Didymus

I understand there were many Thomas gospels; Hippolytus may not have been referring to the same one. The Thomas translation I'm using - Lambdin - makes no reference to a child of seven or the rest.

The reference to the "kingdom within" seems like little more than an aside, and it's not really voiced as an objection to the gospel. Seems like Hippolytus' main complaint about the Gnostics is that they owe too much to the Greek philosophers and too little to Hebrew scripture. I don't think that gets to the heart of the Church's quarrel with the Gnostics, and in turn with Thomas.

I admit I was going well beyond my ken to claim that we don't have any record of the church's view of Thomas. That was a mistake; I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of early Christian writings.

Ddms

Solo

Interesting, though I read it differently. The Thomasian Jesus 'lives' in his disciples; he has no successor. The goal of the community, and what the spirit of Jesus teaches, is to achieve the equanimity of spirit through introspection.

(12) The disciples said to Jesus: ' we know you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader ?' Jesus said to them: 'wherever you are, you are to go to James the Righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.'

There is a curve thrown in this saying. 'We know you will depart from us', does not refer to the departure or death of the person 'Jesus'. It refers to the spiritual 'peak', associated with the spirit of 'living Jesus'. When that is gone, the disciples are to go to James, (wherever they may be physically) and accept his primacy (i.e. the primacy of his church).

As this verse testifies to origins of a version of Thomas before CE 60-62(It would have made no sense to compose it after James' death) it could be that GT is the oldest gospel.

There is at the root an irreconcilable gulf between the Thomasian and proto-orthodox blueprints for faith. They are reflected by two sayings, respectively from GTHomas and GJohn:

GT(108) 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.

GJohn 20:29 Jesus said to him, "Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

The proto-orthodox reached out broadly into the community and promoted the church as a shelter and ocial services center. The introspective schools, starting with the Thomas following would experiment in different ways but were sectarian by nature, limiting themselves to a small niche of spiritualiststs and thrill-seekers, and never found a mode of connecting with the larger mass of humanity. The Thomasians proclaimed salvation through individual ascetic resignation for the few Jesus selected (, GT 62 "To those worthy of my mysteries I will tell my mysteries", GT (42) - "Become passers by"!), the orthodox, through active acts of salvation by Christ's church for all. Not a mystery why one side won hands down !

BTW, I do not think GT 62 and 114 bespeak of misogyny. Quite the contrary, the rebuke to Peter seems to suggest that Jesus himself will make Mary "grow balls".

Cheers,
Jiri