UC Santa Barbara

This essay is concerned with the relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and torah observance as is discussed in the Gospel of Thomas’ logia 13, 14, and 53. I contend in this essay that torah observance and the correct interpretation of torah observance is a central theme both to the historical Jesus, whom we may attempt to parse from these logia, and to the Thomasine community, who would have been reading this text. To make this argument, I will be analyzing the preceding and contemporaneous writings of the Second-Temple period that speak to the concerns, anxieties, and general discourses with which the Gospel of Thomas is engaged. My research compiles discussions of torah observance, Jewish political concerns, changing theologies, and social upheaval as described in Second-Temple Jewish literature. In my essay, I accept Helmut Koester’s analysis of the Gospel of Thomas’ geographical and historical origin as Edessa in the latter half of the first century CE, near or slightly after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE, and for such a reason, I have attempted to make the best use of Second-Temple texts (or texts written shortly after the Second-Temple period) that may have influenced the composition of the Gospel of Thomas. I have included such Second-Temple writings as the Testament of Moses, the Book of Jubilees, the Greek additions to Esther, the Testament of Job, Second Maccabees, 3 Baruch, 4 Ezra, the hypothetical Q-gospel, the Synoptic Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles of Paul of Tarsus. In employing these texts, I am not suggesting that the Gospel of Thomas’ author had any direct knowledge of these works or that s/he was aware of their composition. Instead, I contend that these texts feed into a common discourse relating to the position of Judaism in the Second-Temple period, and for such reasons provide the modern scholar with insight into the concerns and questions posed in the Gospel of Thomas. In an effort to best explore the relationship between torah observance and the Gospel of Thomas, this essay has been divided into three major sections. The first section establishes the literary, political, and social climate of the Second-Temple period, in which the Gospel of Thomas was composed. The essay’s second section analyzes Jesus’ three proscriptions of logion 14 in the Gospel of Thomas: fasting, prayer, and charity. By using comparanda from other literary works of the time period, I will argue that these proscriptions are not nearly as anti-nomic as they initially appear. Instead, the statements in this logion are representative of Jesus’ enigmatic public teachings and are largely concerned with the abuse of torah observance by the Pharisees. In the third and final section of this essay, I discuss the anti-circumcision rhetoric of logion 53. Unlike logion 14, I contend that there is no evidence to suggest that this logion is a veiled criticism of the Pharisees or any other Jewish sects of Jesus’ time. Instead, I argue that this logion is not a saying of the historical Jesus but rather a benchmark of discussions and debates contemporaneous with the composition of the Gospel of Thomas. In this way, logion 53 is anti-nomic, proscribing circumcision of the flesh for Gentiles and Jews alike. Instead, in a telling way, this logion is revealing future debates between Jesus-followers and the large group of Jews who will form Rabbinic Judaism. This essay is followed by an appendix consisting of the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas from the 1945 Nag Hammadi codices and my translation of the Coptic text into English.