The Gospel of Thomas is part of the Nag Hammadi Library, as the texts found in the clay pot are called. It contains 114 sayings, each beginning with the introduction “Jesus said…”.
However, some of these statements are contrary to Jewish traditions. The apostles Peter and Matthew, for example, are described as unable to understand the true meaning of the deed and words of Christ. And such descriptions are inadmissible for the canonical concepts, where all the apostles are absolutized as faithful followers and receivers of Christ’s teachings.
The Gospel of Thomas begins thus: “These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which Didymus Judas Thomas* wrote down: And he said: ‘Whoever finds the interpretation of these words shall not know death.’
According to modern scholars, the apostle Thomas is not the true author of the gospel. Who actually wrote it remains a mystery to this day. There is even a doubt that the “author” is not actually a single person, but several different disciples of Thomas. However, one thing is certain.
The Nag Hammadi Collection of Manuscripts was the work of followers of Early Christianity and Gnosticism. Scholars of ancient texts point out that although it was discovered along with other apocryphal texts in Egypt, the Gospel of Thomas may not have been part of the collection. One reason is that it is very different in structure and content from the rest of the scriptures. The other – that it is dated by some researchers much later than the rest of the scrolls – as late as around 340 AD.
After the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas in 1945, scholars found
that three different fragments of Greek text previously found in Oxyrhynchus (known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri) are in fact part of it. They are believed to have been written between 130 and 250 AD. Some researchers hypothesize that in fact the earliest fragments of the apocryphal gospel containing sayings of Christ were written as early as the 60s AD. Their colleagues, on the other hand, say that this happened around 100-110 AD. Still others, as already mentioned, date the text as late as 340 AD. Therefore, to this day, there is debate as to whether the Gospel of Thomas is an early Christian text, or whether it was written after the flowering of Gnosticism.
The early Christian theologian and philosopher Origen mentions in his texts the Gospel of Thomas as: “one of the unorthodox apocryphal gospels” known to him. According to some scholars, the Gospel of Thomas is the predecessor of the Gospel of John, whose author replicated its content point by point, and thus the two gospels entered into an absent dispute. In the Gospel of John, in fact, the apostle Thomas has a major role and is described as an apistos – an unbeliever. Hence the popular expression, “You are (like) Thomas-infidels.” But other researchers suggest the exact opposite – that the Gospel of Thomas was written long after that of John, which is part of the scriptures recognized by the Church.
One of the essential differences between what is written in the canonical books and what is written in the Gospel of Thomas is rooted in the fact that
the Thomas manuscript does not wait for the return of Jesus after the crucifixion, but boldly proclaims that “the kingdom of God is already here for those who understand the secret message of Jesus.”
Elaine Pagels (an American historian of religion) points out that the Gospel of Thomas proclaims the kingdom of God not as a final destination but as a state of transformed consciousness. Its role is to bring people to a deeper self-knowledge, which is the main goal. Readers are encouraged to seek God within, not outside of themselves.
One of the passages reporting the words of Jesus reads: “The kingdom is within you and it is outside of you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known and you will know that you are the sons of the living father”.
Another quotes:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring out what’s inside you, what you don’t bring out will destroy you.”
As for Jesus himself, he is also different. In the Gospel of Thomas, the son of God introduces himself through his words to one of us, saying: “Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me, and I will become that person, and secrets will be revealed to him.”
According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is our twin brother, not an authority and teacher as described in the canonical gospels and the Bible. And we can all discover God within ourselves and realize that we are God’s children, just like Jesus himself. Heretical, esoteric thoughts.
The original Coptic scroll conveying the Gospel of Thomas is currently owned by the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt, Manuscripts Department.
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*Didymus and Thomas mean “twin” (a number of Gnostic texts present Thomas as the twin brother of Jesus).
**The Gospel of Thomas, quoting words attributed to Jesus, should not be confused with the so-called Children’s Gospel of Thomas, which tells about the childhood of the son of God.
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