The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings of Christ, purportedly recorded by his disciple Thomas. Included is a series of dialogues between him and the disciples in which he shares parables, aphorisms, and other spiritual insights. The Gospel of Thomas emphasizes Jesus’s role as a wisdom teacher and challenges the faithful to wrestle with the subtle meaning of his words.
In contrast to former logion-formatted translations of the Gospel of Thomas, in the following version I have attempted to group the various logia into more natural pericope blocks or units. In this I partly follow the model of Allen Callahan, who has argued, contrary to prevailing models, that the Gospel of Thomas is not a simple Sayings Gospel, but frequently consists of conversational or dialogical units that unfortunately were artificially divided into separate independent brief logia by the first modern editors.
Callahan identifies, for example, the following eleven logia sets as dialogical units: 11/12, 17/18, 23/24, 36/37, 42/43, 50/51/52/53, 90/91, 92/93, 98/99/100/101, 103/104, and 112/113/114. Following Callahan’s model and technique, I have tentatively identified several additional logia sequences as dialogical or non-dialogical units as the case may be: 1/2, 7/8, 9/21.10-11, 11/12/13, 19/20, 59/60, 71/72, 73/74/75, and 78/79. In contrast to Callahan, I have incorporated the conversational units into larger pericopes, each of which usually contains both dialogue (sometimes in a single logion, sometimes encompassing two or more logia), and blocks of strings of non-conversational sayings linked by catchword associations.
Although Callahan did not attempt to group together the Thomas logia into larger pericopes, he did meticulously document the various catchwords that link different logia together. I have incorporated Callahan’s observations on these catchwords, as well as thematic links, into my Thomas translation’s structure.
Thomas’ sayings consist of various genres, including dialogue, monologue, direct address to others (in some mode, including the use of imperatives), and freestanding pronouncements. Even if one examines the standard 114 sayings of Thomas, it is clear that dialogue and direct address occur frequently throughout the text. Thomas thus turns out to be far less of a simple Sayings Gospel reminiscent of hypothetical Q than previously held, and unveils itself as essentially a Dialogue Gospel, which accords well with Thomas’ pervasive paradigm involving the disciples searching for knowledge of their hidden selves by means of conversation with Jesus rather than being focused mainly upon his figure or personality, at least when considered apart from his words.
One can only hope that future scholarship will refine Callahan’s methodology more capably than I may have in order to attain greater precision in the identification of Thomas’ dialogical units, and of larger pericope units as well. I am all too aware of my own limitations as I set out to propose a second type of numbering for Thomas, and I have no doubt that adjustments will have to be made in future research.
Callahan also challenged the prevailing model of Thomas as a haphazard collection of unrelated sayings. Callahan did this by documenting the previously mentioned pervasive links between the sayings by means of catchword associations. One could add that not only are the sayings also frequently linked thematically, but as Hans Kvalbein has argued, the entire Thomas gospel revolves around a single theme, though expressed in a variety of formulations. Kvalbein has documented that Thomas’ core tropes, e.g., entering the kingdom, the two becoming one, transcending male and female, knowing oneself, finding the interpretation of Jesus’ sayings, etc., are all semantically equivalent or theologically interchangeable syntagms that refer to one and the same spiritual process and goal of self-knowledge through exegetical discovery.
I have endeavored to render the Coptic and Greek texts tending towards the literal, retaining, for example, the masculine third person pronoun in statements such as “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” For the sake of those not trained in ancient languages I wish to give an indication of the flavor of the pre-modern linguistic usages inherent in the text, even with respect to its masculine bias.
Other Gospels proudly presents as part of our Nag Hammadi Initiative. The Coptic text was translated by Samuel Zinner and edited by Mark Mattison via our financial support.
How to cite:
Zinner, Samuel. . Translated by Samuel Zinner, edited by Mark Mattison, technical editing by Rachel Bousfield. Other Gospels. (accessed ).
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Original translation by Thomas Lambdin, B.P. Grenfell, A.S. Hunt, and Bentley Layton. This work was graciously given to the public domain by Pual Halsall in 1992.
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Original transcription by Toto Tay, who has graciously provided exclusive permission to reproduce it here.
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Original transcription by Martijn Linssen, who has graciously committed the text to the public domain.