"New Reflections on Gospel Traditions: the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas"

good morning someone that I probably should tell you my name and I am Emily towns I'm the Dean here at Vanderbilt Divinity School and welcome welcome to the second of the two Cole lectures for this year established by philanthropist Edmund W Cole president of Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad and treasurer of Vanderbilt University Board of trust he endowed these annual lecture series in 1892 for quote the defense and advocacy of the Christian religion close quote cause gift provided for the first sustained lectureship in the history of Vanderbilt University I read those gathered last night a very long list which what's not all of the list of scholars who have given the Cole lecture but today we simply want to welcome back dr. Elaine Pagels I also want to welcome those who are joining us for the first time this morning we also welcome those who are watching via live stream and those who will watch the archives of these lectures this year's collection Elaine Pagels is the Harrington spear paying professor of religion at Princeton University she grew up in a family of scientists and was taught that scientific discovery had made religion obsolete and if not irrelevant but something happened along the way and Pagels is now one of the world's leading scholars of religion inquisitive thorough and relentless her scholarship has changed the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement each of her books the Gnostic Gospels which is where I came to know of her work Adam Eve in the serpent the origin of Satan beyond belief reading Judas and revelations which we heard work from last night have taken us from a diverse early church to creation stories and sexual attitudes to evil and demonization to truth to why Judas betrayed Jesus and why God allowed it to the dreams and nightmares of the book of Revelation to engage your work dr. Pagels is to participate in a journey of discovery discomfort surprise and I think ultimately finding a way home this morning dr. Pagels lecture is entitled new reflections on gospel traditions the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas immediately following dr. Pagels lecture you are all invited to stay for the talkback panel and then lunch the panel will start immediately following the lecture here in the chapel and will feature alumni and the current students discussing their reactions and reflections to the issues in the lecture immediately following the panel all are invited to the deans luncheon I guess that's my luncheon to fellowship and celebrate the Vanderbilt Divinity School and the Graduate department of religion I ask you to join me once again in giving a warm welcome to dr. Elaine Pagels and ask that she joined me up here because we have a gift we are southern [Applause] she loves it thank you so much I'm very happy to be here honored to be invited to this distinguished lectureship and and very grateful for the generous hospitality of Dean Townsend and the entire community here at Vanderbilt and today I just want to talk about this discovery that's been changing our understanding of the origins of Christianity certainly mine and talk about not only what I started with in the Gnostic Gospels but how this looks how this looks twenty-five years later as many of you know when I when I went to graduate school I was amazed to discover that my professors were looking at recently discovered Gospels texts discovered in 1945 that's the same year that the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in Israel and they they had found that near Upper Egypt near the city of Luxor the small town of nag Hammadi which is right near the site of three of the earliest monasteries ever built in Egypt a farmer whose name was Muhammad Ali was digging for fertilizer and said that he was digging near a cliff and he struck something underground and found a six-foot jar and inside the jar are there were ancient books now Muhammad Ali didn't read Arabic which is his own language and he certainly couldn't read the script of these books because they were written in Coptic which is a an African language it was a transcription of the hieroglyphic language into a kind of script that looks like a cross between Russian and Greek and and well there's a whole story about that but we don't need to go into what happened we know that one of the most fascinating of these texts to me the most compelling was the one called the Gospel of Thomas which opens with the words this is the cliff where they were found the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic and it it ends with the in Greek the Gospel according to Thomas opens with the words these are the secret sayings of Jesus and didymus Judas Thomas wrote them down and you you recall that Judas Thomas is a one of the disciples in the Gospel of John mentioned as one of the followers of Jesus and and so all of us in graduate school started publishing and trying to translate and publish and edit and figure out what was going on here this isn't as I said lesson it's not what I expected to find in graduate school I was trying to find out what really happened in the beginning of Christianity and I was expecting to find some kind of golden age when when Christianity was simple and pure and and we could find out what it really was like in the beginning and instead we landed ourselves in a much more complicated and interesting I must say a much more difficult and fascinating world than we'd ever expected and when I read this book my wonderful teacher Christa Stendhal said to me not too long ago he said you know we thought these texts were just weird and and I was told that they were just weird that they were full of gobbledygook and passwords into heaven and philosophic and mythological nonsense but this text is nothing but a list I wish I had xeroxed it for you some of you I'm sure many of you have read it it's nothing but a list of sayings attributed to Jesus and some of the sayings are exactly the same that you as those one finds in Matthew and Luke like the parable of the sower the parable of the mustard seed the parable of the pearl found in a in a field blessed are you poor yours is the kingdom of heaven that's in Thomas and there also in Matthew and Luke as you know but there were other sayings that also just stopped me cold and one of them was saying 70 in which Jesus says if you bring forth what is within you what bring forth will save you if you do not bring forth what is within you what you do not bring forth will destroy you and I thought wow you don't have to believe that it just happens to be true and and there were other statements like that that were to me very striking and compelling so I thought what is this what is this text that was discovered and what what does it possibly mean now you know that these texts like the others that we find in the New Testament were originally written in Greek but they were found only in translation in Coptic we know they were written in Greek partly because there are fragments in Egypt or Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas like saying one of the Gospel of Thomas that has been found in garbage dumps at Oxyrhynchus where you find fragments of gospel texts you find interestingly the most commonly found fragments of gospel texts are Matthew and Thomas so this is a widely read text in antiquity anyway so these texts were apparently revered as holy books in in those ancient monasteries which are very close to the cliff where these were buried but we also know that the Archbishop of Alexandria in the year 367 found these texts apparently very upsetting because he wrote a letter in Easter and of course you may know that letter ordering the monks to get rid of those illegitimate and secret books that you like so much and the bishop said now wait a minute there are 27 books that are the springs of salvation you can read those and they will be good for you the others well they may have some good things in them but they will lead you astray and you've got to get rid of them there they're the wrong books and they're they'll lead you into error so the list that he approved of course became what we call the New Testament collection and the others well we don't know what happened to everything in the monastery library but apparently somebody disobeyed the Archbishop's order and took a bunch of books there are 13 codices 13 volumes each one has about five six through seven individual texts in them like the Gospel of Philip and the gospel of Peter and the revelation of Paul and the the revelation of zoster jános and the secret revelation of John and well you know there are 51 texts like this attributed mostly to Jesus and His disciples somebody took those didn't want to destroy them these are actually bound in leather and they have crosses embossed on them they're obviously precious important holy books and at the bottom of many of the of the pages you see the scribe has written Christ is holy pray for me brothers amen you know and then there be crosses all the way embossed at the bottom so these text had been part of the monastic library apparently for a couple hundred years or they had been circulating for a couple hundred years and we know that before the archbishop took action we know that Irenaeus who was of course a famous bishop in Gaul around the Year 160 to 180 knew that there were Christians among his congregants and and in fact throughout the Roman world who were circulating books that he regarded as illegitimate so Irenaeus had had had declared he wrote you know five massive volumes they called the destruction and overthrow a falsely so-called gnosis ordering people to to not read the books that were denounced as saying after all there can only be four Gospels and if you asked him why he would say well there are four Gospels because there are you know four for creatures below the throne of God in in in in the Book of Ezekiel there are four four corners of the universe and four principal winds and therefore there can really only be four Gospels so you see it's kind of a scientific approach but he also would have said well actually it's only because these Gospels are written by eyewitness people who were actual disciples of Jesus like Matthew and John and people who were the disciples of disciples like Luke and Mark now you know those of you at the Divinity School certainly that many New Testament scholars questioned whether the actual authors of these texts go back to the disciples of Jesus and many New Testament scholars including my teachers think that's highly questionable we just don't know the other thing we do know is that many of these texts like the Gospel of Philip and Thomas and for that matter the gospel of Mary Magdalene do go back to followers of Jesus or they're attributed to those people we don't know in any case who actually wrote these or the ones in the New Testament so there are plenty of puzzles here and and so when the Gospel of Thomas first appeared the distinguished editors this was published in 1957 by Michelle melody NAND and and gilles quispel from holland ori Charles Pugh ish French Dutch German scholars published the Gospel of Thomas and they said well this is the first stage of research what are we dealing with they said well we know that there were all these Gnostic Gospels which means bad ones these are not the right