P. Oxy. 5575: Something Like Judas Thomas Was Before the Four Canonical Gospels
Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2024 2:56 pm
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5575 (P. Oxy. 5575) isn’t just another fragment pulled from the sands of Egypt—it’s a window into a chaotic, dynamic, and frankly fascinating era of early Christianity. What’s immediately striking is how this fragment, dated to the second century, presents us with an intermingling of sayings from Matthew, Luke, and what’s unmistakably the Gospel of Thomas. And let’s be clear: we’re not talking about some neat, linear progression toward the fourfold gospel canon. This is something raw, something unresolved. It’s a reminder that, in the early years, the status of texts like Thomas wasn’t secondary, wasn’t sidelined—it was very much in the mix, competing for the hearts and minds of believers.
What you see with P. Oxy. 5575 is a direct challenge to the idea that there was ever a clear boundary between "canonical" and "apocryphal." Here, on a single piece of papyrus, we find Jesus sayings that reflect, and more importantly, blend traditions from all three gospels. It’s as if whoever copied this text wasn’t concerned with "orthodoxy" in the sense that later generations were. They didn’t view Thomas as an outsider or an enemy but rather as a legitimate conveyor of Jesus’ words, coexisting with Matthew and Luke.
This pre-canonical status of the Gospel of Thomas disrupts our comfortable narratives of early Christian development. Here we have, in P. Oxy. 5575, evidence that Thomas wasn’t an "apocryphal" gospel lurking in the shadows but was instead part of the mainstream Jesus tradition. The fragment reflects a time when the Jesus sayings weren’t yet partitioned into categories of "in" and "out." Instead, they were freely circulating, intermingling, cross-pollinating—long before the Church Fathers began their systematic effort to draw hard lines between the canonical and the heretical.
Now, look at the content itself: the admonition not to worry about life and what to eat, to consider the lilies and the birds—echoes we’ve come to associate with the canonical gospels, sure. But then, we hit that hard statement, unmistakably Thomasine: "unless you fast from the world, you will never find the Kingdom." This kind of asceticism doesn’t quite square with the Matthew-Luke combo. It’s far more in line with Thomas’s distinct vision, a vision that was clearly speaking to people at the time.
It’s convenient for modern scholars to assume that the Gospel of Thomas was always a stepchild of early Christianity, something "Gnostic" that the mainstream movement simply "excluded." But P. Oxy. 5575 tells a different story. It forces us to consider that maybe, just maybe, Thomas wasn’t an outsider looking in. Perhaps it was an equal contender, shaping the trajectory of Christian thought just as much as Matthew or Luke. And it certainly complicates any simplistic notion that the Gospel of Thomas was merely a “heretical” text grafted onto the tradition after the fact.
This fragment captures a moment before the New Testament canon was crystallized, a time when followers of Jesus had a more fluid and inclusive approach to what constituted authoritative teaching. P. Oxy. 5575 is a testament to that formative, messy, and all-too-human process of constructing what we now call Christianity. It suggests that the Gospel of Thomas wasn’t merely tolerated; it was embraced as part of the tradition. And that’s a detail that scholars obsessed with "orthodoxy" would prefer to sweep under the rug.
What you see with P. Oxy. 5575 is a direct challenge to the idea that there was ever a clear boundary between "canonical" and "apocryphal." Here, on a single piece of papyrus, we find Jesus sayings that reflect, and more importantly, blend traditions from all three gospels. It’s as if whoever copied this text wasn’t concerned with "orthodoxy" in the sense that later generations were. They didn’t view Thomas as an outsider or an enemy but rather as a legitimate conveyor of Jesus’ words, coexisting with Matthew and Luke.
This pre-canonical status of the Gospel of Thomas disrupts our comfortable narratives of early Christian development. Here we have, in P. Oxy. 5575, evidence that Thomas wasn’t an "apocryphal" gospel lurking in the shadows but was instead part of the mainstream Jesus tradition. The fragment reflects a time when the Jesus sayings weren’t yet partitioned into categories of "in" and "out." Instead, they were freely circulating, intermingling, cross-pollinating—long before the Church Fathers began their systematic effort to draw hard lines between the canonical and the heretical.
Now, look at the content itself: the admonition not to worry about life and what to eat, to consider the lilies and the birds—echoes we’ve come to associate with the canonical gospels, sure. But then, we hit that hard statement, unmistakably Thomasine: "unless you fast from the world, you will never find the Kingdom." This kind of asceticism doesn’t quite square with the Matthew-Luke combo. It’s far more in line with Thomas’s distinct vision, a vision that was clearly speaking to people at the time.
It’s convenient for modern scholars to assume that the Gospel of Thomas was always a stepchild of early Christianity, something "Gnostic" that the mainstream movement simply "excluded." But P. Oxy. 5575 tells a different story. It forces us to consider that maybe, just maybe, Thomas wasn’t an outsider looking in. Perhaps it was an equal contender, shaping the trajectory of Christian thought just as much as Matthew or Luke. And it certainly complicates any simplistic notion that the Gospel of Thomas was merely a “heretical” text grafted onto the tradition after the fact.
This fragment captures a moment before the New Testament canon was crystallized, a time when followers of Jesus had a more fluid and inclusive approach to what constituted authoritative teaching. P. Oxy. 5575 is a testament to that formative, messy, and all-too-human process of constructing what we now call Christianity. It suggests that the Gospel of Thomas wasn’t merely tolerated; it was embraced as part of the tradition. And that’s a detail that scholars obsessed with "orthodoxy" would prefer to sweep under the rug.