The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom by Stevan L. Davies (PDF)

Description

Discovered in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi Library, the Gospel of Thomas was long considered irrelevant to the study of Jesus’ teachings. Stevan Davies’ influential The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom overturned this view, and enabled the Gospel of Thomas to be taken seriously as a source for the earliest Christianity. This Bardic Press edition brings a classic work of accessible scholarshp back into print. A entirely new forty page introduction discusses recent developments in scholarship, looks at Thomas’ independence from the New Testament gospels, discusses the role of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of Thomas, and offers a variety of valuable insights. A fascinating additional essay speculates that Thomas may have been used as an oracle text in a similar way to the I Ching. “The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom… first raised my interest in this debated writing.” — Risto Uro, author of Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas”The most original, challenging, and persuasive book about the Gospel of Thomas that I have ever seen.” — Morton Smith, author of Jesus the Magician and The Secret Gospel”may well be the best yet written on the theology of Thomas… nobody has done it better than he has.” — John Dominic Crossan, author of The Historical Jesus and The Birth of Christianity

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I’m glad I got this book. There is some wear, generally though it is quite acceptable.

⭐I read this book long ago and it had an impact on me. One of the few books that can transmit the power of spirit. Davies does that by writing about Sophia, Christian Wisdom, which potentially in all of us. I just pulled out my book and noticed how many, many sentences were underlined. A great book

⭐Davies’s book is quite good representation of scholars’s view on gospel of Thomas. He arguments, that the GoTh’s groundwork is wisdom tradition. The book thus represents one of various views abot GoTh’s underlying traditions. On the other hand, one must take in consideration that The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom consentrates on just one part of the gospel. Also, one gets a feeling, that the author is overburdened with repudiation of gnostic label for GoTh (as gnosticism should be something negative). This effort seems to be the main starting point for the interpretation.. so the discussion sometimes gets quite one-sided. Nevertheless I must commend the inclusion of the paper “Does GoTh have a meaning” in this second edition of the book. Here author also acknowledges the fact that his view is just one among the many that seem equally legitimate and so puts the whole book The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom into a more objective perspective.

⭐Davies is not afraid to take on a few egos in the academic world. He can be quite biting in his criticism of what many scholars have written about the Gospel of Thomas, and exposes where many assertions can fall down.Where, for example, a scholar may say that Thomas must be later than Matthew because a certain parable has clearly been lifted from Matthew by Thomas because it must have been modified in such-and-such a way, Davies can clearly demonstrate that the opposite can equally be shown to be “true” (that is to say it also might be the case, but we don’t know).Again, where gnostic interpretations are given, Davies can demonstrate that these intepretations are arrived at by assuming from the outset that Thomas is gnostic.For me, Davies is showing, while largely avoiding it himself, what is wrong with much of modern academia in many fields (history, science, you name it), namely presenting as “fact” total conjecture which is not provable, when we simply do not know and perhaps cannot know. Still, PhD’s and other academic honours are not handed out for saying “we really don’t know, it might be thus or it might actually be thus instead”, are they?As an example, the final section is a previously published essay by Davies (with tongue planted fimly in cheek) “demonstrating” how Thomas was “used” as a divination aid by randomly picking logia from the list. In other words, the meaning you find in it could be the meaning you want to give to it.If you are studying the Gospel of Thomas, read this alongside everything else as a sanity check.

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