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- Peter Kirby
The proper name Thomas is derived from the root verb tīm, which means, became paired or twin.
- thomas
Alas, these sayings have far too much of a sectarian attitude. These tendencies are also present (in my opinion) in the Gospel of John, but here they really stand out: it's "us" versus "the rest", and those others are ignorant. The gospel of Thomas has its historic merits, but is too narrowminded to be "believable" in these days.
- Bruno
I disagree with Bruno, respectfully. It's not "us" versus "the rest" inasmuch as it is the discovery by each one of us that which the whole cannot comprehend. Individuals have to realize their place and importance. As one who reads and understands the Bible gains insight despite others not doing so, the same is true for one who understands these sayings. There is an important balance between knowing these truths inwardly and sharing them outwardly.
- tworoads
Jesus combined the prphetic and teachership functions. Which do these utterances belong to? Those who have been through the hurlyburly of a genuine teaching school, which a group under a teaching master is, will recognise these recorded utterances not all of which by any means were intended for public consumption. To interpret them literally or by scholarship may not prove a method of universal applicability, valuable though such approaches are in their own contexts.
- Thief37
The reputed (and possibly actual) author of the Gospel of Thomas was Judas, the twin brother of the "living Jesus" if not that of the "risen Christ." The name "Didymus Judas Thomas" -- "Twin Judas Twin" -- describing the receiver emphatically refers to that blood brother. Thus: "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke, and which (his) twin [known as] Judas (the) twin wrote down." Whom but Yehuda, the closest blood brother of Yeshu'a -- his twin! -- would have been taken aside and confided in so closely concerning the real meaning of the latter's message? And whom but Yehuda would be so threatening to the later cult of the perpetual virginity of Mary -- mother of at least six, if Mark and Matthew are to be believed -- that he would not only be unfairly marginalized (as were his siblings Ya'akov, Yosa, Shim'on, Miryam and Shlomit) by "Christian" redactors unconcerned with truth, but villified as the ultimate traitor? This apocryphal gospel is likely closer to the origins behind the Hellenized myths of "Jesus the Christ" than the Synoptics or Johannine writings, and surely more revealing of "His" intended message than anything written by Paul or Luke. No wonder it was excised from the catholic "canon" so early. How fortunate for us that the true teaching of the man Yeshu'a -- who has become all but mythologized by two millenia of revisionist blatherings by far lesser mortals -- has not been lost sight of completely.
- Qapa
Secret or hidden means undiscovered; therefore, these are the things that people did not understand.
- marick
Both Thomas and Didymus mean "twin" according to F.F. Bruce. So this book is written by Jude the Twin one of Jesus' apostles. Twin of whom? Who could be so recognizable that simply referring to him as "twin" would invoke meaning? According to Matthew and Mark Jesus had a brother named Jude. Could this Jude be the same? And could he be Jesus's twin?
- Solomon
Keep in mind that these sayings, even if unaltered, are presented in the Gospel of Thomas out of context, so something that may sound strange now would, if we knew the application and setting, make more sense.
