Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written?

Thomas in
Alexandria

Ian Phillip Brown

Journal of Biblical Literature, Volume 138, Number 2, 2019, pp. 451-472 (Article)

Published by Society of Biblical Literature

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jbl.2019.0024

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/730371

Access provided at 10 Jan 2020 19:57 GMT from University of Cambridge

JBL 138, no. 2 (2019): 451–472
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1382.2019.523931

Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas

Written? Thomas in Alexandria

ian phillip brown

ianphillip.brown@mail.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5R 2M8, Canada

This article argues that the Gospel of Thomas was written in Alexandria, not in
Eastern Syria as is the current consensus. The arguments in favor of a Syrian
Gospel of Thomas are not as strong as is often assumed, and a stronger case can
be made for Alexandria. The Gospel of Thomas has a number of features that
suggest it was a product of the Judean intellectual culture of Alexandria, includ-
ing its genre (a collection of chreiai), its presentation of Jesus as a wisdom teacher,
and its Platonic/Philonic exegesis of the creation stories in Genesis. I argue that
these features, particularly the exegesis of Gen 1:26–27 and 2:7, indicate an Alex-
andrian provenance for Thomas. Alexandria was a center of Judean philosophy
and was known particularly for producing exegesis of the LXX. These social and
literary affinities with Alexandrian intellectual life make an Alexandrian Gospel
of Thomas more probable than a Syrian Thomas.

Writing shortly after the translation of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, Henri-
Charles Puech noted that, because of similarities between the Gospel of Thomas
and the Acts of Thomas (the use of the name Judas Thomas), it was “perhaps per-
missible” to suspect that the two works emanated from the same milieu, namely,
Edessa.1 For the next fifty years the theory that the Gospel of Thomas was a product
of Edessa (or eastern Syria more generally) remained the near consensus.2 Edessa,

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies
annual meeting in Toronto, May 2017. I would like to thank William Arnal, Michelle Christian,
Anna Cwikla, Ryan Olfert, and Sarah Rollens for their generous comments and suggestions.
1 Henri-Charles Puech, “Une collection des paroles de Jésus récemment découverte en

Égypte: ‘L’Évangile selon Thomas,’ ” RHR 153 (1958): 129–33, here 130.
2 The major works supporting a Syrian Thomas include the following studies by Gilles

Quispel, “The Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament,” VC 11 (1957): 189–207; “The Syrian
Thomas and the Syrian Macarius,” VC 18 (1964): 226–35; “ ‘The Gospel of Thomas’ and the ‘Gospel
of the Hebrews,’ ” NTS 12 (1966): 371–82; “L’Évangile selon Thomas et le Diatessaron,” VC 13
(1959): 87–117; “L’Évangile selon Thomas et le ‘Texte Occidental’ du Nouveau Testament,” VC 14
(1960): 204–15; “The Gospel of Thomas Revisited,” in Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica: Collected

451
452 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

home to a small Judean diaspora, was removed from the violence of the Judean
wars, and several traditions claim that stories of Jesus circulated in Edessa by the
second century.3 An Edessene origin for Thomas has been hypothesized based on
a variety of arguments including its purported dependence and influence on Syrian
texts, Semitisms in the gospel, and the gospel’s distinctness from the gospels of the
New Testament. But the case for Edessa is not as strong as is often assumed. In this
article, I argue that Edessa is not the uniquely qualified location for the composi-
tion of the gospel that it is often presented as and that there is a better location—
Alexandria. Like Edessa, Alexandria housed a large, educated Judean diaspora
familiar with Jesus traditions—at the latest by the mid-second century. Many of
these Judeans were involved in the intellectual life of Alexandria, and I contend
that the producers of the Gospel of Thomas were just such people. Finally, Alexan-
dria boasted a distinct Judean exegetical tradition that paralleled Aristotelian and
Platonic exegesis of Greek texts. The Gospel of Thomas fits in very comfortably with
the Judean exegetical traditions of Alexandria, and therefore an Alexandrian Gos-
pel of Thomas makes more sense than does an Edessene Gospel of Thomas. In order
to make this argument I first review the eastern Syria/Edessa hypothesis along with
criticisms of it. Second, I describe the intellectual life and exegetical traditions of
Alexandria—both Greek and Judean—and situate the Gospel of Thomas within

Essays of Gilles Quispel, ed. Johannes van Oort, NHMS 55 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 175–227; and, in
the same volume, “Some Remarks on the Gospel of Thomas,” 311–28. See also A. F. J. Klijn, “Das
Thomasevangelium und das altsyrische Christentum,” VC 15 (1961): 146–59; Klijn, “Christianity
in Edessa and the Gospel of Thomas: On Barbara Ehlers, ‘Kann das Thomasevangelium aus Edessa
stammen?,’ ” NovT 14 (1972): 70–77; W. H. C. Frend, “The Gospel of Thomas: Is Rehabilitation
Possible?,” JTS 18 (1967): 13–26; Helmut Koester, “GNŌMAI DIAPHOROI: The Origin and
Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity,” HTR 58 (1965): 279–318; Michel
Desjardins, “Where Was the Gospel of Thomas Written?,” TJT 8 (1992): 121–33; April D.
DeConick, “The Original ‘Gospel of Thomas,’ ” VC 56 (2002): 167–99; DeConick, Recovering the
Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth, LNTS 286 (London: T&T Clark,
2006); DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation: With a Commentary and New
English Translation of the Complete Gospel, LNTS 287 (London: T&T Clark, 2007); Pierluigi
Piovanelli, “Thomas in Edessa? Another Look at the Original Setting of the Gospel of Thomas,”
in Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity: Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer,
ed. Jitse Dijkstra, Justin Kroesen, and Yme Kuiper, SHR 127 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 443–61;
Stephen J. Patterson, “The View from across the Euphrates,” HTR 104 (2011): 411–31. The vast
majority of scholars who propose a Syrian Gospel of Thomas name Edessa as the city of origin.
The exceptions to this are Desjardins, who argues that the gospel was produced in Antioch, and
Piovanelli, who agrees with Desjardins’s conclusions. J. Gregory Given has leveled a sustained
critique against the Edessene hypothesis, and, while his article was published after this piece was
submitted, I am largely in agreement with his critique: J. Gregory Given, “ ‘Finding’ the Gospel of
Thomas in Edessa,” JECS 25 (2017): 501–30.
3 I follow Steve Mason in understanding the term Judean to refer to an ethnic group with

distinct laws, traditions, and customs. Hence I shall refer to Judeans, Judean traditions, and Judean
diasporas, except in the case where secondary sources refer to Jews or Jewish-Christianity. See
Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient His-
tory,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512.
 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 453

these very traditions. My conclusion that this gospel was a product of Alexandria
does not simply move the work to a new geographical location but also reimagines
the ways in which Judean traditions were drawn upon in early writings about Jesus.
In addition, this conclusion further troubles a term frequently applied to the Gos-
pel of Thomas by those who argue for a Syrian milieu—“Jewish Christianity.”

