Pocket Edition of the Gospel of Thomas

My 2002 book for Ulysses Books wasn't the first pocket edition of the Gospel of Thomas, as it turns out. Paterson Brown, who has put his translations of Thomas, Philip and the Gospel of Truth online, along with a lot of useful study material for Coptic, plus an older text of Philip with a literal translation, mailed out 20,000 copies of a hand written (i.e., not typeset) edition of the Gospel of Thomas to convicts in US prisons in 1979. The above image is a spread from his pocket edition.

His site is here:- http://www.metalog.org

Change of Blog Template

The blog wasn't republishing correctly, so I've changed the template to this sexy new black look.

I was amused to find the following in a rather rabid conservative protestant American Christian blog:-
"Thomas is a gnostic gospel that holds fascination for many today. A new pocket edition is available. There are some scholars who would very much like to see gnosticism eclipse orthodox Christianity as the proper approach to God. Stevan Davies even opines "A fine introduction... a landmark effort to make Thomas a useful spiritual guide for the present day." A guide for the present day huh? Are the Synoptic Gospels and John's Gospel insufficient? Is Paul now irrelevent? The rise of neo-gnosticism signals yet again that "new age" religions are not interested in anything except the overthrow of Christianity."

This is my book of course, and Steve Davies was kind enough to write a nice blurb for it, even though his interest in these things is purely a question of history and ideas. The blog is written by Jim West, a contributor to the Crosstalk discussion list. An adjacent post discusses the possibility that homosexuality is the result of the actions of Satan.