From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 15:56:44 +0000 Subject: Re: Questions Re Thomas Reply-to: miser17@epix.net Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail/Windows (v1.22) Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Precedence: bulk > From: Phil@sedona.net (Philip B. Lewis) > Are there answers to these questions about Greek POxy. & Coptic GThos? > > 1. Apart from appearing as sayings enscribed in mummy wrappings, to what > USE(S) would Greek Thomas have been put? I wish I knew. I once argued that it was an "oracle text" to be used in divination. It is a characteristic of such texts to be obscure and in need of a secret hermeneutic. http://www.miseri.edu/davies/thomas/oracles.htm Patterson thinks Thomas was used by itnerant Christians in their missionary activities so that they could pull out a saying, like an arrow from a quiver, and apply it as required. I think not. > 2. What can be surmised from those uses about the community for which Greek > Thomas was meaningful? We don't know the uses (except through rather unproven guesses (cf. Davies, Patterson) so we don't know anything about the community from that. > 3. Allowing for the fact that the Oxyrhincus papyri are fragmentary, are > there any conservative speculations as to how much elaboration may have > occurred before Coptic Thomas appeared? This could be done. But I don't know the answer. > 4. If such elaboration occurred is any "layering" evident in the development > of Coptic Thomas? Bill Arnal has argued that there is in a recent Harvard Theological Review article. Patterson argued there is at the last SBL meeting. Patterson takes all the odd sayings as one layer and the sayings in the canon as another layer, a rather unconvincing process IMO. Arnal does something else, but seems to end up with all the odd sayings as one layer and the sayings in the canon as another layer. I've never understood why this is different than what Patterson does, but Arnal says it is and who am I to argue with him? Steve