I.  The Eastern Syria/Edessa Hypothesis

While Puech was the first to suggest that the Gospel of Thomas originated
in Edessa, Gilles Quispel and Helmut Koester popularized the theory in Europe
and North America.4 Quispel published a series of articles and books between
1957 and 1978 wherein he argued that the gospel was a product of Edessa. Quispel’s
exact argument evolved during the course of more than twenty years, but the
general tenets remain the same: the Gospel of Thomas was influenced by Syrian
sources and influenced subsequent Christianity in Syria.5 Quispel argued that
this gospel borrowed its “Jewish-Christian” sayings from the Gospel of the Hebrews,
and that the Gospel of the Hebrews contained Palestinian traditions.6 Quispel’s
catalog of “Jewish-Christian” sayings in the Gospel of Thomas includes sayings
that show deference for the Pharisees (such as Gos. Thom. 39, paralleled in Justin
Martyr, Dial. 17.4),7 sayings that are more primitive than those in the canonical
gospels (Gos. Thom. 65),8 and sayings that contain Semitisms (Gos. Thom. 47).9
In a later piece, Quispel identified twenty-six sayings in the Gospel of Thomas
that contain Jewish-Christian elements. These elements range from a relation
with the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Pseudo-Clementines, to direct contact
with the LXX.10
Quispel expanded on his argument considerably in a 1966 article wherein he
more precisely tied the Gospel of Thomas to the Gospel of the Hebrews.11 He

  4 Quispel, “Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament”; Quispel, “Syrian Thomas and the
Syrian Macarius”; Quispel, “ ‘Gospel of Thomas’ and the ‘Gospel of the Hebrews’”; and Koester,
“GNŌMAI DIAPHOROI.”
  5 Some of the changes to Quispel’s theories include a shift from specific sources for Thomas

(the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Egyptians) toward a more general theory that
Thomas had distinct but unnamed Jewish-Christian and encratic sources. See his introductory
note to his essay “Some Remarks on the Gospel of Thomas,” in van Oort, Gnostica, Judaica, Cath-
olica, 311–28, here 311; the essay was originally published in NTS 5 (1958–1959): 276–90.
  6 Quispel, “Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament,” 204.
  7 Ibid., 202.
  8 Ibid., 205.
  9 Ibid., 194.
10 Quispel, “Gospel of Thomas Revisited,” 200–202. Quispel includes Gos. Thom. 2, 6, 12,

16, 23, 27, 31, 39, 44, 62, 64, 65, 68, 69, 71, 72, 84, 88, 90, 93, 95, 99, 104, 107, 109, and 113. Curi-
ously, Quispel leaves out sayings 83 and 85, both of which make direct reference to Genesis.
11 Quispel, “ ‘Gospel of Thomas’ and the ‘Gospel of the Hebrews.’ ”
454 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

presents nine reasons for thinking that Thomas is dependent on the Gospel of the
Hebrews:
1.  The Gospel of the Hebrews predates the Gospel of Thomas.
2. The doublets in the Gospel of Thomas are evidence that it used at least two
written sources.
3. The second source cannot be Q because Thomas also contains material that
is distinct to Luke.
4. The Gospel of Thomas cannot have been the source for the Gospel of the
Hebrews since Thomas’s sayings are longer and more elaborate.
5. The gospel tradition in Thomas has a marked affinity with Jewish-Christian
gospels.
6. There are stylistic affinities between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel
of the Hebrews.
7. In both the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus speaks
predominantly to his disciples (and not the crowd or the Pharisees).
8. Gospel of Thomas 65, 66, and 78 could not have come from the Synoptic
Gospels but could have come from the Gospel of the Hebrews (which itself
drew on Matthew).
9. Thomas and the Gospel of the Hebrews have a marked animosity toward
mercantile practices and a “superstitious exaltation” of James.12
Ultimately, Quispel concludes that the material shared between Thomas and
the Pseudo-Clementines derived from a common Jewish-Christian gospel, the
Gospel of the Hebrews.13 Although he later steps back from the assertion that the
“Jewish Christian” elements of Thomas came from the Gospel of the Hebrews, he
maintains that the Gospel of Thomas and the Pseudo-Clementines share a Jewish
Christian source of Palestinian origin.14 Quispel’s argument for a Syrian origin is
contingent on his argument that the Gospel of Thomas has a literary relationship
with a number of Syrian texts—either sharing a source with them, as he argues for
the Pseudo-Clementines and the Diatessaron or having a literary influence on
them, as he argues for the Old and New Homilies of Pseudo-Macarius.15 Not all of
Quispel’s theories have stood the test of time, but his argument for a Syrian Gospel
of Thomas is still extremely popular.16

12 Ibid.,
378–79.
13 See
Gos. Thom. 16, 32, 39, 54, and 76, which parallel Ps.-Clem. Hom. 16.16, Rec. 2.28,
Hom. 3.27, Rec. 2.28, and Rec. 3.62.
14 Quispel, “Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament,” 190.
15 Quispel, “Syrian Thomas and the Syrian Macarius”; Quispel, “L’Évangile selon Thomas et

le Diatessaron”; Quispel, Tatian and the Gospel of Thomas: Studies in the History of the Western
Diatessaron (Leiden: Brill, 1975); Quispel, “Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament,” 194;
Quispel, “Gospel of Thomas Revisited,” 208–11.
16 Quispel’s influence is most apparent in the work of L. W. Barnard, “The Origins and

Emergence of the Church in Edessa during the First Two Centuries A.D.,” VC 22 (1968): 161–75;
 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 455

Helmut Koester, for instance, was one of the first to follow Quispel in locating
the Gospel of Thomas in Syria. In addition to Quispel, Koester was also influenced
by Puech’s theory of a Syrian Thomas, as well as Walter Bauer’s theory of theologi-
cal diversity in earliest Christianity.17 Koester places the Gospel of Thomas in
Edessa for three reasons: (1) Judas Thomas is a distinctly Syrian name for Thomas;
(2) this gospel was used by the Manichaeans; (3) the Gospel of Thomas was a source
for the Acts of Thomas, which was almost certainly written in Syria.18 Koester’s
conclusions are largely in line with others who argue for a Syrian Gospel of Thomas,
but Koester has also received criticism, particularly from Stevan Davies, who
argues that Thomas’s relationship with later Syrian texts does not demonstrate a
geographical origin, only a later reception. One could equally make the case that
the Oxyrhychus fragments demonstrate Thomas’s reception in Egypt, and possibly
its origins as well.19 On the gospel’s possible relationship with Manichaean texts,
Davies states, “There is no evidence at all for the Edessene composition of all doc-
uments approved by the Manicheans,” and there is therefore no reason to view the
gospel’s later use by Manichaeans as indicative of an Edessene origin.20
Koester’s first point is often presented as a smoking gun that definitively ties
the Gospel of Thomas to Syria. Koester argues that the title “Judas Thomas” is “a
peculiar part of Early Christianity in the Osrhoëne.”21 Koester cites the Book of
Thomas the Athlete, the Acts of Thomas, the Agbar legend, and John 14:22 in the
Curetonian Syriac as the only other instances of the name Judas Thomas, all of
which are of Syrian provenance, concluding that the unique use of Judas Thomas
in Syrian writing, and its notable absence in the Greek traditions, indicates that it
was distinctly Syrian, and thus the Gospel of Thomas must also be Syrian in origin.22
Davies further criticizes Koester by arguing that the Syrian parallels are not all

DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas; Desjardins, “Where Was the Gospel of
Thomas Written?”; H. J. W. Drijvers, “Edessa und das jüdische Christentum,” VC 24 (1970): 4–33;
Frend, “Gospel of Thomas”; Klijn, “Das Thomasevangelium und das altsyrische Christentum”;
Klijn, “The ‘Single One’ in the Gospel of Thomas,” JBL 81 (1962): 271–78, https://doi.org/
10.2307/3264424; Koester, “GNŌMAI DIAPHOROI”; Patterson, “View from across the Euphra-
tes”; Nicholas Perrin, Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the
Diatessaron, AcBib 5 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002).
17 Walter Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum, BHT 10 (Tübingen:

Mohr Siebeck, 1934).

18 Koester, “GNŌMAI DIAPHOROI,” 291–93.
19 Stevan L. Davies, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, 2nd ed. (Oregon House,

CA: Bardic, 2005), 20–21.

