Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] What is the Gospel of Thomas all about? And did he use the New Testament Gospels by Bart D. Ehrman read by Sharon Roberts What is the Gospel of Thomas trying to teach?
[00:00:17] In my previous post, I gave a basic overview of the book. Here I go into some more depth, not a huge amount about what it's all about, what it's trying to teach, and whether it depended on Matthew, Mark, and Luke for its sayings.
[00:00:35] The overarching message of the book.
[00:00:39] The meanings of many of Thomas's sayings are in no way obvious.
[00:00:44] If they were, they would not be called secret. Even though the book contains nothing like the Scythian or Valentian myths, some of the sayings do seem to reflect roughly analogous understandings of the world and the human's place in it. See earlier posts on Gnosticism.
[00:01:06] Within the here is an element of the divine, a soul that had a heavenly origin.
[00:01:13] It originated, quote, in the place where the light came into being. End quote.
[00:01:20] This world we live in is inferior at best, and is more appropriately thought of as a cesspool of suffering, quote unquote. A corpse, a person's inner being. The quote unquote light within has tragically fallen into this material world, where it has become entrapped in a body, sunk into quote unquote poverty, and in that condition it has become forgetful of its origin or quote, unquote drunk. It needs to be reawakened by learning the truth about this material world and the impoverished material body that it inhabits.
[00:02:06] Jesus is the one who conveys this truth. Once the soul learns the meaning of his words, it will be able to strip off this body of death, symbolize sometimes as garments of clothing, and escape this material world.
[00:02:22] It will then have salvation, life eternal. It will rejoin the divine realm and rule over all.
[00:02:31] There may be no need to call this gospel, quote unquote gnostic, but one can certainly see why many of its teachings would resonate with a Gnostic.
[00:02:44] There is not a word in the Gospel of Thomas about Jesus'crucifixion and resurrection. Indeed, for this author, none of Jesus'earthly activities appear to matter.
[00:02:57] There is also no word here of his miracles or encounters or experiences. What matters are Jesus'secret teachings.
[00:03:07] He brings salvation not through his passion, but by conveying the message necessary for deliverance from this impoverished material existence.
[00:03:19] Not only are Jesus'bodily experiences of no importance in the Gospel of Thomas, but the physical existence of the believer is irrelevant as well. For this reason, neither human events on the personal level nor history itself is of any consequence. The kingdom of God is not something to be expected in the future. Quote his disciples said to him, on what day will the kingdom come?
[00:03:51] Jesus answers quote It will not come by expectation. They will not say, look here or look there, but the kingdom of the Father is spread out on the earth, and people do not see it. End quote. Gospel of Thomas 113 the kingdom is here now for those who know who they are and whence they have come, it is not a physical place, but a salvation from within.
[00:04:23] Jesus says quote if the ones who lead you say there is the kingdom in heaven, then the birds of heaven shall go before you. If they say to you, It is in the sea, then the fish shall go before you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and outside you. If you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are sons of the living Father.
[00:04:52] But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty. End quote. Gospel of Thomas Three thus this material world and the body that we inhabit are poor excuses for existence.
[00:05:11] Only through knowledge knowledge of who one really is, as revealed by the living Jesus, can we escape and enjoy the riches of the Kingdom of the Father.
[00:05:24] This is a powerful message, and one that stands in stark contrast with the gospels proclaimed by other Christians of the early Church who maintained that the material world was good because it was created by God. Who taught that. The kingdom of God would be a physical presence on earth that would come in the near future.
[00:05:48] And who proclaimed that salvation came not by understanding the secret message of Jesus, but by believing in his death and resurrection?
[00:06:00] Thomas and the Synoptics scholars have naturally raised the question of whether the Gospel of Thomas represents a form of Christianity that is early and independent of that preserved, say, in the Synoptic Gospels, or whether it represents a later development of Christianity based in part on the teachings of Jesus found in the Synoptics, but modified in light of alternative beliefs.
[00:06:31] As we have seen, some of the sayings in Thomas are like those found in the Synoptics, with slight differences.
[00:06:40] Could some of these be closer to the way Jesus actually expressed himself? Other sayings cannot be found in the Synoptics. Could some of these be authentic?
[00:06:52] Is the entire collection early from the first century itself, or was it compiled only later?
[00:07:01] These are intriguing questions, but ones that are not easily answered. Scholars have argued about them intensely since the discovery of the Gospel, and even now, more than 50 years later, the heat of the debate has not subsided.
[00:07:19] Let me explain the position that strikes me as the most plausible.
[00:07:25] It does not appear that the Gospel of Thomas actually used the Synoptic Gospels to formulate its own sayings of Jesus.
[00:07:35] As we have seen, the burden of proof in such matters is on the one who claims that an author used another document as a source.
[00:07:44] The surest indicators of reliance upon a source are detailed and extensive verbal parallels. But this is precisely what we do not find with the Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptics. There are many similar sayings but few extensive verbal correspondences.
[00:08:06] The fact that the Gospel of Thomas is written in Coptic rather than Greek the language of the Synoptics does not work against this position.
[00:08:16] Several Greek fragments of Thomas have also survived from antiquity, discovered not at Nihamati, but in an ancient trash heap elsewhere in Egypt in a town called Oxarinkus.
[00:08:31] These small fragments date to some point in the second century, much earlier than the Coptic translation.
[00:08:39] They show us that the Gospel was originally written in Greek, and they indicate something about the care with which the translator did his work.
[00:08:50] When studied closely, they confirm our suspicion that extensive verbal similarities did not exist between the original Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptics.
[00:09:04] Finally, if Thomas did use the Synoptics, it would be especially hard to explain why. He left out of his account most of their sayings of Jesus, many of them relevant to his agenda.
[00:09:20] It is probably better, therefore, to assume that the author who calls himself Thomas knew a number of the sayings of Jesus and understood these sayings in a particular way, based on his own distinctive understanding of the world and the human's place in it.
[00:09:39] He collected these sayings, some of them old, some of them new, and put them into a Gospel designed for his community, where beliefs were rooted not in the death and resurrection of Jesus, but in his secret message.
