The Sayings-Block Structure of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (original) (raw)
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Complete Thomas Commentary, logion 0-55, 2021
This most detailed analysis of the so-called gospel of Thomas evaluates and weighs every single Coptic word. The "Jesus" (I[h]S) that they reveal is radically different and polemic: Thomas reveals that we are split, separated, dualised; we are the Ego and the Self, and we created those two ourselves. Thomas points the way to salvation in the sense of liberation from both the Ego and the Self, slaveowner and slave: we are neither, those merely are the children of the living father - and we are the latter. The suckling infants in Thomas are still pristine, and stand in the Beginning - but then we bring about the end by "eating what is dead" and become dead ourselves. The cause for that is our upbringing, being patched with old patches: our new wineskins get filled with old wine. Thomas precedes modern psychoanalysis by one and a half millennium, and continuously points to the inside for finding answers: that is where the kingdom is. Thomas has nothing to do with Christianity at all, nor any Jesus that we know: Thomas precedes all that too
The true words of Thomas (Interactive Coptic-English gospel of Thomas)
Literal Thomas, Part VII, 2020
This groundbreaking translation of the "gospel of Thomas" follows the Coptic to the letter and reveals dozens of new words and meanings, significantly changing its interpretation. 'The true words of Thomas' hyperlinks to the Coptic Dictionary Online for each word: everyone is only one click away from the meaning(s) and verification of every single word in this text. The translation is fully normalised and contains a full double index as well as concordance: both English-Coptic as well as Coptic-English. The translation is literal, without interpretation. It contains not a single emendation (and it will reveal that every other translation contains dozens that you never knew of); the entire context for the text is the content of the text itself: and it speaks volumes. ______________________ +++Version Management+++ V1.9.5 2023-07-15 - moved the English translation, which has been rendered fully legible, up front
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.
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.
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.