(The following is a reproduction of one of my university essays.)
Introduction
This essay will compare the Thomasine and Markan presentations of Jesus’s identity, asking how they cohere and differ, and if their general portrait of Jesus’s identity is essentially the same. I will focus on these questions: “Do they see Jesus as the Messiah and as fully-divine?” and “Do they see Jesus as a personal Saviour?” I will explore these questions through Jesus’s responses to questions about His identity, His statements about salvation, and the Gospels’ views of the “Christ events”. I will presume that the Gospel of Thomas was compiled in Syria during the second century AD (no later than 132 AD).[i] I will presume that Thomas is heavily dependent upon the canonical Gospels as nearly two-thirds of Thomasine sayings resemble canonical ones, while also drawing on proto-Gnostic sayings.[ii] Proto-Gnostics were loose groups of individuals before 100 AD who believed that ‘the world was created and ruled by a lesser divinity, the demiurge, and that Christ was an emissary of the remote supreme divine being, esoteric knowledge (gnosis) of whom enabled’ redemption.[iii] I will presume Mark’s Gospel was written in Rome soon after 70 AD for a gentile audience.[iv] I will conclude that, while Thomas generally tends to see Jesus as an esoteric teacher and revealer of the means of salvation, Mark sees Him as a unique, personal Saviour.
Thomas provides us with several sayings where Jesus is asked about His identity. In Saying 13, Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Compare me to something and tell me what I am like’ and implicitly denies, via his silence, the responses that He is ‘like a just messenger’ or a ‘wise philosopher’. He does not, however, rebut Thomas’s response that his ‘mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like’, apophatically implying Jesus’s divinity.[v] How divine exactly and divine in what way is open to debate. This is why Jesus rebuts Thomas’s address of Him as ‘Teacher’ because Thomas no longer needs a teacher as he has uncovered the divine spark within: ‘Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended’ (paralleling Saying 108).[vi] Thomas did therefore see Jesus as at least partly divine but seemingly denies Jesus’s uniqueness, implying a temporal deification whereby one who understands Jesus’s teachings becomes divine now, there is then no significant distinction between them and Jesus, and Jesus no longer plays a key role in their life.[vii] When asked about His identity, Jesus often declines to directly answer, instead questioning the questioner(s). In Saying 91 Jesus is asked, ‘who are you so that we may believe in you’ but critiques His disciples’ lack of observation: ‘You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence’. I agree with Pokorný: ‘Jesus refuses to declare his identity […as] it is implicit in his teaching’.[viii] While Gathercole rightly notes that there is a clearer Christological emphasis here than in the parallel Synoptic passages, Jesus dodges the question of whether they should believe in Him as a personal Saviour.[ix] However, this alone does not suggest Jesus was denying His divinity as arguments from silence are unreliable. In Saying 43 Jesus is asked, ‘Who are you to say these things to us?’, questioning His personal authority, and responds that the disciples should know who He is from His teachings. This suggests He has authority to teach but not necessarily as an individual with unending purpose. A similar position seems to be proposed by Mark who has Jesus reply, ‘No one is good but God alone’ to a rich man who asks, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ (10:17-18). However, I believe Jesus is testing the man’s faith and seeing if he will reply that he believes Jesus is God.[x] We find a similar conversation where Peter confesses Jesus as “the Messiah” (8:29) and Jesus commands His disciples never to reveal His identity. While there is no explicit verbal affirmation from Jesus that Peter’s confession was true, arguments from silence are unreliable so we should presume Jesus implicitly agrees with Peter’s confession because He does not reject it. If Mark is saying Jesus is not the Messiah, ‘he is very bad indeed at saying it! Matthew, who is perhaps Mark’s earliest interpreter, did not understand the scene in that way […] for he added [… that] it is an insight given to him by God’.[xi] I further agree with Hooker that Jesus’s command for the disciples not to reveal His identity after the Transfiguration (the ultimate, divine testimony of Jesus’s deity) rules out the idea that His secrecy command in 8:30 can be taken as Jesus disagreeing with Peter’s assertion.[xii] Finally, if by having Jesus command secrecy regarding His identity, He was indirectly rejecting Peter’s assertion, it would seem very strange that Mark places Jesus’s foretelling of His crucifixion and Resurrection (the key events symbolising His Messiahship) immediately after Peter’s Confession (8:31-32). It must instead mean, ‘Yes – but this is not the time to proclaim my messiahship’.