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) 

The Gnostic Discoveries

It seems that in this blog sofar, I have effectively discussed all the books I've referred to in Closing the Circle except this one. So it's time to correct this oversight. I think it is healthy to begin to realize the shift in perception that the discoveries at Nag Hammadi are bringing about, even though they are still very slow to become generally felt. Evidently the Christian construction of Jesus has staying power, because it has become so culturally dominant, but perhaps more importantly because the Christian concept of Jesus as the vicarious savior lets us off the hook - we can have our cake and eat it too - while the original teachings of Jesus ask us very pointedly to take responsibility for our lives (take up our cross), and follow him. Evidently the Christian model has much greater appeal.

The trap presented by the whole thing is that from the Christian fantasies of Jesus, we are then liable to move into a "better informed" position on "the real historical Jesus." We will then have accomplished nothing, merely shifted from one picture of Jesus to another picture of Jesus, which equally serves as a substitute for the experience of him. A careful reading of the Thomas Gospel, and even the canonical gospels, and most certainly A Course in Miracles,  makes it clear that Jesus is not about theology, but about practicing his teachings and applying them to our lives.
Seen from that point of view, the value of the Nag Hammadi discoveries lies in the mere fact that they upset the applecart, and the symbolism of that is absolutely precious. The books were buried by some priest in an out of the way monastery right at the time that the Canon of the New Testament was decided on, which was a highly partisan selection process of what literature was considered "proper" for Christians, and much else was prosecuted, banned, and often destroyed. And then 1600 years later, after a major world conflagration, and about 20 years prior to Vatican II, where Catholics were set free in the area of Bible studies, voilà this treasure trove turns up again.

Meyer gives a very readable and in depth account of the history of the discovery and the impact of the books. For anyone who wants to understand the context, this is a very helpful introduction, and Marvin Meyer is not too biased in the traditional Christian mold, though I would suggest he has a little too much of a gnostic bias to my taste. Jesus was not a gnostic, even though he did say numerous things which were later expanded upon in the gnostic tradition, and to that extent, he often sounds more gnostic than Christian, but that does not make him a gnostic per se, just as much as he was not a Christian.

Former Dutch Queen Juliana 100 years

Today, April 30th Princess Juliana (Dutch Queen from 1948-1980) would have been 100 years old, and the Dutch press has been full of articles recently. Most however are trivial if not banal, and the essence of her reign to this day cannot seem be discussed openly and fully in the Dutch press.

The reason I want to mention her here is because she assisted Professor Quispel, who was one of the first researchers of the Thomas Gospel from the Nag Hammadi library, and who acquired the first manuscript in 1952 with the backing of an American philanthropist, and the manuscript later was apparently donated to the Jung foundation. In 1955 Quispel wanted to research the rest of the manuscripts that still existed in Egypt, at the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Queen Juliana was fascinated at the time with the potential of original words of Jesus being found, and asked the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs J. W. Beyen, to help facilitate Quispel's access to the Coptic museum in Cairo, and this in turn seems to have led to a publication of further manuscripts in 1956. Quispel apparently remained convinced to his dying day that, but for that mission, the Nag Hammadi library and the Thomas Gospel would have languished in the vaults of the museum and most likely decayed completely by now. If this is true, I'd vote for this to be one of the most important things Queen Juliana did during her reign.

Unfortunately, the reign of Queen Juliana became tainted with a palace crisis of 1956, in which her independent spirit seems to have been effectively suppressed by a deft collusion between her husband Prince Bernhard, and Dutch politicians, who felt clearly threatened by a Queen who had a mind of her own, as did he, since at that point she would not tolerate his extramarital affairs any longer and was asking for a divorce - which would have been the end of the good life for him. By cleverly planting his version of things with the foreign press, passing it off as fact, he managed to turn the whole world against her, including manipulating the Dutch body politic to do his bidding, and basically put the shackles on the Queen while at the same time saving the marriage in name, without having to give up any maneuvering room himself. The episode was shameful enough as it was, but then last year the Dutch Court chartered a friendly historian, by the name of Cees Fasseur, to write a book, which under a thin veneer of critique about some of Bernhards more outrageous behavior, in effect did little else but solidifying his version of events, or at least attempting to do so. Fortunately, the Dutch reading public was slightly smarter, and generally did not accept the fact that Cees Fasseur had access to unverifiable private sources which are not available to anyone else.

By now there are beginning to be some critical voices who do not swallow this pablum, one of them Elsbeth Etty, who is a book reviewer for the major newspaper the NRC/Handelsblad, and who delivered a pretty devastating speech to celebrate the publication of the book, Juliana en Bernhard, by C. Fasseur. The other interesting independent voice is one Wim Duzijn, who writes a blog for the newspaper De Volkskrant, and who thankfully does think independently about these things too, and produced a very worthwhile discussion of the whole episode in context, here: "Bernhard wist niet wat een pooier was." (Bernhard did not know a pimp from a hole in the wall.) On the whole however, it is clear that the dominant coverage in leading Dutch newspapers remains confined even 53 years after the fact to the frame of reference of the German magazine Der Spiegel, which at the time published an article that was clearly inspired by Bernhard. But, thanks to the brilliant intervention by the assorted greengrocers of Dutch politics, appearances were saved by telling the Queen she would have to toe the line. The slight of hand that was used, was to turn the relationship that the Queen had with the "faithhealer" (as she was designated in the press), and channeler, Miss Hofmans, into a putative cause of her marital problems in lieu of recognizing this situation as a symptom of a situation that was clearly out of hand on many levels. This allowed the politicians to slaughther this sacrificial lamb instead of dealing with the issues, and so to save appearances and the bad peace. To this day, this duplicitous and cruel solution has hardly been seen through except by a precious few commentators.

