BOOKS

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS, transl. by Guillaumont, Puech, Quispel, Till and Al Masah. Harper, 1959. $2. 62 pp.

In a ruined tomb near Nag Hamadi in upper Egypt, near the site of the first Christian monastic brotherhood, a group of manuscripts about sixteen centuries old were discovered in 1945.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in that same year has already shaken up religious thinking. The translation of these so-called "Gnostic manuscripts of Upper Egypt" has been slower, but their effect, particularly for homosexuals, may prove even more revolutionary, for where the former collection was pre-Christian, the Nag Hamadi manuscripts, found nearly intact in a large jar, were the library of a Gnostic Christian community of the Third or Fourth Century. Since the early orthodox Church Fathers denounced them as heretical, little has been directly and specifically known about the Gnostics in the Christion community. Gnosticism encompassed a set of ideas, poetically expressed, popular through several ancient religions, and forming part of the fabric of early Christianity. The ideas of gnosis are still common in popular Christianity wherever the spirit of mysticism or evangelicalism is found. Gnostics (those who possess the secret knowledge) believed a perpetual struggle exists between the God of Light and the Powers of this World -of Darkness. Man is a stranger here, a spirit bound in a prison of flesh, whose evil corrupts him. He is doomed unless he finds salvation from the "Bringer of Light," who will give him the secret logos (word) to liberate his soul.

This collection, in addition to the

present Gospel According to Thomas, contained four versions of a Secret Book of John, writings attributed to James, Peter, Philip, etc., and another book by Thomas, described as "the athlete." Most of these books were referred to and quoted from, disapprovingly (but the quotes check), by the Church Fathers.

St. Thomas, known as the doubter, and sometimes called Jesus' brother, was traditionally supposed to have founded the ancient Malabar church in India, which still bears his name. The well-known Acts of St. Thomas, describing his mission, and denouncing marriage with even more vigor than St. Paul did, was attacked by St. Augustine as heretical.

This present slim volume, a fragment of a more weighty work to follow, is printed both in English and in the Coptic in which it was found. It consists of 114 logia, or sayings, of Jesus. The opening and some other passages are identical with three Greek Third Century fragments of papyri found in 1903 at Oxyrrhynchos, indicating that this text may be a slight revision of a much earlier, perhaps less Gnostic, text. This translation is in flat modern English, and lacks the hypnotic roll of the King James style. Generally, these logia parallel sayings of Jesus found in the New Testament

of which there are few older manuscripts than this-and there is heavy textual evidence that this may be from an earlier gospel than Matthew, Mark or Luke, which often seem to follow the wording here.

The variations are of particular interest to homosexuals, elaborating ideas hinted at in other gospels, and evidencing the oft-claimed connection between Gnosticism and homosexuality. But in early Christianity, Gnosticism is no more than a matter of degree. Its influence shows throughout the New Testament particularly in the