Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 09:25:22 -0500
From: Michael Grondin <mgrondin@tir.com>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Original GThomas/"I'm your disciple"

Kevin Johnson writes:
> But it does seem to me that this unusual feature of the text [#6 asking 
> questions answered in #14] 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."

For what it's worth, Kevin, I agree with you on this. It could be taken
as yet another reason why #13 is not talking about #14 - because we
already have another saying (#92) talking about #14.

> 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!

I'm not sure that this question has yet received a satisfactory answer,
so I'll try. The way I read it, Thomas's companions would stone him and
not Jesus because they wouldn't believe his assertion that it was
*Jesus* who had said whatever-it-was. The blasphemy would lie not only
in the words themselves, but also in the assertion that it was Jesus who
spoke them. (Of course, this latter would be blasphemous to Christians
only, whereas the words themselves might be blasphemous to Christians or
Jews or both.) I get a suggestion here that maybe Jesus isn't around
anymore for the others to ask him if that is in fact what he said to
Thomas. Perhaps a post-resurrection saying anathema to centrist
Christians? (Something like "I'm your disciple"?-:)

A secondary suggestion is that maybe anyone who repeated a blasphemy,
even if it didn't originate with him, would be susceptible to stoning.
Don't know, but doesn't seem unlikely in those days.

Mike
http://www.Geocities.com/Athens/9068