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Michael Toms (1941–2013)

Author of The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus

13+ Works 896 Members 7 Reviews

About the Author

Michael Toms is the co-founder, executive producer, and principal host of New Dimensions Radio
Image credit: Photo courtesy of Hay House, Inc.

Works by Michael Toms

Associated Works

The Soul of Business (1997) 13 copies
Heart of a Heroine: Saving the Last Redwoods (2001) — Introduction — 3 copies

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Common Knowledge

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Somewhat similar to the Bill Moyers PBS special (and book) Power of Myth, this book consists of interviews between Michael Toms and Joseph Campbell. As such, we get to eavesdrop on a sparkling conversation that illuminates the role of myth in our lives. There's a lot of familiar ground to those who've read Campbell's work, but I like this book because it serves a convenient overview and provides a lot of interesting wisdom.
 
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stevepilsner | 1 other review | Jan 3, 2022 |
Interesting, and of all the Gnostic gospels, this one feels close to Truth.
 
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CodyMaxwellBooks | 4 other reviews | Oct 30, 2021 |
Thomas tells us more about the historical Jesus than all of the Dead Sea Scrolls put together. This book combines a very readable style with an up-to-date introduction, transcription, translation, notes, and bibliography. The notes alone provide the best available commentary on the 114 sayings, explaining many otherwise obscure passages and supplying many ancient parallels that support these interpretations.
 
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PendleHillLibrary | 4 other reviews | Apr 9, 2019 |
I think this is the third translation of the Gospel of Thomas I've read, and possibly the most recently published (1992). Translator Marvin Meyer's introduction conspicuously suspends judgment about the "gnostic" character of the text, and thus side-steps the terminological morass surrounding "Gnosticism." Instead, he emphasizes a shared culture with the Cynic philosophers of antiquity.

This "gospel" is one of the most significant components of the Nag Hammadi Library discovered in Egypt in the mid-20th century. It differs from the canonical gospels by entirely lacking a narrative spine, and consisting solely of purported teachings of Jesus. It thus provides another point of reference for the text-critical approach that postulates a Q (Ger. Quelle, "source") text to serve as a prior reference common to Matthew and Luke, as well as demonstrating that a document of this form did exist among Christians of the first centuries. The text in this edition is printed with a typeset Coptic original on facing pages, and there are endnotes for each logion ("saying"). The notes supply alternate readings of the Coptic, along with parallels in canonical and extra-canonical Christian scriptures, ancient theological writings, and other literature of the period.

Appended to this edition is "A Reading" of the gospel by literary critic and academic Harold Bloom. I found myself fairly sympathetic to most of this "sermon" from Bloom, although it does repeatedly advert to his idiosyncratic identification of American Protestantisms and Mormonism as "gnostic." The one point at which he lost me altogether was when he wrote, "What is surely peculiar is the modern habit of employing 'gnosis' or 'gnosticism' as a conservative or institutionalized Christian term of abuse" (120). Bloom overlooked Irenaeus and Hippolytus somehow, along with the many centuries of theologians who took them as authorities, I guess.

Both Meyer and Bloom drew my attention to logion 13, which had not arrested me in previous readings of this gospel. Jesus rewards Thomas with three secret "sayings" or "words," not themselves reproduced in the text. Meyer's notes about other references to three secret words are intriguing (75); they include "IAO IAO IAO" from Pistis Sophia 136, and other non-canonical gospels intimate identities with divine father, mother, and son. Hippolytus offered what seem to be corrupted forms of the three instructions "precept upon precept," "line upon line,"and "here a little, there a little" from Isaiah 28. Bloom's highly speculative and metaphysical explication did not persuade me, but there are Thelemic doctrines which I think can be curiously enhanced by reference to this logion.
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4 vote
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paradoxosalpha | 4 other reviews | Sep 1, 2016 |

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