ELAINE PAGELS DISCOVERS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN AND THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS*
Jesus reveals to Thomas that "whoever drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I myself will become that person, and the mysteries shall be revealed to him." This, I believe is the symbolic meaning of attributing this gospel to Thomas, whose name means "twin." By encountering the "living Jesus," as Thomas suggests, one may come to recognize oneself and Jesus as, so to speak, identical twins. In the book of Thomas the Contender, another ancient book belonging to Syrian Thomas tradition discovered at Nag Hammadi, "the living Jesus" addresses Thomas (and by implication, the reader) as follows:  "Since you are my twin and my true companion, examine yourself, and learn who you are. . . .Since you will be called my (twin),. . .although you do not understand it yet. . .you will be called "the one who knows himself." For whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has known himself has simultaneously come to know the depth of all things."

I am amazed when I went back to the Gospel of John after reading Thomas, for Thomas and John clearly draw upon similar language and images, and both, apparently, begin with similar "secret teaching." But John takes his teaching to mean something so different from Thomas that I wondered whether John could have - written his gospel to refute what Thomas teaches. For months I investigated this possibility, and explored the works of other scholars who also have compared these sources, and I was finally convinced that this is what happened. As the scholar Gregory Riley points out, John - and only John - presents a challenging and critical portrait of the disciple he calls "Thomas, the one called Didymus, and, as Riley suggests, it is John who invented the character we call "Doubting Thomas," perhaps as a way of caricaturing those who revered a teacher - and a version of Jesus' teaching - that he regarded as faithless and false. The writer called John may have met Thomas Christians among people he knew in his own city - and may have worried that their teaching would spread to Christian groups elsewhere. John probably knew that certain Jewish groups - as well as many pagans who read and admired Genesis 1 - also taught that the "image of God" was within humankind; in any case, John decided to write his own gospel insisting that it is Jesus - and only Jesus - embodies God's word, and therefore speaks with divine authority. (No wonder John's Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by me."(John 14:6); that Thomas Christians, or the way of the Jewish religious leaders is false  and John says it is Jesus' way,  as the way to the Father. Many christians today use John 14:6 as their way of excluding other faith traditions and they, instead, offer Jesus as the only way. - JNR)
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*Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, by Elaine Pagels, pp57-58.