Bart Interviews Mark Goodacre about the Gospel of Thomas 

"omg" in a video like this. Good pun ;D

This is god >ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-C9AOuedvOnI.html

Its bloody mental how much the world changes. When I was studying some of this stuff at uni there was none of this type of thing - that was 2006. Absolutely loving this.

@@osr4152 - How did you learn about this stuff without discussions?

@@MossyMozart it's not people having discussions that is new, it is that distinguished scholars are having these discussions in an online forum for a general audience free of charge which is new.

@@janeroberson4750 🙄

Amen😉

I think 74 may be Thomas' observation, and Jesus responds in 75, saying that the many remain trapped outside because they have yet to become one. 🤔

It's amazing how many mental doors are opened by simply believing!!!😇

@@andrewmays3988 Believing . . . what? Are we referring to “don’t-confuse-me-with-the-facts” belief promoted by fundamentalists? If that is the “simple belief” to which you are referring, it easy to not have to ask hard questions if you “simply believe.” But it is not intellectually honest. The mental doors of “simple belief” open up to brick walls and blind alleys. What the world needs now is critical thought and competent, evidence-based reasoning.

what did they explain to you exactly. Other than Barts guest doesnt approve of Thomas ideologically and presumes it is false because it doesnt fit into his orthodoxy. I have no idea if thomas is "real" or not. But i do recognise the same tactics used by 'christian' fundamentalists being used in this video

@@cdreid9999 What tactics exactly, and where? Spell it out if you don't mind.

He obviously doesn’t fit

@@cdreid9999 I can’t say I recognize any fundamentalist sort of tactics being employed by either man. In fact I’d claim the opposite. I find both Bart and Mark to be incredibly non-dogmatic, with only a couple of exceptions (like that they both hold very tightly to the notion that Luke copied Matthew)

@@cdreid9999 I think, overall, Bart and his guests usually have a balanced and nuanced perspective on their studies. I think that concluding a viewpoint from the available evidence is quite different from the fundamentalist approach, which starts from a presupposition and evaluates the evidence in the respect that it conforms to their base assumptions. Holding a strong stance on a topic based on the available evidence would not qualify itself to be considered a fundamentalist tactic.

Absolutely about Bart. However, Mark?? Gosh, how can he teach anybody anything? Did he ever fully answer a question?

YES HE DOES, Sean, doesn't he? He's a great interviewee and knows his stuff so he makes a FABULOUS interviewer; and he knows all the "best" questions to ask. Amen.

@@steppenwolf3252 For me he did not. I would rather just listen to Bart. I do not doubt Goodacre’s expertise. I do not feel he explained his thoughts with smoothness or clarity. He was to me “choppy.”

Agreed, haven't seen Dr Bart in this role before, really enjoyed this.

@@emiliamartucci8291 ...and he's picked up that annoying (to a Brit's ears) habit of describing a group of anything as "a bunch".

Right on, andre!

@@steppenwolf3252 They're the best.

Hey OhMan! I agree. I'm in heaven listening to these guys. Some of we the people, "request" more! (teasing you OhMan). O Man O Manashevitz! (sp)

Haha; thanks! :D

Without a doubt. Never saw him in this role before

ypu missed that this seems to be why he presumes it is a later scam as his baseline

I agree, knowledge > faith. As to whether it’s a “scam”, to some extent (as I understand Bart) all the gospels are scams because they are presented as being written by the apostles when they weren’t. Whether the Thomas gospel was written later than the others isn’t all that significant to me. What are interesting are the ideas… just as I think there are very interesting ideas in all the gospels. I’m an atheist but the idea that the poor have value and one should love one’s enemies was a very revolutionary idea in ancient times and even in our own time. It’s a pity so few Christians seem to read those parts.

One of my uncles RIP, who was a longtime devotee of Yogananda said once to me, "if you're in this path looking for knowledge, you may be in for disappointment at worst, or a misguided quest at best." I never liked that message, 44 yrs later, because I have always lived and been so thirsty for knowledge.

Moral knowledge

Yes, Thomas has a very eastern feel to it. I agree that these are concepts to be contemplated, rather than secrets gated by gurus. 🤓

They bear even greater similarity to Sufi teaching stories, and anyone familiar with the latter will find Thomas quite easy to understand.

The False Gospel of Thomas is not it the Bible, don't waste your time on it

@@ClaimClam I can't see any grounds for calling it false. Many of Jesus's teachings that are in other gospels are also in Thomas. In fact, it consists of Jesus's teachings and nothing else, which you would have thought would make it a vital part of the New Testament. Put Thomas in, and remove all of Paul's epistles, and you would have a much better mix.

Reads to me like someone who speaks obscurely so as to be misunderstood, as Jesus characterizes his own communication style in Mark. Then again, these are the sayings that were supposedly whispered to Thomas, not to randos

I agree. Jesus says, the kingdom of God is within you, in Luke. Here is the same idea, it's spread out before you, and people don't see it. This is true. Few people see.

