Reply #25: We definitely agree that it's a fascinating debate

[AliceWonderland]

I could be incorrect, but I thought the consensus still leaned towards the later date. That might be based on the first assessments after the Naj Hammadi discovery. There's a lot at stake with Thomas. If it could be definitively dated at the earlier approx. 50 CE period -- through some new archeological discovery, say -- that would have ramifications for NT scholarship, not to mention theology.

I'm pretty sure the Ehrman book that discusses women and the kingdom of God in TGOT is "Lost Christianities." The argument goes: we look at the issue through our current historical lens and we're shocked, but contemporary thought would have made this a theological advance for women. Women were not considered another kind of the same thing -- an equal but different sex of human -- but something lower on the typological totem pole. The idea being put forward in TGOT, according to this theory, is that women would be "elevated" to the status of men and actually have access to the kingdom. (That's the argument from memory, anyway!)

I'd have to look again, but I seem to remember that Erhman also advances some arguments for the earlier dating of Thomas in that book...?