The Gospel of Thomas

Heavy as the main four Gospels are, more and more - I've written this before - two other Gospels are main players in Biblical scholarship. One - (is it Peter?) is touched upon, but The Gospel of Thomas receives a great deal of attention. I've read three separate books on separate -well, New testament scholarship umbrella; but more fine than that? well, then, the three books have separate reasons to exist.

But Thomas is consistently called upon to back up or interpret the main four. A real big deal - I won't go into it too much - for scholars in the field is to find "multiple attestations". That means, scholars want to find stuff in different and unconnected sources - and the older the source, the better (less corrupted by later church teaching). Unconnected sources mean that whatever is being touched upon -be it a Jesus saying or some other happening - has a better chance of being historically true than if only one source has it. Think of it - two independent witnesses to the same story who have never met : good- even great - evidence. One witness of the story? Less good evidence.

So -in what I've been reading = what are the independent sources? The Gospel of Mark is generally argeed upon as the first written Gospel (I've read that possible John is older, hjust not written down until later). The next 'independent' source is the Q document, which I've written about before. It no longer exists, but from comparing Mark w/ Matthew and Luke, scholars think that the latter two gospels are mainly a mixture of Mark and Q Document (plus extra stuff as well). Then there is the Gospel of John. It is radically different than than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So, along w/ Mark, Q, and John, scholars also use Thomas for verification.

So: if something appears in two of those four seperate sources = chances are heavy that it happened. If it's in only one of the four - chances are that whoever wrote that gospel maybe just put it in there to advance their P.O.V.

And the three books on religion that have been in my hands recently - and I wasn't looking for it, it just happened - have all relied on Thomas to some degree or other.

So - intereting. I have actually read Thomas - it's just a list of 114 sayings of Jesus. Just the sayings, parables, etc etc etc - there are no narratives of birth, death, etc. No story - just strings of sayings. It is also a Gnostic text - not wholly, but even I can see @ this point the divergences w/ the later "Orthodox" thought. But, as an historical document, present scholarship has this Gospel basically alongside the four main ones that contain - to a degree -some historical truth. Well, what I'd better write is that Thomas is a text that scholars have enough ....um, faith in...... to allow them to use it as an historical proof alongside the other gospels.

So, what three books you have been into lately that have used Thomas?

The first selection is rather embarrassing. It's The Parables of Jesus by Joachim Jeremies. This is embarrassinmg because it's my first forey into older heavier Biblical research. No, I won't learn Aramaic or ancient Greek to further my knowledge, but totally kool to reading a book that has streches of Greek in it to properly note his interpretation of the text.

Jeremies big deal is best described by himself (p. 22):

"the nature of our task. Jesus spoke to men of flesh and blood; he addressed himself to the situation of the moment. Each of his parables has a definite historical setting. Hence to recover this is the task before us. What did Jesus intend to say at this or that historical moment? What must have been the effect of his words upon his hearers? These are the questions we must ask in order, so far as possible, to recover the original meanings of the parables, to hear again his authentic voice.

"

So- brilliantly - he deconstructs each parable to try and get @ it's original meaning, and what it meant to the dudes actually hearing this parable from the man himself. He uses ancient practices and modern Palestinian ones to compare with the action in the parable. Oftentimes - well, always, according to Jeremies - Jesus would take a story that maybe had happened in the town and then turns it around somehow to give a different view to those listening. So -the parable about the thief in the night - Jeremies thinks that this may have been a story hot @ the time (think "the Parable about the Stupid Governer" is Jesus was alive now- and that is why he used it.

Very dense. Along w/ all the Greek and Aramaic and German translation, one has to closely follow each tangled argument to profit from it. It was a slow read - but I wanted it to go slow to maximise my profit. Felt like graduate schoolmand I was reading some treatsie on draining the fens and how that was important ot the advent of capitalism in England. Very good. Exciting to read an old master, although I'm still no expert to call him an old master.

Oh - Gospel of Thomas, that's right - Jeremies takes that Gospel as a source just as qualified as the four main ones. Then again, it's not theology he's after, but a more historical basis to fit the parables on.

Second book touching on Thomas is from old friend Elaine Pagels: Beyond Belief. I've read her Gnostic Gospels and then her Reading Judas (actually in opposite order). Since Jeremies hit so much on Thomas, I figgered I'd catch some action form this book.

As sumerised below, this had a real cool argument that I have heard before (From Wikipedia article on Thomas):

Another argument for the early date (originally brought forward as the central argument of Elaine Pagels' book Beyond Belief The Secret Gospel of Thomas) is that there seems to be conflict between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas. Certain passages in the Gospel of John can only be understood in light of a community based on the theological teachings of the Gospel of Thomas. John is the only one of the Canonical Gospels that gives Thomas a speaking part - indicating respect for the Thomas community. This is because the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas are theologically similar in almost every respect except one. In the story of Doubting Thomas, the Johannine Community is theologically rebutting the Thomas community. The Johannine Community believes in a bodily resurrection; Thomas community believes in a spiritual resurrection — and completely rejects a bodily resurrection. So the Gospel of John has Thomas physically touch the risen Jesus and acknowledges his bodily nature. Pagel's interpretation of John requires that a Thomas community existed when John's Gospel was written.

In the book she writes that early on this belief that John was written in response to Thomas - and then used her career as a scholar to try to prove it. She is not the only one to ever express this thought - I have read it before. But again, the movement/'fighting' w/in the early christian communities over what Christianity meant - and the eventual emergence of what is known as the 'orthodox' view - holds a heavy historical interest for me.

Last book for me - i'm reading it as we write - is Jesus A Revolutionary Biography. Pretty good - not as hard as the Jeremies, but not the breeze that Pagels is by now. He is involved in the Jesus Symposium, or whatever - it's deal is to try to get to the real historical Jesus. Lotta problems w/ this movement, but whatever - this book is cool. His take on Jesus - and i'm only on, say, p.50 - is that Jesus was somewhat of a ....I hesitate to use revolutionary figure, but actually Crossan has it in the title. So, an axample of this takes us back to the parables - the Parable of the Mustard seed has often been told a sa parable of a little bit of faith will grow into huge strong faith. But Crossan has it that in ancient Palestine, Mustard plants were often weeds that attracted birds to it's branches. So, a weed that attracts seedeating birds into the culitvated farm actually is a terrible thing. But to landless people, it means something else.

Good books.