www.metalog.org/files/intro.html

Metalogos:
The Gospels of Thomas & Philip & Truth
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Ecumenical Coptic Project
t.mnt.son77m.pe.xristos
. www.metalog.org
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Printed IV.92, Uploaded III.98, Revised V.12

‘Wonder at what is present!’—The Traditions of the Apostle Matthias

Introduction

In December of 1945 two Muslim Egyptian farmers, Muhammad ‘Alí al-Sammán and his brother Khalífah ‘Alí, found over 1100 pages of ancient papyrus manuscripts buried by the east bluff of the upper Nile valley. The texts were translations from Greek originals into Coptic, the Hellenistic stage of the ancient Hamitic language of the Pharaohs (Gen 10:6). This evolved after the invasion of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and was subsequently replaced by Arabic as the Egyptian vernacular following the Muslim conquest of 640 AD. Coptic was thus the tongue of the primitive Egyptian Church, and remains its liturgical language unto the present day.

The site of this discovery, across the river from the modern town of Nag Hammadi, was already famous as the location called in antiquity ΧΗΝΟΒΟΣΚΕΙΟΝ (‘Goose-Pasture’), where in 320 AD Saint Pachomius founded the earliest Christian monastery. Less than a half-century later in 367 AD, the local monks copied some 45 diverse religious and philosophical writings—including the Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Truth, as well as part of Plato's Republic (588A-589B)—into a dozen leather-bound codices. This entire library was carefully sealed in an urn and hidden nearby among the rocks, where it remained undetected for almost 1600 years. These papyri, first seen by scholars in March of 1946,¹ have since 1952 been preserved in the Coptic Museum of Old Cairo. The earliest photographic edition of the manuscript of the preeminently important Codex II was edited by Dr Pahor Labib (Cairo: Government Antiquities Dept, 1956). (photo of papyrus page)

The author of the Gospel of Thomas is recorded as Thomas the Apostle, one of the Twelve. The text is a collection of over one hundred sayings and short dialogues of the Savior, without any connecting narrative. A few Christian authors in antiquity quoted from one or another of its logia as Scripture—for example Sayings 2/22/27/37 by Clement of Alexandria (circa 150-211 AD) in his Stromata (Patches)—but without explicit attribution to Thomas. Then 100 years ago at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, there were discovered a few fragments of what we now know to be a prior Greek version of Thomas, datable by paleography as follows (these are linked from the respective logia in Thomas):

—see Biblio.11. The more recent discovery of the Sahidic (S) Coptic version of Thomas has finally made this Gospel available in its entirety. Yet further evidence, such as the asyndeton in logion 6, reveals an underlying Semitic source document (see Guillamont, Modern Scholarly Comments). As indicated in the press release, almost all biblical scholars who have been studying this document since its first publication have now concluded that Thomas should be accepted as an authentic fifth Gospel, of an authority parallel to John and the Synoptics. It is particularly to be noted that several of the logia in Thomas (12/24/28/37) are evidently post-resurrection sayings.

The Gospel of Philip—as can be inferred from its entries 51/82/98/101/137—was composed at least in part after 70 AD by Philip called the Evangelist (not the Apostle), who appears in the Book of Acts 6:1-6/8:4-40/21:8-14. There is no known previous reference to or citation of this complex scripture, which is a Sahidic (S) translation of an elegant series of reflections on the Abrahamic tradition, on Israel and the (incarnate) Messiah, whilst elaborating a metaphysic of Spiritual Idealism. (Typeset page from Philip)

The Gospel of Truth was composed in about 150 AD by Valentine, the famous saint of Alexandria (born circa 100 AD). A continuous interwoven meditation on the Logos, it was scarcely mentioned in antiquity—and until its discovery at Nag Hammadi (in the Subakhmimic dialect, A²), not even a phrase from this noble composition was known to have survived. (The opening five sections are online in audio format. Also online is a preliminary version of another sublime text from the Nag Hammadi library, which may also be by Valentine: The Supremacy.)

In the early years following the discovery of these documents, and before they could be given sufficiently careful scrutiny by scholars, it was commonplace for them collectively to be labeled ‘gnostic’ (see e.g. Grant & Freedman [1960], in Modern Scholarly Comments). This has always been a generic term for the Mediterranean mixture of anti-sensory mystery cults of the early centuries AD. ‘Gnosticism’—whether oriental, platonic, mystery-religion or theosophical—by definition considers the perceptible universe, including our own incarnate lives as well as all human history, Biblical or otherwise, to be inherently illusory and/or malignant. On the other hand, the unequivocal view in the Old Testament and the canonical Gospels is that this universe is neither unreal nor evil, but rather divinely created and good: so, among countless examples, Gen 1:31 (‘everything that He had made ... was very good’) and Lk 24:39 (‘flesh and bones as ... I have’). It is most unfortunate that all of the diverse Nag Hammadi writings have been so commonly described as gnostic documents. Careful investigation shows quite clearly that neither Thomas nor Philip nor the Gospel of Truth is at all gnostic in content, as they each explicitly affirm the sacred reality of human incarnation in its historic ambiance (see Commentary 1).