20 Ibid., 20.
21 Koester, “GNŌMAI DIAPHOROI,” 292.
22 Koester, 291–92. See also Klijn, “Das Thomasevangelium und das altsyrische Christen-

tum”; Klijn, “Christianity in Edessa,’” NovT 14 (1972): 70–77; J. J. Gunther, “The Meaning and
Origin of the Name Judas Thomas,” Mus 93 (1980): 113–48; H. J. W. Drijvers, “Facts and Problems
in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity,” SecCent 2 (1982): 157–75; Perrin, Thomas and Tatian,
19–47; DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 238–49.
456 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

positively Edessene in origin and are much later than the Gospel of Thomas, at best
suggesting influence but not origin.23 There are also material issues with using the
title Judas Thomas to argue that the gospel is Edessene. By conventional dating,
P.Oxy. 654 is our earliest manuscript evidence for the title Judas Thomas.24 P.Oxy.
654 is of Egyptian provenance, so the use of Judas Thomas here does not support
a Syrian origin for the Gospel of Thomas. Were it possible to demonstrate that the
gospel copied the naming formula from an earlier Syrian tradition, then the case
for a Syrian origin would be stronger. But all the evidence we have at best suggests
the name Judas was picked up by later texts in Syria.
Another common argument for an Edessene Gospel of Thomas is that the
gospel was composed in a Semitic language, making Syria the most likely location
of composition. Antoine Guillaumont, K. H. Kuhn, J. E. Ménard, Nicholas Perrin,
and April DeConick claim that many of Thomas’s sayings betray Semitic origins
and that there are translation errors in the Coptic and Greek that are explained by
the translator working with a Semitic edition of the Gospel of Thomas.25 While
some interpreters still support the theory of the gospel’s origin in a Semitic lan-
guage, there are many who argue that proposing a Semitic original is not necessary.
Simon Gathercole examines seventy-seven alleged Semitisms in Thomas and sug-
gests that none requires a Semitic origin to explain the Greek or Coptic text. Instead,
he concludes that the case for a Greek Vorlage is far stronger than the case against
it.26
In spite of these problems with locating the Gospel of Thomas in Syria, the
hypothesis remains popular, if not the consensus. In addition to the critiques I

23 Davies, Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, 19.

24 The name “Judas” is missing from P.Oxy. 654 due to the fragmentary nature of the text,
but it is likely that the name Judas fills the lacuna in the papyrus. See Simon Gathercole, The Gospel
of Thomas: Introduction and Commentary, TENTS 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 104, 190–94.
25 Antoine Guillaumont, “Les sémitismes dans l’Évangile selon Thomas: Essai de classe-

ment,” in Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions: Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion
of His 65th Birthday, ed. R. Van den Broek and M. J. Vermaseren, EPRO 91 (Leiden: Brill, 1981),
190–204; K. H. Kuhn, “Some Observations on the Coptic Gospel of Thomas,” Mus 73 (1960):
317–23; Jacques E. Ménard, “Le milieu syriaque de l’Évangile selon Thomas et de l’Évangile selon
Philippe,” RevScRel 42 (1968): 261–66; Ménard, L’Évangile selon Thomas, NHS 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1975);
Perrin, Thomas and Tatian, 19–47; DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 238–49.
Guillaumont argues that the Semitisms he identifies in the Gospel of Thomas point to both an
earlier Syriac Gospel of Thomas, as well as an earlier Aramaic version of both Thomas and sayings
from the Synoptic Gospels (203–4). With the exception of Perrin, the rest argue that Thomas was
originally composed in Aramaic. Perrin contends that Thomas was dependent on the Syriac Dia-
tessaron and was therefore composed in Syriac. As Simon Gathercole has noted, however, Perrin’s
hypothesis would require the Diatessaron to predate all other Syriac writing by over a century,
and Perrin’s proposal has not received much support (Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel
of Thomas: Original Language and Influences [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012],
38–39).
26 Gathercole, Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 43–104.
 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 457

have already raised, there are a number of historical issues that make Syria a less-
attractive option. Barbara Ehlers, for example, observes that we simply do not know
enough about the first- and second-century Syrian church to determine whether
the Gospel of Thomas could be a product thereof.27 She argues that the Odes of
Solomon, a text often associated with early Syrian Christianity, cannot be con-
nected to Syria with certainty,28 and that the name Judas Thomas is not consistently
used in Syrian texts and so is not a smoking gun in placing the Gospel of Thomas
in Syria.29 Without the Odes of Solomon our knowledge of early Syrian Christian-
ity is reduced, and if the name Judas Thomas is not a hallmark of Syrian literature,
then the gospel’s ties to Syria are weakened. Ehlers’s arguments met with swift
criticism, particularly by A. F. J. Klijn, who counters that the name Judas Thomas
cannot be accounted for without supposing an Aramaic-speaking community, that
the Odes of Solomon fit well in Edessa given the multilingual Jews living there, and
that the Gospel of Thomas’s relationship with the Diatessaron cannot be explained
without a common milieu.30 Klijn’s rebuttal of Ehlers, however, fails to consider her
point that we simply do not know enough about the early Edessene church to say
confidently that the Gospel of Thomas fits the milieu.
Our lack of information regarding Christianity in Edessa is underlined in
detail in L. W. Barnard’s 1968 article on the origins and emergence of the church
in Edessa.31 Barnard notes that, while we know there was a strong Christian pres-
ence by the end of the second century, there is little evidence for the presence of
Jesus traditions much earlier. The mythical foundation of the church goes back to
the life of Jesus himself as reported in the Letter of King Abgar to Jesus, a document
found in the Syrian Doctrine of Addai and also reported in Eusebius.32 The account
is obviously legendary, and we can place Christianity in Edessa with more confi-
dence at the end of the second century with King Abgar IX. There is evidence of a
Judean diaspora in Edessa in the first century, but, outside of the Gospel of Thomas,
there are no Jesus traditions attached to the city until the late second century.
Herein lies the problem: the early foundation of the church in Edessa is not mobi-
lized as evidence that the Gospel of Thomas was composed there; rather, an Edes-
sene Thomas is used to argue that the church was established relatively early in the
second century. The argument for an Edessene Thomas is circular: on the one hand,
an Edessene Thomas is supported by an early Christian presence in Edessa, but, on
the other, this early Christian presence is supported only if we assume that the
gospel was composed in Edessa.

27 Barbara Ehlers, “Kann das Thomasevangelium aus Edessa stammen? Ein Beitrag zur

Frühgeschichte des Christentums in Edessa,” NovT 12 (1970): 284–317.

28 Ibid., 301.
29 Ibid., 305.
30 Klijn, “Christianity in Edessa,” 73, 74, 77.
31 Barnard, “Origins and Emergence,” 161–62.
32 Ibid., 162.
458 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

Alexandrian Traditions in the Gospel of Thomas

In addition to the problems I have already raised with the hypothesis of a
Syrian Gospel of Thomas, a number of the arguments mounted for the gospel’s
Syrian origin necessitate contact with Alexandrian traditions. DeConick’s case
for Alexandrian traditions in Thomas is the most thorough and sustained. She
argues that the gospel was composed as a rolling corpus, compiled over approxi-
mately seventy years: some of the sayings, and perhaps an early version of the
gospel’s kernel originated in Jerusalem, but the final version was composed in
Syria.33 DeConick places the gospel’s final composition in Syria based on thematic
similarities between Thomas and other Syrian literature, as well as on the purported
conflict between the communities of the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of
John.34
On the Gospel of Thomas moving from Jerusalem to Syria, DeConick states,
“This gospel was carried to eastern Syria, seemingly the result of the missionary
activity of the Jerusalem church.”35 She also uses the early church’s missionizing
activities to explain the connection between the Syrian Gospel of Thomas and
Alexandrian traditions. “By the mid- to late-first century, this group seems to have
developed close connections with Christians in Alexandria … as a direct result of
the missionary activity of the Jerusalem church.”36 The gospel’s location in Syria
and the Thomas community’s encounter with Alexandrian Christianity both require
us to assume a missionizing Jerusalem church. The evidence for an early, mission-
izing church in Jerusalem is found almost exclusively in Acts (DeConick also cites
the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies), and the historical reliability of Acts is problem-
atic.37 But even if we grant an early missionizing church in Jerusalem, positing an
Alexandrian Gospel of Thomas not only accounts for the Alexandrian traditions

