The Gospel of Thomas and the earliest texts of the synoptic gospels
Abstract
Research on the Gospel of Thomas in the last quarter of a
century has made it clear that the origins of this apocryphal gospel
cannot
be
satisfactorily explained from a single point of view. The
author thus suggests that Thomas
be
understood as a growing collection
of sayings which originated in various places and languages, with some
logia being added to the collection after its inception. While this
suggestion is by no means new, there have been few extensive attempts
to study Thomas from such a presupposition.
Due to the need for a control group, only the logia which have
rather close parallels to the Synoptic gospels are investigated. Verbal and textual affinities are noted between these logia and the earliest texts of the Gospels (the Coptic versions, the Diatessaron, the
Old Syriac version, and other early versions and Christian writings).
Various degrees of probable contact between each logion and these
texts are assigned.
The results of this study give some idea as to the place of
origin, the original language, and the approximate date at which certain logia were added to the collection. Those sayings which show a
closer affinity to the Diatessaron, the Old Syriac version, or other
Syrian writings may
be
considered as having been added to the sayings
collection as it circulated in its earliest form, possibly in a Semitic language. Other logia which show no signs of awareness of a
Syrian reading, but which are similar to variants found in the Coptic
versions or other Egyptian texts, may well have originated in Egypt
and been added to the collection at a later stage. These results,
however, must await verification by those who might approach Thomas
from related, but different, perspectives.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Collections
Except where otherwise noted within the work, this item's licence for re-use is described as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.