knight4yshua,

Many thanks, for the link and for your broader interests and concerns.

However, it is Pagels’ point that one can argue for evidence of competition with the book of Thomas in the Gospel of John. Whether that is best attributed to a later redactor or the originator of the gospel she leaves unsettled. I believe that she answers your hypotheses of likely alternatives simply by citing John’s muted tone as an indication of the respect in which Thomas was held at the time.

I do not have a list of biblical contradictions. But my OT and NT study (and I only got as far as the basics and in the 1950s) used scholarly works that required extensive pages to explain the likely (because inconsistent) multiple sources of our current texts. In view of the fact that one might well find contradictions in what I’ve written here so far, I do not experience such as a necessary problem.

However, I’m not a helpful resource for biblical studies. Now, should you care to understand Heidegger’s argument for the identity of Being and nothingness, I could give that a go. (But please don’t take that offer seriously!)