The Nomina Sacra of the Gospel of Thomas and Their Numbers (original) (raw)
2018
Within the relevant literature there have been different (often conflicting) approaches to the issue of the sources of the Gospel of Thomas. This topic is connected to the relationship between Th and the Synoptics (and other early Christian texts)—hence, to the vexata quaestio of Th’s “dependence”/“independence.” The article begins with some methodological considerations on the composition and sources of Th, also trying to provide a list of the sources that have been proposed for this gospel. The second part examines the possibility of a relationship between Th and the Pauline epistles, a theme which is emerging with new perspectives in the research on Th’s sources and parallels: some of Th’s logia seem to have connections with certain Pauline trajectories and texts. The final part focuses on Th 17 and 1 Cor 2:9, also exploring their relationship with some parallel texts (e.g. 1 Clem. 34.8, Turfan M 789, and 1 John 1:1), in order to investigate the possible sources of Th 17.
David Cielontko – Tobis Nicklas – Jan N. Bremmer (Hrsg.), The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 23), Leuven – Paris – Bristol, Ct, 2025.
Spanning over fourteen centuries, through dozens of versions in nine languages, the ancient and medieval transmission of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (henceforth IGT) is an intricate maze that has puzzled and fascinated scholars over the last three and a half centuries. Although the hypothesis of a Syriac Urtext has been advanced time and again, the current scholarly consensus posits a Greek archetype dating from the 2nd century. The recent discovery of a papyrus with the Greek text dated to the 4th/5th century not only endorses the thesis of a Greek original, but also raises the possibility of a critical reassessment of the oldest surving version in that language, namely recension S (= Gs), considered to be the closest to the original.
The Nomina Sacra in the Marcan Portion of Codex Vaticanus: A Note on the Scribal Habits
Biblische Notizen, 2017
The following study seeks to trace the fifteen main nomina sacra in the Marcan portion of Vaticanus with a particular focus on scribal behaviour. The Marcan data will be compared with the data of the entire New Testament portion of Vaticanus in order to test the local results against broader patterns of the manuscript. In closing, we shall discuss resulting implications for our understanding of the hand B of Vaticanus and indeed of the manuscript itself.
A.2. P.Lond.Lit. 207 and the origin of the nomina sacra: a tentative proposal
Studia Humaniora Tartuensia
The origin and development of the nomina sacra (sacred names written in an abbreviated form) found in early Christian texts is much debated in scholarly circles and no agreement has been reached. However the use of the nomina sacra in P.Lond.Lit. 207 may help to resolve some of the questions that surround the puzzle of their origin. P.Lond.Lit. 207 is a portion of papyrus that has broken off from a roll (24.5 X 25.7 cm), covering Psalms 11(12):7 to 14(15):4. The scribe of P.Lond.Lit. 207 has consistently written Kurios in an abbreviated form (nomen sacrum), giving only the first and last letters, and a supralinear bar drawn above the abbreviation. On the other hand, Theos is always written uncontracted. This is quite unusual given that Theos in Christian texts is always written as a nomen sacrum. Could the reason for this practice in P.Lond.Lit. 207 be found in the Semitic custom of contracting personal names to the first and last letter? Is Kurios abbreviated in this Semitic fashio...
Minding the Margins: "Scholia" in the text of the Gospel of Thomas
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2021
The following article aims to contribute to the scholarly discussion of both the development and the uses of the text of the Gospel of Thomas, now extant only in a single, fourth-century Coptic manuscript, with very fragmentary attestation of a few sayings among the Oxyrhynchus papyri as well. Here the concern is with post-compositional changes to the (Coptic) text, as opposed to redactional and pre-redactional literary developments. Specifically, the article examines in some detail four of the sayings (G. Thom. 111, 45, 29, and 61) identified by Uwe-Karsten Plisch as interpretive glosses, concluding, on the basis of mainly internal evidence, that in at least three of these cases, there are good arguments to be made that the form of the saying in our Coptic manuscript has been embellished by interpretive comments, perhaps originating as marginalia. The article also aims to link this phenomenon of interpretive glosses “getting into” copies of the text to the scholarly culture of antiquity, finding analogues for this kind of textual change not only in the NT texts, but also and especially in school- and study-oriented classical texts such as Homer and Isocrates.
