Freethought & Rationalism Archive

show_no_mercy · 02-12-2009, 10:40 AM

I think this question really depends on when you think Thomas was written. In the intro, the explicit mention of "secret sayings" seems to follow Gnostic tradition. However immediately after that we have the phrase "living Jesus", which seems to contradict the later Gnostic/Docetic Christologies.

If Thomas was actually the first "gospel" written, then it might explain the eventual split between the Gnostics and the proto-Orthodox since I think it has the seeds for both camps. Also, it seems that in this gospel, Jesus is merely a wisdom sage and not a god. This leans me towards the HJ position; especially if Thomas was the first gospel written.

If Thomas is first, Jesus is merely a wisdom sage because it only contains sayings and no healings or "signs and wonders". Next Mark is written which incorporates Wisdom Sage Jesus with Healer Jesus, thus going from simply a wisdom sage to the adopted son of god. Then Matt and Luke are written which further deifies Jesus by incorporating Wisdom Sage Jesus with Healer Jesus and goes one step further by making Jesus not the adopted son of god, but the literal son of god.

John is then written last; Wisdom Sage Jesus is dropped for the "Obama Speech" Jesus, mixed with Healer Jesus. He then goes from just being the literal son of god presented in Matt and Luke to being god himself. God himself has no need for wisdom sayings. Furthermore, John seems to go out of his way to attack the wisdom sage Jesus presented in Thomas by having the "Doubting Thomas" story.

After John is written, Jesus is further deified by later heresies.

Thoughts, critiques, outrages, etc...

Dirac_Delta · 02-12-2009, 11:11 AM

I have just a small commet about the "signs and wonders" bit. I think that describing "signs and woders" would fit an historical Jesus as well, in the sense that having the in the text doesn't really tells us which gospel was written first. I think that that would push the date of redaction to at least one genration after his death though. I say this because I'm reading Tacitus' "The Histories" and I've noticed that every two chapter or so there will be a mention to "signs and wonders" often in realation to historical fiigures (the miraculous spit of Vespasian).

In short, I think Mark could easily have come first but Thomas decided to focus only on the sayings for some reason. Also note that while the progression you describe from adopted son to God makes some sense, you can't fit the Gospel of Thomas in it because it's not obvious which kind of Jesus we're dealing with in there.

mountainman · 02-12-2009, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by show_no_mercy

.... mixed with Healer Jesus.

...[trimmed]...

Thoughts, critiques, outrages, etc...

Dear shown_no_mercy,

If I am correct in my understanding of the manuscript of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas the text does not explicit make reference to "Jesus" as an expanded literal and unambiguous name. As I understand it, a Coptic nomina sacra -- or abbreviated name -- of I_S is used consistently in this text. This can also be translated as The Healer. The implication is of course that the healer and jesus may not have been one and the same spokeperson, who said these sayings, which the coptic text preserves from this known 4th century codex publication.

One author writes the following:

Quote:

In the Coptic Gnostic material
the names Jesus and Christ
are never written in full,
but indicated by code such as
the letters IS with a bar over them.
Scholars routinely fill in the blanks,

JESUS from IS making IS into I(eseo)S,
the Greek form of the Hebrew name Yeshua.

They do so with considerable poetic license,
for there is no textual evidence to support
the assumption that in Gnostic usage
IS indicated a historical person
named Ieseos, Jesus.

IS could as well be translated in another way:
I(asiu)S, giving the name Iasius, “the healer,”
a title rather than a common name.

But translators assume that IS
indicates Jesus of the New Testament.

In short, scholars do not allow us
the chance to consider that IS might indicate
anything else but a literal person
whose identity is predetermined.

---- SOURCE

And btw, IMO being "gnostic" does not automatically imply it must be early. In theory, the gnostics, docetists and other heretics lived in some form of symbiotic relationship with the orthodox christians until Nicaea. In other words, the Gnostics and Docetists etc were still very prevalent in the fourth century. This is demonstrated by a number of extant gnostic works (nt apocypha) which are thought by the consensus of scholars to have been authored in the fourth (or even later) centuries. Gnostic is very Hellenistic IMO.

