Abstract
This essay addresses the problem of myth and history in terms of mythmaking and social history in early Christian circles. Two features in the Gospel of Thomas suggest that social experience is the occasion for imaginative activity and literary production. First, the sayings in Thomas have been formulated so that they require interpretation in order to become efficacious. Second, several sayings in Thomas refer to the labor or toil requisite to creating and cultivating a group ethos. Those sayings deserve particular attention, for they locate the mythmaking of the gospel within an established discourse of παιδεία. By paying attention to these features in the text, I propose to bring what is known about the textual tradition in line with plausible, though preliminary, reflections on its social history, in order to understand one in light of the other.
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