Gospel of Thomas on Film

Over at NT Weblog, Mark Goodacre has been writing quite a lot about the Gospel of Thomas recently. His latest post in the series is looking at clips from the 1987 Channel 4 documentary The Gnostics and in particular he discusses it's dramatisation of the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas. The most blatant observation is just how blond haired and blue-eyed this Jesus is. There are a couple of interesting points on that issue alone.

Firstly, this is quite the most Arian Jesus I have ever seen in film aside from Robert Elfstrom's portrayal in the Johnny Cash film The Gospel Road. When I saw this film back in 2006 I made a number of posts about it, one of which was a comparison between the gospels of Cash and Thomas. I should point out that I don't necessarily stand by everything I wrote in that post. I've learnt a fair bit about Thomas since then.

The other point on the blond Jesus of The Gnostics is that many commentators are at pains out that Thomas presents a significantly less Jewish Jesus than the canonical gospels and so it's interesting that both these films, linked as they are with Gospel of Thomas, present the most non-Jewish looking Jesus.

I may post more on these clips when I've had a chance to view them properly. Incidentally, I have been writing a series of posts about the Gnostic gospels for the rejesus blog including one on the Gospel of Thomas. I should point out that these articles have a word limit of 500, and are intended for an audience that has very little knowledge about Jesus and the gospels.