The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation

Edited by John Barclay, Lightfood Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, "Early Christianity in Context" is a new series of importance for researchers and students in many different fields: biblical studies, patristics, Jewish Studies, classics and ancient history. The series examines th [...]
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Edited by John Barclay, Lightfood Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, "Early Christianity in Context" is a new series of importance for researchers and students in many different fields: biblical studies, patristics, Jewish Studies, classics and ancient history. The series examines the birth and development of early Christianity up to the end of the second century CE and places early Christianity in its social, cultural, political and economic context, crossing traditional pseudo-boundaries between the 'Jewish' and 'Graeco-Roman' worlds. An enigmatic collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, the 'Gospel of Thomas' was discovered in the sands of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in the 1940's. Since its discovery, scholars and the public alike have been intrigued to know what the Gospel says and what light it sheds on the formation of early Christianity. In "Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas", April DeConick argued that the Gospel was a 'rolling corpus,' a book of sayings that grew over time, beginning as a simple written Gospel containing oracles of the prophet Jesus.As the community faced various crises and constituency changes, including the delay of the Eschaton and the need to accommodate Gentiles within the group, its traditions were reinterpreted and the sayings in their Gospel updated, accommodating the present experiences of the community. Here, DeConick provides a new English translation of the entire Gospel of Thomas, which includes the original 'kernel' of the Gospel and all the sayings. Whilst most other translations are of the Coptic text with only occasional reference to the Greek fragment variants, this translation integrates the Greek and offers new solutions to complete the lacunae. A unique feature of this book is that translations to the parallels of the Gospel are also included. This is volume 287 in the "Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement" series and is part of the "Early Christianity in Context" series.