33 April D. DeConick, Voices of the Mystics: Early Christian Discourse in the Gospels of John

and Thomas and Other Ancient Christian Literature, JSNTSup 157 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic,
2001); DeConick, “Original ‘Gospel of Thomas,’ ” 183–99.
34 DeConick, Voices of the Mystics, 131–32.
35 DeConick, “Original ‘Gospel of Thomas,’ ” 195.
36 Ibid., 196.
37 The question of a Jerusalem church/community has been examined by the Redescribing

Christian Origins Seminar. See Merrill P. Miller, “ ‘Beginning from Jerusalem …’: Re-Examining
Canon and Consensus,” JHC 2 (1995): 3–30; see also the following articles in Ron Cameron and
Merrill P. Miller, eds., Redescribing Christian Origins, SymS 28 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Litera-
ture, 2004): Miller, “Antioch, Paul, and Jerusalem: Diaspora Myths of Origins in the Homeland,”
177–236; Christopher R. Matthews, “Acts and the History of the Earliest Jerusalem Church,”
159–76; Dennis E. Smith, “What Do We Really Know about the Jerusalem Church? Christian
Origins in Jerusalem according to Acts and Paul,” 237–52; and Burton L. Mack, “A Jewish Jesus
School in Jerusalem?,” 253–62. DeConick is aware of these criticisms and argues that the origin
and growth of the Gospel of Thomas directly contradict the findings of the seminar (Recovering
the Original Gospel of Thomas, 245–46).
 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 459

in this gospel but also does not require the proposition of three separate mission-
izing journeys.
DeConick, following Quispel, also notes the many encratic features of the
Gospel of Thomas that suggest to her a Syrian composition. But the majority of her
parallels to other encratic works come from the corpus of Clement of Alexandria.
In fact, she states that “many of the accretions in Thomas squarely link the Thoma-
sine community with the thought-world of the Alexandrian encratic Christians of
whom Clement speaks.”38 Once again this relationship is most easily explained if
this gospel was also a product of Alexandria.
DeConick’s argument for a Syrian Gospel of Thomas revolves around its the-
matic similarities with a number of Jewish and Jewish-Christian texts, including
those that originated in Alexandria, but it is never clear why Syria is more attractive
than Alexandria. DeConick herself states that “many of the accretions in Thomas
suggest that the later community in Syria had experienced an encratic response …
practically identical with that developed in Alexandria.”39 Once again there is no
need to posit a coincidence when a shared location for the Gospel of Thomas and
the encratic traditions—Alexandria—does the same work.
DeConick entertains two theories to explain why the Gospel of Thomas fea-
tures so many Alexandrian traditions and themes: either the kernel text was taken
to Alexandria early on, or Jewish-Christian-Hermetic mystical traditions from
Alexandria traveled on trade routes to Syria.40 She prefers the second option, citing
the Semitisms in Thomas as evidence of an Aramaic substratum and the gospel’s
influence on later Syrian texts as evidence that it is a Syrian product.41 I have already
noted, however, that Gathercole convincingly refutes the idea that the Gospel of
Thomas was originally written in a Semitic language and then translated to Greek.42
Still more, the influence of of the Gospel of Thomas on later Syrian texts points to
the later use of the gospel, not its geographical origins.

The Social Logic of the Gospel of Thomas in Edessa

Stephen Patterson provides the most recent argument for the origins of the
Gospel of Thomas in eastern Syria.43 Patterson moves beyond previous arguments
for an Edessene Gospel of Thomas by focusing on the ways in which the social
world of Edessa was distinctly ideal for the gospel.44 The basis of Patterson’s argument

38 DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 183.

39 Ibid., 187.
40 Ibid., 232.
41 Ibid., 232–35.
42 Gathercole, Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 43–104.
43 Patterson, “View from across the Euphrates,” 411–31.
44 Patterson (“View from across the Euphrates,” 415) agrees with Puech, Quispel, Klijn, and
460 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

is that Thomas’s theology is vastly different from that of the canonical gospels and
the letters of Paul. The absence of Jesus’s death, apocalypticism, and anti-Judaism,
and the presence of a Platonizing worldview in this gospel all demonstrate to
Patterson that it was composed in a social circumstance very different from that
of the New Testament texts, most of which feature one or all of these themes
prominently.45 In support of an eastern Syrian origin, Patterson argues that there
are a number of texts of known Syrian provenance that lack references to Jesus’s
death, apocalypticism, and anti-Judaism and contain a Platonizing worldview:
the Acts of Thomas, the Book of Thomas the Contender, the Odes of Solomon,
Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos, and Bardaisan’s Liber Legum Regionum.46 These texts
resemble the Gospel of Thomas in that almost all “presuppose the Jewish identity
of both author and audience and reveal no animosity between Jesus-followers …
and the larger Jewish community of which they seem to have been a part.”47 These
similarities suggest to Patterson that all these texts, including the Gospel of Thomas,
originate in the same geographical location—Edessa.
Edessa was a multicultural caravan town with trade routes that connected it
to Armenia, Egypt, and Syro-Palestine.48 Because of this, Edessa boasted a diverse
population that included Greek-speaking Judeans. Patterson argues that Edessa
was distinct from other places from which Jesus texts emerged insofar as it was
mostly independent of Rome until 214 CE.49 This relative independence, argues
Patterson, allowed Jesus stories to ferment in ways radically different from the
stories that emerged in areas more affected by the Judean War, the Bar Kokhba
rebellion, and the Roman Empire more generally. One of the major textual traces
of the Judean War in Jesus texts is the sectarian animosity between Judeans associ-
ated with Jesus traditions and Judeans who were not. Edessa, then, is distinct with
respect to other major Judean centers such as Antioch, Damascus, Caesarea
Philippi, and of course Jerusalem, in that the effects of the Judean wars would have
been less seriously felt, if felt at all.50 Patterson contends that this also applies to
Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, where Judeans and Jesus followers suffered under
Nero, Pliny, and others.51 The fact that Edessa lacked exposure to war and persecu-
tion helps to explain the fact that Jesus texts from Syria are largely uninterested in
topics related to strife such as Jesus’s death, apocalyptic ideas, and anti-Judaism.
Patterson’s contention that Syria boasted a distinct social setting for the Gospel of

Koester that the Gospel of Thomas’s apostolic claims (especially the figure of Judas Thomas) and
theological orientation make Edessa an ideal home for the text.
45 Ibid., 413.
46 Ibid., 420.
47 Ibid., 421.
48 Ibid., 421–22.
49 Ibid., 423.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 424.
 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 461

Thomas is strong, but his arguments are still not decisive. In fact, many of these
criteria are found in Alexandria as well.

