Executive Summary: Evidence That The Gospel According To Thomas is an Authentic Sayings Book

In this essay I will reference the following posts in this series:

I.  Evidence Showing The Gospel According To Thomas Is an Authentic Sayings Book, Part I

II.  Evidence The Gospel According To Thomas Is An Authentic Sayings Book, Part II

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

IV.  Additional Arguments Showing The Gospel According To Thomas is an Authentic Sayings Book, Part IV

Claim A: The Coptic Gospel of Thomas is substantially a word-for-word copy of a master copy of an original Greek text.

Claim B: The Greek Gospel of Thomas are authentic sayings of Jesus.

Using the transitive axiom of logic, we have:

Claim C: The Coptic Gospel of Thomas are substantially authentic sayings of Jesus.

I. The claim that the Coptic text is substantially the same as the Greek text means:

A. There are no examples in the Thomas corpus in which a saying is cited which is not in the Coptic text.

Source: The fact that there are no citations of Thomas in Greek which are not in the Coptic text.

B. There are minor additions or deletions in comparing the two texts.

1) In the Coptic  Thomas we have saying 5: “Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.” The Greek text adds to the final phrase “For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed” the phrase “and nothing buried that will not be raised.”

2) In the Coptic text saying 27 reads “Unless you fast from the world, you will not find the Kingdom.” The Greek text says: “Unless you fast with respect to the world, you will not find the Kingdom of God.”

3) In the Coptic text saying 30 reads: “Where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two or one, I am with him.” The Greek text adds at the end part of saying 77: “Lift the stone and you will find me. Spilt the wood and I am there.” 

Conclusion: The Coptic Thomas and the Greek Thomas have minor additions or deletions between their sayings.  In every case, the main body of the sayings are the same between the two texts. There are no cases in which a Greek citation is a new saying apart from the Coptic text.

Note To Readers: I will usually leave out the qualifier “substantially” and just say “The Coptic Gospel of Thomas is a word-for-word copy of an original Greek text.

II. A statistical argument shows that the Coptic Thomas is a master copy of an original Greek text.

Reference: See part III cited at the top of this essay.

A. The statistical argument shows that there was a master copy from which all the other Greek texts were copied.

B. The statistical argument shows the copyists of the Coptic Thomas copied an original text, word-for-word.

Conclusion: The Greek copies of Thomas were all copies of a single original text. In other words, there was a single master copy which all the Greek texts were using.

Example: If one reads 10 different copies of the American Declaration of Independence one will find all of them are identical. This is because they are all copying from an original dated July 4, 1776.

II. There are 39 ancient citations of Thomas.

Source: The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction and Commentary by Simon Gathercole, Brill, London/Boston, 2014, pages 35-55.

A. These citations are dated from circa 225 A.D. to 1300 A.D. 

B. These early citations shows that Thomas was in wide circulation after Jesus’ Resurrection, circa 30 A.D. 

C. The citations are nearly all from the Greek Thomas and all can be found in the Coptic text. 

Conclusion: Nearly all the 39 citations of Thomas which Professor Gathercole cites are from the Greek Thomas and where a specific saying is cited it will be found in the Coptic text. This is strong evidence that the Coptic Thomas is a word-for-word copy of an original master copy of the Greek text.

IV. The Greek copy of Thomas are authentic sayings of Jesus.

A. The structure of the text, a sayings book, shows it was written before 70 A.D. Thus, the Greek Thomas was composed before Mark which was written circa 70 A.D.

Reference: Part IV, section I cited at the top of this essay.

B. Thomas shares 50 sayings with an authentic sayings book, Q.

Reference: Part I, section II cited at the top of this essay.

C. Saying 12 in which Jesus makes James, the brother of Jesus and one of the 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus’ Resurrection (see I Corinthians 15), the leader of the original followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, shows this saying was said before 62 A.D. since James died in 62 A.D.

Reference: Part II, section I cited at the top of this essay.

 

Conclusion: The fact that Thomas is a sayings book, the fact that it shares 50 sayings with an authentic sayings book, and the fact there is an historical reference in Thomas shows it was composed before 62 A.D. Using the statistical argument that there is one and only one original Greek text, it follows from the above 3 lines of argument that the Greek Thomas are authentic sayings of Jesus.

 

Summary: In this executive summary of 4 previous essays, I have shown that the Coptic Gospel of Thomas is substantially a copy of an original Greek text. By “substantially” I mean all the sayings in the Coptic text are in the Greek text with minor additions added at the end of several sayings. In practice, I will say: “The Coptic Gospel of Thomas is a word-for-word copy of an original Greek text." By looking at the structure of Thomas as a sayings book and an historical reference to Thomas (saying 12) I conclude that the Greek text was composed between 30 A.D. and 62 A.D.

Final Conclusion: The Coptic Gospel of Thomas are authentic sayings of Jesus.