Christian Texts and History • Re: GThomas as reaction to the proto-catholic reception of GMark and GMatthew

Thomas seeks to project its readers back into a time and place of uncertain stability – an unspecified location where ‘the living Jesus’ speaks, and a shifting group of largely nameless disciples approaches to listen and question him. Just as nearly all the statements in Thomas are introduced without explicit connection to their neighboring logia but merely with a simple phrase like “Jesus said …” (ⲡⲉϫⲉ ⲓ︤ⲥ︥ ϫⲉ-)
...
Thomas prefers to present the words … with a minimum of narrative dressing, a compositional strategy that compels or enables the reader to ‘hear’ the words in his or her own context, unbounded by historical constraints of ‘original’ time and place.
...
The literary design of the Gospel of Thomas, for its part, is well suited to function as a spiritual guidebook. Here we lack the framing of the teachings of Jesus within a biographical narrative familiar from the New Testament gospels, which tell his story punctuated with geographical and chronological signposts.
...
The sayings challenge, puzzle, sometimes even provide conflicting information about a given subject, and in so confronting the readers and hearers force them to create in their own minds the place where all the elements fit together.
...
The Gospel of Thomas stresses the values of solitude and autonomy over community and subordination, and it does so most decisively. Leaders and leadership are disparaged, while singleness and the solitary state are championed.