II. Alexandria

Two of the strongest supporters of a Syrian Gospel of Thomas, Quispel and

DeConick, both posit that this gospel reflects a number of “Alexandrian” tradi-
tions.52 Here I agree that there are distinctly Alexandrian traditions in Thomas, but,
in my opinion, they did not originate from traveling Alexandrians; rather they are
present in Thomas because the gospel itself was composed in Alexandria. In addi-
tion to the Alexandrian traditions in it, the gospel has a tie to Alexandrian literature
that has not been sufficiently explored: the Gospel of Thomas performs a distinctly
Alexandrian exegesis of the two creation stories in Gen 1:26–27 and 2:7.53 Before
considering the gospel’s exegetical tendencies, we should note a number of other
factors that make Alexandria a likely location for the production of this gospel.

Intellectual Life in Alexandria

We have long known that Alexandria was the intellectual crown jewel of the
Ptolemaic and Roman Empires. The library and museum have taken on an almost
mythical status, and intellectual life in Alexandria is well attested in Greek and
Judean writing.54 Alexandria was the center of Greco-Roman learning in Egypt,
and paideia—culturally significant knowledge acquired through Greco-Roman
schooling (encyclia paideia)—was a powerful currency. Alexandria’s reputation for
paideia attracted teachers and students from across Egypt and beyond. Renowned
intellectuals such as Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, Strabo, Plutarch, Apion, and Philo
visited or lived in Alexandria. But the siren’s call of Alexandria attracted more than
just the intellectual elite. P.Oxy. 6.930 (second–third century CE) contains the
lament of an anxious mother who has learned that her son’s καθηγητής (tutor) has

52 Quispel, “Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament,” 189; DeConick, “Original ‘Gospel

of Thomas,’ ” 196; DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 231–37.

53 Both Elaine Pagels and Arthur Droge identify exegesis of Genesis in Thomas, but neither

connects the gospel to the distinctly Alexandrian style of literary exegesis. See Elaine H. Pagels,
“Exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Gospels of Thomas and John,” JBL 118 (1999): 477–96, https://doi
.org/10.2307/3268185; Arthur J. Droge, “Sabbath Work/Sabbath Rest: Genesis, Thomas, John,”
HR 47 (2007): 112–41.
54 Much has been written on the significance of Alexandria’s intellectual life. The classic

study is P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 1:305–793. For a
more recent overview, see Edward Jay Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexan-
dria, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 41 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006),
143–68.
462 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

left Oxyrhychus; according to Raffaella Cribiore, he likely departed to seek his

fortune in Alexandria,55 a location where rural teachers might relocate. In P.Oxy.
18.2190.7–8 (first century CE), a student in Alexandria complains to his father that
he is having difficulty finding a new teacher and does not want to study with a
certain Didymos. In explaining his reservations, the student reports that “he
­[Didymos], who taught in the country, thinks he can compete with the other
teachers.”56 The presence of figures such as Didymos and the unnamed καθηγητής
demonstrate that the intellectual landscape of Alexandria was made up of both elite
and more modestly educated figures.
The presence of the latter type is demonstrated in several other papyri as well.57
P.Oxy. 18.2192 (second century CE), for example, features a person in Oxyrhyn-
chus writing to a friend in Alexandria, requesting copies of books.58 This is signifi-
cant not only because the letter contains references to two known Alexandrian
intellectuals (Harpocration and Valerius Pollio) but also because it demonstrates
another instance of intellectual exchange between Alexandria and Oxyrhynchus.
The presence of both the intellectual elite and marginal intellectuals illustrates the
range of people for whom paideia was significant in Alexandria. This world of
paideia was important not just for Greeks and Romans living in Alexandria but for
Judeans as well.
Alexandria boasted a large, educated, and socially significant Judean diaspora.
Beginning with the city’s foundation and extending into the second century, Alex-
andria was a major center of Judean life, learning, and writing. To be sure, there
were periods of persecution and violence, especially the pogrom of 38 CE and
subsequent revolt of 40 CE, the unrest caused by the Judean War, and the direct
involvement in the Kitos War (116/117 CE). But these periods of unrest should not
be taken as the norm. Against the popular thesis that Alexandrian Judeans were a
marginalized people living precariously as an isolated ethnos, Erich Gruen argues
that the Jewish experience in Alexandria was, if not positive, at the very least
“unremarkable.”59 The relative freedom to practice their traditions and the direct

55 Raffaella Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt, ASP 36

(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 16.

56 Cribiore’s translation (ibid., 167).
57 Amin Benaissa, “Greek Language, Education, and Literary Culture,” in The Oxford Hand-

book of Roman Egypt, ed. Christina Riggs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 531–38.
58 Ibid., 533.
59 Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 2002), 68. In opposition (but not in response) to Gruen, Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev argues
that Judeans in Roman Egypt had less social and economic freedom and were particularly bur-
dened by the fiscus Judaicus (Diaspora Judaism in Turmoil, 116/117 CE: Ancient Sources and
Modern Insights, Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 6 [Leuven: Peeters,
2005], 123–42). While she argues convincingly that Judeans in Egypt were disadvantaged in the
period leading up to the Kitos War, this does not necessitate sustained persecution of Egyptian
Judeans between the Judean War and the Bar Kokhba rebellion.
 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 463

proximity to the great Hellenistic philosophers, schools, and libraries of Alexandria

helped to cultivate distinctly philosophical Judean traditions.

The Gospel of Thomas in Alexandria

The Gospel of Thomas contains a number of sayings that suggest both that it
was the product of an intellectual environment and that it competed with other
intellectual texts and traditions for prestige and acceptance. The text of the gospel
comprises 114 simple and expanded chreiai, a genre closely tied to Greco-Roman
education and paideia.60 Chreiai were one of the earliest forms of writing instruc-
tion, and in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is presented as a teacher of wisdom. Fur-
ther, the gospel’s first two sayings lay out a hermeneutic of effort61 wherein the
readers/hearers are expected to struggle with the text in order to find the correct
interpretation.
1. And he said: the one who will find the interpretation of these sayings will not
taste death.
2. Jesus said: the one who seeks, let that one not stop seeking until one might find,
when one finds one will become disturbed, when disturbed one will reign, and
having reigned, one will rest. (P.Oxy. 654)62

Part of what makes finding the interpretation challenging is that the composer of
Thomas appears to have purposely made the text difficult to comprehend: similar
sayings are separated, the same words or images are used to mean different things,
and the gospel engages in an exegesis of the creation stories in Genesis without
directly signaling this to the reader/hearer.63 William Arnal argues that these fea-
tures of the Gospel of Thomas betray an effort on the part of the composer to make

60 Ronald F. Hock and Edward N. O’Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, 3 vols., SBLTT 27

(vol. 1), WGRW 2 (vol. 2), WGRW 31 (vol. 3) (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986–2012); Cribiore,
Writing, Teachers, and Students; Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic
and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Teresa Morgan, Literate Educa-
tion in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, Cambridge Classical Studies (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998).
61 Ron Cameron, “Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Chris-

tian Origins,” MTSR 11 (1999): 236–57.

62 All translations of both Greek and Coptic Gospel of Thomas are my own.
63 William E. Arnal, “The Rhetoric of Social Construction: Language and Society in the

Gospel of Thomas,” in Rhetoric and Reality in Early Christianities, ed. Willi Braun, SCJud 16
(Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005), 27–48; Arnal, “Blessed Are the Solitary:
Textual Practices and the Mirage of a Thomas ‘Community,’ ” in “The One Who Sows Bountifully”:
Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers, ed. Caroline Johnson Hodge et al., BJS 356 (Providence, RI:
Brown Judaic Studies, 2013) 271–81.
464 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

a relatively simple text appear much more sophisticated.64 This leads Arnal to the
following conclusion:
Thomas seems to represent an act of cultural imitation: having acquired the liter-
ary skills of a cultural elite, the producers and purveyors of Thomas now are in a
position to imitate high-culture activities such as exegesis and critical analysis of
texts (most proximately, Platonizing exegesis of the book of Genesis), but lacking
the authoritative access to those traditional texts, create their own.65

For Arnal, the social world in which a text like the Gospel of Thomas could have
been produced required an urban, literate population “influenced by Jewish and
Platonic cultural currents.”66 I would go one step further: Thomas requires a social
milieu in which the possession and demonstration of one’s paideia were desirable,
and in which the acquisition of paideia was highly competitive. The Gospel of
Thomas does not merely claim to possess paideia; it does so in a way that paideia
is secret, special knowledge that only the worthy few can access through correct
interpretation. This suggests an urban location with a large, educated, diasporic
Judean population, as well as a strong tradition of paideia and competition, making
Alexandria distinctly qualified. In addition to these more general features that
make Alexandria an attractive location for the gospel’s production, Alexandria also
boasted a distinct style of exegesis that is present in its treatment of the creation
stories in Genesis.

