Complete Thomas Commentary

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mlinssen
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Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by mlinssen »

That is to say, the prologue and the first 13 logia. But the detailing of each of them is complete

To be continued

https://www.academia.edu/46974146/Compl ... ary_Part_I
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Jax
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by Jax »

Nice Martijn. :cheers:

Am reading it now. I can totally relate to the first part of your acknowledgements. :D

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Stuart
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by Stuart »

I started reading through it. Nice job
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mlinssen
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by mlinssen »

:popcorn:
Aleph One
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by Aleph One »

Hey congrats on the work! :cheers: I appreciate the dedication to the original vocabulary, especially for something as full of wordplay, riddles, puns, etc. as gThomas is. I've been working my way through it and there's a lot of nuances of translation that I don't recall from the other works on gThomas I've encountered.

(And one minor suggestion while I'm still reading: maybe if possible add table of contents bookmarks to the PDF as it always makes navigation easier imo. Unless there's a way to download it with metadata I missed or something? :confusedsmiley: Anyway, not a big deal obviously.)
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mlinssen
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by mlinssen »

Aleph One wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 10:26 pm Hey congrats on the work! :cheers: I appreciate the dedication to the original vocabulary, especially for something as full of wordplay, riddles, puns, etc. as gThomas is. I've been working my way through it and there's a lot of nuances of translation that I don't recall from the other works on gThomas I've encountered.

(And one minor suggestion while I'm still reading: maybe if possible add table of contents bookmarks to the PDF as it always makes navigation easier imo. Unless there's a way to download it with metadata I missed or something? :confusedsmiley: Anyway, not a big deal obviously.)
Thank you so very much Aleph One!
I errrrr, well, you know, had never even thought of that

You know, at the end of the day (= years) it has been such an exhausting race of taking yet another hurdle that it's a relief to finally be able to "be done with it", and the final edit alone of papers like this and the Translation takes many days.
But, thanks to you, from now on I'll always publish my PDF's with TOC bookmarks to the PDF! Absolutely awesome and all it takes is just one click ROFL

I've updated the Commentary as well as the Translation. The new files should take precedence over the previous ones so when you just click Download you should get the TOC one now - lemme know if it ain't so!
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mlinssen
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by mlinssen »

Jax wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:58 am Nice Martijn. :cheers:

Am reading it now. I can totally relate to the first part of your acknowledgements. :D

Lane
LOL. Done a big project yourself too hey?
Sometimes when you're out hunting you become the hunted instead, haunted by the hunt itself. Always "good" to have someone looking out after you
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Jax
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by Jax »

mlinssen wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 11:27 pm
Jax wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:58 am Nice Martijn. :cheers:

Am reading it now. I can totally relate to the first part of your acknowledgements. :D

Lane
LOL. Done a big project yourself too hey?
Sometimes when you're out hunting you become the hunted instead, haunted by the hunt itself. Always "good" to have someone looking out after you
Love the thrill of anticipation and as you say "haunted by the hunt".

Total submersion, a thrill and a curse. :cheers:
Bernard Muller
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by Bernard Muller »

to mlinssen,
I know you spent a lot of effort on translating the Coptic.
I wonder what made you think that the coptic gThomas (found in Nag Hammadi, dated 340 AD) is the original version of that gospel? That goes against this kind of early Christian writings were generally first written in Greek, and then later, according to the need, translated in local languages (such as Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic).
That's what the Wikipedia entry says:
The wording of the Coptic sometimes differs markedly from the earlier Greek Oxyrhynchus texts, the extreme case being that the last portion of logion 30 in the Greek is found at the end of logion 77 in the Coptic. This fact, along with the quite different wording Hippolytus [180-230 AD] uses when apparently quoting it (see below), suggests that the Gospel of Thomas "may have circulated in more than one form and passed through several stages of redaction."
Although it is generally thought that the Gospel of Thomas was first composed in Greek, there is evidence that the Coptic Nag Hammadi text is a translation from Syriac (see Syriac origin).

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas)

Cordially, Bernard
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mlinssen
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Re: Complete Thomas Commentary

Post by mlinssen »

Bernard Muller wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 2:01 pm to mlinssen,
I know you spent a lot of effort on translating the Coptic.
I wonder what made you think that the coptic gThomas (found in Nag Hammadi, dated 340 AD) is the original version of that gospel? That goes against this kind of early Christian writings were generally first written in Greek, and then later, according to the need, translated in local languages (such as Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic).
That's what the Wikipedia entry says:
The wording of the Coptic sometimes differs markedly from the earlier Greek Oxyrhynchus texts, the extreme case being that the last portion of logion 30 in the Greek is found at the end of logion 77 in the Coptic. This fact, along with the quite different wording Hippolytus [180-230 AD] uses when apparently quoting it (see below), suggests that the Gospel of Thomas "may have circulated in more than one form and passed through several stages of redaction."
Although it is generally thought that the Gospel of Thomas was first composed in Greek, there is evidence that the Coptic Nag Hammadi text is a translation from Syriac (see Syriac origin).

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas)

Cordially, Bernard
Hi Bernard,

I did indeed, but only because I knew the current translations were all heavily lopsided, biased, distorted through a Christian lens.
They all translate heavens with heaven when it coincides with the word kingdom, but when it appears just on its own, they suddenly use the plural.
The Parable of the colostrum in stead of leaven, the complete obfuscation of logion 74, translating strangers with friends in 64: just throw away all translations of Thomas, they're rubbish, lies, to an essential degree. Not only that, but they treat Thomas just as a superficial text, whereas it clearly states that it should be interpreted

What makes me think that this is the original?
The wordplay, the similarities between word pairs, in writing but also in pronunciation.
The best example of course is logion 7, that of the lion, where we all can clearly see that two similar sentences are followed by opposite phrases: that is intentional. It turns out that the sentences are only similar in writing, but not in syntax: where one word is the verb "come-to-be" in the second sentence, it is its noun in the first: "being". The words are identical, as are many words in Coptic, in their verb and noun form

Try that in any other language and you'll fail, it's like translating a joke into another language: hard, sometimes impossible. This is impossible to put into another language

"That goes against this kind of early Christian writings were generally first written in Greek"

1. What do you mean with "this kind of early Christian writings"?
I fail to recognise any form of Christianity in any of Thomas

We'll get to the rest later then
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