Editing Gospel of Thomas (section)

====Form of the gospel====
Theissen and Merz argue the genre of a collection of sayings was one of the earliest forms in which material about Jesus was handed down.{{sfnp|Theissen|Merz|1998|pp=38–39}} They assert that other collections of sayings, such as the Q source and the collection underlying [[Mark 4]], were absorbed into larger narratives and no longer survive as independent documents, and that no later collections in this form survive.{{sfnp|Theissen|Merz|1998|pp=38–39}} [[Marvin Meyer]] also asserted that the genre of a "sayings collection" is indicative of the 1st century,{{sfnp|Meyer|2001|p=73}} and that in particular the "use of parables without allegorical amplification" seems to antedate the canonical gospels.{{sfnp|Meyer|2001|p=73}}