Archive for June, 2009
June 30th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Thomas. No Comments.
In further poking around the British Library site, I still haven’t been able to find the other side of the fragments of Egerton Papyrus 2. However, I did discover another important manuscript that they have posted images of: Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 654, the only surviving Greek fragment of the beginning of the Gospel of Thomas. They have a quality .jpg that can be clearly read, as well as a zoomable high-resolution image. Fantastic!
June 29th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Unknown Gospel. No Comments.
In launching this site, it escaped my memory that Wieland Wilker has images of the Unknown Gospel of Egerton Papyrus 2/Cologne Papyri 255 posted on his Papyrus Egerton 2 Homepage:
These images of Egerton Papyrus 2 are from:
Bell, H. Idris, and T.C. Skeat. Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early Christian Papyri. London: Oxford University Press, 1935.
The images of Cologne Papyrus 2 are from:
Gronewald, Michael. “Unbekanntes Evangelium oder Evangelienharmonie (Fragment aus dem ‘Evangelium Egerton’).” In Kölner Papyri VI, 136-45. Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1987.
Wilker has presented the images in a manner that is very helpful for study. His layout facilitates easy comparison between a modern edition of the text and the original manuscript.
However, I must also note my continuing amazement at the new material that is being posted online by libraries and museums that house ancient manuscripts. The posting of images of The Unknown Gospel provides a perfect example of what I hope to see much more of in the future.
The University of Cologne provides quality images of Cologne Papyrus 255 (→) and (↓) on its site, and the British Library’s site also provides a quality image of Egerton Papyrus 2, Fragment 1 (↓), Fragment 2 (↓), Fragment 3 (↓)*. Moreover, the British Library also includes a phenomenal interactive zoomable image (made possible by flash). This is about as good as it gets without studying the physical manuscript under a microscope . . . and I speak from experience with this particular manuscript.
Links to all the manuscript images mentioned in this post have been added to the Other Early Christian Gospels Resource Center, as have both publications.
* The reason that all three fragments are included in a single image by the British library is that they are securely mounted together in glass: the image is just a photograph of the glass mount. I will continue looking for images of the reverse sides of the manuscript fragments on the British Library site. I just haven’t found them yet.
June 26th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Thomas. 1 Comment.
Thanks to Wieland Wilker, who continues to do an admiral job of keeping track of important new publications, for his post to the gthomas e-list yesterday. He points out that:
The latest issue of ZAC (Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum) is dedicated to the Gospel of Thomas and Gnosticism. It collects the lectures held at the symposium in honor of Hans-Gebhard
Bethge, who retired, 1st Nov. 2008.
The table of contents for the latest issue of ZAC are available here. I notice several articles that could be of interest to readers of this blog, especially those dealing with the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas. Unfortunately for those whose native language is English, almost all the articles are in German. The abstracts, which are free, are in English. A subscription (or a ridiculously high one-time fee) is required to access the articles themselves.
June 25th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Miscellaneous. No Comments.
I was pleased to see another review of my book, Other Early Christian Gospels, in the latest edition of the Review of Biblical Literature. Stephen Patterson, author of The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus
and other books, has written what I regard as a fair and, ultimately, very favorable review of my book . . . of course, I’m not biased in any way. 
But seriously, I appreciate Dr. Patterson taking the time to review my book and provide valuable feedback, as well as all the other scholars who have done so.
I am very humbled by the attention my book has received.
June 24th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Infancy Gospel of Thomas. No Comments.
I am pleased to see from Tony Burke’s Apocryphicity blog that there is ongoing research on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. I had feared serious scholarly inquiries into the nature of this text had dried up in the mid 1990s, but they apparently haven’t. I’ve already mentioned Burke’s 2001 dissertation, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: The Text, Its Origins, and Its Transmission” and now comes a new book:
Aasgaard, Reidar. The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009.
