Posted: July 12 2007 at 3:04pm | IP Logged

Jeanne Marie wrote: So, Gospel of Thomas is NOT apocryphal Gospel of Thomas is condemned by the Church (and unrelated to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). Infancy Gospel of Thomas is not condemned by the Church. Now do I have it right?

63. Thomas, Acts of, an apocryphal acts, probably originally written in Syriac in the first half of the 3d cent. at Edessa. They recount how Thomas was assigned to India, refused, and was forced by Christ, who sold him to a merchant, to serve Indian King Gundephorus as a carpenter. After many marvelous incidents, Thomas is martyred. The extant Greek is probably closer to the original than the Syriac text, which seems to have been much revised to purify it of Gnostic tendencies: Thomas is represented as the twin of Christ like him both in appearance and in redeeming work. Thomas specializes in urging renunciation of marriage. All attempts to prove the historicity of Thomas's mission to India have failed.

64. Thomas, Apocalypse of, formerly known only through its condemnation in the so-called Gelasian decree (6th cent.), found in the early part of the 20th cent. in two versions, the longer in MSS dating from 8th and 9th cent., the shorter in MSS of 5th and 11 or 12th centuries. The first part of the longer version is probably an interpolation from the 5th century. The second corresponds to the shorter version and is probably earlier than the 5th century. In it Christ is pictured as describing to Thomas the events of the 7 days that precede the final consummation of the world.

65. Thomas, Gospel of, a title given to two apocryphal gospels: (1) the infancy Gospel according to Thomas, extant in Greek, Syriac, and other versions, which recounts the Childhood of Jesus between the ages 5 to 12. It is a welter of tasteless (and worse) wonder stories, e.g., a child running dashes against Jesus; Jesus strikes him dead; Jesus is found making clay birds on the Sabbath, is rebuked, brings them to life. The present form is probably later than 6th cent., but it may go back to the late 2d cent.; (2) the Gospel of Thomas found at Chenoboskion in 1946. It contains hardly any narrative, is a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus. It seems to be the Manichaean gospel mentioned by Cyril of Jerusalem (Catecheses 6.31). Hippolytus attributes such a gospel to the Gnostic Naasenes, probably this one (Heresies 5.2). Perhaps the Manichaeans reworked the Gnostic gospel. It may go back to the mid-2d cent., but it is not later than the beginning of the 3d century.

Posted: July 12 2007 at 3:06pm | IP Logged

Again these writings cannot be traced to the apostolic age when the writings of the New Testament appeared, they cannot be linked to the witness of an apostle or disciple, and they are heretical. Little wonder the Church condemned these writings.