Dating the Gospel of Thomas - Very Clear Clues to a Late Date

reply to post by FlyersFan


WHO is he to approve it? The pope? The Jerusalem patriarch may be? Only a new ecumenical council could do that from churches' point of view. The scientists I guess have written volumes about not only Thomas but also the other books. That doesn't make the religious people to accept authenticity of a book. We are simply not in Nicaea's 4th century anymore when science=religion=state. And when the masses were as illiterate and outside the game as possible. That is the biggest miscalculation today. It is already in the pubic domain of internet. That means everyone could click search and read, with the only condition to want it. The churches must accept that as a changed reality, as a gift from God as pope Francis recently said about internet. I will very much appreciate if the main churches agree on something on that matter. And let me use the occasion to REPEAT that I ACCEPT the canonical books, as long as there are not proven false verses between the time of Jesus/Apostles and the time of the first physical documents that are generally dated to 2nd century. Actually MISSING verses are much more difficult to prove than ADDED verses. I believe you and people like you will approve everything if the pope approves it. This approach is not so bad, as long as the pope is a good pope.

Let me say also that: the churches including the pope cannot act in a vacuum. They need solid scientific and, imo public support. Hope this discussion is a tiny bit of that support. To confirm something, be it a book, be it apparition, be it whatever that the people talk about (to avoid the taboo heretic word composed of two letters inside in the word letter). The idea "it is not so, because it cannot be so", is as wrong as it is meaningless wording. The idea to judge upon such sentence, is as insane as the middle centuries practice show. Unfortunately, some still find it useful, both in private and in public. So I suppose the intelligent people start searching evidences (although not all of us are archaeologists) and help the churches. And stop quoting 4th century canons as rules for 21st reality. Canons can change, check your religious textbooks.

(P.s. practice shows negative-charged threads get many more responses than the threads with a more positive tone. May be I am not exception in that, sorry).

2012newstart
WHO is he to approve it? The pope? The Jerusalem patriarch may be? Only a new ecumenical council could do that from churches' point of view.

I didn't say 'approved' .... I said 'proven to be true'. The two aren't necessary the same thing. That being said, if the different main stream christian denominations accepted it, then I'd be more inclined to also accept it.

Sinter Klaas
Really ?

I wish I was there to slap these apostles in the face. Following an important figure in their lives, and then cause numerous ways of what could be regarded for the truth... Bloody fools should have worked together to spread the words of Jesus, as a single strong story.

while they were mostly running for their lives?

Ah, the chimera of Truth! Belief makes things true for some, as facts and evidence do for others. The very nature of our topic regarding Thomas points to a certain irony in the supposed martyrdom of the apostles ... by the time of the canonizing of texts, it was the nascent Church that was fully capable of making others run for their lives, as well as doing its best to destroy everything and everything that didn't agree with the "official line."

Thankfully for anyone interested in the non-orthodox texts and histories of early believers, those thugs were not entirely successful.

reply to post by adjensen

"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Messiah." (Mark 8:29 NIV)

Note that Peter's response to the question is different -- in one case, he is the Messiah, in another he is "a righteous angel". This is exactly in keeping with Gnosticism, which had no interest in Messiahs, but believed that Jesus was the neoplatonic equivalent of an angel, an aeon.

If you ask me, and I know, no one is asking me, this scripture proves that the Gospel of Mark was written AFTER the Gospel of Thomas.

What is the meaning of the word "messiah", translated as "christ"? According to you, in our previous conversations, the words "messiah" and "christ" mean nothing more than "anointed" with oil.

In the Old Testament, God orders Samuel to anoint Saul with oil, as it is God's will that Saul should be Israel's first king. So Saul was Israel's first "messiah" or "christ". That didn't turn out so well, so God told Samuel to pick up his horn of oil and go anoint David, as it was God's will that David would be Israel's second king. King David was Israel's second "messiah" or "christ".

500 years later, Israel would embrace another "messiah" or "christ" in Cyrus the Great, who freed the Israelites from Babylonian rule. Cyrus the Great was neither a "Jewish" descendant of King David, nor anointed by a prophet. But, he fit the prophecies, and the book of Isaiah was interpolated to include his name as the Messiah. Some info

There is nothing is Jewish history to suggest that the Jews thought that messiahs were divine, other than the fact that they were ordinary men, selected by God to do his will, and therefore endowed with power, only through the power of God.

