Roger Pearse

Thank you for that, Chris. The one I remember is the change to saying 2, introducing the concept of "the all", but I was vaguely aware of the others. The lack of mention of aeons (although multiple heavens are mentioned, #11) is one of the things that I referred to above.

Is there any objective reason to treat 114 as an interpolation? (I can see why people who like GoT, coming from a 60's generation, might find it awkward, of course).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ben C Smith

The late Gilles Quispel has written quite a bit about connections between the Diatessaron and the gospel of Thomas.

Appendix III in his monograph Tatian and the Gospel of Thomas, pages 174-190, lists and compares readings from both works and compares them with readings from other sources, mainly the Old Syriac manuscripts.

Ben.

Chris Weimer

Saying 114 in gThomas is often thought to be a later interpolation based on 22.5, that is, where Jesus commands them to make the male female and the female male. What is earlier a definite proponent of sexual-unity and "pre-Adam" bodily gnosis changes into a common misogynstic saying.

Richbee

The Gospel of Thomas (GoT) is based on an ant eaten manuscript with over 50% from the Gospel of Matthew or other gospels. The problem is that the Greek - Coptic - English translations are very poor and rough, if not filled with errors.

It is difficult to say what versions existed when, but 200 A.D. plus sounds about right.

"Most scholars believe that the Gospel of Thomas is highly tainted with the heretical philosophy known as Gnosticism (Cameron, Ron (1992), “Gospel of Thomas,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, David Noel Freedman, Ed. (New York: Doubleday), Vol. 6. )

Occasionally, some very absurd language is put into the Lord’s mouth. Here is an example:

“Simon Peter said to them: ‘Let Mary (Magdalene) go out from among us, because women are not worthy of the Life.’”

“Jesus said:

‘See I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’”

This sums up GoT very well.

R.K. Harrison has well noted that this apocryphal work “cannot in any sense be called a ‘fifth gospel’”

(Blaiklock & Harrison, p. 450).

Chris Weimer

Richbee,

I'm curious if you had read anything in this thread besides the title and maybe the OP? If so, could you please direct your critcism to the already stated instead of babbling on about stuff you obviously don't know enough about.

If all you care about is polemic and not scholastics, then I don't see any reason to take what you say seriously. Roger Pearse, our resident Christian scholar (among others), has already bulleted any date later than 200.

So please stop making these uneducated guesses and do the necessary research or be dommed to being the ridicule of both knowledgeable Christians and atheists alike.

Chris Weimer

Toto

mod note: may be slightly more available at amazon.uk

Stumpjumper

Wow!

Thanks for the discussion. I have not generally ventured into real textual criticism but it is certainly interesting... I'm more of a philosophical type of guy... You'll find more Nietzsche on my bookshelf than Bultman

Anyway, does anyone think that the Gospel of Thomas as a sayings gospel, and as an early composition as such, is more in line with the view that Jesus was non-eschatological and non-messianic rather than the converse?

Just wondering if anyone thinks that it would lend some weight to a Borgian type interpretation of a Prophetic, but not Messianic, Jesus...

Vorkosigan

I think that Thomas is later than Mark and dependent on it. I've got a discussion of it here:

http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/GMark12.html#12X

Crossan, BTW, discusses the reasons for putting GTHom first in The Birth of Christianity (p117-8). I can show that all of them are invalid.

If GT were dependent on Synpotics, says Crossan, we would expect that GT would take up their individually specific order and content. (implying that GTdidn't). Crossan is wrong on both counts. To buttress his wrong claims, Crossan further adduces G. MacRae's assertion that the majority of scholars who have seriously investigated the matter have been won over to Thomas's independence of the gospels. BoC was published in 1998, MacRae's article was published in 1978.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Meier has a long discussion of this in Vol 1 of A Marginal Jew. He believes GT is "2nd century" and "gnostic" in character. In searching for preservation of early sayings, he writes: "the more probably hypothesis is that the Gospel of Thomas knew and used at least some of the canonical gospels." He also notes that the frequency of sayings mirrors the frequency of use of gospels in the 2 C -- Matt first, Luke, then Mark. (p138-9)

Vorkosigan

Gamera

Attempts at affixing an early date for putative precursors to mss almost always wind up being discredited. Early germanicists wanted Beowulf to be an 8th century text, but no serious Anglo-Saxon scholar now believes it's earlier than 10th century, and may even be 11th.

Obviously the germanicists had an agenda about origins.

Similarly, Crossan has an agenda since he wants to discredit the historicity of the gospel narrative, and an early dating of Thomas helps his case.

However, the fact is no evidence exists that GOT is any earlier than the 2nd century, and is thus a late gnostic text, with typical gnostic content (guruism, secret knowledge, abnegation of the body, etc. etc etc). It is pure speculation. What is rather humorous is that the very people who argue against an early origin for the synoptic gospels (calling it speculation) tend to argue for early origin for GOT, which is in fact pure speculation.

We really know only one thing about early Christian literature, and that is Paul was writing around 55 ad and his epistles are clearly the earliest writings in Christian hagiography/theology. Everything else came later, and hence was probably influenced by Paul.

Curiously both Crossan and Wilson want Paul to be preeminent, only because they want to "blame" him for "inventing" Christianity and the whole messianic identification of Jesus, which they claim was contrary to the true "historical" Jesus (an itinerant preacher), although there is absolutely no historical evidence of Jesus prior to Paul's writings.