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Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins

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Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins ANCIENT MYTHS AND MODERN THEORIES OF THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS AND CHRISTIAN ORIGINS RON CAMERON I don't need any more data. What I need is a theory to explain it all. David Lodge, Small World 1. The discovery of any manuscript is always a joyous occasion, not least when the manuscript is a venerable document that makes a difference in our understanding of religion and culture. In the past century two such discoveries, each fifty years apart, have provided us with the opportunity to pause, take stock of our studies, and reassess what we know about the beginnings of Christianity. I am referring, of course, to two separate discoveries of the same early Christian text: the Gospel According to Thomas. The Gospel of 77zomas is an anthology of 114 sayings preserved in the name, and under the authority, of Jesus. Fragments of three different manuscripts of the Greek text of 77lOrnas(P. Oxy. 1, 654, 655) were discovered nearly one hundred years ago in a garbage dump in the ancient town of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, and published at the tuni of the century. Fifty years later, a Coptic translation of the entire gospel was discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, where it was buried (in a large storage jar) in the fourth century, unearthed in 1945 (by Muhammad Ali), and published the next decade. Thomas quickly became the subject of intense scholarly debate. Since no fewer than 68 of the 114 sayings in the text have biblical parallels, establishing a connection between Thomas and the New Testament was thought to have far-reaching consequences. The outcome is not restricted to the narrow confines of biblical source criticism. Broader issues are at stake as well, including the significance of the Gospel of 77wrnas for the history of the Jesus traditions, the place of Thomas in the intersection of cultures symbolized by the term "Christian beginnings," and the designs of the gospel itself. From the beginning, scholars have been concerned chiefly with 237 three basic questions: the authenticity of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the text, the relation of the Gospel of Thomas to the New Testament, and whether or not this gospel is gnostic.' In fact, the debates started two years before the Coptic text was established and a first edition even published. In 1957, in one of the first two studies of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas to appear in print, Gilles Quispel addressed these issues and concluded with the following assessment of the parable of the tenants (Gos. Thom. 65 // Mark 12:1-8 par.): [77somas] transmits essentially the same message as our Bible.... The importance of the ... discovery [of the Go3pel of Tlzomas] ...could [there- fore] be ... that we may have now an independent Gospel-tradition, which if not verbally, at least in the broad outlines both of style and of theology agrees to a large extent with the text of our canonical Gospels. ... In this sense the Gospel of Thomas confirms the trustworthiness of the Bible. (Quispel 1957: 206, 207 = 1975: 15, 16)2 Although much can be learned by comparing the Gospel of Thomas with the New Testament, a serious problem remains: "The frame of reference for the historical description of Christian origins continues to be the New Testament picture itself (Miller 1996: 229). The conclusion drawn by Quispel illustrates the problem. With the Bible presupposed as the privileged point of comparison, any differences between the Gospel of TIzomas and the canonical gospels are ignored, and all discourse of a social, historical, literary, or theological charac- ter is said to be the same. Every distinguishing feature of 77zomas has thus been erased in the interests of maintaining the reliability of the words, traditions, accounts, and authority of the New Testament. Confining the discussion of the Gospel of 77zomas to questions of authenticity, textual dependence, and gnostic influence ironically truncates the analysis, serving-whether intentionally or not-to marginalize the text and its import for tlle scholarly imagination of ' The history of scholarship on the Gospelof Thomasmay be traced through the surveys of Prigent (1959: 39-45); Haenchen (1961-1962: 147-178, 306-338); Quecke (1962: 217-291 );Rudolph (1969: 181-194); Fallon and Cameron (1988: 4195-4251); Patterson (1992: 45-97); and Riley (1994: 227-252). Recent comprehensive discus- sions include those of Cameron (1992, 6: 535-540); Sellew (1997: 327-346); Valan- tasis (1997); and Uro (1998). A complete listing of the publications on the Gospelof Thomas(through 1995) may be found in Scholer (1971: 136-165; 1997: 309-347; 1998: 88-89). Note that Quispel (1991: 87, 83) never modified his analysis or varied this conclusion, as his "last word on the Gospelof Thonaas"makes clear: "The Gospelof Thomasconfirms the trustworthiness of our Bible." .
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