Acts, apocalypses etc); Other Gospels tries to give *all* the earliest Gospels (only Gospels) and gives htem in new translations with new intros by my colleage Z. Plese and I.
Thank you!