'Gnostic' Texts vs. the New Testament

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From: Elaine Pagels
To: Ben Witherington III
Date: May 1, 2004

Dear Ben,

Thank you for your letter, which helpfully clarified various viewpoints on these early gospels-and on the early Christian movement. As I read it, you make two basic points:

First, that sources like the Gospel of Thomas, being "Gnostic," must be late sources-coming from the second century, or later-and therefore have nothing to do with the beginnings of the Christian movement.

Second, that what we find in the Gospel of Thomas is "at odds with what we find in New Testament texts"-that is, confession of Jesus as the "crucified and risen Lord."

What those of us working on these texts have come to conclude, in the course of extensive research on the Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament gospels, is that the first point is wrong, and the second is questionable. Instead, we're convinced of the following:

First: The Gospel of Thomas is not "Gnostic," but a "gospel" compiled from various sayings traditions, probably around the end of the first century (my dating).

Second: Instead of being "at odds" with what we find in the canonical gospels, the Gospel of Thomas presupposes what Mark tells of Jesus' life, teachings, death, and resurrection-and claims to go beyond it. Thomas depicts the Risen Jesus speaking not of "forgiveness of sins" and "faith," but encouraging each one to "seek, and you shall find" a relationship to God.

Both of your points are assumptions all of us, I would guess, were taught in graduate school. The earliest editors of "Gnostic" texts thought that they were dualistic, escapist, nihilistic, involving "esoteric ideas about aeons and demiurges," as you yourself write. As my former teacher at Harvard, Krister Stendhal, said to me recently about these texts, "we just thought these were weird."

But can you point to any evidence of such "esoteric ideas" in Thomas? Anything about "aeons and demiurges"? Those first editors, not finding such evidence, assumed that this just goes to show how sneaky heretics are-they do not say what they mean. So when they found no evidence for such nihilism or dualism-on the contrary, the Gospel of Thomas speaks continually of God as the One good "Father of all"-they just read these into the text. Some scholars, usually those not very familiar with these sources, still do.

So first let's talk about "Gnosticism"-and what I used to (but no longer) call "Gnostic Gospels." I have to take responsibility for part of the misunderstanding. Having been taught that these texts were "Gnostic," I just accepted it, and even coined the term "Gnostic gospels," which became the title of my book. I agree with you that we have no evidence for what we call "Gnosticism" from the first century, and have learned from our colleagues that what we thought about "Gnosticism" has virtually nothing to do with a text like the Gospel of Thomas-or, for that matter, with the New Testament Gospel of John which our teachers said also showed "Gnostic influences."

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