The Gospel of Thomas

[Yoder777]

Then, assumming the written texts to be representative of the way the stories are told in those communities, you'd end up with what amounts to two different religions. One with a timeless wisdom approach that is more like hellenised Judaism or Greek philosophy in the Thomist community and one based on what God in Jesus did in the Lukan community.

Since we have no evidence for such a community and it doesnt explain anything that can't be explained more simply with a later date for Thomas it's speculation, not useful historical hypothesis.

The differences between John and the Synoptics is often explained by the fact that they were written independently of each other. Why can't the same argument be made for Thomas? There are definitely mystical elements of the canonical Gospels that are similar to the Gospel of Thomas.

 

[Kaitlin08]

The differences between John and the Synoptics is often explained by the fact that they were written independently of each other. Why can't the same argument be made for Thomas? There are definitely mystical elements of the canonical Gospels that are similar to the Gospel of Thomas.

If the Synoptics and John were written independently, then it is even more striking that John chose to write in a narrative form. The gulf between the canonical gospels and Thomas widens when you think of it that way.

 

[Yoder777]

If the Synoptics and John were written independently, then it is even more striking that John chose to write in a narrative form. The gulf between the canonical gospels and Thomas widens when you think of it that way.

If Thomas contains actual sayings of Jesus not found in the New Testament, the content matters more than the form.

 

[ebia]

I think a major problem with trying to talk about the Gospel of Thomas with others is that many people are dead set on their views before they read scholarly sources in favor of Thomas with an open mind.

You assume that anyone disagreeing with you has not explored the scholarship and evaluated it on its merits but that you have, and yet you seem unfamiliar with all the refutations, problems with Thomas, etc. Mostly you have posted unsubstantiated "what ifs" and seem unaware of the basics of the relevant historical method. That's not scholarship with an open mind, it's buying in to the latest fashion.

 

[Yoder777]

You assume that anyone disagreeing with you has not explored the scholarship and evaluated it on its merits but that you have, and yet you seem unfamiliar with all the refutations, problems with Thomas, etc. Mostly you have posted unsubstantiated "what ifs" and seem unaware of the basics of the relevant historical method. That's not scholarship with an open mind, it's buying in to the latest fashion.

Isn't it more fashionable to blindly assume that the New Testament inerrantly contains anything and everything we could possibly know about Jesus and his teachings?

 

[ebia]

The differences between John and the Synoptics is often explained by the fact that they were written independently of each other. Why can't the same argument be made for Thomas? There are definitely mystical elements of the canonical Gospels that are similar to the Gospel of Thomas.

We work back from the differences between the Johanine texts and the others and conclude that they had quite different flavors. If we do the same for Thomas we find a hypothetical community that is so different it amounts to a different religion - on that we have no evidence for and that explains nothing (unlike the Johanine communities).

 

[ebia]

Not that scholars all think the Johanine community had no access to the synoptic tradition.

 

[Yoder777]

Not that scholars all think the Johanine community had no access to the synoptic tradition.

Either way, John is as different from the Synoptics in content as Thomas.

 

[Kaitlin08]

If Thomas contains actual sayings of Jesus not found in the New Testament, the content matters more than the form.

This seems a little desperate. Now you are concentrating on the fact that some of them are actual sayings, whether or not they do anything to illuminate study of the historical Jesus.

 

[Yoder777]

If we do the same for Thomas we find a hypothetical community that is so different it amounts to a different religion

What makes Thomas much different from the Jewish wisdom literature of the same time period?

 

[ebia]

We can argue over semantics but what's important is whether or not Thomas contains actual sayings of Jesus not found in the canonical New Testament.

We can't know that any of the distinctive sayings are authentic, some of look very dubious indeed, and even if some of them are authentic, ripped from their narrative context their true meaning is lost anyway.

 

[ebia]

If Thomas contains actual sayings of Jesus not found in the New Testament, the content matters more than the form.

Wrong. A quote ripped from its context is distorted.

 

[OzSpen]

Yoder,

What if Thomas was available in a different geographical region, isolated from Matthew and Luke? What if, like John, Thomas was written independently of Matthew and Luke?

The church father, Origen, writing about AD 233, mentioned that

there is passed down also the Gospel according to Thomas, the Gospel, according to Matthias, and many others.

This seems to indicate that in the early part of the third century, the Gospel of Thomas, was known in the region where Origen lived.

After this time, it was labelled as heretical. Eusebius (ca. 265-339) includes the Gospels of Thomas, Matthias, and Peter in his list of heretical writings. See Eusebius' greatest work, Ecclesiastical History 3.25.6, where he wrote:

But we have nevertheless felt compelled to give a catalogue of these also, distinguishing those works which according to ecclesiastical tradition are true and genuine and commonly accepted, from those others which, although not canonical but disputed, are yet at the same time known to most ecclesiastical writers— we have felt compelled to give this catalogue in order that we might be able to know both these works and those that are cited by the heretics under the name of the apostles, including, for instance, such books as the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias, or of any others besides them, and the Acts of Andrew and John and the other apostles, which no one belonging to the succession of ecclesiastical writers has deemed worthy of mention in his writings.

Oz

 

[ebia]

Isn't it more fashionable to blindly assume that the New Testament inerrantly contains anything and everything we could possibly know about Jesus and his teachings?

No.

 

[ebia]

Either way, John is as different from the Synoptics in content as Thomas.

The meaning of a text comes from it's form as much as it's content. What you end up hypothesizing from Thomas is a community massively more different from the synoptic tradition than the Johannine one.

 

[Kaitlin08]

I think that Yoder is right to say that content is more important than form, but this doesn't have meaning if a person doesn't see that form shapes content. The real issue here is what the study of Thomas is meant to do: tell us things about Jesus, about the earliest Christian communities, or about later Christian communities. Yoder wants to say that he likes Thomas for what it tells us about Jesus, but this cannot be his real reason for liking it because it does not give insight into who Jesus was.

 

[ebia]

Put it this way: I could take Luke and, simply by removing stuff produce a text with a completely different theology. In one sense the content would be congruent with the synoptic tradition, but the thinking it represents completely opposed to that tradition. That's similar to what you have in Thomas - a lot of the material is the same but it has been cut in a completely different way. By removing all narrative it's been cut in a way that gives us no access to the original meaning even if some of the distinctive sayings are authentic - and we don't know which, if any, are.

 

[Yoder777]

ripped from their narrative context their true meaning is lost anyway.

Why do you say that?

 

[Yoder777]

No.

It's surely the much more popular position.

 

[Yoder777]

What you end up hypothesizing from Thomas is a community massively more different from the synoptic tradition than the Johannine one.

With that, I must disagree. In Thomas, what you find is the same Jesus, even though it emphasizes more of the mystical dimension to his teachings.