Gospels and and we know what Gnostics are we know Gnostics are teach dualism and they teach negative views of the world and they hate the body and they they teach all kinds of mythological nonsense and philosophical speculations I mean it's really terrible things so these scholars when they published the Gospel of Thomas they said well what do we think is the date of this text well it's not one of the right Gospels right which are as you know dated between 70 and say a hundred of the first century they said well this is a obviously a wrong kind of gospel so it must be at least a at least a generation later so they dated this to about a hundred and forty and they thought they knew what they were dealing with so they said well of course it's a Gnostic text so we know we're going to find and when they read this text which is just that list of sayings and they didn't find philosophical ideas and they didn't find mythological nonsense about the universe up there they didn't find the kind of garbage that my professors told me would be there they just decided it shows you how sneaky heretics are so they decided that they would read them in and you can read many publications by early scholars of this and actually some contemporary books on New Testament study one by a professor in a close state to here which I will not mention who says you can't read the Gospel of Thomas unless you understand all the mythological baggage that really lies behind it but it's not in there so that was the first stage of research then when I got to graduate school professors began to say wait a minute a lot of this Gospel of Thomas as I said is just the same as it is in Matthew and Luke a parable of the sower blessed are the poor all of those things mustardseed the treasure found in the field jesus says so many things here that are in Matthew and Luke and by the way there in the q source now could this be the list of sayings that that Matthew and Luke used to write their Gospels so the second stage of research was initiated by Helmut Kessler one of my teachers who said no we don't think this is a late gospel we think this is maybe the earliest kind this is like the Q source and he actually wanted to date it to the year 50 which would make it 20 years earlier than we think mark was written and so many people took that and ran with it John Dominic Crossan wrote about this as the earliest gospel and probably closest to the original teaching of Jesus that started a whole cottage industry among scholars looking for the early teaching of Jesus and the Gospel of Thomas right now I I don't think that really works either so at this point I would say I belong to a third stage of research that says what is this Gospel of Thomas well it looks like it looks like a composite of early sayings of Jesus like some of the ones we mentioned that you find in Matthew and Luke and other sayings which are probably added later and otherwise unattested we don't know whether Jesus would have said them did he have a secret teaching I mean if he did it would be like other rabbis of his time who would teach one thing to the congregation and something else to the disciples in in private did Jesus teach these things or not we don't know are the other sayings simply added by other people we don't know but anyway I think it's a composite of early teachings of Jesus well-known and others which we don't know where they're from but anyway I found them very interesting so the earliest teachings I was talking with Dean Townes about this because we both learned that the Gospel of Thomas has much in common with Matthew and Luke as I mentioned in those teaching traditions and so when I decided to look at it again I thought well let's compare it with the Gospel of John because actually when you compare it with the Gospel of John you know many people think John had a different I had access to different teachings of Jesus or different teachings traditions and when you look at John and Thomas together you find that if you were to underline everything in the Gospel of Thomas that you also find in John you'd probably find about well a third of it underlined in blue say and if you underlined everything in the Gospel of Thomas you found in Matthew and Luke you'd find another maybe 25% so there's a great deal in common and I just want to suggest for the few minutes we have today that if we compare the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas it's not clear what they tell us about what Jesus actually taught because you know that's a very hard question to answer and I don't think we have historical means of ascertaining that for sure but what they do can show us is how followers of Jesus at the end of the first century maybe about ninety to a hundred were were we're understanding and and putting together what they said were the teachings of Jesus I think if you look at John and Thomas compare we can listen in on a kind of intense and rather contentious conversation with it's more like an argument among followers of Jesus about what Jesus taught and what is the gospel so the first thing you notice when you start to compare them of course is that this claims to be secret teaching of Jesus and when I was in graduate school you know my professors thought well there are the good Gospels and the bad Gospels this is one of the bad Gospels they took them as if they were alternatives but this is no more an alternative I think than John this gospel like John's Gospel is meant to supplement and complement what you already know that is it's not meant to be a replacement of the other Gospels it's based on an assumption that you know about Jesus of Nazareth if you don't what would what possibly why would you bother to read something that says these are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke you'd have to know the story of Jesus from the baptism the healings the the crucifixion the resurrection and then secret teachings might have made some sense so what this gospel does like John's Gospel is say well you know you know the basic story already you get that in the other ways people tell the story of Jesus like in mark and now I'm going to tell you in addition some secret teachings which he told privately to his disciples so thomas claims to be only a list of secret teachings and john in chapter 13 to 18 has those of the upper room discourses which according to John's Gospel are the way Jesus taught in private so and you also find so they have that in common they claim to offer secret teaching second they both interpret the teachings of Jesus somewhat similarly I mean you remember what mark says this is the gospel right the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is coming believe in the good news some of you standing here will not die before the kingdom of God comes with power so the gospel for mark is about the imminent coming of the kingdom of God as a kind of cataclysmic world transforming event that's going to shatter the world and and everything will change the Gospel of John however does not have this message in it it hardly speaks about the kingdom of God but it rather it's as though in John the the sense of Jesus proclamation of the kingdom of God is about realized eschatology as the scholars would say is it's it's a present spiritual reality that can be accessed here and now it's it's that kind of transformation of the teaching this eschatologically based teaching you find in in mark Matthew and Luke far more and the Gospel of Thomas takes the same route and and Jesus says if those who lead you say look the kingdom is up in the sky then the birds will get there first and if you say it's in the ocean then the fish will get there first it's kind of a poking fun at people who think of the kingdom of God as a as a place or space is an actual event in space and time in in that way but rather it goes on to say the Kent the kingdom is inside of you and outside of you when you come to know yourselves then you will be known that is God will know you and you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father the language of the text uses the word sons as Greek does so this is also a kind of realized eschatology about the kingdom it suggests that the kingdom of God is kind of a state of awareness in which one lives in the presence of God and second the Gospels of John and Matthew both start at a different point from the other Gospels right you that mark starts with the baptism of Jesus Matthew and Luke with the birth of Jesus but John and Thomas start in a different place you're familiar of course with the way John wants to say well if you want to understand the origin of Jesus you have to go back to the beginning the beginning of time in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and it's right up there and in in in the the stained-glass window this famous words about the prologue that how everything came into being in the beginning and the Gospel of Thomas also has Jesus say when people asked him the disciples keep saying well when is it when is it gonna happen when is the kingdom of God coming what why hasn't it happened yet and Jesus answers have you looked to the beginning that you have you found the beginning that you're already looking for the end and it goes says you have to go back to the beginning and then there's a very strange saying in Thomas which says blessed is the one that who came into being before he came into being you think what what is it talking about what are you talking about came into being before you came into being how do you go back to what there was before we came into being before the universe came into being well Thomas expects that you know the answer and people here all do you know you go back to Genesis right you go back to Genesis and Genesis says what there was in the beginning is is darkness and there's there's the wind the Spirit on the dark waters and and then in the beginning the first thing God says let there be light but first century rabbis certainly understood that the light that's spoken of in Genesis 1 2 3 is not the light of the Sun or the moon or any of that it's not ordinary light because these haven't even been created yet so the light that comes into being before the universe they would say what is well that's an image of the divine energy it's the divine energy of God and and and like the prophets like Ezekiel who said he saw the throne of God and when he saw the divine throne what did he see he says he almost saw a human form something like that but he can't describe a form because God is not supposed to be imaged but what he saw on the divine throne as we talked about last night was light he saw blazing brilliant overwhelming light radiance shining what you're calling in in Hebrew covered right the the the glory of God the shining of God so he said well the first thing that came into being before the universe was the radiance the divine energy we can't describe God's energy except in the image of light so that is what came into being first and so when when first century rabbi said well all right so it says then in Genesis 1:26 that God made humans in His image so what image and of course that's a much debated issue theologically among Jews and Christians is it the the human body is it human consciousness is it the mind the rabbi's would have said no is none of that there is no image you can make of God right so so humans created in the image would be it's like a way of saying within humans there is