Within Reason - #68 Andrew Mark Henry - What is The Gospel of Thomas?

Episode Date: May 19, 2024

Andrew Mark Henry is a scholar of religious studies. His research focus is early Christianity and late Roman religion. He earned his PhD at Boston University. His YouTube channel is "Religion for Breakfast". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Mark Henry, welcome back to the show. Alex, thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure to speak to you again. Today we're going to be talking about the Gospel of Thomas, perhaps the most famous of the non-canonical early gospels discovered in the Nakamadi Library. I imagine that most people listening will have at least heard of the Gospel of Thomas. They'll be aware that there's this text that's floating around

that is something, there's a kind of Da Vinci Code vibe about it, this sort of secretive gospel that was banned from the text. the Bible, that kind of stuff. What is the Gospel of Thomas? Sure. I think for a lot of these things, the hype is overblown. Some things are just so over-exaggerated that you wonder why it's so popular. But when it comes to the Gospel of Thomas, it honestly deserves the hype. It is absolutely fascinating. What I find so interesting about it is that it's a sayings gospel. It's pretty short. It's just 114 sayings. Most of them begin with the phrase Jesus said. So it's almost like a book of Proverbs where Jesus says, you know, sometimes one, two sentence long

sayings that convey hidden knowledge in many respects. I think we can get a really good sense of what the Gospel of Thomas is by the opening sentence, the prologue. It basically says this is the Gospel according to Thomas, the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke, and didomis Judas Thomas wrote down. So right there we have Sayings Gospel, saying is gospel, but also we have this sense of hidden knowledge. And then the name of the gospel, the main figure here did a misjudice Thomas. So 114 sayings, so no historical framework. So we say gospel, but it's really nothing like the Gospels that we find in the New Testament, where there's a historical framework where, at least in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus is born,

and then he tells parables, and there's these stories, he meets other people, and then he's crucified, then there's a resurrection. No historical framework in the Gospel Thomas, no exorcisms, no miracles, no crucifixion, no resurrection. So it's really quite different in that respect. But the focus is on hidden knowledge, and that's what I think is so fascinating about this text. So this text is discovered, buried in the desert, in a cave in Egypt. We've already spoken in my last episode about the discovery of the Narcumadi Library, sort of discovered by accident a bunch of ancient Christian texts, including these non-canonical gospels. Interestingly, the gospel of Thomas is often called a Gnostic Gospel. And there's a sense in which both of those words might

actually be a misnomer. Nosticism is a loose term that scholars use to describe a set of Christian beliefs in the early church. Although a lot of scholars these days think that it's a an unhelpful term because it sort of can denote a wide variety of different beliefs. But Nosticism usually has something to do with belief in like an evil demiurgic creator of the material world who's separate from the God of the universe. That doesn't seem to be present in the Gospel of Thomas. And as you say, the word gospel has come to mean a sort of narrative of Jesus' life. And this is just a list of a list of his sayings.

I want you to tell us a little bit about whether you think the Gospel of Thomas, should be called a Gnostic Gospel, why it is, if it shouldn't be, but also a little bit about the actual sort of origin of the text, when you think it might have been written, where you think it came from. Sure. So it was famously discovered, like you said, among the Nag Hammadi codices. So this was a large collection of texts, mostly early Christian texts, but also texts like Plato's Republic, for example, was found in the Nagamadi codices, found in Nag Hammadi. which is a town in central Egypt, back in the 1940s, I believe it was 1945. The actual discovery of them, the guy who says he discovered them, his story changed

multiple times. So there's this kind of almost romantic story of them being found while he was digging for fertilizer. I've become convinced that it's probably a grave good that was looted from a grave. The scholar Nicola Denzi-Lewis recently published an article basically saying, we could think of the Nagamati codices as books of the dead, where they were buried with a wealthy patron of some sort as part of his grave goods. That's one going theory, but I think we should have a healthy dose of skepticism of how these texts were found. And there's a good chance they

were looted. But the Gospel of Thomas was one of these texts written in Coptic, which is an Egyptian language based heavily on the Greek language. So it uses the Greek alphabet with a few additional letters so you can pronounce some Egyptian phonemes. And it was in a codex with a few other books like the Gospel of Philip, which possibly is a Valentinian text, another one of these early Christian movements that are sometimes called Gnostic. So it was in this compendium, discovered in 1945. The thing is, before this discovery, we knew of the Gospel of Thomas. So back In the late 1800s and early 1900s, an archaeologist discovered a few Greek fragments of a text that at the time we didn't realize was the Gospel of Thomas, but we had a few fragments of

these sayings. Like I said, it's the Sayings Gospel. We had some sayings that said Jesus said, and then a saying that doesn't quite match with what we have in the New Testament Gospels. A few of these, a lot of these sayings actually overlap with the synoptic gospels. So a huge chunk of the Gospel of Thomas, upwards to like 50% of the text, have parallels in the Synoptic Gospels, and the rest of them are otherwise unattested. So we had discovered chunks of the Gospel of Thomas not really realizing what it was. Then there's also references to the Gospel of Thomas by early Christian authors who did not like the text, who viewed as heretical.

So a Bishop of Rome, Hippolytus mentions the Gospel of Thomas in 232. CE. So already there's a pretty early reference to a gospel of Thomas, and then he quotes it. Here to find out that his quote is a little bit corrupted, but basically matches with what one of the sayings in the Coptic version found at Nakamati. So there were hints of this text before the discovery, but the discovery of it in 1945 obviously, you know, opened up the world to this, to this fascinating text. And interestingly, the Greek fragments match the Coptic text pretty well. So the going theory is that the text was originally composed. in Greek and then was translated into Coptic. And we find this text in Egypt because the climate

just preserves papyrus so well. But there's a good chance that this text was circulating throughout the Christian world. And most scholars think it originates in Syria because it seems to have some overlaps with Syrian Christianity. Yeah. So the Coptic translation discovered in Egypt is the only complete version, if I'm not mistaken, we have from antiquity. It's the first time that we have the complete text, and the Coptic version itself probably dates from about when it's maybe like three, 400 AD or something? 300's probably.

So the Nakamati codices, the codices themselves date to the fourth century. Some of them, you know, some of the book covers, for example, were created in similar manner to paper mache, where you're kind of layering layers of papyrus. when you look at these layers, some of them are actually reference, are letters between monks. So there's a strong possibility that these codices were manufactured in a nearby monastery. And we can, through various means, date these to the 300th, the 4th century. But the actual text, the Gospel of Thomas, is much earlier. So we can have the 232 CE when Hippolytus references it.

It definitely dates before then. and it probably dates well before then to the early second century. Some scholars argue that there might have been a core of the Gospel of Thomas that dates back well into the first century. April Deconic and a scholar of early Christianity famously argues that there's an Aramaic core, she calls it, a kernel of the Gospel of Thomas, that might date back to like the time of Paul. Pretty controversial perspective, I don't think it's widely accepted, but it's, you know, it's most of, not most of it, but a large percentage. of the text has parallels with the synoptic gospels, which date to the first century. So at least chunks of it date back to the first century, but the compilation of it must have happened sometime in the second century. Yeah, so we can actually date the physical text of the Coptic translation,

and we know that's quite early, but of course this is just thought to be at least a translation of an even earlier text, probably written in Greek in Syria. Fascinating. I mean, you can understand why when this is discovered it sort of blows open this this wealth of interest and like you said it's not overblown and it's because you can sit down and read the gospel of thomas all the way through in i don't know maybe like half an hour or something i mean i just read it i never read it all the way through yeah i mean it's it's it's only a few pages long i read it on an airplane as is where i do so much of my reading at the moment and i must say that i i found it as baffling as i found it Interesting. And maybe we can go through some of what it actually says, because a lot of the time these conversations and podcasts, they're really interesting. We talk about the history of the text. We talk about its formation. But not a lot of attention is actually given to the contents. You've already talked about the prolog. It opens up. These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and didomus Judas Thomas wrote them down. Within those few words, that single sentence, there's already so much to unpack. This is the opening of the so-called gospel. The secret saying,

