The DeConick Phenomenon

It's been quite a year for April DeConick, formerly of Illinois Wesleyan University, and now Turner Professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University. It was just the very end of December, 2005, that her avid interest in the Gospel of Thomas, first publicly evident ten years earlier in her published doctoral thesis Seek to See Him: Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas, culminated in publication of her ground-breaking work Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas. By the end of the year, Recovering had been issued in paperback, and three more books which DeConick wrote or co-edited had been published, including The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, an important companion volume to Recovering. Now into the new year, her recently-initiated blog The Forbidden Gospels is generating intense online interest in, and controversy about, her views on the privileging of canonical texts and the proper historical approach to theological/religious texts in general (including the Gospel of Thomas). Although the current online excitement is of much personal interest, the purpose of this page is to gather together in one place links to online reviews and commentaries on three of her closely-related publications.

Selected Publications

"The Original Gospel of Thomas," Vigiliae Christianae 56 (2002) 167-199
Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas (paperback $36-40 at Amazon)
The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation (hardcover $126-130 at Amazon)

(for a complete list of publications as of May, 2006, see Illinois Wesleyan DeConick page)

Online Articles, Reviews, Commentaries

Mar 15, 2005: Stephen Carlson "Two Good Articles on the Gospel of Thomas in VC"
Nov 30, 2005: AXcessNews.com
Feb 03, 2006: Jim Davila in his blog "PaleoJudaica"
Feb 13, 2006: Loren Rosson in his blog "the busybody"
Feb 14, 2006: Stephen Carlson in his blog "Hypotyposeis"
Spring, 2006: "Finding Thomas", Illinois Wesleyan University Magazine
Feb 12, 2007: James Tabor in "The Jesus Dynasty Blog"

Mike Grondin (last updated Feb 21, 2007)
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