The Acts of Thomas (AT) is a rather long (90 page) work, belonging to the early Christian genre of the “Acts (i.e. deeds) of Apostles.” Besides the canonical Acts of the Apostles which is found in the New Testament, there also exists, for example, books entitled The Acts of John, The Acts of Andrew, etc. Most of these, like the AT, are probably not to any great extent based on fact. They are full of colorful stories and tales of wonder that have served as pious entertainment for Christians for many centuries.
The AT was probably composed in Syria in about 250 a.d. Very little is known about the circumstances of its origin, apart from what can be gathered from the work itself. Walter Bauer, in Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christianity showed that many early Christians in this part of the world were probably Gnostics, Christians whose beliefs were heretical by the standards of what became mainstream “orthodox” Christianity. It has long been recognized that there are many Gnostic elements in the AT, though difficulties in interpreting the work as a whole had made it unclear as to whether these are just bits and pieces of lore scattered in a somewhat diffuse and not very coherent work, or whether there is some serious intention and coherent unity in the work which this Gnostic lore is a part of.
I addressed this problem in my doctoral dissertation (now published as Language and Gnosis), in which I argued that the AT is a coherent and even artful Gnostic work, and that the legendary stories in the AT serve as material for an elaborate allegory, expounding a rather developed and sophisticated version of Gnosticism.
Gnosticism is the name given by modern scholars to certain thought tendencies which developed in the Mediterranean world at about the same time as the coming of Christianity. There are traces of Gnostic thinking in the writings of Paul and John in the New Testament. The Greek “Hermetic” writings, composed about this same time, are examples of non-Christian Gnostic thinking. The mystical tradition in Judaism called “Kabbalah” originated in a Jewish form of Gnosticism which Gershom Scholem has shown dates to this period. And in 1945 a library of ancient scrolls was found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt which contain many Gnostic writings, mostly of a more or less Christian (though “heretical”) cast. (The exception might be a writing called The Nature of the Rulers, posted on this website with commentary.) The psychoanalyst C. G. Jung was very much influenced by Gnosticism. Gnostic thought survives today in some of the more sophisticated forms of modern occultism and theosophy.
A central feature of Gnostic thought is a strong feeling of the opposition between the spiritual mind and the material world. Many Gnostic writings express the belief that the soul was initially a pure spiritual being existing in a heavenly realm at home with a purely spiritual God. But the soul is now caught in a material world that is foreign to it, and is ruled in fact by evil beings. People who feel at home in the world do not realize their true nature, and must be awakened to this knowledge. Once one truly and completely recognizes one’s real nature, one has “gnosis“, the Greek word for “knowledge”, and this is a kind of salvation. Gnostic writing aims at “waking one up” to one’s true nature. Much of it is very colorful, borrowing from older stories and myths, but retelling them from a Gnostic point of view. For example, the Gnostic writing called The Nature of the Rulers retells the story of the Fall of Man in Genesis, but turns the story around. The god who created the world and forbade Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge (gnosis) was the evil god who rules the world — the real God (a feminine deity who has nothing to do with the material world) sent the snake as a savior.
The AT shows a side of Gnosticism that is either not present in other Gnostic writings, or has not been recognized in them due to difficulties in interpreting the writings. On the surface the book recounts the adventures of the apostle Thomas in India where he goes as a missionary. But there is another meaning below the surface. The story is an allegory about the adventures of the spiritual soul (Thomas) in the earthly realm (India) that is foreign to it. The story does take as its starting point the common Gnostic problematic about the felt alienation of the pure, heavenly soul or Mind from the foreign, “evil” Reality in which it finds itself. The uniqueness of the view represented here is that the feeling of alienation from the material world is taken only as a starting point. Alienation is a problem to be overcome, and this is not done by escaping the world into a pure spiritual realm, but by relating to the world differently. It is due to the soul’s deficiency that it feels alien from the world. The one who sees and relates to the world rightly, sees a divine presence inherent in the material world. (This is probably related to the idea of the Shekinah in the Hebrew Kabbalah (a Jewish form of Gnosticism), representing the divine presence in the world.)
