Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas

work by Pagels

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July 23, 2026

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Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels explores the Gospel of Thomas, an ancient text containing 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Pagels suggests this gospel, which focuses on esoteric knowledge for salvation, was excluded from the Christian canon because its individualistic interpretation of Jesus threatened early Christian elites.12

The Gospel of Thomas is rooted in gnosticism, a movement emphasizing revealed knowledge. Unlike the canonical Gospels, it lacks narrative and consists solely of sayings, some of which may be among the oldest testimonies to Jesus' words. The rediscovery of the Gospel of Thomas in a Coptic library near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945 significantly aided scholarly understanding.1

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Elaine Pagels
…to demonize one’s opponents, and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), which argues that the Gospel of Thomas—whose composition she dated to the mid-1st century, about a century earlier than most scholars dated it—was excluded from the Christian canon because its individualistic interpretation of Jesus was theologically and…
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…to demonize one’s opponents, and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), which argues that the Gospel of Thomas—whose composition she dated to the mid-1st century, about a century earlier than most scholars dated it—was excluded from the Christian canon because its individualistic interpretation of Jesus was theologically and…
Read More