Friday, May 3, 2024

Hans-Martin Schenke on the Date of the Composition of the Book of Thomas

  

For an answer to the question of the date of composition of the original Book of Thomas, i.e. how long it was written before the terminus post quem non of the extant copy of the translation of the text (first half of the 4th cent.), we hardly possess any indications. The only thing that can be said is that its incipit presupposes the Gospel of Thomas and that Book Thom. therefore must have originated after the Gospel of Thomas. The date of the Gospel of Thomas, however, is itself much disputed. It is thus pure guesswork which leads Turner to assume the first half of the 3rd cent. as the date of origin of the Boom Thom. Koester is equally justified in situating it already in the 2nd cent. At all events the problem of the date of Book Thom. loses much of its importance in view of the necessity of applying a literary-critical perspective, in which Book Thom. emerges as merely a thin and superficial framing of a basic document which is neither gnostic nor Christian; thereby we find ourselves in what to a certain extent is a ‘timeless’ sphere. (Hans-Martin Schenke, “The Book of Thomas,” trans. Einar Thomassen, in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, 2 vols. [trans. R. McL. Wilson; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991], 1:234)

 

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