Perhaps the most significant discovery of ancient religious texts of the New Testament era (1st and early 2nd centuries) was the one which included the Gospel of Thomas. It was made in late 1945, in southern Egypt, near a place called Nag Hammadi (the name generally attached to the collection of key texts discovered there). 

Among the important and fascinating texts found, the one given the title Gospel of Thomas has created the most stir, continuing to this day, although at a lowered level of intensity than the period of the late 50s to the 70s. (It wasn’t published, even for most scholars, until 1958 though discovered in 1945, for complicated reasons not much related to the good condition of the text itself.)

So why was this text the most lauded one? Why has it provoked not only intense scrutiny and comparative study but also deep controversy? Is it a text that perhaps should have been included in the canon of the New Testament gradually developed well after its composition?

You can get substantive answers to these and many other fascinating questions in this book by accomplished New Testament scholar, Stephen J. Patterson. (It was one of his earlier works, completed in 1993.) If one is fairly new to the Nag Hammadi texts more broadly and to the Gospel of Thomas specifically, I’d recommend gaining a little familiarity via a good and largely “neutral” or balanced source such as Wikipedia. There are fringe and unhelpful views existing which can distort the careful and responsible scholarship of people like Patterson.

You may wonder why I’m reviewing a book this old, especially if you are aware of how much views on many biblical and Bible-era issues change, sometimes quite rapidly. Among the reasons, a key one is that I was already familiar with Patterson’s work, respected it, and wondered what his contributions might be to my interest in better understanding the Gospel of Thomas. I have been particularly interested in what it may tell us about very early Jesus-following and the teaching of Jesus himself. (This gospel is more purely a collection of purported sayings of Jesus than any other existing text, with many of the sayings closely paralleling ones in our New Testament.) Another reason is that although further detailed analyses have continued since 1993, by this time the study of the text and related texts (some of which only emerged in 1945 from their common burial place) was fairly mature.

Here are a few “take-aways” I consider important from Patterson’s book, which I highly recommend for anyone with more than passing interest in historical Jesus issues, the development of early Christianity and the New Testament (the Gospels in particular):

• Analyzing this “sayings gospel” on any level is complicated and controversial, yet progress toward better understanding of its development, meaning and relation to New Testament texts and others of the same general period progressed a lot in the 30+ years between its modern publication and Patterson’s book. (Much study and scholarly discussion continues to this day, although this is far less in the public eye than it was decades ago.)
• Like other books of its era, the contents of Thomas are better understood if we can grasp something of its context in terms of relationship to other texts, perhaps borrowed from or having an influence on. Similarly, grasping something about its likely audience (socially and in time and geography). There is too much in this regard to even summarize here. But Patterson leans toward a relatively earlier composition than many scholars do, generally in the New Testament era, contemporaneous with the four NT Gospels; and not to Thomas’ reliance on the canonical gospels, though perhaps on sources in common with them.
• Geographically, he favors an origin and audience mainly to the east of Israel proper (Ancient Syrian region, which currently includes Jordan), where many Jews lived and where Thomas has been shown to have traveled and taught. He believes a version earlier than the Nag Hammadi one may have originated in Jerusalem, but the existing one, in Syria. (Virtually all texts of the era went through two or more revisions before becoming codified, less amenable to changes, after a few decades or more with sufficient copying and spreading.)
• Probably the most significant “insight” Patterson develops from the Gospel of Thomas is that it gives us a glimpse into the kind of “itinerant radicalism” described in the Gospels as being launched by Jesus directly. (E.g., his sending out the “seventy” to quickly cover the regions of Judea and Galilee.) That had apparently died down significantly by the writing of the NT Gospels and Thomas, and there were tensions, as one might imagine, between those Jesus-followers still in this mode of evangelization/lifestyle and those remaining tied to homes, families, farms, etc. In the same regard, both the NT Gospels and Thomas repeatedly show evidence of competition among not only Jesus’ original disciples, pre-crucifixion, but also among later followers who often coalesced around the competing “authority” of one disciple/apostle or another.

The important thing for everyone, Christian or not, to realize about this final point is that The Acts of The Apostles, in our New Testament following right after the Gospels, presents a highly selective and slanted picture of the nature of the “early church”. Yet even Acts presents the Jerusalem-based Jesus-followers as remaining tied to Temple worship and retaining, despite periodic persecution, a position as a tolerated Jewish sect which had NOT split off from Judaism more broadly. They struggled with their relationship with Gentile believers in ways quite different from Paul, who had serious disagreements and tensions with Peter, James, and the Jerusalem believers.