The Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Thomas

Andrew Coburn and students from Fuller Seminary wrote in out in the states um asking how do you read ancient non-canonicized writings that aspired to be equal to scripture. Can we ascribe meaning and gain insight from what it says even though it's non-canonical? The best guess currently of scholarship is that these are starting to emerge about the middle of the second century ad they do not go back to anything like as early as the actual gospels there has been an enormous american fad for trying to date them early because the American default religion is agnosticism.