Gospels of Thomas and Philip and Truth - Syriac Christian Church

31. A splendid website of early Christian writings:
www.earlychristianwritings.com (maintained by Peter Kirby).
32. On the formation of the New Testament canon, see Bruce M. Metzger, The
Canon of the New Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
33. Pedro Chamizo, ‘La traducción como problema en Wittgenstein’,
Pensamiento, 1987; www.metalog.org/files/trad-witt.html.
34. The five Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John & Thomas in interlinked
parallel layout: John W. Marshall (ed.), Department of Religion, University of Toronto:
www.utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/meta-5g.htm.
35. A definitive analysis of the 613 rules of the Torah: Abraham Chill, The
Mitzvot: The Commandments and Their Rationale, Jerusalem: Urim Publications
(www.urimpublications.com), 2000².
‘FIFTH GOSPEL’ THROWS LIGHT ON SAYINGS OF JESUS
Darrell Turner, Religion News Service, New York 27.XII.91 (#15709)
(RNS) An ancient document composed of sayings of Jesus has generated a
recent spate of scholarly articles, along with strongly held opinions that the
document, known as the Gospel of Thomas, deserves a much wider audience.
According to scholars, the 114 quotations in the Gospel of Thomas are as valuable
as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for gaining understanding of the man Christians
worship as Messiah.
In a recent telephone interview, Helmut Koester of Harvard Divinity School, the
new president of the Society of Biblical Literature (USA), said nearly all biblical
scholars in the United states agree that Thomas is as authentic as the New
Testament Gospels. In an article that appeared in Bible Review in April 1990, Koester
and his co-author Stephen J. Patterson wrote, ‘the Gospel of Thomas must be given
equal weight with the canonical Gospels’ in any effort to reconstruct the beginnings
of Christianity.
Yet, despite excitement over the work for several decades, ‘nobody's heard of it
except the scholars,’ says Paterson Brown, a former professor of the philosophy of
religion who has written on Thomas for the journal Novum Testamentum
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