Aasgaard is Associate Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Oslo, Norway. Among his publications is “My Beloved Brothers And Sisters!”: Christian Siblingship In Paul 
. The publisher of his new book provides the following blurb:
The mid-second-century apocryphal infancy gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, which deals with the childhood of Jesus from age five to age twelve, has attained only limited interest from scholars. Much research into the story has also been seriously misguided—especially study of the story’s origin, character, and setting.
This book gives a fresh interpretation of the infancy gospel, not least by applying a variety of new approaches, including orality studies, narrative studies, gender studies, and social-scientific approaches.
The book comes to a number of radically new conclusions: The Gospel of Thomas is dependent on oral storytelling and has far more narrative qualities than has been previously assumed. The narrative world depicted in the gospel is that of middle-class Christianity, with the social and cultural ideas and values characteristic of such a milieu.
The gospel’s theology is not heretical—as has often been claimed—but mirrors mainstream thinking rooted in biblical tradition, particularly in the Johannine and Lukan traditions. Jesus is portrayed as a divine figure but also as a true-to-life child of late antiquity.
The audience for the Gospel of Thomas is likely to have come from the rural population of early Christianity, a milieu that has received little attention. A main audience for the story was children among early Christians, making this—at least within Christianity—the oldest-known children’s tale.
The book provides a Greek text and a translation, and several appendixes on the story, along with other early Christian infancy material.
The book has received some strong endorsements as well, most notably from Bart Ehrman:
Although the Infancy Gospel of Th omas has long been enjoyed by readers interested in the Gospels that did not make it into the New Testament, there has been a dearth of scholarship on most of the pressing textual, historical, and theological issues it raises. Reidar Aasgaard has done the scholarly world a real service by presenting a full, interesting, and informed discussion of all these major questions. Scholars will now turn to this study before any other when they want to explore the Infancy Gospel and its traditions.
I concur with that assessment and look forward to picking up my own copy. The book is currently available from amazon.com
for $33 (a very reasonable price for books of this nature). However, amazon’s delivery time is listed as “usually ships within 1 to 3 weeks.” So, I’d probably recommend picking your copy up direct from the publisher, who currently has the book on sale for $26.40 in any event.
I’ve added Aasgard’s book to Other Early Christian Gospels Resource Center.
June 22nd, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Thomas. No Comments.
I am pleased to announce that I’ve accepted an inivitation to become one of the moderators for The Gospel of Thomas Discussion List (gthomas). List owner Michael Grondin posted the news today with a kind introduction:
I’m pleased to announce that the moderators have unanimously chosen Andrew Bernhard to join their ranks, and that he has accepted. Andrew is the author of the highly-regarded 2006 book _Other Early Christian Gospels_ . . . Since last year, Andrew has been involved in analyzing the current state-of-affairs of various methods of online scholarly interaction, and has recently started his own blog (gospels.net), which has been publicized here and in the biblioblog world. We believe that his knowledge and skills will enhance our ability to remain a vital and productive force in the field of Thomasine and related studies.
Mike Grondin
for the moderators:
Bill Arnal
Andrew Criddle
Rick Hubbard
Judy Redman
The gthomas e-list has been a valuable forum for discussion of the Gospel of Thomas and related texts for more than a decade now. Moderator Emeritus is Stevan Davies, who created the Gospel of Thomas Webpage and wrote The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom
(an essential read for those interested in the theology of this text). Independent and academically affiliated scholars, students, members of the clergy and laypeople have all contributed to the discussion over the years . . . and they are well represented among the group of moderators.
I must confess that I have been reluctant to become a moderator of any e-list for some time now, fearing that their time may have passed and that I would have to commit too much of my time. However, I’ve changed my mind with respect to gthomas list.
Mike Grondin has made significant efforts in the past year to rejuvenate the list, successfully instituting a monthly contributor program that has helped generate discussions on current topics in Thomas scholarship and facilitating the presentation of scholarly papers on the list. In addition, I appreciate how representative the group of moderators is of the list participants. All in all, I’m convinced that this e-list is going in the right direction and becoming one of its moderators will be well worth my time. It is a welcoming group that includes high-quality discussions.
