The Gospel of Thomas

What follows is an annotated bibliography on the Gospel of Thomas. I will expand the bibliography and add more annotations as time permits. Books that are highlighted in yellow are highly recommended.

Commentaries

• DeConick, April D.The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation with a Commentary and New English Translation of the Complete Gospel. Library of New Testament Studies 287. London/New York: T & T Clark, 2006. [Amazon]

  This commentary was originally written as an appendix to April D. Deconick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth (LNTS 286; London/New York: T & T Clark, 2005), yet it outgrew its originally intended size and developed into a freestanding commentary on the Gospel of Thomas. Thus, it should be read as a companion to her first volume on the Gospel. DeConick deals with each logion in their own section with the following formula: translation, the Coptic text (NHC), the Greek text (P. Oxy., if applicable), attribution, text and translation issues, interpretive comment, source discussion, literature parallels, agreements in Syrian Gospels, Western Text and Diatessaron, and a select bibliography. The thoroughness of DeConick’s work, the easy-to-use format, and the recent publication date makes this a necessary volume for anyone interested in the Gospel of Thomas. Kudos to T. &. T. Clark for also making it available in paperback.

• Fieger, Michael. Das Thomasevangelium: Eintleitung, Kommentar, und Systematik. Münster: Aschendorffsche, 1991.

  This commentary contains a short (11 page) introduction which addresses many of the standard issues such as intertextuality and the Thomas community. The commentary itself is fairly exhaustive. Each logion is treated separately and systematically: the Coptic text with a German translation and Greek parallels (if applicable). Fieger interacts with a lot of scholarship and the volume is heavily footnoted. At the end the volume there is a brief Systematische Übersicht der Ergebnisse, which includes a number of topics such as soteriology, Jesus made flesh, the kingdom, anthropology, cosmology, and the way of gnosis. He reads the Gospel of Thomas as a second century Gnostic writing which is dependent on the Synoptic Gospels.

• Grant, Robert M. and David Noel Freedman, The Secret Sayings of Jesus. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960.

  This was an early attempt at interpreting the Gospel of Thomas. Grant and Freedman read the Gospel of Thomas as a “chiefly Gnostic” text which is derivative of the Synoptic Gospels (9). The bulk of the volume deals with introductory matters of the Gospel, detailing its discovery, its realationship to other gospels, the Gnostics and Thomas, the environment of Thomas, the Gnostics and our Gospels, and Thomas as an author and theologian. The commentary, based on the translation of William R. Schoedel (1959), is relatively short and chiefly interacts with other primary sources such as the canonical gospels. A brief subject index concludes the book.

• Kasser, Rodolphe. L’Évangile selon Thomas: Présentation et commentaire théologique. Neuchâtel: Éditions Delachaux & Niestlé, 1960.

  Long before his work on the Gospel of Judas, Kasser wrote this commentary on the Gospel of Thomas. It contains a relatively short (15 page) introduction, and features each logion with its own French translation, Greek text, parallel references, and a commentary. The end matter consists of a concordance of French words with their Coptic/Greek parallels and gives their location in the text of the Gospel. There are a few other appendices and a scripture index.

• Meyer, Marvin. The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

  Meyer’s volume contains a short (15 page) introduction, a translation of the Gospel with the Coptic text on the facing pages, and roughly 50 pages of commentary. Following the commentary there is an ‘interpretation’ by Harold Bloom, who reads the Gospel along Gnostic lines. This is accessible to non-scholars and is probably not very useful for those looking for a more technical treatment of the text.

• Ménard, Jacques-É. L’Évangile selon Thomas. Nag Hammadi Studies 5. Leiden: Brill, 1975.

  This has all the signs of being the leading French commentary on the Gospel of Thomas. There is a lengthy (50 page) introduction, which addresses all of the typical issues such as date and location, the Gospel’s place in early Christianity in light of other texts, its theology, and its structure. The French translation has a few footnotes and many in-text references to the Greek. The commentary proper mostly treats the logia indvidually, and is based on the Coptic/Greek text. Although it interacts with a lot of secondary literature, there are only in-text citations (no footnotes). The indices are also quite lengthy as well.

• Nordsieck, Reinhard. Das Thomas-Evangelium: Einleitung — Zur Frage des historischen Jesus — Kommentierung aller 114 Logien. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2004).

  Nordsieck’s volume is divided into three sections: an introduction (7-23), a section on the historical Jesus (24-30), and a commentary (31-390). The page layout and general formatting of the book is horrendous. There are no paragraph indentations, lots of in-text citations with the authors’ names in all caps, and generally too much text on each page. This makes for a difficult time reading or skimming the volume, unless one is browsing for authors’ names (all caps) because there are no indices. Nordsieck treats each logion individually with a lot of references to other scholarship and parallel passages. It’s a very sizable commentary. He argues that the Gospel is neither Gnostic nor dependent on the Synoptic tradition, but is an independent witness to the historical Jesus.

• Plisch, Uwe-Karsten. The Gospel of Thomas: Original Text with Commentary. Translated by Gesine Schenke Robinson. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2008. Translation of Das Thomasevangelium: Originaltext mit Kommentar. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007. [Amazon]

  This recently published commentary by Plisch is a welcomed addition to the Gospel of Thomas commentaries in English. It was translated from a German original and has all the makings of a first-rate commentary. Plisch argues that the text is of Syrian origins and that it preserves sources dependent and independent of the Synoptic tradition dating from before and after the Synoptics. The text contains various theological traditions which cannot be put “under one theological umbrella” (16). The introduction is about 25 pages and the commentary is over 200 pages. In the commentary, each logion is given in the Coptic text with the Greek text from P. Oxy. if applicable. He also gives a retroverted translation of the Greek text from the Coptic and an English translation. Endnotes follow each logion. There is an index of ancient texts, but no author or subject index.

• Valantasis, Richard. The Gospel of Thomas. New York: Routledge, 1997. [Amazon]

  Rather than primarily investigating the Gospel of Thomas in relation to the Synoptic Gospels or second century gnosticism, Valantasis’s commentary approaches the Gospel as a theological document in its own right. He argues that it is first necessary to give this Gospel its own voice before looking at its relationship to other forms of Christianity, which has been the trend (xiii). He views the material as a “complete collection from the first decade of the second century CE” (26), and avoids the difficult “gnostic” language altogether. The commentary is based on the English translation of the Scholar’s Version (Polebridge Press). In the commentary section, he first works through the Greek texts from P. Oxy. and then through the Coptic text from Nag Hammadi. Each logion gets its own section of about one page each. The book only contains a subject index.