that Jesus spoke, implying that there's a public ministry, but also a secret ministry that he gives to those closest to him, that Didomus Judas Thomas wrote down. Who is this Thomas figure? Is it the Thomas, the famous Doubting Thomas apostle? And if so, it seems to be, because he's referred to as Didymus, what is this Didymus business? I mean, even in the synoptic gospels, Thomas, doubting Thomas, is also known as didimus and always translated as such. where can we begin with this? What's the most interesting thing to you to start unpacking here? Sure. I mean, Thomas becomes this major figure, at least for some segments of Christianity, as early as the second century. I do believe it's the same Thomas mentioned in the Gospels. So he has this most famous, his claim to fame is the Gospel of John. So Gospel of John chapter 20, you have the skeptical Thomas, the doubting Thomas, where the other apostles say, oh, Jesus is resurrected. And he's like, unless I, you know, touch the wounds on Jesus, I'm not going to believe. And then he does. But so, what's so interesting though is very little from that story gets packaged into his later persona as

like a hero of the faith for so many Christians except for the figure himself. What's interesting about his name is that Thomas derives from the Aramaic word for twin. So something like Tauma or Toma is the Aramaic and when you transliterate that into Greek you add an S ending to that word so you have Tomas and then the word didomis is the Greek word for twin. So in the Gospel of John, it says Thomas, who is called the twin, and you can see the author of John is translating this for his Greek-speaking audience. So Thomas, who is called the twin, didamis, which I just, it's kind of funny because if the audience could read both Aramaic and Greek, they would see kind of the double pun in his name, you know, the twin who was called the twin. So we have this kind of interesting name, some might even say an epithet or a nickname, maybe it wasn't his actual name. and then he somehow gets tied to this figure, Judas.

So not Judas is scarriot, but in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is said to have several siblings. James is the most famous one, but there's also this figure Jude or Judas who's referenced. And then you have the book of Jude, who in the beginning of the book of Jude, calls himself the brother of James. So early Christians were kind of tying lines, you know, drawing lines between these figures. Okay, Jesus had a brother named James and a brother named Jude, and Jude calls himself brother of James.

therefore this is all, you know, the same guy. And then they somehow, it's not really well attested how this happened, but they somehow equated this Jude, brother of Jesus, with Thomas, the literal brother of Jesus. So some early Christians argued that Thomas was the twin brother of Jesus in a very literal sense. There's two other early Christian texts, the book of Thomas, the contender and the acts of Thomas, that both. reference Thomas as a twin to Jesus. So I believe it's in, sorry, I've looked at my notes here. I believe it's the book of Thomas. The book of Thomas, the contender, is a kind of philosophical dialogue between Jesus and Thomas, and Jesus explicitly says, you are my twin. And then the acts of Thomas, this is a fantastic story about Thomas going on a missionary journey out to India.

And in this story, there's a, that's actually kind of funny side story where there's a bridegroom who walks up and sees his bride talking to Jesus, but the bridegroom thinks it's Thomas talking to Jesus, and Jesus has to correct him. Oh, no, I'm not Thomas, I'm his brother, Jesus. So they actually get confused in the acts of Thomas. So it's hard to tell if this Jesus twin theme is already present in the Gospel of Thomas.

The Gospel of Thomas is earlier than the Book of Thomas and earlier than the Acts of Thomas. but there are hints that there might be this theme of twinship bubbling under the surface of the Gospel of Thomas, even though it's not explicit. We'll get back to Andrew in just a moment, but first, do you like reading? If you're anything like me, your book list is exponentially expanding, and there are at least dozens of books that you've been meaning to get around to

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all at the click of a button. Try it out for yourself at shortform.com forward slash O'Connor. And the first 100 people to use this link will get a free trial and a 20% discount. And that said, back to Andrew. The interesting thing is that it's always translated. Like you say, if Thomas is just the sort of Aramaic essentially for twin, and it just so happens that for whatever reason that's the origin of his name, the fact that the gospel authors, or at least John, sees it fit to say, Thomas, who is also called Didymus, translating it as if to say, it's not just his name, but. but this is like a title. I mean, it could be a nickname. It could just be that they looked like each other.

And so, you know, this is Jesus' twin because they happen to look so similar, like you say. It could be that Thomas is actually Jesus' brother. As you say, it's recognized that Jesus had brothers. The problem is, of course, that if he is actually Jesus' twin, not just his brother, not just a look-alike, but actually his twin,

at least one very important doctrine within at least some forms of Christianity, is maybe undermined and at least, you know, it changes our perception of it. And that is, of course, the virgin birth. If Mary gives birth to Jesus as a virgin, and this is part of the reason that we can trust his divinity and one of the signs that this is the divine Christ, then if he had a twin brother, born at the same time, then either the virgin birth can't have happened, or if it did, then Thomas, the apostle, is also born of a virgin, which seems to quite upset the doctrine, too.

So, I don't know, like, do you think that these ways of thinking about Thomas, the fact that Thomas is so consistently called didomus in any way challenges that doctrine of the virgin birth? This has been a problem for orthodox Christianity? Well, I mean, of course we're talking about Christianity before orthodoxy. I mean, we're talking the 100 CE, and this is a time there are so many varieties of Christianity we're apparently witnessing a variety of Christianity that didn't care so much about that doctrine, or perhaps didn't even care about the nativity stories. So, you know, I don't know if it throws out the doctrine of the virgin birth, but it certainly throws into question the two most famous stories of the birth of Jesus,

the story in the gospel of Matthew and the story in the gospel of Luke, which are both very different birth stories. modern Christians and Christians throughout history try to allied them. I try to harmonize them, but they're very different. But we do have evidence from around this time that some Christians either didn't know those stories or rejected them. So Marcian is this early Christian leader, famously the founder of Marcionism, who has a gospel, which we understand to be a version of the gospel of Luke, that starts without a nativity story. So the gospel of Luke begins with the story of Jesus, and the story of John the Baptist and Elizabeth and Mary, you know, getting along.

But the gospel of Luke, whatever version Marcian had, doesn't have any of that. So that's not to say I'm necessarily drawing a direct line from Marcian to the gospel of Thomas, but we have evidence that early Christians, you know, either rejected or didn't know of this story or didn't want to include it in their gospel, at least if we're talking about Marcian. So I think it's maybe our modern perspective where we would expect a version of Christianity to cohere with modern orthodoxy when that apparently was not the case for so many Christians back then. So the concept of an identical twin might not have been so outrageous. It's also possible that the exact opposite is true in that I know that a lot of

people, especially in early Christianity, began, it seems, to revere Thomas as a very special kind of apostle. The so-called Thomasites were a community that existed. And still today, if you go to India, you find a lot of Christians who will revere the apostle Thomas, because in the Acts of Thomas is the story of Thomas bringing Christianity to India, and it's still believed to this day that he was the man that brought Christianity to India. If there were some level of real devotion to Thomas in the early church. It's possible that this identification of Thomas as Jesus's twin is emphasized in order to, you know, buttress that reverence to say that this is a very special apostle and to sort of help the Thomasites establish the importance of Thomas. I'm not

sure. It's all pretty speculative. I mean, this is all based on a label, a title. This is all based on the idea that Thomas is just called didomus. Exactly. And that's the other thing. It could literally just be that he was called didimus because he looked a bit like Jesus and nothing more. Yeah. Well, in some of these texts, particularly the book of Thomas the Contender, there's a sense

that he's not just an identical twin in looks, but in knowledge and wisdom. I have a quote here from the book of Thomas the Contender where Jesus says, Now, since it has been said that you are my twin and true companion, examine your soul. and learn who you are. And this concept of a true companion is kind of a spiritualized idea where we have like a double out there, like a primordial double version of us that is almost like a guardian spirit or like a guardian angel. Moni, the founder of Manichaeism, is said to have had a spiritual companion who would, you know,

