Themes and Teachings of the Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas has no argument, no chapters and no obvious order. Read it straight through and the sayings seem to arrive at random. Read it repeatedly and a small number of ideas surface again and again, each stated in several registers.

The kingdom is present, not future

Nothing in Thomas waits. The kingdom is not coming; it is here and unrecognised. Saying 113 states it directly — spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it. Saying 3 warns against leaders who point at the sky or the sea, and locates the kingdom inside and outside the hearer at once. Saying 51 answers a question about the new world by saying it has already arrived.

The consequence is that Thomas has almost no apocalyptic content. There is no last judgement, no return on clouds, no resurrection of the body. What the canonical gospels place at the end of history, Thomas places in the present moment, waiting to be noticed.

Self-knowledge as salvation

To know yourself, in Thomas, is to know where you came from. Saying 50 supplies the answer in catechism form: we came from the light, the place where the light came into being by itself. Saying 49 says the solitary will find the kingdom because they came from it and will return to it. Saying 18 replies to a question about the end by asking about the beginning.

Failure to know yourself is not merely ignorance but destitution — saying 3 says such a person is poverty. And saying 67 supplies the check: whoever knows everything but lacks themselves lacks everything.

The single one

Division is the disease and unity the cure. Saying 22 gives the fullest version — make the two one, the inside like the outside, the male and female a single one — and saying 106 repeats it with the promise that the undivided can move mountains. Saying 11 asks the question the programme answers: when you were one you became two, so what will you do now?

The person who achieves this is the monachos, the single one, blessed in sayings 16, 49 and 75. The word later became the technical term for a monk, and the sayings behind it help explain why Syrian ascetic Christianity took the shape it did.

Light and hiddenness

Thomas is full of light that is present but concealed. Saying 24 places it inside the person of light, where it either shines on the whole world or leaves darkness. Saying 77 makes the widest claim in the collection: I am the light over all things, split the wood and I am there, lift the stone and you will find me. Saying 83 turns the image over and lets concealment and revelation swap places.

Hiddenness has two faces here. What is hidden must be sought (sayings 2, 5, 92, 94), and what is understood must be broadcast from the rooftops (saying 33) — but not to everyone, since saying 93 warns against pearls and swine.

The world as a corpse

Thomas’s attitude to the material world is cold but not, on close reading, hateful. Saying 56 says whoever has come to know the world has found a corpse. Saying 27 requires fasting from the world. Saying 42, the shortest in the book, says simply: be passers-by.

Yet saying 29 marvels that such great wealth — the spirit — has come to live in such poverty, and saying 112 condemns dependence in both directions, flesh on soul and soul on flesh. The problem is entanglement rather than matter itself, which is one reason the “gnostic” label sits awkwardly.

Wealth, trade and the poor

A consistent economic edge runs through the parables. The rich fool dies the night he finishes his plans (63). The banquet guests all decline for commercial reasons and the parable ends by barring merchants from the Father’s places (64). Saying 95 says to lend without expecting repayment, and saying 54 blesses the poor without spiritualising them as Matthew does.

Women in Thomas

The evidence pulls both ways. Mary asks the question that opens saying 21 and Salome questions Jesus and declares herself a disciple in saying 61. Two consecutive kingdom parables have women as their central figures (96 and 97). Yet the collection closes on saying 114, in which Peter demands that Mary leave and Jesus speaks of making her male. That saying is missing from the Greek fragments and is widely regarded as a late addition, but it is now the ending the text has.