The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Thomas
While most scholars do not go this far, the Jesus Seminar treats the Gospel of Thomas as an independent source.62 Of the surviving works that we call “gospels” that were not accepted into the canon, the one thought to contain the largest amount of early tradition is the sayings Gospel of Thomas. This optimism seems likely correct, but if the post-canonical works include little of value, it could be true without saying much. More than likely, Thomas does contain some reliable traditions besides where it draws on the canonical Gospels (or, on some views, their sources); but given clearly later elements in Thomas alongside them, it is clear that much of Thomas is not original.63 For most scholars, the later elements in Thomas bring into question how much we can be sure of the elements that are impossible for us to date.
Most scholars today agree that even the Gospel of Thomas in its present form (some argue as many as one-third of its sayings) involves gnostic influence, 64 even if it is less gnostic than many later documents. This state of affairs contrasts with the canonical Gospels, especially the Synoptics, which lack clearly gnostic elements. These canonical Gospels often retain Palestinian Jewish figures of speech, customs, and so forth (sometimes in spite of their authors’ own tendencies) that point to early Palestinian tradition (see later chapters in this book). Although even the most obscure of Greek philosophical schools in this period stand well documented among our ancient sources, we lack evidence for full-blown gnosticism before the second century (although its constituent parts, such as Middle Platonism, were already evolving, as we have noted).65 Thus Thomas represents a late document compared with the canonical Gospels.66
As in the case of the gnostic gospels in general, Thomas belongs to a different genre than the canonical gospels.67 On the assumption that Q (common material behind both Matthew and Luke) is purely a sayings source, some wish to make Thomas as early as Q. But this argument depends on a disputed (though defensible) major premise and an indefensible, implicit minor premise. I address both more fully below, but let me comment on them briefly at this relevant point. First, not all scholars accept “Q” (though I accept it as very probable and employ it as a working hypothesis in this book), and not all who do so accept it as purely a sayings source.68 But the second, implicit premise is the more astonishing one. Sayings collections existed for over a millennium before “Q” and for centuries afterward. Why must one first-century sayings source invite us to date Thomas (but not the many later gnostic sayings sources) to the same period?
Against a first-century date for Thomas is also the recognition, with probably the majority of scholars today, that Thomas in its current form depends on the Synoptics. This is because Thomas has parallels to every stratum of Gospel tradition (including John and distinctively Matthean redaction) and some of its sayings follow others solely because of the sequence in the canonical Gospels.69 Such dependence may limit how much we can rely on Thomas as an independent source.70 If Thomas or a collection that grew into Thomas existed in earlier stages,71 it seems to me that trying to uncover these stages invites as much caution as it would if we tried to uncover preliminary stages in, say, Mark’s Gospel — what most scholars today would consider a speculative exercise (see below our comments on stages within “Q”).
Some scholars have gone further, reconstructing a specifically late-second-century date for Thomas. This thesis remains disputed, and I do not rest my more general argument on it; the consensus dating is already over a century after Jesus’ execution, outside personal memory of the eyewitnesses, so adding an additional generation does not really change our point much. Nevertheless, it is a thesis currently under discussion and illustrates a possible milieu for the finished gospel.
Noting commonly recognized parallels with second-century Syrian ideas,72 Nicholas Perrin recently reverted this Coptic document back into Syriac. Although “back translation” is always precarious, in this case it produced what appears to be a startling discovery: all but three of the couplets in the Gospel of Thomas are linked by 500 catchwords73 (such links being a common practice in Syriac and other sources).74 (Syriac puns often occur in adjacent verses as well;75 for example, “fire” and “light” are similar Syriac terms.)76 Thus Perrin argues that the work as we have it is clearly an “organic unity,”77 composed (at least in its present form) all at one time.78 In itself this discovery would not necessarily render Thomas late; it suggests, in fact, that the work is at least somewhat earlier than our earliest Coptic example of it.79
What is more troubling for an “early Thomas” hypothesis is that Thomas bears numerous characteristics of Syriac Christianity from the second half of the second century, more than of a Palestinian Jewish milieu well over a century earlier. Worse yet, the Gospel of Thomas sometimes follows the sequence and content of Tatian’s Diatessaron (and other Syrian tradition from that period or later).80 It sometimes shares readings with the Diatessaron that do not appear in the Greek manuscripts.81 In some cases where some have regarded Thomas’ readings as earlier than the canonical Gospels, they instead reflect precisely the later Syrian tradition (even to the mix of second and third person in Thomas 54).82 Tatian’s Diatessaron is a harmony of our four canonical Gospels dating to c. 170 CE (i.e., from shortly before Irenaeus was defending the church’s commitment to these four Gospels).83 If the Gospel of Thomas follows Tatian’s Diatessaron, it would stem from some time after c. 170 CE.84 In this case it could be assigned safely to the last quarter of the second century — roughly a century after the average date assigned to the canonical Gospels by critical scholars. This is the very latest at which one could possibly date this work, given most scholars’ dating of P.Oxy. 1 (which attests it) to 200 CE.85
Against this conclusion, we could argue that Tatian and Thomas may simply reflect a common Syriac tradition.86 Though the points of common sequence might suggest more than a common oral tradition, granting a common oral source would allow an earlier date than dependence on the Diatessaron would require. This solution is a possible one, but Perrin’s most important observation would nevertheless remain. We would still have a Syriac provenance (probably not before the mid-second century) and dependence on mid- to late-second-century Syriac tradition, not the original Jesus tradition.87 Even without dependence on the Diatessaron, most scholars date Thomas in its present form to the mid-second century;88 dependence would simply make the case firmer and a few decades later. By contrast, very few scholars would try to date the Synoptics or John this late.89
Perhaps not surprisingly, the gospel’s closing paragraph sounds more like some Greek philosophers than like the Jewish teacher and prophet we hear in the canonical Gospels. When Peter insists that Mary Magdalene, as a woman, is unworthy of spiritual life, Jesus responds, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”90 One might compare such thinking in the first-century Jewish Middle Platonist thinker Philo, whose world of thought is almost universally recognized to differ substantially from Jesus’ Palestinian Jewish milieu. Wishing to praise the intellectual ability of the empress Livia, Philo remarks that she became male in her intellect.91 In contrast to some popular portrayals of this second-century gospel today, Thomas, like Philo, was no feminist. Nor do such remarks belong to the same conceptual world as the Palestinian Jewish sage and prophet of Synoptic tradition.
Some argue that the original Gospel of Thomas lacked all the late material found in its present form. One cannot of course rule out this possibility, but this approach’s appeal to a hypothetical source constitutes a tacit admission that no concrete documentary evidence supports the “early Thomas” idea. (It offers the same problem as arguments for stages in Q: it becomes more speculative than most scholars can find persuasive.) All the concrete evidence that we do have suggests a later work simply drawing on some earlier sources (at least including the canonical Gospels). Moreover, if we do accept the catchwords thesis, they are so deeply embedded in the work’s structure as to render quite difficult any attempt to reconstruct a mid-first-century original.
In some cases, Thomas may appeal to scholars of a particular bent today because of its noneschatological approach.92 Some of the same scholars who appeal to Thomas, however, are fairly skeptical of much historical tradition in John’s Gospel,93 which also emphasizes the present experience of God much more than the future kingdom.94 In such cases, the double standard is telling, for our textual evidence for John is earlier.