2021/07/28

List of Gospel of Thomas versions Online

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas

At a Glance
Gospel
Genre:
(3/5) ***
Reliability of Dating:
(2/5) **
Length of Text:
Greek
Original Language:
Ancient Translations:
Modern Translations:

Estimated Range of Dating: 50-140 A.D.

Discuss this text on the Early Writings forum.

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Information on the Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is extant in three Greek fragments and one Coptic manuscript. The Greek fragments are P. Oxy. 654, which corresponds to the prologue and sayings 1-7 of the Gospel of Thomas; P. Oxy. 1, which correponds to the Gospel of Thomas 26-30, 77.2, 31-33; and P. Oxy. 655, which corresponds to the Gospel of Thomas 24 and 36-39. P. Oxy 1 is dated shortly after 200 CE for paleographical reasons, and the other two Greek fragments are estimated to have been written in the mid third century. The Coptic text was written shortly before the year 350 CE.

Ron Cameron comments on the textual integrity of Thomas (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 6, p. 535):

Substantial differences do exist between the Greek fragments and the Coptic text. These are best explained as variants resulting from the circulation of more than one Greek edition of Gos. Thom. in antiquity. The existence of three different copies of the Greek text of Gos. Thom. does give evidence of rather frequent copying of this gospel in the 3d century. According to the critical edition of the Greek text by Attridge (in Layton 1989: 99), however, even though these copies do not come from a single ms, the fragmentary state of the papyri does not permit one to determine whether any of the mss "was copied from one another, whether they derive independently from a single archetype, or whether they represent distinct recensions." It is clear, nevertheless, that Gos. Thom. was subject to redaction as it was transmitted. The presence of inner-Coptic errors in the sole surviving translation, moreover, suggests that our present Gos. Thom. is not the first Coptic transcription made from the Greek. The ms tradition indicates that this gospel was appropriated again and again in the generations following its composition. Like many other gospels in the first three centuries, the text of Gos. Thom. must be regarded as unstable.

Ron Cameron comments on the attestation to Thomas (op. cit., p. 535):

The one incontrovertible testimonium to Gos. Thom. is found in Hippolytus of Rome (Haer. 5.7.20). Writing between the years 222-235 C.E., Hippolytus quoes a variant of saying 4 expressly stated to be taken from a text entitled Gos. Thom. Possible references to this gospel by its title alone abound in early Christianity (e.g. Eus. Hist. Eccl. 3.25.6). But such indirect attestations must be treated with care, since they might refer to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Parallels to certain sayings in Gos. Thom. are also abundant; some are found, according to Clement of Alexandria, in the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Egyptians. However, a direct dependence of Gos. Thom. upon another noncanonical gospel is problematic and extremely unlikely. The relationship of Gos. Thom. to the Diatessaron of Tatian is even more vexed, exacerbated by untold difficulties in reconstructing the textual basis of Tatian's tradition, and has not yet been resolved.

In Statistical Correlation Analysis of Thomas and the Synoptics, Stevan Davies argues that the Gospel of Thomas is independent of the canonical gospels on account of differences in order of the sayings.

In his book, Stephen J. Patterson compares the wording of each saying in Thomas to its synoptic counterpart with the conclusion that Thomas represents an autonomous stream of tradition (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, p. 18):

The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus: Buy at amazon.com!If Thomas were dependent upon the synoptic gospels, it would be possible to detect in the case of every Thomas-synoptic parallel the same tradition-historical development behind both the Thomas version of the saying and one or more of the synoptic versions. That is, Thomas' author/editor, in taking up the synoptic version, would have inherited all of the accumulated tradition-historical baggage owned by the synoptic text, and then added to it his or her own redactional twist. In the following texts this is not the case. Rather than reflecting the same tradition-historical development that stands behind their synoptic counterparts, these Thomas sayings seem to be the product of a tradition-history which, though exhibiting the same tendencies operative within the synoptic tradition, is in its own specific details quite unique. This means, of course, that these sayings are not dependent upon their synoptic counterparts, but rather derive from a parallel and separate tradition.

