D.W. Kim, «What Shall We Do? The Community Rules of Thomas in the ‘Fifth Gospel’», Vol. 88 (2007) 393-414
This article argues for the diversity of early Christianity in terms of religiocultural communities. Each early Christian group, based on a personal revelation of leadership and the group’s socio-political milieu, maintained its own tradition (oral, written, or both) of Jesus for the continuity and prosperity of the movement. The leaders of early Christianity allowed outsiders to become insiders in the condition where the new comers committed to give up their previous religious attitude and custom and then follow the new community rules. The membership of the Thomasine group is not exceptional in this case. The Logia tradition of P. Oxy. 1, 654.655, and NHC II, 2. 32: 10-51: 28 in the context of community policy will prove the pre-gnostic peculiarity of the creative and independent movement within the Graeco-Roman world.
What Shall We Do? The Community Rules 399
saying from the Thomas text that does not present any favouritism
towards the former (Jewish) family life. These community rules are
obviously factors representing the significant value of the religio-
ideological family concept in the early Christian community (35).
2. The Anti-Jewish Rules
Secondly, the various anti-Jewish rules illustrate not only that the
group of Thomas, in the beginning, was created by Jewish
proselytisers, but also that the community leader, for its own policy,
activated the anti-Judaism campaign through the traditional rituals.
Marjanen’s statement that “first-century … Christianity reacted in
various ways to the central religious practices of the Jewish faith as it
gradually separated from its mother religion and sought to find its own
identity†(36), this confirms with the Logion in which the Jewish leaders
are seen as selfish and bigoted people: “The Pharisees and the Scribes
have received the keys of knowledge (gnosis), they have hidden them.
They did not enter, and they did not let those (enter) who wished†(37).
The Logiographer of the text characterises these Jewish leaders as
“permanent outsiders†or “the opponents of the truthâ€. The insight of
Valantasis, that the phrase of “([You], however, [be as wise as serpents
and as] innocent [as doves])†(38) is advice to the readers of Thomas,
strengthens the community attitude of Thomas against those
formalists. The image of the obstinate Jewish leadership is mentioned
in Q 11,52 (39), in which “ta;" klei'da" th'" gnwvsew" (the keys of
(35) The view of the Thomasine Family rule, for Uro, is seen as “the true
(divine) family lineageâ€. R. URO, “The Social World of the Gospel of Thomasâ€,
Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity. The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel
of Thomas (ed. J.M. ASGEIRSSON – A.D. DECONICK – R. URO) (Leiden – Boston
2006) 26-28.
(36) A. MARJANEN, “Thomas and Jewish Religious Practicesâ€, Thomas at the
Crossroads, 163.
(37) Logion 39 is presented in both Greek and Coptic texts: P. Oxy. 655 col.
ii. 11-23 and NHC II, 2. 40: 07-13. If the word of ‘keys of knowledge’ was
attractive to gnostic readers only, “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of
heaven†in Matthew 13,11 and Luke 8,10, and “… you have taken away the key
to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who
were entering†in Luke 11,52, should be accepted as gnostic sayings as well.
(38) VALANTASIS, The Gospel of Thomas, 48.
(39) “Woe to you, exegetes of the Law, for you shut the kingdom of (God)
from people; you did not go, nor let in those trying to get inâ€, J.M. ROBINSON, The
Sayings of Jesus. The Sayings Gospel Q in English (Minneapolis 2002) 18.
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