I'm reading the Gospel of Thomas, really just a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, and having a very difficult time comprehending some of the sayings.
I can recognize a lot of the parables that made it into the NT gospels, but others totally confuse me. Has anyone else tried to study it?
As stated in the other posts, yes the Gospel of Thomas is among the Gnostic writings.
The Gnostics were a group who preached that essentially there was the public Jesus and there were a lot of secret teachings of Jesus and only when you joined the Gnostics could you learn these secret teachings.
They were the first to come up with a list of writings for people to read that could be identified as a canon. As a result, a counter list was created which was essentially the New Testament canon we know today. Amazingly, not one gnostic writing made it into the New Testament canon.
It is my understanding the Gnostics were never able to sway a majority of public opinion because they were too fragmented. Each Gnostic group had it's own unique set of beliefs and refused to consider another Gnostic groups beliefs. If memory serves me correctly, one exception to this was that almost all Gnostics believed that the reason for evil on the earth was because the earth was created by an inferior god. Jesus came to enlighten us and serve as a bridge to the superior god that created this inferior god.
Long story short, the writings of the Gospel of Thomas may seem confusing but that is because (in my opinion anyway) one would need to join the Gnostic group and attain enlightenment as to the true meaning of the saying attributed to Jesus.
There is speculation among some Bible scholars (AND I EMPHASIZE IT IS ONLY SPECULATION) that those sayings of Jesus which are found in both the Gospel of Thomas and the NT Gospels were put in as a way to appease the Gnostics. Others speculate that those sayings were put there along with explanation to show the error of the Gnostic teachings. Still others wonder if both the Gospel of Thomas and the four NT Gospels took the sayings of Jesus from a document known as "Q" which stands for "Quelle". Quelle is a German word meaning "source". This "Q" document is only a speculative theory as no evidence of it's existense has appeared to date.
If you want to read the Gnostic writings, there is an excellent book entitled "The Nag Hammadi Library in English", edited by James M. Robinson. I have the 3rd edition and it is in paperback. The nice thing about this is the fact they translators leave blanks where the information is non-existant (due to holes in the manuscripts, for example) and also show clearly where they have inserted words or phrases based on the sentence structure.
For me, reading the Nag Hammadi Library has given me insight to a group of people who had an alternate understanding of Jesus and his message. I have no doubt they were sincere but I also find nothing that makes me want to abandon the New Testament we have. I suppose this means I wouldn't make a very good Gnostic.
Finally, the word "Gnostic" is from the Greek "gnosis" meaning knowledge. Since they preached having a secret knowledge of Jesus and His teachings, the title makes sense. Add the letter "A" which means "without" (as I recall) and you have "agnostic"; i.e. "without knowledge". "Atheist" means "without theism", by the way.
Enough lecturing for now. This is probably way more than you wanted to know but it isn't every day the topic comes up.
Another post did a superb job of clarifying the difference between Gnostic and Aprocraphyl writings. Thanks to that person for doing an excellent analysis.
Sincerely,
OldChurchGuy