The New Testament canons of the Western (Catholic/Protestant), Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian and Syrian/Nestorian Churches all differ significantly from one another—and even these were under dispute within the various branches of Christianity until many centuries AD; previously there were only widely diverse opinions recorded by various individuals well after the Apostolic era, regarding not only today's commonly accepted works but also such writings as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Gospel of the Hebrews (in which Christ calls the Sacred Spirit his Mother), the Traditions of Matthias, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Didakhê, and the Acts of Paul. Thus the Codex Sinaiticus of the mid-4th century includes both Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, while the Codex Alexandrinus of the early 5th century contains I and II Clement as well as the Psalms of Solomon. There was no church council regarding the NT canon until the Synod of Laodicea (363 AD), which indeed rejected John's Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. Twelve centuries later (!), the Western Canon was finally settled by the Council of Trent (1546 AD), which designated the present 27-book listing as an article of Roman Catholic faith (although episcopal councils have wisely never claimed to be infallible; the vote at Trent was 24 to 15, with 16 abstentions—as if the original Apostolic Community had been a democracy rather than a kingdom³); this listing was subsequently accepted by the various Protestant sects. The sundry Eastern Churches have equally complicated records on establishing their respective NT canons: thus, the Armenian canon includes a Pauline III Corinthians; the Coptic NT contains I & II Clement; the Syrian/Nestorian Peshitta excludes II & III John, Jude, and Rev/Ap; and the Ethiopian Bible adds books called the Sínodos, the Epistle of Peter to Clement, the Book of the Covenant, and the Didascalia. (see Biblio.32)

Notably, however, the Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Truth were evidently not known to any of those traditions at the time of their attempts at establishing a NT canon, never being so much as mentioned in their protracted deliberations—and hence were never even under consideration for inclusion in their respective listings. In any case, the concept of a canon was certainly never intended to exclude the possible inspiration of any subsequent textual discoveries or isolated agrapha (Lk 1:1 & Jn 21:25).

Precisely what transpired during the first 3½ centuries AD, prior to the earliest ecclesiastical attempts at canonization, is notoriously obscure, as the original Gospel Messianics were eventually supplanted by the Pauline ‘Christians’ (Ac 11:25-26). Thus the Epistle of Barnabas (late first century) remains unacquainted with the historical Gospels, whereas Justin Martyr (mid-second century) shows no awareness of Paul's writings—indicating an ongoing schism between the Petrine and the Pauline traditions. Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus of Lyon, at the end of the second century, are the first authors explicitly to quote from both the Gospels and from Paul. I have attempted to analyze the basis of this rift in ‘The Paul Paradox’. Essential reading on that formative period is Walter Bauer's pioneering study, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Tübingen 1934, Philadelphia 1971).

The subsequent divisions within Pauline Christianity may be summarized as follows. The Oriental Orthodox Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, as well as many other Eastern Elders, refused to accept the new doctrine of Christ's ‘two natures’ (human and divine), decreed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD; thereupon (1) the Oriental Orthodox Churches separated from (2) the Eastern Orthodox and (3) the Roman Catholic Churches. Several centuries later, in 1054 AD, the latter two in turn separated from one another, in the ‘filioque clause’ schism (see Comm.2). Then, starting in the early XVI century, (4) the Protestant Churches began subdividing off from the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The Oriental Orthodox Churches (#1) today include the Coptic, the Armenian, the Syriac, the Ethiopian, the Eritrean, and the Thomasite Malankara of India. They are referred to by outsiders as ‘monophysite’ (‘single nature’); however, they themselves describe their Christology as ‘miaphysite’ (‘unified nature’).

In his prologue, Joshua ben Sirach (II-century BC) wrote an appropriate slogan for any comparable work of translation: ‘What was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same meaning when translated into another language.’ With such admonition in mind, I have prepared the following versions as literally and as lyrically as I could. Historically they have passed from Aramaic (in the case of Thomas) thru Greek (Philip and Truth) to Coptic and only then to English! The complex process of interpreting such ancient documents has been well summarized by John R. Donahue SJ:

The English term ‘text’ is from the Latin texere, meaning ‘to weave’. A text is an interwoven network of meanings that gives rise to the ‘hermeneutical circle’; that is, the meaning of a text must be determined as a whole, but study of the individual parts is necessary to arrive at the meaning of the whole. Reading texts involves ‘an expanding contextual analysis’, in which one studies the immediate context of a passage, what follows or precedes its immediate context, and the larger context of the document as a whole.⁴

—and indeed, regarding the Coptic Gospels, this larger context must include the canonical scriptures themselves (see the innumerable parallels to both the OT and NT noted thruout).

Any grammatical irregularities encountered in the translations are in the Coptic text itself (e.g. the verb tenses in Th 64). Plausible textual reconstructions are in [brackets], while editorial additions are in (parentheses). ‘[...]’ indicates places where it is not possible to interpolate the deterioration of the papyrus manuscript. The Greek Oxyrhynchus variants to Thomas are within {braces}. As distinguishing the second-person singular from the plural is essential to the sense, ‘you’ and its cognates will represent the plural, ‘thou’ and its cognates the singular (but generally with the modern verb-form—a justifiable hybrid, I believe). Scholia footnotes to each logion are indicated by superscript numbers¹, endnotes are hyperlinked via the symbol° (e.g. Sabbath°). The scriptural cross-references listed are essential to an understanding of the saying in its biblical context, and the reader is urged to refer to them in every case; explicit parallels to Thomas in the Synoptics are separately marked with an equal sign=, to spare the reader looking up what is already well-known. In antiquity, of course, there were no lower-case letters, and thus in order to represent the Hebrew, Greek and Coptic scripts I have not here used their subsequent cursive letters but rather their classic forms, which are easier for the non-scholar to read. In turn, in translating such ancient texts to modern languages, it is virtually impossible to capitalize in a consistent and adequate manner; I ask the reader's indulgence in this regard. Thruout, ‘P…’ are links to paragraph numbers in Plumley's Grammar, ‘C…’ to page numbers in Crum's Dictionary (Biblio.5+6). Lastly, since the standard internet browsers do not correctly read the Coptic font's overlines (P023), I have used underlines instead (e.g. 6n t.mnt.ero); this occurs solely in Coptic script, and so will not be confused with the underlining of the hyperlinks. The inessential Coptic dieresis (e.g. ï), also not read correctly by browsers, has been omitted altogether.

I have also included, in the footnotes to the individual logia, occasional quotations from eminent persons across the centuries who have expressed a related idea. In some such cases—but not all—this similarity is directly due to the influence of a parallel canonical text. But in each instance a clarifying insight is provided into the meaning of the saying, giving a thoughtful reformulation of its essential content by a noteworthy person in another context.

