>> the uninitiated would never know that the so-called Gospel of Thomas is a 4C forgery, with antecedents in a 2C forgery.
I think that article itself is guilty of what it complains ABC is doing. Here is some background I dug up on Gospel of Thomas:
When the complete text was found, in a Coptic version, it was realized that three separate Greek portions of it had already been discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt in 1898. The manuscripts bearing the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas have been dated to about 200, and the manuscript of the Coptic version to about 340. Although the Coptic version is not quite identical to any of the Greek fragments, it is believed that the Coptic version was translated from a prior Greek version.
The central argument of Elaine Pagels Beyond Belief (2003) is that there seems to be conflict between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas. According to Pagels, certain specific passages in the Gospel of John can only be understood in light of Thomas-like sayings, ideas, traditions, philosophical beliefs, and community, whether or not precisely represented in the present Gospel of Thomas itself. The most famous example in the Gospel of John is of "Doubting Thomas," which Pagels interprets as rebuttal for the Thomas community. Pagels' interpretation of John logically requires that Thomas-like ideas or a Thomas-like community, if not the present Gospel of Thomas, already existed when John's gospel was written. An unsympathetic evaluation of Pagel's book can be found here.
Another argument for the early camp is that there is overlap between Paul's epistles and Thomas. The authentic corpus of Paul's epistles, which include 1 Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians are universally regarded by secular biblical scholars as predating the canonical Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. There are overlaps between teachings found in Paul and in Thomas that are not found in the canonical Gospels, (nor independently attested by them), and that Thomas therefore may have drawn on a common sayings pool that was drawn upon both by the canonical gospels and by Thomas. According to this theory, Paul was drawing on sayings that were widely recognized to come from Jesus, some which are uniquely preserved in Gospel of Thomas.
The early camp argues that if Thomas knew of the New Testament, including the Pauline epistles, and if it is thought that Thomas showed gnostic tendencies, then it is surprising that he did not take the opportunity to include many verses that would have supported such "gnostic" theology, which are present in the canonical New Testament, such as John 8:58 "Before Abraham was born, I AM." The Gospel of Thomas did in fact include a great deal of material unparalleled in the New Testament. It, however, lacks distinctive terms from second century Gnosticism such as archons, pleroma, aeons, demiurge that would be expected from a product of historical Gnosticism: this is seen by some as another justification for an earlier date of authorship. |