the image of God but that is that could only be divine light it's a kind of divine energy which is deeply hidden in the creation of human beings so the Gospel of Thomas suggests that and both Thomas and John actually want to say well okay who then is Jesus and both of them give the same answer again you remember that John has Jesus say I am the light the light of the world the one that enlightens everyone coming into the world and the prologue and so forth Jesus is the light and Thomas has this saying which I find quite beautiful Jesus says I am the light that is before all things that is before the creation before all things for me all things came forth to me all things extend split a piece of wood and I am there lift up a rock and you will find me so this is as though it speaks about the divine light that came into being that brought the world into being the divine energy that not only pervades the world but every human being here and even the rocks and the stones and the logs it shines through everything in the universe you will find this very much manifested in later Jewish mystical thought this vision of the divine light pervading the universe so here in the Gospel of Thomas and also in John Jesus speaks as if he were the manifestation of that divine light so those are great similarities between Thomas and John that they start at the beginning they have a sense of realized eschatology and they speak of Jesus in this way as the light that comes into being at the beginning of time so how do you find access to the divine Thomas says in saying to well you have to look for it let who let whoever seeks continue seeking until he finds when he finds he'll be troubled when he's troubled he will be astonished is this is a painful disturbing upsetting search because it challenges the way we ordinarily understand who we are and everything in the world this is a process of seeking that's how that's how you look for the divine and that's the only way you find it but according to Thomas when you look for it you can find it you find it not only in Jesus but you can also find it in yourself because in this gospel the good news is not just about Jesus who is Jesus that is the driving question of Mark's Gospel and really of John's and all of them in a way but here the question is also who are you and this Gospels message is that you and I also come forth from the divine light since we're all created in the image of God and that creates a hidden link between God and the whole of being so this gospel suggests that ordinarily we are unaware of our connection the hidden link through this image and we talk we identify ourselves in completely different terms right so anyone here if if I identify myself Elaine Pagels I grew up in California and you know I can tell you a lot of things and you could tell me your name and and gender race background social political religious affiliation that is everyone here has a different name we come from different places we we have different points of origin and so forth and we identify ourselves as we would to each other by how we differ the Gospel of Thomas says yes but when you come to know who you really are you understand that we are children of God and that we are actually kin that is that we're connected not only with God but also with one another so according to Thomas Jesus teaches a different kind of identification it's not about how different we are from each other but this is probably a baptismal saying these are the questions somebody asks you when you go to a different country where do you come from who are you what is your family background and and you could say well you know I come from that place and and my name is such-and-such and and this is my this is my identity that's all about difference but Jesus according to this before won a Chiefs baptism within this group he says well when people say to you who are you say we come from the light where the light came into being at the beginning of time that is we all come from the same place and if they say to you or who are you say we are its children were the children of the light we're children of the living father that's who we are and if they say well how do you identify yourselves tell them movement and rest this all comes out of Genesis right that God acts and that God rests and and says when that movement and that rest is how you identify who you are you all come from that so the Gospel of Thomas as you know is attributed to the disciple he's called in John's Gospel Thomas didymus but Thomas in Aramaic means the twin it's not a name it's a nickname his name is Judas its Judas Thomas didymus Judas Thomas is what John calls him although in the other Gospels he's just called Judas he's not and then they will say Judas not Iscariot the other Judas right so Thomas calling him Thomas means that they're calling him by his nickname the twin and didymus of course is Greek for the twin so it means Thomas between the twin so when when John direst first looked at this gospel in in Egypt where he encountered it in an antiquities dealer shop he thought wait are they trying to say Jesus had a twin brother what is going on here and I think this is meant to be like so much of this text a symbolic statement which basically shows you as you go through the sayings of the gospel and that Thomas begins to understand who Jesus is and the more he understands the more he understands that he and Jesus are brothers they are actually twins that is that Jesus is the twin but you are also you the disciples stand in the role of Thomas and what you have to discover is that you and Jesus in a sense are spiritually connected and that he is your spiritual counterpart something like that so this gospel has that kind of suggestion it's probably in a sense of mystical suggestion so the the idea here is that when you come to see who you really are you understand that your deeper identity your spiritual identity is this hidden identity this connection with with God and connection with as father and connection with each other as part of a the same spiritual family now when I first read that saying saying seventy if you bring forth what is within you what you bring forth will save you if you do not bring forth what is within you what you do not bring forth will destroy you I took it as a psychological statement and I think that kind of works on that level but then I began to understand it's a theological statement it's a statement about the image of God is what's within you and you may not know that but if you bring it forth that becomes your your your mode of access to the divine so now I understand that this this has a theological meaning and it's actually in many ways as as also Stephane Davies wrote in his book on the Gospel of Thomas it's it's an it's an it's a mystical exegesis of Genesis one um that's another story so that's the similarities between these two Gospels but then you get to the practical question how do you find the light how do you really find it John says something very different from Thomas so despite all these similarities between Thomas and John I came to think that the author of John's Gospel this this shocked me and I refuse to believe it for a long time but I could only conclude that John makes more sense to me if its author knew the kind of teachings you find in the Gospel of Thomas now I don't know whether Thomas had been written at the time that the the author of John was writing John's Gospel we don't know they seem to be written close to the same time but the teachings could have been spoken as as the teachings of Jesus often were communicated orally it seems to me that what you find in John's Gospel makes much more sense at least to me and I don't know what you'll think of it if you think that he's responding to people who are teaching the kind of thing you find in Thomas and he really thinks they're on the wrong track in fact that he has written his gospel because he thinks those people teaching that are completely wrong and I'm gonna write a gospel to set them straight and so he does he does it very effectively in order to challenge that kind of teaching as you know John also starts in the beginning and he wants to say well yes I know what it says in the beginning I know what Genesis says it says it says that the light came forth at the very beginning of time before the universe but in the prologue as you recall he will say yes but but did anybody here in the world ever perceive that divine light he says first of all I think it's 1:5 the light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not grasp it now this is nicely translated usually the darkness did not overcome it that's a nicer thought but the Greek is is is kadhalan bono that the darkness did not grasp it did not understand it did not comprehend it it's as though there was light in the beginning of time but the world was sunk in sin and darkness and ignorance and therefore it didn't penetrate the darkness in which the world was plunged so John says well all right so the light shone in the darkness but that but it didn't penetrate to to the world so then it says in in 1:11 so so the light came to its own and by the way here it's translated by Christians as he came because they take it to mean Jesus of Nazareth that's a reading of John but the light came to its own its own people it could mean Israel or human beings and its own did not receive the light that is the light that went to Israel was not fully perceived that's John's message certainly so as you know the light had to come again in a more explicit form that could be perceived by the human beings who are lost in a kind of dense darkness and ignorance and sin in the world and so John says yes so the word the light became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory then finally only when Jesus of Nazareth was incarnated in human form as as Paul will say in in the Philippians - only when he came in the form of a human being did we did we see the glory the shining the radiance the radiance of God that light then we saw it finally because we had to see it in that form and this is the glory of the only begotten Son of God now you you know John's Gospel and you know that John's favorite word is this word moto kinase only begotten so Jesus in John you said you might ask yourself why is Jesus always standing up and saying I am I am this I am that I am the door I am the way I am the the light I am the the path I am the resurrection I am whatever the vine that is Jesus is always saying doing what the scholars call I am sayings I am I am whatever you need I am the bread come down from heaven I am the water of life I am the divine source that you long for right in in whatever metaphor you use and but John wants to say but by the way he's the only one he is Monica knows he is the only begotten Son of God only Jesus is the manifestation of the Divine Light so john wants to say that you and I may become God's children by baptism but not in any way comparable to Jesus because Jesus is mano kinase that greek word only the only one born it means single or unique right so John's favorite description is that Jesus is absolutely single and unique and and that you and I are not in any way like Jesus we are part of the world that is lost in sin and Jesus came into the world not so much to illuminate other people but to save them from sin and damnation I don't know if I have those words here but yes you know perfectly well