It sounds like you had a fairly painless transition. I had a long, lonely, painful crisis of faith that lasted decades,and only recently acquired something like faith. Not planning on ever abandoning a sliver of Agnosticism in my beliefs.

That’s wonderful. I need to pursue the discipline of meditation.

What surprises me is that these two scholars seem to be totally unfamiliar with the tenants of Advaita and the other non-dual philosophies of the East. I am somewhat new to Ehrman's podcast, so I wonder if the Advaita subject comes up in other interviews. To me, Jesus was clearly teaching Advaita, which he likely learned in India during all those undocumented years from his teens to his 30's. I will say that he had to dumb it down for his audience in Palestine. Those three words that he whispered in Thomas' ear must have been "You are God"

Yes, you are on to something with this intuition. I hope you are ready for the ride, because it usually gets weirder before it gets clearer. I say go for it, but many will discourage you, as will the mind. If interested in a perspective, see my separate post in this thread.

Yes! Also, "Be passers by."

the word youre looking for is gnosticism.

I think dualistic is not the word so much as ascetic.

​@@markjohnson543 the denial of physical and psychological desire in order to achieve ascension. This is truly the message in Gospel of Thomas.

@@cdreid9999 irony is both Paul and Gospel of John can be more easily categorized as two different types of popular Gnostic theologies while the Gospel of Thomas seems to have very little overt relationship. For example Paul’s archons are all over the place in Gnosticism. And John theology is related to the Pythagorean Monad and Logos which was also a gnostic cosmology. Meanwhile the Gospel of Thomas has no overt cosmology.

Very interesting points, and I couldn’t agree more. Do you find that the sayings in Thomas remind you of koans in the Zen tradition… sayings that are almost designed to confuse the mind and direct consciousness beyond it?

@@tlucia88 Yes. The koans will highlight and bring to bear one's attention on the seductive power of the conditioned patterns of thought structure. With a sufficient degree of clarity on the structure as an object within Consciousness (i.e., often labeled as 'Awareness'-- to the Nth degree, I'd add), there's a piercing of the veil, and the mind's/self's dominance is demoted. The interesting 'flip' is the realization that ALL that happens as life is within YOU/CONSCIOUSNESS, and the separation was only ever a belief, and a persistent one at that. All seeming paradoxes/confusions are of the mind, and it can (after one actually gets the hang of it) get joyously interesting seeing how ones own mind tends to work. At the core of every belief system worth its salt is a surrender, and an absolute one at that, and the supposed ego does not go down without a fight. So the 'smaller' realizations and massively confusing insights that pop up are useful, but don't get stuck. There's always FURTHER, until....

Discussion Topics. ✊

Agreed!!! Now imagine if they wrote a book

@@investigandolabiblia Now I'm salivating! Quit it, Investigating, you're making me hungry!

@@steppenwolf3252 😂😂😂😂 this comment cracked me up

Oh? I kinda got the impression that Thomas was the Trotsky to Peter's Stalin. 😅

I’ve always seen doubt as a tool

Paul basically had a weird experience, and like David Icke in modern times decided to create his own religion around it. He was totally ignorant of Jesus's teachings and made it up as he went along. He managed to hijack Christianity and 90% of what people think of it as are his teachings and not those of Jesus. Take all of Paul's absurd theology out of the Bible and replace it with Thomas, and you might get somewhere.

-- not your comment, that makes perfect sense. I mean Pauline Christianity makes no sense.

@@beyondbodywork9590 No, it doesn't. In fact I wonder if people who swallow this nonsense actually like it because it makes no sense!

​@@beyondbodywork9590 To me Pauline Christianity can be thought to make sense. Paul was a brilliant theologian, God used him for spelling out more in detail how the transition from the Old covenant with Israel only, to the New covenant with all of humanity by faith in Christ.

I am of the opinion, subject to future amendments, that Saint Paul was motivated by appealing to the prevailing sensibilities and preferences of the Romans and wanted to preach in the Græco-Roman world. Later, when Emperor Konstantinos organized the Ecumenical Council of Nikæa, they found the theology of Saint Paul to be most palatable to the Romans, and this caused them to canonize the New Testament in a way that the resultant anthology was dominated by the theology of Saint Paul.

Whoops! not Markian priority but Matthew -Luke and after!

We need more blessed lions!

imo there is a bad habit of assuming there is a baseline all christian teachings are taken from. Which is refuted by the very need for the council. Books should be presumed to be independant oral traditions as a baseline

@@cdreid9999 When authors write identical things, it's a necessary question especially if it happens often. It can't be coincidental. Did one take from the other or did they both come about these things independently? It's not presumed but it's often the most logical theory until shown otherwise.

