PhD ceremony: P.M. Moldovan

The Gospel of Thomas (NHC II, 2): A Fragmentary Writing, Scholarly Readership and Discursive Imagination

My thesis is a tripartite investigation of the academic ecosystem reading practices developed from 1945 until today around the text known as the Coptic Gospel according to Thomas (afterwards referred to as Thomas) that was discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Within these three parts I argue that Thomas is an assemblage of fragments and a fragmentary writing. I deliberately read it outside from the theological matrix in which it was artificially deposed by the theological scholarly-machine.

The first part is a mapping process which highlights the main scholarly concerns dedicated to this textuality: from its claimed relations with the so-called New Testament writings and its relations of exclusion from the mainstream Christian ‘canon’ to its plausible relations with tangential non-Christian literatures. This part shows how a possible theory of consensus among the opinions related to Thomas are in conflict with categories adopted from the heresiological discourse and applied to Thomas as a scholarly prolongation of heresiological discursive practices within Academia.

The second part investigates the multiple ways used by the scholarly world to invent and develop a particular construct, namely, the ‘Thomasine’ tradition. My research of this construct has emphasized its major academic implications, namely the process of its literary domestication. This process is already at work within the scholarship dedicated to Thomas.

The third part focuses on the practice of reading applied to Thomas. This part claims that new readings of Thomas are possible only if the theological reading practice is no longer applied to such textualities. Such approaches are replaced with more nuanced and historical perspectives.