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• Title: Exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Gospels of Thomas and John.
• Author : Journal of Biblical Literature
• Release Date : January 22, 1999
• Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 220 KB

Description

Just as the Gospels of Thomas and John, for all their similarities, nevertheless articulate somewhat conflicting traditions about Jesus, so also these two Gospels articulate conflicting traditions about creation. Several scholars recently have investigated the former; this article primarily explores the latter. (1) In his recent monograph, Greg Riley, for example, depicts the "communities of John and Thomas" living "in close ... proximity" with one another, sharing both agreements and disagreements. (2) Riley concludes that John's author writes in response to earlier traditions that survive in Thomas, intending his teaching on bodily resurrection to refute the view of spiritual resurrection expressed in the Gospel of Thomas. April De Conick, in her recent monograph and subsequent article, disagrees with Riley's characterization of the conflict, but agrees with the premise, suggesting instead that John's author is arguing against a Thomas tradition encouraging the disciples to seek visions through ecstatic ascent. (3) Helmut Koester and Stephen Patterson have set forth a comparative analysis of sayings involving, for example, Christology and anthropology, that points toward the same conclusion: that the Johannine author polemicizes against certain traditions about Jesus and his message that we find in the Gospel of Thomas. (4) Without accepting all their conclusions (sine this research, like Michael Williams's recent book, (5) raises questions concerning the category "gnostic," which Koester and Patterson sometimes apply to Thomas's logia (6)), I adopt here a similar method, comparing patterns of Genesis exegesis in these two respective Gospels. In order to relate what happened "in the beginning" to bring about the present human condition, each Gospel author invokes and interprets Genesis 1--John in his remarkable prologue (which may, of course, predate the Gospel itself), and Thomas in a cluster of sayings that occur throughout his Gospel. (7) Stevan Davies, in his incisive recent article, points out that both John and Thomas, in contrast with the Synoptic Gospels, speak of the kingdom of God not eschatologically but protologically--that is, by comparing ordinary life in the present not with that of the coming kingdom but with that of the primordial creation. (8) Davies persuasively demonstrates that "Jesus, as Thomas portrays him, insists that the world ought to be considered to be in the condition of Gen 1:1-2:4 and, accordingly, that people should restore themselves to the condition of the image of God." (9)

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