Mike Grondin, the owner of the Gospel of Thomas email list, has organised for Stephen Carlson to lead a discussion on the paper he is presenting at the New Orleans SBL annual meeting on Origen’s use of the Gospel of Thomas.  His abstract ends:

In short, this survey shows that, despite Origen’s recognition that the Gospel of Thomas did not rank with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and despite the presence of some content he must have found objectionable, Origen nonetheless thought that the Gospel of Thomas contained historically useful and homiletically edifying material.

Stephen has volunteered to post excerpts from his paper during the month of May and I’m certainly looking forward to the discussion. It’s a Yahoogroups list and you’ll find it here.  It seems that you can read the posts without joining, but in order to be part of the discussion you’ll need to join.  You’ll be asked to provide information about why you want to be a member, so mention the discussion (and say you read about it on this blog, if you like).  If your email address doesn’t make it obvious who you are, giving your name would also be good. The default setting is that posts are moderated to make sure that spammers (of either the commercial or religious kind) don’t post, so don’t be surprised if your first post or two is held for moderator approval.