Gospels of Thomas and Philip and Truth - Syriac Christian Church

Establishment— whether political, military or religious— for the sake of
the truth. Much of the present edition was prepared while I was a guest
of numerous universities both state and private, as well as seminaries
and religious communities both Catholic and Protestant, thruout Latin
America; and also of the faculties of philosophy, of orthodox theology and
of informatics at the University of Athens— for their fraternal hospitality I
am profoundly grateful. Internet technical advice has been kindly
provided by Ioannis Georgiadis of the Athens University Computer Center.
The canonical Gospels must be the paradigm in assessing any newly-
discovered ‘Gospel’. That is to say, our criteria for evaluating such a text
must be both its internal consistency with, and its external provenance
relative to, the four texts which provide the ostensive definition 1 of the
very term ‘Gospel’ to begin with. So: are Thomas, Philip and Valentine
theologically harmonious with the Synoptics and John? Do they all come
from the same general historic context and archeological ambiance in
antiquity? Are the new texts, upon analysis, both conceptually and
empirically coherent with the four canonical Gospels? Do they, all in all,
seem to be of the same Logos? Sufficiently careful scrutiny, I have
concluded, yields an affirmative answer to all of these questions. Thus the
intent of this present edition, together with the online Coptic texts,
dictionary and grammar, is to provide the reader with the resources to
carry out a thorough assessment of these extraordinary scriptures for
him/herself.
It has often been suggested that these new writings are basically
concoctions produced by a series of unknown somebodies long after the
events they purport to concern. However, the simplest explanation here
(by William of Ockham's famous Principle of Economy: ‘Entities should not
be multiplied unnecessarily’) is not lengthy oral tradition followed by
numerous written redactions; the simplest explanation is that these three
scriptures were composed by the Apostle Thomas, Philip the Evangelist
1 ‘Ostensive definition’: defining a term by indicating an exemplary or paradigmatic referent.
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