Pursah's Idea of the Kernel of Thomas

Pursah is one of the Ascended Masters, who are the teachers to Gary Renard, with whom he has a dialogue in his books, first The Disappearance of the Universe, and Your Immortal Reality, soon to be joined by a third, Love Has Forgoten No One. In these conversations, she reveals herself as a reincarnation of the apostle Thomas, with vivid--first hand--recollection of the eponymous Gospel.

In the first book a few of the more prominent sayings in the Thomas Gospel are discussed, because they are more or less easy on the modern eye and ear. Then, in the second book, Pursah provides what amounts to a kernel of the Thomas Gospel. She essentially eliminates 44 sayings from the collection of 114 sayings that was found at Nag Hammadi, and leaves 70 as her "kernel" of the Gospel, that she considers authentic. The rest she dismisses as either hopelessly corrupted or simply added later. The ones that survive her scrutiny stay pretty much in tact, aside from some minor editorial tweaks. One of the most fascinating steps in Pursah's editorial process is the contraction of sayings 6&14, which, if you let it sink in for a while is so obvious at an intuitive level, that you'd almost have to conclude that it makes sense regardless. By implication, that editorial decision alone is testimony to Pursah's authority with the material, which is only natural if she were the author of it originally.

You could say that the seventy sayings of Pursah's Gospel of Thomas, are her account of the orginial kernel of that book as it must have existed ca 50 AD, and which made it the first of the Gospel accounts, given that Mark dated from 65 AD, Luke and Matthew from ca 75 AD, and John from 90-110 AD. There is also the internal evidence that Mark, Matthew and Luke all quote from Thomas, just as much as Matthew and Luke also quote Mark. Ergo, Thomas must have been first, even if for a long time we did not have a physical manuscript.

The inadvertent risk of anachronisms

One thing to be clear about, is that what was found in Nag Hammadi in 1945 was not a paperback saying "The Thomas Gospel." That is the same mistake as thinking that the King James Version is actually the Bible, or... that there even is such a thing as "The Bible," because the more you study it and understand where it came from, and how it was different books by different authors that were collected into this sort of orthodox anthology, well, then the monolithic notion of 'Bible' may be less useful. 

We suspected there might have been a Thomas Gospel before that manuscript was discovered in Nag Hammadi in 1945. Ancient writers had referred to one. What was found was just one handwritten manuscript, that thankfully was preserved, but ever since the 1890s we suspected there may be a Thomas Gospel, because of the Greek fragments that had been found in the manuscript at Oxyrrhynchus. Those fragments included Logia 1-7, 24, 26-33, 36-39 and some sentences from 77, besides a lot of other materials. The generally accepted date range of that material is from 130-250 AD. But since we had only bits and pieces, there might have been a few who surmised this might be another Gospel, but we did not know for sure until the discovery at Nag Hammadi. So then we had a Coptic translation, of what originally must have been a Greek manuscript that may have been more or less together ca 150 AD. 

Jesus would have spoken Aramaic. But the common written language of the day was Greek, so the Thomas Gospel in an early form may have been together ca 50 AD. That is certainly the version of events Pursah subscribes to.

A few scholars had attempted to reconstruct a notional Kernel of the Thomas Gospel, so the idea was around in scholarly circles before Gary Renard had the experiences he relates in his books. Pursah's version of 70 'core' sayings that she is willing to vouch for is essentially her representation of that kernel, based on past life recall, etc. The reason it is convincing to a careful student, is because of its inner consistency, which harmonizes well also with the teachings of A Course in Miracles, and that is the connection that Gary's books explore. It also harmonizes with Pursah's authority as being a reincarnation of the author (Thomas), with apparently perfect past-life recall. Again, if you look at her editing skills in combining Logia 6 and 14 as a matter of course, it gives me shivers up and down my spine, for it seems so natural, and the fit so perfect, yet how would you have thought of it, unless you knew something?

In short, the Thomas Gospel must have existed in some form, certainly oral, but most likely written, ca 40-50AD, and because of the Greek manuscripts we knew fairly well it existed ca. 140-150 AD in a form that was later validated by the find in Nag Hammadi. We then have a complete document from Nag Hammadi, which may go back to the Greek, or perhaps via an interim Syriac tradition. What we don't really know is when exactly and how the corruptions and additions to the 'kernel' took place, except somewhere in that time span between 40-50AD and 140-150AD, and possibly after that as well, particularly if it was translated first from Greek to Syriac and then to Coptic. But there's much we don't know in details. The only thing we can say for sure by experience, is after we live with Pursah's collection for awhile, is that the coherence of them is quite convincing, compared to the inner contradictions that are so bothersome in the collection of 114 from Nag Hammadi. And this inner experience eventually becomes our surest guide, if we practice the Course:

The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, "How did the impossible occur?", "To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you. (ACIM:C-in.4)