Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: An excellent book. While there may be debate as to whether or not this book is a fifth gospel, and when it was written, no one can deny the humanity of Jesus which shines through this impressive work.In many ways it makes jesus more accessibile and real, the other aspects can and should be open to debate. But anything which can shed more light on humanity and teachings of Jesus is truely invaluable.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Infoms Us to Go Beyond Christian Fundamentalism
Review: Christians must look beyond the Bible to seek truths about Jesus Christ. The New Testament and this book on the Gospel of Thomas tell us that the teachings of Jesus are not simple as Christian fundamentalists teach. Meyer has done a great job. And, Bloom's reading is a wonderful addition to this book. My analysis of the New Testament concludes that some of Jesus' teachings are simple. But, the New Testament has at least two other classes of sayings that are not simple. These other classes deal with the development of the human mind and the development of God's kingdom. Thus, unless one is trained with today's scientific literature on the mind and modern creation theories, one will understand only about one-third of Jesus' sayings in the New Testament and in the Gospel of Thomas. Clearly, Christians untrained in science and mathematics are making too many guesses relative the truths about the sayings of Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas, like the New Testament and the Hubble telescope,is more proof that Nature has no apocalyptic end. Thus, the only new world that people can expect after death is the world that Nature's law of reincarnation gives them. The Gospel of Thomas is an excellent addition to the New Testament because they have many simularities and can thus be compared. This is a good book to have in any home.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Infoms Us to Go Beyond Christian Fundamentalism
Review: Christians must look beyond the Bible to seek truths about Jesus Christ. The New Testament and this book on the Gospel of Thomas tell us that the teachings of Jesus are not simple as Christian fundamentalists teach. Meyer has done a great job. And, Bloom's reading is a wonderful addition to this book. My analysis of the New Testament concludes that some of Jesus' teachings are simple. But, the New Testament has at least two other classes of sayings that are not simple. These other classes deal with the development of the human mind and the development of God's kingdom. Thus, unless one is trained with today's scientific literature on the mind and modern creation theories, one will understand only about one-third of Jesus' sayings in the New Testament and in the Gospel of Thomas. Clearly, Christians untrained in science and mathematics are making too many guesses relative the truths about the sayings of Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas, like the New Testament and the Hubble telescope,is more proof that Nature has no apocalyptic end. Thus, the only new world that people can expect after death is the world that Nature's law of reincarnation gives them. The Gospel of Thomas is an excellent addition to the New Testament because they have many simularities and can thus be compared. This is a good book to have in any home.
Rating: 
Summary: Complemento a mi anterior opinión
Review: Desgraciadamente, en mi anterior comentario he olvidado hacer referencia a uno de los aspectos más relevantes del libro de Meyer: el de las notas que a cada dicho Meyer ha redactado. Este apartado tiene entidad propia; constituye una parte más (junto con la introducción, traducción y lectura de H. Bloom) de la obra, y, a nuestro juicio de las más relevantes. Las notas se encuentran entre la traducción y el ensayo de Bloom. Son variadas en su extensión: algunas pueden considerarse como pequeños comentarios al dicho al que hacen referencia; otras no pasan de la categoria de anotaciones. En cualquier caso son de gran calidad y ofrecen gran cantidad de información útil, prestando una atención especial a los paralelos que los dichos de Tomás presentan con otros escritos, tanto de Canónicos como extracanónicos (cuyas citas literales se ofrecen a menudo en este último caso). Debido a ello, en este apartado la obra de Meyer es provechosa también para un público más especializado, o para quienes deseén profundizar en el tema.
