Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 19:32:57 -0400 (EDT) From: William Arnal To: Stevan Davies cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: re: arnal's gnosticism On Wed, 14 May 1997, Stevan Davies wrote: > So maybe there were generalized religious goals-and-objectives > in the ancient world and no particular system had any sort of > monopoly on them. This is almost certainly true. I think the presence of this FORM so consistently in the set of Thomas sayings I've called secondary a) supports the case that they belong together; and b) supports the case that they depend on extratextual reference, but the form does NOT in itself indicate WHAT that extratextual reference WAS. The FORM certainly doesn't suggest a proto-gnostic (or gnostic, or esoteric wisdom, or whatever) character for this material. I simply find that a gnostic-like worldview provides the best backdrop for elaborating the CONTENT of those sayings. > I wish I knew. My impression of Thomas' arnal sayings is that they > are taken from a variety of god knows where places. In fact I think > this fits your observations too, that they tend to be clumped > together... to which I add that the clumps are not from the same > source. 60-62 and 83-85 and 49-50 are not the same sort of thing > at all. This is significant. I agree. I think, for instance, that Thomas is NOT dependent on the synoptics, regardless of the stratum we're talking about, if Thomas is indeed a stratified document. So I hardly think that this second layer was derived from synoptic extracts, and added to an independent earlier list. The secondary material, as is the case with Q, is secondary only re. its appearance in Thomas as a document, and the modifications that were made to it at that time. I assume that Thomas drew this material from a variety of sources, or, if you want, "locations" (if we're talking about oral tradition), just as Matthew, say, drew from Mark, Q, and presumably other traditions as well. It would be peculiar (although not unique, I suppose) for a document's traditions to be entirely homogeneous. > Alternatively, the "gnostic" material is circulating in oral > tradition along with the "synoptic" material. As freefloating > material it may have had some meaning at some point but > it does NOT NECESSARILY have any systematic meaning > in the oral tradition form that Thomas utilized. YES! this is exactly what I think. You may note that some of the arnal sayings are paralleled in the synoptics, others are paralleled within Thomas. I assume that Thomas mnade use of free-floating material that suited his purposes, redacted it in accordance with his interests, and in thus collecting and redacting, lent the lot of it a coherence it did not originally have. Mark did essentially the same thing, as did the redaction of Q (Q2). Bill _____________________________________ William E. Arnal Centre for the Study of Religion University of Toronto 123 St. George Street warnal@chass.utoronto.ca Toronto, Ontario M5S 2E8 (416) 761-9151