Wer spricht? Die Redeeinleitungen im Thomasevangelium

Abstract The Gospel of Thomas (GThom) is a collection of sayings, most of which come with the stereotypical introduction ‘Jesus said: …’ The GThom thus looks like a loose collection of disparate material. However, several sayings in the collection are introduced by ‘He said: …’, thus omitting explicit reference to Jesus as the speaker. This points to greater (narrative) coherence: when the speaker's name is missing in a logion, the logion depends on the surrounding context and ceases to be a self-contained unit. This article views the GThom as a sayings collection on the way to becoming a literary composition titled ‘The Gospel according to Thomas’.