In place of the Greek form, Jesus (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ), I have used the original Aramaic: Yeshua ((w#y) meaning ‘Yahweh Savior’, i.e. ‘He-Is Savior’ (Ph 20a). Hyphenated ‘I-Am’ represents the divine self-naming from Ex 3:14: Hebrew hyh) (ahyh), Greek ΕΓΩ ΕΙΜΙ, Coptic anok pe (Th 13, P306).

Lastly, I have appended five essays as commentary: (1) ‘Are the Coptic Gospels Gnostic?’, a formal demonstration that they cannot be so categorized; (2) ‘The Maternal Spirit’, re the feminine gender in the Semitic languages of #dqh xwr [rúakh ha-qódesh, Spirit the-Holy]; (3) ‘Theogenesis’, on the intimation in Philip that the original human transgression consisted in claiming to produce children, rather than accepting them as begotten by God alone; (4) ‘Angel, Image and Symbol’, regarding these three primary concepts as found in the new scriptures, together with their underlying metaphysical framework of an apparent Spiritual Idealism; and (5) ‘The Paul Paradox’, a philosophical analysis of the evident discrepancies between the Gospels and the theology of Saul of Tarsus, together with a survey of similar critiques by many pre-eminent individuals across the centuries.

In searching out the sense of these new writings, I have had the benefit of extended conversations across the years with many friends and colleagues, especially Bob Schapiro, Chris Wesson, Crosby Brown, Luz García and Pedro Chamizo. My long-term thanks are also due to two of my undergraduate instructors: the poet Robert Frost, for his advice to partake only in what is worthy of one's time; and Prof William E. Kennick, for his example of the highest standards in philosophical analysis. To Bertrand Russell, while I was studying in London and had the opportunity to demonstrate with him in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, I am indebted for his fearless example in confronting the Establishment—whether political, military or religious—for the sake of the truth. Much of the present edition was prepared while I was a guest of numerous universities both state and private, as well as seminaries and religious communities both Catholic and Protestant, thruout Latin America; and also of the faculties of philosophy, of orthodox theology and of informatics at the University of Athens—for their fraternal hospitality I am profoundly grateful. Internet technical advice has been kindly provided by Ioannis Georgiadis of the Athens University Computer Center.

The canonical Gospels must be the paradigm in assessing any newly-discovered ‘Gospel’. That is to say, our criteria for evaluating such a text must be both its internal consistency with, and its external provenance relative to, the four texts which provide the ostensive definition of the very term ‘Gospel’ to begin with. So: are Thomas, Philip and Valentine theologically harmonious with the Synoptics and John? Do they all come from the same general historic context and archaeological ambiance in antiquity? Are the new texts, upon analysis, both conceptually and empirically coherent with the four canonical Gospels? Do they, all in all, seem to be of the same Logos? Sufficiently careful scrutiny, I have concluded, yields an affirmative answer to all of these questions. Thus the intent of this present edition, together with the online Coptic texts, dictionary and grammar (Biblio.1), is to provide the reader with the resources to carry out a thorough assessment of these extraordinary scriptures for him/herself.

It has often been suggested that these new writings are basically concoctions produced by a series of unknown somebodies long after the events they purport to concern. However, the simplest explanation here (by William of Ockham's famous Principle of Economy: ‘Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily’) is not lengthy oral tradition followed by numerous written redactions; the simplest explanation is that these three scriptures were composed by the Apostle Thomas, Philip the Evangelist and Valentine of Alexandria, and come to us basically intact and well translated from the original languages into Coptic. There is absolutely no reason to propose a more complex hypothesis here. Thus, following the example of Aristotle's Metaphysics,⁵ I have called this collection of new scriptures ‘Metalogos’—that is, ‘More Logos’.

p.ixqus 5.euxariste.k!

—Thomas Paterson Brown, BA (Amherst), PhD (London)
La Antigua, Guatemala, Semana Santa 2012
edit<a>metalog.org

Bibliography

• 1. The print version of this work in doc and pdf formats, plus the parallel Spanish and Modern Greek editions, are at www.metalog.org.

• 2. Photographic editions of the complete papyrus manuscripts have been published by UNESCO in conjunction with the Egyptian Government, under the editorship of James M. Robinson et alia: The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Codex I & Codex II), Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977 & 1974; the Gospel of Truth is in Codex I, Thomas (scan online) and Philip are in Codex II.

• 3. There is a complete bibliography regarding the new Coptic texts: Nag Hammadi Bibliography 1970-1994, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997; also listed annually 1970 ff. in the journal Novum Testamentum (both by David Scholer); as of 2004, this listing had reached 10626 separate titles! See the immense online Gospel of Thomas Bibliograpy (by Sytze van der Laan).

• 4. The entire collection of some 45 titles (including a wide diversity of period religious writings) is available in a popularized edition: The Nag Hammadi Library in English (edited by James M. Robinson & Marvin Meyer), San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977, 1988³ (with Richard Smith) .

• 5. For the grammatical structure of the Coptic language, I have used the comprehensive Introductory Coptic Grammar (by John Martin Plumley, subsequently Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge), London: Home & Van Thal, 1948; this authoritative but rare mimeographed sourcebook of the Sahidic dialect is on-line: photocopied in 1987 by Robert Michael Schapiro at the Mt Scopus Library of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; transcribed to hypertext format (with George Somsel); also available in pdf print version.

• 6. The indispensable standard lexicon is: A Coptic Dictionary (by Walter Ewing Crum), Oxford: The University Press, 1939, reprinted 2000 by Sandpiper Books Ltd, London & Powells Books, Chicago; online in gif and djvu formats; a searchable version is included in #39; NB this monumental work is alphabetized primarily by consonants and only secondarily by vowels; Coptic is a partly agglutinative language,⁶ utilizing a complex system of morphological and syntactical prefixes and suffixes which must be subtracted in order to identify the root term—for example, tnnannhuebol → tn.na.nnhu ebol (P199a, C219b, C034a: ‘we.shall.come forth’).

