0The opening of the collection says that these are the words the living Jesus spoke to Thomas and another disciple.
1Whoever hears these sayings will not taste death.
2The seeker must not stop until he finds; finding leads to astonishment, reigning, and rest.
3Against those who place the kingdom in heaven, Jesus says the kingdom is within the hearers, and self-knowledge is the way to find it and to know that they are the Father's sons.
4A man will not hesitate to ask about the place, and many who are first will be last and the last first.
5Everything hidden will be revealed, and nothing buried will fail to be raised.
6The disciples ask Jesus about fasting, prayer and observances; his answer survives only in fragments.
26Only then will you see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
27Fasting from the world and keeping a true sabbath are conditions for finding the kingdom and seeing the Father.
28Jesus came in the flesh and found humanity drunk and without thirst, blind in heart, and grieves over them.
30Where disciples are gathered, or even one alone, Jesus is with them.
31A prophet is not accepted at home, nor does a physician heal those who know him.
32A firmly built city on a high mountain can neither fall nor be hidden.
33The hearer listens with one ear and has closed the other.
36Do not worry day or night about food and clothing; you are worth more than the lilies, and God will give you your clothing.
37Asked when they will see him, Jesus answers that it will be when they strip and are not ashamed.
39Jesus rebukes those who hid the key of knowledge and neither entered nor let others in.
77Jesus is present under the lifted stone and in the split wood.
About this work
Author
Anonymous
Attribution
pseudonymous · Ascribed in its prologue to Didymus Judas Thomas; the real author is unknown. The Greek fragments are three Oxyrhynchus papyri (P.Oxy. 1, 654, 655; third century). The complete text survives only in Coptic (Nag Hammadi Codex II), which is not given here.
Standing
This work stood outside the church of its own time, and no later tradition receives it. Anonymous; the earliest church writers to name it (Hippolytus, who reports its use by the Naassenes; Origen; Eusebius, who lists it among the books of heretics) know it only to reject it, and it is not honoured by the Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox traditions.
Date
ca. 100–200 (disputed) · The papyri date to the third century; composition is placed between the early second century and about 200 and is disputed. The fragments printed here were first published in 1897 and 1904 as 'Sayings of Jesus'.
Written at
Syria or Egypt (disputed) (disputed)
Language
Greek
Genre
other
Reference system
Logion numbers of the complete (Coptic) Gospel of Thomas, which the Greek fragments are matched to; 0 is the prologue. Logion 77 appears in the papyrus directly after logion 30 and is shown beside it; where only part of a logion is preserved the display title says so. The logion numbers are the editors' later numbering, not the papyri's; Grenfell and Hunt numbered the sayings 1–8 (P.Oxy. 1) and 1–6 (P.Oxy. 654).
SBL abbreviation
Gos. Thom.
Clavis
CANT 17 (not yet checked)
Text from
Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus and Fragment of a Lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus (London: Henry Frowde, 1904), 11–19, 37–38, 40–41 (P.Oxy. 654, 1, 655), with the Logia of 1897 reprinted there (Printed edition in the public domain)
Critical editions
Harold W. Attridge, in Bentley Layton, ed., Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 95–128 (cited only); Grenfell and Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1 (1898), 654 and 655 in vol. 4 (1904) (cited, not reproduced)