Tracking Thomas: a text-critical look at the transmission of the Gospel of Thomas
2009
Wallace for his initial thoughts on the transmission of the Gospel of Thomas that pushed me to take up this subject in the first place, his guidance through the initial stages of the formulation of the argument of the paper, and his consistent availability in pursuing the project through its completion. Additionally, many thanks go to Stazsek Bialecki, Adam Messer, Philip Miller, and Matt Morgan, my σύνδουλοι, without whose thoughts, criticisms, and encouragement I would be in the tall grass. Finally, I would like to thank my lovely fiancée Angel, who has put up with many cancelled evenings through the completion of this work. 1 Technically speaking, this statement is untrue: though the Coptic manuscript was discovered approximately 60 years ago, Thomas has been known to scholars in one form or another since the late 19 th century.
A Hebrew Demonstration of the Gospel of Thomas via Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654
After uploading a few earlier articles to academia.edu, arguing for a Hebrew original behind the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, it was asked, “But what about the Greek?” This text will address the Greek of Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654, covering logia 1–7 with lacuna, to show that its readings not only agree with a Hebrew vorlage hypothesis, but that it provides independent papyrological support for a first-century Simonian syncretic eisegesis. This short presentation demonstrates three lines of the reconstructed fragment to be dubious by criteria of line length and letter count (line 9 anomalously being the shortest reconstructed line with no more than 18 letters, line 23 lacking a word of the Coptic but with comfortable room for inclusion, and line 26 as potentially longest with a total of 34 letters), theoretical liabilities which have previously gone unnoticed. It is followed by a complete retrotranslation of the Greek and Coptic into Hebrew and Syriac with parallel interlinear key to show just how negligibly small the differences between the Greek and Coptic are when viewed from the standpoint of a Hebrew original. The result is as close to the Hebrew vorlage and the original Greek of the papyrus as hitherto seen, a proof by equitable resolution of the texts themselves.
In an earlier paper regarding the Gospel of Thomas (GosThom), I argued that some modern difficulties in translation are due to the Coptic’s overly-literal rendition of a Semitic-language original, one which notably lacks its common idiom.[1] All previously examined mistranslations have been argued for most ingeniously by scholars but are clear examples of ad hoc exegesis: e.g. “the All” as implying Metaphysical Monism or Pan(en)theism, “single one(s)” as mystical hermaphroditic[2] union or sexual intercourse, and “strip(ping) naked” as a Metaphysical Dualist liberation from the material world.[3] This paper will continue in that vein, exposing further unsound readings of the Coptic using the same method of mirror-retrotranslation, but narrowing down the possibilities to specify Hebrew[4] as the language behind the Coptic text (to the exclusion of Syriac and Western Aramaic).[5] In the process other unwarranted imputations of strange dogma to the work will be refuted—such as the alleged lack of a resurrection of the dead and affirmation of self-generated Deity—while also demonstrating GosThom’s reliance on a Hebrew vorlage underlying the synoptics, which hypothesis scholars have overlooked in their eagerness for theological profundity at the cost of popularizing defective translations. Lastly, an early stage of Simonian syncretism will be uncovered as the likely culprit for the text’s continuing heterodox status. [1] See Joseph Gebhardt-Klein, Evidence for a Semitic-Language (Hebrew or Aramaic) Original behind the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (self-pub., academia.edu, 2022). [2] For the sake of precision and clarity, “hermaphroditic” is used for doctrines entailing mixed sex—just like in the biological sciences—in contradistinction to the broader term “androgynous,” which commonly signifies any variation between binary gender norms: e.g. a man who wears lipstick and high heels is androgynous, but tomato plants are true hermaphrodites. [3] The case was not that no one later (and probably quite early) interpreted the text accordingly, but that the Semitic substratum was originally without such imputations. [4] Therein is also demonstrated the relative priority of GosThom to the New Testament’s synoptic gospels, while simultaneously refuting Nicholas Perrin’s argument for a late production of the text from the Diatessaron. See Nicholas Perrin, Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron (Boston: Brill, 2002). [5] Despite the elimination of hypothetical Syriac originality, Syriac is nevertheless reconstructively valuable due to the attestation of a Syriac translation which did at one time exist: see René Falkenberg, “A Manichaean Reading of the Gospel of Thomas” (Brill, 2021). Accordingly, Syriac retrotranslations will continue to be given alongside Hebrew for comparative purposes and for students of Manichaeism.
