Gospel of Thomas?

Has anyone read, looked at, or have any opinion about the work of Dr. Elaine Pagels?Is anyone doing (or done) any research or have any expertise with the 'Gospel of Thomas' or any of the other NEW gospels and texts. That was SOME pile of texts found at Haj Nammadi (spelling?) -the 1945 discovery of what to appear to be some of the oldest Gnostic (debatable, I imagine) texts? Pagels was one that did devote a considerable amount of time and effort with those 'codices' - I did a search here in all forums, on her name, and nothing was found.Stephen P.

Hello phineasf,I read Dr. Pagels "The Gnostic Gospels" some years ago, and also the more recent "The Origins of Satan".I also have read and have for reference "The Nag Hammadi Library", James M. Robinson, ed., Harper Collins pub.Personally, I think Dr. Pagels is a serious researcher. Her work on the Gnostic gospels seems to be a straight forward analysis of the diversity in early Christian writings.Namaste'Amlodhi

I'm aware this is late but I hope you read it anyway; there are a couple scholarly books you may get at a public library that contain and discuss the Gospel of Thomas. They are titled, "The Five Gospels", Ed. Robert W. Funk, and "The Complete Gospels", Ed. Robert J. Miller. Good Luck! PM

There is also a gospel of Mary Magdelaine that for some reason was not included in our English versions of the Bible, for reasons I dont know.

I guess this thread is not very popular, but I don't know why several gospels didn't make it into the Bible. Well, i do know something; the early church fathers were fighting with other "christian" groups over what was considered orthodox teaching and what was heresy. And, there was plenty of demonizing and book-burning going on. Fortunately the Gospel's of Thomas and Mary(in part) made it thru to our time.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 11-20-2003]

When the canonical Bible was being developed, the Church had to items on their agenda. One was to try to co-opt and unite as many of different sects as possible, without sanctioning outright heresy. That is why the Gospel of John and the book of Revelations are included in the New Testament, despite the fact that they are really "way out there" compared to the other Gospels. It was an attempt to keep within the fold the group of early Christians that would, eventually, become the Gnostics. The source I read this from was The Lost Gospel by Burton L. Mack.The other concern was to build allegience to the church heirarchy. That is why many of the forgeries attributed to Paul and the other apostles were chosen - they tended to support allegience to the centralizing church leadership as well as the civil authorities. I don't remember any specific references off hand, by I think this is accepted by the Biblical criticism community.

Quite interesting info. about how the early church tried to be as inclusive as possible. I'll have to research that a little more because I was under the impression that there was alot of in-fighting going on concerning important doctrines; especially the doctrines of christ's divinity and the trinity. It is my understanding that Gnosticism originated a few hundred years BC as a particular philosophy in the Greek world, and that some christians "picked it up and ran with it", so to speak. I did read that book you posted, but that was 5 years ago. I'll have to review it. Regarding the 'forgeries' of Paul's letters, I think you mean 2timothy, Ephesians, etc. I must do more reading on this , but I am aware that it was common literary practice in those times to write letters, books, etc. using a commonly accepted authority to show allegiance. I think it was somewhat like writing or sending a package "in the care of" someone these days, but I'm not sure, its a little confusing. Certain "letters of Paul" were probably also chosen because they agreed to some extent with early church doctrine.

After watching Stigmata, I read the Gospel of Thomas for the first time. It highly contradicts all other Biblical text, hence it wasn't included in the Bible.cheers

Well thats what you get for watching Stigmata! Anyway, the Gospel of Thomas does seem to have a Gnostic bent to it. However, it is believed by the scholars of the "Jesus Seminar" to have been written earlier than the Canonical gospels, which makes it just possible that some of its sayings go directly back to Jesus. It is a "Sayings" gospel, and the earliest church leaders(at the time of the apostles) would have easily collected sayings of Jesus from the apostles and deciples. Other than it's gnostic overtones, I'm not convinced that it contradicts on the whole what Jesus said in the Bible. We also need to remember that it was found along with a bunch of other texts(the Nag Hammadi Library) in Egypt. Perhaps the earliest christians were not only on missionary journeys like Paul, but also were fleeing persecution.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 11-21-2003]

Two books on excluded Gospels are coming out soon, or may already be out at this point.:"Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas""The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle"I don't know the authors names.------------------
holmes

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Quite interesting info. about how the early church tried to be as inclusive as possible.

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Well, I may have misspoke. By inclusive, I meant "within reason". My impression was that there were two purposed in collating the canonical scriptures - to create an organization that is large enough to include most of the important groups (which means making concessions), but also setting a standard by which you can declare the "far out" groups as nuts. Also, I haven't read a whole lot on this subject, so I don't know how my sources are generally recieved in the Biblical criticism community.

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Regarding the 'forgeries' of Paul's letters, I think you mean 2timothy, Ephesians, etc. I must do more reading on this , but I am aware that it was common literary practice in those times to write letters, books, etc. using a commonly accepted authority to show allegiance.

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Yes, that's also my understanding - so maybe "forgery" is too strong a word. The point is that there are several (I think 7) epistles that can be traced to a 1st century Hellenized Christian in the Syria region who we may as well call "Paul", but the rest were written in the 2nd or 3rd centuries. I haven't read enough, so I was never able to get a list of which were the ones that were actually written by Paul.

Forget about the Gospel of Thomas, I mean it isn't practiced by christians. Lets look at things like, First Timothy. Chapter 2, 11-13.http://www.geocities.com/jesussavedusall/index.html?10691...

We will look for the authors of these new books. In the mean time get "The Five Gospels" Editor;Robert Funk. You should be able too find the book at a good library. It contains the Gospel of Thomas, notes and commentary.
As I have also mentioned in a previous post, the Gospel of Mary(a large fragment)is in a book titled "the Complete Gospels", and I'm unsure of the editor. Both of these books are fascinating as they contain some of the oldest writings by Docetic & Gnostic christians.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 12-03-2003]

Yes, we may as well call these authors "Paul" because the theology is much the same as in Pauls own letters(Romans, Galatians, etc.) and they were written in the same time period or soon after Paul's generation. But we can also distinguish them from Paul as written by other authors in his name because the writing styles are a bit different, and these authors don't use Paul's common greetings and prayers. For example:"Grace & peace to you from our Lord Jesus..."(1st Corinthians 1:3) I think the understanding of most scholars is that these letters(the pastoral epistles, etc.) were written by younger deciples of, close associates of, and/or people with similar ideas as Paul. I am not sure that Paul in any of his letters, forged or not, wrote with any gnostic ideas in mind, but I am reading about this now and perhaps the Gospel of Thomas and Paul have some ideas in common. For example; Paul & Thomas both seem to express the idea that the universe is divided into Good and Evil forces.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 11-25-2003]