Thomas and the New Testament

For many decades scholars have assumed that the simpler the Christology, the more primitive and hence the earlier it is. This assumption falls apart when we realize that the complex Christology of Paul is, and remains, the earliest of which we have any written and reliably datable record. The complexity of a Christology is no criterion for its date. If it were so, we would have to date Acts several decades, if not several generations, earlier than Paul, whose history Acts purports to relate. 

It is important to realize that Christologies in the New Testament period, as in subsequent periods, do not arise wholly anew but arise in response to already existing trends and systems of thought. For example, diverse Jewish reflections upon a coming Son of Man were brought over into christological theories. While one Christian might select some characteristics and reject others, the possibility was open for him simply to identify Jesus with the Son of man and adopt the whole of prior Son of Man speculation christologically.

The same is true for sophiological Christology. To identify Jesus and Wisdom was immediately to identify Jesus with all those aspects of Wisdom which were known to a given Christian---often more aspects than are known to us, for the few documents of Wisdom literature that remain to us in the twentieth century are but a remnant of what in the first century was a literate, creative, and ancient tradition. A Christian leader of a primitive church would not have identified Jesus with Wisdom and have expected his followers to understand that he intended but one or two aspects of Wisdom to be considered relevant.

The Johannine sophiological Christology is a case in point. Therein Jesus is not simply _logos_ and nothing else. Jesus is light, life, dispenser of living water, and so on. On Jesus are placed manifold sophiological developments of first-century Judaism. One cannot seek to trace, independently, the Johannine motifs of _logos,_ and then of life, and then of light, and so forth, as though these concepts were brought together uniquely by John. These aspects of divine reality were combined into a conceptual unity decades or centuries earlier. For John to say of Jesus, for example, that he is the Light of the World implies, through pre-Johannine Wisdom literature, that Jesus is _therefore_ one from whom comes waters of life, though of course one is free not to pursue the implication.

Perhaps, by shifting terms, I can make the matter clearer. Imagine, then, that a Christian were to put forth the thesis that Jesus is the Buddha. He would not have to invent independently his categories of thought and expression, his views of the world and of the goals of mankind. He would only have to bring existing Christian traditions (and we may assume he would choose those which suited him) into relationship with his choice of existing Buddhist traditions. His Christology might include such concepts as sambhogakaya, nirvana, dharma, dukkha, prajna, the four noble truths, and whatever else he knew and found significant.

What this means is that a sophiological Christology derived from identification of Jesus and Wisdom could, and probably would, have become a complex Christology in a matter of years and not decades. On the other hand, persons concerned primarily with other possibilities of Christology may simply have chosen to identify Jesus with Wisdom and let it go at that, directly borrowing relatively little material from the rich and elaborated Wisdom tradition. Both Q and Matthew seem to have done this, and their doing so indicates that the identification of Jesus and Wisdom was virtually a commonplace in their environments, worthy of acknowledgment rather than of elaboration.

Paul, in First Corinthians, says that Jesus is the Wisdom of God (1:24) for, like his opponents, he identified the two. The letter to Colossians, by a follower of Paul, also contains such an identification, as does the Gospel of John. The author of the letter to the Ephesians writes that " To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Eph. 3:8--11)" Here too Jesus and God's Wisdom are identified. In fact, one might well say that in the period ca. A.D. 50--90 the question was not so much whether one identified Jesus and Wisdom but what implications one drew from that identification. Any idea shared by Matthew, Paul, Q, John, the Corinthian opponents of Paul, the authors of Colossians and Ephesians, and, for that matter, the author of the Letter to Hebrews was a common and ancient idea indeed.

