No Gnosis After All?

 

 

With things getting exciting in 1957 regarding the potential discovery of A long lost "Fifth Gospel," a Catholic Biblical researcher tells the public to slow down and "pump the breaks."

By slow down, I mean discount the NHL discovery and the alleged Gospel of Thomas.

Famed Dead Sea Scroll researcher, Msgr. Patrick W. Skehan felt it prudent to tell the public that to "label this work the Lost Fifth Gospel is to falsify its place in history."  How so?

For starters, Skehan mentions that the preliminary work and reporting of Professor Henri C. Puech regarding the NHL has nothing to do with St. Thomas.  Instead, the 43 sayings are "old chestnuts," and were sayings quoted by third century writers Origen and Clement of Alexandria.  Old chestnut, for those curious, is defined by the Google machine as a "subject, idea, or joke that been discussed or repeated so often that it is not funny any more."

Ouch.

Skeban also discounts the NHL as being historically relevant as he points out that it is "significant that of the 44 different treasties contained in the 13 volume discovery, not one is a book which belongs to the New Testament or is held sacred by Christians."  

Mentioning that most articles at this time regarding the NHL discovery fail to mention the possibility that the works are apocrypha, Skeban states that Puech's declaration of a discovery is an "insult to the Christian faith."  Continuing on, the biblical scholar states that many, early Christian writers from early centuries have warned the faith of false proclamations.  These people have defended true Christians from works such as the NHL, as such would "foist upon modern followers of Jesus Christ as genuine, a type of literature, and specific sayings, which responsible modern scholarship brands as false, and against which we have been warned by many writers from the early centuries of Christianity."  

Only students of apocrypha and the history of Gnosticism should have interest in the NHL.  After all, the NHL, per Skehan, is the result of "ignorant piety" and "studied malice" of Gnostics and Pagans in the early centuries.  

Suffice to say, Skehan may have been a fan of the Dead Sea Scrolls, yet was not impressed whatsoever with the preliminary translations and reportings of the Nag Hammadi Library.  

The source article was found in the April 5, 1957 issue of the The Messenger.