D.W. Kim, «What Shall We Do? The Community Rules of Thomas in the ‘Fifth Gospel’», Vol. 88 (2007) 393-414
This article argues for the diversity of early Christianity in terms of religiocultural communities. Each early Christian group, based on a personal revelation of leadership and the group’s socio-political milieu, maintained its own tradition (oral, written, or both) of Jesus for the continuity and prosperity of the movement. The leaders of early Christianity allowed outsiders to become insiders in the condition where the new comers committed to give up their previous religious attitude and custom and then follow the new community rules. The membership of the Thomasine group is not exceptional in this case. The Logia tradition of P. Oxy. 1, 654.655, and NHC II, 2. 32: 10-51: 28 in the context of community policy will prove the pre-gnostic peculiarity of the creative and independent movement within the Graeco-Roman world.
414 D.W. Kim
sustain the notion that the Gospel of Thomas, though, cannot be
approved as a new Canonical Gospel, but was a lost Q of Qs that
existed in the middle of the first century C.E.
Department of Studies in Religion D.W. KIM
University of Sydney
NSW, 2006, Australia
SUMMARY
This article argues for the diversity of early Christianity in terms of religio-
cultural communities. Each early Christian group, based on a personal revelation
of leadership and the group’s socio-political milieu, maintained its own tradition
(oral, written, or both) of Jesus for the continuity and prosperity of the movement.
The leaders of early Christianity allowed outsiders to become insiders in the
condition where the new comers committed to give up their previous religious
attitude and custom and then follow the new community rules. The membership
of the Thomasine group is not exceptional in this case. The Logia tradition of P.
Oxy. 1, 654.655, and NHC II, 2. 32: 10-51: 28 in the context of community policy
will prove the pre-gnostic peculiarity of the creative and independent movement
within the Graeco-Roman world.