teach him wisdom. So when we think of Thomas the Twin, it's not just in this more mundane sense of a literal biological twin, but as this spiritual figure with deep wisdom. Some scholars believe that the Gospels, and particularly the Gospel of John, are written at least in part as polemics against other forms of Christianity that were circulating at the time, and the texts are written in an attempt to dispel some of the wrong notions of Christianity that existed. The Gospel of John is, of course, completely different. from the so-called synoptic gospels, which are the other three gospels which share a great deal of

their narrative and stories, John ends up introducing a bunch of new stories, including, as you've already said, doubting Thomas. This is a story that only occurs in the gospel of John, and has Thomas be the one disciple who does not believe that Jesus has risen on testimony alone and insists on touching the wounds of Christ. What do you think of the somewhat conspiratorial sounding thesis that this story of doubting Thomas is added to the gospel of John because of the fact that there is this community of Thomasites who revere Thomas. Perhaps the gospel of Thomas is already written and already circulating. And this story is included as a polemic against Thomas to kind of embarrass him to say, no, no, this was the disciple who didn't believe. Yeah. I'm not familiar with any scholarship on that subject. I'm sure somebody has written on that. It wouldn't be surprising, though. We have a ton of evidence, even within the New Testament, that there were early Christians just constantly arguing with each other. I mean, most of Paul's authentic letters, he explicitly references opponents who are, you know, preaching a gospel that he doesn't agree with. I sometimes say that we need to, when we read the letters of Paul, we have to imagine, maybe he's not in such a strong position of authority that when he writes to some of these communities like the communities in the book in the book of Galatians, he's writing on

the back foot, like, oh, I need to try to convince these people that I'm right because they're starting to doubt me. So it's completely within the realm of possibility that there was attempts to disparage this. Whether it was in the Gospel of John itself, I'm not sure. I don't think Thomas comes off that poorly in the Gospel of John. Like he doubts, but he comes around. But within the gospel of Thomas itself, the other apostles kind of come across as idiots. Like Peter in particular, there's one saying where Jesus says, like, who do you think I am? And Peter's like, oh, you're a great angel. And then one other apostle, I think Matthew says something equally as stupid.

And then Thomas comes in and says, like, the true understanding of who Jesus is. And there's some theories that this was an attempt to disparage other apostles that might have been viewed in high regard. you know, Peter in particular, as one of the ultimate apostles, there's a chance that the Book of Revelation, so the Book of Revelation starts with a series of letters to a series of churches in Western Asia Minor, and some of the opinions that we see in those letters seem to be attempting to contradict Paul. So Paul, you know, one of the issues he was really concerned about was whether or not you can eat meat that has been sacrificed to Greco-Roman gods. and he kind of comes down on a moderate position.

Like, you probably shouldn't eat it if it's going to cause people to stumble, but it doesn't necessarily come out against it wholeheartedly. But John of Potmos, who wrote the book Revelation, comes out against it strongly. So there's some theories that the epistles in the beginning of Revelation are purposely trying to mimic the epistles to Paul, like sending them out to these churches in an attempt to disparage Paul. So there was a lot of that, even within the New Testament, and that would be perfectly in line with the Gospel of Thomas.

The story of doubting Thomas is fascinating for a few reasons. Firstly, one of the most interesting things about doubting Thomas to me is that if you look at its depiction in almost any Christian art, what is depicted, Thomas touching the wounds of Christ? Because Thomas has previously said, I will not believe until I touch the wounds of Christ. Jesus appears before him and says, come and touch my wounds.

But one thing that's never reported in the story is Thomas taking him up on the offer. It's never actually said that Thomas actually touches the wounds, which I've always found to be quite a fascinating observation about that story. Because within Nosticism and Orthodox Christianity, one of the great debates is about the physicality of Jesus and his resurrection, whether Jesus is resurrected as a physical material being or whether it's a spiritual resurrection. And there seems to be, this is one of the debates that seems to be going on throughout the Gospels. Some of the stories have Jesus doing very physical things like eating and drinking and interacting with people. But in other parts of the story, such as when Mary Magdalene discovers Jesus and he says, do not touch me. She sort of runs up to him to touch him. And he says, do not touch me, which is a quite sort of bizarre episode.

And then the Gospel of Thomas, it may, the story of doubting Thomas, sorry, it may seem that this touching the wounds indicates the physicality of Jesus, but because Thomas never actually does so, it's not as clear to me. Also, I think that it's earlier in the Gospel of John when the disciples, when it's reported that Jesus is going to sort of go and heal somebody who ends up dying, and he says, we're still going to go and the disciples say, Lord, why are we going to bother going this person's dead? And it's Thomas who's the one to convince the disciples that they should keep going. So in that case, Thomas is actually the one. seemingly with the most faith. He's the one that says, no, we should go. We should do as the Lord says and trust in him. So doubting Thomas in that instance, at least, is actually the faithful Thomas. So it's a fascinating character. And like you say, he only really gets any airtime at all in the Gospel of John. Which is why I'm quite glad that we have this separate set of traditions around Thomas to try and discover a bit more about who he is.

I sometimes, this might sound like a silly analogy, but I sometimes compare it to the impulse to write fan fiction, where when you think of a modern canon like media franchise like Star Wars or Marvel, fans have this impulse to write additional stories, especially for minor side characters. Sometimes you see an impulse to give a larger story to a side character, or you'll have the impulse to rewrite the story of a main character, put the main character into a different scenario, or write about the same scenario, but from a different perspective. and I see these exact same impulses in early Christianity where these minor side characters get their own stories.

And this is definitely the case with Thomas. We see this with the invention of other side characters like Thecla, with Paul and Thecla, who's this woman who starts to follow Paul and becomes this powerful early Christian saint in her own right. So we can kind of see this literary impulse that's very familiar to even the 21st century. Let's talk about some of the theologian. of the gospel of Thomas because when I spoke to Elaine Pagels last week, she told me that the gospel of Thomas is supposed to be a supplement to the public teachings of Jesus. So that was her

understanding. She thinks that the secret teachings and the public teaching should be reconciled and that the secret teachings are supposed to be supplementary material. However, others will look at this text and think that it essentially contradicts a lot of the message of the canonical New Testament despite sharing about what, 45% of its contents, we talked already about the idea of Gnosticism, potentially being in this text, which Elaine Pagel's thought was an interpolation. She thinks that that's not actually present in Thomas. And there's definitely no evidence of something like an evil demiurge, but the idea of revelation coming from within, the idea of being able to get authority from spiritual

reflection. The idea that you are saved not through what Jesus does, but through nois, knowledge, the right kind of understanding, does seem to be quite Gnostic and does seem to be sort of throughout the text. I mean, I have a collection of apocryphal Gospels that's edited, let me check that I'm saying his name right, that's edited by Simon Gathercole, if I'm saying that right. And in his introduction to the Gospel of Thomas, he says that the very form of the Gospel of Thomas as a saying's gospel tells us that it emphasizes the importance, not of what Jesus does, but of what he says. That's what you're saved by, not the resurrection, not the death on the cross, but through knowing the right thing. So there are a few instances reading through this that do seem a little

bit perhaps Gnostic to me. Near the beginning, famously, in the third logion, Jesus says, If those who lead you, say to you, behold, the kingdom is in heaven, then the birds of heaven would precede you. If they say to you, it is in the sea, then the fish would proceed you. No, the kingdom is inside you and outside of you. When you know yourselves, you will be known and will understand that you are sons of the living father. But if you do not know yourselves, you live in poverty, and you are poverty. So the kingdom is something that's already here, and the kingdom is something that's within you and outside of you, this does seem to contradict a little bit, at least the understanding of the canonical New Testament, but also perhaps sounds, I don't know, a little bit

Gnostic, maybe. Yeah, so I do think saying number three, which you just quoted, is encapsulates one of the major themes of the Gospel of Thomas, and this is where I'd push back a little bit with Dr. Pagels, where I see that as a repudiation of the apocalypticism that we see in the New Testament Gospels. So, you know, it's very well understood that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, swimming in the waters of Jewish apocalypticism, and what are the main features of apocalypticism? The understanding is that the world is, for whatever reason, under the control of evil powers, and that God is going to intervene in history and save his people from oppression. And the major understanding of apocalypticism is that this is going to happen soon. There's this imminence here. Jesus says it in the Gospel of Mark, the book Revelation, implies that. that this is going to happen very, very soon, where the evil powers are going to be overthrown. And it's an understanding that the kingdom of God is going to be this physical place. The book Revelation is literally the New Jerusalem. So there's this understanding that the kingdom

of God is coming soon, and it's going to be physical, it's going to be a localized place. And when we read saying number three, where, oh, well, if we say it's in the sky, the birds will already be there. And if we say it's in the water, the fish will already be there. No, actually the kingdom of God is already here. So it's rejecting apocalypticism in a very clear sense, in my opinion, saying that it's not a place, but it's going to be more of a understanding or a realization. So in that respect, yes, it's an understanding of knowledge, of nosis, that most of the world is not understanding.