[xiii] Jesus needed to keep His identity secret during His earthly life for three reasons. Firstly, to give Him enough time to complete his ministry before the Romans, Scribes and Pharisees found out about his claim. Secondly, to encourage people to have a personal encounter with Him and thereby come to faith in Him, rather than remotely through reasoning or eyewitness accounts.[xiv] Thirdly, if everybody knew He was the Messiah before they met Him, they would not have to work out His identity which requires thought and faith.[xv] Those with a strong faith, like the Roman soldier by the Cross, Peter and Nicodemus, concluded that He was the Christ after being with Jesus. Jesus’s ‘every action is characterised by authority; though he does not teach about himself, his teaching challenges men and women with a choice between believing in him and rejecting him’.[xvi] It would undermine Mark’s structure, themes and plot if Jesus Himself were to repeatedly, directly and publicly proclaim His divinity. However, unlike in Thomas, it is clear throughout Mark that the conclusion which individuals ought to ultimately arrive at is that Jesus is divine but they must arrive at that truth personally, not have it dictated to them.
Saying 52 is Thomas’s clearest reference to Jesus’s divinity: “You have disregarded the living one who is in your presence”, suggesting Jesus outranks the Tanakhic prophets.[xvii] It implies there is something innate within Jesus, not just His teachings, that is unique and authoritative.[xviii] However, the playing off of Jesus against Tanakhic prophets is absent from the canonical Gospels where the fulfilment of Jewish prophecies is often cited as evidence of Jesus’s Messiahship.[xix] This is seemingly why, in Thomas, Jesus does not instead reply, ‘Yes they spoke of me’; the lack of such a response suggests that a classical Christology can be ruled out.[xx] The opposite is true for Mark. While Mark generally fails to use a fulfilment formula as Matthew does (i.e. ‘This was to fulfil what had been spoken through’, Matthew 12:17), Mark sometimes reports Jesus carrying out actions, matching those foretold in the Tanakh. In 15:27-28, Mark states that Jesus was crucified between two thieves, aligning with Isaiah 53:12. In 16:19, Mark tells of the Ascension which is foreshadowed in Psalms 68:18. In 1:15, Mark has Jesus say, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near’. We do not see Tanakhic prophecies fulfilled in Thomas. In Saying 77, Jesus proclaims: ‘I am the light over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained’, suggesting His divine omnipresence and sovereignty. ‘[T]o me all attained’ also suggests His divinity but in a panentheistic way (a deity of whom creation is a part), as Pokorný, Valantasis and Hedrick agree.[xxi] This view links with Jesus’s assertions that his ‘lordship is gentle’, that one can ‘find rest within it’ (Saying 90) and that ‘Whoever is near me is near the fire, and whoever is far from me is far from the (Father’s) kingdom’ (Saying 82), suggesting His unique teachings unlock Heaven. Jesus says: ‘whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me’ (Saying 55), implying His divinity and sovereignty, being worthy of praise and being followed. This echoes Mark 8:34, presumably hinting that Thomas at least partly agrees with Mark. However, for Thomas, unlike Mark, following Jesus does not necessarily mean believing in Him as a personal saviour (Mark 1:1-3,7-8,9-11,14-15,23-24,27).[xxii] Saying 55 is rare in Thomas for emphasising Jesus Himself and highlighting the Cross, but not in a sacrificial, atoning way, instead seeing it as the ultimate metaphor and moral exemplar for embracing suffering as the cost of following Jesus. The question becomes, is it just coincidence that Jesus is the one to teach these sayings? Could another have taught them and had the same impact? The answer is probably yes but, ‘Jesus is certainly the one who […] chooses the disciples to listen to his message […] and actually sets the pre-requisites for discipleship’.[xxiii] It can only be inferred from Thomas that Jesus alone was predestined by God to carry out the task and only Jesus foreknew which disciples (“the Elect”) would understand and apply His sayings. However, Mark’s explicit statements that Jesus is the ‘Christ, the Son of God’ (1:1), ‘the Holy One of God’ (1:24), that He fulfils Isaiah’s prophecy about preparing the way of the Lord (1:2-3), and that with Jesus’s coming, ‘The time is fulfilled’ (1:15), make it clear that only Jesus was predestined by God to bring the Good News. This is reinforced by the Markan Jesus’s foretelling of His death and Resurrection three times. It is therefore clear that Mark, unlike Thomas, emphasises the role of Jesus as the Messiah and personal saviour.
