Page 394 - ILIAS ATHANASIADIS AKA RO1

Another important text, the mid-2nd-century-ce Gospel of Thomas, has attracted
much attention.

A “sayings” gospel (114 sayings attributed to Jesus, without narrative), it is

grounded in gnosticism, the philosophical and religious movement of the 2nd
century ce that stressed the redemptive power of esoteric knowledge acquired by

divine revelation.

For Thomas, salvation consists of self-knowledge, and baptism results in
restoration to the primordial state—man and woman in one person, like Adam

before the creation of Eve (saying 23).

Spiritual reversion to that state meant that nakedness need not result in shame.
One passage (saying 37) allows it to be suspected that the early Christian

followers of the Gospel of Thomas took off their garments and trampled on
them as part of their baptismal initiation.

There are a few connections between this worldview and that of Paul and the

Gospel According to John,

but the overall theology of the Gospel of Thomas is so far removed from the
teaching of Jesus as found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke—in

which Jewish eschatology is central—that it is not considered a major source for
the study of Jesus.

It is, of course, possible or even likely that individual sayings in Thomas or

other apocryphal gospels originated with Jesus, but it is unlikely that
noncanonical sources can contribute much to the portrait of the historical Jesus.

As in the case of the Gospel of Thomas, the traditions found in other apocryphal

gospels are often completely unlike the evidence of the canonical gospels and
are embedded in documents that are generally believed to be unreliable.

There are a few references to Jesus in 1st-century Roman and Jewish sources.
Documents indicate that within a few years of Jesus’ death, Romans were aware

that someone named Chrestus