oa ‘Vader - Zoon - Heilige Geest’ Logion 44 van ‘Thomas’

The striking trinitarian formula of Logion 44 in the Gospel of Thomas has drawn the attention of scholars from the very beginning. Those scholars who date the Gospel in the first century C.E. find in it either a particular early development of a specific independent tradition or a hopelessly corrupt form of such an early tradition. Some scholars who date this Gospel ca. 140 C.E. opt for the possibility that the collectors of this sayings source borrowed it from an independent Jewish-Christian tradition, which then establishes the fact that Jewish Christians cherished a trinitarian faith. The author of the present contribution is inclined to believe that the form of Saying 44 is a rather late, gnostic development of a (probably Syriac form of the) text as it is now preserved in Mt 12:32.