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01-03-2003, 01:02 AM
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The Gospel of St Thomas (http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html)
For nineteen hundred years or so the canonical texts of the New Testament were the sole source of historically reliable knowledge concerning Jesus of Nazareth. In 1945 this circumstance changed. In that year two Egyptian peasants discovered a trove of ancient Christian texts buried in the Egyptian desert near the town of Nag Hammadi. After various adventures, well recounted in James Robinson's introduction to *The Nag Hammadi Library,* those texts became available to scholars and now exist translated into all major European languages. With a single exception those texts provide information about the development of Christian theology (particularly of the gnostic variety) rather than information about the historical Jesus of Nazareth. The single exception is the Gospel of Thomas. That document is a full Coptic translation of the collection of sayings of Jesus previously known only from fragmentary Greek papyri found in 1897 and 1903 near the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus.
When the Gospel of Thomas was translated into English in the late 1950's it aroused considerable excitement. [A. Guillaumont, et al., *The Gospel According to Thomas* (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), and J. Doresse, *The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics* (New York: Viking, 1960).] It contained a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus but no miracle stories and no passion narrative appeared there. We seemed to have before us a series of the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth which was a new and partially authentic source for knowledge of his teachings.
Although schemes of numbering differed, there were at least 114 sayings in the collection. Many of these sayings were only slightly different from their parallels in the canonical gospels but others were wholly new. A few of the new sayings seemed so much in accord with Jesus' known teachings that a scholarly consensus grew that they were authentic:
"8 The Man (the Kingdom?) is like a wise fisherman who threw his net into the sea. He drew it up from the sea; it was full of small fish. The fisherman found among them a large, good fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea; he chose the large fish without regret. He who has ears to hear let him hear.
82 He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the Kingdom.
97 The Kingdom of the [Father] is like a woman who was carrying a jar which was full of meal. While she was walking on a distant road, the handle of the jar broke; the meal spilled out behind her onto the road. She did not know; she was not aware of the accident. After she came to her house, she put the jar down; she found it empty.
98 The Kingdom of the Father is like a man who wanted to kill a powerful man. He drew the sword in his house, he thrust it into the wall so that he would know if his hand would stick it through. Then he killed the powerful one.
Because these sayings are new they come strangely to the ears of persons familiar since childhood with the canonical gospels. We know from those gospels that Jesus' words were regarded by his contemporaries as shocking and surprising, and we should expect that sayings of his with which we are not already familiar may be shocking and surprising to us. No doubt, of Jesus' preaching and teaching we have but a tiny fraction preserved in the canonical gospels. It is highly likely that other sayings were once recorded and were lost through the vicissitudes of time and climate.
No one believes that all the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are authentic sayings of Jesus. As is the case with the traditions preserved in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the traditions preserved in Thomas combine sayings of Jesus with the sayings of other persons that were attributed to Jesus. There is, however, a general consensus among scholars that of all the noncanonical Christian writings we possess, the Gospel of Thomas contains the most authentic record of the teachings of Jesus.
Unfortunately, almost immediately after the publication of the Gospel of Thomas, books and articles were written which dismissed Thomas as "gnostic." [Bertil Gaertner, *The Theology of the Gospel According to Thomas* (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), Robert Grant with David Noel Freedman, *The Secret Sayings of Jesus* (New York: Doubleday, 1960), Johannes Leipoldt, *Das Evangelium nach Thomas* (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1967), H.E.W. Turner and Hugh Montefiore, *Thomas and the Evangelists* (Naperville, Ill.: Allenson, 1962), R. McL. Wilson, *Studies in the Gospel of Thomas* (London: Mobray, 1960). These five are probably the best known compendia of arguments for the gnosticism of the Gospel of Thomas, but there are others.] If Thomas is "gnostic" then perhaps Christians need pay little attention to it. But if it is not "gnostic" in any meaningful sense, then much of Christian scholarship has falsely denigrated and subsequently ignored a text of great importance.
In this book I shall first argue that in no meaningful historical sense is Thomas "gnostic." Whatever the Gnostics of the Apocryphon of John, the Origin of the World, Eugnostos, Pistis Sophia, etc., were doing, the Gospel of Thomas is doing something else. If one would like to see what a Gnostic Sayings Gospel does look like, one should turn to the Gospel of Philip. Then I shall show that although Thomas is by no means a systematic document, it does have a comprehensible set of ideas, which are, for the most part, drawn from the Jewish Wisdom and apocalyptic traditions. Finally, I shall place Thomas in its context in the very early church. It is a collection of sayings used to instruct newly-baptized Christians. It appears to reflect an early form of Johannine preaching and probably came into being at about the same time as the Q document (the sayings source from which may scholars believe Matthew and Luke drew much of their material). Thomas should be dated ca. ~ad 50--70.
