Archive for 'Gospel of Thomas'
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 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 8th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Thomas. No Comments.
I’ve just made some significant updates to the Gospel of Thomas Resource Center. I’ve posted scans of all three of the Greek fragments – these come from the plates published in ΛΟΓΙΑ ΙΗΣΟΥ: Sayings of Our Lord from an Early Greek Papyrus (1897) and volume 4 of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (1904).
Following the lead of Paterson Brown over at metalog.org, I’ve annotated the images with saying numbers in the margins. Now quality images of all the extant manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas are available online and easily accessible from the Manuscript Images section of the resource center.
I have also added one complete article and two complete books about the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas that were published around the end of the nineteenth century. The article is:
Grenfell, Bernard P. “The Oldest Record of Christ’s Life.” McClure’s Magazine, October 1897, 1022-30.
This provides a first-hand account of the discovery of ancient manuscripts at Oxyrhynchus, the largest cache of Greek papyri ever discovered. All three Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas come from Oxyrhychus, as do numerous New Testament papyri and other important Christian and classical texts that would otherwise have been lost forever. The complete article and a brief description of it are now available in the Accounts of Manuscript Discoveries section of the resource center.
The two books that have been added are:
Grenfell, Bernard P., and Arthur S. Hunt. ΛΟΓΙΑ ΙΗΣΟΥ: Sayings of Our Lord from an Early Greek Papyrus. London: Henry Frowde, 1897.
Grenfell, Bernard P., and Arthur S. Hunt. New Sayings of Jesus and Fragment of a Lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus. London: Oxford University Press, 1904.
These books contain the first modern editions of the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas. Oxyrhychus Papyrus 1 was discovered in the first excavation at the site in 1897; Oxyrhynchus Papyri 654 and 655 were discovered during a subsequent excavation in 1904. Both books are available in the Ancient Language Editions section of the resource center.
NOTE: I have included links to both my own scans of the books and those provided by Google Books. If you have decent bandwidth, I recommend downloading my scans (which are larger files) because they are higher resolution and include more material, notably scans of the original covers as well as the plates of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1.
