woman and femininity in the Gospel of Thomas

Women's position and their role in the society has been influenced by various factors such as culture and religion. This research tries to study the role of women in the point of views of religions especially Christianity and church fathers and also analyze the view of the Gospel of Thomas on this matter. The Gospel of Thomas is a noncanonical text that were discovered seventy years ago in the Naj Hammadi, in Upper Egypt. In spite of its small volume, The Gospel of Thomas has always been the focus of scholar in the field of early Christianity. In this research, we have aimed to study the position of woman and femininity in the Gospel of Thomas. The result shows that Jesus in the form of sayings, proverbs and phrases of the Gospel of Thomas, unlike the other canonical texts of Christianity, considers a more important position for women and assigns a more valuable role to them. Because of its theological and mysticism perspective, the Gospel of Thomas focuses on the spirituality of person and not his or her gender. for this reason, attaining the kingdom, enlightenment and salvation requires passing away from masculinity and femininity and then trying to achieve celibacy and unity.