These conflicting sayings on Jesus’s identity demonstrate how complex a text Thomas is and that it probably developed over decades from various sources.[xxiv] G.K. Chesterton said, ‘You cannot put a book in the witness-box and ask it what it really means’; this is even more true with sayings collections.[xxv] There is no single, clear, consistent, fully-developed Christology in Thomas, but base notions, rough allusions and competing ideas in tension.[xxvi] Trying to discern such a Christology, one is anachronistically imposing linear, systematic categories of later Christian theology. We can, however, rule out the traditional, western Christology derived from the canonical Gospels. Thomas’s theology is performative, emerging ‘from the readers’ and hearers’ responses’. He refuses to definitively set out a systematic Christology, forcing readers to form their Christology individually and demonstrating that His message, rather than identity, is central to redemption.[xxvii] This contrasts with Mark’s presumption from the outset that Jesus is the Messiah and consistent implicit references to that presumption.
In Saying 61, Jesus asserts that He is ‘the one who comes from what is whole. I was granted from the things of my Father’. This implies Jesus’s subordination to the Father but it is hard to infer that He may also be divine, or if Thomas just sees Him as God’s Son. He says He received from His Father, not that such things were innate. He then says one can become whole in this life by being filled with light, denying His uniqueness as, after deification, ‘there can be no distinction between Jesus and those who follow him’.[xxviii] Thomas and Mark differ here as Mark presumes Jesus’s uniqueness, as is especially highlighted in Jesus’s forgiveness of the paralytic’s sins after healing him (2:1-12) where He responds to those questioning His offer of forgiveness, ‘the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ (2:10). This distinguishes Jesus from prior prophets who performed miracles but could not forgive sins. It is also emphasised in 2:8 where Jesus reads the minds of others, another power unique to the Godhead: ‘At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves’. Even John the Baptist says, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals’ (1:7).
As we have seen, the Thomasine Jesus never directly asserts divine status, but the Markan Jesus does occasionally. In 14:53-65, the High Priest asks Jesus, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’ and Jesus responds, ‘I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven’. This is a startlingly direct response for the Markan Jesus, affirming His Messiahship, echoing Psalm 110:1 and Daniel 7:13-14.[xxix] However, given this clear affirmation of His divine status, it is curious that Jesus does not subsequently give a similar reply in 15:1-5 where He repeatedly refuses to answer if He is the “King of the Jews”. This may be because He does not see Himself as answerable to the Roman authorities but does to the Jewish authorities. However, this is not stated in Mark (it is in John 19:11). However, Jesus does not deny His divinity, he simply does not reply and arguments from silence are unreliable. The Roman Centurion’s exclamation after Jesus’s death that ‘Truly this man was God’s Son’ (15:39) is another clear Markan sign of Jesus’s divinity. So while the Markan Jesus rarely asserts His divinity and generally only does so when asked by others, this is not because He is rejecting it but is instead because it has to be discovered by readers in a personal encounter. The fact that Mark rarely has Jesus explicitly declare His divinity actually reinforces the case for His divinity as it was so obvious for Mark that Jesus was the Messiah that he did not feel the need to repeatedly assert it.