• 7. For my translation of Thomas, I have utilized the unsurpassed first edition of the Coptic with line-by-line English, French, German and Dutch translations, as published in: The Gospel according to Thomas (edited by Antoine Guillaumont, Henri-Charles Puech, Gilles Quispel, Walter Till & Yassah ‘Abd al-Masih), Leiden: E.J. Brill; New York: Harper & Brothers; London: Collins, 1959.

• 8. The Gospel of Thomas website, with many links, is maintained by Stevan Davies.

• 9. There is now a most useful interlinear Coptic/English edition of Thomas (edited by Michael Grondin, who also maintains the scholarly online gThomas eGroup).

• 10. The current standard popular edition of Thomas, with Coptic text, English translation and notes: The Gospel of Thomas (edited and translated by Marvin Meyer), San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992.

• 11. The prior Greek fragments of Thomas, which vary significantly from the Coptic version: New Sayings of Jesus and Fragment of a Lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus (edited by Bernard Grenfell, Lucy Drexel & Arthur Hunt), Oxford University Press, London: Henry Frowde, 1904; interlinear by Andrew Bernhard, who also maintains the important Gospel of Thomas Resource Center. (Photo of a bronze statuette of the Nile River Oxyrhynchus fish, in the Agyptisches Museum in Berlin.)

• 12. A well-illustrated and most informative historical account and analysis: ‘The Gospel of Thomas: Does It Contain Authentic Sayings of Jesus?’ (by Helmut Koester & Stephen Patterson), Bible Review, April 1990.

• 13. The standard scholarly edition of Thomas and Philip, with ancillary materials, critical Coptic text, English translation and fully indexed Coptic and Greek glossaries: Nag Hammadi Codex II (volume I, edited by Bentley Layton), Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989; unfortunately, this long-awaited edition appeared too late for me to utilize in preparing the present text.

• 14. The primary Spanish edition of Thomas and Philip, translated directly from the Coptic with introductory material, extensive bibliographies and annotations: Los Evangelios Apócrifos (edited and translated by Aurelio de Santos Otero), Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 7ª edición 1991.

• 15. I have based my translation of Philip on the Coptic text, amply annotated with fully indexed glossaries: Das Evangelium nach Philippos (edited and translated by Walter Till; online), Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1963; fotocopied 1987 at the University of Haifa, Israel; author of the succinct but definitive Koptische Dialektgrammatik (1994), Till has done us the inestimable service of parsing the Coptic text (cf. #5), so that e.g. the continuous manuscript line netsite6ntprw4auws66mp4wm (100.25, from Ph 7) is deciphered as net.site 6n t.prw 4a.u.ws6 6m p.4wm, and is thus readily interpreted as ‘those-who.sow in the.winter habitually.they.reap in the.summer’.

• 16. A superlative English edition of the Gospel of Truth, extensively annotated with an expansive introductory essay: The Gospel of Truth, A Valentinian Meditation on the Gospel (online; edited and translated by Kendrick Grobel), New York: Abingdon Press; London: Black, 1960; see Modern Scholarly Comments.

• 17. I based my translation of the Gospel of Truth on the standard scholarly edition, with introduction, Coptic text, English translation, copious notes and fully-indexed glossaries: Nag Hammadi Codex I (two volumes, edited by Harold W. Attridge), Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985; Coptic text.

• 18. NB The best Greek/English interlinear and lexicon of the New Testament canon, with super-linear textual variants and sub-linear ultraliteral translation: Concordant Greek Text and The Greek Elements (both edited by Adolph Ernst Knoch), Santa Clarita CA 91350, USA: Concordant Publishing Concern, 4th edition 1975 (sample page).

• 19. A work of extraordinary breadth and insight regarding the basic parameters of Biblical metaphysics, as contrasted with Greek and Western: Claude Tresmontant, A Study of Hebrew Thought, New York, Tournai, Paris, Rome: Desclee Company, 1960; see ‘Angel, Image and Symbol’.

• 20. ‘The History of the Coptic Language’ (by Hany N. Takla).

• 21. Various editions of the Bible: www.biblegateway.com; see also #24.

• 22. The magisterial Liddell-Scott-Jones-McKenzie Greek Lexicon; included in #29 and #39 (searchable).

• 23. Essential in NT studies is the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1979 ff.; included in #29.

• 24. An excellent Spanish edition of the Bible, with copious notes, indexes, tables, maps and references (which, however, unfortunately continues the use of the hybrid misnomer ‘Jehová’, in place of the correct ‘Yahweh’): Santa Biblia Reina-Valera (Edición de Estudio), Sociedades Bíblicas Unidas, 1995.

• 25. A leading example of the increasing number of theological resources and links on the Net: New Testament Gateway (maintained by Mark Goodacre).

• 26. I have added a number of parallels to the splendid Odes of St Solomon, a first-century Messianic text in Old Syriac discovered in 1909 (translated by James Charlesworth); audio: Intro-14, 15-28, 29-42.

• 27. The Shroud of Turin website, with extensive historical and scientific information plus many detailed images of the cloth (maintained by Barrie Schwortz); an online, computer-clarified ultraviolet image of the face on the Shroud, together with a summary of the ongoing scientific study of the relic and the latest Carbon-14 test results: www.metalog.org/files/shroud1.html.

• 28. A most uesful world-wide listing of university internet pages: www.braintrack.com.

• 29. An invaluable collection of the most important editions of the Biblical scriptures in the original Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, fully interlinked with translations into 25 modern languages plus many of the foremost reference works, all integrated into advanced programs for textual research, is available on a CD or DVD set from: Bible Works; NB the older but perfectly adequate edition BibleWorks 5 is available for only $10 plus postage.