The going theory is that this is a response to maybe anxiety around prophecy failure. So something that social psychologists always try to answer is how do religious communities continue when a prophecy fails? And we see this all throughout history. The rapture is predicted to happen on this particular date and this particular month. When the rapture doesn't happen, sometimes the religious community collapses, but oftentimes it just continues. We see this with a lot of new religious movements as well. And if we're thinking about early Christianity in the early second century, a lot of these people are going to be basically contending with prophecy failure, where they thought the kingdom of God was going to happen, especially after maybe the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and 70 CE, where that might have been like this heightened sense of expectation, but then the year 90 rolls around, the year 100 rolls around, the kingdom of God still hasn't arrived. So social psychologists have put out several strategies, have identified several strategies

that religious communities deploy to survive prophecy failure. One of those strategies, for example, is blaming others. Well, the prophecy didn't come true because, you know, so-and-so or that group over there that we don't like foiled our plan. But one of the more common strategies is to reinterpret or spiritualize the prophecy. Oh, the prophecy did happen. it's just, it happened in a more metaphysical or spiritual sense. And I think this is what we see in the Gospel of Thomas, where, you know, the kingdom of God,

you expected it to come when the Jerusalem temple was destroyed. Oh, you expected it to come when Nero was persecuting Christians in Rome, and it still hasn't happened. Oh, what you don't realize is it already happened. So it's reinterpreting and spiritualizing the end times in such a way to grapple with prophecy failure. Yes, of course. I mean, that's fascinating. In the canonical Gospels, Jesus says there are some of you here today who will not taste death before you see the son of man coming in his kingdom, sort of suggesting this imminent return, this imminent, you know, bringing about of the new world. And that's an interesting take. I hadn't considered that, that maybe this is sort of a form of damage control going on in the Gospel of Thomas. And we actually see it in the New Testament, too. So in Second Timothy, which is widely understood not to be written by Paul, but someone claiming to be Paul and probably dates to the early second century.

So the Second Timothy very likely is roughly contemporaneous with the Gospel of Thomas. And the author of Second Timothy explicitly says, so this is Timothy chapter 2, verses 17 and 18. He references two opponents who, quote, have swerved from the truth, saying resurrection has already occurred. They are upsetting the faith of some. So we have evidence right here, early second century probably, of some Christians that are already starting to say, oh, the resurrection already happened. And then we have saying number 51 from the Gospel of Thomas, his disciple said to him, his disciple said to him, when will the rest of the dead take, the rest for the dead take place?

And when will the new world come? He said to them, what you're looking for has come, but for your part, you do not know it. So right there, explicitly saying, what you're looking for has come, and you just don't know it. So again, we have this focus on secret knowledge. So this would be the other major theme in this book. One major theme is a repudiation of apocalypticism. The kingdom of God is already here. It is not localized.

It is something that has to do with realization of hidden knowledge or hidden truth. So I would say that the Gospel of Thomas is not Gnostic insofar as we think of Gnostic as involving an evil demiurge, godlike being, doesn't have anything like an eminational theology where God emanates these different divine beings called eons, you know, those complex cosmology that we see in Sethian or Valentinian texts. We just do not see it in the Gospel of Thomas. But we do see a very strong focus on knowledge, you know, nosis. Does that make it Gnostic? I think that makes the word Gnostic pretty useless because, you know, I would say it makes the book mystical. And we see mysticism in all branches of Christianity. If by mysticism, we mean, you know,

trying to connect on an intimate and personal level with the divine, that we certainly see. And the focus is salvation via nosis. But if that alone makes it a Gnostic text, I think it makes the word pretty impoverished. Yeah, certainly. I suppose there's also something like a condemnation of the material of the flesh, which seems to crop up throughout the Gospel of Thomas, though it's sometimes sort of hard to tell. I mean, the 56th saying, Jesus says, whoever comes to know the world discovers a corpse, which sounds maybe a little bit like a sort of condemnation or the idea that the world itself is dead.

It's the spirit that's alive. He then does say, and whoever has discovered that corpse is one of whom the world is not worthy, which is a lot of these are quite confusing. A lot of the notes that I've made when reading this gospel are just a bunch of of question marks, to be honest with you. But also, for example, the 29th saying, I find really interesting, Jesus said, if the flesh has come into being because of the spirit, it is a marvel. And if the spirit exists because of the body, it is a wonder indeed. But I do marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty. Encaptulating what today, I think,

is also an amazing fact when we debate materialism and dualism, mind and body, whether the material world creates the mind or whether the material world is a creation of the mind itself, either is marvelous, is brilliant, and Jesus seems to be indicating that, but he then says, I marvel at how this great wealth, that is, the spirit, has come to dwell in this poverty, that is the material body. Again, seemingly a condemnation of the flesh of the material and an indication that what really matters is the spirit. That, again, probably not enough to call it a Gnostic text, but at least enough to sort of point towards it. We don't have the demiurgic creation of the material world by an evil being, but we do have a condemnation of the material world

that would fit with the description that a Gnostic might give of the material world as haven't been created by an evil demiurge. Perhaps. I don't know what you think about that. Yeah, no, I think you're on to something there. I think what we're doing is identifying themes in the Gospel of Thomas that might appeal to that audience. There are things that are in the Gospel of Thomas that a Valentinian would read and be like, okay, yeah, I get that. And a Sethian would read and think the same thing. So, and potentially a condemnation of the material realm is one of those themes. I do think we need to back up a little bit and try to draw that out to explain why the material realm or materiality might be disparate.

And one of the themes here, bubbling under the surface, is first mentioned in Plato's Tamaeus, where Plato puts forth this idea that humans were originally primordial souls, that were eventually embodied in physical bodies. So the understanding is that we were created as these divine beings with divine knowledge of divine things, but then we forgot these things when the souls were sent down to earth and embodied. And through knowledge, through philosophy or education, we can slowly realize that original state. This is under the surface of the Gospel of Thomas, where there's this belief that we humans were these primordial beings of light, living in communion with God. And so this is heavily based in Plato's to Mayas, but it's also drawing influence from the book of Genesis, where God says let there be light. and he created humans, male and female, in his image. So all these different themes are kind of packaged up in this understanding that we are pre-existent. So we see this in saying number 50.

Jesus said, if they say to you, where did you come from? Say to them, we came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord, and established itself and became manifest through their image. So this is pretty confusing. Where did you come from? Say to them we came from the light. But if you understand, you know, platonic understanding of souls pre-existing our embodied experience, suddenly this makes more sense.

We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord, and established itself and became manifest through their image. So image there, drawing that understanding from the book of Genesis, where we're created in God's image. So there's a scriptural basis here. There's a platonic understanding here. We see this in saying number 84 as well. when you see your likeness you rejoice but when you see your images which came into being before you and which neither die nor come manifest how much more you will have to bear so here it's a little

confusing but when it says when you see your likeness it's it's understanding your physical self you look in the mirror you see your your your likeness and you like what you see you know oh look at my physical look at my physical self how cool but when you see your images your your your divine image which came into being before you, it's so much more impactful than your physical self. So this is where we're starting to see that disparagement of the physicality, because that's not our true humanity, according to the Gospel of Thomas. Humanity's true self is this divine primordial self that was existing as a being of light alongside God.

