The best thing to do is to read De Rerum Natura (very much worth reading for its own right given its relative importance to the history of modern scientific thought), and then check out both the Gospel of Thomas and Hippolytus book 5 (keep in mind by then they’ve picked up a lot from the post-Valentinian Gnostics so there’s weird crap mixed up with the unwitting Lucretius references).
It’s IMO a huge oversight in scholarship right now. For example, in Miroshnikov, The Gospel of Thomas and Plato (2018), he lists the research on philosophy and Thomas to date which is absent any considerations of Epicureanism, and even goes as far as saying “In other words, a Stoic reading of the Gospel of Thomas does not seem to have any particular advantage over an Epicurean reading of the Gospel of Thomas nor, for instance, that from the perspective of an Isis worshipper. Similarly, there seems to be no reason to think that sayings 56 and 80 presuppose certain Stoic concepts…”
Let’s look real quick at those sayings:
56. Jesus said, “Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass, of that person the world is not worthy.”
80. Jesus said, “Whoever has come to know the world has discovered the body, and whoever has discovered the body, of that one the world is not worthy.”
While it’s a good work and there certainly are Platonist concepts in the text, Miroshnikov spends two chapters trying to bend over backwards to tie these sayings to Plato’s “living world” while having just totally dismissed looking at it in an Epicurean light.
Here’s Lucretius in book 5 lines 64-67:
To resume: I’ve reached the juncture of my argument where I Must demonstrate the world too has a ‘body’, and must die, Even as it had a birth.
(Also worth pointing out Lucretius begins each of the books basically praising Epicurus who founded the school as being like a god among men for his insight, so the Thomasine sayings are in keeping on that aspect too.)
The Gospel of Thomas has what’s called an over-realized eschatology where it claims the end of the world already happened (too complex for this comment). And it’s saying the world is not only a body, but a dead body. And Lucretius was saying “the cosmos is like a body that will one day die.”
I don’t need two chapters for that connection.
It makes perfect sense that a Jew in Judea would be familiar with Epicureanism. It’s the only school of Greek philosophy named outright in the Talmud, where a 1st century rabbi says “why do we study the Torah? To know how to answer the Epicurean.” And of the three sects of Judaism at the time the Sadducees shared the Epicurean belief there was nothing after death and that God didn’t care what they did or didn’t do. And in Josephus he claims the favorite Sadducee passtime was debating philosophers.
But the overall study of Thomas was just butchered by the first 50 years of scholars thinking it was ‘Gnostic’ and it was only after 1998 they realized it wasn’t, and now just label it “proto-Gnostic” without bothering to actually identify the grounding context beyond that. And even today you have respected Biblical scholars telling their peers who do study texts like Thomas “why do you bother with that nonsense?”
So your best bet is to just read Lucretius and then look at the texts in question with your own eyes.
The best thing to do is to read De Rerum Natura (very much worth reading for its own right given its relative importance to the history of modern scientific thought), and then check out both the Gospel of Thomas and Hippolytus book 5 (keep in mind by then they’ve picked up a lot from the post-Valentinian Gnostics so there’s weird crap mixed up with the unwitting Lucretius references).
It’s IMO a huge oversight in scholarship right now. For example, in Miroshnikov, The Gospel of Thomas and Plato (2018), he lists the research on philosophy and Thomas to date which is absent any considerations of Epicureanism, and even goes as far as saying “In other words, a Stoic reading of the Gospel of Thomas does not seem to have any particular advantage over an Epicurean reading of the Gospel of Thomas nor, for instance, that from the perspective of an Isis worshipper. Similarly, there seems to be no reason to think that sayings 56 and 80 presuppose certain Stoic concepts…”
Let’s look real quick at those sayings:
While it’s a good work and there certainly are Platonist concepts in the text, Miroshnikov spends two chapters trying to bend over backwards to tie these sayings to Plato’s “living world” while having just totally dismissed looking at it in an Epicurean light.
Here’s Lucretius in book 5 lines 64-67:
(Also worth pointing out Lucretius begins each of the books basically praising Epicurus who founded the school as being like a god among men for his insight, so the Thomasine sayings are in keeping on that aspect too.)
The Gospel of Thomas has what’s called an over-realized eschatology where it claims the end of the world already happened (too complex for this comment). And it’s saying the world is not only a body, but a dead body. And Lucretius was saying “the cosmos is like a body that will one day die.”
I don’t need two chapters for that connection.
It makes perfect sense that a Jew in Judea would be familiar with Epicureanism. It’s the only school of Greek philosophy named outright in the Talmud, where a 1st century rabbi says “why do we study the Torah? To know how to answer the Epicurean.” And of the three sects of Judaism at the time the Sadducees shared the Epicurean belief there was nothing after death and that God didn’t care what they did or didn’t do. And in Josephus he claims the favorite Sadducee passtime was debating philosophers.
But the overall study of Thomas was just butchered by the first 50 years of scholars thinking it was ‘Gnostic’ and it was only after 1998 they realized it wasn’t, and now just label it “proto-Gnostic” without bothering to actually identify the grounding context beyond that. And even today you have respected Biblical scholars telling their peers who do study texts like Thomas “why do you bother with that nonsense?”
So your best bet is to just read Lucretius and then look at the texts in question with your own eyes.