‘Vangelo’ o ‘parole’? La subscriptio del Vangelo di Tommaso (NHC II, 51, 27-28) nel quadro dei flussi di trasmissione protocristiani delle parole di Gesù

This essay aims at showing the process of 'orientation' connected to the term εὐαγγέλιον, and how this word seems to assume a role of hermeneutic indicator for appropriation processes of various streams of transmission of/about Jesus in early Christian book-communities, as it clearly emerges from the subscriptio of the Gospel of Thomas in the Coptic Nag Hammadi collection. Such a process implies a fluidity of views and actualizations concerning the meaning of the gospel in whole similar to the same fluidity through which words that are, in a way or another, lead back to Jesus among the different proto-Christian groups are recorded, reassembled and re-adapted during the preaching as well as the writing practices. The comparison between P.Oxy. IV.654, 1-5 and NHC II, 32, 10-14 seems to add another important 'tessera' in such a direction. The attempt, at the same time, of 'implementation' as well as of 'normalization', or of a real orientation, towards a mechanism of 'historicization' of the expression "Gospel according to Thomas," as it emerges from the subscriptio of NHC II on the basis of the comparison with the Greek text preserved in P.Oxy. IV.654, 1-5, seems to polemicize against some perceived deviant tendencies very similar to that which are battled by some late-antique Fathers of the Church.