Ron Cameron argues for the independence of Thomas (op. cit., p. 537):

Those who argue that Gos. Thom. is dependent on the Synoptics not only must explain the differences in wording and order, but also give a reason for Gos. Thom.'s choice of genre and the absence of the gospels' narrative material in the text. To assert, for example, that Gos. Thom. erased the passion narratives because Gnosticism was concerned solely with a redeeming message contained in words of revelation (Haenchen 1961: 11) is simply not convincing, since the Apocryphon of James (NHC I, 2), the Second treatise of the Great Seth (NHC VII, 2), and the Apocalypse of Peter (NHC VII, 3) all indicate that sayings of and stories about the death and resurrection of Jesus were reinterpreted by various gnostic groups. For any theory of dependence of Gos. Thom. on the NT to be made plausible, one must show that the variations in form and content of their individual sayings, together with the differences in genre and structure of their entire texts, are intential modifications of their respective parallels, designed to serve a particular purpose.

On dating, Ron Cameron states (op. cit., p. 536):

Determining a plausible date of composition is speculative and depends on a delicate weighing of critical judgments about the history of the transmission of the sayings-of-Jesus tradition and the process of the formation of the written gospel texts. The earliest possible date would be in the middle of the 1st century, when sayings collections such as the Synoptic Sayings Gospel Q first began to be compiled. The latest possible date would be toward the end of the 2d century, prior to the copying of P. Oxy. 1 and the first reference to the text by Hippolytus. If Gos. Thom. is a sayings collection based on an autonomous tradition, and not a gospel harmony conflated from the NT, then a date of composition in, say, the last decades of the 1st century would be more likely than a mid-to-late-2d-century date.

Ron Cameron states on the provenance of Thomas (op. cit., p. 536):

The fact that Judas "the Twin" was the apostolic figure particularly revered in Syriac-speaking churches is important evidence for the date and place of composition of the text. For as Koester (in Layton 1989: 39) has shown, Gos. Thom.'s identification of this author as Jesus' brother Judas does not presuppose a knowledge of the NT, but "rests upon an independent tradition." In addition, the peculiar, redundant name Didymus Judas Thomas seems to be attested only in the East, where the shadowy disciple named Thomas (Mark 3:18 par.; John 14:5) or Thomas Didymus (John 11:16; 20:24; 21:2) was identified with Judas in the Syriac NT and called Judas Thomas (John 14:22). The occurrence of variants of this distinctive name in the Acts of Thomas is especially striking, not only because the latter evidently shows acquaintance with Gos. Thom. 2, 13, 22, and 52, but also because it is widely held that the Acts of Thomas was composed in Syriac in the early 3d century. Other documents that invoke the authority of Judas Thomas by name are also of Syriac origin, such as the Teaching of Addai, the Abgar legend (Eus. Histl. Eccl. 1.13.1-22), and the Book of Thomas the Contender (NHC II, 7).

Accordingly, the naming of Judas Thomas as the ostensible author of Gos. Thom. serves to locate the likely composition of the text in a bilingual environment in E. Syria.

Patterson writes on the dating and provenance of Thomas (op. cit., p. 120):

While the cumulative nature of the sayings collection understandably makes the Gospel of Thomas difficult to date with precision, several factors weigh in favor of a date well before the end of the first century: the way in which Thomas appeals to the authority of particular prominent figures (Thomas, James) against the competing claims of others (Peter, Matthew); in genre, the sayings collection, which seems to have declined in importance after the emergence of the more biographical and dialogical forms near the end of the first century; and its primitive christology, which seems to presuppose a theological climate even more primitive than the later stages of the synoptic sayings gospel, Q. Together these factors suggest a date for Thomas in the vicinity of 70-80 C.E. As for its provenance, while it is possible, even likely, that an early version of this collection associated with James circulated in the environs of Jerusalem, the Gospel of Thomas in more or less its present state comes from eastern Syria, where the popularity of the apostle Thomas (Judas Didymos Thomas) is well attested.