The Alexandrian Exegetical Tradition

Philo is often singled out (with good reason) as the epitome of Alexandrian
philosophical Judaism, but he had many predecessors, contemporaries, and suc-
cessors. Gruen argues that the quality and style of texts such as 3 Maccabees, the
Letter of Aristeas, and the writings of Aristobulus and Artapanus demonstrate that
the writers had access to advanced training in paideia, for which Alexandria was
famous, as well as the Hellenistic cultural traditions of Alexandria.67 One of the
most distinct Alexandrian cultural traditions in the aforementioned texts is their
style of exegesis.
Alexandrian exegesis was distinct for two reasons: first, it consisted of detailed
analyses of foundational texts (such as the Homeric epics and the LXX); and, sec-
ond, the questions asked of the texts came from Aristotelian text criticism.68 These

64 Arnal, “Rhetoric of Social Construction,” 38; Arnal, “How the Gospel of Thomas Works,”

in Scribal Practices and Social Structures among Jesus Adherents: Essays in Honour of John S.
Kloppenborg, ed. William E. Arnal et al., BETL 285 (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 261–80, here 275.
65 Arnal, “How the Gospel of Thomas Works,” 279.
66 Ibid., 277.
67 Gruen, Diaspora, 69.
68 Maren R. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2011), 19–37.

 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 465

text-critical approaches, preserved in the Homeric scholia of Alexandria, did not

ignore or try to hide inconsistencies, redundancies, contradictions, or reality-
defying stories in the text. Rather, they took the text as fallible and either suggested
reasons for the mistake or proposed that the mistake be corrected. These methods
are attested in the scholia, and Maren R. Niehoff argues that many Judean intel-
lectuals in Alexandria were aware of, and some employed, Aristotelian text-critical
analyses in their reading of the LXX, while others tried to insulate the LXX from
such criticisms.
The author of the Letter of Aristeas, for example, appears concerned with the
possibility that their authorized version of the LXX might be subjected to textual
criticism. Near the conclusion of the letter the author states that “no alteration
should be made in it. And when the whole company expressed their approval, they
bade them pronounce a curse in accordance with their custom upon any one who
should make any alteration either by adding anything or changing in any way what-
ever any of the words which had been written or making any omission” (Let. Aris.
310–311).69 Niehoff situates the letter in the intellectual culture of Ptolemaic Alex-
andria and contends that these statements demonstrate the author’s familiarity
with the exegetical practices present in Alexandria and that the author presented
the LXX as something that needed to be protected from this kind of critical read-
ing.70 This suggests either that there was a danger that Jewish intellectuals might
apply Homeric-style literary criticism to the LXX or that it was already happening.
The Letter of Aristeas is a conservative reaction to the text-critical project of Alex-
andrian exegesis.71
Philo stands between open acceptance and outright rejection of Homeric
exegesis. Niehoff argues that, in the Allegorical Commentary, “Philo engages in a
hitherto unnoticed discussion with literalist Bible scholars, who had a significant
presence among Jewish intellectuals in Alexandria.”72 Philo presents the allegorical
interpretation as more than a mere method; it was an aspect of the text that Moses
himself wished to convey.73 Philo’s allegorical approach addresses the very question
raised by Aristotelian scholarship: Is the text literally true? If not, was it intended
to be read allegorically or metaphorically? Or was there an error in the original

69 Translation of Herbert T. Andrews, “The Letter of Aristeas,” APOT 2:121.

70 Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship, 27.
71 Ibid., 34–37. Niehoff reviews a number of other Jewish-Alexandrian texts and intellectuals

who either utilized Homeric exegetical practices or reacted against them. Among the former,
Demetrius’s fragments and Aristobulus provide evidence of a positive connection between bibli-
cal and Homeric scholarship through their question-and-answer style of commentary, and their
focus on verisimilitude in the stories of the LXX.
72 Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship, 134. See also Niehoff, “Homeric Schol-

arship and Bible Exegesis in Ancient Alexandria: Evidence from Philo’s ‘Quarrelsome’ Colleagues,”
ClQ 57 (2007): 166–82.
73 Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship, 134.
466 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

text? For Philo, arguing that Moses wrote allegorically served to solve text-critical
problems while maintaining the integrity of the original text.74
Philo is particularly pertinent because, as Niehoff argues, his various exegeti-
cal works are all aimed at different audiences. Texts in Philo’s Allegorical Com-
mentary have in mind Alexandrian intellectuals familiar with Homeric exegesis.
Therein Philo is most attentive to other exegetical methods and is careful in docu-
menting and supporting his own.75 Questions and Answers on Genesis and Exodus
covers many of the same passages and issues, but the question-and-answer style
suggests that it was aimed at a more general audience.76 Niehoff argues that this
more general audience consisted of interested but not philosophically educated
Judeans, as Philo often uses language suggesting that his audience is already in
agreement with his arguments, and he frames issues as “our” interpretation verse
the “other.”77 Finally, the Exposition addresses an audience that is familiar with
neither Judean traditions nor Alexandrian-style literary criticism. Niehoff suggests
that the Exposition was written in Rome for a Roman audience during Philo’s ten-
ure with the embassy to Gaius.78 Thus, in Philo alone we see three different audi-
ences for which he writes on the same topic: the educated elite of Alexandria,
Judean and non-Judean; a more general Judean audience in Alexandria; and a more
general, non-Judean, non-Alexandrian audience. This is significant in that it dem-
onstrates multiple perceived audiences for what is ostensibly the same interpretive
project: an exegesis of Genesis. This makes sense given that the intellectual environ-
ment in Alexandria was diverse, both demographically and intellectually. This sup-
ports the idea that something like the Gospel of Thomas, a text that does not
approach Philo’s philosophical and exegetical sophistication, would still have an
audience in Alexandria.

The Gospel of Thomas as Alexandrian Exegesis

Stevan Davies, Elaine Pagels, and Arthur Droge have all argued that a number
of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas offer exegesis of the creation stories in Gen
1 and 2.79 They do not believe that the gospel as a whole is a commentary on the
creation stories, but the fact that a large portion of the often unrelated sayings focus

74 Ibid., 151.
75 Ibid., 136.
76 Ibid., 152.
77 Ibid., 157.
78 Ibid., 170–77.
79 Stevan L. Davies, “The Christology and Protology of the Gospel of Thomas,” JBL 111

(1992): 663–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/3267438; Droge, “Sabbath Work/Sabbath Rest,” 112–41.

