Who wrote the gospel of Thomas?

Answer 1

A:The Gospel of Thomas is a sayings gospel, very similar to the hypothetical 'Q' gospel, but with a moderately gnostic slant. It contains no narrative about events in the life of Jesus and no sayings relevant to the crucifixion. It was once thought to have been a second-century gospel, perhaps on the Christian ego-centric view that only the New Testament gospels could have been written in the first century, but is now more widely acknowledged as likely to have been written around the same time as Mark, or even a little earlier. This would make it the earliest gospel of which we have a copy today.

The absence of narrative indicates that GThomas was not written by an eyewitness to the life and mission of Jesus. John Dominic Crossan (The Birth of Christianity) argues that both GThomas and Q were derived from an even earlier source known as the Common Sayings Tradition. The fact that GThomas is entirely derivative makes it difficult to imagine who wrote this gospel.

What we can say we do know is that the Gospel of Thomas was written around 70 CE or a little earlier, and that its author had to rely on an earlier source, to which he added a mildly gnostic flavour. At this stage, we do not know who could have written the Gospel of Thomas.