• 30. The links on this website are checked periodically by Xenu's Link Sleuth (freeware, by Tilman Hausherr).

• 31. A splendid website of Early Christian Writings (maintained by Peter Kirby).

• 32. On the formation of the New Testament canon, see Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

• 33. Pedro José Chamizo Domínguez, ‘La traducción como problema en Wittgenstein’, Pensamiento, 1987.

• 34. The five Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John & Thomas in interlinked parallel layout (John W. Marshall, ed.), Department of Religion, University of Toronto.

• 35. A definitive analysis of the 613 rules of the Torah: Abraham Chill, The Mitzvot: The Commandments and Their Rationale, Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 2000².

• 36. A superlative free office program, including pdf writer: www.openoffice.org.

• 37. Quick links to the entire Bible (NIV), chapter by chapter: www.metalog.org/files/bible.html.

• 38. William Tyndale's magnificent NT (1534 edition), Matthew thru Acts 8—the first modern-language translation based directly on the original (from Erasmus' 1516 edition of the Greek text, Luther's 1522 German version having been based on the Latin Vulgate), and from which fully 95% of the King James 1611 edition was plagarized without attribution; Tyndale himself was eventually martyred for his venerable achievement.

• 39. A new invaluable resource for the Coptic Gospels, which includes a searchable version of Crum’s Coptic Dictionary, a searchable Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek Lexicon, and Henry Tattam’s A Compendious Grammar of the Egyptian Language (1863 edition): http://sourceforge.net/projects/marcion; english & czech documentation: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/marcion (by Milan Konvicka).

• 40. A free program for compressing entire hyperlinked archives to a single zip file: www.hiteksoftware.com/jaba (utilized for generating the zipped version of this website: Metalogos.zip).

• 41. A comprehensive resource regarding Ancient Egyptian culture and hieroglyphics: www.jimloy.com/egypt/egypt.htm.

  

  ‘FIFTH GOSPEL’ THROWS LIGHT ON SAYINGS OF JESUS
  Darrell Turner, Religion News Service, New York 27.XII.91 (#15709)

(RNS) An ancient document composed of sayings of Jesus has generated a recent spate of scholarly articles, along with strongly held opinions that the document, known as the Gospel of Thomas, deserves a much wider audience. 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.

In a recent telephone interview, Helmut Koester of Harvard Divinity School, the new president of the Society of Biblical Literature (USA), said nearly all biblical scholars in the United States agree that Thomas is as authentic as the New Testament Gospels. In an article that appeared in Bible Review in April 1990, Koester and his co-author Stephen J. Patterson wrote, ‘the Gospel of Thomas must be given equal weight with the canonical Gospels’ in any effort to reconstruct the beginnings of Christianity.

Yet, despite excitement over the work for several decades, ‘nobody's heard of it except the scholars,’ says Paterson Brown, a former professor of the philosophy of religion who has written on Thomas for the journal Novum Testamentum (article online).

Thomas was discovered in 1945 in Egypt along with more than 50 other ancient Christian, Jewish and pagan works that make up a collection known as the Nag Hammadi Library. The documents, which date from the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD, were written in Coptic, the language of early Egyptian Christians. The library, including Thomas, has been translated into English and published in several scholarly editions. But many scholars feel that Thomas should be made available in a separate volume. ‘I think it's urgent that Thomas be published alone in a paperback edition,’ said Brown.

Unlike the other Nag Hammadi volumes, Thomas contains teachings of Jesus, which scholars believe would be particularly valuable for Christian readers. Many students of the Gospel of Thomas believe that its material is potentially of more interest to the general public than the much-ballyhooed Dead Sea Scrolls—except that it is not as well known.

Many quotations recorded in Thomas are similar to those in the Gospels that make up what is known as the New Testament canon—the writings of the early church that eventually came to be accepted as authentic and authoritative texts for all Christians. For example, Saying 90 in Thomas, ‘Come unto me, for my yoke is easy and my lordship is mild, and you will find repose for yourselves,’ bears strong resemblance to a familiar passage in Matthew 11:28-30.

Modern Scholarly Comments

• Henry Barclay Swete, ‘The Oxyrhynchus Fragment [PapOx 1]’ (lecture delivered to the Summer Meeting of Clergy, the University of Cambridge, 29 July 1897): The site of Oxyrhynchus ... in Christian times ... acquired a reputation as a stronghold of Egyptian monasticism.... The Λογια Ιησου are the oracles of Jesus, or sayings in which He reveals the Divine will. The book bears, I think, manifest tokens of its claim to possess this character. It was written in the form of a codex, on leaves, not in successive columns on a roll—a form which seems to have been reserved among Christians for sacred or ecclesiastical books. Each saying begins with a formula which indicates its oracular authority.... The reason why λεγει [i.e. ‘x says’ in the present tense] is appropriate, is that we have before us a fragment of a collection of sayings which purport to be λογια ξωντα, living oracles of the living Lord.... There is a true Christian Gnosis here, but no Gnosticism.... There is no clear evidence of dependence on any of our present Gospels.... Nevertheless, the Greek has, I think, the true ring of the evangelical style. It is marvelously simple and clear.... Everything in this present fragment points to the simple Palestinian Greek of bilingual Jews, accustomed to render word for word the memoirs of the original hearers of the Lord. I doubt if the second century or the soil of Egypt could have produced anything of the kind.... I find it difficult to believe, judging from the form in which they are cast, that any of these sayings are later in their origin than the first century, or that the collection which contained them was put together after our canonical Gospels came into general use. Both St. Luke's preface and the postscript to St. John speak of books other than the Gospels which had been written, or might have been written, to contain the Gesta Christi. We have now for the first time distinct evidence of the existence of books which contained His sayings only, detached from the narrative.... If it be asked why no collection of Λογια found its way into the canon of the NT, or has survived as a whole to our own time, the answer may well be that the Church needed, above all things, histories of the Lord's Life and Passion and Resurrection.

