the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

ENNO E. POPKES 313
(and therefore also those of Qumran) are only relevant to a quite limited
degree. 75 The New Testament writings, strictly speaking, do not contain
any comparable data either.
Marked theological parallels, however, can be found in the two texts
already mentioned, found in the second codex of the Nag Hammadi
library immediately before and after the Gospel of Thomas: the long version
of the Apocryphon of John and the Gospel of Philip. The basic traits of soteriology
and anthropology in the long version of the Apocryphon of John are
developed, for example, in a critical midrash on Genesis 1–7 (NHC II,1
13.1–25.3). This passage contains an exegesis of the fundamental statement
in the Old Testament about man being in the image of God (Gen
1:27). This proves to be a typical gnostic scriptural exegesis insofar as the
actual intention of Gen 1:27 is modified in the sense of a gnostic cosmological
myth. Against the background of this myth, those motifs that
remain enigmatic in Gos. Thom. 83 and 84, if taken by themselves, receive
an appropriate interpretative framework in terms of content. All the more
impressive is the fact that the Gospel of Philip, which follows immediately
after the Gospel of Thomas, also offers a number of central statements that
correspond to each of the previously listed texts about the image-like or
paradigm-like quality of human existence (cf., e.g., Gos. Phil. 67, especially
NHC II,3 67.9–12 [§72]: “The truth did not enter the world naked, but
she came in the paradigms and images. It [the world] cannot receive her
in any other way”). 76
Even if research on the Nag Hammadi library has not yet adequately
described the relationship between the separate texts in terms of religion
and composition history, 77 at this point an essential aspect can be stated:
The Coptic Gospel of Thomas proves to be an early-Christian document,
whose essential intellectual sources no longer lie in early Judaism. Its
75. For such a theory of images, the Qumran texts provide no equivalent, although
there are a number of direct and indirect references to change to 1:26-27 in pre-
Essene, Essene, and in genuinely Qumran texts (cf. Lichtenberger, Studien zum
Menschenbild, 126–27 and 168–70; Lichtenberger and Lange, “Qumran,” TRE
28:55–79, esp. 69).
76. Particularly the correspondence of the motifs/paradigms of “light” and “image”
lead to the impression that these texts interpret each other or are intended to interpret
each other (Gos. Phil. 67, 126c–127b; Gos. Thom. 83–84). Apart from Gos. Thom.
67 [§72], see also Gos. Phil. 106 par. Gos. Thom. 50; cf. H.-M. Schenke, Das
Philippusevangelium: Nag-Hammadi-Codex II,3 (TU 143; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997),
153–54, esp. 467.
77. An important detail is, e.g., that the colophon in 145.20–23 of NHC II does not
only end the Book of Thomas the Contender but also the whole of NHC II. Thus, it is
possible that the texts of this codex were read as corresponding by subject. Cf. H.-M.
Schenke, “Das Buch des Thomas” (NHC II,7), 279–91, esp. 291n22.