A key difference between the Thomasine and Markan accounts of Jesus’s identity is their respective views of the “Christ events”. Thomas does not include accounts of any of the “Christ-events” (His Virgin Birth, miracles, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Transfiguration) which Mark sees as paramount to Jesus’s identity and believers’ salvation, devoting huge sections to it.[xxx] These events are often seen as indicators of Jesus’s Messiahship and their omission casts uncertainty over Thomas’s Christology. Interestingly, both Thomas and Mark fail to include birth narratives or genealogies, linking Jesus to the Davidic lineage, demonstrating His Messiahship, seemingly suggesting less emphasis on Jesus as an individual than Matthew and Luke. However, Mark, unlike Thomas, compensates for this by including miracles, the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Transfiguration. This shows that Thomas makes little effort to elevate Jesus as an individual. For Mark, there would be no salvation without personal belief in Christ. For Thomas, however, there would be no salvation without a deep knowledge of one’s inner self, which seemingly almost just happens to have been revealed by someone called Jesus.[xxxi] Conversely, in Mark, we find lengthy narrations of the “Christ events”. There is, however, a central paradox when it comes to Mark’s views of the “Christ events”. On the one hand, he seems to view them as central and uses them to point to Jesus’s divinity and Messiahship but he equally only includes a brief Resurrection narrative, which seems strange as the Resurrection is the most important “Christ event”. However, Mark excluded a lengthy Resurrection narrative not to cast doubt over Jesus’s divinity but instead to refocus readers’ attention on the crucifixion, the epitome of the self-denial Christians ought to imitate and a necessary pre-requisite for the Resurrection. As Anthony Bash has argued, ‘For Mark, the point of triumph and victory is the fact that Jesus surrenders to the forces of darkness and thereby triumphs over them’.[xxxii] It is clear Mark believed that Jesus rose again as He includes three occurrences where Jesus foretells His Resurrection (8:31; 9:31; 10:34) and so Mark clearly sees this event as having huge significance but just does not see it as the most significant “Christ event” for his audience. Although Mark also fails to include a Davidic genealogy, a birth narrative and an extended Resurrection narrative, he does devote considerable space to Jesus’s Baptism, Crucifixion and Transfiguration. Furthermore, the style employed in narrating these events indicates that they are of vital importance to Mark and that he is using them to demonstrate Jesus’s divinity. It is no coincidence that Mark tells us that, during Jesus Baptism, ‘the heavens tore apart and the Spirit descended like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved with you I am well pleased”’ (1:10-11). Now while this could just mean that Jesus was only the Son of God rather than also being the fully-divine Messiah and Saviour, Mark’s narration of other “Christ events” and retelling of Jesus’s direct statements regarding His identity rule this out, I think. For example, in Mark’s very first verse, he tells us that Jesus is the “Christ” (the “anointed one”) and directly asserts that He is “the Lord” for whom John the Baptist is preparing the way (1:2-3).[xxxiii] It is no coincidence that Mark’s Transfiguration account comes soon after Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah (9:2-8) as it, therefore, acts as yet another reiteration of Jesus’s identity as the fully-divine Messiah.[xxxiv] Jesus’s Transfiguration alone indicates His divinity but Mark reinforces this message by having Elijah and Moses appear and talk to Jesus (9:4) and again having a heavenly voice declare, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved’ (9:7), echoing the Baptismal narrative (1:9-11) while adding the command to ‘listen to him!’ (9:7), implying His divine authority. Mark’s elevation of the “Christ events” and connection of them to Jesus’s identity therefore clearly implies his presumption that Jesus was the Messiah. This clearly contrasts with Thomas’s exclusion of them and general lack of interest in Jesus’s identity as an individual.
“[T]he living one” or “the living Jesus” is a key and repeated phrase within Thomas. Paul Foster argues that it has traditionally been understood in three main ways.[xxxv] The first is that Jesus pronounced these sayings after His Resurrection, the second is that it is employed to ‘indicate that Jesus possesses eternal life and provides such life to others’, and the third that ‘this description represents Jesus as living through his sayings’.[xxxvi] I think the latter two are most likely to be the primarily-intended meanings, as there is no Thomasine account of the Resurrection and the text’s content suggests it was not set after the Resurrection, making it less likely that Thomas saw Jesus as the fully-divine Messiah.[xxxvii] Mark’s Gospel, however, clearly albeit briefly includes a Resurrection narrative in 16:1-8, attesting to Jesus’s Messiahship and divinity as, although other prophets sent by God could perform miracles, only the Messiah was prophesied to be able to raise Himself.