The story in the AT is told then from two points of view at once. In one point of view, Thomas/Mind is a heavenly savior come to destroy the hold of the demonic forces over Reality. In the other point of view, however, Reality is a manifestation of God which the Mind foolishly and stubbornly resists, and only comes to see and enjoy it as such when it is forced to. The details of this double-edged allegory will be explained in another essay.
A general theory: the relation of subjective states of mind to the objective content of religious beliefs.
The interpretation of this aspect of the AT given here assumes something that is central to my theory of religions in general. This is the fact (1) that the subjective state of mind governing our fundamental attitudes to the world also determine our worldview, the way we experience the world, (2) that what are often seen as religious “doctrines” to be believed in, are actually aspects of the world-as-experienced, determining a person’s worldview, and (3) changes in a person’s subjective state of mind and fundamental attitudes–as in a “conversion” experience–change the character of the world-as-experienced. What appear as unmotivated “beliefs” represent a particular way of seeing the world, correlated with a particular set of attitudes fundamental to a believer’s state of mind.
In the AT, this is represented by the complete change in the way Thomas experiences the world. In the narrative prior to the Wedding Hymn, Thomas saw the earthly realm as a completely foreign place, alien to him. The Wedding hymn gives expression to an entirely different way of seeing the earthly realm, as a sensory representation of divinity (the divine Shekinah). The assumption here is that Thomas has had a “conversion” experience: A subjective change in his fundamental attitude to the earthly realm has brought about a fundamental change in the way he experiences the world, represented in mythical imagery in the form of the divine Shekinah.
This complex of ideas represents a possibility for the interpretation of religion in general, and Gnosticism in particular, that is generally not considered at all, because accounts of religions almost always treat each one as a static collection of doctrinal beliefs imposed on believers by authorities or authoritative tradition. Thus accounts of “Gnosticism” treat it as just one more such static set of beliefs, in this case a static dualistic belief in a “good” heavenly realm and a “bad” earthly realm. In the interpretation offered here, the AT represents a different treatment of “Gnostic dualism.” This dualistic view is regarded as the product of a particular state of mind and set of attitudes toward the world. It is possible to experience a change in this state of mind and set of attitudes, in such a way as to change the dualistic way of perceiving and experiencing the world.
I suggest that this is an overlooked possibility in the interpretation of Gnostic writings in general. For example, it is possible that The Nature of the Rulers does not represent static Gnostic dualistic doctrinal belief. It might instead represent an initial stage of Gnostic “conversion.” It assumes a person attached to feeling at home in the world, and aims to “wake up” such a person, to bring about a certain “conversion” experience in which she comes to identify with her heavenly “soul”, and experiences the world as foreign realm ruled by forces alien to her. But this could be only the first stage in Gnostic initiation/conversion, ideally to be followed by further conversion experiences of the kind represented by the Acts of Thomas.
Stylistic features of the AT.
In order to understand the AT, several features also of its literary character must be understood and kept in mind. First, the text is to some extent the result of the editorial use of previously existent stories and bits of tradition. Most of the basic stories in the text probably existed separately at least in an oral form. Some person or group has used these bits of tradition as basic building blocks, altering and adding to them many elements which at first appear nonsensical, but are in fact clues to an underlying allegorical meaning which they intend the traditional narratives to convey.
Secondly, there are several literary techniques which the editors use, both to weld together previously independent bits of lore and to insert clues as to their intended allegorical meaning here. Special attention must be paid to these. They include first, as just mentioned, odd little details that don’t have any apparent function in the narrative taken simply as ordinary narrative. These can’t be skipped over, but held in mind. Secondly, the long spoken parts — here a Wedding Hymn and a Jesus prayer — are meant to give allegorical interpretations on a mythological or archetypal level to the more ordinary-seeming events in the regular narrative.
Thirdly, an unusual weight is given in this work to the repetition of certain words or images, even when these occur in seemingly unrelated scenes. (For example there is an intended connection between Thomas’ reluctance to “set off” for India and his later reluctance to “set off” into the bedroom to bless the bride at the Indian wedding. Especially important are words or images that occur in the narrative and subsequently also in the hymns or prayers.)
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