The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of words of Jesus, is one of the most significant extrabiblical texts of the early Christian era.
This edition presents the texts in the classical languages and provides
an English translation and a readily readable commentary. It includes:
* an introduction to the Gospel of Thomas
* the complete Coptic text
* the text of the Greek fragments and a Greek retranslation of all logia with parallel texts from the canonic gospels
* an English translation
* an extensive commentary
* illustrations of the Coptic manuscript
* an appendix with an index and bibliography
The introduction and commentary do not assume knowledge of the classical languages, making The Gospel of Thomas accessible to a broad audience.
Ever since the discovery of the full text of the Gospel of Thomas as the second text in Codex II of the Nag Hammadi Library in 1946, the Gospel has aroused enormous interest
and generated a huge volume of secondary literature, and there is little sign that this flood of literature is ceasing. However, perhaps surprisingly, full detailed commentaries on the
text of the Gospel of Thomas are not very numerous. Detailed studies on different aspects of the text and/or individual sayings abound, especially on the issue of the relationship of
the Gospel of Thomas to the canonical Gospel tradition, but complete commentaries on the full text are relatively rare. Plisch’s commentary offered here is thus very welcome as
supplying a lacuna in the scholarly literature on the Gospel of Thomas.
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