Also, Queen Juliana's farsighted and humane way of conducting herself during her reign, remains under the cloud of these events, even though she remains the most popular Dutch Queen ever, and in many ways was truly a healing influence who helped resolve many crises (including the ending of the Dutch Colonial ambitions by supporting the independence of Indonesia). In other areas she proved likewise to be very farsighted, for just as she understood the colonial era was over, she also understood that the emerging "cold war," was more likely to become a run-up to world war III than a way to prevent it, and as we now know, events nearly proved her right at times, the most dramatic of which was perhaps the prevention of nuclear war by the Soviet Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov, which could have been the end of the world as we know it.

Consequently, I suspect that it will once again have to come from the foreign press to shed light on these things, and render it possible in Holland for the events to be discussed the way they actually were, so that former Queen Juliana can finally be recognized as the great and farsighted leader of a people who she really was, and which was recognized in popular opinion, but never by the establishment. A hundred years from now the critical role she played in helping professor Quispel gain access to the sources of the Thomas Gospel may also finally be recognized as something for which the world owes her a debt of gratitude. I just figured I'd make a start with it right here and now, because I feel that this particular contribution was near and dear to her heart, and more reflective of her spirit than much that's talked about in the popular press, and its importance without a doubt is global. As with everything else it's often the seeming little things that count, and that are much bigger in retrospect than they seemed at the time.

Sadly, since I first posted this piece, this day was spoiled by some disturbed person taking a kamikaze trip in their car, trying to spoil the festivities, and in the process killing several people (5 at this writing) and wounding others (12 at this writing), and the hospital reports that his own life may be in danger still.

Your Immortal Reality

The full title of the book is: Your Immortal Reality: How to Break the Cycle of Birth and Death, and for reference purposes on the Yahoo! group on Gary's work, it was promptly abbreviated to YIR. Within the work of Gary Renard, this book is the most important one with respect to the Thomas Gospel specifically, for it is here that Pursah gives us her version of the text, which comes in Chapter 7.  Her presentation lines up well with history. While the Nag Hammadi library was clearly buried around the time that Bischop Athanasius was propounding the Canon of the New Testament, and would-be Christians were turning violent against any books that disagreed with the accepted positions, and therefore around 375 CE. We know from the correspondence with the fragments of Greek Text which we have from a find dating back to the end of the 19th century that the text of the Thomas Gospel existed in similar form in Greek, which would have been the original language, in ca. 140 CE. And circumstantially it is now clear that the Thomas Gospel must have existed as an identifiable collection ca. 50 CE, or within the first 20 years after Jesus's death.

Pursah's proposition is that she is reducing the collection of 114 sayings to a presumed kernel of 70 sayings, corresponding to 71 in the Nag Hammadi collection because of the contraction of Logia 6 &14. Her edits are mostly fairly cosmetic, but for a few cases. In all cases her edits produce a crisper statement, without any compromise, usually leaving off stuff that feels like it could very reasonably be suspect. Her proposed contraction, discussed on page 161 of the book, of 6 & 14 into one statement makes so much sense, that one wonders why we did not think of it ourselves. In short her edited version is very convincing, and leaves off about 1/3 of the collection, of which Pursah says they were generally added later and subject to some amount of correction, and in the process some inner contradictions are removed. In short she proposes, based on her recollection, that these 70 sayings she selects are the ones she can vouch for were very close to the original, going sofar as to say that if you rendered these in Aramaic, you would have just about the words Jesus spoke back then. As I've argued in my book, Closing the Circle, the rest is a personal decision, quite along the lines of the distinction William James made between formal and personal religion: we have only our own inner compass to go by if we want to rely on Pursah's version. I did, and I even wrote a book about it. So for me it's a done deal. One important comment Pursah makes, which should be obvious, but merits mention here, is that quite evidently the Thomas Gospel is not a complete presentation of Jesus's thought system. The quotes are a bunch of pearls on a string, however in the treatment in both DU and YIR, it becomes evident that the string is the thought system of the Holy Spirit of which we do have a very profound and complete presentation in the form of A Course In Miracles.

The book as a whole is a continuation of Gary's deeply inspiring personal learning experience of the Course, as guided by Arten and Pursah. And in spite of all the clowning around he does, giving us so many ways to recognize ourselves in his exploits, he remains thoroughly humble in his overall presentation, presenting himself as just another Course student, but sharing with us just exactly how much it is all in the application, not in the theory. If Gary could learn it, we could too. We may not have the experiences he has, but we can still learn from his experiences, and the implicit promise is that to us all experience will come along the way in forms that we can understand. So it is never about imitating the form, as was the old Christian misunderstandig about the Imitatio Christi, which was the early Christian belief that if we only let ourselves be crucified for our tenaciously held beliefs we would go to heaven. Of course that was never what Jesus meant to teach, and he firmly disabuses us of that notion in the Course. It is always about learning to walk the talk, and Gary's sharing his own struggles with us via these books remains a powerful encouragement that we can do the Course, for we all can identify with him, since we've all done what he's done, and sometimes worse, or at least different variations. But in the process he really works through all the issues we all have with learning the Course.

