This is almost certainly a fabrication, written more than a century after Christ – possibly a century after the Gospel of John – without any clear connection to St Thomas the Apostle or any of the other apostles. Early Christian leaders denied its authority.
The earliest New Testament books were St Paul's letters, dating within a decade or so of the crucifixion & resurrection, and the earliest Christian creed – quoted in 1 Corinthians – dates to likely within a year of Christ rising from the dead. The Gospels were written down within the next few decades: from Mark being penned within a couple decades to John being penned about 60 years later.
The Gospel of Marcion is possibly the earliest new testament gospel, either a primitive form of the Gospel of Luke, or sourced from the same text which the Gospel of Luke drew upon.
Indeed, St Paul's letters are the earliest recorded New Testament books. Marcion's cannon grouped most of the letters of Paul into a collection termed the Apostolikon, which was the centerpiece of his branch of early Christianity:
"The premise of Marcionism is that many of the teachings of Christ are incompatible with the actions of the God of the Old Testament. Focusing on the Pauline traditions of the Gospel, Marcion felt that all other conceptions of the Gospel, and especially any association with the Old Testament religion, was opposed to, and a backsliding from, the truth. He further regarded the arguments of Paul regarding law and gospel, wrath and grace, works and faith, flesh and spirit, sin and righteousness, death and life, as the essence of religious truth. He ascribed these aspects and characteristics as two principles, the righteous and wrathful God of the Old Testament, who is at the same time identical with the creator of the world, and a second God of the Gospel who is only love and mercy.[11]
Marcionites held that the God of the Hebrew Bible was inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal, and that the material world he created was defective, a place of suffering; the God who made such a world is a bungling or malicious demiurge."
[...]
"In Marcionite belief, Christ was not a Jewish Messiah, but a spiritual entity that was sent by the Monad to reveal the truth about existence, thus allowing humanity to escape the earthly trap of the demiurge. Marcion called God, the Stranger God, or the Alien God, in some translations, as this deity had not had any previous interactions with the world, and was wholly unknown. See also the Unknown God of Hellenism and the Areopagus sermon."
The key emphasis here being that The Gospel of Marcion is possibly the earliest gospel. The wiki article you link to clearly says that is a minority view not in line with early church tradition.
The earliest reference to the four canonical gospel comes from Irenaeus, who also references the at that time decades old Gospel of Marcion. The early church is not a reliable source about this, because it's strongly against Marcion.
Not research per se, but I do read, as do most with an interest in early Christianity. The following are some suggested physical books for those interested:
Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, 1921, ISBN 1556357036
Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity, 1934, ISBN 149829359X
The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon, 2013, ISBN 1598151312
I just read the Wikipedia. It's not about extra-terrestrials. The 'alien' aspect suggests that the god that sent Jesus was a different god than that of the Old Testament, and was previously unknown to the people.
Interesting stuff that somehow eluded me all these years.
And yet the first anecdote in it is mirrored in the Quran and early Jewish text: Jesus creates 12 live sparrows from clay models with his word; while predating those texts by centuries.
On what basis did these Early Christian leaders (Nicea?) deign to dismiss this work out of hand? Clearly at the time it had currency, maybe their dismissal was expedient to their goal to create an organized religion: necessitating them subduing to the useful and the good the "rough edges" of Jesus' very messy real character?
Disagree: This is an area to which I've devoted some study (amateur theologian, former professional "street-level historian," i.e., litigator). I can't speak to his comments about the Qur'an, but his comments about early Christian sources seem to be pretty much the consensus among scholars.
The problems I'm talking about are in the first three sentences and arguably also the second-last one.
Moderation is concerned with the worst bits of a post. If I toss a lit match and a few pinecones in a forest, and you tell me not to start forest fires, I can't just reply "but pinecones are fine!"
> The Gospels were written down within the next few decades: from Mark being penned within a couple decades to John being penned about 60 years later.
Not contradicting you, but it is worth mentioning the earliest composition date for the Gospel of Thomas (60AD) predates the earliest composition date for the Gospel of Matthew (66AD).
There are two so-called gospels of Thomas: the one called the Gospel of Thomas, which is a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is what we're talking about here. The Infancy Gospel is dated from between AD 150 to AD 185.
Also, the Gospel of Thomas has a huge range of dates of composition, partly because it is just sayings, most of which are found in the canonical gospels. AD 60 is the earliest date of composition, but some time in the mid-2nd century is more likely.
> There are two so-called gospels of Thomas: the one called the Gospel of Thomas, which is a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is what we're talking about here. The Infancy Gospel is dated from between AD 150 to AD 185.
I don't believe anyone would confuse these two gospels. Infancy gospels are always specified as such, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is never referred to as the Gospel of Thomas.
> Also, the Gospel of Thomas has a huge range of dates of composition,
All the gospels have a range of estimated dates of composition, though the Synoptic Gospels have consensus for a tighter range, the date of composition of John spans at least 20 years.
> partly because it is just sayings, most of which are found in the canonical gospels.
