Gospel of Thomas

[Jayhawker Soule]

It is not considered part of the canon.It is considered apocryphal.There are passages in that book that state Jesus killed people.

Gospel of Thomas
11
2 And Jesus, seeing what had happened, said to him, “Your fruit (shall be) without root and your shoot shall be dried up like a branch scorched by a strong wind.”
3 And instantly that child withered.

Nope ...

 

[outhouse]

Thomas was unknown at the time and place of canonization, so it wasn't "wiped out."

How would you substantiate that bud?

 

[Nada]

That's the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is not the same text we were discussing, just fwiw

Infancy Gospel of Thomas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gospel of Thomas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

None of these writings are considered part of the original canon.They are all considered Apocryphal


The Apocalypse of Thomas

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Greek Text A

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Greek Text B

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Latin Text


The Acts of Thomas The complete text the Acts of Thomas, from The Apocryphal New Testament, translated by M. R. James.

The Gospel of Thomas Collection - The Gnostic Society Library

"Particularly from the second century C.E. forward there has developed an immense body of writings making claim to divine inspiration and canonicity and pretending to relate to the Christian faith. Frequently referred to as the “Apocryphal New Testament,” these writings represent efforts at imitating the Gospels, Acts, letters, and the revelations contained in the canonical books of the Christian Greek Scriptures. A large number of these are known only through fragments extant or by quotations from them or allusions to them by other writers.

These writings manifest an attempt to provide information that the inspired writings deliberately omit, such as the activities and events relating to Jesus’ life from his early childhood on up to the time of his baptism, or an effort to manufacture support for doctrines or traditions that find no basis in the Bible or are in contradiction to it. Thus the so-called Gospel of Thomas and the Protevangelium of James are filled with fanciful accounts of miracles supposedly wrought by Jesus in his childhood. But the whole effect of the picture they draw of him is to cause Jesus to appear as a capricious and petulant child endowed with impressive powers. (Compare the genuine account at Lu 2:51, 52.) The Apocryphal “Acts,” such as the “Acts of Paul” and the “Acts of Peter,” lay heavy stress on complete abstinence from sexual relations and even depict the apostles as urging women to separate from their husbands, thus contradicting Paul’s authentic counsel at 1 Corinthians 7.

Commenting on such postapostolic Apocryphal writings, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Vol. 1, p. 166) states: “Many of them are trivial, some are highly theatrical, some are disgusting, even loathsome.” (Edited by G. A. Buttrick, 1962) Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Bible Dictionary (1936, p. 56) comments: “They have been the fruitful source of sacred legends and ecclesiastical traditions. It is to these books that we must look for the origin of some of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Just as the earlier Apocryphal writings were excluded from among the accepted pre-Christian Hebrew Scriptures, so also these later Apocryphal writings were not accepted as inspired nor included as canonical in the earliest collections or catalogs of the Christian Greek Scriptures.—See CANON."

WOL-Later Apocryphal Works.

 

[lovemuffin]

No one is disagreeing that the Gospel of Thomas is non-canonical. That is a given. However, the quotes you posted earlier are from a different text, and the links you just posted are also all for different texts than the one that is the subject of this thread. (edit: except for your last link, which you edited in. Sorry for the confusion)

This is the gospel of thomas: The Gospel of Thomas Collection - Translations and Resources

 

[outhouse]

I'm not sure I'd agree with that

And he said,
"The one who finds the interpretation of these sayings shall not taste death."

 

[sojourner]

Primary Sources - Gospel Of Thomas | From Jesus To Christ | FRONTLINE | PBS

What do we think here? Could it be that the Gospel of Thomas is a long lost collection of Jesus' private teachings? Or is it a kind of fake that misrepresents his teachings?

I'm just wondering what you all think about it.

Thomas is a collection of sayings that shares some commonality with Q and with Mark. Some solid scholarship suggests that the source of both Q and Thomas separated very early -- less than 10 years after the crucifixion, in fact, and the quotes that are shared between the two are often used for the authentication process.

 

[outhouse]

(2 Peter 1:3-4)

(2 Cor 3:18)

(1 John 3:2)

These text are almost worthless for understanding Thomas, or being Jesus like.

