Religion: St. Thomas’ Gospel

Published last week was a book so important to New Testament studies that it was released simultaneously in Europe and the U.S. in five languages and six editions. Scholars have been waiting for it since 1946, when word went through the learned world that jars containing 13 leather-bound papyrus manuscripts—part of a 4th century Gnostic library—had been found in a sand-covered tomb in Upper Egypt. Laymen had been waiting for the book since last spring, when Swiss Theologian Oscar Cullmann, in a lecture at Manhattan’s Union Theological Seminary, quoted some tantalizing excerpts from the “sayings of Jesus” contained in one of the volumes, which Cullmann compared in importance with the Dead Sea Scrolls (TIME, March 30).

Now the full translation by five scholars* of all 114 “sayings”—together with the Coptic-language text—has been published as The Gospel According to Thomas (Harper; $2).

The Evil Creator. The manuscript of this so-called Gospel attributed to “Doubting Thomas,” the disciple who insisted on verifying Jesus’ bodily resurrection by touching his wounds (John 20: 25-28), is dated somewhere between A.D. 350 and A.D. 425. But, say the translators, the original “goes back much earlier. We are dealing here with a translation or an adaptation in Sahidic Coptic of a work the primitive text of which must have been produced in Greek about 140 A.D., and which was based on even more ancient sources.”

Though it includes many word-for-word quotes and echoes from the New Testament, plus many new sayings attributed to Jesus, the Thomas Gospel is not a candidate for inclusion in the Bible. While some of the sayings may well be genuine, others are strongly influenced by Gnosticism. And Gnosticism, in its various forms (including Manichaeism) was one of the chief heresies fought by the early Christian church. Basic to all Gnostic sects was the belief that the world was evil, created by a bad god for the express purpose of imprisoning the divine spark which had somehow become vulnerable. Human beings who harbored some of this spark had secret knowledge (gnosis) and could be saved from the world trap by an emissary of the Divine whose mission was to gather up the scattered sparks and smuggle them out of the created universe to Paradise.

The Empty Jar. Gnostic thought existed long before Christ, but it adapted itself so well to Christianity that the subtlest and toughest Christian minds worked overtime to combat its combination of mystery, myth and spiritual snob appeal. When orthodox Christianity triumphed at last, the writings of the Gnostics were suppressed so thoroughly that most present-day knowledge of Gnosticism relies on the anti-Gnostic polemics of the fathers. The Thomas Gospel will widen knowledge—and speculation—about Gnostic doctrine.

Part of the Gnostic’s special concern seems to have been self-knowledge, an emphasis that appears at least twice in the Thomas Gospel: Jesus said: Whoever knows the All but fails to know himself lacks everything . . . But the Kingdom is within you and it is without you. If you will know yourselves, then you will be known and you will know that you are the sons of the Living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty and you are poverty.

Some of the similes are familiar, e.g., The Kingdom of the Father is like a woman who has taken a little leaven and has hidden it in dough and has made large loaves of it. Whoever has ears let him hear. But others have a surprising new emphasis, like the saying which immediately follows the above and seems to indicate that one can lose one’s chance to enter the Kingdom through ignorance: 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 the jar down, she found it empty.

What is the meaning of Jesus’ well-known words about children and the King dom of Heaven? In a cryptic “saying,” the Gospel of Thomas seems to suggest that it has something to do with psychological unity: Jesus saw children who were being suckled. He said to his disciples: These children who are being suckled are like those who enter the Kingdom. They said to Him: Shall we then, being children, enter the Kingdom? Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one . . . then shall you enter the Kingdom.

A similar theme occurs in conjunction with a familiar biblical echo: The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a little child of seven days about the place of Life, and he will live.For many who are first shall become last and they shall be come a single one . . . When you make the two one, you shall become sons of Man, and when you say: “Mountain, be moved,” it will be moved.

Fire upon the World. Gnosticism was strongly influenced by Oriental and Greek ideas, with their circular conception of time, as opposed to Judaism’s linear time. The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us how our end will be. Jesus said: Have you then discovered the beginning so that you inquire about the end? For where the beginning is, there shall be the end. Blessed is he who shall stand at the beginning, and he shall know the end and he shall not taste death.

Gnostic contempt for creation—the exact opposite of the Christian belief that the Creator—hence creation—is good, though flawed by man’s disobedient self-will—is clear in this passage: If the flesh has come into existence because of the spirit, it is a marvel; but if the spirit has come into existence because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. But I marvel at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.

Christians will treasure many of these sayings for their restatements of familiar themes (It is impossible for a man to mount two horses and to stretch two bows, and it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters), as well as for their beauty and ring: Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I guard it until the world is afire.

* A. Guillaumont, Henri-Charles Puech, Gilles Quispel, Walter Till, Yassah ‘Abd al Masih.