The easiest way to follow or participate in the ongoing discussions is simply to join the list. I realize that many people today are reluctant to subscribe to anything that will increase their (already overwhelming) email load, but there are plenty of options for addressing this concern (for example, “daily digests” or RSS feeds). If you have any questions about how to customize your settings so that the Gospel of Thomas Discussion list works most effectively for you, do not hesitate to contact me directly (see address on sidebar). And if you have any suggestions about new (”Web 2.0″) methods that might help facilitate discussion online, I’d be most eager to hear about those as well. We’re always looking for ways to keep the group up-to-date in the ever changing communications landscape.
(I’ll even listen to you, if you can explain to me how an academic discussion might be sustained in posts containing no more than 140 characters – LOL!)
Anyway, if you’re interested in the content of gospels.net, you will likely be interested in the Gospel of Thomas Discussion List as well. You can join here.
More news on this later.
June 18th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Infancy Gospel of Thomas. No Comments.
Tony Burke has called my attention to his excellent Infancy Gospel of Thomas website. Burke holds a PhD from the University of Toronto and currently teaches at York University in Canada. He has made his full dissertation, “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: The Text, its Origins, and its Transmission” available on his site.
The history of the transmission of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is complex; it has come down to us in significantly different rescensions. Since the mid-1800s, scholars have relied largely on the work of Constantin von Tischendorf for their knowledge of the gospel. Tischendorf prepared three different editions of the gospel based on the manuscripts available to him: Greek Text A, Greek Text B, and Latin Text (these are available online from Google Books in Tischendorf’s Evangelia Apocrypha). Many know the gospel only through the somewhat antiquated English translations prepared by M.R. James in the early twentieth century (these are available online courtesy of the Wesley Center for Applied Theology: Greek Text A, Greek Text B, Latin Text). An English translation and a provisional revision of Tischendorf’s Greek Text A were also published by Ronald Hock in the mid-1990s in his book, The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas
(the translation is currently available online here). However, Burke has significantly improved our knowledge of the text.
Burke provides a clear, concise overview of the nature of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the history of its transmission on his website. He also includes introductions to and English translations of four recensions of the text:
- Greek Text A (Burke’s critical edition of the recension most closely resembling Tischendorf’s Greek Text A)
- Greek Text B (Burke’s slightly revised version of Tischendorf’s Greek Text B)
- Greek Text D (A recension resembling Tischendorf’s Latin text but based on Greek manuscripts)
- Greek Text S (An edition of Ms: Cod. Sabait. 259, the earliest Greek witness to the gospel, that was first published in Burke’s dissertation)
In addition, Burke includes English translations of versions of the gospel that have survived in different languages:
Finally, Burke includes his own critical edition based on his extensive research. It is worth pointing out that there is other material (not related to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas) on Burke’s site that may be of interest to readers of this blog.
I have added Burke’s blog, Apocryphicity, to my Blog Roll and posted links to his site and translations in the Other Early Christian Gospels Resource Center.
I greatly appreciate Dr. Burke taking the time to let me know about his work.
June 16th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Thomas. 1 Comment.
I received a kind email from John Dart today. Dart covered religion news for the Los Angeles Times for over thirty years until retiring in 1998. Since 2000, he has worked as news editor for the biweekly magazine, Christian Century. He is also the author of the book I mentioned in my previous post, Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus: The Discovery and Text of the Gospel of Thomas.
Dart reminded me that Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus was actually re-released in 2000 in a revised, paperback edition as The Gospel of Thomas: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus and provided me with some interesting background information about the book (which I reproduce here with his permission):
The origin of that book was Ray Riegert’s idea of rewriting my story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library as seen in my book, The Laughing Savior (Harper, 1976), but putting the focus on the Gospel of Thomas. My Harper book, I believe, was the first U.S.-published popular account of the Nag Hammadi Library and its significance for research . . . Harper asked me to update The Laughing Savior to be released in 1988 along with the third, revised edition of The Nag Hammadi Library, James M. Robinson, general editor. I did an extensive rewrite and even proposed an early stage of Thomas’ sayings in an addendum. The title of my book, as suggested by the publisher, became The Jesus of Heresy and History, the Discovery and Meaning of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library. I did not like the word ‘meaning’ in the subtitle, for I don’t pretend to make theological judgments on the contents.”