Seventy (One) or One Hundred Fourteen?

That's the difference between the Pursah version, and the Nag Hammadi text. Or to be precise, it's really 71 vs 114, since 6 & 14 are contracted into one saying in the Pursah version, and so her selection of 70 corresponds to 71 one sayings in the Nag Hammadi text. Thus, counting purely the number of sayings in the Pursah version, it covers just 62% of the material. She also adds substantial material to Logion 13 (on page 81 in DU), so that it seems fairly justifiable to condider her version to equate to a good two thirds of the Nag Hammadi version. Understandably however, questions do come up from people about the justification for Pursah's selection.

We have only the statements of Pursah to fall back on, which really boil down to the fact that she claims there was too much corruption in the other sayings. Historically that is a credible suggestion, except that the extant materials make it very hard to figure out what such a kernel might have been, though it would seem that the most "accepted" belief currently is that indeed the Thomas Gospel would have existed in some recognizable form within 20 years after the crucifixion, and many would assume that this was not necessarily the full collection as we know it now from the Nag Hammadi text. And so it remains that we have really only Pursah's testimony as her past-life recollection that authenticates her particular selection. The reader either accepts that or not, that is a personal decision, but some of Pursah's edits and comments seem highly credible. In particular the contraction of 6 & 14 has that "Why didn't I think of that? " feel to it.

Along with that, it seems to me Pursah is not rejecting every word in the other sayings, which she excludes from her collection, but on the whole she indicates, as reported in YIR on page 160, that "the other 44" were later additions. Again that does not state that pieces of them might not contain authentic words etc., her point seems to be only that the 70 as provided by her are totally solid, and the other 44 just were not part of the original collection, the "kernel," and are thus under suspicion of having too much corruption in them. In a more general sense she has indicated in DU, that once you truly understand Jesus's thought system it is relatively straightforward to figure out which ones are authentic and which ones are not. Some people may wish to try their hand at sorting out the chaff from the wheat for the other 44, but that is likely to end up with endless bickering, that is not of interest for the student who is simply interested in understanding Jesus better.

It is these practical considerations which also led me to stick with just the Pursah collection for my book, and not to overly emphasize the NH version, there are already too many books on that one, and they seem to keep coming. This collection in the Pursah version grows on you the more you work with it, exactly because of its coherent nature.

Tradition and Textual Criticism

And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it. But without parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples. (Mk 3:33-34)

One of the interesting aspects of the emergence of Pursah's Gospel of Thomas is that it makes us think again of the whole business of textual tradition and textual corruption. One of the fundamental issues with the world's misunderstanding of the teachings of Jesus lies in the problem of reporting. To begin with there is the issue of contemporaneous reporting: there is none.

However, by studying the problems of textual transmission even a little bit, we can definitely begin to intuit a lot about the problems of transmission, particularly if we take into account that before the written stage, there was a period of purely oral transmission. The way Pursah pares back the Thomas Gospel to its bare essence in her version of it is fairly instructive. The contraction of sayings 6 & 14 into one makes immediate intuitive sense if you read them in the Nag Hammadi version and then compare it to the form in Pursah's Gospel of Thomas. Realistically however, we need to understand that there is no authority to say that Pursah's version is authentic as she claims, other than your own inner guidance that could make you feel comfortable with her text. In this regard there is no external authority to validate the apparent facts. Having said that, many of her edits do seem to make immediate intuitive sense.

Another contribution of the Pursah version which makes intuitive sense, lies in the fact that she systematically strips out the "Jesus said" and therefore radically alters the nature of the presentation from story-telling mode, into one of direct address. The text speaks directly to the reader, and therefore through the text Jesus speaks directly to us, in a manner not dissimilar from A Course In Miracles. A lot of Pursah's changes up to that point could be viewed on the basis of the commonly understood issues of oral tradition, similar to the telephone game, where people whisper a story in each others ear, and the last person tells it out loud to the group, at which point the originator shows the original written story which the first person read, and the transition tells you a lot about the changes along the way. Simple experiments like that may cure us of any notion of the reliability of oral tradition. Scriptural corruptions per se are easier to deal with because once you have multiple texts, you can compare, and you can decide which ones are older, which ones have a shorter path of transmission etc., and the more you can reconstruct this, the more you can feel comfortable that it is reasonable to attempt to filter out an original text, an authoritative text, which you can pretty much vouch for at that point. However, there is another dimension, which Pursah implicitly appeals to in her comments.

This other dimension is understanding. Pursah's presentation in DU sets us up to explore that dimension with her comments in that book: that it should be intuitively obvious which of the 114 sayings should be original sayings of Jesus, and which contain evident contradictions. In Your Immortal Reality she subsequently indulges us by actually giving us her version, and she is pretty emphatic that this is how it originally sounded, except that it would have been in Aramaic. In the process, however, she has invited us to get in touch with our own understanding of and intuition about the material. This appeal is a crucially important part of the process, and should also make us do a double take about the issues surrounding oral tradition discussed above.

