P_Brian_Bateman

I read the Gospel of Thomas last night, and looked around on the internet to see if I could find some reasons, other than some weird passages at the end about women turning into men in order to be allowed into heaven, for why this book is not looked at seriously by Christian scholars and intellectuals (in other words, why don't preachers, and other Christians who know a lot about the Bible use the Gospel of Thomas to answer questions, like they do with the canonical gospels).

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus' deciples ask him who will be their leader when Jesus departs, and Jesus says "Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being." (Thomas 12)

And if you read the first part of Acts, you will see that James is considered the leader for a little while before Peter takes the title away from him. James was considered the leader when Peter came up to him and the other deciples and told them about eating and preaching to a Roman, and about how he had a vision that God told him it was ok to not obey the food laws and to preach to Gentiles.

So it seems as though the Gospel of Thomas could have been a very early account about Jesus (and I noticed that the author of this Gospel didn't find it interesting enough to make an account of the history of miracles that supposedly filled Jesus' life from cradle to grave). It seems likely that this account was written before Peter took over leadership of the Christian community. It doesn't seem as likely that this account was written after this event took place, because, and I could be wrong on this because I didn't look it up, but several or all of the other Gospels mention that Peter is to be the leader ("on this 'rock', I will build my church ... Peter being a pun for the, I think, greek word for rock). So the only plausible (though not necessarily true beacuse of this) explanation is that whoever wrote the Gospel of Thomas, wrote it while James was the leader of the community.

So anyway, that would date the Gospel of Thomas either before, or around the same time as all the other Gospels. Now, on what other criteria could we reject the sayings found in it? I mean, from an historical viewopint, shouldn't this Gospel be consulted just as much as the others for sayings Jesus might have said, or is there some historical reason to reject this Gospel?

Herschel Krustofsky

The Gospel of Thomas was only discovered in the late 1940's at Nag Hammadi, I believe it was. It is considered to be a Gnostic gospel. Gnosticism was an early Christian sect that had very different beliefs than orthodox Christianity. I think most scholars believe this gospel was written in the 2nd century. The Gnostics were probably familiar with the canonical gospels (although not canonical at the time) and they created the Gospel of Thomas from the canonical gospel sayings of Jesus. The Gnostics gave these saying their own particular spin to fit their beliefs.

In order for any Christian to use this gospel, it would have to be declared inspired by Yahweh by one or more of the thousands of different Christian denominations. It will never be considered inspired by the mainstream churches because it has verses which are contrary to mainstream Christian beliefs. It's possible that one of the Christian churches may consider it inspired but I highly doubt it will be considered inspired by the mainstream churches.

I think the verse about women turning into men just reflects how women were considered inferior to men in the ancient world.

It is widely believed that James, the brother of Jesus along with Peter and John were the early leaders of the Jerusalem church. The canoncial Gospels were written about 40-70 years after the death of Jesus. By that time, Peter must have been recognized as the founder of the church. So the writer of Matthew created some verses which have Jesus declaring that Peter is the founder of the church.

I think I answered this in the above comments. Most scholars believe that it was written in the 2nd century. There are a few around that do think it was written prior to the canonical gospels but they are in the minority. I think there is a website devoted to the study of the Gospel of Thomas.

cloudyphiz

GoT is a gnostic document. It's a list of sayings attributed to Jesus (similar to what 'Q' might be), with a slant. The Nag Hammadi codex dates to around 125 CE or so (from memory). it's debatable when the first copy was written but it's probably a later document than the cannonized gospels (except for John).

The most important thing about GoT is that it supports the Q (or Quelle) theory. That is, that the gospels writers redacted the sayings of jesus from other, older documents and interjected their own theology. This flies in the face of the fundy point of view (inerrancy, divine inspiration, etc.). Also, the early xian church worked very hard to destroy the gnostic church, so the last thing they want to do today is accept any of their writings.

i think the religious tolerance site has some pretty good articles on the subject. and robert ingersoll had some good insight as well.

edited because even after two attempts i still can't spell

[ September 06, 2001: Message edited by: garich ]

Peter Kirby

The Nag Hammadi codex dates to the fourth century. The earliest Greek fragment dates to about 200 CE.

I have information on the Gospel of Thomas here.

http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/writings/thomas.html

best,
Peter Kirby
http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/writings/