So, there you have it: a nice of summary of Dart’s writings about the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, which contained the only complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas that has survived from antiquity. He co-wrote (with Ray Reigert) Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus: The Discovery and Text of the Gospel of Thomas (1998), which was released in a revised form as The Gospel of Thomas: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus
(2000), and wrote The Laughing Savior: The Discovery and Significance of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library
(1976), which was released in a revised edition as The Jesus of Heresy and History: The Discovery and Meaning of the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library
(1998).
I greatly appreciate Dart’s feedback on my earlier post and hope that I will be able to engage many more authors in a similar manner as the blog progresses. I want this blog to have as much interaction between authors and readers as possible.
I’ve updated the Gospel of Thomas Resource Center so that it lists the most recent edition of Dart’s book, revising the annotation to indicate that J.D. Crossan’s commentary was moved to the front of the book in the revised edition to serve as its introduction.
June 12th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Thomas. 7 Comments.
I’ve just updated the Accounts of Manuscript Discoveries section in the Gospel of Thomas Resource Center, annotating the following entry:
Dart, John, and Ray Riegert. Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus: The Discovery and Text of the Gospel of Thomas. Berkeley, Calif.: Seastone, 1998.
The description of the book I have posted is:
A lively account by two journalists of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt in 1945 and the subsequent struggles of Western scholars to bring the complete Gospel of Thomas and other ancient texts to light despite blood feuds, mysterious deaths, sketchy antiquities dealers, and a series of tumultuous political crises and wars in the Middle East; also includes a complete translation of the Gospel of Thomas and a brief commentary entitled “Paradise Regained” by John Dominic Crossan.
Additional information about the book is also available from amazon.com
.
I’ve always liked Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus because the journalists who wrote it tell the story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library (one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century) in such an engaging manner that I think anybody could enjoy reading it. It appeals to the “Indiana Jones” in all of us.
June 10th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Judas. 1 Comment.
April DeConick has announced on The Forbidden Gospels Blog that the revised edition of her book The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says is now available from amazon.com
.
I have updated the entry in the Other Early Christian Gospels Resource Center to reflect that there is now a second edition:
De Conick, April D. The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says. London: Continuum, 2007 [1st ed.]; 2009 [rev. ed.].
In the first edition of this book, DeConick challenged the idea that the Gospel of Judas presented the traditionally infamous disciple in a favorable light (an idea suggested by the scholars who published the first modern edition of the text on behalf of National Geographic). As she prepared her own translation and commentary, DeConick came to the conclusion that the recently recovered gospel was, in fact, “an ancient Gnostic parody.” The publisher’s website quotes her as saying:
I didn’t find the sublime Judas, at least not in Coptic. What I found were a series of English translation choices made by the National Geographic team, choices that permitted a different Judas to emerge in the English translation than in the Coptic original. Judas was not only not sublime, he was far more demonic than any Judas I know in any other piece of early Christian literature, Gnostic or otherwise.”
For the second edition, DeConick reports in her post,
I revised this book substantially, including two new chapters – one on Judas and astrology (my paper from the Codex Judas Congress) and another on Judas and ancient magic (I cover the magic gem that I think is related to the ideology put forth in the Gospel of Judas). I also have a new preface, covering what has been happening with the Gospel of Judas since its initial release, and I added a section on Thomasine church in the chapter on early Christianity.”
While the question of whether the Gospel of Judas portrays Judas as a hero or a villain is far from settled, DeConick has clearly established herself as one of the leading proponents of the “Judas villain” position. Those interested in keeping up with this debate will definitely need to be familiar with the revised edition of The Thirteenth Apostle.
