From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 16:10:06 +0000 Subject: Philip Lewis' discussion Reply-to: miser17@epix.net > From: (Philip B. Lewis) > R. B. Y. Scott in his Introduction to the Wisdom literature of the Tanach > in the Anchor Bible series' Vol.18, traced the antiquity of what he called > "the Wisdom Movement" and identified its characteristics. The history goes > back to Sumerian and Egyptian roots, was to be found in Akkadian, Persian, > Babylonian, Phoenecian, Edomite and Canaanite cultures as well as in "The > Writings" of the Bible. It consisted of varied forms - one liner proverbs, > doublets, quatrains, paradoxes riddles, and parables. Technically speaking, it doesn't have "parables" in the sense that we have Jesus "parables." If it has "parables" at all, they are immediately clear allegories. I think the category of riddles is interesting........ > As a "tradition" it > embraced folklore, advice of fathers to sons, tutors to their charges, > teachers to students in academies (as old as Sumer, but Cf. the turn of the > millenium schools of Shammai, Hillel, Johnanen ben Zakkai, and Gamaliel). > It was cast in forms easily remembered since it was conveyed originally > "within the heads" of traveling "wise men." These are all very formal, very higher class occupational categories... "schools, teachers, academies, tutors," and so forth. I'm sure that there were traveling "wise men" who worked with the adolescent males of leading houses, but this isn't Gospel of Thomas. > On the invention of writing it > formed the lesson material, and the creative reconstructions, of scribes > (The scribe arising as a distinct profession). It is in this heritage that > GThomas finds its place. I think Proverbs in the Bible is a good example of all that you've described, and perhaps Pirke Aboth of the early Jewish material. Trouble is that if you take Thomas and compare it to those things it just isn't the same at all. It's much more riddles than aphorisms. You couldn't educate a young male with it. You couldn't teach torah with it. If you compare Thomas' sayings (or Q) with Proverbs not much seems the same at all except in a very very broad sense e.g. "short." > We may note that as a gathering of "secrets" GThos leans heavily on > paradox. Discussions of the paradox of a lion who eats a man, or a man who > eats a lion, and which have preoccupied crosstalk lately, are from our > century's standpoint rather fruitless. Fruitless because paradox was a > device for stirring comment leading to discussion. The essence of paradox > lies, not in the form which states it, but in the interpretation roused by > it. And note that we are never given those "answers" to paradox in GTHos.! This is true. But perhaps the category "riddle" fits better. "Who can figure this out! Who can catch on to the larger hidden meaning! That's ridddles. Thomas does have paradox too. And Thomas does CRY OUT for folks to figure out the meaning of the hidden meanings. And hence I think it really isn't like the wisdom material you alluded to above, for there the meaning is just absolutely crystal clear. > What USE are we entitled to envision for GThos as a whole? This is a really difficult question. I keep going back, AS YOU DO, to the Historical Jesus oral tradition, for I find that if you take the Jesus tradition sayings they too are riddles, or seem to be riddles. Thomas has added MORE riddles of an odd sort, but I don't think Thomas invented the idea that Jesus said riddles (Mark thought Jesus spoke in riddles, cf. Mk. 4) and any collection of supposed Historical Jesus material when listed turns out to be a list of riddles. (cf. Jesus Seminar, Crossan, etc.). Question is whether Jesus intended to speak riddles... and the parables give some reason to think he did. But proverbs of Jesus are the opposite of parables. Parables are undercoded so that they can mean all sorts of things; proverbs are overcoded so that they mean something everybody already knows. Odd. > Originally its > sayings were employed to communicate a Jesus Person's oral representation of > the Great Ones teaching. That is what must be inferred from the nature of > the sayings themselves. The same broad judgment is applicable to Q. Probably for Q, although Q's topical organization seems to be designed to communicate meaning in itself and not simply by the representation of a set of sayings of the Great One. I still think that Jesus being the Great One HAD to have preceded the idea of Jesus being The Teacher for either he just wasn't a teacher and so what he said doesn't come together into a coherent statement or if he was a teacher so much of what he said was forgotten that the coherence was lost. In either case the emergence of the discussion of his teachings occurred when those teachings' coherence did not exist and so coherence had to be added. I think this is an important point. Thomas presents things and demands folks find a missing? hidden? coherence. I think that Q, Mark, Mt, etc. were in exactly the same position. They had to find the coherence in an incoherent collection of sayings regardless of where that collection came from (oral, plus Q, plus Thomas, plus special luke, etc.). Mark too had to find the non-obvious meaning in what sayings he had available, so did Matthew. Then they present the meaning by organizing, adding-to, and commenting on the sayings. So the activitiy Thomas seems to expect from his readers is in fact an activity that was going on in the first century. Steve