The Gospel of Thomas
Collection

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Finding Inner Meanings

Experience shows that everyone at first finds the Gospel of Thomas difficult. No exceptions to this rule have been found. The primary reason is that Jesus is striving to take his listeners—or for us his readers—to a higher level of spiritual awareness than prevails in the materialistic world in which we ordinarily live. This becomes a step of discovery.

A secondary reason is that Jesus uses words with symbolic meanings, which point to concepts beyond those that can be tied down by rigid words. Symbolic language works not just on the mind but essentially on the heart and the imagination. It has a power to reach levels within us that ordinary language fails to touch—it can convey an awareness in a way that plain words cannot do.

The great achievement of the scholars of l'Association Metanoia was to begin to discover the inner meanings hidden in the parables of the Gospel of Thomas. Their insights give remarkable—and unique—clues to the meanings. They took the sayings one by one, and expressed their awareness in the form of a commentary on each individual saying.

A further valuable clue was to recognize that the inner meanings of each individual saying had to be harmonious with all the others—a consequence of their all coming from one source. This has greatly helped dismiss mistaken meanings.

In both the Association Metanoia work and in the work described here much benefit has been derived from insights of other great spiritual traditions. Very often, when a saying has seemed impenetrable, such an insight has broken through like a shaft of light to illuminate Jesus' intended meanings.

On the other hand, much less often has help been obtained from making comparisons with the Bible or attempting to draw insights from the doctrines of the established Christian Churches. Study of the literature shows that route to be frequently misleading.

This second level of discovery relates to the inner meanings of each individual saying in the Gospel. It was a work extendi ng over a period of about eighteen years, and was immensely satisfying.

The Gospel of Thomas translated by Hugh McGregor Ross  To find out more go to 'Presentation' book

More about the Gospel of Thomas

  • Found in Egypt
    Only one ancient copy of the complete Gospel of Thomas exist, discovered in 1945 by Egyptian peasants
  • Finding the Inner Meanings
    Experience shows that everyone at first finds the Gospel of Thomas difficult; no exceptions to this rule have been found. The primary reason is that Jesus is striving to take his listeners to a high level of spiritual awareness.
  • The Teachings
    To assimilate these Teachings requires a good deal of work—chiefly thought and contemplation, and allowing time for them to grow inwardly and mature.
  • The Language of the Gospel
    Working with this original text it becomes more and more apparent that these are the words of a Master. Such texts are rare. In consequence every word has to be carefully studied, and due weight given to it.
  • Structure of the Sayings
    One of the pioneering achievements of scholars was to identify that the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are made up from short phrases. By following their example it can be seen that the Gospel is a record of speech, for this is a characteristic of Semitic speech that Jesus would have used.
  • The Role of Thomas
    How the disciple with the birth-name Judas came to be given, twice over, the spiritual name of Twin
  • Signature of Thomas
    It is very clear that Jesus taught his chosen disciple Thomas something that he and his colleagues considered to be blasphemous and punishable by ritual stoning
  • The Thomas People
    'India, and all the countries belonging to it and round it, even to the farthest sea, received the apostles' ordination to the priesthood from Judas Thomas'
  • Presentation of Thomas
    The Gospel of Thomas is definitely not a literary or narrative work. It is quite unlike the Gospels in the Bible