- Matthew
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Scholarly Quotes
Marvin Meyer writes: "The incipit, or opening of the document, provides what is most likely the earlier version of the title. A second, later title is given at the end of the document: 'The Gospel According to Thomas.' A similar incipit opens another document from the Nag Hammadi Library, Book of Thomas 138, 1-4: 'The hidden sayings that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas, which I, Mathaias, in turn recorded. I was walking, listening to them speak with each other.'" (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, p. 67)
Marvin Meyer suggests that "the living Jesus" is "probably not the resurrected Christ as commonly understood, but rather Jesus who lives through his sayings." (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, p. 67)
Joseph A. Fitzmyer writes: "logoi: The use of this word to designate the 'sayings' of Jesus in these fragments should be noted. Nowhere do we find logia used of these sayings; Grenfell and Hunt were, therefore, not accurate in entitling the preliminary publication of Oxy P 1 Logia Iesou, which did not, of course, become apparent until the discovery of Oxy P 654. From the time of Herodotus on logion meant 'oracle', 'a saying derived from a deity'. In the LXX it denotes the 'word of God', having lost the Greek nuance of 'oracle' and acquired that of OT revelation. In this sense we find it in Acts 7:38; Rom 3:2; 1 Pt 4:11; Heb 5:12 (see G. Kittel, TDNT 4, 137-41). In A. Resch's collection of Agrapha (TU 30 [1906]) we find the word used only twice, and in each case it refers to the OT. See further J. Donovan, The Logia in Ancient and Recent Literature (Cambridge, 1927). The use of logoi here for the sayings of Jesus can be compared to Mt 15:12 and especially to Acts 20:35, mnemoneuein te ton logon tou Kyriou Iesou hoti autos eipen. See also Clement of Rome, Ad. Cor. 13:1; 46:7 (ed. K. Bihlmeyer, pp. 42, 60) for the use of this word to designate the sayings of Jesus. Now that we know that the Greek fragments belong to a text of the Gospel according to Thomas, there is no longer room for the speculation that possibly they contain part of the Logia on which Papias wrote his commentary or of the Logia that Matthew collected (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3, 39, 1 and 16). Consequently, it is better not to refer to the sayings either in the Oxyrhynchus fragments or in the Coptic Gospel According to Thomas (where the word used is sage, 'word, saying') as logia, pace R. North (CBQ 24 [1962] 164, etc.)." (Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, pp. 366-367)
F. F. Bruce writes: "'Jesus the living one' probably means 'Jesus the ever-living one'. It is common form in Gnostic Gospels to represent the esoteric teaching or gnosis which they contain as delivered by Jesus to his chosen disciples during his appearances to them after he was raised from the dead. But there is no esoteric flavour about the sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas; many of them can be paralleled from the canonical Gospels (especially Luke) and many others are of the same matter-of-fact order. Perhaps it was not the sayings themselves but their interpretation in the circle from which the Gospel of Thomas came that the compiler regarded as 'secret'. As for the threefold name Didymus Judas Thomas, Didymus is the Greek word for 'twin' and is used in the Gospel of John (11.16; 20.24; 21.2) to explain Thomas, which is the Aramaic word for 'twin' (t'oma). In Syriac Christian tradition he is identified with the 'Judas not Iscariot' who belonged to the company of the Twelve: in the Old Syriac Gospels the question of John 14.22 is said to have been put to the Lord by 'Judas Thomas'." (Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, p. 112)
R. McL. Wilson writes: "Of the general character of the text it must suffice to say for the moment that it was found in a Gnostic library and contains little or nothing which could not be adapted to a Gnostic use. The opening words, again, might be thought to suggest a Gnostic origin: 'These are the secret words which the living Jesus spake.' The work, that is, purports to contain esoteric teaching delivered, like other similar revelations, by the risen Lord in the period between the Resurrection and the Ascension. It may be, however, that too much should not be made of this, since the Greek word APOKRUFOS did not always have the disparaging sense which later became attached to it. In Gnostic circles it was used of books the contents of which were too sacred to be divulged to the common herd, and it was in fact the heretical associations which it thus came to possess which led to its use as a term of disparagement. In the Nag Hammadi library, for example, one document bears the title Apocryphon or Secret Book of John, another that of Apocryphon of James, and several Gnostic gospels contain solemn warnings against imparting their contents to any save the deserving, or for the sake of material gain." (Studies in the Gospel of Thomas, pp. 11-12)
Joseph A. Fitzmyer writes: "We may ask in what sense the sayings of Jesus in this collection are to be regarded as 'secret' (for it is obvious that apokryphos does not have the later pejorative meaning of 'apocryphal' here), when many of the sayings contain words which Jesus pronounced openly and publicly. The 'hidden' character is rather to be found in the manner of interpretation which is found in this collection. The quotation from Hippolytus [Elenchus 7, 20] above tells us of 'hidden words' that Matthias had learned from the Saviour in private. This reveals a tradition which undoubtedly is to be traced to Mt 13:10-11, where Christ himself distinguished between the comprehension of the disciples and that of the crowd. The thirteenth Coptic saying illustrates this idea, moreover, when Jesus takes Thomas aside to tell him three words which he is not allowed to repeat to the other disciples. In this very saying we learn that eternal life is promised to him who succeeds in discovering the real meaning of the sayings in the collection. This probably refers to the different application or interpretation which is given to even the canonical sayings that are set in a different context. Such shifts in meaning were undoubtedly part of the esoteric interpretation which is intended by 'hidden' or 'secret'." (Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, p. 368)
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