Product Description

Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed." Many scholars of the historical Jesus believe the Gospel of Thomas contains original sayings of Jesus that circulated among his followers before the composition of the New Testament Gospels. This fresh revision of Marvin Meyer's masterful translation is clearly the most complete, up-to-date, accurate, and literary version of the Gospel of Thomas. Meyer has refined the translation in light of the latest research and has updated the Notes and Bibliography.

Readers of Thomas will be enthralled by the Jesus revealed here through his Zen master-like sayings. What emerges is not the canonical Jesus but, as Harold Bloom puts it in his skillful interpretation, a gospel that "spares us the crucifixion, makes the resurrection unnecessary, and does not present us with a God named Jesus. . . . If you turn to the Gospel of Thomas, you encounter a Jesus who is unsponsored and free."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28073 in Books
• Published on: 1992-11-13
• Released on: 1992-10-09
• Original language: Greek
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780060655815
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
The gospel according to Thomas is an ancient collection of sayings attributed to Jesus and thought to be recorded by his brother Judas, the Twin (Thomas means "twin" in Aramaic). Some scholars suggest that this gospel was collected from New Testament sayings, while others believe it springs from a completely independent author because many of the quotations are not in the New Testament at all. It slept for two millennia in a stone jar until it was accidentally exhumed by a group of fertilizer gatherers in the northern Egyptian desert in 1945. (The gospel is just one document in the fourth-century papyrus library discovered near the city of Nag Hammadi, from which the entire collection gets its name.) Marvin Meyer's distinguished translation includes Coptic text on each left page and the English translation on the right. It is considered by many to be perhaps the closest we'll ever get to reading what was actually said by the historical Jesus. In The Gospel of Thomas, you'll discover a different kind of Christ--a wandering spiritual teacher from Galilee who performs no miracles, reveals little prophecy, announces no apocalypse, and dies for no one's sins. --P. Randall Cohan

Review
"Best known of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts (a collection buried c. 370 C.E. and found accidentally by an Egyptian farmer in 1945), the Gospel of Thomas confronts readers with sayings attributed to a Jesus who seems more like a Zen master ('Split a piece of wood; I am there') than either a political messiah or incarnate god.... Many historians of religion now think the Gospel of Thomas is the nearing surviving approximation to Q, a hypothetical collection of material about Jesus believed to have been used as a source by the authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the so-called 'synoptic' gospel. Thomas, however, contains no stories about Jesus, but instead consists of a compilation of 114 sayings attributed to him.... Free as it is from the encrustation of orthodoxy, the Gospel of Thomas can take the reader, as much as any book can, directly to an enigmatic teacher who walked out of Galilee two millennia ago." -- Gnosis

"Discovered among the gnostic texts found in Egypt in 1945, this gospel from Thomas gives the reader a fresh vision of Christ's teachings. Free of dogma, Zen-like wisdom graces the pages of this scholarly yet immensely readable work...superbly presented." -- NAPRA Trade Journal

"In this book an excellent, very readable translation of the Gospel of Thomas accompanies a new edition of the Coptic text and learned notes." -- Birger Pearson, University of California, Santa Barbara, Religious Studies Review

"The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, is one of the Nag Hammadi gnostic texts discovered in 1945 in upper Egypt. The collection belongs to the genre of wisdom sayings, and some of the sayings parallel those of Jesus in the synoptic gospels and Q. Professor Meyer, professor of religion at Chapman University, presents a critically established Coptic text and a new English translation on facing pages. He also provides an introduction and notes. Also included is a brief appreciation by Harold Bloom." -- Theology Digest

"Thomas tells us more about the historical Jesus than all of the Dead Sea Scrolls put together. A superb presentation of the most important early Christian text discovered in this century." -- John Dominic Crossan, author of The Historical Jesus

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Introduction To An Important Christian Text
The first verse of the Gospel of Thomas tells the reader that whoever understands the gospel's sayings will not "...taste death." It is a clear message that understanding these sayings of Jesus is key to one's spiritual growth. Thus, the onus is on the interpreter to create both an effective translation and a context to evaluate the sayings in order to facilitate this growth. Meyer does a marvelous job of meeting these demands.

The book's introduction gives the reader excellent background information on the discovery and authorship of the text. The translation of the text itself is bolstered by the very helpful notes listed after the gospel. The notes made it very easy to cross-reference the gospel's text with similar passages in the New Testament's four gospels. Finally, Harold Bloom provides an interesting commentary that's useful for reflection on the gospel's themes.

There is no guarantee that reading the Gospel of Thomas as translated by Meyer will provide the spiritual enlightenment that many people seek. However, Meyer does his best to allow the reader to discover this enlightenment by not clutter the text with his own views and biases. The result is that Meyer's interpretation is a perfect way to learn about and evaluate this important "lost" book of Christianity.

The book is fine
I have used this book as a study with my congregation and the members of the class found it both engaging and helpful. While not a 'traditional' gospel in the manner of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it is a unique, though not entirely foreign, look at the sayings of Jesus.

There are several translations of the Gospel of Thomas available and I have found this particular one to be very straightforward, no nonsense, with little of the editorializing that sometimes slips into other translations. It has a brief but informative introduction and would serve the 'average' reader well.

As to the comment in a previous review that this book was written by the 'doubting Thomas'of the Gospel of John, I would hope that most people realize such an assertion is hog wash.Read the introduction to the book and get a more informative perspective on authorship.

114 Sayings attributed by the Gnostic Christians to Jesus
In 1945 a couple of Egyptians digging in the Nile River valley found a sealed storage jar that contained a collection of fifty-two ancient manuscripts, most of which were devoted to the teachings of Gnosticism, early Christians who believed that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through "gnosis" (the Greek word for "knowledge"). The Gnostic inner quest for spiritual understanding put them at odds with the authority of the Church in the first, formative centuries of Christianity. It is not surprising that the Gnostic writings were suppressed by the early Church and were really only known to us through the writings of their opponents. The discovery of these manuscripts allows us to read what these early Christians were thinking and to judge for ourselves the value of their beliefs.

Marvin W. Meyer has provided new English translations of several of the most important and revealing of these early Christian texts. Of these, the Gospel of Thomas is the most interesting. Biblical scholars have long maintained that one of the source documents for the Gospels was a collection of sayings that was integrated with the Gospel of Mark to produce the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of Thomas is an example of such a collection, providing dozens of sayings attributed to Jesus. For example, Saying 75: "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: all came forth from me, and all attained to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Pick up a stone, and you will find me there." The words might be different, but certainly the idea is recognizable, which is true of the vast majority of 144 Sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas. These sayings are not a radical depature from what we have in Scripture and at the very least we can accept them as being accurate representations of early Christian beliefs. Certainly they are more familiar than the other Gnostic writings Meyer has translated. You will have to judge for yourself how compatable they are with the New Testament. But I think they are definitely worth thinging about.