Editing Gospel of Thomas (section)

====Intertextuality with the Gospel of John====
{{Update|section|reason=The majority of this section's sources come from the early-to-mid 2000s. As one example, the final paragraph said that as "the scholarly debate continues" someone "recently" responded to these in 2009. This was clearly out of date. That error is fixed, but the rest of the section remains outdated and in need of work.|date=September 2016}}
Another argument for an early date is what some scholars have suggested is an interplay between the [[Gospel of John]] and the ''logia'' of Thomas. Parallels between the two have been taken to suggest that Thomas's ''logia'' preceded John's work, and that the latter was making a point-by-point riposte to Thomas, either in real or mock conflict. This seeming dialectic has been pointed out by several New Testament scholars, notably Gregory J. Riley,{{sfnp|Riley|1995}} [[April DeConick]],{{sfnp|DeConick|2001}} and [[Elaine Pagels]].{{sfnp|Pagels|2004}} Though differing in approach, they argue that several verses in the Gospel of John are best understood as responses to a Thomasine community and its beliefs. Pagels, for example, says that the Gospel of John states that Jesus contains the divine light, while several of Thomas's sayings refer to the light born 'within'.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bettencourt |first=Michael |date=October 30, 2018 |title=The Gospel of Thomas According to Dr. Elaine Pagels {{!}} Revel News |url=https://blogs.yu.edu/revel/2018/10/30/the-gospel-of-thomas-according-to-dr-elaine-pagels/ |access-date=2022-07-13 |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>Logia 24, 50, 61, 83</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Townsend |first=Mark |title=Jesus Through Pagan Eyes: Bridging Neopagan Perspectives with a Progressive Vision of Christ |publisher=Flux |year=2012 |isbn=978-0738721910 |location=Minnesota, U.S. |pages=54 |language=English}}</ref>

The Gospel of John is the only canonical one that gives Thomas the Apostle a dramatic role and spoken part, and Thomas is the only character therein described as being {{transliteration|grc|apistos}} ({{gloss|unbelieving}}), despite the failings of virtually all the Johannine characters to live up to the author's standards of belief. With respect to the famous story of "[[Doubting Thomas]]",<ref>Jn. 20:26–29</ref> it is suggested{{sfnp|Pagels|2004}} that the author of John may have been denigrating or ridiculing a rival school of thought. In another apparent contrast, John's text matter-of-factly presents a bodily resurrection as if this is a ''[[sine qua non]]'' of the faith; in contrast, Thomas's insights about the spirit-and-body are more nuanced.<ref>Logia 29, 80, 87</ref> For Thomas, resurrection seems more a cognitive event of spiritual attainment, one even involving a certain discipline or asceticism. Again, an apparently denigrating portrayal in the "Doubting Thomas" story may either be taken literally, or as a kind of mock "comeback" to Thomas's logia: not as an outright censuring of Thomas, but an improving gloss, as Thomas's thoughts about the spirit and body are not dissimilar from those presented elsewhere in John.<ref group=note>e.g. Jn. 3:6, 6:52–6 – but pointedly contrasting these with 6:63.</ref> John portrays Thomas as physically touching the risen Jesus, inserting fingers and hands into his body, and ending with a shout. Pagels interprets this as signifying one-upmanship by John, who is forcing Thomas to acknowledge Jesus's bodily nature. She writes that "he shows Thomas giving up his search for experiential truth{{snd}}his 'unbelief'{{snd}}to confess what John sees as the truth".{{sfnp|Pagels|2004|pp=66–73}} The point of these examples, as used by Riley and Pagels, is to support the argument that the text of Thomas must have existed and have gained a following at the time of the writing of the Gospel of John, and that the importance of the Thomasine logia was great enough that the author of John felt the necessity of weaving them into their own narrative.

As this scholarly debate continued, theologian Christopher W. Skinner<!-- Please do not wikilink to Christopher Skinner the mathematician --> disagreed with Riley, DeConick, and Pagels over any possible John–Thomas interplay, and concluded that in the book of John, Thomas the disciple "is merely one stitch in a wider literary pattern where uncomprehending characters serve as [[Foil (literature)|foils]] for Jesus's words and deeds."{{sfnp|Skinner|2009|pp=38, 227}}