Both Q and Matthew, who used Q, identify Jesus with Wisdom. Matthew heightens the identification that he finds in his source Q. Several sayings in Q indicate that this identification has been made; Luke 10:21f. and Matt. 11:25f. is a case in point. The passage reads, in Luke, " I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." This is, in the words of Elisabeth Fiorenza, Q's latest stage which "identifies (Jesus) with Wisdom herself insofar as the relationship between son and father is conceived in terms of the relationship between the heavenly Sophia and God." [Elisabeth Schu^:ssler Fiorenza, "Wisdom Mythology and the Christological Hymns of the New Testament," in _Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity,_ ed. Robert Wilken (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1974), p. 17.] In James Robinson's opinion, " what is most significant for our purposes is that here, even if at the very latest stage in the Q tradition, Jesus is not simply cast in the role of one of Sophia's spokesmen even the culminating one, but rather is described with predications that are reserved for Sophia herself. [James Robinson, "Jesus as Sophos and Sophia," in _Aspects,_ ed. Wilken, p. 9.]" It is not possible, in this space, to argue at length for the antiquity of this pericope of Q, as opposed to its existence in "the very latest stage," but the argument that it is late depends upon the prevailing view that Q represents a very early eschatological Son of man preaching which supposedly derives in the main from Jesus himself. This view is by no means unanimously shared by scholars. For example, Koester claims that there was an earlier "version of Q in which the apocalyptic expectation of the Son of man was missing, and in which Jesus' radicalized eschatology of the kingdom and his revelation of divine wisdom in his own words were dominant motifs." [Koester and Robinson, _Trajectories,_ p. 186.] Indeed, it is an interesting experiment to look at the Q sayings which are neither Wisdom sayings (as determined by Suggs) nor sayings present in Thomas. [Cf. M. Jack Suggs, _Wisdom Christology and Law in Matthew's Gospel_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970).] The remaining sayings have a remarkable consistency: concern with John the Baptist, eschatological parallels drawn in reference to the Old Testament prophetic figures and scenes, struggle with the devil and his minions, and a kind of preaching in the form of "as you do X, so X will be done to you."

At the time of Q the _option_ of a highly complex sophiological Christology existed. The author of Q did not take much advantage of this option; Matthew, who used Q, took more advantage of it.

Matthew, however, _assumes_ an identity of Jesus and Wisdom, and so writes his gospel. He does not, to all appearances, strongly stress this identity, nor deal with it in a novel or even particularly significant way. That Jesus can speak as Wisdom itself is something Matthew assumes his community will find acceptable. For example, what in Luke is given as a quotation of the Wisdom of God by Jesus is attributed directly to Jesus in Matthew (Luke 11:49; Matt. 23:34). Robinson writes that "in the last stage of Q ... the shift to a Sophia Christology has been made. This Sophia Christology that emerges at the end of the Q tradition comes to fruition in Matthew, which in general seems to carry forward the Q trajectory more than does Luke." [Robinson, "Jesus as Sophos," p. 10.] "It would not," M. J. Suggs writes, "greatly overstate the case to say that _for Matthew_ Wisdom has `become flesh and dwelled among us' (John 1:14)." He believes that "Matthew has consciously modified the saying about `Wisdom's children' into one about `Wisdom's deeds' _in order to identify Jesus with Wisdom."_ Matthew, he believes, " proceeds to an identification of Jesus with Sophia. It now becomes apparent that the long- recognized sayings belonging to the Wisdom tradition are not merely outcroppings above the surface of Matthean Christology. As it had done for Paul and subsequently did for John, speculation about the pre-existent Sophia constituted an important element in Matthew's understanding of Christ. [Suggs, _Wisdom Christology,_ pp. 57, 97. Italics in originals.]" This I believe to be true and well demonstrated in Sugg's book. Matthew makes the identification of Jesus and Wisdom rather casually, however. In a few pericopes it is obvious; in the Gospel of Matthew as a whole it is present. Matthew assumes his readers will share this perception with him and finds no need to belabor the point.

As I Cor. 1:24 and later Pauline texts indicate, one can safely believe that Paul and his followers identified Wisdom and Jesus. By the time of Matthew, and the time of the Q with which Matthew worked, Paul's identification was thirty or so years old.