If these conclusions are accepted, then the Gospel of Thomas can take a place in scholarship and in Christian self-understanding which it is now denied. I am less concerned that any specific conclusions I draw about the meaning of Thomas be accepted than that the text be accorded a place in the mid-first century, for only then will the question of the meaning of Thomas for Christian history be re-opened.
Almost all of the scholars who have written about the Gospel of Thomas have presumed that Thomas is "gnostic." It was presumed to be so mainly because it was discovered as part of the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of documents found buried in the sand near the town of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. [James M. Robinson, ed., *The Nag Hammadi Library* (New York: Harper and Row, 1977).] The Nag Hammadi documents are in the Coptic language but all are, in the opinion of most scholars, translations from Greek originals. Prior to their burial in or about the year ~ad 350 they were probably used by monks in the nearby Pachomian monastery at Chenoboskion. [On the fact that the Nag Hammadi texts derive from a Christian monastery, cf. J. Barns, "Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices," in *Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honor of Pahor Labib,* ed. Martin Krause (Leiden: Brill, 1975) and cf. T. Save-Soderberg, "The Sitz im Leben of the Nag Hammadi Library," in *Les Textes de Nag Hammadi,* ed. J. Menard (Leiden: Brill, 1975) and cf. F. Wisse, "Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt," in *Gnosis, Festschrift fu^:r Hans Jonas,* ed. Barbara Aland (Go^:ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978).] The Gospel of Thomas is, in the standard edition, document two of the second codex in that collection.
At least half a dozen books and many more articles appeared between 1959 and 1963 devoted to the Gospel of Thomas, and these have influenced all later scholarship. Written by reputable Christian scholars, most of these works presumed that since the Gospel of Thomas was found within a collection of texts that were mostly gnostic the Gospel itself was also gnostic. Proceeding circularly, these scholars interpreted the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas as they believed a gnostic would have interpreted them and, having done so, concluded that the Gospel was a gnostic document. We shall return to this point in detail later.
The Gospel of St Thomas (http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html)
For nineteen hundred years or so the canonical texts of the New Testament were the sole source of historically reliable knowledge concerning Jesus of Nazareth. In 1945 this circumstance changed. In that year two Egyptian peasants discovered a trove of ancient Christian texts buried in the Egyptian desert near the town of Nag Hammadi. After various adventures, well recounted in James Robinson's introduction to *The Nag Hammadi Library,* those texts became available to scholars and now exist translated into all major European languages. With a single exception those texts provide information about the development of Christian theology (particularly of the gnostic variety) rather than information about the historical Jesus of Nazareth. The single exception is the Gospel of Thomas. That document is a full Coptic translation of the collection of sayings of Jesus previously known only from fragmentary Greek papyri found in 1897 and 1903 near the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus.
When the Gospel of Thomas was translated into English in the late 1950's it aroused considerable excitement. [A. Guillaumont, et al., *The Gospel According to Thomas* (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), and J. Doresse, *The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics* (New York: Viking, 1960).] It contained a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus but no miracle stories and no passion narrative appeared there. We seemed to have before us a series of the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth which was a new and partially authentic source for knowledge of his teachings.
Although schemes of numbering differed, there were at least 114 sayings in the collection. Many of these sayings were only slightly different from their parallels in the canonical gospels but others were wholly new. A few of the new sayings seemed so much in accord with Jesus' known teachings that a scholarly consensus grew that they were authentic:
"8 The Man (the Kingdom?) is like a wise fisherman who threw his net into the sea. He drew it up from the sea; it was full of small fish. The fisherman found among them a large, good fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea; he chose the large fish without regret. He who has ears to hear let him hear.
82 He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the Kingdom.
97 The Kingdom of the [Father] is like a woman who was carrying a jar which was full of meal. While she was walking on a distant road, the handle of the jar broke; the meal spilled out behind her onto the road. She did not know; she was not aware of the accident. After she came to her house, she put the jar down; she found it empty.
98 The Kingdom of the Father is like a man who wanted to kill a powerful man. He drew the sword in his house, he thrust it into the wall so that he would know if his hand would stick it through. Then he killed the powerful one.