Rating:
Summary: Sencillo y de agradable lectura
Review: El libro de Meyer consta fundamentalmente de tres partes: La primera es una introducción del propio Meyer al Evangelio de Tomás. Se trata de una introducción muy breve y sencilla, bien escrita, donde Meyer informa, no obstante, sobre las principales cuestiones referentes a este evangelio: lugar y fecha de composición, dependencia o no de los sinópticos, caracter gnóstico o no gnóstico, principales temas que desarrolla este evangelio, su relación con Jesús de Nazaret... La información de Meyer sobre estos temas es breve, pero esta muy bien sintetizada, y, aún cuando en ocasiones los puntos de vista que defiende sean discutibles (yo mismo discrepo de algunas de sus conclusiones), se trata de una información bién tratada y de calidad, que informa bién sobre las principales cuestiones referentes a este evangelio, y sobre las que discuten los especialistas. La segunda parte es una traducción del texto copto de este evangelio. Se hace en paralelo al texto original; el texto copto en una página, y la traducción inglesa en la paralela. La traducción de Meyer no pretende ser literal, ni técnica, sino fresca, actual y de fácil lectura para cualquier lector. Ello supone que se trata de una traducción que pierde en exactitud y precisión respecto al texto original, pero que facilita y hace agradable y sencilla la lectura de la obra a cualquier lector. Por ello, las opciones de Meyer a la hora de realizar su traducción son, a veces, discutibles y se entiende las críticas que otros especialistas y traductores le puedan hacer, pero, sin embargo, creo la decisión de Meyer de optar por una traducción de fácil lectura es acertada y de agradecer, máxime cuando ya existen otras traducciones de esta obra al inglés que son más técnicas y literales. En cualquier caso, el lector puede estar seguro de que la traducción de Meyer, a pesar de sus posibles inexactitudes de detalle, es válida, esta bién hecha y no falsea el contenido de este evangelio. La tercera parte de la obra es un ensayo interpretativo de Harold Bloom. Es sin duda la parte más floja del libro y, francamente, no entiendo por qué ha sido incluida. El ensayo de Bloom es pesado, bastante aburrido y carece de interés y de cualquier rigor en sus conclusiones (hasta el mismo Meyer en su introducción afirma disentir de Bloom). Quede como ejercicio literario, o mera fantasia compositiva. Finalmente, la obra cuenta con una bibliografía bién seleccionada, que logicamente (el libro se publico en 1992) deberá de ser actualizada por el lector en base a otras lecturas. En definitiva, si lo que buscas es un libro para conocer o para iniciarte en el Evangelio de Tomás, el libro de Meyer es especialmente adecuado: Traducción fácil y agradable + breve, pero bién sintetizada introducción ¿Qué más se puede pedir?
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable introduction to controversial material
Review: I wish I knew more about this curious manuscript. I'm still not sure I understand the 'discovery story'. As best I can tell, the text was found in an ancient urn with 50+ other manuscripts. The contents of the urn are now called a library, based on the assumption someone hid their library in the urn and buried it. The actual 'gospel' is easier to read than I expected. It reminded me of Zen koans and I enjoy a good riddle. But, puzzled I remain. The various interpretations offered by the book leave me wondering and feeling a need to read more. In particular, I'd like to know how to place these documents in the context of other 2nd century manuscripts.
Rating:
Summary: 114 Sayings attributed by the Gnostic Christians to Jesus
Review: In 1945 a couple of Egyptians digging in the Nile River valley found a sealed storage jar that contained a collection of fifty-two ancient manuscripts, most of which were devoted to the teachings of Gnosticism, early Christians who believed that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through "gnosis" (the Greek word for "knowledge"). The Gnostic inner quest for spiritual understanding put them at odds with the authority of the Church in the first, formative centuries of Christianity. It is not surprising that the Gnostic writings were suppressed by the early Church and were really only known to us through the writings of their opponents. The discovery of these manuscripts allows us to read what these early Christians were thinking and to judge for ourselves the value of their beliefs. Marvin W. Meyer has provided new English translations of several of the most important and revealing of these early Christian texts. Of these, the Gospel of Thomas is the most interesting. Biblical scholars have long maintained that one of the source documents for the Gospels was a collection of sayings that was integrated with the Gospel of Mark to produce the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of Thomas is an example of such a collection, providing dozens of sayings attributed to Jesus. For example, Saying 75: "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: all came forth from me, and all attained to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Pick up a stone, and you will find me there." The words might be different, but certainly the idea is recognizable, which is true of the vast majority of 144 Sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas. These sayings are not a radical depature from what we have in Scripture and at the very least we can accept them as being accurate representations of early Christian beliefs. Certainly they are more familiar than the other Gnostic writings Meyer has translated. You will have to judge for yourself how compatable they are with the New Testament. But I think they are definitely worth thinging about.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor scholarship reveals an unscholarly bias by Meyer
Review: Marvin Meyer has done a service for us in that he has translated the Coptic text of a document that helps to explain the beliefs of proto-Gnostic Greek mystery sects in the second century. However, his introduction reveals his bias. One must remember that the Gospel of Thomas is dated by reputable scholars as somewhere between 70-100 years younger (and therefore more unreliable) than the synoptic Gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke). One must also remember, as Meyer describes, that the Gospel of Thomas survives in its entirety in only ONE full manuscript, and it is a translation of the missing Greek text into the unrelated Coptic language. (We also have three Greek quotations of the text of the Gospel of Thomas in the writings of some early church fathers). Compared to the thousands of partial and full ancient Greek manuscripts that we have available to us of the canonical gospels, the Gospel of Thomas cannot be seriously considered to be a more accurate account of the teaching of Jesus than the canonical gospels.