The very important difference is about "understanding," as alluded to in the quote from Mark with which I opened this comment. The point is that individually Jesus explained everything to his apostles. And so also did the teaching style of the apostles doubtlessly develop with their growing understanding. And they in turn taught from their own understanding, in a manner similar to Jesus, in which they might have reused images, stories and words they heard Jesus say, or they might simply make up their own story, based on the situation they were in, or their own life experience, but focused on transmitting to their interlocutor or their audience, the spirit or meaning, the content of Jesus's teaching. And thus the essential point is that the teaching was about expressing the truth Jesus taught, in a way that the audience could hear. Once we begin to fathom this dimension, it should be readily obvious to us that the whole point is about transmitting meaning, so that many corruptions in form, may not be corruptions at all if they adequately convey the meaning.

To students of the Course this should be obvious, for the miracle is really the instrument of teaching, and we realize that as we learn to choose the miracle, Jesus really is taking us by the hand, and making us understand in the circumstances of our life what his teaching of love means to us, right here, right now, in our own life. The miracle in that sense is the definition of the teaching moment in which Jesus explains "everything" to us when we are alone with him, i.e. when we drop the interpretations of the ego, and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit instead. Through those experiences we come to understand in the context of our own specific experiences the meaning of what Jesus teaches, then, now, and always. Therefore, the validation of Pursah's proposed "Kernel" of the Thomas Gospel lies only in that inner experience of consistency which altogether speaks for itself. And so, again, the role Pursah plays serves to underscore one of the principal tenets of the Course namely that its purpose is not to become the basis for a new cult or religion, but rather to help some people find their Internal Teacher (ACIM:Preface). Pursah in effect refers us to our Internal Teacher first to validate the soundness of the kernel of the Thomas Gospel which she proposes. Besides inviting us to validate her preferred text in this fashion, she also emphasizes that in understanding it, we should not seek external authority, but learn to become our own ministers and teachers, by letting the Thomas sayings speak to us, and developing our own understanding, as we let the spirit work through us.

Thomas one of Five? Ask the Jesus Seminar.

 This has to be one of my favorite editions of the Gospels currently on the market in English. This book is thorough and complete, and it really empowers you to study, ask your own questions, and it is not beholden to church positions which force other authors to assume later dating of Thomas, ultimately so as not to upset the applecart of Christian orthodoxy.

The book starts with a thorough exposé on the historical position of the Thomas Gospel as a precursor to the narrative gospels (synoptics), relying on the common sense insight that the sayings gospels were a type that preceded the more elaborate and interpretative narratives of later authors, all of which seem to date two or more generations after Jesus. The Q and Thomas traditions which just collected sayings seem to go back to the first generation, immediately following Jesus' death, roughly the years 35-55 AD. They lay out the time line very carefully, showing both Q and Thomas as originally oral traditions that flowed gradually into the written traditions and provided raw material for the later writers.

The translation is fresh and new and thought-provoking. They provide a reasoned accounting for their assessment of the authenticity of the Thomas sayings, which makes a fascinating read if you're in to that. By providing thorough cross-referencing they offer plenty of food for thought and opportunity to make your own assessments of the likely flow of ideas. One inspiring notion is their translation of 'Kingdom' as 'Heaven's Imperial Rule.' To my personal taste that seems a case of 'close but no cigar' because of the awkwardness of the 'imperial' moniker, given how Jesus uses Caesar as a symbol of the ego, and the ruler of the world. However in Pursah's version she chooses in some places the expression 'God's Heavenly Rule,' and that seems to be a next step along the same line of thinking, which does make sense, and so clearly Pursah is concerned to convey a more practical sense of the meaning of the somewhat forbidding term 'Kingdom,' though she uses it as well, as does the Course.

Besides the Marvin Meyer translation, this is probably the Thomas version I use the most. It is remarkably free of prejudice overall, because it does recognize that Thomas is from an early date. The one thing we might ask is, why do they make the editorial choice of putting the synoptics in chronological order (Mark first), rather than in the accepted (orthodox) theological order (Matthew first), but yet they still put Thomas last? Purely chronologically Thomas should come first. However this raises the next question, and that is why indeed stop at five? Just because Thomas is the most complete? This is still an indication that the book belongs to a Christian world view. I believe the independent world view at the present state of our knowledge would simply recognize that the canonical tradition has nothing to recommend it, other than that they won out, with a little help from their friend, the Emperor Constantine, solidifying the intellectual supremacy of a Christian orthodoxy which relied on Paul, Peter, bishops Irenaeus, and Athanasius, congealing first in the Nicene Creed at 325, and later Athanasius' list of the NT Canon in 367. So, in putting Thomas last, this edition still is deferential to the canon. I would argue so are some of its conclusions about the authenticity of Jesus' statements, except that by providing the full accounting they do, the reader can really draw his own conclusions.

