In 1945, a trove of documents were discovered in Egypt, which came to be called the Nag Hammadi Library. Some of the documents were excerpts from popular ancient writings, such as Plato's Republic. However, most of them were long-lost books, written by ‘heretical’ Christians in the first few centuries of the religion’s history. Some of these were previously known only by their titles or brief summaries, provided by ‘orthodox’ Christian peers. Amid this library was The Good News According to Tōma (aka The Gospel of Thomas).

Tōma, unlike the gospels in the New Testament, is not a narrative. It does not tell stories about Yēšu (Jesus), and it barely hints at his crucifixion or resurrection. Instead, Tōma is a collection of things Yēšu said: proverbs, parables, prophecies, and other cryptic teachings. Academic convention distinguishes 114 units in the book—these sayings/chapters are called Logia—but a more accurate count is closer to 140. Most Logia are a sentence or two, while some are multiple paragraphs. Roughly half of the Logia are very similar to Yēšu’s teachings in the New Testament. Some Logia which share a similar theme can be found in clusters, and others are put next to each other because they share a keyword, but there is no obvious structure to the overall order of the Logia.

A popular misconception is that all of the Nag Hammadi books were written by the ‘Gnostics’, a schismatic pseudo-Christian religion which said salvation came through divinely-revealed knowledge, reserved only for elite insiders to learn. In fact, ‘Gnosticism’ did not exist. Early Christianity contained a diverse array of theological perspectives, and the adjective ‘gnostic’ was a spectrum which included both orthodox Christians and heretical Christians (as Christians today might judge them), similar to adjectives like ‘apocalyptic’ or ‘mystic’. Even parts of the New Testament may be considered gnostic (e.g. Mark 4.10–12, 33–34). Tōma does express a gnostic theology in places, but it was not written by a ‘Gnostic’.

How Tōma came to exist is unclear. The most common theory is that Tōma was written in the second century by someone who falsely identified himself as one of the twelve disciples. This person simply copied sayings from the New Testament gospels while inventing new ones to reflect their esoteric theology. Another theory, less common but still respected by scholars, is that the book was written over many decades by several members from an evolving Christian community. It began as a collection of things Yēšu was thought to have said. As time went on, the social context and theological views of the collection’s keepers changed, and new sayings were invented in reflection of these changes and added into the book. Only near the end of this process did someone claim the disciple Tōma was the author.

Loading/refreshing the front page of this website will display a random Logion. The numbers and titles did not exist in the original book. The numbering system follows the academic convention, but Logia which comprise multiple sayings have been separated. These retain their common number, but are given a letter to indicate the split (e.g. Logion 31a and Logion 31b). Some Logia ran into translation corruptions long before the Nag Hammadi copy was made. Hypothetical restorations of these corruptions are indicated by an asterisk in the Logion number.