FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (10) - PART ONE: HUGH MCGREGOR ROSS (1990) 'THIRTY ESSAYS ON THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS'

 In 1987, Hugh McGregor Ross's work: The Gospel of Thomas, Newly presented to bring out the meaning, with Introductions, Paraphrases and Notes was published. It had been nine years in the making, during which time Ross, dissatisfied with the first English translation of this Gospel, had learnt the ancient Coptic language of the manuscript to gain a deeper understanding. These thirty essays on the Gospel of Thomas published in 1990 serve as a companion, three years in the writing, each one following an idea Ross felt compelled to tease out. I am in awe of this scholar who has made such an important contribution to Christian theology from a background of scientific and engineering excellence. This is a man who had joined a specialist computer company in the week of the very first commercial sale of a computer anywhere in the world - see this link here for my earlier blogpost on Hugh McGregor Ross, his scientific background, his achievements, and his Quaker faith centred on the teachings of Jesus. 

Some of the contents of the jar found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi

What follows is a summary of the key ideas in these essays:

• Where did the Gospel of Thomas come from? It was amongst a group of twelve volumes discovered in a jar in 1945 at a site near Nag Hammadi in Egypt, mid-way along the Nile. They were buried by the monks of a nearby monastery at a time of persecution. The Gospel begins with this statement: 

These are the hidden logia

 which the living Jesus spoke

 and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote.    

A logion is a saying, given by a master, that has both an outer and a deep inner meaning which provides great reward for one's life. The manuscript we have is the only known complete version - written very clearly in black ink on papyrus.

• In the early 4th century AD, Diocletian was unifying the rule of the Roman Empire and saw Christians and Jews as a threat so he persecuted these monotheists. Sections of the Christian Church were consolidating their doctrines and liturgy at the same time and establishing their own orthodoxy which meant anything different was termed heretical and to be condemned. The more powerful Christian Churches persecuted those other less powerful Christian Churches who had different ways of knowing and understanding their faith, so mirroring the pagan Roman persecution of the Christian Church in general. The Victorian Lord Acton's adage remains ever valid: 'Power corrupts - and absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
• There were Christian Churches in north Africa whose beliefs and practices were different from the mainstream Churches - and they suffered persecution by these mainstream Christians. As a result, books were destroyed and leaders killed or exiled. Followers of such Churches sought safety and moved away into the desert forming communities which in time became monasteries, each within a stout defensive wall. It is estimated there were around 50,000 such monks in Egypt by the time that Archbishop Athanasius of Alexandria sent out an edict in 367 to establish the canonical books of the New Testament (which provides us with the literary basis of our faith) and to condemn all heretical teachings and apocryphal books (which certainly included the Gospel of Thomas). 

Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria - represented in this icon - defender and enforcer of one interpretation of the faith 

• It seems a fair assumption that when the monks at the monastery of St Palamon, 600 kilometres up the Nile, received news of the edict some of the monks took certain books from the library (including the Gospel of Thomas), put them in a tall earthenware jar and sealed the lid with bitumen, then buried it in the sand at the foot of an escarpment in the desert. They were determined to protect their treasures, the basis of their faith - and they were successful. 
• In time, the monastery was destroyed; the Persians invaded in the seventh century and soon after the Muslim Arab conquest began and lasted eight hundred years to be followed by Turkish dominion. Meanwhile, the Christin churches had established their definitive list of sacred books - the canon - and ordered the destruction of any other so-called gospels. The Gospel of Thomas is detailed in lists of books that are banned and are to be destroyed. Those orders were effective; no other complete copy of this Gospel has survived. As Ross observes, 'For us, it must be regarded as a miraculous escape that it remained hidden in that jar until the power of the Church over temporal matters is so weakened as to permit it to survive.' 
• From a study of the handwriting and in particular the bindings these buried books are usually dated to the first half of the fourth century. Our surviving manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas is a copy - most likely from the original Greek into Coptic - and cannot be dated. However, it could have been a substantial time before the set of books were completed and buried. We know that the Gospel of Thomas was condemned as heretical by Archbishop Hippolatus of Lyon in France who died about 325 A.D. so its circulation must have been wide enough to make it worth banning. The date that most scholars give for the composition of the whole Gospel in substantially the form we now have it is 140 A.D. Evidence - concepts and words that were distinctive to a Church in that place and time - point to the composition taking place at Edessa in Mesopotamia.  