Ron Cameron comments (op. cit., p. 540):

Gos. Thom. took Jesus seriously as a teacher who spoke with authority. It celebrated his memory by preserving sayings in his name that sanctioned the formation of a distinctive community. The gospel locates its group's position within the Christian tradition as an independent Jesus movement, which persisted over the course of several generations of social history without becoming an apocalyptic or kerygmatic sect. Authorized by interpreting the written legacy of Jesus, Gos. Thom. maintained its autonomy and distinct identity by acts of creative attribution. Jesus was characterized as the embodiment of Wisdom; his words, which could harness the very power of the universe, offered her path of 'knowing' as an investment of the imagination. Gos. Thom. defines the role of its community in constructing the fabric of society as a process of sapiental insight and research. The gospel, therefore, charts the course of salvation as a study in interpretation, providing the elixir of life to those for whom the secret of the kingdom is disclosed in the interpretation of Jesus' words.

For information on the individual sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, please take a look at the Collected Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas. These webpages present every saying of the Gospel of Thomas alongside scholarly commentary, parallel references in other literature, comments from visitors, the original Greek and Coptic, and multiple translations to provide you with deeper insight into the meaning of the Gospel of Thomas.

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Colin Ward - Wikipedia anarchist

Colin Ward - Wikipedia

Colin Ward

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For other people named Colin Ward, see Colin Ward (disambiguation).
Colin Ward in his workroom, October 2003

Colin Ward (14 August 1924 – 11 February 2010) was a British anarchist writer. He has been called "one of the greatest anarchist thinkers of the past half century, and a pioneering social historian."[1]

Life[edit source]

Ward was born in Wanstead, Essex. He became an anarchist while in the British Army during World War II. As a subscriber to War Commentary, the war-time equivalent of Freedom, he was called in 1945 from Orkney, where he was serving, to give evidence at the London trial of the editors for publishing an article allegedly intended to seduce soldiers from their duty or allegiance. Ward robustly repudiated any seduction, but the three editors (Philip Sansom, Vernon Richards and John Hewetson) were convicted and sentenced to nine months imprisonment.

He was an editor of the British anarchist newspaper Freedom from 1947 to 1960, and the founder and editor of the monthly anarchist journal Anarchy from 1961 to 1970.[2]

From 1952 to 1961, Ward worked as an architect. In 1971, he became the Education Officer for the Town and Country Planning Association. He published widely on education, architecture and town planning. His most influential book was The Child in the City (1978), about children's street culture. From 1995 to 1996, Ward was Centennial Professor of Housing and Social Policy at the London School of Economics.[3]

In 2001, Ward was made an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University.[4]

Thought[edit source]

Anarchism[edit source]

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Ward's philosophy aimed at removing authoritarian forms of social organisation and replacing them with self-managed, non-hierarchical forms. This is based upon the principle that, as Ward put it, "in small face-to-face groups, the bureaucratising and hierarchical tendencies inherent in organisations have least opportunity to develop".[5] He particularly admired the Swiss system of direct democracy and cantons whereby each canton is run by its members who have control on the laws placed upon them, although he disapproved of many the policies this system enacted.

"I believe that the social ideas of anarchism: autonomous groups, spontaneous order, workers' control, the federative principle, add up to a coherent theory of social organisation which is a valid and realistic alternative to the authoritarian, hierarchical and institutional social philosophy which we see in application all around us. Man will be compelled, Kropotkin declared, 'to find new forms of organisation for the social functions which the State fulfils through the bureaucracy' and he insisted that 'as long as this is not done nothing will be done. I think we have discovered what these new forms of organisation should be. We have now to make the opportunities for putting them into practice".

