Waren Judas en Thomas gnostici? Het evangelie naar Johannes met gnostische ogen gelezen
Abstract
Jude and Thomas, were they Gnostics? Reading the Gospel according to John from a Gnostic perspective: The discoveries of Gnostic texts since the mid of the twentieth century challenge biblical scholarship to read New Testament texts from new points of view. It is remarkable that Jesus' disciples who are prominently present in Gnostic texts, especially Jude, Thomas and Philip are also more conspicuous characters in the Gospel of John than in the Synoptics. This challenges scholars to read these sections in relation to Gnosticism. The article aims at reading the scenes dealing with Jude and Thomas in John's gospel with a Gnostic framework in mind. These texts gain more profile than by a traditional reading which is often based on a psychological understanding of Jude and Thomas. The article demonstrates that the author of John's gospel uses these passages in an anti-Gnostic discourse. Thomas is a Gnostic who could fully understand Jesus' words in a Gnostic way until he encounters the bodily risen Lord. Jude does not make such a conversion and disappears in the night. These are the option for Gnostics: either convert to the type of Christianity the Gospel of John teaches or being lost in darkness.
HTS Theological Studies Vol. 64 (1) 2008: pp. 395-413
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.