With competence on the Gospel of Thomas already established through previous publications (for example The composition of the Gospel of Thomas: original language and influences, 2012), Gathercole has herewith produced what is now the most important English-language commentary on this much-discussed text. It is a major work, both in size and contents, and will now be a key resource in all future scholarly analysis of Thomas. His aim, expressed in his preface, is simply ‘to understand the meaning of the sayings of Thomas in its second-century historical context’ (p. ix), giving thereby advance indication of when he situates the composition of the text.

The 183-page introduction (organised in twelve chapters) addresses all the questions about the origins and nature of the text: manuscripts (both Greek and Coptic), named references to a Gospel of Thomas, early references to the contents of Gospel of Thomas the original language (Gathercole opting for Greek contra proposals for a Semitic original), the provenance (after weighing various proposals, he sagely judges that ‘we do not really know’), the date of composition (various evidence supports a date before 200 ce and after 135 ce, which he notes rules out both an apostolic and a Manichaean authorship of this pseudonymous text), the structure (granting that the Gospel of Thomas is ‘not a particularly carefully ordered collection or list’ of material, nevertheless, he notes that there is an introductory prologue, and numerous word or subject links between pairs or small clusters of sayings, and he finds ‘a much greater proportion of links than one would conventionally find in a piece of literature’). As to the genre of Thomas, Gathercole concludes that it is a mixture of ‘Gospel’ and sentence/chreia collection, finding Kelber's view of the text as a ‘sayings Gospel’ appropriate. Gathercole rejects various proposals that the Gospel of Thomas was formed in some sort of rolling recensional process, and judges that it was composed pretty much as we have it in the Coptic translation at some point in the second century ce.

The longest chapter of the introduction is rightly given to ‘the religious outlook’ of the text (pp. 144–75). Gathercole finds the fundamental emphasis of Thomas to be ‘soteriology’, declared explicitly from the opening words about finding life through interpreting aright the sayings that follow. Gathercole lays out the main themes of the text: ‘the Father’ (mentioned twenty-one times but ‘hardly a character at all’), ‘the Kingdom’ (‘a pre-existent, paradisal realm of light’), ‘Creation and the Fall’ (a tragic disruption of ‘a primordial unity’), ‘the World’ (Thomas exhibiting a certain ambiguity in the theme), ‘the Body’ (a somewhat similar ambiguity, but on the whole ‘a more negative perspective’), ‘the History of Israel’ (only ‘brief allusions’ and all negative), ‘Jesus and Revelation’ (Jesus/Christology prominent, his role as revealer ‘central’), ‘Self-knowledge’ (‘a central theme’, ‘an extraordinary density of “knowing” vocabulary’ for such a short work), and ‘Salvation’ (self-knowledge the ‘necessary condition for salvation’, with ‘a strong emphasis on text and textual interpretation as precondition for salvation’).

In the ensuing section of the chapter, Gathercole discusses ‘the practice of discipleship’ in Thomas, the aim of which is ‘self-union’ in which the ‘new, or true, person within’ supersedes ‘the external physical person’. Associated with this motif is the theme of ‘gender union’, the transcending of male/female, categories treated in Thomas as part of the human plight. The soteriology of Thomas also involves ‘christological union’, the incorporation of the elect persons ‘into Jesus himself’, although he finds the ‘precise nature of this union’ elusive. It is clear that Thomas requires ‘radical self-denial’, but Gathercole judges that celibacy is not required, though it is ‘the (strongly) commended life’.

He next considers the critical attitude in Thomas toward ‘rivals’: Judaism and ‘the wider Christian movement which does not follow Thomas’. He rejects proposals that the text emanates from a Jewish-Christian ethos, noting that in Thomas neither Jesus nor his disciples are presented as Jews. Over against the wider Christian movement of its time Thomas presents teachings ‘as soteriological conditions’, thereby excluding ‘non-Thomasine Christians’, and exhibiting ‘an uncompromising stance towards its rivals’. In a final part of the chapter, Gathercole considers whether Thomas is a ‘gnostic’ text, concluding that it is ‘difficult to pin down’ and align with ‘other known works and movements’.

One of the questions much discussed in previous scholarship on Thomas is its relationship to the New Testament Gospels and to the historical Jesus, and Gathercole here reiterates his argument (previously published) that the text shows ‘extensive’ influence from the Synoptic Gospels. He also notes the chronological and cultural distance from the Galilean Jesus. But he grants that in principle some of the distinctive sayings in the text might comprise ‘authentic agrapha’. All through this extensive introduction, Gathercole displays an irenic attitude, and gives cogent reasons for his judgements. Moreover, at some points, as in his discussion of the individual logia, he is commendably candid in admitting that a confident judgement is not possible.

In his commentary on the logia he considers both the Greek (where extant) and the Coptic forms. He weighs scholarly proposals about meanings, and, where he can do so, strives for a judgement. There is no sense of pushing some agenda, however, or trying to coerce the text in any way. Instead, we have a rich, reasonable and impressively informed treatment of the 114 sayings of this fascinating text. I was surprised, however, that in his discussion of the notoriously esoteric Greek form of Logion 30, ‘lift the stone and you will find me there, split the wood/tree and there I am’, Gathercole does not note that in early Christian parlance τὸ ξύλον can often refer to Jesus’ cross (likely influenced by an early Christological appropriation of Deuteronomy xxi.23, as, for example, in Galatians iii.13; Acts v.30; x.39; xiii.29; 1 Peter ii.24 et al.). Given that the Greek form of the saying twice uses the definite article the stone and the tree/wood, I wonder if there is more to consider than the options he cites: ‘pantheistic’ or ‘omnipresence’ or ‘perpetual presence of Jesus’ (which may more readily be posited for the form and placement of this strange saying in the Coptic text at Logion 77).

I was also a bit surprised to find his frequent references to a ‘Thomas movement’. To be sure, there were readers of the text (as reflected in the early Greek fragments of several copies of it). But did these readers comprise a ‘movement’, a term that I take as connoting some group identity? Or were they simply self-identifying elitist individuals, perhaps in touch with others of a similar mentality, but hardly forming any organised ‘movement’?

These queries notwithstanding, Gathercole has produced a work that is exemplary in all that we ask for in a scholarly introduction and commentary on a text. A fifty-five-page bibliography, and indices of text citations and modern scholars complete this excellent (albeit prohibitively expensive) volume.