Aspects of the Gospel of Thomas Puzzle (original) (raw)
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 ...
Corrections to the Critical Reading of the Gospel of Thomas
Vigiliae Christianae, 2006
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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.
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
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.
"The Gospel of Jesus' Wife: Textual Evidence of Modern Forgery" (New Testament Studies)
New Testament Studies, 2015
The present essay summarises textual evidence indicating that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is essentially a ‘patchwork’ of words and short phrases culled from the lone extant Coptic manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi Codex II), prepared by a forger using Michael W. Grondin’s 2002 PDF edition of this manuscript. The text contains at least five tell-tale signs of its modern origin, including the apparent replication of a typographical (and grammatical) error from Grondin’s edition. A direct link between it and Grondin’s work also seems to be confirmed by the earliest known English translation of the fragment.
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.
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.
The Gospel of Thomas: The "Fifth Gospel" or a Writing that Excludes Itself from the Canon
Annales Theologici, 2021
In the first centuries of Christianity many writings appeared bearing the title “Gospel” yet only four of them ended up being recognized as such and as worthy of being read, copied, revered and transmitted through the ages until our day. The rest were considered spurious and most ended up being lost to posterity. Thanks to the new-found interest in archeology in the 19th and 20th centuries, many of them have been found and made available for scholarly study. One of these—the Gospel of Thomas—has received a great deal of interest mainly due to its similarity both in its form to the hypothetical document “Q” of the two source theory behind the formation of the synoptic Gospels, as well as in some of its contents to some of the sayings of the Lord found in the canonical Gospels. That of course raises the question: why was the Gospel of Thomas not included among the canonical Gospels? In this paper, we will examine the concept of “Gospel” in a bid to elucidate what it is that was found to be common to the 4 canonical Gospels and yet lacking in the Gospel of Thomas, so much so that, despite the similarities with the other four, it ended up being altogether rejected.
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 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
Did Thomas Know the Synoptic Gospels? A Response to Denzey Lewis, Kloppenborg and Patterson
Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2014
Nicola Denzey Lewis, Stephen Patterson and John Kloppenborg have written appreciative but critical reviews of the books by Simon Gathercole and Mark Goodacre. This response focuses on several key elements in their critiques: Thomas's role in secondand fourth-century Christianity; the difference between 'direct links' and 'diagnostic shards'; the analogy of 'the plagiarist's charter'; the categories 'secondary orality' and 'scribal culture'; the role played by oral tradition; the argument from Thomas's genre; the example of the Rich Fool; modelling Christian origins; and questioning the notion of a 'new Synoptic Problem'.
"Postscript: A Final Note about the Origin of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife" (New Testament Studies)
New Testament Studies, 2017
The owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife provided Karen King with an interlinear translation of the text. Like the Coptic of the papyrus fragment, the English of this interlinear translation appears dependent on ‘"Grondin’s Interlinear Coptic/English Translation of the Gospel of Thomas." It shares a series of distinctive textual features with Grondin’s work and even appears to translate two Coptic words found in the Gospel of Thomas but not in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. Consequently, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife seems undeniably to be a "patchwork" of brief excerpts from the Gospel of Thomas created after November 2002.