The Gospel According to Thomas

The remains of an extraordinary Coptic library, lost for 16 centuries and discovered in 1945 in a ruined tomb near Nag Hamâdi, Upper Egypt, has yielded an extensive collection of "logia", an anthology of 114 "sayings of Jesus", now published for the first time in their entirety. Preserved by dry sands covering what was apparently a thriving Gnostic community, 13 leather-bound papyrus volumes were found in jars in a cliffside by Egyptian peasants. Alone among the 49 works contained in them, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS has created a stir similar to that which followed the find of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is one of the earliest manuscripts related to the New Testament, and is based in fact, according to the editor-translators, on "a work the primitive text of which must have been produced in Greek about 140AD". They may supply the "missing Link" in the study of ancient manuscripts and texts which connects the known Gospels with Gnostic, Patristic, Manichaean and even Cathare literature. This authoritative translation has been obtained through the unremitting efforts of an international team of five Coptic and Hebrew scholars who are specialists in Gnosticism and primitive Christian literature. It is based on a most minute reading of the manuscript itself, which has been corrected and reconstituted with the use of infra-red photographs which are, as Professor Piper points out, "clearer than the original itself". Here is a complete translation in English, as literal as possible, easy to read and refer to, with the original text in Coptic characters on opposite pages, reproduced line for line and page for page.