The Gospel of Thomas Complete Sayings (2009)

The Gospel of Thomas formed part of a collection of Gnostic (Gnosis, Gk. Knowing, act of knowing) Coptic Texts discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Although The Gospel of Thomas is not included as part of the New Testament it is regarded by some as the 'Fifth Gospel.' Unusually, as compared with the four canonical gospels, Thomas is not a narrative account of the life of Jesus, but a collection of short dialogues and sayings, 114 in total, that are attributed to Jesus. It is considered by most scholars to contain some of the earliest known recorded sayings of Jesus and is one of the most controversial, enigmatic and studied of Gospels and was used as the basis for the feature film 'Stigmata.' There are many translations of the Gospels and no two read alike. This disturbs many Christians since they believe that their salvation depends upon the correct interpretation of the truth and want to know which is the most reliable translation that has the least bias. As a result many translations can be discounted. However, in reference to the Gospel of Thomas, it should be recognised that Coptic words do not have a direct correspondence with English words in terms of their meaning nor the same sentence structure nor style. Therefore, bias does not necessarily enter into it and as such there is room for legitimate variation in translation, provided that each translation is truthful. However it is crucially important that the translation is as accurately meaningful to the source text as is possible and accomplished by an acknowledged scholar in their field of expertise.