The identification of Jesus and Wisdom _can_ immediately carry with it the entirety of the Wisdom tradition. It need not do so, of course. Still, the identification of Jesus and Wisdom needs neither long evolution, the passage of years, nor the emergence of theological genius to imply the whole Wisdom tradition.

Toward the beginning of the letter to the Colossians and at the beginning of the Gospel of John are hymns which have much in common: Col. 1:15--20 and John 1:1--5, 10--14, 16--18. Ka^:semann believed that the hymn in Colossians was a pre-Christian gnostic hymn, and Bultmann believed the same of the hymn in John. More recent scholarship has turned away from this interpretation, and both hymns are now more commonly thought to derive from the Wisdom tradition. Lohse says, of the hymn in Colossians, that "the exalted Christ is called `the image of God, the first-born of all creation,' and he is also called `the beginning.' With these designations the hymn relates to the characterizations which Hellenistic synagogues gave to Wisdom." [Lohse, _Colossians,_ p. 46.] He goes on to point out, in reference to this hymn, that the Hellenistic synagogues found that "Wisdom is not only the mediatrix of creation but also of salvation, and cosmology and soteriology are related to one another in the myth of Wisdom." [Ibid., p. 48.] Similarly, Brown writes of the hymn that begins the Gospel of John, wherein the term _logos_ is of primary importance, that " in the OT presentation of Wisdom, there are good parallels for almost every detail of the Prologue's description of the Word. The Prologue has carried personification further than the OT did in describing Wisdom, but that development stems from the Incarnation. If we ask why the hymn of the Prologue chose to speak of "Word" rather than of "Wisdom," the fact that in Greek the former is masculine while the latter is feminine must be considered. Moreover, the relation of "Word" to the apostolic kerygma is a relevant consideration. [Raymond Brown, _The Gospel of John: Volume One,_ Anchor Bible Series, vol. 29a (New York: Doubleday, 1966), p. 523.]" The terminology in these two hymns is by no means absent from the remainder of Colossians and John, and in both the identification of jesus with Wisdom is more fully developed. 

In Colossians and John, especially in the two hymns, certain terms and conceptions appear prominently that are also prominent in Thomas. The beginning and the creative activity of jesus Christ therein is stressed (John 1:1--3, Col. 1:16--17, Thomas 18, 77). The words "light," "life," "image," are of major importance, as they are in Thomas, and in John it is only in this hymn that we hear that the Word became _sarx_ (cf. Thomas 28). Thomas' central themes of the Kingdom and of the revealing of hidden things are present in Colossians just prior to this hymn (1:12) and just after its completion (1:26--27). The Colossians hymn uses the term _"ta panta"_ (1:16--17), the All or all things, which occurs also throughout Thomas (e.g., 2, 67, 77). It is probably significant that both the letter of Colossians generally (cf. 2:12, 2:20, 3:10--12) and John in its first chapter especially (1:24-- 34) have to do with the rite of baptism. We shall see that this rite was of importance to Thomas as well.

Colossians is not Johannine; John is not Pauline; Thomas is neither Pauline nor Johannine in any full sense. The hymns in Colossians and in John were certainly in existence, and probably in liturgical use prior to the writing of either the letter or the gospel. This provides further indication that the identification of Jesus and Wisdom was made early in the first century. It is hard to imagine that any one of these three (John, Thomas, Colossians) is "gnostic" in a way that will permit the other two to be non-gnostic; but none is gnostic. All three are derived from the tendency of primitive Christianity to apply to Jesus terms and concepts of the Wisdom tradition. While John here uses the word _logos_ and not _sophia,_ Colossians and Thomas use neither _logos_ nor _sophia_ for Jesus. The latter two probably came from a time before logos- Christology, properly so-called, came into being.

