Gospel of Thomas

8 February 2013

Friday Night Fun (with P52)

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Ok, so it’s not everyone’s idea of fun. But tonight was the second part of Where did the Bible come from?

Tonight we read some of the “Lost Gospels” … including this passage from the Gospel of Thomas that’s always a hit:

Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.”

Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

Needless to say, that wasn’t a favourite with the women present. 🙂

But we did discover why we can have a lot more confidence in the four Gospels of the Bible than these other “Gospels”, and we cleared up some confusion amplified a few years ago by Dan Brown.

Here I am – dressed for my study with ancient papyri on my shirt and a replica of P52 in my hand (a fragment which Shari and I have now seen – housed in Manchester, England). Yes, pretty nerdy. 🙂

P52 is, for the uninitiated, a fragment of the Gospel of John. It’s from a copy made around 120AD. Absolutely amazing. It has survived for almost 2000 years, thanks to the dry deserts of Egypt. You can read about P52 here.

There’s so much that’s fascinating about that little fragment of papyrus alone – but I guess you’ll have to come to the class to hear more. 😉

12 October 2012

“Jesus’ Wife” – Surprising News

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I wasn’t going to write about the papyrus fragment that has “Jesus” referring to his wife. But I thought the latest twist was just too interesting to ignore.

In case you’ve missed the whole silly saga, back in September the headlines screamed: Ancient text has Jesus referring to ‘my wife’

If you’re like me, you probably said,”Who cares?” After all, there are all kinds of things said about Jesus, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Take for example the Gospel of Thomas. Here “Jesus” says that Mary must become male in order to enter the “Kingdom of Heaven” (and all other women must do the same). Read it for yourself here.

Then, of course, if you read the article you discover that this is supposedly a fourth century fragment. Yes, be sure to take this tiny fragment and ignore the writings about Jesus from eyewitnesses a few years after his life on earth. And somehow make it big news.

It’s not even Easter, for crying out loud. That’s when the news tries hardest to distract us from the truth about the Resurrected Jesus.

Next, of course, and almost immediately, came allegations that this was a forgery. Still, some were talking about this fragment as if it would make Christianity fall or drastically change (by the way – ask yourself what exactly would change in Christianity if the Gospels told us that Jesus had a wife. Having trouble thinking of anything significant? Me too.).

Dr. Albert Mohler makes some good points in his article, written the same week, which begins “The whole world changed on Tuesday. At least, that is what many would have us to believe. Smithsonian magazine, published by the Smithsonian Institution, declares that the news released Tuesday was “apt to send jolts through the world of biblical scholarship â€” and beyond.” Really?“

But I haven’t gotten to the latest news.

The exciting TV documentary about the “Jesus’ Wife Gospel” is being delayed – because there is increasing doubt about the authenticity of the fragment.

Where did the fragment really come from? The latest suggestion – the internet.

That’s right. And actually, an internet version of of the Gospel of Thomas!

What was the give-away? It looks like the forger may have copied a typo that was in an internet version of Thomas.

Yes, truth is stranger than fiction!

You can read more here: Jesus’ Wife Fragment: Further Evidence of Modern Forgery

What a strange world, where people prefer a mystical Jesus who wants all women to become male to the Jesus who healed the sick and got tired and ate with sinners. A strange world where we want to create new theology based on a small bit of papyrus which was may have been copied from a website.

25 January 2011

Study Week 2 – The Four Witnesses

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Tonight was part two of the new study – Where did the Bible come from?

So, last week we talked about the resurrection – how these early Christians were obsessed with the real life, real death, and real resurrection of Jesus. For this faith they lived and died during the early years of the Church.

Symbols for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; from the Book of Kells

This week we talked about the four Gospels. We started out talking about the claims made in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code – that essentially the Christians were trying to choose from thousands of "gospels", and it wasn’t until the 4th century that they finally chose the four we know today – for political reasons, of course.

Well, that’s Dan Brown’s claim…

So, we actually read excerpts from four of these other "gospels" (the so-called gospels of Judas, Thomas, Peter, and Mary), and compared them with the four we know. We talked about how Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were accepted very early as Scripture. They were solidly and more or less universally accepted as the four, very soon after they were written. It sure didn’t take until the 4th century! And why? Well, there were some good reasons. Maybe if you come to the study you can find out what some of those reasons are! 😉

It’s obviously very important to know the real story about this man who claimed to be God – and then who proved it by rising from the dead! What did He teach? What did He do? And what did He have to say about the books of the Bible?

Well, next week we’re going to go back to the Old Testament to find out where it came from. Then… well, then I have a few days off. 🙂