Not Just a Doubter

Intro to Gospel of Thomas Session or Two 

in our Fall 2014 Bible Seminar

I first became interested in the Gospel of Thomas nearly 35 years ago as a seminarian at the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In the seminary bookstore I had picked up a copy of The Gospel According To Thomas, Coptic Text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, Henri-Charles Puech, Gilles Quispel, Walter Till, and Yassah Abd Masih, Harper & Row 1959. Short, it was readable over a weekend, and I did so. I'd never seen Coptic writing and was taken with its similarity to Greek, and the following week enthusiastically sought to discuss it with my New Testament professor at LTSG. To my disappointment and great sadness, his response was a scathing “Why would you want to read that Gnostic document?” Embarrassed and taken aback, it was the last time I ever approached him with a question or anything else, but I kept my copy of Thomas, have been interested in it ever since, have quoted from it in sermons, have had mild discussions of it with Bible study groups, once even briefly loaned out my copy, which I never do with beloved books and this has been one. 

I‘m still thinking of personal history, which in my case nearly always comes down to something about automobiles. In 1990 I started looking around for a car for Tassy to finish up at high school and as her college car, and ended up smitten with a used 1980 Mercedes-Benz 300SD at Prestige Motors in Tallahassee. Later bigger and more prestigious, at the time they were into used cars and l tried out several MBs before settling on this one for Daddy’s Girl the Apple of My Eye to take to college in Virginia. I think she loved it almost as much as I did. A lovely car, its history was NYC and it only had 47K verified miles, practically new, though some problems did turn up later. Wheel bearings, and body rust evidently from salt or other corrosive on the winter streets of the big city. Anyway, where I’m going with this is that I found out in buying a used Mercedes that you become part of a cult that is strictly into used Benzes. It’s probably not as dead serious as the BMW and Corvette cults, both of which I would like to have been a member in my lifetime, but it’s real. 

As with the Benz cult there is also a Gospel of Thomas cult, the Thomas Nerds, of scholars who are fascinated with the document and have published books about it and posted many things about it online, several of which I have read and enjoyed. What I find is this. The dating of Thomas is not agreed, ranging from 40 AD, which would precede Mark and the other synoptics, out to 140 AD or closer to 200 AD. In spite of the possible early dating, no scholar that I’ve read thinks that Mark, Matthew or Luke, or even John, lifted from Thomas, rather the trend is in the other direction, of Thomas perhaps knowing the synoptics; and there’s an interesting school of scholars with a struggle between Thomas and John, but I’m not going there. Early views castigated Thomas as Gnostic, but that view seems to have evaporated and Thomas is seen as a -- get this -- sapiential work, what the hell does that mean? It’s OK for some moronic preacher to say hell as long as I bow my head in penitence, but if I get any more colorful than hell I have to use flower names such as heliotrope, gardenia and daffodil. Those who know our Advent hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel” (my Lutheran professors struck off points for writing Emmanuel instead of Immanuel) know that December 17 is to sing the sapiential verse, “O come, O come thou Wisdom from on high.” Sapiential (from Latin sapiens) has to do with Wisdom, and calling Thomas a sapiential document makes it wisdom literature, a disorganized and random taxonomy of wisdom tenets allegedly uttered by Jesus. I learned at seminary that theologians and bible professors love the word taxonomy, which means that your homework for next class session is to turn in a list of something. I did not come out of seminary a total caustic cynic, but they helped. 

So, the Gospel of Thomas, the Nerds have pretty much come round to agreeing that it’s not gnostic but sapiential. I’m easy, but then I see gnostic elements in the Gospel of John, and I know the “beloved disciple” was not who people think, though I don’t think he was just the evangelist’s literary device.

Anyway, here we are with the Gospel according to Thomas, whom some say was Jesus' twin brother. Chock full of sayings from the Bible, or vice versa. For those who come to our kickoff Tuesday Morning Bible Seminar the day after Labor Day, we’ll have a go at it.

The following by Professor Marvin W. Meyer is from a series of Gospel of Thomas interviews that Professor Christopher W. Skinner published on his website pejeiesous.com. I especially appreciated this portion of Skinner's interviews with Professor Meyer, and it helps set the stage for our bible seminar introductory session: 

(Marvin Meyer) "The early sayings traditions in the Gospel of Thomas may be as useful as Q materials for providing insights into the teachings of the historical Jesus. Personally, I find that the overall presentation of Jesus in Thomas as a Jewish wisdom teacher and storyteller who employs parables, typically without allegorical interpretations, and utilizes an interactive pedagogy, is more compelling than any of the New Testament gospel accounts, which have been shaped by a dominant concern for the salvific nature of the crucifixion and resurrection. Additionally, I find the lack of apocalyptic (or even the opposition to apocalyptic) in Thomas coheres with what I consider very likely to be characteristic of the historical Jesus: he appears to have been a Jewish sage who used witty aphorisms and stories to encourage people to think about and seek after the reign of God.

"In The Gospel of Thomas I wrote, “In contrast to the way in which he is portrayed in other gospels, particularly New Testament gospels, Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas performs no physical miracles, reveals no fulfillment of prophecy, announces no apocalyptic kingdom about to disrupt the world order, and dies for no one’s sins.” To this I might add that Jesus in Thomas does not rise from the dead on the third day. In all these respects the Gospel of Thomas may bypass the emerging theological and soteriological issues in the New Testament gospel portraits of Jesus as son of God and savior, and as a result Thomas may bring us a step closer to the historical Jesus."

TW+

Marvin W. Meyer (April 16, 1948 – August 16, 2012) was a scholar of religion and a tenured professor at Chapman University in Orange, California. He was the Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University and Director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute. He was also Director of the Coptic Magical Texts Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. A participant in the Jesus Seminar, Dr. Meyer authored numerous books and articles on Greco-Roman and Christian religions in antiquity and late antiquity, and on Albert Schweitzer's ethic of reverence for life. He had been interviewed on television programs that aired on ABC, BBC, CNN, PBS, A&E, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the National Geographic Channel.

Professor Meyer was best known for his translations of the texts of documents associated with the ancient mystery religions, early Christian magic, and Gnostic texts, of which the most notable have been the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas, the former of which is included among the Nag Hammadi library. Meyer edited a collection of English translations of the Nag Hammadi texts for the  HarperOne  imprint, the most recently revised edition of which has been released as the Nag Hammadi Scriptures in 2007, including help from James M. Robinson who has edited an earlier publication of the library. He was regarded as an authority on Gnosticism and had worked on many books on the subject. Meyer died of melanoma on August 16, 2012. (Wikipedia).

This is the +Time blog post I prepared for today, Monday, September 1, and as an intro to our Bible Seminar that starts tomorrow morning, Tuesday, September 2. So, I'm publishing it anyway, even though I wrote and published the below, earlier post "Three Dog Night: Don't Mess" during my semi-concious hour 3 to 4 a.m. before going back to sleep until 8 a.m. TW+