Same here 🙃

This is god >ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-C9AOuedvOnI.html

This is a very useful interpretation. I also get the sense that this text has a lot of eastern influence, and is meant to guide the reader to a deeper understanding, rather than impose some greater truth upon them. What are your thoughts on logia like 48 and 106? To me, they preach the power of solidarity. I think the "solitaires" referenced as the elect throughout the text, are those who have achieved true solidarity with their fellows, making the two into one. 🤔

Yes, my reading of 114 is something like, "The only reason the women are not your equals is because you block their way, Peter." 😇

> Instead of Thomas using sayings from the Synoptics to produce a sense of Jesus speaking, the Synoptics used Thomas to claim that they knew the interpretations of the hidden sayings and thus had eternal life. < I agree, Thomas seems like the purer form of the teachings, and then the others come along with their own interpretations and justifications for those interpretations. Look at logion 35. In Thomas, it simply describes revolutionary tactics, but in Mark it becomes a metaphor for fighting demons, while Matt and Luke present it as a bizarre justification(?) for actual exorcism? Luke actually changes the meaning of the logion, saying you defeat strength not with cunning, but with still _more_ strength. 🤷‍♂

I’m no linguist or biblical scholar but I do have advanced pattern recognition and experience with comedic writing structure. My take on the lion & man meaning, while not a concrete solution, I do believe my take is a useful push in the right direction: It has all the makings of a double or triple entendre. (Words in jokes that carry double meanings). Think like a Tetris chain where one object connects separate blocks and once those blocks clear out new blocks fall and make new connections. Anyways, my take is that the original text language used a word for man, lion, and or consumed (or possibly all three) that made the passage carry double meanings while using the same word. An example would be: think the theory of relativity, and how it’s attributed to Einstein Blessed is the problem(proof) consumed(solved) by a man’s conclusion(theory) for the problem becomes the man’s conclusion/theory. cursed is the man consumed by a problem for the mans theory becomes a problem(demise) and the problem becomes mans conclusion (demise/legacy)” The meaning in parenthesis would need to have the same root word or slang. An informal and crude example of structure would be: A man will lose money chasing women but a man will never lose women chasing money. If you notice that example the structure it’s the same premise as the lion but still missing a third variable, or constant rather. I’m at work and claim defeat for lack of interest, but I’m relatively certain someone with the training and knowledge will be able to trace back alternate meanings to the words or the original text that make the passage enlightening. Hope that helps.

Yea after looking at it again the whole thing works even if the (GREEK?) word used for “man” also can mean “a mans legacy”. It would be a triple if the word used for “consumed” also can mean “overtaken/overcome”. Blessed is the lion who is consumed by the man, the lion becomes the mans legacy. (Highlight or accomplishment) Cursed is the man who is consumed by the lion, the lion becomes the mans legacy. (Reason he died) That’s gotta be it tbh. All of the saying are pretty straight forward TO ME. Anything such as the lion passage and the male/female & two become one I’m relatively certain have translation issues or meaning not available to me personally.

@Sydney - What does " Gt show" mean? (I get that "Gp" = gospel.)

@@MossyMozart Great.

I've met him and will vouch for Bart being a really nice guy.

Lion: Overcome our trials or they will overcome us? Verses that relate to logos 2? Overcoming our ego/animal/carnal selves? The Gospels are the theatrical releases, but and here the writers reveal their subtexts?

Wow. That makes sense! 😃

I'd recommend that you listen to the Extended Episodes of Mark's NT Pod in that case.

@@nendwr Thanks!

> you don't taste death because your mind is liberated < Exactly. Death is bitter, yet some die with a smile on their face. 🤔

Yes. I think you’re right

Yeah, there generally seems to be more of an Eastern flavor to Thomas. 🤓

Scholars have noticed this, but it's difficult to prove derivation because in most cases it's impossible to determine who's influencing whom. Sufi traditions are much younger than Thomas, so it is entirely possible that what we think of as Eastern esoteric tradition that Thomas and similar texts draw from actually evolved from Eastern mystics reading Thomas and similar texts.

I pity the schmucks that end up sifting through _ours._ 😜

Ha

Neat, though a massive contrast to Numbers 21:6, Exodus 34:14 and 2 Samuel 24, if you think about it, @Terence David . In some ways, anyway. I think being godly can aspire to somewhat higher reaches, maybe?

@@chrissonofpear1384 I AM god mate. Look 👀at Psalm 82:6 & John 10:34 and be inspirEd.

Over-complicated mate. It means that a lower life-form eaten by a higher life-form is raised to a higher spiritual level and a higher life-form eaten by a lower life-form is debased to a lower spiritual level. A standard trope in middle Eastern mysticism.

@@dirkcampbell5847 it can be a complicated subject for lesser evolved Souls. The LION IS your EGO, is metaphor, obviously, that is lost on u. DON'T be eaten by your EGO. Regarding Eastern mysticism, u haven't a clue Dirk, try living in the East, Calcutta, India for 33 years.

I follow your thinking, and I agree, it points to evolving into higher states of consciousness.

It’s basically “you are what you eat “

I see it that way too. It points to evolving from lower consciousness to higher consciousness.

Yes, I think the author makes it clear that the reader must find their own understanding of these things, not be lead to one. ✊🤓