Another possibility: people knew the difference between the status of what was divinely inspired and "suggestions" and perhaps the canon developed because people started to forget the difference eg due to entropy? Then eventually non canonical texts fell out of favour due to disuse?
4 days ago (edited) | 6
Thanks for sharing Michael! I have been working on reading the early church fathers. (Not just parts but spending the time going from start to finish. I have a long way to go but I like to look up the earliest manuscripts we have from them. I though it was wild that we have P. Oxy. 405 which is a fragment from Saint Irenaeus volume - Against Heresies dating to 200 AD.
4 days ago | 0
I have long speculated that the Gospel of Thomas might actually be a collection of legitimate agrapha. I don't see anything unorthodox in it having read it. With it being found quoted in and alongside other orthodox sources, especially alongside the canonical gospels, would lend credence to that possibility. It's definitely not certain, but it seems plausible to me.
4 days ago (edited) | 5
Doesn’t the gospel of Thomas promote the so called secret knowledge stuff ? Seems pretty off to me. The gospel of Thomas at least .
4 days ago | 4
wording is not identical to the known Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas (P.Oxy. 1, 654, 655, all 3rd-century) or the Coptic Nag Hammadi version. Evangelical textual critics (e.g., on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog) and others note that the parallels with Thomas “differ significantly” and are better explained as coming from a shared oral or agrarian tradition rather than direct quotation from the Gospel of Thomas itself. In other words, P.Oxy. 5575 does not contain actual text from the Gospel of Thomas. Look at the intent of the doc. Get free from the World And Worry!
3 days ago | 0
What's the age of the fragment? The canon of scripture was not established by the Church until about 400 years after Christ.
4 days ago | 0
Reason & Theology
There’s a really interesting papyrus fragment called P.Oxy. 5575 that’s been getting attention because it includes sayings of Jesus from Matthew, Luke, and even the Gospel of Thomas. It’s from the late 2nd or early 3rd century, making it one of the oldest Christian manuscripts we have.
What’s cool about it is that it mixes quotes from the gospels with sayings from Thomas, showing that early Christians sometimes collected teachings from different sources, not just the canonical scriptures.
I went through the fragment and compared the quotes to their sources. It talks about things like not worrying about food or clothing (Matthew 6, Luke 12), trusting God’s care for the birds and lilies (Matthew, Luke, and Thomas 36), and even includes a Thomas saying about fasting from the world to find the kingdom (Thomas 27). Seeing all of these together gives a sense of how early Christian communities may have shared and combined these sayings.
It’s a small fragment, but it gives a fascinating look at how early Christian texts weren’t always neatly divided into canonical and non-canonical material.
Here's what it says on the recto and verso:
recto (→)
[…] (the rich man) died. [I tell you, don’t] be anxious about [your life], what you’ll eat, [nor the] body, what [you’ll wear], because I tell you, [unless] you fast from [the world], you’ll never find [the kingdom], and unless you […] the world, [you’ll never …] the Father [… the] birds, how […] and [your] heavenly Father [feeds them …] so you […] much […]
verso (↓)
[…] how [they grow …] Solomon […] in [his] glory […] the Father [clothes] grass which [dries up] and is thrown into the oven, [he’ll clothe] you […] so you […] also […] because [your] Father [knows] your need, [but] look for [the kingdom and all these things will be given …]
Notes
recto (→)
(the rich man) died. Cp. Thomas 63: “a rich man … died.” See also Luke 12:16-21.
[don’t] be anxious. Cp. Matthew 6:25; Luke 12:22; Thomas 36.
[unless] you fast from [the world]. Cp. Thomas 27.
[the] birds. Cp. Matthew 6:26; Luke 12:24.
4 days ago (edited) | [YT] | 161