Anarchism for Ward is "a description of a mode of human organization, rooted in the experience of everyday life, which operates side by side with, and in spite of, the dominant authoritarian trends of our society".[6] In contrast to many anarchist philosophers and practitioners, Ward holds that "anarchism in all its guises is an assertion of human dignity and responsibility. It is not a programme for political change but an act of social self-determination".[7]

Rural issues[edit source]

Most of Ward's works deal with the issue of rural housing and the problems of overpopulation and planning regulations in Britain to which he proposed anarchistic solutions. He was a keen admirer of architect Walter Segal who set up a 'build it yourself' system in Lewisham meaning that land that was too small or difficult to build on conventionally was given to people who with Segal's help would build their own homes. Ward was very keen on the idea of 'build it yourself' having said in response to the proposition of removing all planning laws, 'I don't believe in just letting it rip, the rich get away with murder when that happens. But I do want the planning system to be flexible enough to give homeless people a chance'. In his book Cotters and Squatters, Ward described the historical development of informal customs to appropriate land for housing which frequently grew up in opposition to legally constituted systems of land ownership. Ward described folkways in many cultures which parallel the Welsh tradition of the Tŷ unnos or 'one night house' erected on common land.

Ward included a passage from one of his anarchist forebears, Peter Kropotkin, who said of the empty and overgrown landscape of Surrey and Sussex at the end of the 19th century, 'in every direction I see abandoned cottages and orchards going to ruin, a whole population has disappeared.' Ward himself went on to observe: 'Precisely a century after this account was written, the fields were empty again. Fifty years of subsidies had made the owners of arable land millionaires through mechanised cultivation and, with a crisis of over-production; the European Community was rewarding them for growing no crops on part of their land. However, opportunities for the homeless poor were fewer than ever in history. The grown-up children of local families can't get on the housing ladder'. Ward's solution was that 'there should be some place in every parish where it's possible for people to build their own homes, and they should be allowed to do it a bit at a time, starting in a simple way and improving the structure as they go along. The idea that a house should be completed in one go before you can get planning permission and a mortgage is ridiculous. Look at the houses in this village. Many of them have developed their character over centuries - a bit of medieval at the back, with Tudor and Georgian add-ons.'

Education[edit source]

Colin Ward in his main theoretical publication Anarchy in Action (1973) in a chapter called "Schools No Longer" "discusses the genealogy of education and schooling, in particular examining the writings of Everett Reimer and Ivan Illich, and the beliefs of anarchist educator Paul Goodman. Many of Colin’s writings in the 1970s, in particular Streetwork: The Exploding School (1973, with Anthony Fyson), focused on learning practices and spaces outside of the school building. In introducing Streetwork, Ward writes, "[this] is a book about ideas: ideas of the environment as the educational resource, ideas of the enquiring school, the school without walls...”. In the same year, Ward contributed to Education Without Schools (edited by Peter Buckman) discussing 'the role of the state'. He argued that "one significant role of the state in the national education systems of the world is to perpetuate social and economic injustice"".[8]

In The Child in the City (1978), and later The Child in the Country (1988), Ward "examined the everyday spaces of young people’s lives and how they can negotiate and re-articulate the various environments they inhabit. In his earlier text, the more famous of the two, Colin Ward explores the creativity and uniqueness of children and how they cultivate 'the art of making the city work'. He argued that through play, appropriation and imagination, children can counter adult-based intentions and interpretations of the built environment. His later text, The Child in the Country, inspired a number of social scientists, notably geographer Chris Philo (1992), to call for more attention to be paid to young people as a 'hidden' and marginalised group in society."[8]

Bibliography[edit source]