So that's kind of where we see the disparagement of the material world, because we don't really belong here, is basically what it's saying. Which, if not explicitly Gnostic, at least points toward the Gnostic worldview, and at the very least, is consistent with it. It's certainly something that a Valentinian, for example, might enjoy reading. The thing is that we might, I think a more historically Orthodox Christian could find something to like there too. So in Eastern Christianity, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, for example, there's this concept of theosis, becoming more like God. and we've become more like God in so many different ways, whether trying to live out God's commandments

or going through the sacraments of the church. So, and tied to this concept of theosis is the understanding that we're created in God's image. So I think even an Orthodox Christian might be able to read some of these ideas and like that. But certainly in this case, it's Christians that are well-versed in platonic philosophy and would get what's being read here.

Like, oh, this sounds like Plato's Tamaus, for example. So this is the other major theme, what I call a bifurcated anthropology. We kind of have these two selves. We have our material self, which is not really our true self. It is not what God intended. And then we have our primordial light, soul, spiritual self that existed before we were ensued in these physical bodies. And that's our true humanity. And that's what we need to realize.

So when I say the Gospel of Thomas, one of its themes is salvation through knowledge, salvation through nosis, it's that understanding. It's that understanding that we are living a kind of impoverished existence that God didn't really intend. So major themes within bifurcated anthropology, we have two selves. We come from a different realm. The spirit is trapped in a realm of poverty, which is what you said when you quoted saying number 29, when Jesus says, if the flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a marvel. But if the spirit came into existence because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. yet I marvel at this how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty.

So basically Jesus is saying, like, if the spirit came into existence because of the body, that would be ridiculous. You know, marvel of marvels. And by marvel, he means like it's just wild to comprehend that such a great wealth, our divine self, has come to dwell in this poverty. So here we see the platonic idea of unsold pure spirits stuck here on earth, bubbling under the surface of these sayings. So how would an orthodox Christian, and by orthodox here, I should be clear, I mean sort of believing in orthodox theology, so not like the Eastern Orthodox Church, but Catholicism as well in the early church, how would they understand, you say they might find something to like in this, if we are not as God intended, if we are sort of constrained in these physical bodies when we were supposed to be these beings of the light, how do we end up in a physical body? How do we end up as these non-ideal beings, if it isn't for the influence of some other evil creative deity? Yeah, I mean, obviously, that was the explanation from some of these other groups. So the Valentinians, Marcy and even, like these other Christians answered that question

with an evil creator god. I would say Orthodox Christians are more, you know, more accepting of the physical body and to create a theology that incorporates that, you know, the bodily resurrection of the dead. But even the concepts, so really I'm latching onto the concept of being created in the image of God. So, you know, I would say Orthodox Christians would say that humans have an inherent capacity to reflect God's divine qualities, you know, his love, wisdom, his holiness, by holy living. So the focus on being created in his image, I think, could be something that an Orthodox

Christian would latch on to. I'm not saying that Orthodox Christians would, you know, like the Gospel of Thomas. They obviously didn't with a lot of these proto-Orthodox groups explicitly rejecting it. But I guess what I'm getting at is that whoever compiled the Gospel of Thomas, whoever wrote the Gospel of Thomas, they were not inventing this stuff out of whole cloth. They were trying to do biblical exegesis as well. Like when you read, you know, humans were made in the image of God, male and female, he created them. You know, what does that mean?

And so they tried to interpret what does that mean? Paul in the book of Romans says that we were like predestined to be conformed in the image of Christ. What does that mean? But if we think of Christ as a pre-existent logos, living in communion with God, I could see how a Christian could develop a very complex cosmology about us being before the creation of the universe being conformed in the image of Christ himself. So these Christians were trying to contend with their own texts and came to different conclusions. It wasn't like they were completely unmoored from Christian scriptures. Hi, everyone. Are you enjoying this episode?

Would you like to get access to episodes early and ad-free whilst simultaneously supporting the channel and getting access to exclusive Q&As and updates? Well, you can do all of that at patreon.com forward slash Alex O.C. Sorry to disturb you. We'll get back to the episode now. Simon Gather Cole, again, in this introduction to the Gospel of Thomas I have in the Penguin Classics collection of Apocryphal Gospels, writes in the introduction that there are at least three points that seem to be direct polemics against either the New or the Old Testament that we find in the Christian canon. I suppose I wanted to go through them, beginning with something

you've already mentioned. You refer to the saying, but we should read it in full, which is saying number 13. I mean, this is probably to me the most interesting of all of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said to his disciples, compare me and tell me whom I resemble. You're like a righteous angel, Simon Peter said. You're like a wise philosopher, Matthew said to him. Master, replied Thomas. My mouth is completely unable to say whom you are like. Jesus said, I am not your master, Thomas. When you drank, you became drunk with the bubbling spring, which I have dug. Jesus took him and withdrew and spoke three words to him. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him,

what did Jesus say to you? If I told you one of the words which he spoke to me, Thomas said, you would pick up stones and throw them at me, but fire would come forth from the stones and burn you up. A bit dramatic, perhaps, but also so much in here. The first way this is potentially a polemic against the New Testament is Jesus saying, I am not your master, Thomas, which seems to completely contradict the message of the canonical New Testament,

but also pulling Thomas aside, again, this idea of secret knowledge, even within the disciples, there's like secret knowledge within the secret knowledge. Jesus pulls Thomas aside, sort of analogously to how he pulls Judas aside in the Gospel of Judas, pulls Thomas aside and speaks three words to him, and when he comes back, when the disciples ask him what he said, he said, well, if I told you, you'd stone me. What do you get stoned for? well you get stoned for what adultery and I imagine Jesus wasn't sort of whispering sweet nothings into his ear the other thing that you can get stoned for is blasphemy how is it possible

to blaspheme in three words what do you think this this is telling us about what Jesus might have said to Thomas I mean the one theory that I've heard that is I don't know how a few scholars have argued this but the three words would be ego a misu I am you which is where we get the twinship theme come back into play where if so again the gospel of thomas doesn't explicitly say that thomas is the twin of jesus but if the three letters are you know or three words are i am you that would be that would be blasphemy as it were um so that might be under that might be the the interpretation there i i think the gospel of thomas is purposely being difficult to interpret sometimes like this is meant to be a difficult text to interpret like

throughout the gospel of Thomas Jesus is saying like this is hard work you know the labor is difficult and I think any number of these sayings have multiple interpretations but in my mind that's the most intriguing interpretation that that we do see twinship that Jesus explicitly tells Thomas I am you know I am you that we are in this more intimate sense the same I think would be pretty compelling and throughout the gospel Thomas we see we see Jesus explicitly saying like the part of this realization of trying to reunite with your primordial self is becoming more like Jesus. And in some respects, literally become him, a Christ.

