The Gospel of Thomas came to my knowledge while I was in Germany in 1964 when I purchased a set of volumes on the New Testament apocrypha. But it wasn’t until after some study that in the 1980’s I purchased the English translation of the Coptic collection of sacred texts. I then began this commentary. It consists first of all in my own interpretation and translation of part of a codex written in Ethiopic from among a large library of Coptic documents found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt (Robinson, 1978). This part is called Nag Hammadi II, 2 (Koester, 1978). I have added to this the evidence of certain papyrus fragments in Greek found at Oxyrhinchus (Hennecke & Schneemelcher, 1959), namely numbers 654 (Schneemelcher, 1959, I), 1 (Jeremias, 1959), and 655 (Schneemelcher, 1959, II). I give our version of the gospel in the left column. The translation accords quite closely to the English and German translations that have been published.

The second element of this commentary is in the right column. Here I give references to and extracts from the canon and certain other early documents. It appears that these sources are in some measure based on the same tradition as Thomas’ gospel. A third component of this work is the commentary itself. The point here is to give some of my thoughts on the meaning of these words of Jesus. In large part these comments are based on my own religious upbringing and understanding.

The reader may safely infer from the references, which are to the writings of the Fathers of the early Church, that there were Greek versions extant before the second century. The wording is enough to suggest that the original was likely written in Aramaic. (It is also possible that this reflects a hypothetical variety of Greek then current in Judea.) The reader may also notice that many of these sayings are connected simply by particular transitions: words in common and sometimes words similar only in Aramaic. One might easily take this phenomenon as evidence that the gospel was committed to memory before having been written down.

Perhaps this gospel (in some more original form) was a source for much of the material of the synoptic evangelists. The fact is that there are a number of parallels with Q. “Q” stands for “Quelle,” which is the German word for source. This is the name of a hypothetical source for material that is common to Matthew and Luke but that is not to be found in Mark. The Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Egyptians also appear to have used some form of Thomas. The book known as the Acts of Thomas, which was composed in or around Edessa in the beginning of the third century quotes freely from this version of Jesus’ teachings. Apparently it was access to these various versions of the gospel that provided much fodder for the heretics of later centuries. Eventually (especially at the Council of Nicea in the Fifth Century) as the Church purged itself of heretical teachings and established a canon, they rejected Thomas from inclusion in their scripture.

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1. Helmut Koester & Thomas O. Lambdin, "The Gospel of Thomas (II, 2)" in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library: In English, pp. 117-130. Harper & Row, Pub., San Francisco. 1978.

2. J. Jeremias "3. Spruchsammlungen auf Papyrus, b) Oxyrhynchos-Papyrus 1 in Edgar Hennecke & Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., Neutestamentliche Apokryphen: in deutscher Übersetzung, 3., völlig neubearbeitete Auflage, I. band Evangelien, pp. 66-70. J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen. 1959.

3. Edgar Hennecke & Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., Neutestamentliche Apokryphen: in deutscher Übersetzung, 3., völlig neubearbeitete Auflage, I. band Evangelien, (E. Evangelien unter dem Namen eines Apostels, 2. Das Thomas-Evangelium) p. 199-223. J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen. 1959.

4. James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library: In English. Harper & Row, Pub., San Francisco. 1978.

5. Wilhelm Schneemelcher (I) "3. Spruchsammlungen auf Papyrus, a) Oxyrhynchos-Papyrus 654 in Edgar Hennecke & Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., Neutestamentliche Apokryphen: in deutscher Übersetzung, 3., völlig neubearbeitete Auflage, I. band Evangelien, pp. 61-66. J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen. 1959.

6. Wilhelm Schneemelcher (II) "3. Spruchsammlungen auf Papyrus, c) Oxyrhynchos-Papyrus 655 in Edgar Hennecke & Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., Neutestamentliche Apokryphen: in deutscher Übersetzung, 3., völlig neubearbeitete Auflage, I. band Evangelien, pp. 67-73. J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen. 1959.