Not only do they contradict the kingdom of god, one of the main reasons this text was not canonized, besides it being gnostic.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Thomas was unknown at the time and place of canonization, ...

And how did you come to know this to be true? So, for example ...

Ron Cameron comments on the attestation to Thomas (op. cit., p. 535):

The one incontrovertible testimonium to Gos. Thom. is found in Hippolytus of Rome (Haer. 5.7.20). Writing between the years 222-235 C.E., Hippolytus quoes a variant of saying 4 expressly stated to be taken from a text entitled Gos. Thom. Possible references to this gospel by its title alone abound in early Christianity (e.g. Eus. Hist. Eccl. 3.25.6). But such indirect attestations must be treated with care, since they might refer to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Parallels to certain sayings in Gos. Thom. are also abundant; some are found, according to Clement of Alexandria, in the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Egyptians. However, a direct dependence of Gos. Thom. upon another noncanonical gospel is problematic and extremely unlikely. The relationship of Gos. Thom. to the Diatessaron of Tatian is even more vexed, exacerbated by untold difficulties in reconstructing the textual basis of Tatian's tradition, and has not yet been resolved.​

- source

Similarly ...

The earliest surviving written references to the Gospel of Thomas are found in the writings of Hippolytus of Rome (c. 222–235) and Origen of Alexandria (c.233). Hippolytus wrote in his Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.20:

[The Naassenes] speak...of a nature which is both hidden and revealed at the same time and which they call the thought-for kingdom of heaven which is in a human being. They transmit a tradition concerning this in the Gospel entitled "According to Thomas," which states expressly, "The one who seeks me will find me in children of seven years and older, for there, hidden in the fourteenth aeon, I am revealed."​

This appears to be a reference to saying 4 of Thomas, although the wording differs significantly.

Origen listed the "Gospel according to Thomas" as being among the heterodox apocryphal gospels known to him (Hom. in Luc. 1).

In the 4th and 5th centuries, various Church Fathers wrote that the Gospel of Thomas was highly valued by Mani. In the 4th century, Cyril of Jerusalemmentioned a "Gospel of Thomas" twice in his Catechesis: "The Manichæans also wrote a Gospel according to Thomas, which being tinctured with the fragrance of the evangelic title corrupts the souls of the simple sort." and "Let none read the Gospel according to Thomas: for it is the work not of one of the twelve Apostles, but of one of the three wicked disciples of Manes." The 5th century Decretum Gelasianum includes "A Gospel attributed to Thomas which the Manichaean use" in its list of heretical books.

- Wikipedia

You seem to be making up your facts on the fly.

 

[sojourner]

You see when the church started to canonize the teachings it is because there were several conflicting points in several different books of the bible. One says "this" and others say "that". So they created a cannon they believed to be the legitimate teachings from god and attempted to cross examine the different works to find books that were in line with each other. The logic is that if they all matched then they must be the correct uncorrupted versions of the truth.

Yeah. No. That's not the way it worked. The texts are all from different regions and traditions; some have common sources. What was canonized was the "basic list of stuff that could be read in church."

 

[sojourner]

He only mentioned 3 disciples. He never mentioned Jesus's baptism. He didn't mention the resurrection. He didn't mention the majority (if any) of the miracles. It was highly "gnostic" in its messages. It talked openly of obtaining the "secret knowledge" of god.

Gnosticism was a semi-radical sect of early Christianity that the main church did not agree with and the primary reason other than the fact that pretty much all of the mystical and magical god like acts of Jesus was absent it also had a gnostic feel.

Not all scholarship agrees that Thomas is gnostic.

 

[outhouse]

Some solid scholarship suggests that the source of both Q and Thomas separated very early -- less than 10 years after the crucifixion,

And some solid scholarship suggest the exact opposite.

That they were later gnostic teachings based on NT text as its only origin. We know Thomas was copied into the form we have roughly 200CE based on the receipts in the binding of the books.


How early it goes back is not substantiated with any certainty. Pointing out apologetic scholars does not substantiate any date.

