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{"id":4037,"date":"2012-10-29T01:02:09","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T05:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=4037"},"modified":"2015-03-13T23:05:48","modified_gmt":"2015-03-14T03:05:48","slug":"early-manuscripts-of-the-gospel-of-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2012\/10\/29\/early-manuscripts-of-the-gospel-of-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Early Manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas
\nby larryhurtado<\/p>\n

In writing a commissioned essay on \u201cWho Read Early Christian Apocrypha?\u201d for a multi-author volume, I drew upon an earlier study I made a few years ago: \u201cThe Greek Fragments of the Gospel of Thomas as Artefacts: Papyrological Observations on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1, Papyrus Oxrhynchus 654 and Papyrus Oxrhynchus 655,\u201d published in Das Thomasevangelium: Enstehung\u2013Rezeption\u2013Theologie, eds. Jorg Frey, edzard Popkes and Jens Schroeter (Berlin\/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 19-32. To my knowledge, this essay remains the most recent, and in some respects the most detailed, papyrological analysis of these fascinating items in print. I\u2019ve now put a PDF of the pre-publication form of the essay under the \u201cSelected Essays\u201d tab of this blog-site.<\/p>\n

But the volume also includes a wealth of other studies by a galaxy of scholars important for anyone seriously interested in scholarship on the Gospel of Thomas, some in English and some in German. Among them, I cite in particular Stephen Emmel, \u201cThe Coptic Gnostic Texs as Witnesses to the Production and Transmission of Gnotic (and Other) Traditions\u201d (pp. 33-49); Stephen J. Patterson, \u201cJesus Meets Plato: The Theology of the Gospel of Thomas and Middle Platonism\u201d (pp. 181-205); April D. DeConick, \u201cMysticism and the Gospel of Thomas,\u201d (206-21); Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer, \u201cOn the Redactional and Theological Relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocryphon of John\u201d (251-71);and Jens Schroeter, \u201cDie Herausforderung einer theologischen Interpretation des Thomasevangeliums\u201d (435-59).<\/p>\n

As to who read early Christian apocrypha, my main contention is that there was a diversity of readers of the very diverse body of texts grouped under this category. One of the bodies of data that I discuss, and that hasn\u2019t been noted as much as it could have been in prior studies, concerns the physical\/visual features of the earliest manuscripts of these texts. In keeping with some others of my recent publications, I urge that these early manuscripts are direct artefacts of the reading and readers of these particular texts. Working with manuscripts of some apocryphal texts as illustrative (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, and apocryphal Acts of the Apostles), I conclude that these items reflect the use of these texts for personal reading and study, with no indication of discrete circles of Christians particularly identifiable with reference to these texts.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"