the famous words in John 3:16 that God gave his mono ganas quiesce His only Son so that the world otherwise completely lost in in sin so that people who believed in him should not be condemned and those who believed in him would believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God and and so so John is all about who is Jesus you've got to believe it believe what well you have to believe that he's the only begotten Son of God and and and Jesus speaks about this in a very different way from the Gospel of Thomas you remember that the Gospel of Thomas has Jesus say you come from the light where I came from that's what you don't know about yourself but John's Gospel says no wait a minute you got it wrong Jesus says you are from below I am from above you are from this world I am NOT from this world I am utterly I'm not like the rest of you human beings I am utterly unique the revelation of God and then Jesus says here in John 8 I told you that you would die in your sins unless you believe that I am he so who well you know who who is he jesus says of course in chapter 8 he says that he is that's not it but in John 8 he finally says I am right he uses the word saying claiming the divine name that he is the one who spoke to Moses I am in John 8:58 so in John's Gospel you don't find the Sermon on the Mount of course you don't find the parable of the Good Samaritan the things you find in Matthew or Luke you just find Jesus proclaiming what before Abraham was I am that what God revealed to Moses Jesus is God in human form and in John's Gospel it is Thomas who grasps this at the end and finally says those famous words my Lord and my god jesus is my Lord and my god so according to John the good news is that Jesus is God incarnate and the bad news you might say is that the rest of us are nothing like Jesus so instead of speaking about people coming from God Jesus says you must believe believe in me and you must believe that he alone is the son of God and if you believe that you have life in his name you're well familiar with this but what what gospel does I think because he associates Thomas with false teaching his gospel alone turns Thomas into a character you know who he is right who is he he's doubting Thomas but where do you get that impression there's nothing in Luke nothing in Matthew nothing in mark that says a word about Thomas in that way the only way you get that impression that the whole Christian tradition gives that impression is in John's Gospel which alone gives you three episodes in which Thomas plays a part the first one is this one in John 14 and Jesus is anticipating his death and he says well you know where I'm going and and and you know the way Thomas being you know the fool the one who doesn't get it says well we don't know where you're going how can we get over the way and Jesus turns to him in the Gospel of Tom a John and says I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me do you get that Thomas is that clear it's as though he's he I think the author is quite aware that there's different teaching with which he disagrees the second the second episode is one this is the third episode the second episode is is when Jesus tells his disciples he's going up to Jerusalem and he's going to wake Lazarus and and and he's going to bring Lazarus back to life and Thomas says we'll go with him we'll die with him meaning that's not going to happen so Thomas is the doubter Thomas is the one who doesn't get it Thomas is the one who doesn't believe and then most crucially you get to the famous episode in which from which he gets his name doubting Thomas now notice here that what what John does and this surprised me but it was very interesting because I never compared the appearance of Jesus in John's Gospel with the ones who find in Matthew and Luke Matthew and Luke tell how after the death of Jesus Jesus appears to them he comes through a closed door and he appears and and he says you are my disciples right and he he he gives them the power to his authority that if Jesus transmits to them his own authority now who is present Luke tells you exactly who their 11 disciples and you know the one missing is Judas Iscariot of course the betrayer is not among those to whom Jesus transmits his authority after his death Matthew also tells you that Jesus appeared to the disciples John interestingly John says I wonder if I have that here I don't know if it's on here ah this is this is a difference it says Jesus appeared to the disciples in John's Gospel and he does three things he says well let's go back because this comes a little later the first thing John's account says is that Jesus breathed upon them the Holy Spirit that is he gave them he transmitted the Holy Spirit the second thing he does is is tell them that they are to be his apostles and representatives and the third thing he does is he gives them his authority to remit sins that's John's account of what happens in that the transaction when Jesus returns and speaks to his disciples in a resurrected state so they become the bearers of his tradition but it's the next line that really struck me because this isn't in Matthew or Luke John's Gus was Bhutan's the one called the twin he wasn't there he wasn't with them and and when they said so he missed this meeting right he didn't receive the Holy Spirit he didn't get the authority he wasn't among them and when they said to him and we have seen the Lord you know what he said he said I don't believe it that's Thomas right he doesn't believe anything he has to experience and the whole Gospel of Thomas is about experiential seeking and knowing for yourself not taking somebody else's word for it and John's Gospel is all about take my word for it I'm an authoritative witness so so anyway Thomas true to form says I don't believe it and then it says Jesus actually came back a second time just to rebuke Thomas and he come back and said all right well you you don't believe anything you can't see for yourself so here you can see for yourself you can touch my wounds and and you can see that I'm actually resurrected and at that point Thomas you imagine he falls on his knees and he capitulates to John's view of Jesus and he says now I get it you know you're not my brother you're nothing like me you are my Lord and my god and so that is that is where John leaves the story that that it's necessary for everyone to recognize Jesus and believe the witness of others without asking for that kind of proof here Thomas is rebuked for you know don't be doubting but believe it Thomas is rebuked for being faithless so John takes this insistence on I've got to understand it by through my own experience as a kind of evidence of a faithless doubting skeptical approach and Thomas which Thomas exemplifies and Jesus then says blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe so I think John wrote this with some satisfaction that even Thomas finally got it he admitted he was wrong and John was right seeing Jesus he's overwhelmed and so forth and he and he speaks about in the in the right way from from John's point of view now you know that Christian leaders adopted of course the Gospel of John and not the Gospel of Thomas this different interpretation of the teachings I think Helmut Kessler is right that they are based on common teaching traditions about Jesus as the light about the beginning of time about the Incarnation but they move in very different directions and the church churches as you know adopted John's view and then you get hundreds of years later the creed that will speak of Jesus as God from God light from light true God from True God begotten not created of one being with the father event is utterly unique taken to its highest possible imaginable level and and that of course has an enormous influence on the history of Christianity one final comment I just don't want to leave without mentioning the issue of gender because many of you know that the Gospel of Thomas ends very weirdly as Peter says to Jesus tell Mary to leave us Mary Magdalene because she's a woman and not worthy of life and Jesus says I will take Mary and make her a male so that she can become a living spirit resembling you males for every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven I remember reading that in graduate school at Oxford and I thought the whole place was designed to turn women into men but I would just like to suggest that if you look at the Gospel of Thomas saying 22 and and the episode in 61 where Salome this is not of course the nephew of Herod but Salome a the follower of Jesus speaks to Jesus and she says to him who are you man that you've come up on my couch and eaten from my table it sounds very sexually charged and he rebukes her and says no I'm not going to answer you in those terms in in terms of difference of gender he says I am the one who comes from what is the same whoever comes from what is the same is full of light and whoever comes from what is divided is full of darkness and this I suggest goes back to Genesis 1:26 and 27 which suggests that God created Adam that is humankind in His image and many interpreters in the first century like Philo and others said but only later we became actual humans divided by gender and and that division by gender is not in the image of God because the image of God is the primordial human made in the image and in Hebrew that's definitely a male being that is the Hebrew says in in the image of God he created him and the word is low male and female he created them so that when one understands who one is spiritually it's in the image of that primordial being here described as you would expect in this ancient Jewish text in in a masculine image thought to be generic before you get to the level of gender so I just want to mention that that's part of the way people are taught to identify themselves in this text but there's a great deal else we could discuss and I hope we will in the in the talkback session looking forward to that thank you [Applause] if you would give us just a few minutes to set up and I would ask there he is Professor James Byrd whom we know best is Jimmy to come forward while we're setting up I just wanted to show you a couple images from the gospel of Mary this is the Thomas the gospel of Mary Magdalene often taken as a prostitute appears in the gospel of Mary from antiquity as a disciple of Jesus not the lover of Jesus not the wife of Jesus but an important disciple who actually rebukes Peter it's as different of view as we find from Thomas from doubting Thomas in the gospel of Mary Magdalene just couldn't help sharing that with you and now up here I just our moderator for the talkback panel is associate professor of American religious history and the associate dean for graduate education and research dr. James P Byrd better known as Jimmy dr. Byrd's research interest Center on theology and biblical interpretation in American history religion and war the history of Baptists and Methodists in America his latest book which was released this summer is Sacred Scripture sacred war the Bible and the American Revolution it is a masterful systematic study of how the American revolutionaries actually used the Bible in their pursuit of independence yes that was a shameless plug for a faculty member I turned the moderator duties over to dr. Byrd Thank You Dean Townes we also want to thank our lecturer professor Pagels for two insightful and engaging lectures this week and