The Gospel of Thomas and Syria
Syria is a very important place for Christianity.
It was on a way to Damascus that St. Paul was accessed by the spirit of Christ Jesus. Even the Holy Shroud of Turin could be traced back to a region called Edessa around Syria. And the Gospel of Thomas is considered to have been edited around Syria.
The Gospel According to Thomas, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Thomas, is a well-preserved early Christian, non-canonical sayings-gospel which many scholars believe provides insight into the oral gospel traditions. It was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library.For a tree to grow tall and big, it should have roots expanding wider and deeper in the ground. The success of Christianity implies that there were various types of believers in many regions of the ancient world from Rome to Jerusalem and Alexandria, Egypt through Syria.
The Coptic-Language text, the second of seven contained in what modern-day scholars have designated as Codex II, is composed of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus.[2] Almost half of these sayings resemble those found in the Canonical Gospels, while it is speculated that the other sayings were added from Gnostic tradition.[3] Its place of origin may have been Syria, where Thomasine traditions were strong.
Unlike the canonical Gospels, it is not a narrative account of the life of Jesus; instead, it consists of logia (sayings) attributed to Jesus, sometimes stand-alone, sometimes embedded in short dialogues or parables. The text contains a possible allusion to the death of Jesus in logion 65[9] (Parable of the Wicked Tenants, paralleled in the Synoptic Gospels), but doesn't mention his crucifixion, his resurrection, or the final judgment; nor does it mention a messianic understanding of Jesus.[10][11] Since its discovery, many scholars have seen it as evidence in support of the existence of the so-called Q source, which might have been very similar in its form as a collection of sayings of Jesus without any accounts of his deeds or his life and death, a so-called "sayings gospel".
Valantasis and other scholars argue that it is difficult to date Thomas because, as a collection of logia without a narrative framework, individual sayings could have been added to it gradually over time.[28] (However, Valantasis does date Thomas to 100 – 110 AD, with some of the material certainly coming from the first stratum which is dated to 30 – 60 AD.[29])
Albert Hogeterp argues that the Gospel's saying 12, which attributes leadership of the community to James the Just rather than to Peter, agrees with the description of the early Jerusalem church by Paul in Galatians 2:1–14 and may reflect a tradition predating AD 70.[45] Meyer also lists "uncertainty about James the righteous, the brother of Jesus" as characteristic of a 1st-century origin.
Several scholars argue that Thomas is dependent on Syriac writings, including unique versions of the canonical gospels. They contend that many sayings of the Gospel of Thomas are more similar to Syriac translations of the canonical gospels than their record in the original Greek. Craig A. Evans states that saying 54 in Thomas, which speaks of the poor and the kingdom of heaven, is more similar to the Syriac version of Matthew 5:3 than the Greek version of that passage or the parallel in Luke 6:20.
As one of the earliest accounts of the teachings of Jesus, the Gospel of Thomas is regarded by some scholars as one of the most important texts in understanding early Christianity outside the New Testament.[66] In terms of faith, however, no major Christian group accepts this gospel as canonical or authoritative. It is an important work for scholars working on the Q document, which itself is thought to be a collection of sayings or teachings upon which the gospels of Matthew and Luke are partly based. Although no copy of Q has ever been discovered, the fact that Thomas is similarly a 'sayings' Gospel is viewed by some scholars as an indication that the early Christians did write collections of the sayings of Jesus, bolstering the Q hypothesis.
The Gospel of Thomas does not refer to Jesus as "Christ" or "Lord," as the New Testament does, but does call him "Jesus," and "Son of Man," which are concurrent with the canonical Gospels.[76] The Gospel of Thomas also lacks any mention of Jesus' birth, baptism, miracles, travels, death, and resurrection.[77] However, some of the sayings in Thomas are similar to sayings and parables found in the canonical gospels.
Elaine Pagels, in her book Beyond Belief, argues that the Thomas gospel at first fell victim to the needs of the early Christian community for solidarity in the face of persecution, then to the will of the Emperor Constantine, who at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, wanted an end to the sectarian squabbling and a universal Christian creed. She goes on to point out that in spite of its being left out of the Catholic canon, being banned and sentenced to burn, many of the mystical elements have proven to reappear perennially in the works of mystics like Jacob Boehme, Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross. She concludes that the Thomas gospel gives us a rare glimpse into the diversity of beliefs in the early Christian community, an alternative perspective to the Johannine gospel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas
Translations by: Thomas O. Lambdin (Coptic version)
B.P Grenfell & A.S. Hunt (Greek Fragments)
Bentley Layton (Greek Fragments)
Commentary by: Craig Schenk
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I: Commentary
The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of traditional Sayings
(logoi) of Jesus. It is attributed to Didymos Judas Thomas, the
"Doubting Thomas" of the canonical Gospels, and according to many
early traditions, the twin brother of Jesus ("didymos" means
"twin" in Greek).
We have two versions of the Gospel of Thomas today. The
first was discovered in the late 1800's among the Oxyrhynchus
Papyri, and consists of fragments of a Greek version, which has
been dated to c. 200. The second is a complete version, in
Coptic, from Codex II of the Nag Hammadi finds. Thomas was
probably first written in Greek (or possibly even Syriac or
Aramaic) sometime between the mid 1st and 2nd centuries.
II: Coptic Gospel of Thomas
P) These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke
and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.
1) And He said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these
sayings will not experience death."
...
17) Jesus said, "I shall give you what no eye has seen and what
no ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has never
occurred to the human mind."
18) The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us how our end will be."
Jesus said, "Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that
you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the
end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning;
he will know the end and will not experience death."
19) Jesus said, "Blessed is he who came into being before he
came into being. If you become My disciples and listen to My
words, these stones will minister to you. For there are five
trees for you in Paradise which remain undisturbed summer and
winter and whose leaves do not fall. Whoever becomes acquainted
with them will not experience death."
20) The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us what the Kingdom of
Heaven is like."
He said to them, "It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of
all seeds. But when it falls on tilled soil, it produces a great
plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky."
...
III: Fragments of Greek Gospel of Thomas
Several fragments of a Greek version of Thomas were found
among the Oxyrhynchys Papyri in the late 19th century. These
fragments consist of the preamble, and sayings 1-6, 26-28, 30-32,
36-38, and 39, as well as a saying not found in the Coptic
version, which follows 32.
32) Jesus said: "A city built on the top of a high hill and
fortified can neither fall nor be hid."
--) Jesus said: "Thou hearest with one ear, [but the other thou
has closed].
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/thomas-layton.html
It is said that Christ Jesus preached around the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem in ancient Palestine for three years. If he delivered his sayings at a pace of one per day, the total number of his sayings could be almost 1,000. More Gospels could be found especially around Syria. But the civil war now going on there might destroy some of them. The situation in Syria is so grave to the entire Christian communities in the world.
We have to spend more budgets in research work to discover hidden Gospels that should contain more new sayings of Christ Jesus than in wars.
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Luk 6:9 Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing; Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it?
Luk 6:10 And looking round about upon them all, he said unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he did so: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
Luk 6:11 And they were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus.