The Words of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas

The Genesis of a Wisdom Tradition

David W. Kim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000377651
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book offers a detailed analysis of the Gospel of Thomas in its historic and literary context, providing a new understanding of the genesis of the Jesus tradition. Discovered in the twentieth century, the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas is an important early text whose origins and place in the history of Christianity continue to be subjects of debate. Aiming to relocate the Thomasine community in the wider context of early Christianity, this study considers the Gospel of Thomas as a bridge between the oral and literary phases of the Christian movement. It will therefore, be useful for Religion scholars working on Biblical studies, Coptic codices, gnosticism and early Christianity.

1 The transmission of a Thomas tradition

The purpose of this opening chapter is to scrutinize the influence of the “social usages of orality and literacy”¹ on the composition of the Gospel of Thomas (Gos. Thom.). My exegetical focus on the Greek and Coptic texts of Thomas will show that the Jesus Logia in the gospel underwent a transformation process with the change of medium, and that through the change from the oral to the written tradition the Logia tradition was systematized and eventually documented in a different form. In order to investigate this intriguing shift, I will query how the verbal traditions affected the composition of Thomas in context. If the crucial function of the Thomas text is defined as a bridge between oral traditions and the canonical literary traditions, we may well be able to uncover the inaugural emergence of the Logia tradition in the literary world of early Christianity. The subsequent sections of this chapter—on the traces of oral tradition in Thomas, the existence of “the Thomas school,” and the role of the “1.5 generation” of the Jesus movement for the textualization of the community canon, as well as the socio-linguistic strategy for the enlargement of the early Christian movement—will be presented as evidence for the fundamental proposition that Thomas is a post-oral written source of the Jesus tradition.

The oral traditions and Thomas²

In this first section I will attempt to corroborate the historical facts that the words of the oral Performer (Jesus)³ were actively circulated among certain eyewitnesses and that these were eventually carried into the form of a written tradition.⁴ The question is, then, how (or how long) did the oral tradition survive? And how can one relate the oral tradition of Jesus with the Gospel of Thomas, which is so replete with “Jesus sayings”? One finds the earliest external record of Gos. Thom. in the early Church Father Hippolytus (Refutatio 5.7.20) in 222–235 CE, at a time when Gnostic Christian texts were flourishing,⁵ but that does not mean the text was first created in this period. On the contrary, the literary traces of oral tradition in the gospel itself, in Logia 9, 33, 65, and 66, show that they are related to an oral period of the first century CE. To read Thomas in relation to the oral traditions of Jesus’ teachings is indisputably the correct approach, in keeping with research into “tradition history” (Traditionsgeschichte),⁶ an ongoing critical method which exposes not only the primitivism of Thomas’s “secret” Logia but also the existence of the local Christian communities established and led by the eyewitness-disciples. Looking at the text of Thomas as bearing a very early oral tradition squares with views on such transmission found in the canonical Gospel narrators (e.g., Mt 28:15; Mk 4:33–4; Jn 21:25), Paul’s Epistles (1 Cor 15:3–8; 1 Thes 4:15–8; 2 Tm 4:13), Papias’ An Exposition of the Lord’s Reports (in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History), and other sources.⁷

The oral-scribal culture in antiquity has been a subject of frequent discussion in modern research,⁸ including studies of the Hebrew Scriptures, Qumran texts, and Rabbinic culture.⁹ These same oral practices would have held sway in the Jesus movement of the first century CE. Several Christian texts certify the continuation of the verbal traditions as well as their effects in the world of written tradition.¹⁰ For instance, the scene in Matthew in which the soldiers deny the story of the Resurrection of Jesus clearly depicts a well-known oral tradition circulating in the Jewish-dominated milieu of the Matthaean community: “this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day” (Mt 28:15b). The words of 1 John, such as “we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us” (1 Jn 1:3), “see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you” (1:24), and “this is the message we have heard … and declare to you: God is Light” (1:5), all suggest the existence and continuation of the oral tradition that was transferred to followers as “tradition carriers.” The testimony of John that “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, … even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25) confirms the unaccountable scale of the agrapha¹¹ of Jesus remaining within the verbal form. Birger Gerhardsson convincingly epitomized this in his category of “practical tradition,”¹² which was expressed not in textual words but in oral forms in the milieu of early Christianity.

The oral tradition with Paul and Apollos

The continuation of the oral Jesus traditions obviously spread out among the Gentiles beyond the regions and specific contexts of Jewish society. The process of this continuation can be seen in the writings of Paul, who, as an Apostle (shaliah), would be thought of as a reliable witness, operating in the medium of oral communication.¹³ There is little to suggest that Paul relied on textual resources for the specifically Christian content of his preaching; instead, he endeavored to operate his far-flung missionary enterprise, with its network of co-workers, on the basis of unwritten Jesus Logia. His remarks in 1 Thessalonians (50/51 CE) manifest the manner in which he passed on such oral Jesus traditions:

According to the Lord’s own Word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these Words [of Jesus].

(1 Thes 4: 15–8)

As the text is generally recognized to originate around 50s CE, its unique content, unparalleled in the Gospels, nicely illustrates the role of the oral tradition not only in the Jewish-Christian communities but also in the developing Gentile groups founded by Paul in the middle of the first century CE.

Like the oral tradition of “the Lord’s Supper,”¹⁴ “the Resurrection of Christ” in 1 Corinthians is another renowned example of the oral traditions Paul received:

For what I received I passed on to you …: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the Apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

(1 Cor 15:3–8)¹⁵

Although it has been debated whether the phrase “according to the Scriptures” signifies the Tanakh as prophecy or a written Gospel giving an account of these events, the majority of interpreters rightly note that Paul knew no such Jesus source to which he would accord the status of scripture. The resurrection appearances, therefore, belong to oral traditions: “for what I received I passed on to you.” The phrase “most of whom are still living” also highlights the living authority of the eyewitness-disciples, among whom would be Thomas—unless of course Thomas had died, as one of those who “have fallen asleep.”¹⁶

Werner Kelber has argued that oral sensitivities and interpretations of the scripture had permeated into many places of Paul’s Letters, creating for him the nickname of “the oral traditionalist.”¹⁷ Such a perspective on Pauline oral transmission should be set beside Stephen Patterson’s view that the Gospel of Thomas offers insights into community life “equal” to Paul’s positions concerning “circumcision,” “dietary laws,” and “women’s attitudes.”¹⁸ One should not neglect such similarities between Paul and Thomas, then, when it comes to orality. Apropos Thomas, the Gospel phrase “with many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them (disciples), as much as they could understand. … When he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything (again)” (Mk 4:33–4), also implies that with Thomas’ more intimate attendance, when the private instruction was given after the public discourse, he was engaged in the process of hearing and remembering the words of his master.

Luke, however, implies that the continuation of the oral traditions or textual sources in the early period did not always spread successfully, being sometimes communicated inaccurately in the process of transmission. For example, the incomplete (and thus allegedly false) teaching of the oral traditions of Jesus was passed...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables, Figures, and Boxes
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The transmission of a Thomas tradition
• 2 The Thomasine community
• 3 Hermeneutical debates over mystical Logia: Sapiential versus gnostic
• 4 The parables and kingdom language in Thomas
• 5 The female disciples in Thomas
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• References
• Index