we're excited to have some panelists here who will lead us in some conversation and at the end we'll have some opportunities for questions from everyone so first I'd like to ask each of our panelists to introduce themselves and say something about their own initial reactions to the lectures we'll just start on this thanks dr. bird okay hi I'm Jennifer Alexander I am a PhD student here I'm about to take exams and let's see interest in the lectures first of all I think what I appreciate in general is dr. Pagels passion for sharing what she's discovered with larger publics so she doesn't just stay within academia and her passion for showing us some of the diversity that she's encountered informative Christianity so that's one of my interests also I'm working on Matthew I'll be doing some work on Matthew in my dissertation when I get past my exams so in dr. towns when you spoke about a journey of discomfort and dr. Pangos you mentioned saying - of Gospel of Thomas and that was striking to me because there's this idea of when you find you will become trouble you will become troubled that's me that kind of defines my scholarship so I'm interested in Matthew I'm interest in some of the violence I'm interested in the violence and revelation I don't have the guts to deal with revelation very interested in anti-semitism anti-fusion and I'm Monica Weber I'm a third-year m.div graduating in December I'm seeking ordination in the Lutheran Church ELCA when I told my son my sixteen year old that I would be here he said oh I know her she's on TV so I was excited that he knew who you were but I'm interested in what you speak about in terms of the Gnostic Gospels in particular from a practical side when I speak to parishioners who approach me and say what am I supposed to do with this text I'm Alba Onofrio and I'm a third year end event on a four-year track god willing for an m.div I was the pesky person last night who asked well what does this mean for the conservative folk that we love and care about and that I come from and so I would repeat that same iteration this morning and so what I really appreciated about this particular conversation is last time I question is how do you respond to people who hold a revelation close at heart how do you respond to those images in the ways that they've been harmful and I think that the same thing is my trouble with John is how do we respond to this heaven or hell kind of mentality that makes us really aggressively go after people and save them for Christ or reject them as as going to hell and so I really appreciated I think Thomas is a great response to that because it says here's another way to look at it and then that opens up conversations about why things were chosen to be part of the Canon and not and that something is really exciting because people who find God and know God personally I feel like are open to those kind of movements of spirits so I'm grateful for that hello my name is Nicolas che sir I am a third-year PhD student in the history of religion and within that I study Jewish texts in the few centuries immediately after the New Testament so rabbinic literature and I have a minor in New Testament so my project is a comparative one comparing later Jewish texts with the New Testament pieces and paragraphs and trying to figure out how these parallels can illuminate both texts and so dr. Pagels project here today with the Gospel of Thomas is very similar to what I do with Jewish texts so I very much appreciate if they approach questions about how we can compare two different texts and what they can tell us about the relationship between them as far as her talk on Revelation she mentioned that the writer of Revelation may have been a refugee of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 and also of the possible Semitic background of the text based on its language and so for me that's very important because a lot of the Jewish texts that I deal with are also very similar to John and have a church today the apocalypse of John I have a very similar Semitic flavor so I really appreciated all of that as well hi my name is Cheri Katherine Woolsey I'm a graduate of Hogwarts I mean Vanderbilt Divinity School 2010 and I've been practicing as a solo United Methodist pastor here in Nashville at West National United Methodist Church and before that I was in that magnificent darkness known as the music industry and I was both worked in the music industry and also was the lead singer for a rock band for about a decade what's interesting about being here at this table today for me is that as I was touring all over the United States and parts of the world I carried with me this heretical book that was called the other Bible and within this book were several these Gnostic texts and this book became my sort of armor I suppose in the darkness of the music industry it became a kind of compass for me it also became a way of remarrying my own story which had been sort of jack through a fundamentalist Southern Baptist upbringing not that Southern Baptist always has to be synonymous with fundamentalist but it really helped me to Ranieri my own story and so I think that these texts are riku man izing texts and what I really loved about the revelation speech last night was that I think you showed us how John really provided a sort of script a sort of reader raishin out of the chaos that was and you know it's a beautiful text for helping us to renate the chaos of our own world and in today's lecture I really loved the talk about unity and about how particularly the Gospel of Thomas brings us into this idea that we are we are one as human beings as Jesus says in 28 of the Gospel of Thomas my my soul eight for the children of humanity and so there's this idea of what it really means to be human you know in our world at our time and just this idea of the molecular energy you talks about as the divine light being in us all it reminds me a lot of some of the Sufi poetry that I love Rumi talks about let the beauty you love be what you do jesus also says in the Gospel of Thomas don't do what you hate and so I think there's a lot of parallels there so I'm interested in exploring that more my name is Mariah Vinson and I a third year ended student I will be graduating in May which I'm quite excited about not that I have a little check mark of the dates Edna nothing like that yet I am interested in the Gospel of John for the centrality of the body and the senses and in your lecture today you spoke about how one approaches and learns that a vine and that's something that I find John presents like a very human capability of doing that just based on the capacities that you have as a human being with a body I did forget how much I like to tell myself that somewhat in my undergraduate and then I was reading some this morning and then with what you presented it's it's very freeing I feel so I appreciated the parallel between those two another thing about what comes from Thomas I feel is I just with all the study and with like this is the can this is the Bible I forget to take the wide view sometimes and to just see what else has been written and people's efforts to learn God and I think Thomas is a really good example of of that you know of another story or another piece of the story that is not necessarily attended to all the time so thank you for that well there's much to respond to and and and just a couple of comments thank you very much for these comments I find it liberating if one sees that there's not just one story in the history of Christianity I mean that it has often been taught as if well Jesus taught this and then and then other people interpret it and it becomes a grander and grander symphony and it's all a simple continuity and that's partly because we only have a very small part of what was actually available about the teachings of Jesus so much so much is probably destroyed maybe 50 or 70 percent of what was written in the ancient world but if we see these different stories not just as you've got to believe it this way but that religious language our our language is symbolic language it is poetic it is me versed theology is about poetic language and when I talk about the contrast between John and Thomas I was drawing it kind of sharply but in the fourth chapter of my book I realized anybody who gets poetry and you spoke about Rumi can understand these as part of the same conversation for example I think of John of the Cross great Spanish mystic who was apparently a convert from Judaism forced to convert the great mystics of the Christian Church Catholic mystic and and the way he writes about the darkness in which we live and about the gospel the way he relates to the fourth gospel is is deeply experiential and TS Eliot when he when he takes into the Four Quartets the lines from the from the fourth gospel he doesn't take them in any way literally he takes them as the kind of evocative attempt to speak about what he called a raid on the inarticulate because after all we're talking about divine things it's not as though we have definitive knowledge of those things also I met someone this morning who said he was he had to leave the church that he was brought up and because his experience did not correspond with what he was told he had to believe and and I think that issue of experiential understanding one thing I forgot to say lesson I'll stop after this is I want to hear from you is somebody said how do you tell what a genuine revelation is and I thought oh yeah I forgot to say that's why I wrote that book because when your work does what my work did and is doing which is mess up the boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy and when I could read the Gospel of Thomas and find something in it that struck me as a very powerful spiritual insight and it leads me to put some that are in the Canon on a lesser level of authority yes that's the right word it comes from oneself also tell us in Greek then the question how do you tell when you have a genuine revelation when you don't I mean st. Anthony was asked this by his disciples and you know when you have a revelation how do you know it's from God and not from the devil because it could look very beautiful it could still could be from the devil and he said well you can't tell by the way it looks you can only tell by the way it feels after its left because a genuine revelation may terrify you you talked about being troubled but when when it departs you will have a sense of peace and a and a and a revelation from the devil may dazzle you with its beauty but it will leave you anxious and depressed and afraid and so those are all experiential and I thought when your work messes up the boundaries or is it actually supposed to say look these are the right Gospels this is the truth believe that that's then you'll be fine this is obviously garbage so avoid that but if you're doing what everybody here is doing and saying we have to struggle with these questions then you have to partly depend on your own internal sense of authority and validity I was just reading Emerson who said spiritual activity is self evidential oh it isn't always but we'd like to just open it up for conversation on the panel I think you have microphones they should work if not you can borrow mine I suppose I can start the faulty microphone here so there was an issue there regarding specific questions that I would have I go back to the comparison that you made between