In short, if we let go more and more of the limiting framework of later orthodoxy (post Nicea), we would simply read the literature from those years in a spirit that evidently nobody completely understood Jesus, some succeeded in making a world religion out of him, arriving at the opposite relationship to the Roman Empire of what Jesus had foreseen ('Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's.'). Others followed quite their own path in a variety of contemplative paths, gnostic philosophies and religions, mystery religions, faiths and practices, all of which highlight very different aspects of his teaching, and the sheer variety of which practically defies the imagination. Ever more we would find ourselves in a fix, having to decide that we are really on our own, and need to follow our intuition as to what Jesus really said. For me, the only real answer in the end comes not from the rubble of history, no matter how brilliant the treatment, but from the statement at in the preface of A Course in Miracles, saying that "Its only purpose is o provide a way in which some people will be able to find their own Internal Teacher," or in fact in the oft repeated injunctions from Jesus in the old literature: "Seek and ye shall find," as well as "Follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men." Without our own relationship with him, which is questioning and based on the acceptance that we have not understood, but we're willing to learn, so that we now come to him as a student, as a disciple, and no longer as a theologian who already knows, and really ends up telling Jesus what he means to say, which is what Christianity has mostly done.

Besides a general collection of the Nag Hammadi writings, this book is probably the single most helpful source for someone raised to some degree in  a supposedly Christian world, to begin to develop a broader view of what the historical impact of Jesus might have been, what his authentic meaning might have been, before he was bombarded into being a proto-Christian after the fact by the 'winning' clan of Bishops gathered at Nicea.

Jean-Yves Leloup translates the Gospel of Thomas

This book is a gem, and the introduction by Jacob Needleman makes it even more so. Originally published in 1986 in French by Éditions Albin-Michel, it appeared in English in 2005 at Inner Traditions.  The opening paragraph of Jacob Needleman's introduction is a classic, and a wonderful characterization of the Thomas Gospel, but then the rest of it skids on the Gnostic banana peel, first developed by Bishop Irenaeus, and while Needleman seeks to refute the good Bishop, he falls into the trap of characterizing the Thomas Gospel as Gnostic because the Nag Hammadi Library as a whole has that characteristic. However, the mere fact that the Gnostics liked the Jesus of Thomas, does not make him a Gnostic. Even certain turns of phrase which are Gnostic with the benefit of hindsight, can not be Gnostic avant la lettre. But again, Gnosticism, written here with a lowercase "g" in this treatment is not seen as a negative per se, the way Irenaeus characterized it. But by applying the moniker to a book retroactively does not do the clear interpretation of that book any favors. Aside from this issue, Needleman's introduction does contain other gems which make it worth reading. The subsequent introduction by Jean-Yves Leloup is succinct and to the point, and leads up to first a reprint of the Coptic text of Thomas with an integral translation on the facing pages. After that, Leloup provides the sayings a second time with commentaries, which are meant to stimulate our own process in exploring these sayings. Not to put to fine a point to it, but if the "Seek and ye shall find" of Thomas, clearly seen to be a reference to seeking within, makes Jesus a gnostic in this expanded usage of the term, then so is Socrates, at which point the term loses its usefulness from the standpoint of the history of religions to discuss the religious phenomena of Christian Gnosis which flowered in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, and which represented a confluence of much more than just the Thomas sayings. The Gnostic tradition definitely did include some teachers who seem to closely reflect the intent of the Jesus of Thomas, such as Valentinus, who in light of his overal presentation justifiably can and should be characterised as a Gnostic teacher. Or, in yet another way of looking at this, if truth is true - which is a very logical position to take and a central tenet of A Course In Miracles - it can not also be not true, though the mind is capable of denying it, but by its very nature, if we subsequently give up the denial, of necessity we return to truth again, which by this same definition can not ever be lost. Therefore truth is within, except we can deny it as long as we want, but if we do the work with Socrates, or with Jesus -- the forgiveness process asks us that we look with Jesus at the ego's obfuscations and let the light of reason shine on them -- then we cannot fail but to return to truth. In other words, the outcome, in the words of the Course is indeed as certain as God. (ACIM:T-2.III.3:10) The more proper way of looking at this, as the Course would suggest, is that we are within truth, suffering from a delusion, but if it wears off, nothing but truth can be left. So then a useful way to define "gnostic" with a lower case "g" as these authors do, we might say: "He who believes that truth is within, and only needs to be uncovered, and cannot be seen outside, unless and until it is understood within." The introduction by Jean-Yves Leloup is brilliant, and while I evidently do disagree with the ill-defined way he and Needleman use the term gnostic in a very general, non-specific sense, he does do us the favor of defining the way he is using the term reasonably well, and in a way that in and of itself makes a lot of sense, though it could be more explicit as suggested above. He emphasizes how the Gospels canonical and otherwise should all be read side by side, and seen as different ways to hear Jesus, realizing that in this world no-one at least initially "gets" the message completely. This is the beginning of wisdom, as I've argued elsewhere, because it saves us from the arrogant know-it-all attitude of the canonical tradition which simply produced a revisionist Jesus, and proceeded to found a religion in his name, with an exclusive claim to truth, declaring any others to be wrong. However, in the process he sidesteps the likely timeline of the Thomas Gospel, and fails to note how all the theological constructs that really define Christianity as what it is today are not in Thomas, but belong to the so-called canonical tradition, and are thus later inventions. Critical/historical assessment is not Leloups forte, but an open-minded, contemplative approach to the material is. His introduction is also blissfully short, and he then lets the text do its work on us. I love the translation, it flows very well. The choice to use Yeshua in lieu of Jesus is an admirable one, because the name Jesus brings up so much unfortunate Christian baggage for people that were raised in that tradition, and let's face it, even for many who weren't, as Christianity has not always been a good brother to the non-believers in its dogma. It follows a regime of capitalization that I find pleasing (Kingdom, Father, Living One etc.) and its word choices are neutral and inobtrusive. I'm not familiar with Leloup's French version, but evidently the translator did a fine job. For the translation alone this edition merits publishing. Leloup's commentaries are not the strongest element of this book, though they are the bulk of it. I emphasize again that the first presentation of the text is in its entirety, without commentary, followed by a reprint of the individual Logia, with Leloup's commentaries is fortuitous in the sense that you can avoid the commentaries if you so desire. This is a pleasant arrangement, which invites the reader to first form their own response to the text in its pure form. I want to make just a few observations about the commentaries here.  At one point in a footnote, there is reference to Thomas being dated before the canonical Gospels (p. 63, footnote 2), but still not only the introduction, but the book as a whole suffers from the avoidance of discussing the relevance of this dating, which would serve to disentangle Jesus from Christian theology. Leloup's consideration of avoiding this scholarly argument, in order not to burden the reader, and leave us free so we can consider the text in its own right therefore does not hold up and produces the opposite effect. Likewise the development of the usage "gnosticism," broadly as a replacement for "mysticism," "esoteric tradition," or "inner tradition," or even "contemplative tradition," remains in my view fuzzy and undesirable, in that it detracts from clarity about what the Gnostic tradition is, and by implication does not serve to clarify but rather obfuscates who the Jesus might be who is speaking in these sayings. Having said that, there are numerous worthwhile elements in the commentaries, including Biblical references, as well as tidbits from many other traditions. The effect can be a bit Byzantine from time to time, but there are some gems throughout, though it remains a pearl-diving exercise. Some solid points are his repeated observations that the Jesus of Thomas offers a non-dualistic teaching. On the whole however the fuzziness that results from the avoidance of the critical historical discussion, and the unfortunate obfuscating usage of the terms gnosis, gnosticism and gnostic, merely to avoid using certain other words that might lead to misinterpretation, permeate the whole, and leave the reader with a whole patchwork of association, and stream of consciousness ideas, which simply don't add up to a focused whole. Partly of course this is also made difficult because even with the best intentions Thomas is not a nice and coherent whole, and not some spiritual masterpiece, but a somewhat haphazard collection of sayings not all of which seem to be original or free of corruption. Thus in this treatment, even the most seemingly inconsistent sections such as Logion 114 do not elicit even the suggestion of a doubt, but are taken at face value and deemed to be of one piece with the rest of the material.

