Gospel of John aims to discredit evangel Thomas, scholar says
BY THERESA JOHNSTON
The article drastically oversimplifies (so that Athanasius is the big baddie who suddenly arrives to exclude books like Thomas from the canon) but there are some interesting quotations from Pagels, summarising her book; ana couple of excerpts:
In her latest best-selling book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Pagels argues that whoever wrote the Gospel of John clearly was familiar with this Gospel of Thomas -- and thoroughly detested it. "What you're seeing when you read [John and Thomas] together is an intense, contentious ... I guess you could call it a conversation, but really it's more like an argument between different groups of the followers of Jesus," Pagels told her rapt Stanford listeners. "What they're arguing about is the question: Who is Jesus and what is the good news about him?" . . . .
. . . . . As if to underscore these differences, John alone among the evangelists paints Thomas as an ignorant, unauthorized, faithless disciple. Thomas is the only one of the original 12 (besides the betrayer Judas Iscariot) not present in the famous scene when Jesus reappears after his death, and because of this untimely absence, Jesus doesn't make Thomas an apostle like the others, Pagels said. "Furthermore, when the other disciples tell Thomas what happened, he stubbornly refuses to believe it."
It is not until Jesus appears in the locked room again eight days later and chastises Thomas for his lack of faith that the doubting man falls on his knees and proclaims Jesus as his Lord and God. "I think John wrote this scene with some satisfaction," Pagels added wryly, "to show that Thomas finally 'got it' and admitted he was wrong."
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