Best wishes,

Pete

vid · 02-13-2009, 03:51 AM

Somewhat lengthy quotation arguing it is a gnostic gospel:

Quote:

Bart D. Ehrman - Lost Christianities (or via: amazon.co.uk) p.60 ff

Let me stress that I do not think the Gospel of Thomas attempts to describe such a Gnostic view for its readers or to explicate its mythological undergirding. I think that it presupposes some such viewpoint and that if readers read the text with these presuppositions in mind, they can make sense of almost all the difficult sayings of the book.

For example: Saying One claims that the one who finds the interpretation of Jesus’ secret sayings will not experience death. The sayings are thus secret; they are not open to the public but only for those in the know. Moreover, their interpretation—knowing what they mean—is what brings an escape from the death of this world. Saying Two, quoted above, is about seeking and finding. Knowledge is to be sought after, and when you realize that everything you thought you knew about this world is wrong, you become troubled. But then you realize the truth about this world, and you become amazed. And when that happens, you return, ultimately, to the divine realm from which you came and rule with the other divine beings over all there is. Or as expressed in another saying, “Whoever has come to understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world” (Saying 56). This material world is dead; there is no life in it. Life is a matter of the spirit. Once you realize what the world really is—death—you are superior to the world and you rise above it. That is why the one who comes to this realization “will not experience death” (Saying 1)

Coming to this realization of the worthlessness of this material world, and then escaping it, is like taking off the clothing of matter (the body) and being liberated from its constraints. Thus an effective image of salvation: “When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid” (Saying 37). Salvation means escaping the constraints of the body.

According to this Gospel, human spirits did not originate in this material world but in the world above:

Jesus said, “If they say to you, ‘Where did you come from?’ say to them, ‘We came from the light, the place where the light came into being of its own accord.’ If they say to you, ‘Is it you?’ say, ‘We are its children, and we are the elect of the living father.’” (Saying 50)

Thus we came from the world above, the world of light, where there is no enmity, no division, no darkness; we ourselves came from the one God and are his elect, and he is our ultimate destination: “Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the solitary and elect, for you will find the kingdom. For you are from it, and to it you will return’” (Saying 49).

It is indeed amazing that this material world came into being as a place of confinement for divine spirits. But as amazing as it is, it would have been completely impossible for it to be the other way around, that human spirits came into being as a result of the creation of matter:

If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth [i.e., the spirit] made its home in this poverty [i.e., the material world/body]. (Saying 29)

For spirits trapped in this material world it is like being drunk and not being able to think straight, or being blind and unable to see. Jesus came from above, according to this Gospel, to provide the sobering knowledge or the brilliant insight necessary for salvation, and those who were trapped here were in desperate need of it:

Jesus said, “I took my place in the midst of the world and I appeared to them in flesh. I found all of them intoxicated; I found none of them thirsty. And my soul became afflicted for the sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and do not have sight. . . . But for the moment they are intoxicated. When they shake off their wine, then they will repent.” (Saying 28)

Why then is it that the “dead are not living and the living will not die” (Saying 11)? Because the dead are merely matter; and what is not matter but spirit can never die. How is it that “on the day you were one you became two” (Saying 11)? Because you were once a unified spirit, but becoming entrapped in a body, you became two things—a body and a spirit—not one. The spirit must escape, and then it will be one again.

This salvation will not, therefore, be salvation that comes to this world; it will be salvation from this world. The world itself, this material existence, is not something that was created good (contrary to the doctrines of the protoorthodox). It is a cosmic catastrophe, and salvation means escaping it. For that reason, the Kingdom of God is not something coming to this world as a physical entity that can actually be said to be here in this world of matter. The Kingdom is something spiritual, within:

If those who lead you say to you, “See the kingdom is in the sky,” then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. Rather the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. . . . When you come to know yourselves . . . you will realize it is you who are the sons of the living Father. (Saying 3)

Notice once again the key: knowing yourself, who you really are. Since this world is a place to escape, no one should be tied to material things: “Do not be concerned from morning until evening and from evening until morning about what you will wear” (Saying 36). Instead, all that the world has to offer, all the riches it can provide, should be rejected in order to escape this world: “Whoever finds the world and becomes rich, let him renounce the world” (Saying 110). And so, one should not be attached to anything in this world; as indicated in the pithiest of the sayings of the Gospel, “Become passersby” (Saying 42).

