INNER CIRCLE: Evidence For The Early Date of Thomas’s Gospel

Another clue that Thomas belongs with those pre-Synoptic writings of the early Christians is that his Gospel is also uninterested in apocalyptic eschatology – which wasn’t developed until much later – and also cares nothing about recording the crucifixion or resurrection events that later became essential to Christian theology.

Even Gnostic texts from the second century had much greater theological content than we find in The Gospel of Thomas, or in the supposed Q-document.

So, if these scholars are correct in theorizing that the Gospel of Thomas predates Mark, Mathew and Luke, [and, of course, the Gospel of John which came much later], then we have a few things to consider. First, that this collection of sayings from the Gospel of Thomas are indeed accurate transcriptions of things Jesus actually taught. Or, at the very least, they are as accurate as anything we find in those other New Testament Gospels. Why? Simply because half of the sayings of Thomas are also found in Mark, Matthew and Luke. Therefore, Thomas did not copy his sayings of Jesus from them. If anything, those other [later] Gospel writers must have copied their sayings of Jesus from Thomas, or at least from another Q-type document of sayings dated around the same time frame.

This means that those other sayings of Jesus found in the Gospel of Thomas are equally authentic. If so, we need to ask ourselves a few questions, like: “Why didn’t those other Gospel writers incorporate all of the sayings of Jesus found in Thomas? Why only choose half of them and leave out the other sayings?”

We might also ask ourselves, “What if those other Gospel writers copied the sayings of Jesus from Thomas without fully understanding the context or meaning of what Jesus was trying to communicate?”

That, for me, is the twenty-thousand-dollar question. I can’t help but wonder if Mark, Matthew and Luke didn’t construct a narrative around half of the sayings of Jesus in order to tell a narrative story without fully recognizing what Jesus may have been trying to say. Perhaps the original meaning of some of these sayings was – quite unintentionally – obscured by placing the saying in a certain narrative framework that shifted the meaning into a more literal, or less esoteric direction?

Of course, we’re speculating here. There’s not much we can hold on to when it comes to which came first, and who copied what, and what meaning might have been clouded by the authors of these Gospels. If we start by assuming that Thomas’s collected sayings of Jesus came first, and if we believe later authors applied those sayings in ways that blurred the teachings, then we’ll arrive at one set of conclusions about these things. But, if we start by assuming that Thomas came later, then we’ll conclude that new sayings were added to all the others and that leaves us with still more questions to ponder. For example, if the latter case is true, then why would anyone add new sayings to a list of Jesus’s teachings without explaining why? In other words, if the goal of the Gospel of Thomas was to suggest a different version of the Gospel found in the Synoptic texts, why not go all the way and actually provide a counter-narrative to challenge those other Gospels? Wouldn’t it defeat the purpose to leave out such details? Other Gnostic writings certainly do suggest another narrative – like the Gospels of Judas or Philip, or even Mary Magdalene’s Gospel – but Thomas does not do this. Instead, the Gospel of Thomas only gives us a long list of the sayings of Jesus without instruction, doctrine, or clarification. We’re simply left with a collection of wisdom without context, instruction or theological framework.

To me, this alone suggests that the Gospel of Thomas is indeed an example of an earlier, pre-Synoptic collection of the sayings of Jesus, without any agenda to debunk the teachings of Jesus in Mark, Matthew or Luke – because those Gospels didn’t exist yet.

In other words, the Gospel of Thomas doesn’t feel the need to correct any conflicting versions of Jesus’s teachings because, at the time it was compiled, there weren’t any other versions of Jesus to compare to.

So, if we go along with this assumption – and believe me, I do understand that this is absolutely an assumption – that Thomas was compiled merely as a collection of the sayings of Jesus, and if this collection of the sayings of Jesus contains additional teachings that we do not find in later Gospels, and if these sayings are trying to tell us something deeper and more profound than what those other Gospel authors understood, then…well, we’ve got some digging to do, don’t we?

All of this supposition is based on more than mere guess-work, thankfully. As we saw in our previous post, there is some connection between at least some of the sayings in Thomas and the writings of Plato that shed a bit more light on the possible meaning of these words from Jesus. [If they are, indeed, the words of the same Jesus of Nazareth found in the New Testament Gospels].

For now, at least, let’s suspend some of our disbelief and take this opportunity to explore the “what if?” notion that the Gospel of Thomas just might contain some hidden wisdom taught by Jesus that could potentially help us understand more of who God is, and who we are, and what our place in the universe might be.

As we’ve already said, the simple code for everything in Thomas’s Gospel seems to be one of nonduality and the Oneness of all things with the Divine. If accept this, then everything else should fall into place for us as we move forward in our exploration of this work.

From what I’ve seen so far, there is indeed some great wisdom for us to contemplate here. I do hope you’ll enjoy this deep dive into the Gospel of Thomas with me.

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Keith Giles is the author of the 7-part best-selling “Jesus Un” book series from Quoir Publishing. His latest -and final book – in this series, Jesus Unarmed: How The Prince Of Peace Disarms Our Violence is available now.  Keith is also the host of Second Cup with Keith [a new solo podcast available now on the Ethos Radio App, for Apple and Android and on Spotify; and the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast [along with co-hosts Matthew Distefano, Dr. Katy Valentine, and Derrick Day], and the new Apostate’s Anonymous podcast with Matthew Distefano. He and his wife, Wendy, currently live in El Paso, TX.