Thomas and the Gospels: The Making of an Apocryphal Text

The Gospel of Thomas is the most controversial of the non-canonical gospels and the most important source outside the Gospels for our understanding of the historical Jesus and Christianity's origins. Mark Goodacre makes a detailed and compelling case that the author of The Gospel of Thomas is, after all, familiar with the Synoptic Gospels. He shows that the arguments for independence are inadequate and that the degree of agreement between Thomas and the Synoptics is far too great to be mediated by oral tradition. He suggests that Thomas features tell-tale signs of Matthew's and Luke's redactions and that the Gospel should be dated to the early to middle second century, when its author was looking for a means of lending the voice of his enigmatic Jesus an authoritative, Synopic-sounding legitimacy.

Mark Goodacre is Associate Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Department of Religion, Duke University, North Carolina, and general editor of T & T Clark's Library of New Testament Studies. His most recent books include The Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze (T & T Clark, 2001) and The Case Against Q (Continuum, 2002).