"Whoever finds the meaning of these sayings will not taste death . . ." (2012)

Undergraduate: James Heilpern

Faculty Advisor: Zlatko Plese
Department: Religious Studies

---

Since its discovery over half a century ago, more ink has been spilled attempting to interpret the Gospel of Thomas than any other non-canonical, Christian text. In the words of April DeConick “It has been called a ‘direct and almost unbroken continuation of Jesus’ own teaching – unparalleled anywhere in the canonical tradition’ – as well as a ‘perversion of Christianity by those who want to create Jesus in their own image’. It has been understood as an early Jewish Christian document, preserving independent Jesus traditions older than the New Testament gospels, as well as a late Gnostic gospel entirely dependent on the canonical gospels. On the one hand it has been lauded as the ‘fifth gospel,’ while on the other it has been dismissed as ‘heretical’” The confusion is largely due to the enigmatic nature of the text - 144 unconnected sayings associated with Jesus, about half of which were previously unknown. Scholars have attempted, unsatisfactorily, to construct an interpretive framework through which to understand the sayings collectively. In this paper, however, I will compare the gospel to the texts of ancient, Greco-Roman mystery religions, and argue that a ritualistic interpretation can be derived if one understands that the theme that unifies the gospel is actually disunity.