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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insights from the past, 8 May 2007
--Simon Peter said to them: Mary should leave us because women are not worthy of the life. Jesus responded: Look, I'll lead her in order to make her male so that she can become a living spirit as you males are. For each woman who makes herself male will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.--
When I've read this passage to my biblical studies and history classes in seminary, they can usually agree readily that this might not have been the best document to include in the canon of scripture, at least when thinking about it from a `preachability' standpoint, particularly if one tends toward literalist interpretations. But many of the passages in the Gospel of Thomas defy simplistic interpretation and understanding because they really are of a different world and different worldview, and have not had a long history of hermeneutic development as have other, equally difficulty canonical passages.
The Gospel of Thomas gained a significant audience during the first decades after its discovery in the Egyptian desert in 1945. Part of a collection that has come to be called the Nag Hammadi scriptures, they were discovered only a few years prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls, another set of documents that has been pivotal in increasing our understanding of the religious culture of the time two thousand years ago.
One scholar classified the Gospel of Thomas along with most other non-canonical gospels as failing to gain widespread acceptance not primarily because of the content, but because of the style - the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are all narrative in their development; they tell stories and narrate a history in addition to giving the wisdom of Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas, like many of the other, is more a collection of sayings, more on the order of the book of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes than Mark or John. According to Stevan Davies, `The format of the Gospel of Thomas is little more than a disorganised list.... The Gospel of Thomas is about as primitive a form of text as there can be: a simple list with one thing following another in a manner that is much more reminiscent of oral tradition than of literary construction.'
The Gospel of Thomas is perhaps best understood as a Gnostic text (though there are some who would dispute that). Andrew Harvey, series editor of the Skylight Illuminations set in which this book falls, writes:
`The Gospel of Thomas is more than the most exciting archaeological find of the last century, even more than another gospel to add to the four canonical ones. It is far more than another Gnostic text, or one that carries on the tradition of Jewish wisdom sayings, or, as some have also claimed, a cross between the two. These are scholarly descriptions and distinctions, fascinating and helpful in their way, but they do not begin to describe the extraordinary importance of the Gospel of Thomas, or to show how it can be used today by all sincere seekers to awaken their divine identity and to focus its powers on a radical transformation of the world.'
There are 114 passages (not quite verses in the traditional since, but closer to verse-size than chapter-size). Each one is here presented in new translation by Davies, laid on with only a few (sometimes only one) per page, with commentary on the facing page. This commentary is primarily looking at social, historical, philosophical and theological ideas rather than linguistic and translation issues; thus, it is accessible to the general reader, but will need to be supplemented for the scholar. Davies avoids jargon and terminology with which only scholars would be comfortable, again in an effort to make the Gospel of Thomas generally accessible to non-professional readers.
Those who are looking for forbidden fruit might look elsewhere. As Davies points out in the introduction, we have no proof that this book was deliberately excluded by those councils and decision-makers who solidified the canon as we now have it - indeed, they might not have even been aware of the existence of the Gospel of Thomas, which might have been a more regional text in circulation and popularity. Still, its rediscovery has not provoked widespread movements to reopen the canon. It has provided fascinating insight into the early Christian world, and provided a new lens through which to assess how some people understood the person and phenomenon of Jesus.
This is a very good text to use to be introduced to the Gospel of Thomas, to some of the less-traveled by-ways of early Christianity, and to ideas of spirituality that are both Christian and foreign.
As for the opening passage -- that is actually the conclusion of the Gospel of Thomas. Remembering that the writers (and intended audience) would not have taken the terms 'male' and 'female' to be literal, flesh-and-blood attributes is the key to understanding this passage.
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by Marvin Meyer
by St.Benedict
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