The key to the salvation brought by Jesus is having the proper knowledge, gnosis—knowledge of your true identity:

When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty [i.e., the material world/the body] and you are that poverty. (Saying 3b)

Jesus himself is the one who can provide this knowledge, knowledge that the human spirit is divine, as divine as Jesus himself and one with Jesus: “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him” (Saying 108). And so Jesus brings the knowledge necessary for the divine spirits to be reunited with the realm whence they came. That is why Jesus is not a “divider” (Saying 72).
He is not a divider but a unifier.

This stress on becoming “one,” reunified with the divine realm in which there is no conflict and no division, is why the text emphasizes so strongly oneness, singleness, solidarity: “For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same” (Saying 4); “Blessed are the solitary and elect, for you will find the Kingdom” (Saying 22). Or as Jesus indicates when the disciples ask, “Shall we then as children enter the Kingdom?”:

When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness, then you will enter the kingdom. (Saying 22)

Restore all things to their original unity, where there are not parts but only a whole, no above and below, no outside and inside, no male and female. That is where there is salvation to those who have been separated off, divided from the divine realm. Perhaps it is this idea which can make sense of what is possibly the most peculiar and certainly the most controversial saying of the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 114:

Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The saying has caused a good bit of consternation, especially among feminist historians of early Christianity who are inclined to see, for good reason, that many Gnostic groups were more open to women and their leadership roles in the church than were the proto-orthodox. But how does one understand this verse, that women must become male in order to enter the Kingdom?

It is virtually impossible to understand what the verse can mean without recognizing that in the ancient world, the world of this text, people generally understood gender relations differently than we do. Today we tend to think of men and women as two kinds of the same thing. There are humans, and they are either male or female. In the ancient world, genders were not imagined like that. For ancient people, male and female were not two kinds of human; they were two degrees of human.

As we know from medical writers,
philosophers, poets, and others, women in the Greek and Roman worlds were widely understood to be imperfect men. They were men who had not developed fully. In the womb they did not grow penises. When born, they did not develop fully, did not grow muscular, did not develop facial hair, did not acquire deep voices. Women were quite literally the weaker sex. And in a world permeated with an ideology of power and dominance, that made women subservient and, necessarily, subordinate to men. All the world, it was believed, operates along a continuum of perfection. Lifeless things are less perfect than living; plants less perfect than animals; animals less perfect than humans; women less perfect than men; men less perfect than gods. To have salvation, to be united with God, required men to be perfected. For some thinkers in the ancient world, the implications were clear: For a woman to be perfected, she must first pass through the next stage along the continuum and become a man.

And so, salvation for this Gospel of Thomas, which presupposes a unification of all things so that there is no up and down, in and out, male and female, requires that all divine spirits return to their place of origin. But for women to achieve this salvation, they obviously must first become male. The knowledge that Jesus reveals allows for that transformation, so that every woman who makes herself male, through understanding his teaching, will enter then into the Kingdom.

Requia · 02-15-2009, 02:55 PM

The Gnostics certainly seemed to think so. The complete version of the text was recovered as part of a large find of Gnostic works.

The more modern Gnostic traditions (some of them at least, I'm not familiar with all of them by a long shot) that have arisen since the Nag Hammadi find put a particularly high value on Thomas, recommending it be read first, and repeatedly. Gnostics outside of organized churches tend to point to Thomas in my experience as well.

Contradictions within Gnostic texts may not have mattered much to the Gnostics either. Non dogmatism is a common interpretation of the Gnostic texts, though its hard to say what interpretation they would have favored, since everything we have on them is either the gnostic texts (which are cryptic as hell, at best), or the things said about them by their enemies.

