Gospel of Thomas

A non-canonical collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus — discovered in Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945 — which has no narrative framework, only sayings, and which some scholars argue preserves early independent Jesus tradition, while others read it as Gnostic theology.

Raises the question of what Jesus tradition existed outside the canonical Gospels — several Thomas sayings have parallels in the Synoptics but in different and sometimes more primitive forms — making it the most important non-canonical text for historical Jesus research.