The Gospel of Thomas

[rj]

dm
> Whether the Church "suppresses" or refuses to recognize as canonical the
> Apocrypha or any other non-canonical gospel is beside the point of rj's
> earlier post. 

It pretty much was the point, or one of them, of my post.

I'm not saying that those cited and (some/most/all of?) the other
sayings from the Gospel of Thomas aren't in the New Testament, although
that seemed to be one of the assertions that the expert theologians on
the program were making, but rather that they were assembled into a
narrative context in the synoptic Gospels, where some sayings and events
were given greater prominence than the others, or juxtaposed in certain
ways, or "embellish'd", so to speak. 

What have been "left out, or suppressed" over the centuries *are*
apocrypha such as the Gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene or Philip, which
were discovered at Nag-Hammadi. What has been "reinterpreted", I submit,
are Jesus's teachings, and the portent of His life, in the narrativised
versions of it which form the synoptic Gospels.

I'm not so sure that it is correct to say that (only) the "Roman
Catholic Church has suppressed Christianity's mystical tradition"
either; it has certainly reserved the "epiphanies" and "salvation" for
an Elite few, however, just as institutionalised Protestantism has.

Slothrop isn't an Apostle, I agree (and never said he was). And while I
don't find it particularly necessary to elevate "Christianity" to a
position of primacy amongst the "faith traditions" you allude to, I do
very much agree with the sentence below (though it seems c doesn't):

> Slothrop's epiphany seems to me yet another example of
> the way Pynchon affirms the mystical experience that lies at the heart of
> Christianity (and other faith traditions) even as he rails against the
> crimes of the institutional Church.

best