The Gospel of Thomas
Attributed to Didymus Judas Thomas; translated by Mark M. Mattison
A collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, without narrative, discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. Some sayings parallel the canonical Gospels; others present a strikingly interior teaching.
- Composed
- Composed 1st to 2nd century CE; Coptic manuscript, 4th century
- Original language
- Coptic (from a Greek original)
What this text is
The Gospel of Thomas is a sayings gospel: one hundred fourteen statements attributed to Jesus, with no birth story, no miracles, no crucifixion narrative. A complete Coptic manuscript was found in the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt in 1945, and Greek fragments found earlier at Oxyrhynchus show the text circulated by the second century.
Roughly half the sayings have close parallels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The other half do not, and their emphasis is different: the kingdom is described as already present, "spread out over the earth," and the path runs through self-knowledge. Scholars still debate whether Thomas preserves an independent early tradition or reworks the canonical material.
The version shown here is Mark M. Mattison's translation from the Coptic text of Nag Hammadi Codex II, published with a dedication to the public domain.
Why researchers read it
Thomas is central evidence in a question SOL investigates directly: whether the earliest Jesus movement carried an interior, transformative teaching that the later institutional tradition reframed. Because Thomas is a primary source rather than a modern reconstruction, it lets a reader test that hypothesis against the actual words.
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