A Statistical Argument Showing the Coptic Gospel According To Thomas Is a Word-For-Word Copy of an Original Greek Text

Update on January 22, 2019: I make it clear that this statistical argument means that there was a master copy which all the other copies of The Gospel According To Thomas used.


In this model I use the following assumptions:

1. Thomas was originally composed in Greek.




Source: The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and Influences by Simon Gathercole, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2012. See Chapter 4: “Positive Evidence for a Greek Language Origin,” pages 105-125. In his conclusion, Professor Gathercole concludes 125:

“In sum, these six factors mean first that a Greek vorgage to the Coptic version is a virtual certainty, with proposals for a translation into Coptic from any other language being highly speculative.”


See: The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and ...

2..There are 3 different Greek fragments which were part of larger texts found by British explorers, Grenfell and Hunt, in 1897 and 1903.  See : The Gospel of Thomas: Oxyrhynchus Fragments - The Gnosis Archive.

3. These 3 Greek texts are part of 3 papyri :

a. The first set, name after where it was discovered, Oxyrhynchus and is abbreviated P. Oxy. 654 contains the prologue+ sayings 1-7, in that order.

b. The second set, labelled P. Oxy. 1 contains sayings 26-33 in that order. 

c. The third set, labelled P.Oxy 655 contains 36-39 in that order.

4. There is a single counterexample, saying 77, which is attached to the end of saying 30. Since 31 follows 30 I view this as an outlier and thus do not include it in this model; however, some mathematicians may wish to do so. The result will confirm the original thesis of this essay.

 

The Model:

1. In the first set, prologue + sayings 1-7 I fix a single saying, prologue and then argue there is a 1/114 chances that next saying will be saying 1 if the sayings were randomly chosen. Note there are 115 saying in Thomas. Then upon choosing the second saying I then choose a third saying. Again, note there is a 1/113 chance that saying 2 would following saying 1 if the sayings were in random order. In general, we have:

[ 1/114 x  1/113 x1/112 x 1/111x 1/110 x 1/109 1/108]

2. In the second set, composed of sayings 26-33 we use the same model as above: [ 1/114 x  1/113 x1/112 x 1/111x 1/110 x 1/109 1/108]

3. In the third set, composed of sayings 36-39 I fix saying 36 and then model as follows: [1/114 x 1/113 x 1/112] for the chances these 4 sayings would be in the same order if they were randomly selected. 

4. Summing the first three probabilities and putting them in odds form we have:

2x [114x113x112x111x110x109x 108] + 114x 113x 112= 4.1476035e+14

 or about 4.2 trillion to 1 against the order in the Coptic text being randomly chosen.

 
Conclusion: Based upon a statistical argument in which I compare the word order for the Coptic and 3 Greek texts I show that the odds are about 4.2 trillion to 1 that the Coptic Thomas is a word-for-word translation of an original Greek Text. This also means that there is a master copy from which all the other copies of The Gospel of Thomas copied ; in other words, there was one and only one text called The Gospel of Thomas which was used by later copyists. The original Greek Thomas was composed between 30 A.D. and 62 A.D. (Side note: This is known since in saying 12 Jesus tells his original followers that James would be the new leader of the Jesus movement and James died in 62 A.D.) Note to readers: I will assume this conclusion is true in any future discussions as it is almost certain that the Coptic Thomas is a word-for-word copy of an original Greek text. Because saying 77 was attached to saying 30, it does appear as though there was some rearrangement of the sayings, but no evidence that anything was added later. The “Rolling Corpus Hypothesis” which says that because Thomas is a sayings book it probably had saying added to it is refuted. In other words, there is no evidence any sayings of Jesus were added to the Coptic text and thus when using the Coptic text we can have high confidence that these saying derive from an original Greek text.