Because these sayings are new they come strangely to the ears of persons familiar since childhood with the canonical gospels. We know from those gospels that Jesus' words were regarded by his contemporaries as shocking and surprising, and we should expect that sayings of his with which we are not already familiar may be shocking and surprising to us. No doubt, of Jesus' preaching and teaching we have but a tiny fraction preserved in the canonical gospels. It is highly likely that other sayings were once recorded and were lost through the vicissitudes of time and climate.
No one believes that all the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are authentic sayings of Jesus. As is the case with the traditions preserved in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the traditions preserved in Thomas combine sayings of Jesus with the sayings of other persons that were attributed to Jesus. There is, however, a general consensus among scholars that of all the noncanonical Christian writings we possess, the Gospel of Thomas contains the most authentic record of the teachings of Jesus.
Unfortunately, almost immediately after the publication of the Gospel of Thomas, books and articles were written which dismissed Thomas as "gnostic." [Bertil Gaertner, *The Theology of the Gospel According to Thomas* (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), Robert Grant with David Noel Freedman, *The Secret Sayings of Jesus* (New York: Doubleday, 1960), Johannes Leipoldt, *Das Evangelium nach Thomas* (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1967), H.E.W. Turner and Hugh Montefiore, *Thomas and the Evangelists* (Naperville, Ill.: Allenson, 1962), R. McL. Wilson, *Studies in the Gospel of Thomas* (London: Mobray, 1960). These five are probably the best known compendia of arguments for the gnosticism of the Gospel of Thomas, but there are others.] If Thomas is "gnostic" then perhaps Christians need pay little attention to it. But if it is not "gnostic" in any meaningful sense, then much of Christian scholarship has falsely denigrated and subsequently ignored a text of great importance.
In this book I shall first argue that in no meaningful historical sense is Thomas "gnostic." Whatever the Gnostics of the Apocryphon of John, the Origin of the World, Eugnostos, Pistis Sophia, etc., were doing, the Gospel of Thomas is doing something else. If one would like to see what a Gnostic Sayings Gospel does look like, one should turn to the Gospel of Philip. Then I shall show that although Thomas is by no means a systematic document, it does have a comprehensible set of ideas, which are, for the most part, drawn from the Jewish Wisdom and apocalyptic traditions. Finally, I shall place Thomas in its context in the very early church. It is a collection of sayings used to instruct newly-baptized Christians. It appears to reflect an early form of Johannine preaching and probably came into being at about the same time as the Q document (the sayings source from which may scholars believe Matthew and Luke drew much of their material). Thomas should be dated ca. ~ad 50--70.
If these conclusions are accepted, then the Gospel of Thomas can take a place in scholarship and in Christian self-understanding which it is now denied. I am less concerned that any specific conclusions I draw about the meaning of Thomas be accepted than that the text be accorded a place in the mid-first century, for only then will the question of the meaning of Thomas for Christian history be re-opened.
Almost all of the scholars who have written about the Gospel of Thomas have presumed that Thomas is "gnostic." It was presumed to be so mainly because it was discovered as part of the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of documents found buried in the sand near the town of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. [James M. Robinson, ed., *The Nag Hammadi Library* (New York: Harper and Row, 1977).] The Nag Hammadi documents are in the Coptic language but all are, in the opinion of most scholars, translations from Greek originals. Prior to their burial in or about the year ~ad 350 they were probably used by monks in the nearby Pachomian monastery at Chenoboskion. [On the fact that the Nag Hammadi texts derive from a Christian monastery, cf. J. Barns, "Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices," in *Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honor of Pahor Labib,* ed. Martin Krause (Leiden: Brill, 1975) and cf. T. Save-Soderberg, "The Sitz im Leben of the Nag Hammadi Library," in *Les Textes de Nag Hammadi,* ed. J. Menard (Leiden: Brill, 1975) and cf. F. Wisse, "Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt," in *Gnosis, Festschrift fu^:r Hans Jonas,* ed. Barbara Aland (Go^:ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978).] The Gospel of Thomas is, in the standard edition, document two of the second codex in that collection.
At least half a dozen books and many more articles appeared between 1959 and 1963 devoted to the Gospel of Thomas, and these have influenced all later scholarship. Written by reputable Christian scholars, most of these works presumed that since the Gospel of Thomas was found within a collection of texts that were mostly gnostic the Gospel itself was also gnostic. Proceeding circularly, these scholars interpreted the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas as they believed a gnostic would have interpreted them and, having done so, concluded that the Gospel was a gnostic document. We shall return to this point in detail later.