The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus | Marvin Meyer

The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus | Marvin Meyer | The true life of Jesus son of Mary

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The Gospel of Thom...

	The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus Marvin Meyer HarperOne, 1992 - 144 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

These are the heart of Christ's teachings

This book does a wonderful job of presenting the Gospel of Thomas. Here we have a work that focuses on the actual teachings of Jesus and the messages he was trying to convey to his followers. It is not an attempt to chronicle the story line of his life like the Synoptic Gospels. The historical value of the Synoptic Gospels has long been established by scholars and historians to be minimal. A quick sampling of works to illustrate this would include Rex Deus and The Bloodline of the Holy Grail although there are many other works out there. However, what should be most important to followers of Jesus should not be the details of what town was he in on which day with which people. The real importance of Christ is what he was trying to teach to the world. Here in the Gospel of Thomas we see exactly that, what was he teaching (instead of worrying about what he had for breakfast).

Here every person can see and feel and absorb the essence of those teachings for themselves instead of having some "expert" interpret it for them. Jesus didn't spend his time teaching to the "experts" of his day, he taught to the common man and woman. The Gospel of Thomas was written in the same manner.

Reading this text will only serve to enhance your understanding of Jesus and his teachings.

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The true life of Jesus son of Mary

This books offers a true insight to the life and work of the real Jesus of Nazerath. One of the greatest human beings the world has known. This book certainly gives a insight to the benevelont life of this great man. It helps peel away the confusion surrounding Jesus, a counfusion that was fueled by the conflicting, historically innaccurate and fictitious accounts that appear in the bibles that are in use today. These bibles which were not actual eyewitness accounts to the life of jesus are in essence written based on heresay and wriiten to suite the self serving motives of the powerful political forces of the early millenium. They were edited time and time again by various dominant sects of chritianity thus augmenting the mystery about Jesus and obscuring the truth. In the Gospal of Thomas, Jesus appears as what he really is - a great teacher, philosopher and benefactor to mankind.

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The Fifth Gospel

To the average person that reads this book, there may be confusion of what Jesus is saying. However, having studied the Kabalah (ancient Jewish mysticism) it clearly shows the mystical side of Jesus the Christ, a side that until now we really never knew existed. I feel that the Gospel of Thomas (originally called The Sayings of Jesus) is a book that reveals the gospel of our age. I would recommend this book to those who are seriously seeking spiritual enlightenment.

114 Sayings attributed by the Gnostic Christians to Jesus

In 1945 a couple of Egyptians digging in the Nile River valley found a sealed storage jar that contained a collection of fifty-two ancient manuscripts, most of which were devoted to the teachings of Gnosticism, early Christians who believed that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through "gnosis" (the Greek word for "knowledge"). The Gnostic inner quest for spiritual understanding put them at odds with the authority of the Church in the first, formative centuries of Christianity. It is not surprising that the Gnostic writings were suppressed by the early Church and were really only known to us through the writings of their opponents. The discovery of these manuscripts allows us to read what these early Christians were thinking and to judge for ourselves the value of their beliefs.

Marvin W. Meyer has provided new English translations of several of the most important and revealing of these early Christian texts. Of these, the Gospel of Thomas is the most interesting. Biblical scholars have long maintained that one of the source documents for the Gospels was a collection of sayings that was integrated with the Gospel of Mark to produce the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of Thomas is an example of such a collection, providing dozens of sayings attributed to Jesus. For example, Saying 75: "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: all came forth from me, and all attained to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Pick up a stone, and you will find me there." The words might be different, but certainly the idea is recognizable, which is true of the vast majority of 144 Sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas. These sayings are not a radical depature from what we have in Scripture and at the very least we can accept them as being accurate representations of early Christian beliefs. Certainly they are more familiar than the other Gnostic writings Meyer has translated. You will have to judge for yourself how compatable they are with the New Testament. But I think they are definitely worth thinging about.

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Did Jesus really say all this?

The Gospel of Thomas is part of gnostic literature which purports to give the most accurate data on the sayings of the historical Jesus. Yet on reading Marvin Meyer's translation one wonders to what extent this claim is justified. A great many of the 114 sayings can also be found in the synoptic gospels and those which appear to be new, especially in regard to women, may or may not have come from Jesus' lips. This is not a critque of Prof. Meyer's efforts who has given a very scholarly presentation but is the inherent problem when one takes the person of Jesus, who is known to us practically only from the Gospels, as well as from some derogatroy comments in the Talmud (see noahide.com) and then tries to decipher what He actually did or did not say. This applies of course also to the "Jesus Seminar" where inspite of scholarly efforts a majority vote is not likely to yield scientific truth. Theologians and religious scholars will find the notes Prof. Meyer enclosed very instructive but the average reader, who might expect a major surpise from the Gospel of Thomas is likely to be disappointed

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9

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