Stevan Davies Translates the Thomas Gospel

The Shambala Library edition of Stevan Davies' translation is absolutely beautiful in form and in content. It is somewhat unfortunate that the very passionate foreword by Andrew Harvey does not integrate well with the book. First of all we are not even introduced to Mr. Harvey, nor is there any clarification of his relationship to the translator, publisher or the Thomas material in general, other than that he apparently feels inspired by it and has an opinion. We find out mr about Mr. Harvey on-line, here: http://www.andrewharvey.net/biography.html In terms of content this foreword in my view strikes a bit of a discordant note with the rest of the book. While clearly Mr. Harvey feels very inspired by Thomas, and presents a few interesting observation, his overall point of view is highly personal, and if not seemingly at odds with Stevan Davies' views, at least not well integrated with them, nor is it clear in what tradition it stands besides Mr. Harvey's own idiosyncratic reading, based on Sri Aurobindo's work, the rationale of which is less than totally clear from this piece. In a more general sense these comments reinforce for me the feeling that the study of Thomas is pretty much lost at sea if the point of departure is found only in the fact that Jesus somehow teaches something different from Christianity, without any clarity about what the difference is all about, for the Thomas Gospel is not sufficiently comprehensive to support a complete picture. Needless to say I feel that without the vantage point that Pursah provides through the work of Gary Renard, this is pretty much a lost cause.

The part of the foreword by Prof. Davies however is eminently worthwhile and a very good synopsis about the position of the Thomas tradition, and serves to make a few very important points which are not always brought out by even the best texts on Thomas. First, Prof. Davies broadly embraces the timing as represented in the first post on this blog, which provides a foundation for a roughly similar look at the material. However, he makes a number of very insightful comments, which to me were worth the price of admission. These include a very well reasoned view of why and how the emerging main stream orthodoxy starting from Paul and Mark represents a radically different view from the Thomas tradition by placing Salvation in the future. And based on these observations he proceeds to hint strongly that what we know as Christianity may not at all represent Jesus' teachings.

Further, he does take up the issue of the Thomas timeline, and in fact pretty much disembowels the church-favored notion that Thomas must be late and Gnostic, as merely a convenient way to get rid of him. He provides crystal clear logic why Thomas is not automatically a "gnostic" book, because it was found (at Nag Hammadi) with other Gnostic books, as it evidently lacks the cosmogenetic speculations that make the gnostic tradition in the narrow sense so recognizable. Meanwhile of course in the wider sense Thomas does have a focus on the direct knowledge of God, which on the most abstract level is the heart of the Gnostic tradition. In this spirit Davies closes the foreword by referring us to the obvious purpose of the Thomas gospel per se, which is to have our own relationship with the material (and with Jesus no doubt, though Davies does not express that clearly), and explore the meaning of it as a point of departure for our own spiritual growth, making the point that the very idea of learning the "meaning" of this gospel from someone else would defeat that very purpose.