 

[sojourner]

Indeed. Don't forget there was political agenda as well. I forget his name but the actual cannization of the bible came after someone else started to make their own "cannon" that was different than the regular christian Cannon. All of this of course several years after the founding of christianity.

There were several canons. You're probably thinking of Marcion.

 

[outhouse]

Not all scholarship agrees that Thomas is gnostic.

While that is true.

The text itself, however, continuously reflects Gnostic teachings by continuously referring to Jesus's sayings as "secret" and "mysterious", which were common gnostic phrases.

 

[lovemuffin]

And he said,
"The one who finds the interpretation of these sayings shall not taste death."

I'm not sure there's going to be much point in arguing this since there's no way to establish what kind of expressions the 4th century church would or would not have interpreted in a way that they considered theologically problematic, but it's not at all clear to me that this verse is automatically problematic, but I am also not interpreting it very literally or within any specific metaphysical framework either. But cf. Matthew 16:28, or John 8:51.

I'm not sure if it was unclear, but my point in citing verses from the canonical texts was in response to what I understood your argument to be, about which I think I was at least modestly confused. You suggested that the Gospel of Thomas could not have been made canonical because it said that the one who properly understood the text would become "like Jesus". So I cited canonical texts that (to me) suggest that a Christian should become "like Jesus", the point being to say that I don't think the assertion that one could become like Jesus amounted to a theological difficulty for canonization. As it turns out, I think you were paraphrasing and really were referring to this verse ("...shall not taste death") and so my point in referencing Matthew 16:28 or John 8:51 is to note that they are similar, and yet are canonical, especially John 8:51. To be clear, I was not suggesting that they should be used to understand the Gospel of Thomas, only that they appear to say similar things.

As far as the text being "gnostic", and that being an impediment, I think that is more plausible, but I'm not entirely clear on how closely the Gospel of Thomas would have been associated with gnostic beliefs that would clearly have been problematic. In any case, I was only making a more limited observation that I don't think this one particular verse in and of itself is disqualifying, by which I simply mean that I don't see how it's theologically at odds with the orthodoxy of the councils.

 

[sojourner]

And how did you come to know this to be true? So, for example ...

​

Similarly ...

​

You seem to be making up your facts on the fly.

No, the text may be referred to, but that doesn't mean that the referent had the text in front of him. Thomas doesn't appear on any of the early lists -- it was most likely Syrian, unlike the other texts. They couldn't canonize what they didn't have until the 1940s. Note that Q hasn't been canonized either, and there's plenty of evidence (including Thomas) that Q was in existence -- although no one seemed to have a copy when the texts were canonized.

 

[Nada]

No one is disagreeing that the Gospel of Thomas is non-canonical. That is a given. However, the quotes you posted earlier are from a different text, and the links you just posted are also all for different texts than the one that is the subject of this thread. (edit: except for your last link, which you edited in. Sorry for the confusion)

This is the gospel of thomas: The Gospel of Thomas Collection - Translations and Resources

I know.That is the same link I posted.Thanks.

 

[lovemuffin]

While that is true.

The text itself, however, continuously reflects Gnostic teachings by continuously referring to Jesus's sayings as "secret" and "mysterious", which were common gnostic phrases.

There's no doubt that "mystery" and esotericism are important to the "gnostic" tradition, but "mystery" is also a staple of Paul's writing, and also appears in the gospels. Cf. Strong's Greek: 3466. μυστήριον (mustérion) -- a mystery or secret doctrine

 

[outhouse]

. So I cited canonical texts that (to me) suggest that a Christian should become "like Jesus",

And none specifically say anyone would become god or immortal if they understand the mystery, did they?


Completely different context of "like"

 

[lovemuffin]

I know.That is the same link I posted.Thanks.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, my original reply to you was to clarify that the quotes you posted, wherein the child Jesus kills people, do not originate from the Gospel of Thomas. Does my post make sense now?

 

[sojourner]

Pointing out apologetic scholars does not substantiate any date.

These aren't "apologetic scholars." They're exegetical scholars. The date isn't substantiated -- like most other stuff about the gospels. Like Q, textual evidence points to the supposition I stated.