The Lost Gospels of the Desert Fathers: Codex II...The Gospel of Thomas a sayings gospel

"....Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas performs no physical miracles, reveals no fulfillment of prophecy, announces no apocalyptic kingdom about to disrupt the world order, and dies for no one's sins....I might add that Thomas's Jesus is 'the living Jesus,' but he does not rise from the dead and leave an empty tomb....In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus is proclaimed the living one, and he lives in his sayings....The Gnostic Discoveries:the Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library...by Marvin Meyer...p.62"

• The Gospel of Thomas a sayings gospel (Gnostic Society Library)

• Gospel of Thomas (Wikipedia)
• The Gnostic Society Library: The Gospel of Thomas Collection
  There is a growing consensus among scholars that the Gospel of Thomas – discovered over a half century ago in the Egyptian desert – dates to the very beginnings of the Christian era and may well have taken first form before any of the four traditional canonical Gospels. During the first few decades after its discovery several voices representing established orthodox biases argued that the Gospel of Thomas (abbreviated, GTh) was a late-second or third century Gnostic forgery. Scholars currently involved in Thomas studies now largely reject that view, though such arguments will still be heard from orthodox apologists and are encountered in some of the earlier publications about Thomas....
• From Jesus to Christ: The Gospel of Thomas...Elaine Pagels
  This book opens with the lines, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and the twin, Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down." Then there follows a list of the sayings of Jesus. Now this raises all kinds of questions. Did Jesus have a twin brother? Actually the name Thomas Didymos -- well, Thomas is Hebrew for twin. Didymos is Greek for twin.... The implication here is that he is Jesus' twin. But this character, of course, also appears in the Gospel of John, he's one of the disciples, the twin. Here he appears as if he's Jesus' twin, and he is one who knows secret teaching, which Jesus hasn't given to all other people. Some of these sayings are familiar. We know them from Matthew and Luke - Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire on the earth." Or "Behold, a sower went out to sow," and so forth.... Others are as strange and compelling as Zen koans. My favorite of these is saying number 70, which says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The gospel opens as Jesus invites people to see....
  
  The Gospel of Thomas also suggests that Jesus is aware of, and criticizing the views of the Kingdom of God as a time or a place that appear in the other gospels. Here Jesus says, "If those who lead you say to you, 'look, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds will get there first. If they say 'it's in the ocean,' then the fish will get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you and outside of you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father"....
  
• THE CIRCLE OF THE WAY: READING THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS AS A CHRISTZEN TEXT by Kenneth Arnold
  The Sayings Gospel of Thomas can be encountered in the same way one encounters a koan. The teachings of Master Jesus cannot be apprehended intellectually. Like koans, they need to be realized by what Zen would call the unthinking mind. This essay is an experiment in reading Thomas with Zen mind. It concludes with some traditional Zen-style readings of three of the Thomas sayings.
• Mark's Use of the Gospel of Thomas...Part One by Stevan Davies
  One of the most interesting facets of the study of the Gospel of Thomas, the Coptic manuscript that has made such an impact on Biblical studies at the end of the present century, is that so many sayings in the canonical Gospel of Mark are also found in Thomas. In the chapters on Jesus' public ministry (Mark 1:1-8:22 and 11:1-12:44), thirty five separate sayings may be counted that are neither Markan redaction nor occasional comments by Jesus in the course of stories about his miracles. Of those 36, no fewer than 21 can also be found in Thomas in one form or another.
• Mark's Use of the Gospel of Thomas...Part Two by Stevan Davies
  The present essay examines, in moderate detail, some twenty sayings common to Mark and Thomas. In many of these sayings, we find evidence of the Markan redaction of sayings that appear in the Gospel of Thomas. The principal purpose of the present essay is to show that the thesis that Mark drew upon Thomas is consistent and that when one subtracts what appears to be Markan redaction, in many cases one is left with Thomasine material. It will further be shown that Mark's use of this material exhibits patterns, particularly in clustering the material together and in characterizing the material as parables.
• Didymus: History & Conspiracy by Matthew Thomas Farrell
  This page contains the curious history of the Gospel’s discovery, and an alternative explanation of why Thomas was suppressed from Scripture. A more expanded (and rambling) version of this article exists, enlarging upon topics such as the historical apostle Thomas, Gnostic influence, the formation of the Canon, and general nitpickings there-of.
  Readers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions.
• Johannine Sayings in the Gospel of Thomas: The Sayings Traditions in their Environment of First Century Syria by Alexander Mirkovic
  The writings from Nag Hammadi have changed our view of the early Church history. The Gospel of Thomas has changed our perception of the nascent Jesus movement more then any other tractate from Nag Hammadi.
• Gospel of Thomas (eastern Syria, ~150 CE)
• Wisdom Interpretation of Jesus' Sayings by Meera Lester
• Gospel of Thomas by April D. DeConick
• The Gospel of Thomas: Frequently Asked Questions...Stevan Davies
• Gnostic.org home

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