Davies then proceeds with an introduction, which is very helpful, and continues to make very salient observations. He lays out carefully why Thomas appears more "original" than the synoptics, thus reinforcing the very common-sensical view that it must have been older and a source for that tradition, as well as leading an independent life of its own with a tradition that developed in Syria and India. He makes the very astute observation that since it incorporates in saying 12 a recommendation to let James lead the community after Jesus' death, that the book therefore logically should predate the death of James in 62 AD, which seems highly likely also from the point of view of the absence of any Pauline influences in Thomas. His repeated emphasis on the statements that the Kingdom is already here, and "seek and ye shall find," are grist for the mill of Course students, since the Course teaches that "the world was over long ago," and that the  "tiny mad idea" never happened in reality, and that the only thing needed is that the student should "accept the Atonement for himself," referring to the experiential realization that the tiny mad idea indeed did not happen, and had no effect except illusory ones.

Finally, in a little section called "Cast of Characters" he makes the very important observation that the Apostles in Thomas appear as examples of people who misunderstand Jesus' teachings. He does not elaborate on this further, but I would like to add that this is a crucial point. If one has this vantage point, the entire reading of the canonical Gospels changes, for one then abandons the assumed homogeneity of the "Christian" tradition, and reads the books as the attempts of people struggling to understand this teacher Jesus to whom they felt attracted, but who they did NOT understand. We literally don't understand where Jesus is coming from because he is present to us from outside of the time/space framework, and beckons us to come and follow him there, out of the "cave" in which we are chained to the time/space framework - almost literally, the dimensions of time/space are the "walls" of that symbolic cave.
At the moment we shift to that position of uncertainty about our understanding of him, we are back to seeing the whole tradition, canonical and apocryphal alike, as potentially at least equally relevant and as an invitation to come to our own conclusions, and seek our own relationship with the teaching. From that vantage point we have by implication abandoned the arrogance of the orthodox tradition which already knows what Jesus teaches, to one of seeking, in which there is room for Jesus to teach us what it is he has to say. And Jesus explicitly guarantees: "Seek and ye shall find," as Davies frequently reminds us.

The translation itself is unproblematic and clean, and it might be one of my favorite translations. The commentaries are definitely inspired and inspiring, with the proviso of course that there are inner contradictions in the material which only Pursah's Kernel resolves, resulting in a much cleaner reading. In all this is a lovely book, a beautiful edition and certainly a worthwhile introduction to the Gospel of Thomas materials.

Historical Opinions as a Key to Thomas Translations

Below I would point out some of the key historical positions, and what they imply as to the views on Thomas of various commentators.

1) The position we embrace here, that Thomas came first, is of roughly the same age as Q, the tradition which Gary Renard refers to as The Words of the Master, and therefore it was a source for the other writers. John does not quote him directly, although he seems to go to some lenghts to discredit and refute him, which would likewise argue for pre-existence. This position is in my view the most common-sense view to take today, and it was mine already for some time, long before Pursah explained the story to Gary in Your Immortal Reality. I have covered this position in the first post on this blog, so I merely mention it here for the sake of completeness. The main points for this position are that the Thomas Gospel as a form predates the narrative gospels, the internal evidence that shows an absence of all the theological notions of later Christianity, eucharist, crucifixion, etc., and the likelihood that many Thomas sayings are quoted by later evangelists, as they do appear to represent early forms of many sayings. This position simply leaves it open that Gnostic sects could later have adopted Thomas, explaining the find at Nag Hammadi, without necessarily making Thomas a Gnostic document per se. Stevan Davies and the Jesus Seminar are mostly in this camp. There is a budding awareness in this group that Thomas shows us a very different Jesus from the notions which crystallize as "Chrstianity" later on, and very likely a more original one. This logic leads to a separation between the teachings of Jesus and Christianity, as being perhaps mostly unrelated, by dint of the fact that Paul and Peter c.s. in effect put their interpretations in Jesus' mouth.

2a) The good, or benign, or perhaps merely interesting Gnostic position. Here the Gnostic associations in Thomas are reinforced but seen as a positive. Deriving among other things from the fact that the Nag Hammadi library has a gnostic character, but also from the fact that self-knowledge and introspection are  inherent to the Thomas material, and thus of a gnostic character in the wider sense. This position tends to keep open a later dating of the book since the Gnostic development within Christianity does not happen in full force until the 2nd century AD. Jean-Yves Leloup is in this camp, so was Gilles Quispel, and Elaine Pagels is as well. There is an overall tendency among this group to pull Thomas into the history of Christianity. One can not very well argue that the Thomas Gospel was not together by 140 AD (the oldest Greek fragments), but anything more recent than c.a. 60 is safe, for it preserves a picture of the Jesus of Thomas in a sort of proto-Christian landscape, because with any timing later than 60 AD, the break represented by Paul is obfuscated. Some of these authors get fascinated by Thomas and other books of Nag Hammadi, and there is a certain polite curiosity about other modes of experiencing Jesus, but the tendency remains for the Christian mold not to be seriously questioned.

