Nonsensical Logic Isn't

The literature about the Thomas gospel, and therefore the conversations on the topic in general, seems to be full of alternative theories about Jesus and Thomas which make no sense to me at all, the most predominant one being the notion that by one definition or another the Thomas gospel would or should be considered a gnostic document, which it is not. Some helpful reflections could be found in a current book, Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category.

The notion of gnosticism in and of itself remains fraught with problems, because it is really a nomenclature for a wide range of religious and spiritual traditions which flourished perhaps in the second and third centuries of the Common Era, but which has roots that reach back well before Jesus. By and large gnosticism was thrown out by the nascent church as heresy, which seemed to be fulminating against the gnostics and to all they could to wipe out the teachings. And to a large degree the best knowledge we have about some of the gnostics is because the church did such a good job of fighting them, very much in line with the psychological notions of the Course that opposition makes the error real. Bisshop Irenaeus in his Adversus Haereses dealt with them so effectively that in many cases his work remained the best source of information on many of the gnostic schools. Even in recent times the term has given rise to much confusion, when at one point Elaine Pagels proposed that Paul may have been a gnostic, which is preposterous, and in another case Miachael Allen Williams in his book correctly argues that the whole nomenclature should be abandoned, because it lumps too many dissimilar traditions together. In other words, the term causes more confusion than it breeds understanding. I'll say!

Pertaining to the Thomas Gospel, the first association with gnosticism was because the manuscripts we have are from the 2nd and 4th century of the Common Era, and some of the statements sound so alien to Christian writers, that they thought it must be a heretical document, and courtesy of Bishop Irenaeus, sure enough, it became a case of let's throw it on the heap of "gnosticism," just as well nobody really knows what the term means, and so it becomes an epithet, and it certainly does not mean Christian. So initially the "gnostic" epithet became the knee-jerk defense of Christianity against the authenticity of the Thomas gospel. By now the internal evidence is pretty convincing that this view was not warranted, and that instead the Thomas Gospel predated Paul and the canonical gospels. So now other arguments have to be found to get rid of its perceived authenticity since its rediscovery, and that's how the churches and writes with broadly Christian allegiance have tended to use the term in modern times.

Then there are those who seem to think broadly that since the early Christians did not like the gnostics, and the Thomas material is clearly different from the Christian tradition, therefore they should automatically assume that the Thomas gospel was gnostic, and this should now be seen as something positive. That makes no sense either. What  is true is that a few things in the Thomas gospel are evocative of some concepts we know from gnosticism, and some ideas of the early Jesus are well preserved in later gnostic tradition, such as the "Be passersby," of Logion 42, and the notion in the Valentinian school of gnosticism that Jesus was laughing under a tree, and they really crucified somebody else. Even though it borders on a possible misunderstanding, it is certainly an ineresting way of expressing the notion that Jesus was not his body (ergo that we are not our bodies), and truly puts him in the oberver's seat, as a 'passerby.' But the fact that some of his teachings which were ignored by the Christian community, flourished in certain gnostic schools, does not per se make Jesus a gnostics, just as little as he was a Christian for similar reasons: it was invented later. This is true even if some gnostic type thinking was in evidence well before Jesus's time, as in the Wisdom traditions of Judaism, etc.

So this becomes a classic case where the label really has nothing to contribute to the conversation, and in reality becomes an impediment to understanding the Thomas sayings as they should be understood, and without making Jesus into anything that he isn't. So the label - gnostic - in both cases cited above is an obfuscation, and it sullies the very freshness of the Thomas gospel, which first and foremost really remains an invitation to read and hear the sayings of Jesus just like they sounded, and it only takes a little effort to adjust in our imagination to be with him then and there. And realizing how easy that is, makes it also much easier to understand how he is with us here and now.