An Analysis of the Gospel of Thomas (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas
The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas, 2015
Seven years, and a bibliography of over 100 pages: that is what Detlev Koepke invested in researching the gospel of Thomas. Over 600 carefully worded pages disclose in great detail his intricate study and findings on Jesus in the gospel of Thomas as well as in the New Testament, and Q. Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist and James are discussed in a separate chapter each, and we are presented with a full translation from Coptic, and a commentary on the gospel of Thomas. The second half of this book focuses on the New Testament and history of Christianity: its historical background, Josephus, Paul, the Roman Empire and Christian persecution are some of the highlights. Detlev Koepke passed away in 2015, leaving behind a truly majestic piece of work on the gospel of Thomas, its relation to Christianity, and the historical Jesus. A most complete work on the combination of these topics. Detlev Koepke was fluent in 4 languages, and learned ancient Greek and Coptic specifically for and during his research. Most of his research was conducted utilising Harvard Divinity School library as well as his own extensive personal library: "no stone has been left unturned". 2021 edition, republished with permission from his son, David Koepke ______________________ +++Version Management+++ Includes Discussion content (92 pages) - see https://www.academia.edu/57161277/Publication\_List\_and\_Discussion\_Content\_access
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 Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptic Gospels
Oxford Handbook of the Synoptic Gospels, 2023
This article moves away from questions of dependence or autonomy to show that comparison of the texts' style and content is fruitful for understanding both Thomas and the Synoptic Gospels. When we read the Synoptics against Thomas, some of the central characteristics of Mark, Matthew, and Luke stand out in higher relief. Differences in theology, narrative structures, genre, and approaches to community formation combine to confirm that early gospel writers had a variety of choices about their modes of representation of the meaning(s) of Jesus. As part of its pattern of distance from Judaism, Thomas shows that it was possible to present Jesus as somehow removed from the thought world of Scripture, even as a source of revelatory or prophetic information.
Currents in Biblical Research, 2012
This article, the second of a two-part series, examines scholarly research on the Gospel of Thomas between 1989 and 2011. The previous article (CBR 5.2 [2007: 183-206) reviewed research on Thomas's place in discussions of the historical Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels between 1991 and 2006. The current study focuses on three concerns: (1) scholarly opinions of Thomas's genre, (2) the notoriously difficult problem of identifying Thomas's theological outlook, and (3) the relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the Fourth Gospel. the historical Jesus, and whether Thomas was after all dependent on the Synoptic Gospels or attested to an independent line of tradition, largely innocent of the canonical texts. Now, five years later, Christopher W. Skinner and Perrin together examine a different, albeit related set of issues: what have scholars been saying about Thomas's genre, theological outlook, and relationship with the Gospel of John. While the first two questions have preoccupied Thomas scholars since the text's discovery many years ago, the last of these reflects relatively recent developments. On all three issues, the discussion remains lively, perhaps some indication that in the arena of Thomas studies the historical and theological stakes remain high.
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 and the Thomasine Tradition
Collectanea Christiana Orientalia, 2023
The debates about various early ‘Christian’ communities are still in an incomplete and tumultuous never-ending process. This paper illustrates that the manufactured theories about ‘community’ or ‘tradition’ do not describe the particular social conditions of textualities such as the Gospel of Thomas. It is very common to the mainstream scholarship of the early Christianities to put together heterogeneous ideas and to understand them as forming a special type of singularity. This is, in our case, the idea of ‘apostle Thomas.’ The scholarly representatives have tried to use complex sets of borrowed methodologies in order to make the historical lines of flight of early Christianity ideas more appealing and to conceal the process of domestication of textualities as the Gospel of Thomas. They have intentionally constructed religious communities, several types of Christians, differences, and similarities; all these aspects have the purpose to join in one wide and domesticated ‘Thomasine’ tradition. This paper aims to follow the lines of flight as they are programmed by the Thomas-scholars in order to deconstruct such approaches and to provide an alternative reading perspective detached by any kind of theological agendum.
2009
The hypothesis that the Fourth Gospel is a theological response to the Gospel of Thomas is a recent development in the study of the New Testament and early Christianity. Assuming an early date for the Gospel of Thomas, the proponents of this hypothesis argue that the supposed "polemical" presentation of Thomas in the Fourth Gospel is evidence of a conflict between the early communities associated respectively with John and Thomas. However, a detailed narrative study reveals that the Fourth Gospel portrays a host of characters--disciples and non-disciples--in an equally unflattering light where an understanding of Jesus's origins, message, and mission are concerned. The present study attempts to demonstrate that the Fourth Gospel's presentation of Thomas is part and parcel of its treatment of "uncomprehending" characters. If this thesis is correct, it poses a significant challenge to the assumption that the Fourth Gospel contains a polemic against Thomas, or that it was written in response to the Gospel of Thomas or the community associated with Thomas.