The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age

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Summary: Gospel of Thomas comes to life
Review: A wonderful translation! The footnotes themselves are worth the cost of the book! Written for use by both scholars and laypeople. Anyone interested in the early roots or the future of Christianity would appreciate this book.

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Summary: Truly Has Come of Age
Review: It does seem curious to me that the early Church saw fit to leave this Gospel out. It seems to me that it should now be included in the Canon of the official Gospels. Thomas truly has come of age and more accurately describes the mission of Christ for humanity and is more relevant for today.

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Summary: Early Christian History
Review: This book is a printing of the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of the sayings of Jesus found with Gnostic writings in a collection known as the Nag Hammadi collection. The title of "Gospel" is rather shaky as there is no narrative and no retelling of the story of Jesus as can be found in the Synoptic Gospels.

Most of the book consists of two very scholarly articles written by Stephen Patterson and James Robinson. Both are heavily involved in biblical research and have worked extensively with the Nag Hammadi writings. The first article discusses the origins of Thomas by looking at where it may have been written and what influence it may have had. One interesting point is raised when the author goes so far as to suggest that it may have been Jesus' twin brother Judas who wrote this Gospel. He is totally speculating of course, but can you imagine the implications of this? It makes the article more interesting to read. The second article discusses how the Nag Hammadi writings were found and the enormous effort that scholars undertook to get the writings published.

The first part of the book is the actual Gospel of Thomas. Some of the sayings are pretty mysterious. One of them is, "Jesus says: Be passers-by." Passers-by to what? Sin? Pharisees and Sadducees? It is fun to contemplate what the saying means. A large amount of the sayings are recognizable from the Synoptic Gospels, although most seem to be very simplified versions of these sayings. They lack the embellishments that the Gospel writers gave to them. It is also important to note that the Gospel of Thomas is written in Coptic, a form of Greek with letters added to mimic sounds of the Egyptian language. The Coptic version is a translation from an earlier Greek source, so errors abound. Also, when the writings were found, the Egyptian tore them up to give to some of his companions. As a history student, I still cringe when I think of the damage he caused.

This is a good book with obvious implications for Christians as well as New Testament scholars. Be aware that this is a VERY scholarly work. You will find huge footnotes with titles of books written in German. The second article could be very wearisome to the non-scholar, who probably doesn't care about the numerous academic bodies that were convened to gain access to the writings. The Gospel itself is still worth reading.