The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

292 THE DIFFERING APPROACH TO A THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE
While the basic theological direction of these parallels appears to be
quite comparable, the third example offers an explicit contrast. The Jesus
of the Gospel of Thomas says that he had stood in the midst of the world
and had appeared to humankind in the flesh (28a). This statement strikingly
reminds us of a central thesis of the Johannine Prologue, where the
author, or the group that handed down this tradition, confesses that
Jesus, the Word of God, has become flesh, and they have seen his glory
( John 1:14). This motif, however, is developed in both gospels in opposite
ways. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus talks about the bodily existence of
mankind in an eminently negative way. Thus saying 87 emphasizes that
the soul clinging to a body is miserable. Correspondingly, saying 112
says: “Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul. Woe to the soul that
depends on the flesh.” Against the background of this statement, it is
rather clear that the statement about the incarnation of Jesus in saying 28,
also true of 29, has a docetic tendency. All the more impressive that the
Gospel of John polemicizes especially against any docetic tendency. This
subject is the cause of the schism among the disciples described in
6:60–71. Behind this narrative lies the breakup of the Johannine community,
which is more easily visible in the Johannine Epistles. And in
these documents, which are the closest aids in our understanding of the
Gospel of John, it is particularly clear that the understanding of the incarnation
of Jesus was one of the most central points of conflict within the
Johannine school.
These few hints at the points of contact between the Gospel of Thomas
and the Gospel of John already give rise to the question of whether these
writings are related tradition-historically or even rival each other. This
impression is strengthened when we take into account that in both writings
the disciple Thomas is given a special relevance.
3.2. The Statements About Thomas in the Gospel of John
and in the Gospel of Thomas
In no other writing of the New Testament is the disciple Thomas given
so much attention as in the Gospel of John. Although the Synoptic
Lührmann, Die Redaktion der Logienquelle; Anhang: Zur weiteren Überlieferung der
Logienquelle (WMANT 33; Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969), 72–75, 94–97;
Helmut Koester, “Q and Its Relatives,” in Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings: In
Honor of James M. Robinson (ed. J. E. Goehring et al.; ForFasc 1; Sonoma, CA:
Polebridge, 1990), 49–63.