Pagels is largely in agreement with Davies and develops his notion that the Gospel of Thomas is
exegetical. Droge is not as convinced as Pagels that Thomas includes the primordial light of Gen
1:3 in its exegesis of creation, but he is otherwise in agreement on the gospel’s use of Genesis.
 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 467

on the creation stories in Gen 1:26–27 and 2:7 suggests that Gen 1 and 2 were
influential in the composition of the Gospel of Thomas. In some places, Thomas is
organized loosely by catchwords, but for the most part its structure intentionally
creates interpretive problems by separating related sayings and directly contradict-
ing sayings that appeared earlier in the text.80 While the sayings that relate to cre-
ation are indeed spread throughout the gospel (11, 15, 18, 19, 22, 50, 83, 84, 85,
114), there are sections where two or three of these sayings are clumped together
and function as a small discussion of Genesis (18–19; 83–85). This clumping is
significant because in almost all other cases the gospel separates related sayings
rather than connecting them.81 According to Thomas, the stories in Gen 1:26–27
and 2:7 represented two distinct creations: the first in which human beings were
pure images of God, and the second in which humans were made flesh and blood.
This interpretation of the Genesis creations is most clearly present in Gos. Thom.
83–85.
83. Jesus said, “Images are revealed to people, but the light within them is hidden
in the image. The light of the Father will be disclosed, but his image is hidden in
his light.”
84. Jesus said, “In the days that you see your likeness, you rejoice. But when you
see your images that came into being before you that neither die nor become
revealed, how much will you endure!”
85. Jesus said, “Adam came into being from great power and great wealth, but he
did not become worthy of you. For had he been worthy, [he would] not [have
tasted] death.”

In saying 83, Thomas uses the same word, ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ (borrowed directly from the
Greek, εἰκών), to refer both to images as representations of sense-perceptible things,
and to the original, unseen image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ, Gos. Thom. 83.2, εἰκών Gen 1:26), the
image of God in which humans were first created. The current form of human-
ity—the fleshy embodied human—is a result of the second creation (Gen 2:7), and
when these fleshy humans see the ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ that came into being before, during the
first creation, they are distressed. Saying 85 makes it clear that we are dealing with
Genesis as it presents Adam, the fleshy result of the second creation, as unworthy
of the gospel’s audience. Saying 46 supports the idea that Adam was the first prod-
uct of the second, lesser creation, and sayings 11, 18, and 19 all stress the signifi-
cance and superiority of the first creation over the second. Combined with sayings

80 Allen Callahan attempts to account for Thomas’s structure with an appeal to coherent

themes that connected individual sayings (“ ‘No Rhyme or Reason’: The Hidden Logia of the
Gospel of Thomas,” HTR 90 [1997]: 411–26). Arnal, on the other hand, argues that the composers
of the gospel intentionally made the text difficult to interpret by separating similar sayings and
leaving out interpretive contexts (“How the Gospel of Thomas Works,” 265–77).
81 The one exception is Gos. Thom. 63–65, parables in which a rich person suffers due to

wealth.
468 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

15, 22, 50, and 114 (all of which allude to the two creations), Thomas contains ten
sayings that address the creation accounts in Gen 1:26–27 and 2:7. This number
may sound small in a text of 114 sayings, but it is one of the most consistent themes.
The Gospel of Thomas’s reading and application of the creation stories in
Genesis is remarkably similar to Philo’s in Creation.
After this he says that “God formed man by taking clay from the earth, and
breathed into his face the breath of life” (Gen. ii. 7). By this also he shows very
clearly that there is a vast difference between the man thus formed and the man
that came into existence earlier after the image [εἰκών] of God: for the man so
formed is an object of sense-perception, partaking already of such or such quality,
consisting of body and soul, man or woman, by nature mortal; while he that was
after the (Divine) image [εἰκών] was an idea or type or seal, an object of thought
(only), incorporeal, neither male nor female, by nature incorruptible. It says, how-
ever, that the formation of the individual man, the object of sense, is a composite
one made up of earthly substance and of Divine breath: for it says that the body
was made through the Artificer taking clay and molding out of it a human form,
but that the soul was originated from nothing created whatever, but from the
Father and Ruler of all: for that which He breathed in was nothing else than a
Divine breath that migrated hither from that blissful and happy existence for the
benefit of our race, to the end that, even if it is mortal in respect of its visible part,
it may in respect of the part that is invisible be rendered immortal. Hence it may
with propriety be said that man is the borderland between mortal and immortal
nature, partaking of each so far as is needful, and that he was created at once mor-
tal and immortal, mortal in respect of the body, but in respect of the mind immor-
tal. (Creation 134–135 [Colson and Whitaker, LCL])

Philo’s analysis is more overtly exegetical and sophisticated than Thomas’s, but the
core argument is the same: the first humans were created in the perfect image of
God, and the second, fleshy creation is vastly different from the first. Philo inter-
prets the two creation stories in Genesis through Platonic philosophy, namely, Pla-
tonic dualism, which differentiates between the nous and the sōma. For Philo (and
Thomas), the first creation parallels Plato’s nous, the aspect of mind, whereas the
second creation parallels the baser sōma. It is clear that, for the Gospel of Thomas,
the flesh-and-blood state of humanity is a lesser state (see Gos. Thom. 29 and 112),
and the message Jesus pushes is the need to return to that first, perfect creation.
Sayings 11, 15, 18, 19, 22, 50, 83, 84, 85, and 114 all directly address the need to
return to the previously perfect state, and many more sayings stress the importance
of becoming a single being, alone and chosen. For a text that appears to be an
eclectic collection of sayings with a very rough organizing principle, the fact that
so much of the gospel speaks to creation in Genesis is remarkable.
I do not suggest that the Gospel of Thomas is a text comparable to the writings
of Philo. It shares many Philonic themes but is clearly well below Philo in terms of
philosophical sophistication. This should not, however, dissuade us from placing
it in Philo’s Alexandria. Sections of the gospel are clearly interpreting Genesis in
 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 469

ways that are similar to Philo’s exegesis, and, while the gospel is not at Philo’s intel-
lectual level, the presence of Philo’s contemporaries and the writings of Philo him-
self suggest that there was an audience interested in LXX interpretation beyond
Alexandria’s intellectual elite.
Questions and Answers indicate that those interested in LXX exegesis included
more marginally educated individuals. This should not come as a surprise as ency­
clia paideia actively promoted the social significance of paideia at all levels of edu-
cation. Thus, even those with an elementary or grammatical education would still
recognize the cultural capital in textual exegesis. A text like the Gospel of Thomas
was not composed by or for someone like Philo, but there were many semieducated
people between Philo and the completely uneducated. It is within this field of par-
tially educated people that this gospel is at home. This is the case not only in the
gospel’s generic form—a collection of 114 chreiai—but also in its content. In spite
of his denial of such a title (Gos. Thom. 13), Jesus is frequently presented as a
teacher. The Gospel of Thomas is framed by sayings that present Jesus as a teacher:
the incipit and first saying present Jesus as an orator with his choice student writing
down his sayings, and saying 114 presents Jesus’s disciples in a school setting
wherein Jesus uses the occasion of Peter’s ignorance to teach about the nature of
humanity, while also promising to guide Mary. There are an additional fifteen say-
ings that are occasioned by questions from Jesus’s disciples or are presented as Jesus
directly teaching them.82 The subjects of the questions range from Judean religious
practices (6, 53), to discipleship (21, 22), to the figure of Jesus (43, 61, 91), to the
nature/coming of the kingdom (20, 22, 113), to the aforementioned question of
Genesis (18). While chreiai introduced by questions represent only a small portion
of the gospel, they address nearly all of the significant themes in the work. While
less sophisticated and much shorter, these sections reflect the kind of topics that
Philo addressed in Questions.
An Alexandrian Gospel of Thomas makes sense given what we know about
the city. The supposedly distinct characteristics that place the gospel in Syria are
largely present in Alexandria. Even more than Syria, Alexandria boasted a large,
educated Judean diaspora with an established tradition of LXX exegesis. Placing
Thomas in Alexandria does more than move it from the eastern borders of the
Roman Empire to the south. It further supports recent scholarship that under-
stands early Jesus traditions in the matrices of intellectual culture and does not
require us to posit anything special about Jesus myths finding a receptive audience.
A learned Judean population with a long history of performing exegesis on the LXX
would be very receptive to a text that presents a wise teacher doing the same.

