Blog

Many claim today that the Gospel of Thomas, one of several ancient documents discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, should be considered as valid as the other four gospels we currently have in our Bible.  It is a document which claims to contain sayings of Jesus, some which are not included in the canonical gospels.  Should it be included in our Bibles  as the inspired word of God?  If not, why not? After all, some books that are now in the Bible were disputed, such as Hebrews and 2 Peter and Revelation.

The canonical books that were disputed gave internal evidence of being inspired despite questions of authorship or general use, and when we read Hebrews or 2 Peter or Revelation we see they have the same consistency and quality as the other canonical books. In contrast, when we read the books that were rejected we often see many mythological elements and doctrinal contradictions. For example, the Gospel of Thomas is generally thought by most scholars to have been written in the second century, about 170–180 A.D.[1]  This late date alone was enough to call it into question, since obviously it could not have been written by who it claimed to be by, namely Thomas the disciple of Christ.

It’s content also calls it into question.  Although it may contain some accurate information about some of the sayings of Jesus, additions and Gnostic elements are present which conflict with the canonical Gospels. For example, in the Gospel of Thomas “Jesus” says: “Split wood; I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.”[2] These are definitely Gnostic elements, namely pantheism, the idea that all material is God. And look what “Jesus” says about women at the end of the Gospel of Thomas: “Let Mary go away from us, because women are not worthy of life. . .Lo, I shall lead her in order to make her a male, so that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter into the kingdom of heaven.”[3] We see the blatant doctrinal contradictions.

Randall Price comments on the preceding verse: “This is because in Gnostic thought only the male mind is capable of ‘knowing’ and therefore of attaining salvation, which is based on knowledge. Apparently, women also are not ‘living spirits’!”[4]

As we can see, the “Jesus” in the Gospel of Thomas is a totally different Jesus from the Jesus of the canonical Gospels. Grant and Freedman, in their modern translation and commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, deny its connection with the real Jesus: “The Gospel of Thomas. . .is probably our most significant witness to the early perversion of Christianity by those who wanted to create Jesus in their own image. . .Ultimately it testifies not to what Jesus said but to what men wished he had said.”[5]