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Document Details : Title: What Shall We Do? Subtitle: The Community Rules of Thomas in the ‘Fifth Gospel’ Author(s): KIM, D.W. Journal: Biblica Volume: 88 Issue: 3 Date: 2007 Pages: 393-414 DOI: 10.2143/BIB.88.3.3189007 Abstract : This article argues for the diversity of early Christianity in terms of religio-cultural communities. Each early Christian group, based on a personal revelation of leadership and the group’s socio-political milieu, maintained its own tradition (oral, written, or both) of Jesus for the continuity and prosperity of the movement. The leaders of early Christianity allowed outsiders to become insiders in the condition where the new comers committed to give up their previous religious attitude and custom and then follow the new community rules. The membership of the Thomasine group is not exceptional in this case. The Logia tradition of P. Oxy. 1,654.655, and NHC II,2.32:10-51:28 in the context of community policy will prove the pre-gnostic peculiarity of the creative and independent movement within the Graeco-Roman world. |
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