{"id":14308,"date":"2020-09-03T09:12:19","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T13:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=14308"},"modified":"2020-09-13T22:19:06","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T02:19:06","slug":"the-lost-gospel-of-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Gospel of Thomas: What Does it Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is the lost Gospel of Thomas? What can the book of Thomas in the bible tell us about Jesus and his life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The lost Gospel of Thomas is a test that was uncovered in the twentieth century. The book of Thomas in the Bible is a highly contested text, and the majority of Christian theologists don&#8217;t consider it canon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The lost Gospel of Thomas is controversial, but could help clear some confusion about whether or not Jesus was real. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Lost Gospel of Thomas: Is It Canon?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The documentary provenance of the books included in the New Testament is considerable. But\u2014as skeptics and more liberal Christian scholars are wont to point out\u2014<strong>those aren\u2019t the only gospels to have been discovered<\/strong>. In fact, some gospels\u2014for example, those of Philip, of the Egyptians, and of Nativity of Mary\u2014were suppressed by early Church leaders. Which raises the question: <strong>How can we be sure the canonical gospels comprise the truest accounts of Jesus?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the early church, there were three criteria for canonization:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The gospel had to have been written by either an apostle himself or a close follower of an apostle.<\/li><li>The gospel had to conform to normative Christian tradition as the church saw it.<\/li><li>The gospel had to have been widely accepted and used.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite some disagreement among various fringe factions in the early church, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-four-gospels\/\">the four gospels<\/a> as found in the Bible today satisfy these three criteria<\/strong>. The noncanonized gospels, like those of Peter or Mary, had authors different from the names attached to them and were usually written later than the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Lost Gospel of Thomas\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Discovered among the Nag Hammadi documents unearthed in Egypt in 1945, the Lost Gospel of Thomas has found many adherents among liberal scholars of the New Testament. For example, the members of the Jesus Seminar\u2014a scholarly collective active in the 80s and 90s\u2014believed the Lost Gospel of Thomas should be canonized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One problem with the Book of Thomas in the Bible, which comprises an array of Jesus\u2019s sayings without any narrative,<strong> is that many of Jesus\u2019s pronouncements run contrary to those that appear in the canonical gospels<\/strong>. For example, in the Lost Gospel of Thomas, there are utterances that paint Jesus as a pantheist and misogynist\u2014quite opposite to his teachings in the four canonical gospels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These uncharacteristic pronouncements are why the early church didn\u2019t accept the Gospel of Thomas as legitimate. Some believe that there was a conspiracy among the fifth-century councils to suppress the Gospel of Thomas, but the truth is simpler: <strong>The early followers of Jesus <em>knew\u2014<\/em>in the same way they knew Jesus was God\u2014that the Gospel of Thomas wasn\u2019t an accurate portrayal of Jesus<\/strong>. They <em>sensed <\/em>its inauthenticity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Considering the Bible as a whole,<strong> there has been little scholarly dissension surrounding twenty (Matthew through Philemon, plus 1 Peter and 1 John) of the 27 books<\/strong>. As for the remaining seven, though they were treated with some skepticism by the early church, they have now gained full acceptance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201cpseudepigraphia\u201d\u2014a term for the array of documents that appeared in the centuries after Jesus\u2019s death\u2014on the other hand, are widely disputed. Strobel finds them ludicrous and inconsistent with Jesus\u2019s teachings, and their origins in the fifth and sixth centuries are too distant from Jesus\u2019s life to be credible testaments to Jesus\u2019s historical existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Suppressed Gospels<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Arguably the most controversial of the Jesus Seminar\u2019s pronouncements was that the Gospel of Thomas, a long marginalized text, should be included in the New Testament canon. The Gospel of Thomas features passages that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-jesus-seminar\/\">the Jesus Seminar<\/a> argues (1) predate the accounts of Jesus found in the canonical gospels and (2) depict a naturalistic Jesus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scholars associated with the Jesus Seminar have also raised questions about other \u201csecret gospels\u201d that have been discovered, including \u201cSecret Mark\u201d and the \u201cCross Gospel.\u201d Some Jesus Seminar members have speculated that these secret gospels feature revelations about Jesus that expose him as exclusively mortal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>To most serious scholars of the New Testament, however, these so-called \u201csecret gospels\u201d are simply a distraction<\/strong>. In fact, most aren\u2019t even discoveries: theologians have long known about the Gospel of Thomas\u2014and have dismissed it because it so clearly contravenes the Jesus of the canonical four gospels (see Chapter 3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSecret Mark,\u201d according to its proponents, is a longer and more reliable version of the gospel of Mark, one that was suppressed by the early Church. The problem with this assertion is that no copy of \u201cSecret Mark\u201d exists, <strong>and there\u2019s only the thinnest evidence it ever <\/strong><strong><em>did <\/em><\/strong><strong>exist<\/strong>. Everything we know about \u201cSecret Mark\u201d is contained in a quote from it included in a letter by a second-century author. (And, curiously enough, <em>there\u2019s no existing copy of the letter, either<\/em>\u2014only a picture taken of it by the mid-twentieth-century scholar who found it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Some contemporary commentators believe that the scholar who photographed the letter actually fabricated it.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the lost Gospel of Thomas? What can the book of Thomas in the bible tell us about Jesus and his life? The lost Gospel of Thomas is a test that was uncovered in the twentieth century. The book of Thomas in the Bible is a highly contested text, and the majority of Christian theologists don&#8217;t consider it canon. The lost Gospel of Thomas is controversial, but could help clear some confusion about whether or not Jesus was real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,6],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-14308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-spiritual","tag-the-case-for-christ","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Lost Gospel of Thomas: What Does it Mean? - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is the lost Gospel of Thomas? The Gospel, known as the Lost Gospel or Suppressed Gospel, provides key info about Jesus.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Lost Gospel of Thomas: What Does it Mean?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is the lost Gospel of Thomas? The Gospel, known as the Lost Gospel or Suppressed Gospel, provides key info about Jesus.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-09-03T13:12:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-09-14T02:19:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/gospel-of-thomas-case-for-christ-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carrie Cabral\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2ababb7c63a94ff5d2190f71dc417d56\"},\"headline\":\"The Lost Gospel of Thomas: What Does it Mean?\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-09-03T13:12:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-09-14T02:19:06+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/\"},\"wordCount\":849,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/gospel-of-thomas-case-for-christ-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Case for Christ\"],\"articleSection\":[\"History\",\"Spiritual\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/\",\"name\":\"The Lost Gospel of Thomas: What Does it Mean? - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lost-gospel-of-thomas\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/gospel-of-thomas-case-for-christ-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-09-03T13:12:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-09-14T02:19:06+00:00\",\"description\":\"What is the lost Gospel of Thomas? 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