Thomas and John regarding notions of light and particularly you mentioned with John is that Jesus is the light that the Jesus is the light that enlightens the world or lights up the world illuminates it and this is a response in some ways to to have Thomas understands light and the duality between light and darkness which also is in John very prominently I'm reminded of saying 24 I think it is basically says that there's a light inside of a person that that illuminates illuminates the person if they don't have this illuminating light then that once inside them is darkness also saying 61 which I think that dr. pales mentioned as well says she mentioned that Jesus says that he comes from that which is one or the same or that which is integrated and he tells his listeners that a person who's integrated will have a light welling up inside of them so we have this idea of light being inside the person or inside the practitioner which is somewhat different than what John would understand it there's a kind of external light that comes into the world so I just like to your comments on yeah I'm glad you brought that up because you know you find hints of this same kind of teaching you find in Thomas in Matthew and Luke right I was thinking when you said that of Matthew where Jesus says you are the light of the world and Luke's saying in 1720 the kingdom of God is within you right I mean there are these hills who get in the Gospels and the one you mentioned in Thomas Jesus says within a person of light there is light and if it's if it's not illuminated everything is dark so it's as though one has to discover that which Matthew says is in you I mean and then I think John wants to appropriate it all on says Jesus is the light and you are in total darkness until you receive the light the way I think you should receive it it's just my slightly polemical read I would agree I mean I think it's I think John is forcing the reader to make a choice you know to make a statement and you know we know we're Mariah and Alba and I roll in AJ Levine's Gospel of John course right now so we're learning about John's use of belief as he uses it as a verb never as a noun so I think again it's pointing to action he's asking readers to make a choice versus you know just a passive understanding of belief yeah and that reminds me you know what you just said about you know whoever is is is how the light will come to the light and so his his deeds can be seen or and whoever wants to hide actions will will avoid the light that's very different from what happens as I see it in the fourth century when the question is who is a Christian and who is the right kind of Christian well only if you sign the Creed with homoousios in it right and not the other version with with the other version of it of the term the Arian so-called version I mean who Constantine took that as a litmus test of are you Orthodox a set of beliefs and that is very different from what in fact the gospel itself it says and that's very different that's why I mentioned Matthew 25 last night which is about it's not just a bunch of concept but it's it's how you are in relation to each other that makes me think about questions of authority which is something I think about often and so yeah I think the idea that I think it makes sense in when we look for simple answers that there is a right belief and if you believe that belief then it's easy to tell who's in and who's out who's going to heaven who's going to hell and I think that John even just John 3:16 has been a key text that Christianity is used to say you're in or you're out and so it makes me wonder about things like the Gospel of Thomas it makes things much more complicated because when you just like with the Sufis when you start giving authority to individual experience then you have to make a lot more space for variety and difference of experience that may or may not be synonymous with what an empire wants or what an authority based on church wants and so I wonder what questions of authority and power grandly speaking have to do with these in and out when I was working on the Gnostic Gospels I realize everything is about authority everything it's it's all about that you know and and and and that becomes particularly important in the 4th century with Athanasius with the list of books these books read those books are censored you know that kind of clerical authority I guess I have a problem with that because I think that's that's the main question I was thinking of the verson Thomas that talks about Jesus saying if you know yourself you will not experience poverty but if you don't know yourself it leads to poverty or you will live in poverty you are poor and so I was thinking about a sort of spiritual poverty of course but how does spiritual poverty lead to physical property especially in in our country for instance where people are denied even rights to dignity so how is that sort of sick culture preventing people from knowing themselves and so I think that there's some kind of truth there in what is allowed you know access to access to humanity or access to dignity you know some people think there's no ethical statements in Thomas but of course the primary one is love your brother as if like the apple of your eye the pupil of your eye that is I don't think Thomas was meant to be read in a vacuum it was meant to be read with the other Gospels right so you already know these other things you know that you find in Matthew and Luke it's not either/or it's actually meant to be a supplement and that really changes so so the ethical injunctions you find in the Gospels I would assume are taken for granted and then you go from there but but that statement about he says Adam came into the world very full of wealth beating spiritual awareness of the presence of God and without that you're completely poor but I think it would doesn't negate the issues of actual poverty or what has to be done for other well I have a question and it has to do with the American Revolution of course because that's what I know over the past few years historians religious historians have been fascinated with apocalyptic for a long time and the influence of apocalyptic ideas in American history and millennialism in American history yet when I looked into the the revolutionaries and what they thought about apocalyptic literature there were several concepts one a lot of people in the Revolutionary period wanted nothing to do with the book of revolution Thomas Jefferson I think his exact quote was it reminded him of the something like the nightmares of raining mania raving maniac or something like that which is they're not really positive and then you had several others who did preach on the book of Revelation clergy but in many cases they were a kind of way of the symbols other than just the larger assumption that the symbols indicated that the power of Antichrist was rested in Roman Catholicism and Rome there was a lot of empty Catholicism in the Revolutionary period it was even in Thomas Paine's Common Sense Catholicism but another kind of unique use was a militant use of the book of Revelation in that many found the book of Revelation as a counter-argument to the Sermon on the Mount whereas pacifists like Quakers and others would typically point to the Sermon on the Mount and turn the other cheek as evidence of Jesus refusal to go to war they would turn to Revelation 19 and just in general the world like book of Revelation to prove that as several preachers actually the quote was that Jesus was a man of war don't know how common that was throughout history but that that was the way that it was used for the most part in war time in the book and the revolution that sounds like it's taken from Exodus you know the Lord is a metaphor they use that quite a bit Exodus I think 15 3 yes the song of Miriam and and then it's applied to Jesus returning with the armies of heaven this pheasant you know I really wish that I could write you know I think anybody could write the history of Christianity as a history of the interpretation of the Apocalypse because I didn't know what you said about the revolution I'm sure Thomas Jefferson hated it because he couldn't deal with anything that wasn't rational which is a lot of the biblical material but but understanding how they how people play out and see themselves living out the conflict that they see described there to me is fascinating I'd love to hear other accounts of that thank you at this point I think we'd like to open it up to questions so at the grantee thank you I have two maybe three questions what the first one has to do with the phrase Thomas's use of the phrase my lord and my god at the end of John's Gospel and how that relates to the period in which we think the book of Revelation was written how that might relate to I guess political rhetoric surrounding the personnage of Caesar but then the second question has to do with what you just said about reading the Gospel of Thomas in conjunction with the now canonical Gospels what function might Thomas's gospel had with since it is almost exclusively the sayings of Jesus as opposed to containing events and miracle signs such as the canonical and what might that tell us about the dating of Thomas's gospel if it was intended to be read in conjunction with the Canonical's thank you thank you those are really wonderful questions I hadn't thought about the first thing you raised how that profession my Lord and my god in John is writing what we think about 90 and of course well sue atonia says that that Domitian is addressed as Lord and God we don't know some people question that but certainly the Emperor is as we saw those images he is Lord and God or and certainly the deceased Emperor's so that that's a very important point I hadn't been thinking about John in that context but it sounds like a very good insight one that should be followed further in looking at John I'm Thomas when I say the function of it you know it makes a point of saying these are the secret sayings right and John says okay well from chapter 13 to chapter 18 this is just the disciples alone with Jesus and Matthew and Luke make a point of saying well there were thousands on the hills of Galilee and he was speaking in public and mark says yes but he didn't say anything to them that wasn't said in parables and then in John it claims to be speaking openly and not in parables and Jesus said we still don't understand it but later you'll understand it it seems to me that the audiences are meant to be different that as I said they practice for a rabbi would be to speak in the congregation but when speaking to your intimate disciples you might explain things different and Mark says you know in chapter 4 well privately Jesus explained everything to his disciples but mark tells you it was almost zero about what that could have been now could it have been anything like what we find in Thomas who knows but if he did have secret teaching I mean we know that both John and Thomas claimed to be transmitting it so I wonder whether there was secret teaching I mean it seems to me the mark says so Paul says he did that because he taught that way mark says Jesus taught that way but he doesn't tell us what and then we have two witnesses at least surviving who claimed to report secret teaching and there's a lot in common between those two so my guess is that if Jesus did have secret teaching as Mark says it was meant to be taught to