Lyndon writes a good story. He is also inconsistent when he tries to preach his sermon. He brings us the legend of Prester John at the same time he begins to introduce the Gospel of Thomas. He does not name either of them until the end. I guessed he was referring to Prester John when he first started describing the claims and I already knew what the Gospel of Thomas was. Instead of simply making them historical artifacts and enlightening us, he needed to get in his digs against the church and the Bible. The inconsistency is that he makes it clear that Prester John is a myth but acts like the Gospel of Thomas is genuine. Historically they are both figments of someone’s creative art.
Prester John was supposed to rule over a magnificent Christian kingdom. He was wealthy, wise and powerful beyond belief. His location kept moving. In this book he is in Asia. Other documents have him deep in Africa. Prester John is like Atlantis: There has never been any genuine evidence that he existed outside the minds of the ancient writers.
The Gospel of Thomas is one of a well known group of gnostic writings that emerged hundreds of years after Jesus. They were attempts to debunk Christianity by presenting false claims and attributing them to disciples. They have a lot in common with contemporary writings like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. They mixed a little bit of truth with a lot of creative speculation.
This book makes it appear that at the time of Crusades the Gospel of Thomas was discovered but hidden by the Muslims to be brought out later. In reality, the only Bible that Mohammed knew was the Gospel of Thomas. He quotes it in the Koran. That was in the year 630. The heretical Christian sects that lived in the desert of Egypt taught him, verbally since he could not read, all that he knew about Christianity. If you have read the Koran you know that most of what he “knew” was false. The point here is that if this false gospel was well know in the year 600 it is doubtful that the Muslims stole it 400 years later.
To be continued...
Lyndon, Robert. Hawk Quest. New York: Redhook, 2013.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.