Another Look at St. Thomas and the Plurality of the Literal Sense of Scripture
Medieval Philosophy and Theology 2 (1992) 118-42, 1992
There has been no unanimity among interpreters of St. Thomas Aquinas as to whether he held a doctrine of the plurality of the literal sense of Scripture, and the chief reason for this diversity of modem opinion lies in the few texts in which Thomas broaches the subject. While at first glance suggesting a doctrine of plurality, these texts have not been thought to state it with a clarity that puts the matter beyond all doubt; scholars who have denied that Thomas held the doctrine have felt free to interpret his texts by other means, such as by his doctrine of theology's basis in the literal sense, or of the inner and outer word.l 1. Those who have denied that Thomas held a doctrine of plurality include the following: Paul Synave, "La doctrine des. Thomas d'Aquin sur le sens Iitteral des Ecritures," Revue Biblique 35 (1926): 40-65; Synave, note in Bulletin Thomiste 3 (1930-1933): 711-718; J.-M. Voste, Revue Biblique 36 (1927): 112; Ceslao Spicq, note in Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques 20 (1931): 331; Spicq, Esquisse d'une histoire de l'ex~g~se latine au moyen iige, BT 26 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944), pp. 276-279; N. Assouad, France Franciscaine 13 (1930): 409-504; G. Parella, "II pensiero de s. Agostino e s. Tommaso circa il numero del senso letterale nella S. Scritture,"
The Battle To Authenticate \u27The Gospel of Thomas\u27
2013
Many early Christian sects were aware of and accepted The Gospel of Thomas as authentic Christian scripture, despite its unorthodox, radical doctrine, igniting an ideological battle in and around the Thomasine communities of the ancient world. This ideological war is still raging and conflict renewed and amplified with the discoveries of the Greek and Coptic texts of The Gospel of Thomas in the first half of the 20th Century. Since it’s discovery, The Gospel of Thomas has presented scholars with ferocious debate, as serious probability exists that Thomas preserves an older tradition of the historical Jesus than that of the Synoptic Gospels. Though the fierce theological battle of religious scholars in the 1990s hardly sparked The Gospel of Thomas debate, their combined research has renewed questions of how to validate Thomas, and thus, Jesus scholarship over the last half century has been restrained in the use and acceptance of Thomas. Failure of modern scholars to develop a shared ...
The Gospel of Thomas: Prospects for Future Research
The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years, ed. John D. Turner & Anne McGuire, 1997
What should our primary goal be as readers and interpreters of the Gospel of Thomas? Which form of the gospel text should we privilege, if any? I suggest that we should seek literary questions and literary answers about Thomas. The text obviously must have meant something to the many readers that we might imagine using the surviving Egyptian manuscripts. Perhaps the arrangement or sequence of statements and groups of statements does indeed convey meaning, though not necessarily the sort of meaning that we see even in other sayings gospels or in wisdom books. To explore this possibility requires adopting a more literary sensibility, a focusing of attention on reading the text in its own terms, searching out its hermeneutical soteriology. The task is difficult, and the meanings provided by stark juxtapositions are not always obvious. Perhaps that obscurity is already part of the point.
The Battle to Authenticate The Gospel of Thomas
LUX: A Transdisciplinary Writing and Research Journal of the Claremont Graduate University, 2013
Many early Christian sects were aware of and accepted The Gospel of Thomas as authentic Christian scripture, despite its unorthodox, radical doctrine, igniting an ideological battle in and around the Thomasine communities of the ancient world. This ideological war is still raging and conflict renewed and amplified with the discoveries of the Greek and Coptic texts of The Gospel of Thomas in the first half of the 20th Century. Since it’s discovery, The Gospel of Thomas has presented scholars with ferocious debate, as serious probability exists that Thomas preserves an older tradition of the historical Jesus than that of the Synoptic Gospels. Though the fierce theological battle of religious scholars in the 1990s hardly sparked The Gospel of Thomas debate, their combined research has renewed questions of how to validate Thomas, and thus, Jesus scholarship over the last half century has been restrained in the use and acceptance of Thomas. Failure of modern scholars to develop a shared understanding of the proper role of The Gospel in reconstructing Christian origins underscores the importance of accurately dating documents from antiquity. Progress in Thomasine studies requires exploration of how texts and traditions were transmitted and appropriated in the ancient world. The greatest contribution of Thomas’ discovery will be to deepen knowledge and understanding of early Christianity. The Gospel clearly bares witness to an independent branch within early Christianity and is a prime example of the diversity of the early Christian Church.