The Gospel of Thomas and Reception

The Gospel of Thomas — a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus recovered among the Nag Hammadi codices in 1945 — is a second-century gnostic-leaning text that borrows the apostle’s name in its incipit but is not the work of the apostle and is not the basis of his veneration. This file distinguishes the Gospel of Thomas sharply from the canonical apostle, sets out what the text is and why it is not apostolic, and addresses the modern fascination with it, so that the gnostic namesake is not confused with the figure the Church honors.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

A Separate Text, a Borrowed Name

The first thing to establish, and the reason this file exists, is a distinction the modern reader can easily miss: the Gospel of Thomas is a different text from the Acts of Thomas (Section 06), from the canonical Gospel of John (which alone gives us the apostle’s words), and from the apostle himself. It is a sayings-gospel — a collection of 114 logia (sayings) attributed to “the living Jesus,” with almost no narrative — whose opening line reads, “These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down” (Gospel of Thomas, incipit; trans. in Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library 1990). The name “Didymos Judas Thomas” in the incipit is the Syriac triple-name of the apostle (see Thomas the Twin), and it is the only connection between the text and the apostle: the work borrows his name to claim apostolic and esoteric authority for its sayings, a common device of the period. The attribution is pseudonymous; the apostle did not write it, and no serious scholarship holds that he did (Patterson and Robinson 1998; Meyer 1992).

What the Text Is

The Gospel of Thomas survives complete in a Coptic translation among the codices discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945, and in three earlier Greek fragments (the Oxyrhynchus papyri 1, 654, 655) recovered around 1900 and later identified as part of the same work (Patterson and Robinson 1998; Meyer 1992). Scholars debate its date — proposals range from the mid-first to the mid-second century, with a second-century composition (in its present form) the most widely held position, though some argue an early core (Patterson and Robinson 1998). The text consists entirely of sayings introduced by “Jesus said”; some parallel the Synoptic sayings of Jesus, others are unique, and a number have a markedly gnostic or proto-gnostic cast — sayings about secret knowledge (gnosis), the divine spark or “light” within, the rejection of the body and the world, and salvation by self-knowledge and interior awakening rather than by the cross and resurrection (Meyer 1992; Patterson and Robinson 1998). The closing saying 114, with its strange logion about Mary being made “male” to enter the kingdom, is among the clearest markers of its distance from the apostolic Gospel.

Why It Is Not Apostolic and Not Scripture

The Gospel of Thomas was not received into the canon of the New Testament, and its exclusion was not arbitrary. Several reasons converge. First, it is pseudonymous and late: not the work of the apostle whose name it bears, and (in its present form) a second-century composition, well after the apostolic age (Patterson and Robinson 1998). Second, its theology is at variance with the apostolic faith: it has no Passion, no Resurrection, no cross as saving event; it offers salvation by secret knowledge and the discovery of the divine self, a soteriology the Church rejected as gnostic; and it lacks the confession of Christ crucified and risen that is the heart of the Gospel (Meyer 1992; cf. Christology). Third, it was not received by the Church: the early Church, which knew of “Thomas” gospels and named them among the rejected and heretical writings (so the lists of suspect books, and the suspicion attaching to texts circulating under apostolic names in gnostic circles), did not include it among the Scriptures (the patristic and canonical reception; Patterson and Robinson 1998). The Church’s discernment here is the same exercised toward the Acts of Thomas: a text bearing the apostle’s name but carrying a theology the Church did not confess was set outside the canon (see The Acts of Thomas; Holy Scripture).

Not the Basis of the Apostle’s Veneration

It must be said plainly, because the modern association of the name is so strong: the Gospel of Thomas has nothing to do with the Church’s veneration of the apostle Thomas. The Church honors Thomas for what the canonical Gospel of John records — his loyalty, his doubt, his confession “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28) — and for the tradition of his eastern mission and martyrdom; it does not honor him for, or on the basis of, the gnostic sayings-collection that borrowed his name. The veneration of Thomas predates the recovery of the Gospel of Thomas by nineteen centuries and rests on entirely different foundations: the Gospel, the Pentecostarion, the mission tradition, the relic-cult. The gnostic text is a borrower of the apostle’s name, not a source of his honor; confusing the two — as popular writing sometimes does, treating “the Gospel of Thomas” as if it gave us the authentic apostle or a “lost” apostolic Christianity — inverts the actual relation. The apostle is known from the canon; the gnostic gospel is known only by its borrowing of his name (Patterson and Robinson 1998; Meyer 1992).

The Modern Fascination

Since its publication, the Gospel of Thomas has drawn intense scholarly and popular interest, sometimes presented as a “fifth gospel” that opens a window on a suppressed, more mystical or egalitarian early Christianity (Patterson and Robinson 1998, whose title reflects this framing). Some of this interest is legitimate historical scholarship: the text is a genuine and important witness to second-century Christian diversity and to the sayings-tradition of Jesus, and its parallels to the Synoptics are studied for what they may show about the transmission of Jesus’ words (Patterson and Robinson 1998; Meyer 1992). But the popular framing — that the Gospel of Thomas recovers a lost apostolic or authentic Jesus suppressed by the Church — goes well beyond the evidence and rests on the gnostic theology the Church rejected for reasons of substance, not mere power (Meyer 1992). For an Orthodox reader, the text is to be understood as what it is: a second-century gnostic sayings-collection of real historical interest and no doctrinal authority, bearing the apostle’s name without being his work, and not to be confused with the apostle the Church venerates. The Gospel of Thomas belongs to the study of gnosticism and of early Christian literature; the apostle Thomas belongs to the Gospel, the liturgy, and the Church’s veneration — and the two must not be run together.

References

The Gospel of Thomas. In The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson. 3rd rev. ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990. (Coptic text in translation; the incipit “Didymos Judas Thomas.”)
Meyer, Marvin. The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. (Translation, introduction, and notes; the gnostic character and the Oxyrhynchus fragments.)
Patterson, Stephen J., and James M. Robinson. The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998. (Date, character, and the modern reception.)
The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. (John 20:28, the canonical basis of the apostle’s veneration.)