But this general opinion, though reasonable, is not necessarily correct. It also subjects the Gospel of Thomas to the same sort of criticism applied to the Bible whereby some sayings are judged more or less authentic and others more or less spurious. But Hannah presents evidence that the 113 sayings do not belong to the genre wisdom literature , instead have a much weightier import. He detects a sequential correlation between the themes of the sayings and stories depicting Jesus life as given in the Gospel of Mark . The incipit of the Gospel of Thomas says of itself that its sayings are enigmatic things Jesus said which Thomas wrote down.
Notes are an altogether different matter from any collection of sayings.
A student s notes are taken day by day, come close to recording the very words of the teacher, and are generally devoid of modifications. They also suggest a story of what transpired over the period in which they were taken. Thomas notes come close to being a journal. The following lists the correspondences between events in Mark and sayings in Thomas , which Hannah deals with in detail in his book. Notice that the numbered saying of Thomas advance sequentially with the chronology of events in Mark .