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What does the “Jesus” of “The Gospel of Thomas” teach? What does he proclaim? Will we find this “Jesus” teaching the same things as the biblical Jesus? All quotes are taken from: Dart, John and Ray Riegert. “The Gospel of Thomas: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus.” Berkeley: Seastone, 2000.

The gospel starts (page 14): “These are the secret words that the living Jesus spoke and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down.” One sees the Gnostic bent from the start: the book reveals secret wisdom known only to Gnostic teachers and their initiates.

There are roughly 70 sayings that parallel what Jesus said in the actual New Testament Gospels. Here is one (page 34): “If a blind man leads a blind man, both of them will fall into a ditch.”

That so many sayings parallel the New Testament Gospels helps “Thomas” have an appearance of legitimacy. It is therefore potentially easier to fool those who aren’t familiar with or reject portions of the New Testament Gospels.

There are many sayings unique to “Thomas.” For example (page 28):

“Jesus saw some infants being nursed and said to his disciples, ‘These children are like those who enter the kingdom.’ They said to him, ‘If we are children shall we enter the kingdom?’ Jesus said to them, ‘When you make the two one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male is not male and the female not female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, and an image in place of an image, then you shall enter the kingdom.’"

According to Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 8:1, prior to being split into separate male and female beings, Adam was an androgynous whole. We tend to think that the sexual identity issues our culture currently face are somehow new. Yet here in “Thomas,” with this saying, we see a blurring of male and female, with the male not being male and the female not being female. What does this “one” look like? The text doesn’t answer that question, leaving it open.

Page 55: “When you bring forth what is in you, what you have will save you. That which you do not have in you will kill you if you do not know it within you.”

What does this saying tell us? Salvation is something that we must possess and bring forth from within. It is not found outside of ourself. There is no biblical Jesus who died on the cross for our sins.

Here is another cryptic saying (page 63): “Adam came into existence from great power and great wealth yet was not worthy of you. For had he been worthy, he would not have tasted death.”

Adam is lost, not worthy of being redeemed. One can infer that since he wasn’t enlightened, he is forever lost.

The most controversial saying of all (page 114): “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, because women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look, I shall lead her so that I can make her male in order that she also may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’”

On one level, women will understandably find this saying extremely offensive. Yet on a different level, what the saying states has largely happened in our culture, with women in essence seeking to become like men (the reverse is arguably also true with the feminization of men).

One would think that “The Gospel of Thomas” would be rejected based on this last quote (the final saying in “Thomas”). But no, its denial of Jesus Christ is more important. Its move towards non-binary identity is arguably another key. Just as people do with the real Bible and a passage they don’t like, that last saying can be ignored.

Are any of these other sayings even remotely biblical? No. It is easy to understand why Gnostic writings like “The Gospel of Thomas,” along with the others we’ve briefly looked at, not to mention all the others, were excluded from Scripture. They are not biblical, go directly against what the genuine gospels teach, and are not from God. Rather, they are from a different spiritual source. They declare other gospels, gospels that are false, gospels that Scripture, particularly the book of Galatians, warn against and condemn.

In the next post, we will begin looking at the various books of Enoch.

The Gnostic writings: The Nag Hammadi find uncovered many gnostic writings.

They include among others: “The Secret Book of James,” the “Secret Book of John,” “The Gospel of Thomas,’ “The Gospel of Philip,” “The Revelation of Peter,” “The Gospel of Mary,” “The Acts of Peter,” and “The Gospel of Judas.” As noted in the previous post, those who seek to discredit Christianity wish that these writings would replace the biblical gospels.

Of these writings, “The Gospel of Thomas” is probably the most important. A copy of it was obtained by the Jesus Seminar, smuggled out of Egypt, and then published by them in "The Five Gospels." According to the Jesus Seminar, “The Gospel of Thomas” is the oldest and most authentic gospel.

In “The Five Gospels,” they are honest enough to admit their dishonest approach. They had already determined that Jesus was merely an illiterate peasant who uttered pithy sayings and got in trouble with both the religious and political leaders. As such, he never claimed to be God. Therefore, any text in the Gospels attributed to Jesus that indicated anything different, had to be by definition, later legendary additions by various Christian communities.

“Thomas” has none of that, and therefore it had to be the oldest most authentic gospel. Since in “Thomas,” Jesus mostly uttered pithy, often obscure, sayings, that helped cement its status. As we saw in the previous post, the historical and archeological evidence point to a much later compositional date than the biblical gospels. But, Jesus being both fully God and fully human is not an allowable option for these “scholars,” and therefore something else must be true.