• ————————, ‘The New Oxyrhynchus Sayings [PapOx 654]’ (lecture delivered at the Divinity School, the University of Cambridge, 7 July 1904): We now know that in the third century there existed a collection of Λογια Ιησου which was in circulation at Oxyrhynchus and probably elsewhere in the valley of the Nile. The sayings were not simply jotted down in the note-book of a private collector, but were prepared for publication.... My impression [is] that the new sayings are substantially genuine,... at once new and after the manner of our Lord's earlier teaching,... which it is difficult to regard as the creation of subapostolic times,... traditions based on the recollections of those who had heard the Lord.

• Gilles Quispel, ‘The Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament’ (lecture held at Oxford, 18 Sept 1957): Unknown sayings of Jesus, taken from a Jewish-Christian Gospel originally written in Aramaic, have come to light. The Gospel of Thomas ... is nothing else than the Gospel used by the descendants of the primitive community of Jerusalem, who seem to have lived on in Palestine almost completely isolated from the main stream of Gentile Christian tradition.... There is, as far as I can see, nothing to show that this is not good tradition.... I do not see why these ... sayings of Jesus that are contained in the Gospel of Thomas and by their wording, their style and their content betray their Palestinian origin, should not have the same historical value as the words of Jesus contained in our four canonical Gospels. They may have been transmitted in a Palestinian milieu quite isolated from the rest of Christendom and not influenced by the trends of Pauline theology. And we must not exclude the possibility that these people may have preserved sometimes the words of Jesus in a form more primitive than that found in the canonical Gospels.

• —————, ‘Some Remarks on the Gospel of Thomas’ (New Testament Studies, 1959): The Gospel of Thomas contains a certain number of sayings which transmit an independent Jewish-Christian tradition, neither influenced by nor having served as source for our canonical Gospels.... We may try to discover the aramaisms which are so frequent in these sayings.... Up till now about thirty logia have been found to preserve traces of their Aramaic origin.

• —————, ‘Gnosticism and the New Testament’, in J. Philip Hyatt (ed.), The Bible in Modern Scholarship (papers read at the centenary meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, 1964): The Holy Ghost as a Mother [is] a concept well attested in the Jewish Christian Gospel tradition and quite understandable in a religion of Semitic language.... The Gospel of Thomas ... contains evidence of a Gospel tradition transmitted in a Jewish Christian milieu.... [It] is not gnostic at all. The adherents of the gnostic interpretation ... must explain how the author could possibly say that the buried corpse could rise again (logion 5, Greek version).... For the Gospel of Thomas, Christ is our Father and the Holy Spirit is our Mother.

• Antoine Guillamont, ‘Semiticisms in the Logia of Jesus found at Nag Hammadi’ (Journal Asiatique, 1958): The Coptic logia [in the Gospel of Thomas] can, in certain cases, help to restore the Aramaic substratum of Synoptic logia.... Certain divergences of detail between the text of the Coptic logia and the Synoptic text are explained by reference to a common Aramaic substratum. In those cases, the terminology of the Coptic logia enables us to restore the Aramaic substratum more surely than when we have only the Synoptic text.

• Otto A. Piper, ‘Review of Jung Codex’ (Theology Today, 1958): While all the world talks about the Dead Sea Scrolls, relatively little publicity has been given to another find of ancient manuscripts, which may prove to be of greater importance for the study of early Christianity than the former one.... The ‘Gospel of Truth’ is considered by the editors as being either the original work of Valentinus, or its revision by one of his earliest disciples. This would date it at about AD 150.... One is amazed about the freshness of the author's approach. There is no trace of polemics against certain types of established doctrine; and the exegesis, for example, of the Prologue of John at the beginning of the work, is of surprising originality. The frequent references to New Testament passages and to ‘Jesus the Christ’ indicate the author's conviction and determination to be a real Christian. In a number of instances, for example in his view of man, the author is obviously indebted to Hebraic realism.... Far from being a philosophical treatise, the Gospel of Truth is a poem. The elegance of its style, the loftiness of its outlook, the tenderness with which the ‘secret’ is described, the unfailing dexterity with which the right term is chosen in each instance ... point to an author of uncommon talent and profound spirituality and in every respect superior to the [Church] Fathers of the second century.... With the Biblical writers he shares the Hebraic view of the Ego as the totality of body and mind.... [There is an] almost complete absence of mythological elements in the Gospel of Truth.

• Robert M. Grant & David Noel Freedman, The Secret Sayings of Jesus (1960): Those who worked with Togo Mina, director of the Coptic Museum before his death in 1949, made the first discoveries. These scholars were H.-C. Puech of Paris and his pupil Jean Doresse.... [Regarding] the Gospel of Thomas, Doresse looked through this gospel in the spring of 1949 and later announced that it was ‘a Gnostic composition’.... By 1952 Puech had discovered that Greek fragments of the same work had been found, many years earlier, among the Oxyrhynchus papyri but had never been correctly identified.... In 1958 the first complete translation of Thomas appeared; it had been made from the photographs of Pahor Labib's edition by the German scholar Johannes Leipoldt.... The Gospel of Philip contains nothing but Gnostic speculations. The Gospel of Thomas, on the other hand,... is probably our most significant witness to the early perversion of Christianity by those who wanted to create Jesus in their own image. [Included as representative of much published commentary over the last half-century.]

