Whom was the gospel of Thomas written for?

Answer 1

AnswerThe date of the Gospel of Thomas is uncertain. What was to become mainstream Christianity has tended to downplay the size of the Gnostic Christian community and assert that Gnosticism only began in the second century. Thomas is a Gnostic Christian gospel and, on that basis, should be dated to well into the second century. However, the similarities of the Gospel to the hypothetical 'Q' document and other internal clues have led some scholars to believe that Thomas could be almost as old as Mark's Gospel, or even older. On this view, Thomas could be one of the two oldest gospel accounts known.
A:

Because the Gospel of Thomas is mildly gnostic, it was long assumed to have been written during the second century. After all, an early date would suggest that gnostic Christianity existed from a very early time, which would conflict with a simplistic understanding that what is now orthodox Christianity arose after the crucifixion of Jesus and faithfully taught what Jesus had said and done, and that gnostic Christianity arose as teachings were corrupted.

Recent studies of the Gospel of Thomas, in the context of 'Q' and the Gospel of Mark, mean that there is now a consensus that the Gospel of Thomas was actually written around the middle of the first century CE.

Answer 2

One theory (Stephen Patterson) is that it was a book carried around by a certain group of wandering missionaries, but no one knows for sure.