I am trying to find a version of the book of St. Thomas, which that apparently was left out of later versions of the Bible. Was this St. Thomas the same as St. Thomas of Aquinas? Can you advise on how to find this version?
Dear Dr. Reper,
The Gospel of Thomas is, I believe, what you are seeking. It can be found in any library or on the Internet. It is included in full in the book entitled The Five Gospels, edited by Robert Funk and Roy Hoover, in which the work of the Jesus Seminar has been laid out for the world to read. The Jesus seminar, a gathering of some 250 scripture scholars, meeting over some 15 years, sought to discern the authenticity of every saying attributed to Jesus in every written Christian source that we have available to us. They included the four canonical gospels: Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Then they elevated into the canon of scripture the gospel of Thomas, which was discovered in a cave near Nag Hammadi in the Middle East in the 1940’s. Scholars had known of the existence of this gospel, for other authors of antiquity had referred to it, but no copies of it existed that we knew of until this discovery. The members of the Jesus Seminar began to refer to the gospel of Thomas as the “fifth” gospel.
I don’t believe it is accurate to say that the Gospel of Thomas was “left out of later versions of the Bible.” To my knowledge, it was never considered. There are some contemporary biblical scholars like Robert Patterson of Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, who will argue that it should have been.
The gospels assert that one of the twelve was a man named Thomas. No detail of his life is recorded until the Fourth Gospel (John) which makes him one of the heroes of John’s resurrection narratives. It is from that source that the phrase ‘Doubting Thomas’ is derived. The historicity of the narrative is, however, highly doubted.
Thomas Aquinas was a 13th century Catholic theologian whose primary work was entitled The Summa Theologica. He is not related in any way to the presumed author of the gospel of Thomas.
There is some debate about the date of the gospel of Thomas ranging from a date as early as the 50’s to as late as 125 CE. It has only about 100 verses. I tend to see it as an early second century piece of work. My favorite treatment of it is in a book entitled Beyond Belief by Princeton University Professor Elaine Pagels.
I hope this helps.
John Shelby Spong
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