RELIGIOUS BOOKS
The Gospel of Thomas
BY HUGH MONTEFIORE HE Dead Sea Scrolls have stolen the headlines I from other important and perhaps even more important recent discoveries which bear upon Christian origins. One of the reasons for this has been the delay in making these finds public. Even in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947, one of the scrolls was not published until 1956. A later great discovery, the earliest extant papyri containing much of the New Testament and written in the second century, is in the pos- session of M. Bodmer, a private collector, and is still zealously (one might say jealously) secreted in Geneva.
An even more important find was made in Nag 1-lammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945, a fourth- or fifth-century coptic and gnostic library containing some forty-eight writings in thirteen codices or books. One of these books, which found its way to Europe, contains the lost 'Gospel of Truth,' written by Valentinus in the second century; This was made public in 1953 and sheds important light on the origins of Christian gnosticism. In 1956 the first volume of the coptic texts which remain in Egypt was published in Cairo; and there is much more to come. This first volume includes the lost 'Gospel of Thomas' which consists of a series of over a hundred 'Sayings of Jesus.' The 'Gospel of Thomas' has now been' published with an English translation.* While the translation is not Perfect (and it is maddening that the system of numeration differs from that of Doresse's -French translation), this version will be a fascinating and invaluable tool in the scholar's hands. Some of these Sayings of Jesus overlap with gospel material, others have gospel overtones, others cor- respond to sayings of Jesus found elsewhere, while there is quite a lot that is previously unknown. 'This exciting find must be viewed against the background of other evidence about Jesus.
The Fourth Gospel ends • with these words : 'And the are also many other things that Jesus did, the which, if they should he written every one, I suppose the world itself could not contain them.' An exaggeration, of course: and yet it is true that the four Gospels contain only a selection of 'the words and deeds of Jesus. The formation of the scriptural canon gave authority to the canonical Gospels, but it did not exclude the possibility of finding elsewhere sonic authentic sayings of Jesus. There are many sources for such 'agrapha; and the difficulty lies rather in assessing their authen- ticity. A saying may be found in some part of the New Testament other than the Gospels, or it may be written in the margin of an ancient Gospel *THE CIOSPEI. ACCORDING .10 THOMAS. Edited and translated by A. Guilluumont. H.-C'h. Ptieeh. G. Quispel. W. Tin and I- likssah 'Abd Al Masih. (Collins. I8s.) manuscript. There are sayings of Jesus recorded in Rabbinic traditions, in the writings of the Christian Fathers and even in Muslim sources. And there were many 'apocryphal gospels,' that is, gospels excluded from the scriptural canon. Sonic of these were written early and are extant only in small fragments, such as the Gospel to the Hebrews. Others are later compositions, and, though they contain much that is fantastic, there is always the possibility that they include some genuine material from unknown sources. And there are fragments of papyri, dug up from the rubbish tips of ancient Egypt, which may be portions of such unknown gospels. It is hard to know just how much of all this wealth of material is authentic. A scholar who has recently reviewed the evidence regards only twenty-one sayings as having a high claim to authenticity; and many would consider that his estimate is too liberal.
The 'Gospel of Thomas' k an apocryphal gospel probably written in Greek about the mid-second century, although the newly-found coptic codex belongs to the fourth or fifth century. We need not take seriously its attribution to Thomas the Apostle. In Syria many strange legends grew up about Thomas, who was identified with the Jude of the Gospels and who was even supposed to be the identical twin brother of Jesus (Thomas means twin). Some of the 114 sayings of this gospel magnify Thomas and may be the product of this mbvement. Another saying exalts James, the Lord's brother, who became head of the Jerusalem Church. This reflects an earlier stage of develop- ment and points' to the connection, already made by some scholars, between early Jewish Christian- ity and' incipient gnosticism. Further sayings exhibit the well-known characteristics of gnosti- cism: esotericism, spiritual knowledge, philosophi- cal speculation, misogyny and mistrust of sex; and these sayings, together with those which evidently
reflect later Christian doctrine, are clearly un- authentic. They are useful for the study of early Christian history, but they shed no light on the words of Jesus himself.
There are three categories of sayings in the 'Gospel of Thomas' which are specially relevant to the quest for the historical Jesus. Firstly, there are the words of Jesus which correspond to Gospel sayings but which have subtle differences. Among these the parables are the most interesting. Scholars have for some time suggested that Jesus's parables were originally not allegories, and that the apocalyptic element in many of them was added later by the primitive Church. Now, in the 'Gospel of Thomas' many such parables are told 'straight,' without application, allegory, or apocalyptic colouring. Comforting for the scholars, no doubt; and this further suggests that the 'Gospel of Thomas' may include some material even more primitive than portions of the canonical Gospels.
Secondly, there are sayings which have been found elsewhere in extra-canonical sources. In- deed, a papyrus containing stories found in the 'Gospel of Thomas' was actually found at Oxyrhyncus in 1897, although the source of these fragments was unknown and attempts to restore the mutilated text are now seen to have been wide of the mark. One such saying is this : Lift the stone, and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there am I. And there are sayings in the new gospel not found at Oxyrhyncus but reason- ably attested elsewhere, such as this : He that is near me is near the fire; he that is far from me is far from the Kingdom.
Thirdly, there are sayings which are not found elsewhere and which do not bear obvious marks of later tradition or marks of gnostic ideas. Of the forty or so Words of Jesus unattested elsewhere not very many fall into this category. There is the saying : Become passers-by; and there is a striking parable : The Kingdom of the [Father] is like a woman who was carrying a jar full of meal. While she was walking [on a] distant road, the handle of the jar broke. The meal streamed out behind her on the road. She did not know [it], she had noticed no accident. After she came into her house, she put down the jar, she found it empty.
The 'Gospel of Thomas' certainly contains material from earlier sources, possibly from the Gospels to the Hebrews and to the Egyptians. Its connection with the Fourth Gospel seems slight : its relationship to the synoptic gospels needs further study. The discovery of the new gospel, with its use of earlier sayings collec- tions, strengthens the arguments for the existence of the hypothetical document Q, composed of material common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark; and Q must have been written in the Fifties, little more than twenty years after the death of Jesus. Much work remains to be done, and the full weight of 'higher criticism' still needs to be brought to bear upon the new text; linguistic study (including translatability into Aramaic, the language which Jesus spoke), form criticism, literary criticism, theological criticism. The 'Gos- pel of Thomas' adds little or nothing to our know- ledge of Jesus's character. But it cannot fail to shed light on the early history of the Christian Church, and parts of it will bring inspiration to minds which have been dulled by over-familiarity with the canonical Gospels.
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