people who were already in part of the inner circle and you know Jewish mysticism later was said to be taught only to people who were who were not young or they were over 35 because they could be immature or simply a mistake if Jesus says well you are my brother you are you come from the divine just as I do if you're immature you could say oh yeah well I can do anything I want you know it could be taken in a megalomaniac or instead of in a in with a kind of spiritual maturity so I think that's a reason that secret teaching was kept secret in Jewish tradition it is kept within a circle in fact it's not written down these are the sacred sayings which Jesus spoke because if you write them down anybody can can find them but if you speak them you know to whom you speak and you don't say them to anybody who you don't think is mature enough to understand what's being said so that's the reason for the oral teachings and and that's what they both claim who knows interesting thank you I was just wondering if you could maybe comment a little bit on what you think Christology has to do with this so you know in Thomas Jesus is one of us and then in John he has become the light that is separate from us and I was wondering if you could just consider that a legendary development you know so in mark Jesus seems to be a prophet but in John he's God you know so in Thomas he's one of us and in John he's not do you think that's kind of what's going up well that's an interesting point because many people have said that the Gospel of Thomas doesn't acknowledge the crucifixion and the resurrection and I think that's a complete misunderstanding of it in a sense he's like us but actually Thomas speaks up to whoever comes to understand the secret words these are the secret words of the Living Jesus now the living Jesus is a term that the author of Revelation uses the living one to so on right so the resurrection is understood because it seems to be that some of these are probably post resurrection sayings so you could say he's one of us but actually I the way I understand it is not he's an ordinary person but rather when he speaks he speaks as one who speaks from the primordial light if that light could speak it would say this so he's only like us when we get to a level of understanding who the image of God is and what that what that suggests about who we actually might be or become so yeah these could be understood as developments you could also understand them if you're just looking at them historically as ways that the authors of John and Thomas deal with the fact that the kingdom of God was supposed to come within a generation and it did so so they reinterpreted I mean either you say well he was wrong which some followers of Jesus are unwilling to say or you say well we didn't understand what he really means is is here all the time so these are re interpretations the way Matthew will say well it's like a wedding and the bridegroom is late and you have to keep waiting and Luke says well you know it comes like a thief in the night but you don't know when that's gonna happen because the thief isn't going to tell you so they all have ways of trying to cope with that issue of the fact that the kingdom did not come as the cataclysmic event that many anticipated so thank you for that question I have a question I'm really curious about pushback that you've gotten not from the Academy per se but outside of the Academy and specifically from the church because if you read if of how you talk about Thomas today is as dangerous to like Orthodox Christianity particularly fundamentalism as it seems to me which is why I think is exciting I wonder if you've gotten that thing this step well you might wonder I I got a whole carton of hate mail I saved it somewhere I don't know where it is people really thought I was trying to just and I thought well you know I somebody said Elaine Pagels who wrote the Gnostic Gospels I said they didn't write all of them I mean this this is what was going on in the early communities but somebody told me that I don't look at my online critics because I just can't deal with all this but some say Elaine pagan no there's a lot of criticism that people think it's a well-known professor of New Testament not far from here that says that you know my purpose is to destroy the church and I thought it's a strange inference to me some participate in a church and I love this tradition I wouldn't devote my life to studying it but but that's the way many see it as you can well imagine I'm what other difficulties do you have with this material though I mean it is difficult the illusion you made you alluded to this idea of Thomas didymus Judas being the twin of Jesus if that is true could you elaborate on the holes that are blown through our concept of incarnation if Thomas is the twin of Jesus where is the divine and Thomas and is that alluded to in the Gospel of Thomas it's a good question at first when Jean de-rez looked at this text he and others asked you know what does this mean about the birth of Jesus I think that this author isn't isn't talking about a literal level of a twin brother but rather on a symbolic level that at the beginning of the of the Gospel of Thomas saying 13 Jesus says to his followers who do people say that I am so this is basically mark 8:30 whatever 37 who do people say that I am and and then the disciples answer and let's see Peter says they say you're a righteous messenger and Matthew says well you're like a wise philosopher and I think what these are are translations of what you find in mark for somebody who speaks Greek so Peters saying you're the Messiah this is a Hebrew word for you know Anointed One Messiah is translated as a messenger from God and and and Matthew saying rabbi in effect your teacher is translated into wise philosopher put people who don't know Hebrew words like rabbi and the seiyya and then Thomas here gets and of course in in mark Peters say you are the Messiah is the right answer and Matthew adds a blessing blessed are you simon barjona as flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but in thomas thomas gets the third he says master my mouth is completely incapable of saying what you are like and if it says jesus took him aside and said three things to him and when they got back the other said what did he tell you and he says if I told you even one of the things he said to me you would pick up stones and throw them at me so you think well what did he say I mean you can only be stoned for two things right one would be adultery and one is for blasphemy so we presume this is not a case of adultery it's a case of blasphemy so you'd be stoned from what I mean in in John's Gospel in chapter 8 says people took up stones to throw them at Jesus because he was making himself like God and so we don't know what the things are you supposed to read the gospel anyway with a teacher who's had the oral and initiation which I haven't I mean I think there was oral instruction that went with his gospel secret teaching but if we infer from other texts Jesus might have said to him I am feyo's which would mean divine and Greek you are Thais I am you because at the end of the gospel Jesus says in saying when await to Thomas whoever accepts my teaching will become like me and I will become that person and the mysteries will be revealed to him so meaning I will become you and you will become me this is not a physiological statement of fraternity but it's a spiritual statement about connection as I read it I was I found your comparison of the authority of Thomas in John and the Gospel of Thomas you know sort of competing portrayals of the authority of Thomas compelling and the topic of Thomas as a twin of course made me think of the Syriac acts of Thomas which I'm sure you know where Thomas literally is the twin of Jesus would you describe that as a sort of third way of portraying the spiritual authority of Thomas or how would you fit the Syriac view of Thomas in with this you know with your narrative well yes exactly you know many people think this comes from a Syriac tradition I don't know if it does or not I mean that was certainly quispel so you precisely because of the acts of Thomas and some of those Syriac texts which have that tradition that Thomas was actually was Jesus's double his other his other self his twin so it could come from that tradition indeed yeah thank you hi I've heard a sermon or two from or based on revelation 21 the idea of new heaven new earth and my question is around do you is that notion evident in some of the other revelations texts that you mentioned last night the notion of new heaven and new earth and if not is the notion that we find it that we find in Revelation John's revelation do you think it's motivated primarily by the political backdrop but you also mentioned that is so interesting of the new heaven and the new earth you know it is in the revelation of Ezra where you find that magnificent passage at the end in which the woman the grieving woman turns in to the New Jerusalem the transformed world right and and the hope for a new Jerusalem and I think that's understood as a restored and renewed creation something else you reminded me of trying to think what it is that vision you know of the New Jerusalem and I think that's what this the artist James Hampton had in mind of a world that's transformed and and and radiates the presence of God you could read this when I was working on the book of Revelation in one of the later chapters chapter 4 I quote Tertullian Christian in Africa in 180 right to 200 and and Tertullian hates the Roman Empire and and he writes scathingly he writes a text called against the nation's and and another one just he hates the Roman Empire and he says well you're trying to destroy us but I don't belong to this to this Empire I don't belong to the world the way it is now I belong to that Jerusalem I'm a citizen there and and he pictures he uses John's revelation to talk about a world that he imagines which doesn't exist and what really shocked me I could not believe it when I read this I had to I what Tertullian says to the Roman emperors is you know you you think everybody has to worship the Emperor and you know you have this rule and over the world but I'm seeing a world that I belong to which John envisioned in the book of Revelation and there there is there is freedom of religion there everyone worships according to his own convictions and I couldn't I thought freedom of religion wait a minute that surely comes out of the Enlightenment right that comes out of the French Revolution the American Revolution that's 17th century language early freedom of religion and then I went back to the Latin and it says exactly liberty autumn religio nice you know and he's a natural human right I could not believe it the Latin says that I put it in the book in Latin for me in parentheses because I couldn't believe he's talking about a human right to freedom of religion which I always associated with the Enlightenment and with the American Revolution and particularly American attempts to establish something that had never been established but interestingly Tertullian sees in John's vision of John 20:1 the new heaven and the new earth he imagines a world that is not real but which for us has become part of the political world at least we strive for you know it's not an impossible reality it was just one that's not fully realized as our current