William Lane Craig discusses an argument by the Jesus Seminar[1] for the early dating of the Gospel of Thomas,[2] (hereafter, “Thomas”) and therefore, its alleged claim as an appropriate authority on the life of Jesus to rival the accounts given in the canonical gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). I have summarized Craig’s critique of their reasoning in flowchart form.
Dr. Craig continues:
And so around and around it goes. New Testament scholar Thomas Wright says, ‘It’s like Winnie the Pooh following his own tracks in the snow around a clump of trees and every time he comes around and sees more tracks he takes this as evidence that his query is even more numerous and more real then he thought before.’ It’s no wonder that the fellows of the Jesus Seminar haven’t been able to persuade very many of their colleagues on the basis of arguments like this.
Now, I am superficially aware of other reasons that are promoted to try and validate the early dating of Thomas and I am willing to consider them in greater detail. But upon reflection, I think there is an inherent problem in any reasoning that attempts to elevate the relevance of Thomas (or any account of Jesus’ life written after the first century) and similarly play down the four canonical gospels. It’s the same kind of problem that would exist if someone from the 20th century were to write an account of the life of, say, Charles Darwin. While it may be quite appropriate to place a certain amount of trust in an account of Darwin written in the 20th century, we would be quite justified in placing more confidence in those writings from the 19th century. Especially those written by Darwin himself or by those close to him, or those who were his contemporaries. Indeed, we might even use the 19th century writings as a check against the 20th century account.
Similarly then, if Thomas is an early primary source as the Jesus Seminar claim, then how much more do the four canonical gospels qualify for such an honour, which are contemporaneous accounts. And this is sometimes the problem with insisting on extra-biblical sources for the life of Jesus. As Gary Habermas has pointed out, the four canonical gospels are the only ones written around the time of Christ. I should think that counts for something in one’s assessment of the facts. “There certainly were more than four [gospels] but you have to go to the second, third and fourth centuries for most of them. It’s not our fault that there were only four gospels by 100AD and we took all four of them.”[3]
In other words, if you are going to insist – in discussing the life of Jesus – on leaving the canonical stuff off the table, you are basically tossing out the best sources we have before the discussion even begins.[4] You are welcome to do so of course, but you should not expect reasonable people to think that any conclusions you draw from later sources provide more certainty than can be gained from the canonical sources.
References & Notes:
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A freely downloadable audio version of Dr. Craig’s talk can be found here
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The Gospel of Thomas is one of many early writings discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. By “discovered” I do not mean that knowledge of it is new. For example, Eusebius, a third century historian and one of the early church fathers, knew of the work and wrote against it. Hippolytus and Origen also comment on the gospel in their third century writings.
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I think this argument holds even if you want to push Thomas into the first century alongside the canonical gospels (as some have tried to do), because of the greater detail and textual reliability provided by the four canonical gospels when compared with Thomas (or any other ancient historical work).