The identification of Wisdom and Jesus is built into and underlies much of the early Christian literature we possess. It is not foreign to Q, Matthew, Paul, John, Colossians, Hebrews or Ephesians. It is the property of no one "gattung" and no one ancient theologian. It can be rather casual (as in Matthew and Q) or of central significance (as in John and Colossians). The identification of Wisdom and Jesus always has the potential of leading immediately to full utilization of Wisdom speculations in reference to Jesus. Those authors who refrain from this do so because they have other points they hold to be more important. Those authors who do not hold back in this regard find the identification of Wisdom and Jesus one of the major points they wish to make.

Thomas and John

Raymond Brown, in his article "The Gospel of Thomas and St. John's Gospel," says, "I wish to emphasize that throughout even when John and GTh use the same terms, they often use them in an entirely different theological framework. _Presuming_ GTh is the later work, we find a theological adaptation and reorientation of gospel [i.e., John] ideas in GTh" (Emphasis added.). [Raymond Brown, "The Gospel of Thomas and St. John's Gospel," _New Testament Studies,_ vol. 9, p. 157.] Brown acknowledges that he operates on the assumption that Thomas is a gnostic document although he notes objections to this raised by W. C. van Unnik. [Ibid., p. 156.] As I do not believe that Thomas is gnostic, I shall presume that when John and Thomas share christological conceptions and vocabulary derived from Sophiology, the similarities in derivation, conception, and vocabulary indicate a similarity of theological orientation, which is modified but not eliminated by the divergence of the literary forms and particular emphases of the two documents. Thomas' theology is not identical to that of John, but neither is it "entirely" different.

In the next few pages I shall take advantage of Brown's well worked-out st of parallels between the Gospel of John and Wisdom literature (in his Anchor Bible commentary on John) to show that, to a large extent, what he says is true for John and Wisdom literature is also true for Thomas and Wisdom literature. Brown writes that " Lady Wisdom existed with God from the beginning even before there was an earth (Prov viii 22--23; Sir xxiv 9; Wis vi 22)---so also the Johannine Jesus is the Word who was in the beginning (i 1) and was with the Father before the world existed (xvii 5). [Brown, _Gospel of John,_ p. cxxiii.]" Ka^:semann, writing on John, finds this theme to be of exceptional significance. He claims that " John ... places the community ... in the situation of the beginning when the Word of God came forth and called the world out of darkness into light and life. This beginning is not a past occurrence in saving history which is lost for ever. It is instead the new reality eschatologically revealed. ... The community under the Word lives and exists from the place granted to it in the presence of the Creator and from its ever-new experience of the first day of creation in its own life. This is the meaning of the dogmatic Christology in our Gospel. [Ka^:semann, _Testament,_ p. 53.]" The sophiological Christology Brown traces within the Wisdom tradition ha soteriological implications in the Gospel of John. It does so as well in Thomas. There we find both Logia 18 and 19 referring to the beginning soteriologically, "In the place where the beginning is, there the end will be. Blessed is he who will stand at the beginning, and he will know the end and he will not taste death," and "Blessed is he who was before he was created." These ideas are reflective of a sophiological Christology insofar as Jesus/Wisdom is the one who was before creation, and it may also reflect the experience of such Christians as are united with Jesus. Logion 77, "I am the light which is above all of them, I am all things, all things came forth from me and all things reached me," contains a combination of motifs that all things came into being through Wisdom/Jesus, that Jesus is light and that light was the condition of the initial day of creation. These ideas are not foreign to John.