• Kendrick Grobel (←in the link, scroll down to The Contributor's Column), Introduction to The Gospel of Truth, A Valentinian Meditation on the Gospel (1960): [The Gospel of Truth] is written in the non-Sahidic dialect, which only very few of the [Nag Hammadi] books exhibit:... Subakhmimic (A²),... the dialect once spoken ... something more than a hundred miles downstream from Chenoboskion.... [There,] then, this translation of the Greek Gospel of Truth must have been made; there, too, in all likelihood this copy of the translation was made and from there later brought up river to Chenoboskion.... All the Christians of the second century are personalities in a deep historical shadow, even where considerable of their writing has survived. We can at least speculate that if Ignatius, Valentinus, and Justin Martyr had been equally fortunate as to the survival of their writings, Valentinus might turn out to have been both the ablest in ‘talent and eloquence’ and the most original of the three and of their whole century.... [Prior to the Nag Hammadi discovery, we could] understand Valentinus solely from the few reasonably reliable direct quotations that have come down from him, principally in the Miscellanies of Clement of Alexandria. In contrast to the heresiologies of the Church Fathers, the most striking thing in the fragments is that they reveal a Valentinus whose soteriology is Christocentric—not pleromatocentric or sophiacentric, [as alleged by the heresiologists].... W.C. van Unnik, professor of NT at Utrecht, has declared unequivocally (The Gospel of Truth and the NT, p.171) that Valentinus himself was the author of this work. I agree with him.... Has [the author here] written anything that would have been a secret unknown to an orthodox Christian?

• Krister Stendhal, ‘Method in the Study of Biblical Theology’, in J. Philip Hyatt (op.cit., 1964): The gospel traditions ... in the Gospel of Thomas or in the Agrapha may point toward traditions which are as valid as those in the NT. For the student of early Christian history the limitation to the ‘biblical’ is an act of textual laziness or a methodological sin.

• Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (1965 edition): It is a great help which the Gospel of Thomas gives us, in offering us eleven parables from the Synoptics in its own version [9/20/21b+103/57/63/64/65/76/96/107/109].... [Moreover, Thomas] contains ... four parables which are not found in the NT [8/21a/97/98].... The text of the parables has not been allegorically transformed, but rather has remained intact (except for the two additions to the parable of the thief); this confers a great value to the tradition which the Gospel of Thomas transmits to us.

• Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (1977): The Holy Spirit [is] not male (feminine in Hebrew; neuter in Greek).... The Gospel of Thomas, discovered at Nag Hammadi, has often been thought to contain some authentic material from the ministry of Jesus not otherwise preserved in the canonical Gospels.

• Helmut Koester, Introduction to ‘The Gospel of Thomas’, in James M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Biblio.4, 1977): If one considers the form and wording of the individual sayings in comparison with the form in which they are preserved in the New Testament, The Gospel of Thomas almost always appears to have preserved a more original form of the traditional saying. In its literary genre, The Gospel of Thomas is more akin to one of the sources of the canonical gospels, namely the so-called Synoptic Sayings Source (often called ‘Q’ from the German Quelle, ‘source’), which was used by both Matthew and Luke.... In its most original form, [Thomas] may well date from the first century.

• ——————, Ancient Christian Gospels (1990): What is put to the test is the ‘early Catholic’ or ‘orthodox’ tradition, which asserts the monopoly of the canonical gospel tradition.... Only dogmatic prejudice can assert that the canonical writings have an exclusive claim to apostolic origin and thus to historical priority.... The parables of the Gospel of Thomas are to be read as stories in their own right, not as artificial expressions of some hidden Gnostic truth.

• James M. Robinson (General Editor for the Nag Hammadi Codices), Introduction to The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Biblio.4, 1977): The focus of this library has much in common with primitive Christianity, with eastern religion and with ‘holy men’ (and women) of all times, as well as with the more secular equivalents of today, such as the counter-culture movements coming from the 1960s. Disinterest in the goods of a consumer society, withdrawal into communes of the like-minded away from the bustle and clutter of big-city distraction, non-involvement in the compromises of political process, sharing an in-group's knowledge both of the disaster-course of the culture and of an ideal, radical alternative not commonly known—all this in modern garb is the real challenge rooted in such materials as the Nag Hammadi library.... Primitive Christianity was itself a radical movement. Jesus called for a full reversal of values, advocating the end of the world as we have known it and its replacement by a quite new, utopian kind of life in which the ideal world would be real. He took a stand quite independent of the authorities of his day ··· and did not last very long before they eliminated him. Yet his followers reaffirmed his stand—for them he came to personify the ultimate goal.... Just as the Dead Sea Scrolls [at Qumran] were put in jars for safekeeping and hidden at the time of the approach of the Roman Tenth Legion, the burial [three centuries later] of the Nag Hammadi library in a jar may have been precipitated by the approach of Roman authorities, who had by then become Christian.

• ———————, ‘Nag Hammadi: The First Fifty Years’ (plenary address, Society of Biblical Literature, 1995): Clearly the Gospel of Thomas does contain sayings that cannot be derived from the canonical gospels,... that are clearly not Gnostic, but have the same claim to being old, even authentic, as does the older layer of sayings in the canonical gospels and Q. This can be illustrated by some of the kingdom parables in the Gospel of Thomas.... Such sayings are not Gnostic inventions, but simply part of the oral tradition of sayings ascribed to Jesus. What is perhaps even more impressive is that the Gospel of Thomas contains some New Testament parables found in their pre-canonical form.

• Ron Cameron, in David Noel Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, volume 6 (1992): Determining a plausible date of composition [of Thomas] is speculative and depends on a delicate weighing of critical judgments about the history of the transmission of the sayings-of-Jesus tradition and the process of the formation of the written gospel texts. The earliest possible date would be in the middle of the 1st century, when sayings collections such as the Synoptic Sayings Gospel Q first began to be compiled. The latest possible date would be toward the end of the 2nd century, prior to the copying of P.Oxy.1 and the first reference to the text by Hippolytus [of Rome, ca. 170-236 AD].... A date of composition in, say, the last decades of the 1st century would be more likely than a mid-to-late-2nd-century date.