Thomas’s view of salvation is vital to understanding what his view of Jesus’s identity might be. Mark implies that Jesus is an unique personal Saviour (8:34-39) but Thomas conversely portrays Jesus as the revealer of introspective truths about the divine spark within each individual which, once known and understood, could save them.[xxxviii] Thomas is not concerned with Jesus’s identity, instead being interested in an introspective, esoteric, philosophical, rational, intellectual and sapiential notion of salvation, the source of which Jesus points people to. Once an individual is enlightened, they have already been saved and deified and are identical in nature to Jesus and Jesus is then dispensable for them.[xxxix] It is about interpretation rather than belief in Jesus and personal regeneration. For Thomas, Jesus had no unique ongoing purpose after pronouncing His sayings. The question becomes, “Does this suggest that Thomas implies Jesus’s immortality or eternality?” If not, what would Jesus’s purpose before and after His sayings be? Thomas was a subordinationist, believing that Jesus proceeded from the Father and was obedient to Him but goes further by implying that Jesus is not equal to God the Father. Jesus states that all He has received has been granted to Him by the Father (Saying 61). We can therefore see that Thomas’s view of salvation clearly downplays the role of Jesus as an individual and does not view Him as a personal saviour.
In conclusion, Thomas does not present a single, clear, unified, systematic vision of Jesus’s identity which is to be expected due to the text’s disjointed nature, multitude of input sources and incremental development. However, through examining Thomasine sayings about salvation and Jesus’s identity, I think one can discern within Thomas a general divergence from the traditional western Christology derived from the canonical Gospels. He does not emphasize divine Triunity, Jesus’s full divinity, Jesus’s eternal purpose, His ongoing role in sanctification, His fulfilment of Jewish prophecies, or the “Christ-events”. Thomas instead seems to see Jesus as a partly-divine teacher and mystical revealer of esoteric truths about salvation sent by God for a predestined Elect. Mark conversely presents readers with an implicit presentation of Jesus’s full divinity and Messiahship which underpins and pervades every corner of His Gospel. It is clear from Jesus’s responses to questions about His identity, deeds and miracles and Mark’s elevation of the “Christ events” that Mark saw Him as the Messiah and a personal saviour.
[i] Simeon Burke, ‘When Was the Gospel of Thomas Written?’, Bible Odyssey, 2019 <https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/ask-a-scholar/gospel-of-thomas>; James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson, Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), p. 1574.
[ii] Martijn Linssen, ‘The 72 Logia of Thomas and Their Canonical Cousins’, in Absolute Thomasine Priority, Part III (Academia.edu, 2020), p. 141 <https://www.academia.edu/41668680/The_72_logia_of_Thomas_and_their_canonical_cousins>; Klyne R. Snodgrass, ‘The Gospel of Thomas: A Secondary Gospel’, in Lives of Jesus and Jesus Outside the Bible, The Historical Jesus: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, 4 vols (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), iv, p. 299; J.R. Porter, The Lost Bible (New York: Metro Books, 2010), p. 166.
[iii] Malcolm L. Peel, ‘Gnostic Eschatology and the New Testament’, Novum Testamentum, 12.2 (1970), 141–65 (p. 143); Angus Stevenson, Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 747.
[iv] Pheme Perkins, Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007), p. 241; Delbert Burkett, An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 157.
[v] Petr Pokorný, A Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas: From Interpretations to the Interpreted (New York: T&T Clark, 2009), p. 55; Simon Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 260.
[vi] Pokorný, A Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, p. 55.
[vii] Richard Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 7.
[viii] Pokorný, A Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, p. 91.
[ix] Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 534.
[x] ‘If Jesus Was God, Why Did He Say, “No One Is Good but God Alone”?’, Got Questions <https://www.gotquestions.org/good-God-alone.html> [accessed 24 January 2021].
[xi] Morna D. Hooker, The Message of Mark (London: Epworth Press, 2005), pp. 52–53.
[xii] Ibid., p. 53.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Anthony Bash, ‘Mark as Theology: Mystery, Failure, and Faith’ (unpublished Lecture, Durham University, 2017), pp. 1–4.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel According to St. Mark (London: Continuum, 2001), p. 20.