Brown points out that " Wisdom is said to be a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty (Wis vii 25)---so also Jesus has the Father's glory which he makes manifest to men (i 14, viii 50, xi 4, xvii 5, 22, 24). Wisdom is said to be a reflection of the everlasting light of God (Wis vii 26); and in lighting up the path of men (Sir 1 29), she is to be preferred to any natural light (Wis vii 10, 29)---in Johannine thought God is light (I John i 5); and Jesus who comes forth from God is the light of the world and of men (John i 4--5, vii 12, ix 5), ultimately destined to replace all natural light (Rev xxi 23). [Brown, _Gospel of John,_ p. cxxiii.]" Brown finds something of the same complexity in the Johannine idea of light (wherein God is light and Jesus is the light of the world) as one finds in Thomas' conception of light. In Logia 83 and 84, discussed above, a distinction is made between the light and the image of the light. The light of the world may be, in Thomas, the image of the light which is within the manifest images which compose the world. When, in 83, Thomas writes that (God's) image is hidden in (God's) light, he may be making a distinction of the same order as John's. Neither the "light of the world" nor "the image of the light" are the same as the light which is the everlasting light of God.

Certainly in Thomas light which illuminates man's path is to be preferred to any natural light and may replace it (although Thomas does not conceive of this replacement in an eschatological sense). Thomas writes, in 24, "His disciples said, `Show us the place where you are, for it is necessary for us to seek it.' He said to them, `He who has ears to hear, let him hear. There is light within a man of light and he (or, it) lights the whole world. When he (or, it) does not shine, there is darkness." Jesus is indirectly identified with light in this passage. Moreover, this quotation is in accord with John's pattern of thought. There is a duality between light and darkness; Jesus is found where light is; Jesus who comes from God (cf. 61) is the light of the world and of men.

Returning to Brown: " Wisdom is described as having descended from heaven to dwell with men (Prov. viii 31; Sir xxiv 8; Bar. iii 37; Wis ix 10; James iii 15)---so also Jesus is the Son of Man who has descended from heaven to earth (i 14, iii 31, vi 38, xvi 28). In particular John iii 13, is very close to Bar iii 29 and Wis ix 16--17. The ultimate return of Wisdom to heaven (En xlii 2) offers a parallel to Jesus' return to his Father. [Ibid.]" Thomas is not interested in Jesus' return to his Father in a Johannine sense although that return is clearly implied in Logion 38. He does speak of Jesus' coming from the same (61) and in Logion 28 Jesus speaks as incarnate Sophia, saying "I stood in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in the flesh." This has similarities both to the idea of Wisdom's descent from heaven and to John's "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). 

Thomas, as indicated in Logion 108, stresses the unity of Christians with Jesus, although he does not assert their full identity with Jesus. Ka^:semann claims that Johannine Christians may hope to experience the first day of creation in their own lives. Thomas contains the same idea in 18, "Blessed is he who will stand at the beginning," which introduces the ambiguity of 19, "Blessed is he who was before he was created." As the existence in the present of the condition of the beginning is taken quite seriously by John, so it is by Thomas. The idea of the disciple as one who becomes a child (21, 22, 37, 46) is definitely present. We shall discuss its particular meaning in Thomas in the next chapter. " On the other hand, there are men who reject Wisdom (Prov i 24--25; Bar iii 12; En. xlii 2)--- so also we see in John many who will not listen when Jesus offers them the truth (viii 46, x 25). For those who reject Wisdom death is inevitable; truth is unattainable; and their pleasure in the things of life is transitory.... Thus the coming of Wisdom provokes a division; some seek and find (Prov viii 17; Sir vi 27; Wis vi 12) others do not seek and when they change their minds, it will be too late (Prov i 28). The same language in John describes the effect of Jesus upon men (vii 34, viii 21, xiii 33). [Ibid., cxxiii--cxxiv.]" In Thomas 28 Jesus sees that human beings are not thirsting and that they seek to go out of the world empty. In Logia 59 and 92 it is implied that persons may well fail to seek and to find. As with John so with Thomas, human beings have options; they may be in poverty, they may find the treasure; they may be in darkness or in light; they may seek and find, or they may fail to do so.

