When you know yourselves, you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father.
I've been re-reading Jeremy Puma's extraordinary manuscript, The Face of Heaven and Earth, which is slated to go to press in May. Of course any discussion of a Gnostic Gospel is topical these days, with an irritatingly disproportionate attention paid to the dating of such texts. The reasoning goes, if it wasn't written in the first century then it can't have been written by the person who claims to be the author, and therefore is unreliable. All that matters, the thinking goes, is authorship, not content, and authorship is entirely authenticated by date.
[We'll have to set aside the illogic of this insistence, at least for the time being, as yet another instance of psychic literalists putting all their eggs in one basket (at their peril).]
Dr. Elaine Pagels, currently in the crosshairs of an ad hominem attack by modern-day Iranaeuses, suggests that Thomas may have influenced John, and we know John was around in 130 because we have one. But Pagels may be wrong; she readily admits this is conjecture (let's not get dragged into this belittling of her scholarship and play into the hands of the New Inquisitors, okay?).
We should bear in mind the following;
- 1) The basic story of the canonical Gospels predates the biblical scenarios by millennia
2) The words attributed to Jesus in the NT are mostly paraphrasing of the Old Testament, and in numerous instances, quotes of Socrates
Because we're firmly in the realm of myth here, repetition of themes is to be expected. It's okay. The origins of the material in no way make it less spiritually resonant. It is what it is.
So did Thomas write Thomas? Was there really a series of secret conversations between John the Apostle and Jesus resulting in The Gospel of Thomas?
No.
Judas didn't write Judas either. These texts authors weren't trying to fool anybody; they were using a literary technique common in the ancient world of employing known characters to convey wisdom tradition. It's not history, it wasn't meant to be history, and the first audiences of this material were smart enough to realize that.
The first audiences of Mark were probably smart enough to realize it, too.
As I said, any discussion of these texts is met with the refutation that the Gnostic Gospels are too late to accurately describe their events as history (assuming that they were meant to do so, which they weren't), and that the canonical Gospels are first-century eyewitness accounts. I accept that this is accepted by the majority of biblical scholars. I also accept that it's based on... absolutely nothing.
We don't have any first century canonical Gospels. We don't have any first century mention of any first century Gospels. We have Paul, and evidence of first-century oral transmission. And that's it.
- There are two writers who at first glance appear to be potentially useful for determining which (canonical) gospels were in circulation by the early second century. First, it appears possible that Ignatius of Antioch was familiar with Matthew when he wrote his letters around 110 C.E. In various passages, Ignatius seems to allude to the gospel, although he does not mention it explicitly. Most of these passages, however, are vague references at best and could easily be the result of oral tradition. Also, careful examination of the Matthew-Ignatius parallels reveals an interesting trend. Ignatius has an overwhelming preference for material found in Matthew, but not the other synoptics. This excessive familiarity with special M material has suggested to some that Ignatius may have known a source of Matthew rather than the gospel itself.
Second, Papias of Hierapolis mentioned writings by Matthew and Mark in his five volume Oracles of the Lord Explained around 130 C.E. ... Thus, it is not certain that Papias was describing either canonical Matthew or Mark...
Three gospels must have been written after 70 C.E.; how long after is anybody’s guess. Two gospels must have been written before the end of the first half of the second century C.E.; how long before is anybody’s guess.
The arguments for ignoring the evidence and dating all the canonical gospels in the first century are as follows:
- 1) Everbody else does.
2) Ummm... shut up.
A defense of the orthodox take is here, but every argument made can be countered with a Q. If late-first-century Christians over here agree with late-first-century Christians over there, it does not prove that they all found Gideons in their hotel rooms; rather it suggests access to a common source (or sources) of oral material.
The Gnostic Gospels don't matter because they're contemporary with the canonical Gospels (which they are), they matter because they're beautiful. Because they speak to the imagination and our nascent recognition of the indwelling Divine. Not because they happened (they didn't), but because they are Real.
