Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 19:48:49 -0500 (EST) From: William E. Arnal To: M.S.Goodacre@bham.ac.uk Cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Re: Original GThomas On Mon, 30 Mar 1998, Mark Goodacre wrote: > If there are "no especially good reasons", then I am curious to know > why the gut-reaction in favour of a date so very early? > Traditionally (and perhaps wrongly), Biblical scholars have had the > opposite gut-reaction and have put documents as late as possible. > Scholars (e.g. Sanders) are often charged with a pro-Canonical bias. > Is this an example of the opposite, an anti-Canonical bias? Yes, in part. But there's more than this: I used this tenative language because I didn't want to get into a broad discussion of Thomas' date -- I just wanted to make the point that even advocates of a redacted Thomas need not place the document very late. AND I think that most of the dates usually given for all sorts of early Christian documents are offered for "no especially good reasons." It's not that there are NO reasons at all; just that they're never probative. As for dating Thomas early: 1. the use of the list form (as per Davies); 2. the absence of a theological interest in the death and resurrection of Jesus; 3. the use of the "sayings collection" genre; 4. the independence from the synoptics; 5. the use of named figures without a closed or authoritative circle of the twelve (so Patterson); 6. the lack of any clear reference to the Jewish War; 7. little hint of a non-Jewish or extra-Jewish environment (i.e., the Christians represented by Thomas still seem to think of themselves as Jews, in a largely unproblematic way). All these factors create for me the presumption of an early date, but with no more certainty or strength than the dates given for, say, Matthew, or Luke, or John, or, for that matter, Q. Bill ________________________________________ William E. Arnal 19 University Place, #503 Religious Studies/Classics New York, NY 10003 New York University (212) 998-8990 (o) william.arnal@nyu.edu (212) 995-5036 (h)