Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 15:13:27 -0500
From: Kevin Johnson <kjohnson@truesoft.com>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Original GThomas/"I'm your disciple"

At 06:37 PM 4/1/98 -0500, Bill Arnal wrote:
>
>Two things on GThom, in response to Mike Grondin:
>
>1. Unbelievably, I'd never noticed that #14 is a response
>to #6a! ... So now I have to ask
>myself, "Why?"...

Exactly!  Why anyone (at any level of stratification) would divide the text
in this manner is problematic and I haven't come across a convincing answer
to this question yet.  Most commentators ignore it because, ostensibly,
they have no answer for it.  

But it does seem to me that this unusual feature of the text may be related
to saying #92:

92)  Jesus said, "Seek and you will find. Yet, what you asked me
about in former times and which I did not tell you then, now I desire to
tell, but you do not enquire after it."

Here Jesus says, "what you asked me about in former times and which I did
not tell you then," just as the disciples ask him in #6, but he doesn't
tell them until #14.  So we have a saying in the text which matches this
odd feature of the text itself.  At least the author/redactor was
consistent in this one respect.

I suppose it could then be argued that the author wanted to portray this
disjointed manner of teaching as representative of the actual practices of HJ.

>2. I LIKE the idea that the "three words" in #13 are "I am
>your disciple" which we see in #61. This fits both Thomas'
>internal style, IMHO, and the context of the "three words"
>within #13. To support this view, though, we ought to be
>able to attribute the words, "I am your disciple" in #61 to
>Jesus, rather than Salome. English versions of the text
>offset this phrase with new quotation marks to indicate it's
>Salome speaking, rather than Jesus. This is not just because
>of the squeamishness of translators: The Coptic demands it.
>What is said here is "anok tekmathetes," i.e., I am your
>(masc) disciple (feminine). Fine, so the Coptic translator
>was himself squeamish about this, and turned the Greek
>(which doesn't have gender at all in the second person, as
>does Coptic) into a statement unambiguously made by Mary. 

Good stuff.  I've long wondered about this particular point. Thank you for
clarifying this issue.

And since we're on the topic of saying #61 here, I just have to ask... what
is the deal with the Coptic word for "bed" here?  Is the word unambiguously
the type of bed you sleep upon or can it also mean "couch?" 

>My question is, though -- and this is a real question, not a
>rhetorical one -- what do you propose as the original Greek
>behind this? Remember, this has to be three words in Greek,
>AND gender-ambiguous, and should be a fairly natural
>formulation in the Greek. 

"Three words in Greek" if you want to argue that the mysterious three words
are (1.) within the text and (2.) that the text was originally written in
Greek.  That Coptic GTh is a translation from the Greek is a point that B.
Metzger made to me and he was quite adamant about it (though he did concede
that the original could have been in Aramaic). 

The aspect which seems oddest to me about #13 is that if Thomas repeats one
thing spoken by Jesus, the disciples would then attempt to kill *Thomas*
and not Jesus!  What could Thomas have repeated for which the punishment
was death?

The only word that seems to suggest itself, to my manner of thinking, would
be the secret name of God. Other than this, I cannot think of a single word
that Thomas could repeat for which the disciples would immediately try to
kill him.

- Kevin
(kjohnson@truesoft.com)