Biblical Views: What’s Up with the Gospel of Thomas?

Home > Magazines > BAR > January/February 2010

New manuscript discoveries continually expand our knowledge of what was actually going on in antiquity. The accommodation of this new knowledge can sometimes require us to create new histories. Yet as a Biblical scholar, I am constantly faced with the fact that our old academic models die hard. Why? Because there is a general resistance to changing previous understandings of the Bible based on the discovery of “new” nonbiblical manuscripts. For one thing, the religious view that the Bible is old, trustworthy and sacred has become a cultural icon in our society. Second, not only are believers invested in […]

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Footnotes

Gnostic Christians believed that YHWH, the Israelite God of the Hebrew Bible, was a lesser god who created the world and humans. The one Supreme God, whom the Gnostics worshiped, was a separate god. He was an indescribable and ineffable deity who dwelled outside YHWH’s universe. However, his spirit had fallen into the created universe and resided in the human soul. Only by gaining true knowledge, or gnosis, about the order of the universe and the ascent route back to the one Supreme God could the believer return and be reunited with full divinity. For these Gnostic Christians, Jesus revealed gnosis through his esoteric teachings.

See “Ten Top Discoveries: The Nag Hammadi Library,” BAR 35:04, and James Brashler, “Nag Hammadi Codices Shed New Light on Early Christian History,” BAR 10:01.

Endnotes

Thomas 3, 20, 51, etc.

All translations included here from the Gospel of Thomas are mine.

John 1:12, 3:13, 17–21, etc.; Thomas 10.