  • Talking Green (2012)
  • Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader (edited by Damian F. White and Chris Wilbert) (2011)
  • Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction (2004)
  • Cotters and Squatters: The Hidden History of Housing (2004)
  • Talking Anarchy (with David Goodway) (2003)
  • Sociable Cities: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard (with Peter Hall) (1999)
  • Reflected in Water: a Crisis of Social Responsibility (1997)
  • Havens and Springboards: The Foyer Movement in Context (1997)
  • Stamps: Designs For Anarchist Postage Stamps (illustrated by Clifford Harper) (1997)
  • Talking to Architects (1996)
  • New Town, Home Town (1993)
  • Freedom to Go: After the Motor Age (1991)
  • Influences: Voices of Creative Dissent (1991)
  • Talking Houses: 10 Lectures (1990)
  • Undermining the Central Line (with Ruth Rendell) (1989)
  • Welcome, Thinner City: Urban Survival in the 1990s (1989)
  • The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture (with David Crouch) (1988)
  • The Child in the Country (1988)
  • A Decade of Anarchy (1961-1970) (1987)
  • Chartres: the Making of a Miracle (1986)
  • Goodnight Campers! The History of the British Holiday camp (with Dennis Hardy) (1986)
  • When We Build Again: Let's Have Housing that Works! (1985)
  • Arcadia for All: The Legacy of a Makeshift Landscape (with Dennis Hardy) (1984)
  • The Child in the City (1978)
  • Housing: An Anarchist Approach (1976)
  • British School Buildings: Designs and Appraisals 1964-74 (1976)
  • Tenants Take Over (1974)
  • Utopia (1974)
  • Vandalism (ed.) (1974)
  • Anarchy in Action (1973)
  • Streetwork: The Exploding School (with Anthony Fyson) (1973)
  • Work (1972)

Critical work on Colin Ward[edit source]

  • Wilbert, Chris, and Damian F. White. Autonomy, solidarity, possibility: the Colin Ward reader. AK Press, 2011.
  • Levy, Carl. Colin Ward: Life, Times and Thought. Lawrence & Wishart, 2013.
  • Remembering Colin Ward (Five Leaves Press 2011)
  • Richer Futures. Fashioning A New Politics (Earthscan, 1999)
  • Goodway, David. Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. PM Press, 2012.
  • Honeywell, Carissa. A British Anarchist Tradition: Herbert Read, Alex Comfort and Colin Ward. A&C Black, 2011.
  • Levy, Carl. "Introduction: Colin Ward (1924-2010)." Anarchist Studies 19.2 (2011): 7-16.
  • Goodway, David. "Colin Ward and the New Left." Anarchist Studies 19.2 (2011): 42–56.
  • Price, Wayne (2015). "Colin Ward's Anarchism". Anarcho-Syndicalist Review. 63.
  • White, Stuart. "Social anarchism, lifestyle anarchism, and the anarchism of Colin Ward." Anarchist Studies 19.2 (2011): 92-104.
  • White, Stuart. "Making anarchism respectable? The social philosophy of Colin Ward." Journal of Political Ideologies, 12:1 (2007): 11–28, DOI: 10.1080/13569310601095580

See also[edit source]

References[edit source]

  1. ^ Krznaric, Roman (27 February 2010). "Colin Ward – an obituary and appreciation of the chuckling anarchist". outrospection.org. Archived from the original on 21 September 2011. Retrieved 27 February 2010.
  2. ^ "Anglia Ruskin University". anglia.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 28 July 2008. Retrieved 13 July 2008.
  3. ^ "The Times & The Sunday Times". The Times.
  4. ^ "Anglia Ruskin University, profile". anglia.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 28 July 2008. Retrieved 13 July 2008.
  5. ^ « in small face-to-face groups, the bureaucratising and hierarchical tendencies inherent in organisations have least opportunity to develop », Colin Ward, Anarchism as a Theory of Organization, 1966, "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 25 March 2010. Retrieved 1 March 2010..
  6. ^ Colin Ward, Anarchism as a Theory of Organization, Freedom Press, London, 1988, p. 14
  7. ^ Colin Ward, Anarchism as a Theory of Organization, Freedom Press, London, 1988, p. 143
  8. ^ Jump up to:a b Mills, S. (2010) 'Colin Ward: The ‘Gentle’ Anarchist and Informal Education’ at the encyclopaedia of informal education.

Further reading[edit source]

External links[edit source]

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