Toto

This is disputed by almost anyone who can claim to be a scholar. And what does it have to do with the stoning of Stephen or anything else in this thread????

Rick Van Vliet

No, I'm aware they are very different. The odd couple. But both world class. Robinson being a mild mannered world class expert on the Gospel of (Judas) Thomas, and Eisenman, a bit of a grouch, pretty much ignoring it, despite similarities to his Jewish Revolutionary idea of Jesus, because the Jesus of Thomas isn't particularly observant.

Yes, Robinson says the Gospel of Thomas is mid first century. And yes, the physical scraps of the Coptic is fourth century and the Greek is late first/early second century. And other than a tiny scrap of John, it's as old or older than any physical scrap of Mark, Matthew, Luke, or Paul.

Obviously. A sophmoric analysis, no doubt from the 30 seconds with Google..

Toto

Please provide a citation where Robinson dates the Gospel of Thomas to the first century.

Rick Van Vliet

If Pagels is right, and the "doubting Thomas" the non-superstitious Thomas, was inserted to refute the non-superstitious Gospel of Thomas that doubts the same exact things, then the Gospel of Thomas was called "Thomas" when those that knew him and Jesus well were still alive, with James in charge of the Jerusalem Church.

And there have been Thomas Christians in India for at least 1800 years, and probably because Thomas went there in 42CE, just like tradition says. Tradition also had a name for the obscure king in the obscure part of India, that was considered myth. Then they found a coin a few years, from the time and place tradition said it would be, with his name on it.

When the Portugese arrived, the exterminated any Thomas Christians that didn't totally abandon the old religion. All that's known is that they said everyone is Christ, everyone the sons of God, just like the Gospel of Thomas.

Rick Van Vliet

No it isn't. You just made that up. All the evidence isn't in, but it sure looks like Thomas went to India, and scholars that have looked at it don't rule it out.

Toto

Your conclusions do not follow. The "doubting Thomas" story does not show the existence of Thomas, much less James, Jesus, or the Jerusalem Church

Citation? This is all myth. If one coin was found with a king's name on it who was previously considered mythical, that does not prove that every myth is actually based on history.

aa5874

And if Pagel is wrong?

2000-1800=42?

Perhaps it may be argued that we are all sons of gods but the there was only [b] one offspring of the Holy Ghost, Creator of everything in heaven and earth called Jesus the Messiah in the NT Canon.

And even if everyone is Christ, then we have Rick Van Vliet Christ, aa5874 Christ, .........and the fiction character called Jesus Christ, the offspring of the Holy Ghost.

Rick Van Vliet

A.D.H. Bivar, writing in The Cambridge History of Iran, said that the reign dates of one Gondophares recorded in the Takht-i Bahi inscription (20-46 or later AD) are consistent with the dates given in the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas for the Apostle's voyage to India following the Crucifixion in c.30 AD.[9] B.N. Puri, of the Department of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology, University of Lucknow, India, also identified Gondophares with the ruler said to have been converted by Saint Thomas the Apostle.[10] The same goes for the reference to an Indo-Parthian king in the accounts of the life of Apollonius of Tyana. Purii says that the dates given by Philostratus in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana for Apollonius' visit to Taxila, 43-44 AD, are within the period of the reign of Gondophares I, who also went by the Parthian name, Phraotes..[11] Saint Thomas was brought before King Gundaphar (Gondophares) at his capital, Taxila.[12] "Taxila" is the Greek form of the contemporary Pali name for the city, “Takkasila”, from the Sanskrit “Taksha-sila”. The name of the city was transformed in subsequent legends concerning Thomas, which were consolidated into the Historia Trium Regum (History of the Three Kings) by John of Hildesheim (1364-1375), into "Silla", "Egrisilla", "Grisculla", and so on,[13] the name having undergone a process of metamorphosis similar to that which transformed “Vindapharnah” (Gondophares) to “Caspar”. Hildesheim's Historia Trium Regum says: “In the third India is the kingdom of Tharsis, which at that time was ruled over by King Caspar, who offered incense to our Lord. The famous island Eyrisoulla [or Egrocilla] lies in this land: it is there that the holy apostle St Thomas is buried”.[14] "Egrisilla" appears on the globe made in Nuremberg by Martin Behaim in 1492, where it appears on the southernmost part of the peninsula of Hoch India, “High India” or “India Superior”, on the eastern side of the Sinus Magnus ("Great Gulf", the Gulf of Thailand): there Egrisilla is identified with the inscription, das lant wird genant egtisilla, (“the land called Egrisilla”). In his study of Behaim's globe, E.G. Ravenstein noted: “Egtisilla, or Eyrisculla [or Egrisilla: the letters “r” and “t” in the script on the globe look similar], is referred to in John of Hildesheim’s version of the ‘Three Kings’ as an island where St. Thomas lies buried”.[15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondophares

Other gospels with "Thomas" in the name were written centuries after the Gospel of (Judas) Thomas, and are pretty off the wall. Why it was so surprising, that a third century rather fanciful "Acts of Thomas" would get the name of an obscure local Indian king, from a couple centuries before, right. Particularly since we had no clue he existed in that time and place until we recently found the coins. How would it have retained that information accurately for centuries, if there hadn't been some truth to it? As for it's claim that Thomas was Jesus' biological twin brother, well, hard to say, that is what Thomas means, "Twin", and he was his brother...

Rick Van Vliet

If Pagels is right, it's a logical fact that the Gospel of Thomas was called Thomas when you couldn't get away with it. That conclusion is logical fact.

Toto

No, it's not an inevitable conclusion. And you still haven't produced citations that show that James Robinson dates the Gospel of Thomas to 50 CE, or that any significant number of scholars think that a Christian traveled to India in 42 CE. (Copy and paste from a tangential wiki article doesn't count.)