And this is key, especially considering the hypothetical Q Source, which it is believed that Matthew and Luke rely on apart from Mark. The Q Source, material in Matthew and Luke not found in Mark, is a sayings gospel, and could very well be a different version of the same Gospel of Thomas. If true, Thomas may indeed be the oldest gospel with a date of composition around 50AD and that was only passed down orally until written down later. Or it is possible it was written down early and no copies survive.
> AD 60 is the earliest date of composition,
As I already precisely specified....
> but some time in the mid-2nd century is more likely.
By what reasoning or evidence? If Matthew and Luke rely on Thomas, obviously Thomas would predate them. Some believe it was composed in the mid-3rd century, but if it is the Q Source, it would necessarily have a far earlier composition date. There are many theories and no overwhelming consensus. One theory hypothesizes that the Q Source and the Gospel of Thomas have a common source.[1] And it is curious that a sayings gospel would be hypothesized from analysis of where Mathew and Luke agree against Mark, and such a gospel, a complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas, was already discovered but not yet widely known.
What was beneficial to them about saying the apostles all ran away on the night Jesus was betrayed, or that they were hiding in fear a few days after the crucifixion? Or by saying that Jesus told Peter (who was recognized as the early church's leader), "Get behind me, Satan"? The sense I get from the gospels is that the apostles had a lot of embarrassing things happen to them, and yet the apostles were held up by the early Christian leaders as the Twelve. If anything, it seems like the early Christian leaders had to keep what they were given in spite of all the negative things that happened.
Not true. All the books in the New Testament has a clear connection to Paul or the other apostles and were penned within 50-80 years after Jesus's death. The only exception is the Book of Revelation.
The age of what was ultimately included in the bible, has little to no bearing on the claim that bible organizers cherry-picked what to include in the bible.
Yes it has, since Christians would consider older books and books written by people connected to the apostles to be more authoritative than younger books and books authored by people with no such connections. That claim that "bible organizers cherry-picked" anything is a falsehood that you likely heard of because of the book The Da Vinci Code.
No, the claim that bible organizers cherry-picked which to include comes from my having studied this quite a bit.
What is canon has always been manipulated and twisted to suit human agendas. Even the words chosen via translations have been chosen because of how well they serve an agenda.
Note that Mark is generally thought to be recording an earlier, possibly oral, gospel dubbed Q. It would have been composed closer to the nominal date of the crucifixion, perhaps contemporary with the epistles.
That doesn't make it an eyewitness account, and even if it were we can only infer its text from the copies in the synoptic gospels (which disagree with each other). But it does give us a chronology of the composition relative to the events that inspired it.
This video about the gospel from early Christianity scholar Andrew Mark Henry is very informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7JYGOhgnKc I totally recommend his channel if you are interested in topics related to early Christianity and the New Testament.
It's a 4-D projection/Rubik's cube manual about personal development, the logos, and the formation, nurturing, and triumph of a society, despite going up against what seems to be impossible odds. Simply calling it mythology or tying it's value as history or any other ill-conceived standard of truth and guidance we have now is missing the point.
Some of the Gospels were canonized, sure, but to claim this is fanfiction, while it appears to be contemporary or earlier than some of the others, I think is a bad take. It'd be like claiming that the Q document (if it is ever found) is fanfiction compared to the other gospels.
The early Christians assembled the New Testament over many decades in an environment where you would be nailed to trees by strong men for spreading the message of slaves being equal in dignity to Romans.
In this environment they determined which texts would be incorporated as they interacted with eye witnesses of the time.
There are arguments on both sides of the chronology. It isn't known whether this came before or after. Some argue that Luke added to the document. Others argue that Marcion removed parts of the story that they deemed contradictory to the OT version of God.
> as opposed to the real Gospel of Thomas, the gnostic one.
This is a simplistic and superficially supportable description.
Because of its discovery with the Nag Hammadi library, and the cryptic emphasis on "gnosis" in some of the sayings, it was widely thought that the document originated within a school of early Christians, proto-Gnostics. However, critics have questioned whether the description of Thomas as an entirely gnostic gospel is based solely upon the fact that it was found along with gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi.[1]
Many scholars consider the Gospel of Thomas to be a gnostic text, since it was found in a library among others, it contains Gnostic themes, and perhaps presupposes a Gnostic worldview. Others reject this interpretation, because Thomas lacks the full-blown mythology of Gnosticism as described by Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 185), and because Gnostics frequently appropriated and used a large "range of scripture from Genesis to the Psalms to Homer, from the Synoptics to John to the letters of Paul." The mysticism of the Gospel of Thomas also lacks many themes found in second century Gnosticism. According to David W. Kim, the association of the Thomasines and Gnosticism is anachronistic and the book seems to predate the Gnostic movements.[2]
The earliest New Testament books were St Paul's letters, dating within a decade or so of the crucifixion & resurrection, and the earliest Christian creed – quoted in 1 Corinthians – dates to likely within a year of Christ rising from the dead. The Gospels were written down within the next few decades: from Mark being penned within a couple decades to John being penned about 60 years later.