The Politics Of Christianity
• Hodgepodge
Elaine Pagels on the Gospel of Thomas and the origin of what has come to be known as Christianity.
The teaching we find in the Gospel of Thomas is very much like some of the teaching in other Christian texts, like the Gospels of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament. But some of it is radically different. Some of it looks like Buddhism, and may have in fact been influenced by a well-established Buddhist tradition at the time that these texts were first written. There were Buddhist missionaries in Alexandria, coming from Egypt, at the time. ...
But this and many other forms of Christianity were suppressed—by certain Christian leaders—to consolidate an extraordinarily diverse movement, and to attempt to ensure its survival.