spin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 03, 2022 5:54 pm
This thread seems to have strayed from BC&H!
Let's stray a bit more then. Putting some kind of stake into the ground here, saves me from publishing an odd paper.
No edits from this point on, just a straight copy of my bio on academia.edu. Today is the 5th of February 2022
The so-called Gospel of Thomas (Thomas) has my undivided attention, and I have reached the point where I carefully weigh and evaluate every single word of the Coptic text.
The second part of the Complete Thomas Commentary has been published, 500+ pages solely on the content of the Prologue and the first 55 logia
My first series, 'Literal Thomas', consists of 7 parts, is predominantly about Thomas and contains my initial findings, among others his metamorphosis model.
My second series, 'Absolute Thomasine priority', consists of 3 parts, is entirely about the canonicals, and discusses every version of his 72 logia, in full, with a separate paper on all the parables.
My third series, 'Thomas in context', is entirely about Thomas and was intended to consist of 16 parts, yet the first 9 have been published and exhibit a most detailed and elaborate analysis of Thomas, which triggered me to make the Commentary
The Interactive Thomas translation is the focal point of my entire series of series. I started and finished my second series before publishing my translation, part VII of the first series: most everything published prior to July 2020 is based on the usual translations, which are very inaccurate, heavily biased and full of undocumented emendations - Paterson Brown and Detlev Koepke being exceptions there
It is my top priority to disclose the intricacies of Thomas and the beautiful insights in it. In essence, he teaches what today is known as radical non-duality, only 2 millennia earlier.
His World is how we view the world, his 'house' is how we view ourselves - the mental models we created for ourselves to live in, inhabited by the two that we made when we were One: the Ego and the Self. We are neither.
The World must burn, and the house overturned - then the slaveowner (Ego) and the Self (slave) will make way for our real, original self: the living father.
IS, who is also living, is a mere helping hand on our way to that salvation: a concept, and it all is created by the alleged Thomas, the author - who very likely was known as Judas at first
On Absolute Thomasine Priority, my latest addition is this:
Coptic Thomas is the original, which I date to 100 BCE-CE. Its Oxyrhynchus copies and the like served as input for Marcion (and Marcion is just an invention of the Church Fathers, a personification, so they could pull their usual stunts of ridicule, falsification and deceit):
Thomas got hijacked into a narrative by "Marcion", who turned it into a religion - which is diametrically opposed to everything in Thomas. Calling themselves Chrestians (based on logion 90), a movement came into being that became immensely popular; Philip narrates of those Chrestians who already practised baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and even received the Holy Spirit: the earliest CE's did know Chrestianity but naturally that did not contain even a hint of Judaism or Tanakh.
Bar Kokhba abolished Judaism and perhaps that was the trigger to fuse Chrestianism with the Tanakh? Call it dramatic irony, but Marcion got hijacked himself - by "Christianity "; Romans who sought to possess the Marcionite movement for reasons of power and control.
An early copy of Marcion, "Mark", got expanded by - highly likely - Justin Martyr. He took all of Marcion and prefixed it with the birth narrative and the Tiberius dating, and added all the references from and to the Tanakh, including the resurrection. At the same time he wrote "his own gospel", namely "Matthew": Luke and Matthew are produced by one and the same editor.
Mark got expanded after that, all the evidence destroyed, and "Jesus" got retrofitted to the first half of the 1st CE - all from the second half of the 2nd CE at the earliest, and it is highly likely that it wasn't until Constantine (1st half 4th CE) that the hostile take-over of Chrestianity by "Christianity" took place: the persecuted "Christians" of the early centuries most likely were Chrestians, and the persecutors Christians themselves, even though those labels are somewhat opague at best.
John doesn't belong in the NT, like "Luke" it is a heavily redacted work of original thought yet one that was rooted in self-seeking, spirituality, introspection, built on top of Thomas: I and the father are one; indeed
My current roadmap:
Philip Translation v1.0 - Q2-3 2022
Thomas - Marcion parallels based on Klinghardt (13 Thomasine parables) - Q3-4 2022