As mentioned, of all the Gnostic writings, “Thomas” is probably the best known. But some of the others have been quite influential as well. In this brief overview, looking at all the Gnostic writings is not possible, but a couple will be mentioned briefly before we take a more detailed look at “Thomas.”

One of the famous passages from the Gnostic gospels comes from “The Gospel of Philip.” That passage states, and doesn’t state, due to holes (lacuna) in the manuscript: “And the companion of the […] Mary Magdalene [...] loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her […] on her […].”

The idea that Jesus didn’t die, had children with Mary Magdalene, and Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” nonsense, stem in essence from that passage.

The most common reconstruction of that phrase is: “used to kiss her often on her mouth.” That is just a logical guess. No one knows the answer.

Another important Gnostic gospel is “The Gospel of Judas,” written probably around 150 AD. The hero of that gospel is, as expected, Judas Iscariot. In essence, Jesus gives secret information to Judas, information he alone understands. The other disciples believe in the false god, the demiurge. They will do all sorts of evil. Jesus tasks Judas with betraying him. While Judas will be reviled, even killed by the other disciples, he will ultimately be vindicated.

In 2008, Peter Rollins wrote, “The Fidelity of Betrayal,” a book built upon the “Gospel of Judas.” It it, he states that the best way to honor and maintain fidelity to Jesus is by betraying him.

Rollins’ book became a key work within the emergent/progressive church, helping birth pyrotheology (an incendiary system that emphasizes approaching life by faith, but minus belief in anything) Pyrotheology is another key within progressive Christianity. One recently recommended practice was to encourage people to give up God for Lent, to embrace atheism (pyrotheology is a form of religious nihilism).

The Gnostic gospels have significantly impacted our contemporary culture. As we will see in the next post, arguably in some ways, “Thomas” is even worse.

The Gnostic Writings. In 1945, near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, a treasure trove of new “Biblical gospels” and other writings were discovered. As the writings never claim that Jesus was God, many “scholars” ever since have touted them as the “true biblical accounts,” defeating the now proven to be false version of the Bible imposed on others by the winning “orthodox” Christians (see Bart Ehrman, the earlier Jesus Seminar, among others).

The Gnostic gospels and other Gnostic writings found at Nag Hammadi have been dated from between the mid-second and the fourth centuries. They were written considerably later than the books of the New Testament. That actual history is rejected by those who seek to deny Jesus Christ, and historic biblical Christianity.

Who were the Gnostics and what did they teach?

The Gnostics were prominent from the mid-second through the fourth centuries. They believed that physical matter was evil, that only one’s spirit was important. Since matter was evil they split into two camps regarding one’s behavior: either extreme asceticism or extreme license was ok. The former view reflected the rejection of matter; the latter, the idea that since only the spirit was important, how one behaved physically was of no real consequence.

They believed that salvation was through knowledge, particularly secret knowledge and wisdom that only they possessed. One had to be deeply involved with them before being taught that special salvific knowledge (we see the Masons using a similar approach today). They were particularly prominent in Alexandria, Egypt, but also elsewhere.

Since the Old Testament God created matter, a “god” known as the Demiurge, that God was seen as more of a self-focused bumbling idiot. That god was prone to making mistakes, since no real god would have made the error of creating physical matter. The chief goal of the Gnostics was to realize and recover their true identity as spiritual beings, beings imprisoned in a body.

As for Jesus, the Gnostics tended in one of two directions: Jesus was either a special type of human mystic who uttered spiritual pithy sayings, or he merely appeared to be human but was strictly a spiritual being. In no case was Jesus both fully God and fully human. Enlightened, yes; God, no.

As stated, gaining special knowledge was key. The very name of the movement declares it: gnosis is Greek for knowledge.

Unfortunately, we see some of their beliefs infiltrating and infecting the church today, just as they did in the past, particularly the ancient church at Alexandria via Clement of Alexandria and especially Origen. Origen held that the literal meaning of Scripture was the least important. Those who wanted to go deeper in Christ would recognize the more important allegorical and spiritualized meanings of the text, meanings that were often kept hidden from basic unenlightened Christians.

We possibly see a forerunner of gnostic tendencies in Revelation 2:24, in the letter to the church at Thyatira:

Revelation 2:24 (ESV): “But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden.”

The teaching, the deep things of Satan, by definition a type of special knowledge, mirrors what the Gnostics would teach.

Currently, we see at least some of the key leaders of the NAR downplaying the literal contextual meaning of Scripture, replacing the literal meaning with either symbolic readings of it or new “prophetic” words, prophecies and knowledge only their prophets possess. While their teachings are different, the underlying commonalities are most concerning.

We’ve noted what the Gnostics believed and taught in a general sense. What did some of their writings directly claim? We will start to address that topic in the next post.