The Most Famous Gospel Not In The Bible - What Is The Gospel of Thomas?

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Thanks so much for the invite! Loved the conversation.

Frankly, I don't understand why you don't invite Jesus to your podcast; it would settle all these questions once and for all.

Jesus having a twin would make it ridiculously easy for them to fake the resurrection. That's the first place my mind went, rather than the virgin birth.

I've watched this video, your video with Elaine Pagels and with Dr. Justin Sledge from Esoterica all back to back and they've all been really, really great stuff! I'm super interested in looking at religion and in particular Christianity from a scholarly historical perspective, but a lot of the content that offers that can be quite dense and difficult to watch and follow. For example, while I love Esoterica, sometimes the content can be a bit difficult to watch if it's on a topic I'm not already intimately familiar with, but your video with Dr. Sledge did a great job of sort of weaving his knowledge into a narrative that's more digestible and informative from someone without that scholarly background. I felt the same for this video and your video with Elaine Pagels. I've been aware of your channel for quite some time and have always watched your videos here and there, but this recent content featuring experts in the field has been an absolute delight to listen to and it really feels to me like you've found a niche here that no one else on youtube is doing, so I hope you continue down this path. Please keep up the fantastic work, and I'll be here to eagerly consume the fruits of your labors!

Two of my fav religion youtubers! This will be a fantastic watch

This was such an interesting discussion! I look forward to more discussions like this

I'm currently living close to St. Thomas Mount (a.k.a Parangimalai) where St. Thomas allegedly got killed (I can see the mountain from my house rooftop). Its fascinating as a local how this event happening thousands of miles across being crucial to Christian cannon.. There are some reports on how his death might have caused but here locally, the story is that he was killed by a bunch of bandits uphill for his belonging.. People in the west say he got decapitated (Syrian tradition because he brought bunch of Syrian Christians to South India) or stoned both of which are not possible because stoning someone to death is not a common practice here and there is no alleged action by St. Thomas which would result in his decapitation and there is no evidence for proper trial that happened on him either. One other story which I recently heard is that he got impaled by spears and the spear tips are preserved, which I never heard it till now so its worth noting as well. You can sill find his remains in a tomb in a church called "San Thome" which is relatively close. Just to add some info for the audience.. Edit: Added the spear line

Thanks for banging out so much amazing content Alex

Thank you for insightfully engaging with the material

uploaded in perfect time--thanks Alex!

This is the kind of material I could listen to every day. Calm conversations that elevate the discourse.

thank you Alex, please continue these great podcasts!!!!

1:09:05 lol! "I'm no divider." Jesus is doing the "get a load of this guy" move

The depth if your combined insights and speculation is most satisfying and impressive and I thank you both for this discussion.

Rly enjoying this series, keep it up Alex.

Keep these coming Alex. I would dearly love one how much the gospels are affected by Paul. I've got some partial answers but can't seem to find a lengthy answer.

Can i suggest that this Gospel of Thomas is easier to understand as a Zen text. Many of the struggles you are having are released if, for example, you switch 'kingdom of heaven' for 'nirvana'. I'm not necessarily saying it is a product of Buddhism (though there was already cross-fertilisation between Greeks and Buddhists before Jesus), but that they are both drawn from the same pursuit. There is only one 'reality' out there and, if mystics grapple with it, you would expect many of them to arrive a similar positions. The Chinese seem to be more along this road, seeing Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism as three branches of the same tree.

00:48 I appreciate the edit to ~pan out to both of you, to show Alex's absolutely massive grin at the notion of what he's about to hear.

This was such a great watch!!