Gospels of Thomas and Philip and Truth - Syriac Christian Church

Περιπατωµεν κατα τας εντολας αυτου! (II-Jn 6)
Those who study the New Testament may well note that popular ‘red-letter’
editions of the text, with Christ's words thus highlighted, contain virtually no such
rubrics thruout the Epistles of Paul. With the sole exception of the eucharistic
formula at I-Cor 11:24-25, he does not quote any sayings of the historical Yeshua/
Jesus, either as found in the written Gospels or from a contemporaneous oral
tradition. 1 Indeed furthermore, he never even once alludes to the panorama of the
Savior's biography from the Nativity up to the Passion, as well as his elaborate
teaching presented there, which fill the pages of the first four books of the New
Testament. This is, on the face of it, a most puzzling omission.
I
Beyond this remarkable lack of historical concern, however, there is an even
more enigmatic aspect of Paul's record in the New Testament. For an objective,
philosophical reading of the documents would seem to reveal a number of logical
contradictions, both within his biography and also between his theology and that of
the Evangelists. It must be emphasized that these anomalies are conceptual rather
than empirical in nature. For although they of course occur in interwoven historical,
theological and normative contexts within the NT, they nevertheless present
themselves as a priori problems of analytical consistency between various texts—
regardless of the truth or falsity of any factual claims being made or presumed by
those texts. Furthermore, these discrepancies must be similarly distinguished from
logically posterior issues concerning the ancient composition, editing, redactions or
dating of the New Testament writings, all of which are factual/ historical topics.
In sum, and stated more formally: the Pauline antinomies are logical
contradictions and therefore cannot in principle be resolved by means of either
historical investigation or textual criticism, both of which are empirical
methodologies.
Neither is this the place to provide a retrospective survey of the many past
commentaries on these complex questions. I shall only append a series of
quotations from a large number of eminent figures who are in general agreement
that Paul's doctrines appear to be seriously at odds with the Gospel message. These
1 Although, astonishingly, at Ac 13:24-25 he does quote John the Baptist! Ac 20:35, on the other hand, is actually a citation from
Thucidides' Peloponnesian War II.97.4; whilst Ac 26:14 is in fact from lines 1660-1 of Aeschylus' Agamemnon.
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