Place: Campfire 200AD. Topic: The Nazarene. What if you could listen in?
The Gospel of Thomas is a papyrus manuscript that contains a set of quotations reputed to have been spoken by Jesus Christ. It’s estimated to have been recorded sometime between the first and third century during a time when persecutions were not uncommon, and Christians did not yet have a formal church or a codified bible. My speculation is that these sayings were part of the oral traditions used during this period and were the topics of discussion around campfires, in tents and individual homes. For reasons unknown, the manuscript was buried some eighteen hundred years ago.
Along comes 1945 and a time capsule for the twenty-first century was discovered in a dump -of all places! In this age of “alternate facts, counter-culture narratives and social media hype,” I thought it might be interesting to see how todays’ conversations compared to that of the early Christians during roman times. I transcribed each saying with a brief title describing its content and respectfully provided my own minimal interpretation of what I think was being said in each passage. In saying two of the Thomas gospels, the text suggests that we seek until we find. So, being the year 2022, I created a digital web-help program that’s a smart phone version of the entire gospel manuscript. It has helped me understand many things and I collectively call it:
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