The preceding considerations show that the Gospel of Thomas has striking similarities to Johannine conceptions and that both derive much of their thought and terminology from the Wisdom tradition. Ka^:semann says, of John, that "In Christ, the end of the world has not merely come near, but is present and remains present continually." [Ka^:semann, _Testament,_ p. 16.] So, in Thomas, Jesus can say that the Kingdom is spread upon the earth in answer to the question, "On what day will the Kingdom come?" (113), and can demand that those who look for the end look to the present and see what is directly in front of their faces.

The present possibility of salvation is common to both Thomas and to John. Thomas, in 11, speaks of the fact that "the living will not die" and this is not dissimilar to John's "Everyone who lives and believes in me will not die" (11:26). John 8:52 reads, "If anyone keeps my word he will not taste death," and in Thomas we find in Logion 1, "He who finds the meaning of these words will not taste death." The Jews rephrase Jesus' words to "If anyone keeps my word he will not see death," and Thomas in Logion 111 claims that "he who lives by the Living One will not see death." These are verbally and conceptually similar. Eternal life in Thomas and in John are possibilities in the present for one who lives by Jesus and his words. A number of scholars believe that a _later_ redactor added to John's gospel several eschatological reservations lacking in earlier versions; no such reservations are present in Thomas.

Thomas seems to contrast the world of those who do not find God's Kingdom with the world wherein the Kingdom is hidden. John develops a distinction between world and "world" more radically by equating the "world" with those who reject Jesus' words, so that the contrast takes on the cosmological implications of a world of darkness and demonic power which is opposed to the heavenly world of light above. John very occasionally uses world with positive valuation (e.g., 3:16, "God so loved the world...."). Thomas' use of a dual meaning for the word world can allow him to speak ironically in Logion 110: "He who has found the world and becomes rich [world with positive value], let him deny the world [world with negative value]," in a way impossible to the more starkly dualistic Johannine conception. In Logion 43 we find, "By what I say to you, you do not know who I am ...," a notion with obvious Johannine overtones (cf. 14:9); 43 continues, "you have become as the Jews"---a usage, as Brown mentions, that "is quite Johannine."[Brown, "Gospel of Thomas," p. 167.]

On the one hand Thomas is replete with Johannine concepts, language, and dichotomies, and shares John's origin in Jewish Wisdom speculation---and John's ideas of the present possibility of eternal life and the present existence of the beginning in the end. On the other hand, Thomas is also replete with sayings parallel and similar to sayings in the synoptic gospels but derived from a source or sources other than the synoptic gospels.

Logion 43 is a Johannine commentary (by means of an introductory sequence of phrases) on a synoptic-style saying derived from a non-synoptic source. This might seem to indicate that a person familiar with John's gospel made the commentary, except that Thomas, with at least 114 logia of Jesus and a substantial community of ideas and modes of expression with Johannine Christianity, _has not one logion which is a quotation from the Gospel of John or from the Letters._ This is remarkable indeed.

Brown offers four ways in which he believes the composition of Thomas could have been influenced by Johannine ideas and vocabulary, other than by use of the Gospel of John (a use that he recognizes is ruled out by the complete absence of quotations from John). I shall consider each of these four, but not in his order.

1) "The author(s) of GTh may have read John in the past and have been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by recollections." [Ibid.] Should we presume, however, that someone with access to a very early sayings source independent of the synoptic gospels had direct access to that source but not to the Gospel of John or to the synoptic gospels, and so had to rely on recollections? It is difficult to believe that one who does _not_ consciously or unconsciously reflect in his writing influences he may have picked up from reading Matthew, Mark, or Luke would reflect such influences from John. The particular ideas and modes of expression of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are not in Thomas, although Thomas contains many of the sayings they used. It is also difficult to believe that one who knew only John's Gospel would be interested in the preservation of synoptic style sayings in a way that the author of the Gospel of John certainly was not. Johannine traits are common in Thomas but are by no means ubiquitous. There are numerous sayings in Thomas devoid of Johannine ideas or vocabulary.

