Unlocking the Secrets of the Gospel According to Thomas: A Radical Faith for a New Age (review)

There is no shortage of translations of the Gospel of Thomas, the well-known and controversial ancient collection of sayings of Jesus. One may wonder, therefore, what value there is in publishing or reading yet another one. This book, however, presents the text in idiomatic English and includes commentary by one of America’s leading scholars of Coptic and of non-canonical Christian literature.

The Gospel of Thomas, like any text from antiquity, presents the translator with certain complexities. It is extant in two forms—three second-to-third-century fragments in Greek, and one fourth-century complete manuscript in Coptic—indicating that the text has been altered over time, with sayings moved, expanded, and added to the collection. Some scholars even believe the gospel to have been composed in Syriac or Aramaic. The interpreter also must face the problem of elucidating a text that, in its very form, allows for multiple interpretations. Hedrick is fully aware of these difficulties, stating, perhaps to his own disadvantage, “There is no one authoritative explanation for these sayings—nor was there ever!” (xi). As for the text, Hedrick’s solution is to translate the gospel in its fourth-century Coptic form and explain its meaning for an audience of its particular time and place.

The book opens with a preface and a brief introduction (1–18) that set out some bare details about the origins and proclivities of the gospel. Hedrick displays here judicious caution and welcome neutrality. He rejects patristic testimony as sure signs of the origin of the text; he places its origins in Egypt (given that this is where all the evidence is found) rather than Syria (the attribution and sayings reflecting Syriac influence may be late additions to the text); claims few of the sayings (he suggests nos. 82 and 98) go back to the historical Jesus (though he thinks little of even the canonical material was spoken by Jesus); characterizes its theology as more radical and mystical than Gnostic; and rather than argue for an early or late date of composition, posits a nuanced relationship with canonical texts (because the gospel is a collection of collections, each saying must be evaluated separately and “regarded as potentially independent until it can be shown to be dependent on the Synoptic Gospels”) (15).

Hedrick devotes a page (sometimes less, sometimes more) to each saying, with the text placed at the top of the page and the clearly separated commentary below. Some sayings are divided into smaller “sub-sayings” (e.g., no. 21 becomes 21A, 21B, 21C, and 21D) to illustrate their independence from each other. The idiomatic style of the translation is often quite striking; while the text is readable and easy to follow, it chafes against the language of the parallels offered in the commentary. For example, a reader knowledgeable about the beatitudes may not readily see the connection to saying no. 54 (“The poor are favored, for yours is Heaven’s imperial rule”) or the common phrase “Whoever has ears to hear should hear” (Mark 4:9 and elsewhere), which Hedrick renders, without explanation, as either “Better pay attention to this” (no. 8, 21D) or “If you have ears, listen up” (no. 24).

The commentary reflects the caution of Hedrick’s introduction, with the discussion focusing on understanding the saying within the context of the larger text and within the context of Christian and non-Christian literature of its day. Very little secondary literature is employed. Occasionally the views of anonymous “scholars” are mentioned; the exception is April DeConick’s The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation (London: T&T Clark, 2007), which is cited frequently to direct the reader to more detailed discussion. At rare times, Hedrick provides in-depth analysis of a saying in Coptic if it suffers from lacunae or is difficult to understand. One of these is given a particularly...