The Gospel of Thomas preserves a core of authentic Aramaic sayings of Yeshua older than the earliest Christian writings. When they are isolated from the second-century Gnostic framework, they reveal many of Yeshuas inner-circle kabbalistic teachings. Scholars can restore much of the pre-kabbalistic tradition of Yeshuas era through sources like the Sepher Yetzirah, Sepher Ha-Razim, and the haggadah preserved in the Mishna, Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, Philo of Alexandria, and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. These were the Holy Scriptures of Essenes, Zadokites, and...