Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:28:55 -0500
From: Mike Grondin <mgrondin@tir.com>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Original GThomas

Kevin Johnson wrote:
> 
> Yes, you subscribe to the "puzzle" theory.  We differ here as I do not feel
> that the sayings in GTh were originally in some other vastly different
> order and were later re-shuffled (#77 is the only one that seems to have
> wandered when we compare Coptic GTh with the POxy fragments; the rest seem
> to have managed to stay in sequence), nor that there is any special,
> secret, hidden "key" to the order of the sayings which, if we had it, would
> somehow make the order seem logical. It seems to me that the order of the
> sayings was produced out of the necessities of oral tradition.

Well, my "puzzle" theory really doesn't require what you say it does.
I'm quite willing to believe that not much was done to the original GTh,
but I don't think that #77 was the only difference between the Coptic
and the full Greek version. Statistically, if we find one rearrangement
in a sample composed of, say, 25% of the text, we would expect to find
approximately four rearrangements in the full text. What I think it
comes down to is that you emphasize the agreements between the POxy
fragments and the Coptic text, and tend to dismiss the disagreements as
inconsequential. I, on the other hand, being the literal-minded person
that I am, look at those disagreements and wonder whether there isn't
some intentionality behind them.

I do find the "memorization" theory to be wanting, for several reasons.
One, which we have discussed, is that it envisions a linear structure,
with connecting elements between adjacent sayings. The problem is that
these very same kind of connecting elements are all over the place in
the text, not just between adjacent sayings. Then, of course, there is
the embarassing detail for the "memorization" view that saying #14 is a
direct and specific answer to #6a. Why on earth would this
question-and-answer pair have been separated, if the arrangement of
sayings was merely to reflect and/or enable oral transmission?

One of the things I found interesting about the Davies-Arnal exchange
which has been going on concurrently with ours is Arnal's statement (if
I've got it right) that he sees his stratum2 sayings as "commenting" on
stratum1. Now, I haven't read his paper, but I do know that I see this
same strange "self-referential" aspect in GTh. In fact, the single
saying which started me down this road many years ago was the "divider"
saying (#72). A man asks Jesus to speak to his (the man's) brothers so
that they will divide their father's possessions with him. We would
expect Jesus to simply say that he is not a divider. Instead, he first
asks "Who has made me a divider?", then he turns to his disciples and
asks them, "I am not a divider, am I?" What sense does it make that he
would turn to his disciples to ask for their reassurance? The more I
thought about this saying, the less likely it seemed to me that this was
merely a report of what someone thought Jesus might have said. As much
as I would have liked the Coptic GTh to be a gateway to the HJ, it
seemed to me that something else was going on here - something that
would have to be uncovered and stripped away before we could even get
closer to the original text, let alone the HJ.

Finally, since Arnal has mentioned the "three words" of saying #13, I'll
simply make it known to all what I've already expressed to you in
private correspondence, viz., that I think that they are "I'm your
disciple.", found in saying #61, where they obviously don't belong. I
think you'll agree that if I'm right about this one little thing, the
"puzzle" theory has to be taken much more seriously.

Best wishes,
Mike