[xvii] Pokorný, A Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, p. 97.
[xviii] Ibid.
[xix] Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas, pp. 414–15.
[xx] Ibid.
[xxi] Pokorný, A Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, p. 123.
[xxii] Antti Marjanen, ‘The Portrait of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas’, in Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 214.
[xxiii] Ibid.
[xxiv] Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 5.
[xxv] G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume 3 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 131.
[xxvi] Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas, pp. 6–7.
[xxvii] Ibid., p. 7.
[xxviii] Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 10.
[xxix] ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2011), p. 1929.
[xxx] Marjanen, ‘The Portrait of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas’, p. 214; Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 9.
[xxxi] Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 8.
[xxxii] Bash, ‘Mark as Theology: Mystery, Failure, and Faith’, p. 5.
[xxxiii] R. Alan Cole, The Gospel According to St. Mark: An Introduction and Commentary (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1983), p. 56.
[xxxiv] Dorothy Lee, Transfiguration (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004), pp. 21–33; Mark Harding and Alanna Nobbs, The Content and the Setting of the Gospel Tradition (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), pp. 281–82.
[xxxv] Paul Foster, The Apocryphal Gospels: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 30.
[xxxvi] Ibid.
[xxxvii] Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 191.
[xxxviii] Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 10.
[xxxix] Ibid., p. 7.
*All Thomasine sayings cited in this essay are from the following translation:
Patterson, Stephen J., and Marvin Meyer, trans., ‘The Gospel of Thomas’, in The Complete
Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version (Farmington, Minnesota: Polebridge Press, 1994) <https://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html>
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Dunn, James D. G., and John W. Rogerson, Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003)
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———, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
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———, The Message of Mark (London: Epworth Press, 2005)
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Perkins, Pheme, Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007)
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Ahearne-Kroll, Steve, ‘The Scripturally Complex Presentation of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark’ <https://www.academia.edu/9393837/The_Scripturally_Complex_Presentation_of_Jesus_in_the_Gospel_of_Mark> [accessed 22 December 2020]
Davies, Stevan L., ‘The Christology and Protology of the Gospel of Thomas’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 111.4 (1992), 663–82
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Kloha, Jeffrey, ‘Jesus and the Gnostic Gospels’, Concordia Theological Quarterly, 71.2 (2007), 121–44
Linssen, Martijn, ‘The 72 Logia of Thomas and Their Canonical Cousins’, in Absolute Thomasine Priority, Part III (Academia.edu, 2020) <https://www.academia.edu/41668680/The_72_logia_of_Thomas_and_their_canonical_cousins >
Perrin, Nicholas, ‘Recent Trends in Gospel of Thomas Research (1991–2006): Part I, The Historical Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels’, Currents in Biblical Research, 5.2 (2007)
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Bash, Anthony, ‘Mark as Theology: Mystery, Failure, and Faith’ (unpublished Lecture, Durham University, 2017)
Websites
Barkman, Dan, ‘The Deity of Jesus, Part 1: The Testimony of Jesus’, Blogos, 2012 <https://www.blogos.org/exploringtheword/deity-of-Jesus-1-is-Jesus-divine.php > [accessed 22 December 2020]
———, ‘The Deity of Jesus, Part 2: The Account of the Synoptic Gospels’, Blogos, 2012 <https://www.blogos.org/exploringtheword/deity-of-Jesus-2-is-Jesus-God.php > [accessed 22 December 2020]
Broussard, Karlo, ‘The Divinity of Jesus According to Mark’, Catholic Answers, 2016 <https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-divinity-of-jesus-according-to-mark > [accessed 22 December 2020]
Burke, Simeon, ‘When Was the Gospel of Thomas Written?’, Bible Odyssey, 2019 <https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/ask-a-scholar/gospel-of-thomas >
‘If Jesus Was God, Why Did He Say, “No One Is Good but God Alone”?’, Got Questions <https://www.gotquestions.org/good-God-alone.html > [accessed 24 January 2021]
By Ben Somervell
Theology Seeking Faith in Durham 