Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 03:01:23 -0500
From: Mike Grondin <mgrondin@tir.com>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Original GThomas

Kevin Johnson writes:
> And, of course, statistical arguments cut both ways.  For example, the
> word "righteous" appears twice in the entire text of GTh - in sayings
> #12 and #13.  The word "images" likewise appears only twice in the
> entire text of GTh - in sayings #83 and #84.  The phrase, "The Kingdom
> of the Father is like a woman," likewise occurs but twice in the text
> of GTh - in sayings #97 and #98.  What is the statistical probability
> of these occurrences? 

As to the details: 'righteous' seems right (but see disclaimer below);
'kingdom...like a woman' is basically right (actually, it's 96 & 97);
'images' is somewhat misleading: evidently, you're picking out the
plural form, which does indeed occur only in 83 and 84. But the singular
form occurs in 22, 50, and 83. Do you really want to count only those
catchwords which agree in number? On what grounds, given that you are
willing to overlook the difference between definite and indefinite
articles with respect to 'Jacob the Righteous'(12) and 'a righteous
angel'(13)? And how many catchwords on Patterson's list fail the test of
agreement in number?

What is the statistical probability of the three cases of juxtaposition
you mention occurring at random? Quite good, I should think, given the
large number of associations which occur throughout the text, both
juxtaposed and not. But Steve has covered this quite well, so I'll say
no more, except to say that I'm speaking here of the randomness of
juxtaposition, which does not entail a claim that the very existence of
these catchwords is an accidental feature of the text. Quite the
contrary, I believe that there IS a method to GThom's madness - I just
don't believe that that method is right on the surface, nor that it is
so easily explained as to say that it's simply a mnemonic-technique.

> However, if you want to draw up a statistical analysis of the
> correlation between repeated words in connected sayings and repeated 
> words in non-connected sayings, by all means feel free to do so (you 
> could produce a GTh concordance as a by-product!).

We'd have to agree first on exactly what constitutes a "repeated word",
which I suspect would lead to some difficulty. But these discussions
about GTh have led me to see the need for (and actually start work on!)
a saying-by-saying presentation of my interlinear translation, with
direct links from each saying to others which contain the same
root-words. This would be a sort of concordance, I suppose.
Unfortunately, this is a lot of work, and I don't have a lot of free
time, so I wouldn't look for it in the near future.

Sorry I didn't get to some of your comments about 77a, which I regard as
the "smoking gun" of someone's tinkering with the original GTh, but I've
run out of time.

Best wishes,
Mike
-- 
Macomb, Michigan USA (810-954-3562)
The Codex II Student Resource Center
http://www.Geocities.com/Athens/9068