There's so much to make of what this could mean, because it could be that if Jesus says something like, I am you, it could mean so many different things. I mean, maybe Jesus is saying something like, okay, so maybe he's pulling Thomas aside and saying to Thomas directly, I am you. That is, Thomas specifically is this special character. Perhaps, you know, Jesus' twin brother,

some kind of spiritual twin, maybe even born of a virgin, you know, whatever, like Thomas is very special and that's what's going on here. It's also possible that when Jesus says, I am you, and again, Jesus says, I'm not your master, right? When he says, I am not your master to Thomas, is he saying that to Thomas, or is he saying that to the disciples? You know, if Simon Peter had said, master, would Jesus have said, I'm not your master? We don't know if he's speaking to Thomas. Yeah, I'm the master of these disciples, but not to you, Thomas. Or if he's saying, no, I'm not the master of my disciples, you know, spiritual truth is about communion with me. I'm not your master, you know, you've got to become more like me. Like, when I first read this, I thought it might

have been something like that. That is, you know, he's saying, I'm not your master to all of the disciples, pulling Thomas aside, saying something maybe like, I am you, by which he means, to any of his disciples, you know, I am within you. The spirit of God is within you. Like, no-sys is about coming to know that we're sort of of of the same spirit, that kind of thing. And that's why it would seem blasphemous, because Thomas would say, you know, I'm sort of claiming to be divine, I'm claiming to be God, but you don't understand that you could do that too. But from what you just said, I hadn't considered this before. Maybe it's just Thomas that he's speaking to. Maybe it's just Thomas who is like Jesus. So maybe it's just Thomas who, who Jesus isn't the master of,

which again would indicate this particular reverence for Thomas. I don't know. Like you say, it's seemingly intentionally mysterious. There are a number of points where Jesus says things which to me are completely incomprehensible and then says those who have ears to hear, listen, or something like that. And he says that, I think like 12 or 13 times throughout the Gospel of Thomas. He says, those who have ears to hear, you know, listen. It's sort of like a refrain, as if to say he's just said something that you really got to pay attention to. I mean, because it's a saying's gospel, there's an understanding.

that's been compiled from different sources, and a lot of these sayings are intention. They do not necessarily cohere with each other and sometimes seem to contradict. So it's very possible that one saying might say, you know, Thomas, you are like me. But then there's another saying, I have it right here, saying number 108, which seems to imply like anyone can become Christ himself or become like him. So this is saying number 108, whoever drinks from my mouth will become. like me, I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him. So, again, this could have multiple interpretations. There's the soft reading where both Jesus

and the person come from this primordial heavenly existence. We both come from this, this is our origin point. But then there's a stronger reading where we are in some sense a Christ or part of Jesus or somehow identified with Jesus and a more intimate, uh, spiritual, ontological self. You know, I myself shall become that person. You know, some have argued that this is a form of twin theology. You know, the twinship of Thomas and Jesus is something that we can emulate to truly become, you know, people that understand this salvation. Yeah. You know, I think Gather Cole himself, have you quoted a few times. I think he doesn't think there's twinship theology in the Gospel of Thomas. I think David Bracky, another scholar who, a major authority on this

text, things that there is, and this would be one of those instances, depending on if we want to read the soft interpretation where Jesus and the human both come from a primordial existence or a more strong interpretation where they're literally saying that we can become twins of Jesus. Yeah, I mean, I think that saying 108 there tells me that if Jesus did say something like that to Thomas, he was speaking more broadly. He was saying that this is something that anybody can achieve. Maybe Thomas is the only one who had achieved it at that point, and that's why Thomas is special. That's fascinating too. Judas Didomus Thomas, the twin of Jesus. The reason he's the twin is not because he's his actual twin, not because he looked a bit like him,

but because Thomas is the only one here who's actually achieved what other people should be emulating in themselves becoming, you know, called Didimus. Perhaps we should all, you know, have that epithet to our name once we achieve our spiritual enlightenment. In that respect, Thomas becomes an exemplar. That's why I say he's like a hero of the faith. He's a hero of this variety of early Christianity where he's an exemplar that we can model, where we want to be like twins of Jesus himself. It's fascinating. I said that there were three polemics against the canonical New and Old Testament. The second that I have here is a seeming polemic against the Old Testament in saying 52, where Jesus says, well, the disciples say, 24 prophets spoke in Israel

did all of them speak about you his disciples asked you have neglected the living one in front of you Jesus said and spoken of the dead fair enough to say you know what about the prophets they didn't mention you and fair enough of Jesus to say ah but you have a prophet in front of you but to say something like you've neglected me and spoken of the dead seems to sort of undermine a little bit of the emphasis on on fulfillment of the old testament prophecy and law and say that actually you know, you should be listening to me and not these people who are dead before you. Do you think this reads as something like a polemic against the Old Testament? I mean, it's possible. I haven't explicitly studied the interpretation of this particular saying,

but that would be in line with a lot of early Christians. I've already mentioned Marcian, who explicitly rejects the entirety of the Hebrew Bible and actually calls the God of the Hebrew Bible, the evil god that created this universe. So, It's definitely feasible. I think the focus here is on Jesus, Jesus himself as the revealer of knowledge. So going back to Plato's Tamaeus, through philosophy and education, we can come to realize our primordial divine self. But in the Gospel of Thomas, it's through Jesus who reveals this knowledge.

And in some respects reveals it via his surrogate, Thomas. So ignoring Jesus, you know, ignoring the person in front of you, like you're ignoring what I am teaching you right now. Elsewhere in the gospel of Thomas, Jesus refers to humans that have not yet made this interpretation as being drunk. You know, I found you all in drunkenness, and you have to shake off this drunkenness to realize what I'm telling you. So, I mean, it's possible, but I have not explicitly studied that saying.

The final polemic here that's pointed to by gathercole is saying 14, Jesus said to them If you fast You will bring forth sin within yourselves If you pray you will be condemned If you give arms You will harm your spirits If you go into any region where you travel around

In its districts and are received there Eat what is set before you And heal whoever is sick there For whatever goes into your mouth Will not defile you Rather it is what comes out of your mouth That defiles you Quite an interesting phrase at the end there

but the relevant point here is saying that if you fast, you'll bring forth sin within yourselves. If you pray, you'll be condemned. If you give arms, you'll harm your spirits. These are all things which are celebrated in the canonical Gospels by Jesus and recommend it. And here, they're seemingly condemned. I mean, this reads to me like a fairly explicit contradiction of the message of Jesus in the canonical Gospels. Well, this is where it gets tricky again, because the Gospel of Thomas seems to contradict itself. Because elsewhere in the Gospel of Thomas, it explicitly says that asceticism is great. Like, I'm trying to find a particular quote here where it says, yeah, so saying number 64,

buyers and traders will not enter the places of my father. So explicitly deride in commerce. And saying number 63, there was a rich person who had many possessions. He said, I will use my possessions. I will sow, harvest, plant, and fill my storehouses with crops. But that very night, he died. So there's this disparagement of wealth. disparagement of, of, um, commerce, uh, saying number 110, Jesus says,

whoever finds the world and becomes rich, let him renounce the world. So scholars like April Deconic have argued that there's a theme of asceticism bubbling under the surface of this text, where it might have appealed to, you know, maybe an early form of Christian monasticism where you're trying to actively reject the world. And then we have the saying that you just quoted saying to, you know, fasting as a waste of your time. that's how I would probably interpret it, where the focus is so much on nosis, on knowledge, finding the revelation about your true origins, your true humanity, that all these other things are distractions from that main goal. So whether it's a polemic against asceticism of some

sort, I doubt it, but again, these sayings are eclectic, so there's a lot of opportunities for them to contradict. Hmm. That saying 64 that you just quoted, I underlined and starred. I found very interesting. It's quite a long one, but it's Jesus giving a sort of parable saying that there was a man having some guests to his house and he prepared dinner and sent out his servants to summon the guests. And he sort of goes one by one. The servant went to the first and said, my master summons you. And the guest replied, I have some claims against some merchants who are coming to see me this evening. I'm going to go and give them orders. Please. please excuse me from the dinner. So the servant goes to the second person and he basically says, oh, I bought a house and I'm required today. I don't have the spare time. And then he goes to the third one and he says, oh, a friend of mine's getting married. I've got to arrange the dinner. I can't come. And he goes to the fourth one. Oh, I've just bought a village and I'm going to collect the rent. I can't come. Please excuse me. And comes back to the master and says, they're all too busy.

And the master says, okay, grab whoever you can find and bring them. Similar to one of the parables that Jesus gives in the in the canonical uh canonical gospels but different he then says Jesus says businessmen and merchants will not enter the places at the place of my father and okay it might seem to if you just read that last bit as you just did businessmen and merchants will not enter the places of my father it sounds like he's just condemning you know trade he's condemning that kind of line of work but reading it in in its whole context it reads to me like something about the the busyness of a businessman or a merchant that their inability to prioritize communion with friends and family because, oh, they're too busy.

