Interpreting Thomas

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. -- In an ancient neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt, in the Coptic Museum, April DeConick's academic pursuit reached a zenith.

A professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, DeConick had been fascinated with the Gospel of Thomas since her undergraduate days in Michigan.

Now she was leafing through text nearly 2,000 years old -- a full, early Christian text of the Thomas book, which purports to be sayings of Jesus.

It wouldn't be all that illuminating for most; the copy's Egyptian Coptic language makes it impossible reading for most people. But DeConick knows Coptic -- and even teaches it at Wesleyan.

Hers is a journey to know the story behind the story, the back-story of Bible construction and the story of material, especially the Gospel of Thomas, omitted as apocryphal from sanctioned church Scripture. It is a study of Christianity's earliest roots.

"We find the early Christian period was as diverse, if not more diverse, than today," she said.

An orthodoxy was established, and books not deemed correct by the religious leaders fell out of use, she said. Thomas, she said, was one of those books.

Her fascination with Thomas started in the mid-1980s when her mother gave her a book, called "The Other Gospels," which examines early Christian books omitted from the Bible. She asked a religion professor about them. He told her to not bother looking at them, because they basically were rubbish.

She respected the teacher, but she couldn't get rid of the itch. She changed her major to biblical studies. Learning Greek, Aramaic and Coptic was part of the program.

The only known full text is the Coptic-language version uncovered by accident in Egypt 60 years ago near the village Nag Hammadi, and the translations made from it. The book dates to about 120 A.D.

DeConick believes oral tradition led to sayings of Jesus being unintentionally altered in ways that reflected the changing spiritual thought of early Christians. The copy of Thomas found in Egypt probably was translated from Syrian Christians because it reflects on their understanding of Jesus, she said.

Among her conclusions was that a crisis emerged among Christians in Syria because the apocalypse didn't happen. They had expected an imminent, epic battle with angels and demons, followed by the Second Coming of Christ and establishment of a new, holy kingdom. Some of the sayings begin with the posing of questions by disciples about the Second Coming. These actually represent the questions posed by Syrian Christians, she said.

The crisis is resolved by addition of sayings in Thomas that introduce mysticism -- that is, the internalizing of God. The idea of a new kingdom was collapsed into the idea of an experiential spiritualism. The new kingdom already had come, and it could be found within oneself.

Late last year, DeConick's "Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas; A History of the Gospel and its Growth" was published as a scholarly work. Other scholars have undertaken similar work with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It causes a commotion among preachers and followers who teach that these books contain Jesus' exact words.

It causes less stir when addressing the Gospel of Thomas, since Thomas isn't accepted as canonical by most churches.

Nonetheless, the concept is the same: The idea that the ancient Christian texts aren't word-for-word replication of what Jesus said, but are influenced and changed by the orators.

Said DeConick, "We don't have Jesus' actual words. We have memories of his words."