Jesus According to the Gospel of Thomas
By: The Modern Platonist
Tags: Religion, History, Gnostic, Christianity, Spirituality

Since 1945, Jesus has not been the same. That year the Nag Hammadi library was found in an Egyptian cave. The scrolls contained dozens of early Christian texts that have been globally known as the “Gnostic Gospels.” Even though scholars knew of the existence of Gnostic Christianity through the polemist treaties of early Orthodox Christian authors, the Gnostic works were assumed to be lost when the nascent Orthodox-Catholic church declared them to be heretical.

The notion of heresy needs to be used with caution here. The Nag Hammadi library is heretical from the point of view of the version of Christianity that won the early Christian controversies and that, later on, found Emperor Constantine’s favor. If we place ourselves in the second and third centuries, the time in which Christian Gnosticism and many other Christian sects existed, there was no Christian dogma or canon. No Christian faction was “right or “wrong.” Competing sects had equal rights and popularity within the early Church. The notion of truth was something coined by the camp that scholars call Orthodox Christianity — the original church from which Orthodox, Catholic and Reformed Christians come from. These Orthodox Christians began a wide campaign against what they considered wrong, heretic doctrines that needed to be persecuted and extirpated. This is how Christian Gnosticism was obliterated and disappeared from history.

One of the gospels found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi has had an epochal impact and transformed the figure of Jesus: the Gospel of Thomas.

The Gospel of Thomas presents the Jesus of Wisdom, not the Jesus of Faith. Thus, Jesus becomes the enlightened teacher, who imparts wisdom.

The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus. In these sayings, there is no mention of the miracles, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus — and naturally the dogma of the Trinity is absent. The Gospel of Thomas presents the Jesus of Wisdom, not the Jesus of Faith. Thus, Jesus becomes the enlightened teacher who imparts wisdom. These sayings are elaborated according to the Greek tradition but also the Jewish tradition of the logoi sophon — the “sayings of the sages.” The Talmudic Pirkei Avos would fall within the Jewish side of this tradition.

Even though the Gospel of Thomas is generally considered within the Gnostic tradition, to be precise and accurate we should state that this gospel has Gnostic leanings and perspective. According to the incipit — the heading — of this gospel, the sayings were collected by Judas Thomas, the alleged twin brother of Jesus. The nature of the collector gives important relevance to the sayings. Thomas is a critical figure in early Christianity, notably in the Chaldean — Syriac — church, still today.

More importantly, the Gospel of Thomas has a very interesting composition date and place. According to most scholars, the gospel was composed first in Greek in Syria — in the land where Thomas had a crucial founding relevance for the local church. Scholars also tend to agree that the Gospel of Thomas began circulating in the first century. Even though that the Nag Hammadi copy of the gospel is written in a Coptic translation and dated in the fourth century, the analysis of the fragments from the Oxyrhynchus papyri shows that the Greek version comes from the very first century AD. This dating makes the Gospel of Thomas older than the canonical gospels that you can find in any New Testament of the Bible today. The analysis and dating of the papyri are also supported by textual evidences of these fragments.

One of the oldest depictions of Jesus, from St. Catherine’s Monastery at Sinai. Source: Anonymous.

The Jesus of Wisdom, the Jesus according to the Gospel of Thomas is concerned about a totally different salvation. There is no atonement and no notion of sin. Rather, Jesus seeks the enlightenment of his followers, in a master-disciple relationship. This is already very clear in the saying 2:

“Jesus said, ‘Let one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will be troubled. When he is troubled, he will be astonished, and will rule over all.’”

The seeker comes to Jesus looking for knowledge, and when he finds it he is troubled by the wisdom he receives — a revelatory wisdom that in other Gnostic texts is called the epinoia, the “luminous insight.” Yet, this revelatory and troubling wisdom brings control over all, that is, personal enlightenment and dominion over oneself. This is what this fragment of the saying 3 states:

“The kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known.”

Spiritual knowledge, the luminous insight, that is, the Kingdom is inside oneself — the Kingdom is within you. It is inside and outside, it is here now. This is the radical understanding that Thomas presents and that has been amply discussed by Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault. She rejects the Kingdom as both heavenly reward and earthly paradise. Instead, she adheres to the consideration that the Kingdom is unitive consciousness — a mystical union that brings wisdom and the enlightening experience of transcendence. This is clearly stated in the second part of the verse from the saying 3: “when you know yourselves, then you will be known.” The central key of Jesus’ message here is the acquisition of wisdom, a transformative knowledge revealed, perhaps in unitive consciousness as Bourgeault proposes.

