(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Portions
of Greek versions of the Gospel of Thomas were found in Oxyrhynchus
Egypt about one hundred years ago and these can be dated around 140
A.D. or somewhat before. A complete version in Coptic (the native
Egyptian language written in an alphabet derived from the Greek
alphabet) was found in Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945. That version can be
dated to about 340 A.D. The Coptic version is a translation of the
Greek version. Most of the Gospel of Thomas was written prior to 140 A.
D.
Steven Davies,
Professor of Religious Studies at the College Misericordia in Dallas,
Pennsylvania, spoke about this informative Gospel of Thomas. He states
that the basic belief of this document, “is that the Kingdom of God is
spread out upon the earth now, if people can just come to see it; and
that there is divine light within all people, a light that can enable
them to see the Kingdom of God upon the earth. Further, the perspective
of Thomas is that the Image of God in the beginning (Genesis 1) still
exists and people can assume that identity, an identity that is neither
male nor female. The image of God is differentiated from the fallen
Adam of Genesis. The Gospel of Thomas advocates that people should
restore their identities as the image of God now, and see the Kingdom
of God on earth now. Thomas reads the first two chapters of Genesis in
a straightforward way, there were two separate creations of mankind;
the first is perfect, the second flawed. Rather than waiting for a
future end-time Kingdom to come, Thomas urges people to return to the
perfect Kingdom conditions of Genesis chapter one. For Thomas, Endzeit (the final culmination of things) already existed in the Urzeit
(the primordial creative time of the past). Jesus teaches, in the
Gospel of Thomas, that people have the potential to be as he is, to be
a child of God, and therefore from that perspective Jesus is not a
uniquely divine person but a role model for all people.”
And for the question as to the Gospel of Thomas being a Gnostic text?
He answers, “It all depends on what you mean by Gnostic. If you mean by
Gnostic the belief that people have a divine capacity within themselves
and that they can come to understand that the Kingdom of God is already
upon the earth if they can come to perceive the world, that way then
Thomas is Gnostic. But if you mean by Gnostic the religion upon which
the Nag Hammadi texts are based, a religion that differentiates the god
of this world (who is the Jewish god) from a higher more abstract God,
a religion that regards this world as the creation of a series of evil
archons/powers who wish to keep the human soul trapped in an evil
physical body then no, Thomas is not Gnostic. This differentiation is
very important, because some scholars reason that if Thomas is Gnostic
(in the first sense) then it is Gnostic (in the second sense) and, as
they believe, Gnosticism (in the second sense) is a second or third
century heresy, they conclude that the Gospel of Thomas is heretical,
late in date, and without very much historical value in regard to Jesus
of Nazareth.”
When
asked if the views of Jesus are reflected in this Gospel, he replies;
“Maybe. There was once a Q gospel and a Mark gospel. These were revised
and combined into a Matthew gospel and a Luke gospel. So there were
four interrelated texts that testify to a single view of Jesus; that he
was a man who predicted the early end of this world and its violent
replacement by a future Kingdom of God. If these texts have it right,
then Thomas is divergent from Jesus’ own perspectives. But there is
also a John gospel testifying to the present reality of God’s Kingdom
and the presence of the divine in the world. John’s gospel, like
Thomas’ gospel, focuses on the actuality of the divine in the present.
So one must decide for oneself whether the John/Thomas perspective
reflects Jesus’ own ideas or whether Q/Mark, and then subsequently the
revised versions called Matthew and Luke, do so.”
So when we look at the modern factions of Christianity today for that
Kingdom of God within we realize the significance of Sam Pascoes
American scholar statement when he writes, “as Christianity started out
in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a
philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to
Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an
enterprise.”
Elaine Pagels comments in Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel Of Thomas (1981),
“I am a historian of religion, and so, as I visited that church, I
wondered when and how being a Christian became virtually synonymous
with accepting a certain set of beliefs. From historical reading, I
knew that Christianity had survived brutal persecution and flourished
for generations, even centuries, before Christians formulated what they
believed into creeds. The origins of this transition from scattered
groups to a unified community have left few traces. Although the
apostle Paul, about twenty years after Jesus death, stated ‘the
gospel,’ which, he says, ‘I too received,’ it may have been more than a
hundred years later that some Christians, perhaps in Rome, attempted to
consolidate their group against the demands of a fellow Christian named
Marcion, whom they regarded as a false teacher, by introducing formal
statements of belief into worship. But only in the fourth century,
after the Roman emperor Constantine himself converted to the new
faith—or at least decriminalized it—did Christian bishops, at the
emperor’s command, convene in the city of Nicaea, on the Turkish coast,
to agree upon a common statement of beliefs—the so-called Nicene Creed,
which defines the faith for many Christians to this day.”
She says in another online interview about the hypothesis that the
canonical Gospel of John may have been written in response to Thomas’
gospel, to refute Thomas. “Yes. Many people have pointed out that the
two gospels have a lot in common. They are both different from the
other gospels we know, as symbolic and poetic interpretations of Jesus’
teaching. But they have a very different practical turn. They both
speak about Jesus as the divine light of the world that comes into the
world, and the divine energy of God manifested in human form. But the
message of the Gospel of John is that Jesus alone is that divine
presence among us. Thomas’ gospel suggests that Jesus taught something
quite different, which is that everyone, in fact all being, came from
that divine source [and that we can access that divinity on our own].”
The Gospel of John speaks of Jesus as the “light of the world,” the
“Divine One” who comes into the world to rescue the human race from sin
and darkness, and basically says, “if you believe in him, you can be
saved. You can have everlasting life. If you don’t believe in him, you
go to everlasting death.” The Gospel of Thomas, on the other hand,
speaks of Jesus as the “Divine Light” that comes from heaven, saying,
“and you, too, have access to that divine source within yourself”—even
apart from Jesus. That might suggest you don’t need a church, or a
priest, or an institution.
Elaine Pagels quotes Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (1981) that Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, “These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.” They said to him, “Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?” Jesus said to them, “When
you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and
the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you
make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be
male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of
an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot,
and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom.”
According
to scholars, the 114 quotations in the Gospel of Thomas are as valuable
as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for gaining understanding of the man
Christians worship as Messiah.
(111) Jesus said:
The heavens shall be rolled up and the earth before your face, and he
who lives in the living One shall neither see death nor (fear); because Jesus says: He who shall find himself, of him the world is not worthy.
(112) Jesus said: Woe to the flesh which depends upon the soul; woe to the soul which depends upon the flesh.