The Gospel of Thomas I

Seeking Ancient Wisdom in the New Age: New Age and NeoGnostic Commentaries on the Gospel of Thomas

An excellent paper by Dylan Burns, who earned his Ph.D. in religious studies (Early Christianity) at Yale University and is currently doing postdoc work at the Centre for Naturalism and Christian Semantics at the University of Copenhagen:

Personal identity is negotiated within a complex of social groups, and is formed not only from within a group but also from without.  It is fragmented, each affirmation of identity being a separate reference to difference with some "other" social group. At times discourses of identity are primarily concerned with differentiation and achieve it by villifying the "other" in reference to the ongoing discourse about the self; they polemicize.

This study in polemics and esotericism will discuss how the Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi Codex, tractate 2) has been appropriated in New Age and Neognostic discourse, in the form of commentaries, in order to fulminate against "mainstream Christianity" and secular culture.  In these commentaries a diverse array of fragmented identities (Christian, Gnostic, Jungian, Buddhist, New Ager, scholar, seeker, mystic, etc.) are negotiated in the effort to differentiate the self and its esoteric truth-claims from what is perceived as intolerant Christendom..."  read the full article here