82 Sayings 6, 12, 18, 20, 21, 22, 37, 43, 50, 51, 52, 53, 61, 91, and 113. Saying 50 is framed as

instruction from Jesus to his disciples when someone asks them a question, and saying 52 is
introduced by the disciples but is not framed as a question per se.
470 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

III. The Gospel of Thomas, Alexandria,

and “Jewish Christianity”

Two interrelated foundations upon which the hypothesis of a Syrian Gospel

of Thomas is built are that the gospel contains “Jewish Christian” elements and that
Syria’s earliest Jesus traditions were distinctly “Jewish Christian.” Quispel offered
the earliest and most emphatic defense of this hypothesis, first positing that the
Gospel of Thomas copied the Jewish Christian Gospel of the Hebrews, and later
that Thomas had a Jewish Christian source.83 There are problems, however, with
the ways in which Quispel and others construct “Jewish Christianity,” as they use
the category in a way that is at best ill-defined and is often invoked to draw attention
to thematic similarities between the Gospel of Thomas and other “Jewish Chris-
tian” texts from Syria such as the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies.84 A bigger prob-
lem, however, lies with the category “Jewish Christian” itself. According to Matt
Jackson-McCabe,
Since the nineteenth century, “Jewish Christianity” has been among those cate-
gories that function essentially as givens in the field of early Christian studies.
Scholars, in other words, have generally taken for granted that there was in antiq-
uity an identifiable phenomenon that should be considered a distinctly Jewish
subclass of Christianity, and that some early Christian groups and texts are best
understood as examples of it. Remarkably, however, there has been no agreement
as to what the particular phenomenon in question actually is, nor, consequently,
the specific body of data that manifests it.85

Without a basic understanding of what “Jewish Christian” is or is not, the category

becomes empty. Still more, the category is not explanatory; calling something “Jew-
ish Christian” does not help us better understand that thing but is rather an

83 Many who wrote after Quispel also consider large parts of Thomas to be “Jewish Chris-

tian,” singling out Syria as a home for Jewish Christianity based on a construction of Syrian
Christianity from the third and fourth centuries. Stephen Patterson makes a notable qualification;
he argues that the sayings often labeled “Jewish Christian” are evidence that the Gospel of Thomas
is “less hostile” toward Judaism than the canonical gospels. Patterson still argues that this attitude
toward Judaism points to Syria, but he does so based on the fact that Syrian Judaism did not
experience the trauma of the Judean War in the same way as Judea, Palestine, and Galilee did. I
agree with Patterson’s approach here, but not with his conclusion.
84 Quispel, “Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament,” 190–94. This vagueness is not a

distinct failing of Quispel but is indicative of the more general failure to come up with a concrete
definition. See Matt Jackson-McCabe’s discussion of this failure in “Introduction,” in Jewish Chris-
tianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts, ed. Matt Jackson-McCabe (Minneapo-
lis: Fortress, 2007), 1–6, here 1–3.
85 Matt Jackson-McCabe, “What’s in a Name? The Problem of ‘Jewish Christianity,’ ” in

McCabe, Jewish Christianity Reconsidered, 7–38, here 9.

 Brown: Where Indeed Was the Gospel of Thomas Written? 471

after-the-fact descriptor. The category assumes a distinction between Jewish Chris-

tianity and gentile Christianity, with the former represented by Peter, James, and
the church in Jerusalem, and the latter by Paul.86
One possibly helpful alternative to “Jewish Christianity” that Jackson-McCabe
suggests is “Christian-Judaism.” This category is as much a modern creation as the
one it replaces, but it has the potential to do more theoretical heavy lifting. The
reversal of terms no longer requires a preformed Christianity and instead focuses
on the more historically plausible scenario of some Judean traditions adopting
Jesus stories. The hyphen, of course, artificially separates two categories that never
existed as static wholes, but at the same time serves to highlight the significance of
Judean tradition.
Related to the criticisms of the category “Jewish Christian” is the narrowing,
or even erasing, of the gap between “Judaism” and “Hellenism.” “Jewish Christian-
ity” exists in a world where we can clearly differentiate it from “gentile Christianity,”
and by extension distinguish Judaism from Hellenism.87 This divide has come
under significant scrutiny, particularly as it relates to Paul, but there is reason to
argue that the distinction fails in a number of locations. Keeping with the Gospel
of Thomas, the text assumes that its audience is familiar with both the LXX and
Platonic anthropology. The Gospel of Thomas is not anti-Judean, but neither is it
anti-gentile or anti-Hellenistic: Thomas freely blends the LXX with Platonic exege-
sis, paraphrases Aesop’s fables, comments on food and purity laws, and combines
Judean wisdom with Greek chreiai. In short, the Gospel of Thomas moves seam-
lessly between “Judean” and “Hellenic” ideas and genres, effectively collapsing the
distinction.88
Other examples of texts that move fluidly between “Judean” and “Hellenic”
discourses are readily available in antiquity, particularly the writings of Judean
intellectuals in Alexandria. The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, fragments of
Aristobulus, Letter of Aristeas, fragments of Artapanus, and, of course, the many
writings of Philo of Alexandria are all witness to a tradition of Judean intellectuals
blending the Judean epic with Greek philosophy. The contents of each author differ,

86 Ibid., 10. Daniel Boyarin is also critical of the term “Jewish Christianity,” but on the
grounds that it was, and continues to function as, a heresiological term that distinguishes proper
Christians from “Judaizing” heretics (“Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Disman-
tling a Dubious Category (to Which Is Appended Correction of My Border Lines),” JQR 99 (2009):
7–36, here 27–28.
87 Troels Engberg-Pedersen, ed., Paul beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (Louisville:

Westminster John Knox, 2001).

88 In recent decades, Paul has been the focus of the collapsing of Judaism and Hellenism,

but there are numerous examples outside of the New Testament. See esp. Stanley K. Stowers, “Does
Pauline Christianity Resemble a Hellenistic Philosophy?,” in Engberg-Pedersen, Paul beyond the
Judaism/Hellenism Divide, 81–102; and Stowers, “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power: Paul and the
Corinthians,” in Redescribing Paul and the Corinthians, ed. Ron Cameron and Merrill P. Miller,
ECL 5 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 105–50.
472 Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no. 2 (2019)

but there is a general trend wherein the Judean epic and history—particularly as
they pertain to Moses—are presented in step with Greco-Roman virtue and phi-
losophy. In the case of Aristobulus and Philo, Moses is presented as the precursor
to Greek philosophy and poetry. While the Gospel of Thomas is not nearly as
sophisticated as these other Alexandrian authors, the content of the gospel still fits
quite comfortably in the intellectual milieu of diaspora Judeans in Alexandria.
An Alexandrian Gospel of Thomas accounts for the various Judean and Alex-
andrian traditions in the text better than a Syrian gospel. Not only are the Gospel
of Thomas’s reflections on and exegesis of the creation traditions in Gen 1:26–27
and 2:7 paralleled in Philo, but they more broadly reflect the exegetical traditions
of Alexandria’s Judean and Hellenistic intellectual elite. The Gospel of Thomas,
then, should not be understood as a text that contains “Jewish Christian” or “encratic”
elements (as DeConick and Quispel argue). Such an approach artificially separates
the content of the gospel and fails to recognize what its form and content most
evidently imply about the nature of the text: the Gospel of Thomas is “Alexandrian.”