Accoding to it’s supporters, it is an orally delivered document from one of Jesus’ disciples, Thomas that was finally written in the 2nd century.
It is a collection of sayings in which the doctrine of the apocalypse followed by a rule of the Kingdom of Heaven is contradicted.
Instead, Thomas claims that the Kingdom of God is right here in front of us, here on Earth, and we just need to see it with our own eyes.
I have two takes on this “Gospel”, which is considered heresy by the Christian faith, and will never be part of the Bible:
It is a hoax.
It is a legitmate recording of the teachings of Jesus that was discovered after the Bible was written, and therefore the Church did NOT want to embarrass itself by including it in the Bible.
I am not well studied in theology, (Catholic CCD classes in the 70’s all but excluded religious teaching in favor of morality discussion, but that’s another topic) but seem to recall a very well-respected Roman Catholic theologian from the 50’s or 60’s whose thesis was that it was our responsibility as disciples to work towards making God’s Kingdom on Earth Heavenly. Although his beliefs were contrary to the prevailing belief of Christ’s coming as depicted in Revelations, he remained within the establishment of the Roman Catholic church. I’ll defer to Tom for further enlightenment, or perhaps Melin can recruit her better half (a former priest) to help with this.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Cecil talked about a couple of “books of Thomas” in What’s up with the “lost books of the Bible”? Some scholars draw on writings like these for additional information, but, as Cecil notes, each has sections that are inconsistent with general teachings, so neither book is considered canonical.
My (non-scholarly) understanding of the selection of the NT canon was that the decisions about what was in, and what was out, by various Church bodies during the late Roman empire, pretty much reflected what had already happened on the ground, so to speak: early Christians felt certain texts were deeply relevant to their spiritual experience, and others were less so.
There was a natural shakeout over time, in which some texts were used and copied more frequently, and others less so. There might have been a few tough calls at the edge, but the loose confederation that was the early Church couldn’t exactly say to churches from Spain to Syria, ‘you’ll read this, but not that.’ By the time it got that sort of power, IIRC, what was and wasn’t Scripture was more or less a done deal.
If there are any genuine Biblical scholars out there, or even anyone whose college courses covering such matters are more recent than mine, I’d appreciate any corrections.
Unfortunately, Uncle Cecil still didnt get to the nitty gritty- was the Gospel of St. Thomas as credible as the other Gospels . . .and suppressed . . . or is it a complete fraud?
If I have my facts straight to begin with (above), then if 1st- and 2nd-century Christians were aware of the Gospel of Thomas, it became obscure because they didn’t think much of it. And if they were not aware of it, then it couldn’t have had a 1st-century origin, so it wasn’t what it claimed to be.
The Gospel of Thomas was found in 1945-46 in upper Egypt with 43 other separate works. They were written in Sahidic Coptic, and date from about 400 C.E. The Coptic is a translation from the Greek probably written in the 2nd century C.E. The Gospel of Thomas is simply a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus (maxims, proverbs, parables); it has no narrative. Some sayings are identical with or are parallel to canonical New Testament sayings; but the majority are different in whole or in part.
As for the similar or parallel sayings, it is difficult to be certain whether the Gospel of Thomas has borrowed from the Synoptic Gospels or from a source similar to the sources behind those Gospels. As for the sayings that are different, some may be genuine, for several are cited elsewhere in early Christian literature. Yet there is a Gnostic or incipiently Gnostic flavor to many of them. Probably the Gospel of Thomas is a composite work, binding together genuine sayings of Jesus, canonical and noncanonical, with sayings invented in Gnostic circles. (taken from Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, 1968)
As Christianity developed (as any religion does) many people attempted to write down their understanding of what they believed. Some got accepted by the larger community, others did not.
The Gospel of Thomas was rejected as of Gnostic origin by Hippolytus, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Eusebius about as soon as it appeared. (St. Cyril also mentions its use by the Manichaeans.)
It is pretty much of a hodge-podge (see this link) http://home.epix.net/~miser17/trans.html
mixing statements that are familiar with statements that are certainly not part of the Christian canon.
Rather than either a hoax or a scandalous suppression, I would guess that it is a fairly straightforward attempt by one group of Christianity-inspired people to codify their beliefs that was not accepted by mainstream Christianity.
Christian theology teaches that the bible is divinely inspired, and that the decisions made as to what books should constitute the bible were therefore also divinely inspired.
Therefore, if Thomas is not in the Bible, it does not reflect the word of God.
Not that I believe in the divine inspiration of the bible, but there you go.
So, if I understand this right, Thomas is basically a “Quotations of Chairman Jesus” type of work and not a record of His ministry.
I seem to recall another “gospel” that supposidly fills in the empty years from His childhood to His ministry, including some interesting stuff in Egypt. For some reason I am attaching Philip’s name as the author of this one. Anyone else flash on this?
I’ve also heard of the apocryphal book detailing Jesus’s upbringing, but am not sure of its name.
It’s not the Gospel of Philip, though, which has been described as: “One of the Gnostic treatises foudn at Nag Hammadi. It is a series of reflections on the quest for salvation; it contians no narrative and only a few incidents or sayings attributed to Christ.” (From the Oxford Concise Dictionary of the Christian Church, “Philip, Gospel of.”)
Yeah, I too recall hearing about a Gospel that didn’t get included in the Gospels, and wasn’t the Thomas book. This non-canonical Jesus story had young Jesus helping his father Joseph out with his carpentry. Joseph in this book wasn’t a very good carpenter, and made awful-looking rickety tables and bookshelves and what have you, but little boy Jesus could just snap his fingers and BAM, Joseph’s furniture would suddenly become high-quality Ethan Allen fare. The book also has little boy Jesus carving bird statues out of wood, touching them, and POOF!, they became real birds and flew away.
Which non-canonical Gospel was this from?
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
I don’t know about the carpentry part, but the bird story is from the Protevangelium of James, which tells all about Jesus’ miraculous boyhood, including having killed one of his boyhood buddies for some insult to God. Boy, am I glad that one’s not canonical!