2b) The Bad Gnostic position. This position is argued mainly by writers who are beholden to the Christian tradition and the churches, and in order to save its relevance, they dismiss Thomas as a later book, of the late 1st or even the 2nd century, which was the date of the Oxyrrhynchus papyri (ca. 140 AD), and by taking this position Paul's position as the de facto founder of Christianity is protected because the issue of his evident corruption of Jesus' teachings never arises. This is the position of e.g. Bart D. Ehrman, and to such writers Thomas is at best an interesting curiosity, at worst a blasphemy or a fraud, really not unlike the line of bishop Irenaeus' writings against the heretics, though often with a more sophisticated and seemingly objective modern historical appearance.

There may be some further sub-categorizations here, but the above should be helpful in determining the slant of a translation. Other issues which unfortunately taint translations are attempts to make the book sound more "modern," and God-forbid, but yes, even a tendency political correctness exerts a corrupting influence on the faithfulness of some translations.

Closing the Circle & The GoTh Timeline

Closing the Circle is (going to be) a book about the continuity of the teachings of Jesus, which in turn belies the discontinuity of our world of time and space, which is obfuscated by our seeming experiences of the 'passing of time,' not to mention the illusion of 'development.' The illusory nature of such concepts of reality is exposed head on in the teachings of J, by affirming in so many ways that truth merely is, and does not have to become, and both the Gospel of Thomas (GoTh) and A Course in Miracles(ACIM) are expressions of that truth, which are quite consistent with one another, as is highligted in particular by Pursah's kernel of the Thomas Gospel, as published in Gary Renard's Your Immortal Reality. One of such dubious developments was the repression of the teachings of Jesus, and the blatant replacement of them in the world by Paul's teachings about Jesus, which in order to obliterate all traces of the crime were for good measure named "Christianity," and which in effect were nothing more than the ego's coopting Jesus by producing a g-rated version of him in all respects, and thus to firmly pull him into the world and assign him a role which suited us, and which accordingly could become "popular" as in "popular religion," and "popular culture." One of the items I'd like to consider at the outset is the most probable timeline of GoTh as I see it, and discuss some of its implications. 1) J (30-33 AD) 2) => Q & GoTh (50-60 AD) 3) => Mk (55-65 AD) 4) => Lk & Mt (75 AD) 5) => Jn (90-120 AD) 6) Traditional "Christianity," as formed by the Council of Nicea in 321 AD. The above is a step-wise representation of the funnel of information that led to the formation of the classic notion of a monolithic Christianity, an illusion which even in the official version did not last much longer than to the time of the first split, between the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic church, about 300 years later. What we now understand is that the funnel overflowed a few times, and spilled material which did not fit the mold of what Christianity was becoming. Meanwhile the other traditions lived on without the dubious "benefit" of being the Roman state religion which was arrogantly named after Jesus (Christ), and which made Christ special rather than understanding that we are him, and he is who we truly are. The Thomas tradition lived on in India, and in the West it literally went underground for 1600 at Nag Hammadi, but ultimately was rediscovered there in 1945, and from the 50's till now has led to a gradual re-framing of our understanding of those early years of Christian history, and for many of us to a more intimate understanding of Jesus as he speaks to us directly, without many of the later distortions. At the modern end we thus have the rediscovery of the text in 1945, and the gradual emergence of translations, commentary and interpretations into the public awareness in the 60 years since then. In a way this went amazingly slowly, if one realizes that at least in the Anglo-Saxon world it was not until the simultaneous publication in 2003 of Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe, Elaine Pagels' Beyond Belief, and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, that active interest in the Thomas Gospel began to dawn on the awareness of main stream audiences. Considering the growing bookshelves of Thomas related literature, it is proving to be fertile territory indeed. I will humbly add my contributions, and through this blog I will discuss some detailed material more in depth which is part of the research for my book. Needless to say, from my perspective Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe and its follow-on book Your Immortal Reality are by far the most interesting of the lot, culminating in Pursah's offering of a kernel of the Thomas Gospel which she represents to be authentic, thus bypassing some of the inevitable historical distortions which are undoubtedly present in the text we found at Nag Hammadi. Moreover the consolidation of Thomas interpretations around A Course In Miracles which Pursah's version implicitly solidifies, provides a clear anchor for the discussion of Thomas which has not existed heretofore and which accounts for the sometimes wildly speculative literature around Thomas. In short, I would argue that the appearance of the Pursah kernel in 2006 consolidates the content of Jesus' teachings in the Thomas tradition in a way which eliminates a lot of corruption of the tradition and gets us back to a coherent whole. If one is stuck however in a Newtonian concept of the world, it would not be possible to give Pursah's version this kind of authentic authority. To many students of the Course however this viewpoint may naturally feel comfortable and "right." I would conclude this introductory comment with the observation that, since Gary quoted my "recap" of revisionist early Christian history in his book, I clearly agree with everything Pursah represents about the history of Thomas' tradition in the overall context, and I gladly accept her endorsement of a position which common sense had already led me to believe was substantially the most reasonable view of the matter. We will come to consider the major different interpretations and dating of Thomas in future postings to this blog.