The Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic text promoting secret knowledge and self-enlightenment. The Bible teaches that salvation comes through Christ alone, grounded in His historical, bodily death and resurrection, and guided by God’s trustworthy Word—not hidden sayings.
The Gospel of Thomas is a second-century Gnostic text that distorts the message of Jesus by emphasizing secret knowledge, self-enlightenment, and hidden sayings as the path to salvation. Unlike the biblical Gospels, which center on faith in Christ’s historical, bodily death and resurrection, Thomas promotes the idea that spiritual insight comes from discovering hidden truths within oneself.
Composed well after Jesus’ ministry, the Gospel of Thomas includes 114 sayings claiming to be from Jesus, often twisting familiar New Testament concepts and even reflecting negative views contrary to Scripture. For example, the Old Testament reveals God’s Law to His people, with the most important command being to love God (Deuteronomy 6:5). God’s Word and His promises to send a Messiah to save us are truths that are shared openly, not hidden for a select few (Psalm 119:105; 2 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 4:12; Isaiah 53:3-5). In the New Testament, Jesus fulfilled the messianic prophecies and asserts that He is the only way the Father (John 14:6). In fact, Paul had harsh words for any who are preaching a different gospel than has been revealed to us in Scripture (Galatians 1:8-9).
The Gospel of Thomas was rejected by the early church as heretical and lacking historical credibility. It serves as a reminder that salvation and spiritual truth are grounded in Christ’s life, death (John 14:6; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4), and resurrection, and fully revealed through God’s trustworthy Word, not through secret or mystical teachings.
The Gospel of Thomas is a pseudepigraphal collection of 114 sayings written in Coptic and discovered in the Nag Hammadi collection of documents in Egypt in 1945, known as the Gnostic gospels. Because it claims to be sayings from Jesus collected by the apostle Thomas, the discovery led to much attention, including claims that it was a lost gospel.
A look at the Gospel of Thomas reveals that it includes a much different structure than the biblical Gospels. It consists of 114 sayings introduced by the statement, "These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down." This focus on "hidden words" or a secret message was common among the Gnostic writings that focused on enlightenment and hidden wisdom.
Part of the reason the Gospel of Thomas may have been hidden for many centuries is due to the response of the early church to its message. The early church leader Eusebius (who wrote the first major history of the church in the fourth century) considered it a fictional, heretical account, in agreement with other church leaders of his time.
Despite its differing message with the biblical Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas appears to have been composed at a very early stage of church history. Most scholars argue that it was composed in the early to mid-second century, especially since it was quoted in another writing dated to about AD 185. The Gospel of Thomas's seemingly intentional contrasts with the New Testament Gospel of John help to date it after the composition of John, which is usually dated in the 80s or 90s.
Part of the fascination with the Gospel of Thomas appears to be the mix of New Testament ideas with additional ideas resembling mystical teachings. Many verses sound similar to a New Testament reference with a slight twist. For example, even Saying 114 seems to take a very negative view of women, while the New Testament clearly holds a highly positive view of women (Galatians 3:28).
The Gospel of Thomas was not accepted by the early church as coming from Thomas nor as being authoritative for churches. Nineteen hundred years later, we can look back and find value in the Gospel of Thomas as a historical writing, but do not look at it as Scripture. There is no secret gospel or lost book of the Bible. The Word of God is true, complete, and sufficient to equip God's people (2 Timothy 3:16-17; Ephesians 4:11-12).