Meyer obviously favors the Gospel of Thomas over the canonical gospels, with some extremely faulty reasoning. Meyer writes on pages 8-9 of the intro, "The most well-known Christian collection of sayings is what Burton Mack calls "the lost gospel" Q (from the German Quelle, "source"), which was used, along with Mark, by Matthew and Luke in the compilation of their gospels. As it has been reconstructed out of sayings in Matthew and Luke, Q was very likely a "gospel" of wisdom very much like the Gospel of Thomas in it is literary genre." In other words, Meyer likes to see Jesus as a teacher minus all the miracle stories present in the canonical gospels, which, in his mind, was who Jesus really was. The Gospel of Thomas, with no miracle stories or crucifixion/resurrection narrative, obviously reveals a Jesus that Meyer prefers to the "Jesus of Faith." But relying upon Q to prove that Christ was not a supernatural miracle worker but only a wise teacher is unbelievably subjective. Q is hypothetical, a theory, that's it. There is no Q manuscript anywhere in existence. Q very well may have existed as a source for Matthew, and Luke, but if it did, we have no sure idea what it contained. Meyer talks as if he is quoting directly from Q, which allows him to come to whatever conclusion he wishes to reach. If Q really consists of what is common to Matthew and Luke, it could just as well contain many miracles of Christ in addition to teaching alone.
It is far more likely that the Gospel of Thomas is the representation of a mixture of Greek philosophical Gnosticism and Christian belief. Meyer himself admits on page 6 of the introduction that it is likely that the Gospel of Thomas was written by a Manichean, a group which Meyer describes as "mystical, gnostic followers of the teacher Mani." The ancient church father Cyril of Jerusalem attributed the writing of the Gospel of Thomas to a Manichean, and scholars knew this long before the text of the Gospel of Thomas was ever even discovered in the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and a little mysterious
Review: Most the sayings can be found in the new testement, I caught the so called "hidden sayings", such as "break a piece of wood and you will find me" which caught my eye, refering to God being everywhere, and not just confined to a church, and this seems to be make sense, since Jesus taught the Sermon on The Mount outside and not just in churches or synagauges. The Jewish teachings of the time put a great emphasis on holy places and buildings, but Jesus only used the buildings as a place of gathering and teaching, but... Why would these few hidden saying be left out of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. I found that difficult to beleive, but I guess thats what makes them mysterious. It's worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Introduction To An Important Christian Text
Review: The first verse of the Gospel of Thomas tells the reader that whoever understands the gospel's sayings will not "...taste death." It is a clear message that understanding these sayings of Jesus is key to one's spiritual growth. Thus, the onus is on the interpreter to create both an effective translation and a context to evaluate the sayings in order to facilitate this growth. Meyer does a marvelous job of meeting these demands. The book's introduction gives the reader excellent background information on the discovery and authorship of the text. The translation of the text itself is bolstered by the very helpful notes listed after the gospel. The notes made it very easy to cross-reference the gospel's text with similar passages in the New Testament's four gospels. Finally, Harold Bloom provides an interesting commentary that's useful for reflection on the gospel's themes. There is no guarantee that reading the Gospel of Thomas as translated by Meyer will provide the spiritual enlightenment that many people seek. However, Meyer does his best to allow the reader to discover this enlightenment by not clutter the text with his own views and biases. The result is that Meyer's interpretation is a perfect way to learn about and evaluate this important "lost" book of Christianity.
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