The Gospel of Thomas Examined

This is an in-depth look into what the gospel of Thomas is and when it was written.

Sources:

Simon Gathercole - The Gospel of Thomas

NT Wright - The New Testament and the People of God

Craig Evans - Fabricating Jesus

John P. Meier - A Marginal Jew

Darrell Bock and Dan Wallace - Dethroning Jesus

Hippolytus of Rome - Refutation of all Heresies

Cyril of Jerusalem - Catechesis Lecture

Richard Bauckham - Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Nicholas Perrin - Thomas: The Fifth Gospel?

[Edgar-xzuw]

"These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke!?"But John 18:20 states "I have spoken openly to the world, " Jesus replied. "I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret."

[b.arborio]

3, 000 yrs from now, when Our future selves, translate & unravel the mysteries of Ancient Social Media, it'd be funny to watch Academics argue the difference between a Twitter Feed and a Facebook Blog.

[OrangePony]

Am I the only one who finds this “gospel” astonishingly buddhist in nature and form?

[nuovaapologetica]

"the light is in everybody" and "hidden words" smell a lot gnosticism

[cedb]

Whooooaa. I didn't get any of this but it felt like the DaVinci code movie.

[LuisCja]

Peace to everyone: In Saying 14 of the Gospel of Thomas, The Messiah is not necessarily saying that fasting, praying, or giving to charity are inherently bad or negative actions. Rather, it suggests that these external practices alone are not sufficient for spiritual growth or salvation. In addition, this is a response to saying 6 (Compered to Matthew 6:1-8); The saying challenges the idea that engaging in religious rituals without a genuine and sincere internal connection to spirituality may be counterproductive. It emphasizes the importance of authenticity and integrity in one's spiritual practices. It suggests that true spirituality involves a deeper, more personal relationship with oneself, others, and G-d, and goes beyond mere outward religious observance. Thank you, great video, really good info.

[esauponce]

Great! Are you starting like a series on analyzing the Gospels (and the apocryphal gospels) independently?

[altareggo]

This is EPIC research! A lot of information presented quite succinctly and cogently. BRAVO!! I love how detailed the discussion is, about the dating of the book: pros and cons are presented for various viewpoints, and discussed rationally. MANY THANKS!!

[janddbackup]

Minor correction: @1:39 John 14:6 says Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus being the Light is found in John 1:9 and 8:12.

[bromponie]

Regardless of one's opinion on this document's teachings, one has to admit that the gospel of Thomas (c. 100 - 180) having manuscripts from around c. 200 is quite impressive!

[othername]

Thanks for all the time you put into your work! Ps. Watched your debate with Aron Ra on Wise Discipline and it was epic.

[jdshl]

Amazing. As I watched this, it completely reminded me of the Quran. Both of these are incoherent in very similar ways, telling a different "truth" after the apparent fact hundreds of years later, without much manuscript evidence, and whatever is available shows the story to be evolving ove time.

[Coach-V]

Quite a few scholars in academia suggest a composition of late 1st, early 2nd century for Thomas (which puts it in the wheelhouse of primary sources/witnesses) but most of those i've studied identify it as a type of "NT pseudepigrapha" and attribute authorship to more radical offshoots such as the Essenes or the Gnostics created by S. Magus.

[victorzane]

Micheal you should do a series on the apocrypha, church fathers, and lost texts.

[magykjames]

The timeline analysis around 6:46 is a really great visual. I'd love to see a deep dive on that.

[pentalarclikesit]

I think one of the word "Gospel" in the title is making people treat it as one, even though it is simply a list of sayings, with no narrative, which is an entirely different thing from the Cannonical Four

[jcs]

Very cogent analysis. Agree with timeline and dating. The gospel itself seems more meaningful and relevant when viewed from a modern perspective. Truth inside a riddle. It is definitely worth a full read.

[sammathai]

Could you please do a video on the “Missing Years of Christ”?

[camilotorres]

It's great to see you posting again what happened to the channel the last couple of weeks? It kept on telling me it had closed.

[robinlazulite]

Im thankful for youtube because of channels like yours.