Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§7.6 The Sources
document. 110 If then the distinctive Thomas tradition is early, it could provide a
strong basis for the argument that a Gnostic response to and use of Jesus' teaching
was among the earliest responses to Jesus; in a word, Gnostic Christianity
would be as old (and thus as 'respectable'), or at least as deeply rooted in the Jesus
tradition, as the Christianity of the canonical Gospels. However, the earlier
stage of the search, the search for a pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer myth, 111
proved unsuccessful and ran out of steam in the 1960s. And the older view, that
Gnosticism is more accurately defined as a second-century Christian heresy, 112
or at least that the Gnostic redeemer myth was itself parasitic upon early Christianity's
own Christology, 113 should be accorded fresh recognition. The problem
with using the term 'gnostic' for the various soteriologies of the first century (or
earlier) is the same as with the use of 'wisdom' for a variety of sayings collections.
114 Is the term appropriate even when the features described as Gnostic/
gnostic are so heavily diluted as to cease to be distinctive of Gnosticism? 115 And
the alternative of 'pre-Gnostic' or 'proto-Gnostic' is little better as a description
of mid-first-century Christianity. 116 The point is that the Gospel of Thomas
110. E.g., Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels 83, 124-28, referring particularly to GTh
3, 29, 50, 56, 83, 84; Patterson, Thomas and Jesus 226-28; Lüdemann has no doubt that the
message of Thomas 'corresponds with that of the early Christian Gnostics' (Jesus 589). Pace
J. D. Crossan, Four Other Gospels (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), who argues that Thomas 'is
primarily concerned with asceticism rather than gnosticism' (28-35): the alternatives are not
mutually exclusive. On the problems of defining Thomas more precisely as 'Gnostic' see
A. Marjanen, 'Is Thomas a Gnostic Gospel?', and R. Uro, 'Is Thomas an Encratite Gospel?, in
R. Uro, ed., Thomas at the Crossroads 107-39 and 140-62, with further bibliography 108-109
nn. 5-11.
111. The pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer myth was hypothesized by Bultmann in particular
as a source for Paul's Christology (Theology 1.164-68), a thesis which was hugely influential
through the middle of the twentieth century but is now widely regarded as passe (see, e.g.,
those cited in my Theology of Paul 282 n. 68 and 550 n. 97). See below, vol. 2.
112. S. Petrement, A Separate God: The Christian Origins of Gnosticism (San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 1994).
113. So already R. M. Grant, Gnosticism: An Anthology (London: Collins, 1961): 'The
most obvious explanation of the origin of the Gnostic redeemer is that he was modelled after
the Christian conception of Jesus. It seems significant that we know no redeemer before Jesus,
while we encounter other redeemers (Simon Magus, Menander) immediately after his time'
(18). See further those cited in my Christology in the Making (London: SCM, 2 1989) 305 n. 3.
114. See above, n. 68.
115. K. Rudolph defines Gnosis/Gnosticism about as broadly as is possible: 'a dualistic
religion ... which took up a definitely negative attitude towards the world and the society of the
time, and proclaimed a deliverance ("redemption") of man precisely from the constraints of
earthly existence through "insight" into his essential relationship . . . with a supramundane
realm of freedom and rest' (Gnosis: The Nature and History of an Ancient Religion [1977; ET
Edinburgh: Clark, 1983] 2).
116. We might as well describe Second Temple Judaism as pre- or proto-Christian, or
163