The Gospel According to Thomas

This is a paper written for my Jesus Through The Ages course at Capital University.

Jesse Harmon

RELIG 210

January 27, 2011

The Gospel According to Thomas

[“And he said, ‘Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.’”]

            The Gospel According to Thomas is probably the most famous Gnostic gospel out there.  I can clearly see why this apocrypha isn’t included in the present-day canon.  For this paper, I used the English translation of the Gospel of Thomas, translated by Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania.  This gospel, to me, seemed to be written as if someone were taking notes.  There are short, quick passages that don’t seem to connect together somehow.  It seems there should be more detail in between what was actually written down.  In this translation, also, there were many missing parts, which were stylized at the three periods in a row (for example, saying one hundred and one was translated like this, “For my mother [...], but my true [mother] gave me life").  There were several phrases in this Gospel that struck me as either important or questionable.

            The first verse I am going to talk about is the sixteenth verse.   “Jesus said, ‘Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war.’”  This is a radically different view than what people are used to Jesus saying.  Why would he say something like this?  Isn’t he here to save us from our sins? 

            In verse twenty-two, Jesus mentions that the only way to enter the kingdom of God is to “make the two into one.”  Could this mean marriage, since two people who were previously separated are now joined together in matrimony?

            One of the longest verses in the entire gospel is number sixty-four.  This short story goes on to describe people leaving a dinner party because of other commitments.  However, the host asks his slave to go retrieve other people off of the street so that they might have dinner with him.  This is a very good metaphor for our relationship with God.  The host, God, invites many people to his dinner party (his kingdom).  The people leave the party, saying they have other things to do (leaving the faith).  The slave, Jesus, goes out onto the streets (the world) to gather more people to come eat at dinner (kingdom).  This was one of the most striking and hard-hitting parables for me in this gospel.  Notice how the host didn’t tell the slave to go find the same people.  He told the slave to go out and bring in new people.  This reminds me of Mark 8:11. “[Jesus said in the synagogue in his hometown,] and if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dusty off of your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.”  If people refuse to believe, move on to the next town. 

            Finally the very last verse (which apparently was added later according to Patterson and Meyer) says, “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.’”  When I read this, I was instantly reminded of my dear mother.  My mother wears the pants in the house.  She’s the one who owns the house, the property, and all the cars.  Mom is the one who pays the bills and takes care of everything in the house.  She especially did this when my father was in the hospital at the Cleveland Clinic in 2010 for a much-needed liver transplant.   My father was first admitted to the Cleveland Clinic in October of 2010 after he developed a very serious infection.  He pretty much stayed at the hospital until after the start of 2011.  During that time, she had to take a leave of absence from her work at a hospital in Logan, Ohio, and take care of him and the animals at our house (she drove the one hundred miles or so every three days).  I don’t know if this is what Jesus meant when he said the females should become like the males in order to enter the Kingdom of God, but I do know that my mother put her health (and life) on the line at times in order to help my dad out (I was very fearful for a while that she might have a heart attack because of the amount of stress she was under).   

            I’m not sure how I feel about this gospel.  I don’t know if it should be included in the canon or not.  There are several interesting points in this gospel, and several not-so-interesting points. 

Works Cited

Patterson, Stephan. "The "Scholars' Translation" of the Gospel of Thomas ."             Misericordia University. Polebridge Press, 1992, 1994. Web. 26 Jan 2012.