Oh, sorry, I've got to go and get the rent. Oh, I've got my business to take care of. It seems to me like maybe it's that which Jesus is condemning there. And I underlined it because I thought if that's what's going on there, it's a sort of fascinating way of getting at that point. Like, you know, it seems perfectly reasonable. Oh, come to dinner today. And they say, sorry, I've, you know, I've just bought a house. I need to go and tend to that. But if this becomes who you are, if you just become the businessman, if that's who you are first, then you will not enter the places of my father, so many of these sayings and verses are just open to myriad interpretations. And the thing that's kind of annoying to me about it, actually, is that because we've

only had this text since 1945, the scholarship is, is scant. Even just in terms of textual analysis, trying to work out what the phrases even mean, what's going on, it seems impossible to really uncover something like a trustworthy interpretation. You really just have to read the text for yourself and see what you make of it, I think. Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty, there's a pretty robust scholarship underneath this text. I just think there are so many different, because each saying is so vague, you know, one of the sayings is Jesus said, be passers by. Yes. You know, like, David Bracky has a pretty good argument where he's like, oh, he's talking about that we don't really belong here. Our true origin is beings of light and communion with God before the

creation of the universe, so we're just pastors by in this world. I think it's pretty convincing. But, you know, it's just a few words, be passers by. So because there are so many, there are myriad interpretations. I think there's a lot of debate over what each saying really means. For some of the sayings we've been quoting recently, both April Deconic and David Bracky argue that the Gospel of Thomas might have originated from an aesthetic community of some sort. You know, this would be pretty early for early Christian monasticism, but not early for, you know, solitary holy men wandering the deserts of Egypt or Syria. So when you read the things like, you know, buyers and traders won't enter the places of my father, saying number 58, Blessed is the person who has suffered and found life, you know, we want to envision, because Gnosticism is so romanticized, we want to envision some sort of mystic philosopher saying these sayings, but when we envision a monk saying them, you know, it kind of makes sense, you know, a monk who rejects the physical world. that this physical world is a distraction from actually communing with God and trying to get a more intimate relationship with God.

A lot of the Gospel of Thomas, I think, completely coheres with a more monastic lifestyle. Yeah, Jesus said B passes by is the entirety of saying 42. It's just that. And that is one of the ones that I put a question mark next to, and I'm glad that we've got to mention it. because I think that probably makes sense as an interpretation. The only quotation that has two question marks next to it in my annotation is saying number 105. Jesus said, whoever knows the father and the mother will be called son of a prostitute. I mean, what on earth could that even mean?

I really, am I missing something? Am I, is it got some allusion to like the prostitute? of revelation? I mean, am I just missing something, or is this just something that is going to be impossible for us to understand? I mean, it's, it also got a star from me, which I was using to to note sort of, uh, theoretically interesting points, because it says, whoever knows the father and the mother, the father and the mother, that's a strange thing for Jesus to say, but then the fact that he says, will be called a son of a prostitute also merited a question mark or two. So I, I don't know, do you have any idea what's going on in saying 105?

I don't, and I'm pulling out my commentary by Gathercole, because I have not read this one in depth. And the first sentence of his commentary, this is a puzzling saying. So I don't blame you. It's so fascinating, because because, as you say, it's just a sayings gospel, it's not like you can figure out where Jesus was, what he was responding to. It's just out of nowhere. You just get this. And then immediately, we're just moving. on. So gather Cole here says an explanation that I like. So the reference to the mother might be a

reference to the Holy Spirit or some sort of female spirit, which is something that appears in some of these Gnostic myths of a female Sophia or wisdom. So that could be one interpretation. Yeah, so it's often father, son and mother rather than father, son and holy spirit in the Gnostic tradition. That's something I spoke to Elaine Pagels about last week as well, if listeners are interested. But also she has a whole chapter in her Gnostic Gospels, the book the Gnostic Gospels on, you know, God as mother, which is a fascinating element of the Gnostic tradition. But, yeah, I mean, like, there's a point as well in the Gospel of Thomas where I was hypothesizing that Jesus might be telling a joke.

Throughout the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is constantly talking about unity, directly after the verse we've just spoken about there. So number 106, Jesus said, when you make the two one, you'll become sons of man. And when you say mountain move away, it will move. When you make the two one, you'll become the sons of man. That seems sort of quite important. And then I think it's saying 22. Jesus saw some little ones being suckled.

These little ones being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom, he said to his disciples. Shall we then enter the kingdom like the little ones? They asked. When you make the two one, Jesus replied. And when you make the inside like the outside, the outside like the inside, the above like the below, in order to make the male, in order to make the male and the female one and the same so that the male is not male and the female is not female, when you make eyes in the place of an eye, hand in the place of a hand, a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an image, it is then that you will enter the kingdom. Not the clearest advice in the world, but seemingly a huge emphasis here on unity, especially from two things, bringing two things together. And so then when I read saying number 72, a man says to Jesus, tell my brothers how to divide my father's property with me.

And Jesus said, who has made me a divider? He turned to his disciples and said to them, I'm certainly no divider. As if to say, I mean, this reads to me, like some man has come up to him and said, you know, how can I divide up my father's property? I need some advice. And he says, well, who's made me a divider? and then he sort of turns to his disciples who he's been speaking to constantly about unity and bringing things together and gone, I'm certainly no divider, speaking obviously in a totally different context, but seemingly, like maybe here, making something like a joke. This text

is just fascinating to me. I don't know. I don't know if you have any particular favorites or quotes of interest that you think we haven't mentioned yet. I'm glad you brought up saying number 22. So again, this is when you make the two one, when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below when you make the male and the female into a single one. So this theme of a single one or a solitary one or one, this is going back to what I was saying about the bifurcated anthropology, where we have our material self and then we have our true heavenly primordial light self. And the goal of salvation is to reintegrate, to unify those two selves. So saved people are the solitary ones. And it's

interesting, that term solitary or one that's used so many times in the Gospel of Thomas, it's the word monocos, where we get the word monk, which, you know, again, kind of echoing the ascetic idea. So the whole goal is to reunify or reintegrate to become one, because right now we're bifurcated. We have our earthly self, but we have a true self that we need to realize is out there. And when we make that realization, we become one. We reunify ourselves. So we see this is channeling another concept we find in Plato's Symposium. So in Plato's Symposium, there's this kind of bizarre myth that's described about how the sexes have come into being, male and female.

And according to Plato's symposium, the primordial human was this spherical being with four arms and four legs, a cylindrical neck, and two faces. That was the primordial androgynous human. It also had two sets of genitals, as an aside. So you had this androgynous, you know, multi-limid being that the gods become concerned about. This being is getting too powerful. Let's bifurcate it, you know, cut it down the middle, two heads, two arms, two legs.

Let's separate the genitals as well. And so this is the understanding of male and female was this bifurcation. of the primordial androgine. And then the Plato's Symposium uses this as an explanation for heterosexual attraction, where the male and the female feel this desire to reintegrate, but they can't because they've been separated. So we see this in the Gospel of Thomas. The Plato Symposium is running through some of these more confusing passages, where the true, our primordial selves, are androgynous. they're neither male nor female.

And we're trying to reintegrate that. So when saying number 22 says when you make the male and the female into a single one, when you reunite into that spherical, perfect primordial being, make it into a single one, then you will enter the kingdom. So that is the goal of salvation, at least in saying number 22. But we see this throughout, you know, becoming a single one, becoming a solitary one, is pointing at this androgynous self. And this is, this interpretation is carried through into interpretations of the book of genesis,

where the book of Genesis says that we're made in the image of God, male and female, we were created. It is saying, male and female, in one being. So the understanding that the original human was androgynous, and that the separation of the sexes, you know, creating Eve by taking the rib of Adam, of him was actually a bad thing for some Christians. The Gospel of Thomas, or not the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, which is in the same codex as the Gospel of Thomas, explicitly says that this was a bad thing. So I have the quote here from the Gospel of Philip.