2) "The author(s) of GTh may have drawn on a source which in turn drew on John." [Ibid.] This is highly unlikely. It would require a conflux, in Thomas, of very badly preserved Johannine traditions and very well preserved "synoptic" traditions. The motivation for the creation of a set of short (and thereby atypical), badly preserved sayings traditions from the Gospel of John is hard to imagine. If we presume that there is a chain from John (the latest Gospel by most estimations) to a source which drew on John and thence to Thomas which draws on that source to produce a _logoi sophon_ sayings collection, we must contend with an exact reversal of known literary trends in early Christianity. We have also multiplied entities needlessly, and are still faced with the fact that Thomas contains no quotations whatsoever from John's gospel.

3) "GTh and John may both be drawing on a third source like Bultmann's hypothetical Offenba^:rungsreden source." [Ibid.] If this were the case, the hypothetical source was very different for the authors of John and Thomas (the lack of direct quotations is again relevant). The former found therein poetic discourses and the latter short and rather enigmatic sayings and brief exchanges. This would, it seems, really require there to be two sources, one used by John and one used by Thomas. The Thomas source would be a sub-set of Thomas logia, yet no non-synoptic logia make more sense when abstracted from Thomas than they do in the document as it stands.

4) "The author(s) of GTh may have had some familiarity with memories of the oral preaching that underlay the Fourth Gospel." [Ibid.] This suggestion is similar to the last mentioned if we assume there must have been two Offenba^:rungsreden sources, the one used by Thomas composed of short logia. If such a source existed, it might well have derived from "the oral preaching that underlay the Fourth Gospel." What would such oral preaching be like? Presumably, it would have been conducted in part by means of short logia of Jesus. It probably would have been more closely connected with the traditions of the words of Jesus that we find in the synoptics than is the Gospel of John, for I assume that John and the synoptics are more divergent in their present forms than was the oral preaching of their respective communities in earlier times.

If we assume that the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John were in part derived from sayings of Jesus such as are found in the synoptics, then the oral preaching of the early Johannine community must have contained sayings of Jesus modified in a Johannine way, but less modified than the sayings now preserved in John. One would expect then that a document which remained from the period of the oral preaching of the Johannine communities and which Thomas used would have been a sayings collection, as Thomas is. It probably would have contained some sayings closer to synoptic sayings than are the discourses in John, and would show signs of early development of the Johannine tendencies, including the creation of "I am ..." sayings, the presentation of Jesus as Wisdom in _sarx,_ exploration of such dualities as light and darkness, dual use of the word "world," etc.

In fact, if we try to imagine what a sayings collection underlying Thomas from an early stage of the Johannine community would look like, it would look very much like Thomas itself. Indeed, the hypothesis that the Gospel of Thomas is a sayings collection from an early stage of the Johannine communities accounts for the fact that Thomas contains no quotations from the as yet unwritten Gospel and Letters of John, accounts for the use of both Johannine vocabulary and synoptic- style sayings, and to a certain extent accounts for the fact that the ideas of Thomas are less well conceptualized than the ideas in John.

The connection between Thomas and John is multifaceted and complex. The Christology of Thomas shares with that of John a place of origin in the Jewish Wisdom tradition. Thomas shows familiarity with Johannine vocabulary and ideas, and uses some of the same dichotomies, such as between "world" and world, and between light and dark. It is incorrect to claim that Thomas is wholly a product of the Christianity that produced the Gospel of John. There are ideas in Thomas that do not appear in John, and vice versa. It may, however, be correct to see in the later Johannine writings a developed and transformed version of Thomasine Christianity. Thomas may have been utilized in early Johannine preaching, before Johannine Christianity reached its full development and before the detachment of the Johannine trajectory from the synoptic trajectory took place.  
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From The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom
by Stevan L. Davies, Seabury Press: New York, 1983

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