What are the Gnostic Gospels?

April 3, 2007
The Episcopal Church

By: Deirdre Good

Deirdre Good is professor of New Testament at the General Theological Seminary in New York City.

Along with thousands of other people, I recently examined the first page of the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas from Codex 2 of the Nag Hammadi Library on loan from the Coptic Museum in Cairo in an exhibit called In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000 at the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. In that exhibit, pages from the Gospel of Thomas and Codex Sinaiticus sit side by side with papyrus fragments of Paul’s letters from the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, just as they did in the ancient world. People in the first three centuries read Thomas alongside other gospels and Paul’s letters. They didn’t label them.

When anyone identifies the Gospels of Thomas, Mary and Philip as “Gnostic,” they see behind such texts an assertion that creation of this world is an error brought about by an inferior divine being, not the transcendent true God. Those who know this truth (gnosis = knowledge, intuition) about human existence and who grasp its implications are “Gnostics.” While there are many Gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi Library, not all of them share this perspective. Judge for yourself whether it is shared by the Gospel of Thomas.

The title, “The Gospel of Thomas,” is found at the end of the text. This gospel consists of 114 sayings of Jesus: wisdom sayings, prophetic sayings and parables. Some are familiar (the parable of the Sower, the parable of the Vineyard), while others are not (the parable of the Empty Jar: “Jesus said: “The kingdom of the [Father] is like a certain woman who was carrying a [jar] full of meal. While she was walking [on the] road, still some distance from home, the handle of the jar broke and the meal emptied out behind her [on] the road. She did not realize it; she had noticed no accident. When she reached her house, she set the jar down and found it empty.”).

The gospels of Mark and Thomas each contain a version of Jesus’ parable of the Sower. But while the author of Mark’s gospel puts Jesus’ parables into a wider context of Jesus’ ministry, particularly his death, the author of the Gospel of Thomas transmits Jesus’ words without any frame at all. For Mark, Jesus’ parables proclaim the immanence of God’s reign within the context of Jesus’ whole life. For Thomas, whoever finds the interpretation of Jesus’ words will not taste death.

Jesus’ disciples in Mark and Thomas find his sayings and parables enigmatic and confusing. Mark unfolds the meaning of the parable of the Sower as a story of the ways people hear Jesus’ words and interpret his death, while Thomas proposes that understanding Jesus’ words is enough in and of itself. Thomas describes this investigation: A listener moves from a state of hearing to seeking and finding, then to being disturbed to marveling and finally to reigning, and (in the Greek version of Thomas) to rest.

How can narratives of Jesus’ life (ancient biographies) in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John belong to the same genre as a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas? Because the genre “gospel” can include collections of sayings like those found in Thomas, Philip and the Dialogue of the Savior in the Nag Hammadi Library, and narrative gospels like those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Particular disciples display insight into Jesus’ sayings in gospels with their names: Thomas in the Gospel of Thomas, Mary in the Gospel of Mary, Peter in Matthew’s gospel, the beloved disciple in the Gospel of John. In some gospels (Gospel of Mary), the disciple relates a vision of a world beyond this one, revealing knowledge of the inferior origins of present existence. Mary’s demonstrates that she has insight into heavenly realities. She is “the woman who knows the All,” i.e. a “Gnostic.” In such cases, we would call gospels like Philip, Mary and the Dialogue of the Savior “Gnostic.”