So, if you, Adjensen, believe that Jesus Christ was fully human and fully god, an emanation of the one true GOD, as an arm of the "Trinity" reaching out from heaven, to perform a magical act of sacrifice, that would free not only the Jews, but all of humanity, how do you think you would describe his presence as being like? What is a messiah like?

Would you say that Jesus was like an oiled man, yet ordinary in every other way? Would you categorize him in the same way as you would a frail man such as Saul or David, or would you say that the "Son of Man", the very emanation of God on earth was like a "righteous angel".

Do you really think that Peter saw Jesus as a warrior, like Cyrus the Great or King Saul or even like King David, who would lead them into battle, taking foreskins and conquering and overthrowing the Romans? What is a "messiah" like?

The Gospel of Thomas doesn't refer to Jesus as "Jesus Christ" or "christ" or "messiah" because, primitively, he wasn't called "messiah" or "christ" by his followers. That was a titled bestowed on Jesus after his death. And, therefore, in my opinion, the "righteous angel" comment, with which you have contention, actually proves your theory wrong. The word "messiah" contains no description of the divinity of the "Son of Man", "Son of God", "Holy Emanation of God", that the presence of such a man as Jesus must have commanded. It's an obvious interpolation, in my opinion.

The concept of a "biographical narrative" was so rare as to be non-existent before the very late 1st century and into the 2nd. Plutarch (45 - 120 CE) popularized the form in his "Lives" which were probably composed in 96-98 CE which interestingly corresponds with the probable composition date of the canonical gospels.

Prior to that the most common way to honor a famous or wise man was to pass on his "sayings" (e.g. the Proverbs of Solomon, the Dialogues of Plato, etc.).

Thomas is a "sayings" gospel. That it represents an earlier tradition in the Christian churches, facilitating passing the oral tradition around as witnesses aged and died, has seemed quite reasonable to many who have studied it. Some scholars believe that Thomas may even predate the theoretical "Q" Gospel which was the bibliographic forerunner of Mark, Matthew, etc.

Whether Thomas should be considered a "gnostic" gospel is under scholarly debate. There are not that many recognizable Gnostic elements in Thomas as there are in some of the other Nag Hammadi texts.

FlyersFan

2012newstart
WHO is he to approve it? The pope? The Jerusalem patriarch may be? Only a new ecumenical council could do that from churches' point of view.

I didn't say 'approved' .... I said 'proven to be true'. The two aren't necessary the same thing. That being said, if the different main stream christian denominations accepted it, then I'd be more inclined to also accept it.

...obviously it is you who have chosen your own wording...

I think I commented on the issue anyway, relevant enough for the readers to understand. Readers that might be on a higher intellectual level than we suppose of them or we ourselves are. I respect the readers, and many of my writings are addressed to them to explain a different point of view than presented by the respected posters. I know I will never convince the fellow posters who have deep rooted views different from mine.

I am done with this thread. It exhausted itself as a positive work to bring something new on the table.

If we are going to comment new facts coming of new/old gospels, I think the tone of such a scientific thread cannot be the same tone of the current thread. It doesn't match the level of spiritual matter we discuss.

There is the incoming meeting in Jerusalem between pope and patriarchs. Highly relevant and full of expectations. May is not that far away. I made a thread about it. www.abovetopsecret.com... Or you make your own thread if you don't want to post in a thread where OP is 2012newstart.

That meeting may put the new renovation of the ancient church, as Jesus spoke to Peter: you are Peter, ...etc. The current structure and practice, the interpretations of the gospels, both approved and still waiting their approval, is not the way Jesus taught anyone, anything. Jesus never told how should the churches be run. Today we see they are run not so ...good, to put it mildly. They do not answer basic expectations of common faithful in the new time we are living in today, not 50 years ago.

There are hi expectations something good will happen, especially after the election of pope Francis and the election of a number of Eastern and Orthodox patriarchs, among whom are the Coptic patriarch/pope of Alexandria, Egypt, the Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, residing in Damascus, besides others. New people in the old churches, with hopefully new approach to old and new problems.

Let concentrate on the positive, on what could be done from now on, in this 2014, for the generations to come. It is wrong to assume everything ends in this generation that some outdated views envision as a generation of global martyrdom. I do not agree with these views. I believe the churches have more to give to the entire world, or universe. Whether new canonized books (not just Gnostic) will give that new impulse, or new interpretations on the very well know old canonized texts, it is not I to say.