president says but which we're trying to work for but nevertheless I think that vision allowed people to imagine different worlds than the ones in which they were living also even in a political sense thank you that's an important point I have a question and this is for for our panelists one of the things that I'm struck by with your talk last night and tonight was just your excitement for the topic and I work with our alumni and one of the things that I hear most often is when we announced that we were going to have you as our co lecturer was Elaine Pagels made me go to Divinity School and so one of the things I have asked for our panelists is how do we take this excitement that we experience in the walls of Vayner built about topics that may not be common to our laypeople in churches and share that excitement and then how do we preach specifically text of Revelation because I think there's a lot of fear to engaging that and so I toss that up to you all to talk about well I can't speak about preaching but I was struck last night and I have another question for you but it relates to what you're talking about when you're talking about Revelation you said for those of you were who were here she said she's going to give us a Cliff Notes version you know it's been a long time since I've looked at cliff notes but if that was cliff notes it was amazing it was incredibly evocative and what I was thinking and wondering about really is when you study when you research when you write about revelation how does that because what you shared with us was incredibly evocative you're a natural storyteller I think or maybe not a natural storyteller that was part of my question how has your reading of revelation changed your teaching and I think that we can also apply that to preaching but let me just say one thing because I want to hear from all of you on that because as I said I don't do that preaching but you look at all that art you know and and those visions inspire people in passionate ways and they interpret it in so many ways I think you don't have to take it literally to take it seriously I mean William Blake is reading it not about the end of the world but as internal transformation that shatters your world so I'm very interested in I mean there's a lot of passion you can engage with that book so how would you do it well I think something that has been the the most revolutionary part of being in Divinity School for me coming out of a Southern Baptist tradition has been this notion that I think gets instilled to us by all of our professors but especially dr. Levine is that this is about dialogue we're in conversation this like you spoke about this monolithic view that everything is in harmony and goes down one straight line and I think that we as religious leaders know the right words that we're supposed to say and we don't trust our audiences enough to be able to handle differing encounter views and so I think that talking about Thomas in relation to John is beautiful because it helps us this is not revolution specifically but it's about giving more than one voice at the table right because we have been taught in this country to fit a mold we have produced our system of workers and thoughtless kind of drones and I think that what the church has to offer is a sign that's like wake up because God is real and there are so many different ways to understand and know and get at the divine that we're missing by just toting a party-line so I get really excited about John and Thomas being that conversation partner and also about revelation of like we've all had experiences in our life that shake us to the core and I think that that's where we can touch on while acknowledging the problems that are that are really there as opposed to being as opposed to glossing the problems saying like yes in these ways this is detrimental and this is what we need to get from it and we have the pulpit some of us to be able to do that work and that's incredible and we should do that really responsibly I would agree with that I think I what I really appreciated last night was your use of visuals because I'm a visual learner I'm a photographer and so the use of that really helps me form an image in my own mind and when I preach I try to give visual examples or at least story examples and I think being able to illustrate our points with either poems or visuals and you know William Blake or other artists when you can use you know as a Lutheran I can use cranach's you know illustrations because it brings alive the fact that people through the ages have wrestled with these texts in the ways that we are wrestling with them and we can we can have encounter of our own but we can also look at the encounters that other people have had and take from those and it is a dialogue with people at our table but it's also a dialogue with people through the ages and I think ultimately what we bring to this is a relationship with the text but primarily a relationship with each other absolutely I won a second of both of you on that especially on the dialogue aspect of it I think that often I can't speak to preaching I've never preached before but I have taught in adult education settings and in church settings and I think that oftentimes in churches the congregation hears from the pastor and deals with there are sacred texts the New Testament and an outside of that don't just don't get the chance to engage in other strands of tradition other other ideas so for me I'm very concerned with jewish-christian relations and Jewish Christian dialogue which is part of the reason that I do New Testament and Jewish text together and relate those to them so in adult education classes we can take what we learn here at Vanderbilt and and practically apply it and to say well are our texts holy Christian ie other than Jewish well no just like if the Gospels promise holy Gnostic I eat other than orthodoxy well in some sense as it is but in others there's parallels between the synoptic Gospels and this just offers a an alternative dialog for people to engage in and understand other traditions within Christianity but also other other religious traditions as well well I been preaching for 3 and 1/2 years every Sunday and it's a dangerous business that's one of the things my preaching professor told me when I got into it I think last year sometime I began to understand what I was doing and I began to understand that my main role is to inspire people they come for inspiration they come from hard lives hard weeks and they're looking for a nugget of inspiration more than anything I think and I have a friend who wrote a book called everyday apocalyptic and I think that these texts were really written for everyday people I think that sometimes we get lost in the translation because they were written so long ago to a culture that we don't understand but I think the preachers role really is to live in that narrative world of the text to love it to wrestle with it to be passionate about it and to renew rate that as faithfully as possible for the people that come I definitely don't as of yet have any experience with preachings what next semester is for I'm telling myself I in terms of this education and I think that I genuinely think that everything that you touch really informs all that you do and your practice I don't come from any tradition I started studying religion in college so I think I have never had a hard time identifying human touch what I identify as human touch in holy writings towards God so I I don't necessarily feel a need to reclaim some text because I I don't feel that I've ever had them as a part of my own story so in terms of Revelation that's you know for better or worse it's never something I've jumped into I really like Thomas because it it does push some buttons and it and it puts the person the human being and we talked some about how that you know your own authority and your own experience can lead to some very damaging situations but I also think that it's kind of that challenge of showing up and I think your mind can be blown by understanding the access that you have to God and to your own holy pursuit and that kind of responsibility can be a lot to take and so you're talking about the the rough road some of this is sometimes and I think that a lot of what is in Thomas is looking within seeing what you've got and fighting it out and actively going after that word for that will lead you as a third year it's kind of that moment where you're like alright so I'm going to leave at some point and actually have to I started doing this and so I guess I appreciate the way that all of everything is coming together however it will be I get to claim the last word and it's not a question actually it's an announcement next year's Cole lectures will be the first Thursday and Friday of October as this year's was and the speaker for those lectures will be dr. text sample some of you know him those of you who are United Methodists and he will be to let doing two lectures as normal and he does not yet know his titles but I wanted you to save the date know who it was who is going to be and invites you to be with us for the Cole lectures for next year professor Pagels thank you for - engaging insightful lectures and for your thoughtful responses to our questions like to thank the panelists for their insights as well and would like to invite all of you to join us for lunch just across the hall thank you [Applause]

Channel: Vanderbilt University

Views: 86,012

Rating: 4.5141954 out of 5

Keywords: Vanderbilt University, Bible, Gospel of John, Gospel of Thomas

Id: JDdb2uEcldU

Length: 119min 21sec (7161 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 09 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Tharrod1]

This explains the extremely exclusionary nature of the gospel of John that "Only Jesus" is the way and no one will find the kingdom except through him. It's the reason why many modern Christians are so close minded. Even if the Gospel of John has certain gnostic origins as some have theorized; I believe it allows for discrimination and persecution against anyone who disagrees with it and thus should not be taken seriously at all with this exclusionary nature in mind.

[u/Cthulhuman]

I really dislike how ignorant the presenter is about all of the other Gospels. She is unknowingly giving out false information because as she says the Gospel of Thomas takes into consideration that you already know about the teachings of Jesus. However, the way that she goes about it is as if the Gospel of Thomas is isolated. As if they didn't bother reading on the Origin of the World in the pursuit of knowledge about the origin of the world. It really irked me when she started presenting the idea that in the beginning was darkness and wind and the dark waters... And then the light came! The big gnostic idea is that the light was first and descended into the dark waters. I suppose it's just a matter of perspective. I wonder how long they will stay willfully ignorant about the true beginning to the story of creation? There are something like 5 accounts (Apoc. John, Judas, On the Origin of the World, Hypostasis of the Archons, Paraphrase of Shem, maybe more) of the same story from different perspectives, but they'll never accept them because it paints the God of the Jews as the one we have come to know as Satan. However, his deficiency is not malevolence, it is ignorance and we all suffer from it.