When Eve was still an Adam, death did not exist. When she was separated from him, death came into being. If he enters again and attains his former self, death will be no more. So the separation of the sexes, at least for the gospel of Philip, is considered to be part of the fall of humanity, and there's this goal to reintegrate into this androgynous being. So I think we see a similar theme in the Gospel of Thomas, even though it's not explicitly said, at least in saying number 22. We can now talk about saying number 114 if you want. You have preempted me, yeah. Yes. But again, this is not being invented at a whole cloth. This is coming from Plato, but it's also coming from the New Testament. You know, what the Apostle Paul says in Galatians, they'll no longer be

male or female. So you can imagine someone very well versed in Plato's symposium reading the book of Galatians when Paul says there will no longer be male and female and be like, oh, and we were made, male and female, and bringing that all together. So scriptural, you know, scriptural exegesis is happening in these texts. It's not just being, you know, created, divorced from Christian tradition. Yeah. I mean, that's brilliant, by the way. We'll be doing something on. the Gospel of Philip. I'm not quite sure who with and quite when yet, but I'm really excited to dig into the Gospel of Philip. It's not something that I've sat down and read. So that, I mean, that is a very instructive quote and example, and I'm grateful to you for bringing it, bringing it to

my attention. But as you say, there is probably the most famous quotation from the Gospel of Thomas is the very last one, number 114, which every single time I introduce the Gospel of Thomas to people that I know who maybe haven't heard of it, don't know anything about the apocryphal Gospels, probably the first thing that I, that I point out to them to indicate just how weird and wacky these non-canonical Gospels are, is this quote, saying number 114, at least the translation I have, Mary should leave us, Simon Peter said, because women are not worthy of life. Okay, side note, this is where you might expect Jesus to say something like, don't be

so silly, Simon Peter, women are worthy of life, and she can enter the kingdom of God. You know, this wonderful, progressive, inclusive Jesus. No, this is what Jesus says. Now I will draw her to me to make her male, Jesus said. To make her a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. And there it ends. The gospel according to Thomas. That's it. The final quote of the book. what on earth is going on there? Yeah. So again, let's think of Plato's Symposium.

There's this, this androgynous human with two faces, four arms, four legs, two sets of genitals, that could bifurcated into male and female. So this is, again, bubbling under the surface. And again, we're going to see some contradiction within the Gospel of Thomas, because saying number 22 seems to have some parity or equality between the sexes. The male and the female need to become androgynous. Here we might be seeing, you know, a gender hierarchy where reintegration needs to happen. We need to become a solitary one. We need to become a unified one, but one sex is better than the other.

So Simon Peter says, make merry leave us, for women are not worthy of life. Peter elsewhere is disparaged in the Gospel of Thomas. We already saw he was kind of a dumb, dumb earlier when Jesus said, who am I? And Peter's like, oh, you're an angel. So I don't think we're supposed to be siding with Peter at all in this saying. But then Jesus says, I will guide her to make her male. so that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males.

So in my mind, there are two interpretations, well, there's many interpretations, but I see, to make it simple here, a positive interpretation, and then the more negative sexist interpretation. The positive interpretation is that the androgyne is the ideal, original, primordial human. So we need to reintegrate the feminine

back into the masculine to produce the androgynous first human, but left unsaid is that men need to reintegrate into the female as, you know, the masculine, needs to reintegrate into the feminine as well. And that's just, you know, Jesus is just talking about Mary here, but the rest of the saying might say, oh, and Peter, we will make you female, and then we have the androgynous being. But the more negative interpretation, which I think is a little

more convincing, is that, you know, women must become like the first human, which is male, Adam, and they need to, women must reintegrate into maleness, because the, at least in this understanding, the sexes are not equal. Because according to Genesis, Eve is the derivative being pulled out of Adam and therefore needs to reintegrate back into Adam to create the, you know, to become male again. And then once you're male, you're only one step away from living spirit, which is salvation. So from this saying, you have women have two steps to salvation. They need to first reintegrate with their male self, and then they can become living spirits while men are only one step away from salvation. So again, it's sexist, no way around it, but that would be one of the interpretations.

But again, we see this sense of a divine double or a true self versus our earthly self and the need to reintegrate to become one. And whether that one is an androgynous being like described in the Plato Symposium, or whether that one is a male being as described in Genesis as Adam. So, I mean, it's a nice place to sort of end the various quotes that we've been pulling out there because this is the end of the Gospel of Thomas. I want to talk a little bit about the Gospel broadly as we bring this to a close. We've heard some of the instances where the Gospel of Thomas seems to negate the canonical New Testament and the Old Testament. We've heard areas where it seems to at least be consistent with it, maybe even support some of the ideas of the ideas.

of the canonical New Testament. We also spoke earlier about how the text seems to be relatively early. There's a lot of scholarly debate. I mean, there are some people who think that it's early enough to predate the Gospel of John. There are others who think that it comes afterwards, but not very long afterwards. Some people think maybe it's written around the same time. Maybe as part of these debates around the correct theology of Jesus, you end up with the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas both emerging out of this debate.

What do you say to those who look at this text and say, it's weird and it's wacky, but it's very old, and I think maybe, I can't see a reason why it shouldn't have been included in the New Testament canon? I mean, the reason why it wasn't included, I mean, I guess would be Myriad. Christians that doubt that it actually was written by Thomas, you know, apostolic authorship matters so much. So if you can't convince enough people that has apostolic authorship or is authored by a companion of an apostle, then it's not going to make the cut. I would say that the disparagement of materiality of the material world might have been a major aspect of that too. With proto-Orthodoxy and then later historical orthodoxy, seeing value in the material realm, understanding that the future kingdom will be a material kingdom with a literal New Jerusalem. with literal resurrected bodies, I would say the theologies were at odds. But, I mean, this is something that several scholars have said, but this text doesn't sound

as wacky as it does to our 21st century perspective. Because if you just look at it, you know, as a 30,000-foot view as just a text, the main text argument is that as a Christian you are made in the image of God and you can either work toward being closer to that image or you will remain stunted. So this is going back to the idea of asceticism and right living. You know, the Gospel Thomas seems to imply that through hard work and and thinking about the sayings of Jesus, you can work toward becoming more like the image of God, which is your true self. And that goal in and of itself is not necessarily antithetical to historical orthodoxy.

So I think what we're seeing more is a mystical form of Christianity of Christians that were concerned about trying to understand God on a more deeper, intimate level, and trying to experience God more immediately, which is what I would define mysticism as. So in that respect, it's not like this wacky, weird, gnostic cosmology. it's just a form of early Christian mysticism. April Deconic would say early or Jewish Christian mysticism in the mid-first century. And we see sort of this sort of language in the New Testament as well. Like Paul himself in 1st Corinthians chapter 2 says that we have knowledge that's hidden and needs to be revealed. So the idea of, you know, plumbing the depths of God's wisdom and trying to conform closer to his image, I don't think is, wildly antithetical to early Christian orthodoxy, even though this text was disparaged pretty

early on. Well, it's been genuinely fascinating and a wonderful first crack at getting into some of these texts in depth. I'm looking forward to having, I've got Bart Ehrman coming on the show. He's making a return to talk about the Gospel of Judas. I think we're talking to Philip Holm of Let's Talk Religion as well. And if people, are interested in these particular episodes going into the apocryphal texts, then there should be many more to come after that. But thank you so much for joining me for the first try at doing a sort of in-depth literary review of a gospel. It's a new thing for the channel. I hope people have enjoyed it. I know that I have Andrew Mark Henry. The channel that you have is religion

for breakfast. I probably should have mentioned it at the very beginning. I'll link it down below. People are interested in this kind of stuff. You've done videos on the Gospel of Thomas, as well as Thomas as didomus, the twin that you've done videos on all kinds of wonderful aspects of the history and different sort of secret theologies of Christianity. So I'd recommend people go and check that out. Thanks for coming back on the show. It's been fun. Thanks for having