The Gospel of Thomas Has Been Misunderstood: It Is The First Gospel! | Martijn Linssen

Summary

Main thesis

Guest Martijn Linssen argues that the Gospel of Thomas is earlier than the canonical Gospels and that the usual account of its relationship to them should be reversed. His proposed sequence is broadly Thomas → Marcion’s Gospel → Luke and the other canonical Gospels. This is Linssen’s position, not a consensus view presented by the interview.

Linssen’s case for Thomas’s priority

• Thomas sometimes brings together material that appears separately in the Synoptic Gospels. Linssen calls these examples “split logic”: a saying in Thomas appears to combine portions that Luke, Matthew, or Mark place in different contexts.
  • He points to Logia 33, 39, 45, 76, and 79, among others.
  • In his view, this is easier to explain if Thomas preserves an earlier, integrated form that the canonical Gospels later rearranged or divided—not if Thomas assembled it from the later texts.
• He sees Luke as Thomas’s closest canonical parallel. Linssen says that, across the parallels he examined, Thomas most often resembles Luke, while Matthew tends to have smoother grammar and wording. He interprets Matthew as a later editor or polisher.
• He argues that Thomas’s versions can be more concise than the canonical parallels. In the saying about Caesar’s taxes, for example, Thomas lacks the extended introductory exchange found in the Synoptic accounts. Linssen argues that the canonical versions expanded the scene and added explicit reference to God, while Thomas’s wording reflects an Egyptian context in which gold could carry divine associations.
• He uses the parable of the sower to argue that Thomas preserves a distinctive numerical scheme. Thomas gives yields of 60 and 120, unlike the differing figures in Mark, Luke, and Matthew. Linssen connects these numbers to a base-12 finger-counting system and interprets them as one and two handfuls of seed, with the harvest representing the total return.
• He sees the wine and patch sayings as evidence of links among Thomas, Marcion, and the Synoptics. He focuses on their ordering, wording, and the use of a Coptic term he translates as “fresh” rather than simply “new.” He also argues that Thomas’s wording preserves features lost or altered in the canonical versions.

His proposed role for Marcion

• Linssen reports finding 55 strong parallels out of 63 shared Thomas–Luke sayings in a reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel. He takes this as evidence that Marcion is an intermediary between Thomas and the canonical Gospels.
• He describes Marcion’s Gospel as the Quelle—the source—for the canonical texts, and Thomas as a source for Marcion. On this model, the Synoptic Problem needs to be reconsidered rather than explained through the hypothetical Q document.
• His overall argument places Thomas before Marcion and Marcion before Luke, although he also discusses how the wine-and-patch material might be used to argue for a different ordering between Thomas and Marcion.

Linssen’s reading of Thomas

• Linssen rejects treating Thomas simply as a conventional Christian account of Jesus. He describes it instead as a psychological and inward-looking text about overcoming the ego and duality, and seeking self-knowledge or awakening.
• He characterizes it as strongly anti-religious and anti-Jewish, arguing that it challenges external religious authority and practices such as prayer, fasting, and circumcision. These are Linssen’s interpretations of the text.
• He stresses that Thomas should not automatically be harmonized with the canonical Gospels or read through later Christian assumptions.

Translation and linguistic method

Linssen says he prepared a detailed, interactive translation of Thomas and argues that it should be read closely in Coptic rather than normalized to fit familiar Gospel passages.

His method and linguistic claims include:

• Check each word against dictionaries. In his interactive translation, individual lemmas link to the Crum Coptic dictionary and the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek dictionary.
• Avoid adding words that are not in the manuscript. Linssen criticizes earlier translations for inserting or smoothing wording to align Thomas with canonical passages.
• Take unusual grammatical details seriously. He highlights singular forms, mismatches between grammatical gender and articles, and other irregularities as potentially meaningful rather than errors to be silently corrected.
• Consider alternative lexical meanings. Examples he discusses include translating a term in Logion 96 as “colostrum” rather than “sourdough,” and reading the sow in Logion 93 as specifically female.
• Pay attention to possible wordplay and ambiguity. He argues that some Coptic spellings and homonyms permit more than one reading. For example, he proposes that the wording in Logion 66 could be read not only as “cornerstone,” but also as a phrase involving turning and envy.
• Notice Greek/Coptic word pairs. Linssen says Thomas sometimes uses a Greek loanword alongside a native Coptic term with a similar basic meaning, and suggests the difference may signal a more abstract or metaphysical sense.
• Account for dialect variation. He argues that Thomas contains forms associated with more than one Coptic dialect and that translation choices can affect interpretation. For Logion 3, he disputes the standard rendering “within you and outside you,” proposing that the relevant wording could instead refer to one’s inner part and eye or perception.

Speakers and sources mentioned

Speakers

• Jacob, the History Valley interviewer/host; the auto-captions render the name inconsistently.
• Martijn Linssen, the guest and main speaker.
• The closing channel-subscription message is delivered by a narrator or channel voice; the captions do not clearly identify whether this is a separate speaker.

Scholars and works cited or discussed

• Elaine Pagels
• Mark Goodacre
• Lambdin, Guillaumont, and Layton
• Hans-Martin Schenke
• Detlef Koptka
• Johannes Liebold
• Klinghardt
• Dieter Roth
• Adolf von Harnack
• Rudolf Bultmann
• David Trobisch
• Plato, especially the Phaedrus

Texts and documents discussed

• The Gospel of Thomas
• The canonical Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke
• Marcion’s Gospel and writings by early Christian authors about Marcion
• The Gospel of Philip
• Egerton 2
• Pistis Sophia
• The Epistle to the Romans
• Justin Martyr’s use of a saying about Caesar and taxes