                                      The Gospel of Thomas - read aloud - around 33 minutes

• We can surmise that people's memories were then more acute than ours since we have printed records available making it less important to remember precisely. It is possible that the sayings and phrases had been passed down for three generations as oral traditions - taking us back ninety years to the lifetime of Jesus. It is also possible that the sayings existed in a written document that was used by the final editor or redactor. Some may be exactly what Jesus said; others may have been changed in a redaction. What is clear is that although there are overlaps between some of the sayings and those in the canon of the four Gospels, there are not sufficient to account for the whole. To conclude, it is possible that the sayings were received by the Apostle Thomas, one of the twelve, who then started the oral tradition which may have become a written tradition and which then led to the composition of the Gospel of Thomas in 140 A.D. 
• We know that there is in the south of India a widely held tradition that this Thomas reached India in 52 A.D. and established a church there, the descendant of which still exists. It seems likely that the oral tradition or text that bears the name of Thomas began life before he left for India, less than a generation after the mission of Jesus, the messianic carpenter-turned-preacher. The Gospel of Thomas has a likely claim to be earlier than the dates of the other books of the New Testament. The words at the beginning of the Gospel - see above - mean what they say.
• This Church that treasured the Gospel of Thomas was effectively wiped out by the end of the struggles between the early Christian churches during the fourth and fifth centuries - but that primitive Church has left traces in the Syrian Christian church in India today. Moreover, its scriptures can be deduced from copies of documents that have been discovered much later - they are known as The Acts of Thomas, the Hymn of the Pearl, and the Book of Thomas. All are thought to have been written between 150 and 350 A.D. and almost certainly in Syriac. Within each one there are clues pointing towards the teachings that are present in the Gospel of Thomas - sometimes direct quotations of its logia. The primary emphasis in that Gospel is on the indwelling Kingdom that may be known (logion 3) which leads to a sense of Oneness (logion 22). It would encourage a mystical form of spiritual experience.

An icon representing St Thomas of India - with a text that perhaps does not quite catch the essence of the Gospel of Thomas

• Such an approach to spiritual Truth is one that is particularly relevant to Quakers. Writing in 1990, Ross estimated that around a third of the 20,000 Quakers in Britain had read or heard quotations from the Gospel of Thomas - every Quaker is willing to consider new insight into spiritual truth. Moreover, George Fox as the founder of a religious movement stands as a spiritual giant. His mission was preceded by a series of mystical experiences he called his 'openings', shaped by the indwelling Christ. George Fox had Luke 17:21 (Behold, the kingdom of God is within you') to support his own experiences. We now have 'The Kingdom is at your centre and is about you' (logion 3) and 'Become your true selves, as your ego passes away' (logion 42) from the Gospel of Thomas to guide us - and not least logion 24: 'There is light at the centre of a man of light, and he illumines the whole world. If he does not shine, there is darkness'. 
• Hugh Macgregor Ross is clear. The over one hundred sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are the words of a spiritual Master. They come from one source. They are very precise and terse. many of them are difficult to understand. Only a Master would have devised such precise and yet problematic phrases, taking his followers to the steepest part of the path of insight. There are those, like Ross, who as they become more familiar with the Gospel of Thomas find that it has a self-authenticating quality. 

In the second and final part of this blogpost, to be published in a couple of weeks, I will complete this summary of Hugh McGregor Ross's thoughts on the Gospel of Thomas.