Gospel of Thomas

Gospel of Thomas a collection of sayings, composed originally in Greek, attributed to the "living" (i.e., resurrected) Jesus. Some of the sayings were previously known from papyri discovered at Oxyrhynchus and published in the late 19th cent. The sayings are similar to those of Jesus in the canonical Gospels. It is possible that the Gospel of Thomas is as early as the New Testament Gospels; more likely, the work is based on the sayings of Jesus preserved in the Gospels and edited from a gnostic point of view. The Gospel of Thomas is more encratite (antimarriage) and ascetic in tone than most gnostic works. See also Nag Hammadi .

Bibliography: See J. M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (1988).

Thomas, Gospel of. An apocryphal Gospel of which a Coptic version was found at Nag Hammadi in 1945–6. The Greek original perhaps dates from c.150, the Coptic from c.350. It professes to be the work of St Thomas. It is not, like the canonical Gospels, historical in form, but consists of a series of pithy sayings and parabolic discourses of Christ; it is possible that it may preserve a few of the Lord's words not found in the canonical Gospels. The work is apparently of Gnostic provenance.

Thomas, gospel of Among the Greek papyri discovered at Oxyrhynchus were three fragments containing sayings of Jesus. It turned out that these formed part of a complete work, the gospel of Thomas, which in a Coptic text of about 350 CE was among the important writings found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. The original fragments had generated discussion about the history of the transmission of Jesus' sayings in the oral tradition. Then the publication of the 114 sayings of Jesus (without any narrative continuum) in the complete gospel stimulated lively scholarly controversy. Some of the sayings have close resemblances to those in the canonical synoptic gospels; others are quite different, of which five have been reliably claimed as authentic.

It is disputed whether the sayings resembling those in the canonical gospels come from an independent oral tradition (and therefore are perhaps closer to what Jesus in fact said) or whether they show knowledge of those gospels (and so must be later). The first view is taken by those who believe that the Thomas sayings represent a collection which is ‘very, very early’ and remarkably free of any ecclesiastical interests. On the other hand, Thomas is without doubt a Gnostic work. In that system Christ shares with true believers a secret knowledge (gnosis) which enables them to be liberated from the evils of this world. The sayings in Thomas conform to this system; it is the words which offer the means of salvation—not, as in mainstream Christianity, Jesus' death and resurrection. Jesus' term ‘Kingdom of God’ is used here in a different sense from that in the synoptists; it is not an external reality but refers to the innermost self of a person who has come down from heaven but has forgotten its origin.

Although some of Thomas' parallels with sayings in the canonical gospels are shorter, that is not a certain indication of being earlier and independent; after all, Matt., following Mark, often abbreviated that gospel in order to accommodate more of his own special material. Evidence of Gnostic adaptation of Jesus' parables has been shown to be in such a way that they have become vehicles of esoteric Gnostic teaching. And the tradition which Thomas was adapting was probably not an oral tradition but the written canonical gospels, as indicated when one of the Greek fragments from Oxyrhynchus presupposes Luke 8: 17, which has altered Mark 4: 22.

It would seem that Thomas is not a ‘fifth gospel’ offering an additional and faithful reproduction of Jesus' sayings, but a work designed for its own clientele with very few sayings of Jesus of demonstrable authenticity.