• Richard Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas (1997): These sayings work at constructing a new and alternative subjectivity. Through reading the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas deliberately and consecutively, the readers gradually come to understand not only the new identity to which the sayings call them, but also the theology, anthropology, and cosmology that supports that new identity.... The dating of the Gospel of Thomas by means of the oldest core of sayings suggests an early date of 60-70 CE [AD].... The Gospel of Thomas does not contain any of the known systems or theologies of gnostic writers.... [It] connects the hearer and seeker to the very voice of the living Jesus speaking in the midst of an interpreting community.

• John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity (1998): Grenfell and Hunt drew very decisive conclusions regarding the text contained in their pap. Oxy.1. They clearly did not know that it formed part of the Gospel of Thomas, but I cite their synthesis because, in my judgment, it applies perfectly to this Gospel as a whole. They established ‘four points: (1) that we have here part of a collection of sayings, not extracts from a narrative Gospel; (2) that they were not heretical; (3) that they were independent of the four Gospels in the form preserved; (4) that they are prior to the year 140 AD, and could date from the first century’ (Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papiri: Part I, 1898).

• Stephen J. Patterson, ‘Understanding the Gospel of Thomas Today’, in Stephen J. Patterson, James M. Robinson & Hans-Gebhard Bethge, The Fifth Gospel (1998): As a sayings collection, it is likely that Thomas originated sometime in the first century, when sayings collections had not yet given way to other, more complex forms of literature, such as the narrative story or dialogue.... The social radicalism that characterized the early synoptic tradition is also found in the Gospel of Thomas.... Moreover, some of the most characteristic features of Gnosticism are not present in Thomas, such as the notion that the world was created by an evil demiurge.... It now seems most likely that with the Gospel of Thomas we do indeed have a new text, whose traditions are for the most part not derivative of other, better-known gospels, and which was originally written at a time more or less contemporary with the canonical texts.

• Higinio Alas Gómez, The Nag Hammadi Gospels (1998): [Gnosticism] basically denied the physical reality of Christ incarnate.... Little by little, scholars have come to comprehend that it is not appropriate to classify [the] texts [of Thomas, Philip and Valentine] as gnostic,... since these clearly affirm the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

• Elaine H. Pagels, ‘Exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Gospels of Thomas and John’ (Journal of Biblical Literature, 1999): The sayings [in the Thomas Gospel] are not randomly arranged, but carefully ordered to lead one through a process of seeking and finding ‘the interpretation of these sayings’ (log. 1).... Thomas's theology and anthropology do not depend upon some presupposed, generic ‘gnostic myth’. Instead,... the source of this religious conviction is, quite simply, exegesis of Genesis 1.... Such exegesis connects the eikon of Gen 1:26-27 with the primordial light,... to show that the divine image implanted at creation enables humankind to find ... the way back to its origin in the mystery of the primordial creation.

• —————, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003): Now that scholars have begun to place the sources discovered at Nag Hammadi, like newly discovered pieces of a complex puzzle, next to what we have long known from tradition, we find that these remarkable texts, only now becoming widely known, are transforming what we know as Christianity.... Let us start by taking a fresh look at the most familiar of all Christian sources—the gospels of the New Testament—in the perspective offered by one of the other Christian gospels composed in the first century and discovered at Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Thomas.

• Nicholas Perrin, ‘The Gospel of Thomas: Witness to the Historical Jesus?’ (paper, annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature, 2002): The Gospel of Thomas was not originally written in Greek;... instead, it shows every evidence of having been written in Syriac [i.e. Aramaic¹].... Secondly,... the Gospel of Thomas is not an evolving sayings collection of different strata. Instead, it is a carefully worked unity, brought together by a Syriac-speaking editor. [¹Heb Mr) (aram) = LXX Gk ΣΥΡΟΙ, as in II-Ki 8:28, Ezra 4:7; see Biblio.26, Mt 4:24, and Ph 20a (line 6)]

• Jean-Yves Leloup, Introduction to The Gospel of Philip (French 2003, English 2004): To reach [thus] into Christian origins is to find ourselves in a space of freedom without dogmatism, a space of awe before the Event that was manifest in the person, the deeds, and the words of the Teacher from Galilee.... The Gospel of Philip invites us to follow Christ by awakening in this life to that in us which does not die, to what St. John called Eternal Life.... Another important theme showing a kinship between this Gospel and that of Thomas is the idea of non-duality.... The Gospel of Philip ... [is] dealing with subjects that were undoubtedly the source of much misunderstanding in his times, as they still are today.

• Harold W. Attridge, The New York Review of Books (1.IV.2008): The body of Christian literature from the second and third centuries ... reflects the intense debate among followers of Jesus.... The faction that won these debates promoted its own version of the history of the times and suppressed dissenting voices.... In the last century ... a number of manuscripts written by the losers in the ancient ecclesial battles was discovered.... The most important was a cache of codices ... uncovered in 1945 near the village of Nag Hammadi, in Egypt.... The entire discovery was soon labeled ‘Gnostic’, echoing a term of opprobrium used by ancient polemicists against their ecclesial adversaries. Although at least one sect may have styled itself ‘the Gnostics’ (‘the Knowers’), referring to a secret knowledge, the notion that this broad label accurately applies to all the marginalized early Christian sects has been heavily criticized among contemporary scholars. Early Christians whose perspectives fell from favor represented a wide spectrum of views and social groups.... The philosophy underlying ... [those] systems of a generally ‘Gnostic’ cast, owes much to the popular Platonism of the Hellenistic and Roman eras.

• Biblical Archeology Review, ‘Ten Top Discoveries’ (VII-X.2009): Among the Nag Hammadi texts was the fully preserved Gospel of Thomas, which does not follow the canonical Gospels in telling the story of Jesus’ birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection, but rather presents the reader with a very early collection of Jesus’ sayings. Although this mystical text was originally believed to be a Gnostic text, it now seems to reveal yet another strand of early Christianity.