This is further clarified by Thomas in saying 5:

“Jesus said, ‘Recognize what is before your eyes, and the mysteries will be revealed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.’”

Or in saying 108:

“Jesus said, ‘Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the mysteries will be revealed to him.’”

Personal revelation, not personal salvation in the traditional sense, is what matters to the Jesus of Wisdom. The wording of these sayings is reminiscent of the mystery cults so popular in the contemporary times of both Jesus and Thomas. The Hellenistic and Græco-Roman mysteries provided revelation, a higher truth and wisdom ritually taught to the initiate, a new knowledge for a better life, for enlightenment, for liberation from attachment and mortal pain. It was a shortcut, a way to the Gods, to the divine — the unitive consciousness mentioned by Bourgeault.

Only in this light the saying 1 can be understood:

“And he said, ‘Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.’”

The “will not taste death” here is not referring to physical salvation of the soul, but a higher secret wisdom imparted through the epinoia. The sayings are not salvation but initiation to the mysteries of life and spiritual wisdom. The words of these sayings are very similar to the ones that the Roman orator Cicero dedicated to the Eleusinian mysteries in Athens in his work De Legibus:

“We have learned from them [the mysteries] the fundamentals of life, and have grasped the basis not only for living with joy but also for dying with a better hope.”

The sayings are the basis for a personal, interpretive revelation to the disciple. Jesus sows the beginning of wisdom that the disciple needs in order to fully find it in the epinoia. Little is known about the rituals and practices of the Gnostic followers of the Gospel of Thomas. However, it has been speculated that rituals would have been similar to the ones of the other mystery cults of the Roman Empire, where initiates would have received the fundamentals for living with joy and a better hope in intricate ceremonies. This was the goal of the mystery cults in the Late Antiquity.

The personal epinoia, the luminous insight, has a central role in the Gospel of Thomas. In saying 24 it says:

“There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world. If It does not shine, it is dark.”

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

The importance of light and the epinoia are traits that are not exclusively of Jesus, but they can be accessed by any disciple. Jesus is not the Light, but the enlightened master who helps the disciples not to go to the Light — that is, Jesus himself — but to find their own inner Light, like the master Jesus had done before them. Thomas reiterates this idea on saying 49, adding the notion of the Kingdom inside and outside oneself:

“Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who are solitary and chosen, for you will find the Kingdom. For you have come from it, and you will return there again.’”

Again, the Jesus of Wisdom becomes an intimate master that teaches the spiritual pathway of detachment and revelation in solitude — that is, separation from the worldly matters and worries. The Kingdom is a mystical journey of inner life knowledge. This detachment from worldly matters is explicitly mentioned in saying 54, echoed as well in the Sermon of the Mount of the canonical Gospel of Matthew:

“Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.’”

Asceticism is clearly advocated by Thomas. This adds up to the many ascetic sayings in the Gospel of Thomas that are parables also found in the canonical Gospels. It shows that the interpretation of the parables is a matter of perspective: it can dramatically change the meaning in the Jesus of Wisdom, opposed to the Jesus of Faith.

The Jesus of Wisdom becomes an intimate master that teaches the spiritual pathway of detachment and revelation.

The Jesus of Wisdom found in the Gospel of Thomas shows the spiritual possibilities of a Christianity that was and could have been. It shows a Buddha-like Jesus, a spiritual teacher closer to many contemporary Hellenistic wandering philosophers like the Pythagorean Apollonius of Tyana. The full rediscovery of the Jesus of Wisdom in 1945 allows us to transform and rethink Christianity in a way full of spiritual possibilities. Throughout the centuries, reformers, mystics and philosophers who wanted a different Christianity tended to prefer the Jesus of Wisdom against the Jesus of Faith. In our current world in which Christianity dies and languishes enslaved to the dogmatic nature of the Jesus of Faith, the Jesus of Wisdom, the enlightened teacher, represents an opportunity for redeeming Christianity through an entirely new but old pathway — even older than the canonical gospels.