Elijah · 02-15-2009, 04:22 PM

For dating Thomas you could maybe make a case around the hitting of the eternal life bit so hard at the beginning. I’ve heard it is considered a later development in the ideology but I’m not sure the reasoning on that. Maybe someone here knows why exactly. It seems intuitive that the belief would be there early and fade as more of the followers died but I’m not sure the evidence behind the later date. The problem is that the synoptics don’t have a lot of mentions of the eternal life stuff but John is loaded with it so it would probably date to after the synoptics if you have John coming later.

02-12-2009, 10:40 AM	#1
show_no_mercy Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Dancing Posts: 9,940	Is Thomas a Gnostic Gospel? I think this question really depends on when you think Thomas was written. In the intro, the explicit mention of "secret sayings" seems to follow Gnostic tradition. However immediately after that we have the phrase "living Jesus", which seems to contradict the later Gnostic/Docetic Christologies. If Thomas was actually the first "gospel" written, then it might explain the eventual split between the Gnostics and the proto-Orthodox since I think it has the seeds for both camps. Also, it seems that in this gospel, Jesus is merely a wisdom sage and not a god. This leans me towards the HJ position; especially if Thomas was the first gospel written. If Thomas is first, Jesus is merely a wisdom sage because it only contains sayings and no healings or "signs and wonders". Next Mark is written which incorporates Wisdom Sage Jesus with Healer Jesus, thus going from simply a wisdom sage to the adopted son of god. Then Matt and Luke are written which further deifies Jesus by incorporating Wisdom Sage Jesus with Healer Jesus and goes one step further by making Jesus not the adopted son of god, but the literal son of god. John is then written last; Wisdom Sage Jesus is dropped for the "Obama Speech" Jesus, mixed with Healer Jesus. He then goes from just being the literal son of god presented in Matt and Luke to being god himself. God himself has no need for wisdom sayings. Furthermore, John seems to go out of his way to attack the wisdom sage Jesus presented in Thomas by having the "Doubting Thomas" story. After John is written, Jesus is further deified by later heresies. Thoughts, critiques, outrages, etc...

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02-12-2009, 11:11 AM	#2
Dirac_Delta Regular Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: England Posts: 115	I have just a small commet about the "signs and wonders" bit. I think that describing "signs and woders" would fit an historical Jesus as well, in the sense that having the in the text doesn't really tells us which gospel was written first. I think that that would push the date of redaction to at least one genration after his death though. I say this because I'm reading Tacitus' "The Histories" and I've noticed that every two chapter or so there will be a mention to "signs and wonders" often in realation to historical fiigures (the miraculous spit of Vespasian). In short, I think Mark could easily have come first but Thomas decided to focus only on the sayings for some reason. Also note that while the progression you describe from adopted son to God makes some sense, you can't fit the Gospel of Thomas in it because it's not obvious which kind of Jesus we're dealing with in there.

02-15-2009, 02:55 PM	#5
Requia Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Utah Posts: 74	The Gnostics certainly seemed to think so. The complete version of the text was recovered as part of a large find of Gnostic works. The more modern Gnostic traditions (some of them at least, I'm not familiar with all of them by a long shot) that have arisen since the Nag Hammadi find put a particularly high value on Thomas, recommending it be read first, and repeatedly. Gnostics outside of organized churches tend to point to Thomas in my experience as well. Contradictions within Gnostic texts may not have mattered much to the Gnostics either. Non dogmatism is a common interpretation of the Gnostic texts, though its hard to say what interpretation they would have favored, since everything we have on them is either the gnostic texts (which are cryptic as hell, at best), or the things said about them by their enemies.

02-15-2009, 04:22 PM	#6
Elijah Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: MidWest Posts: 1,894	For dating Thomas you could maybe make a case around the hitting of the eternal life bit so hard at the beginning. I’ve heard it is considered a later development in the ideology but I’m not sure the reasoning on that. Maybe someone here knows why exactly. It seems intuitive that the belief would be there early and fade as more of the followers died but I’m not sure the evidence behind the later date. The problem is that the synoptics don’t have a lot of mentions of the eternal life stuff but John is loaded with it so it would probably date to after the synoptics if you have John coming later.

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