From: "Mark Goodacre" Organization: Fac of Arts:The Univ. of Birmingham To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:34:37 GMT Subject: Re: Orality Philip Lewis wrote: > For instance, I had suggested to you in our brief phone conversation > that it seemed to me GThos 107 illustrates oral presentation. It > reads, "The Kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One > of them, *the largest,* went astray..."etc. The description, "the > largest" has nothing to do with the parable; it seems to be the sort > of thing with which a story-teller embelishes his tale to catch the > ear of listeners. If so, a stylism of oral rehearsal has been > carried over into written form. > > Similarly, GThos. 100 has "They showed him a *gold* coin and said to > him..."etc. The "gold" coin appears to be an embelishment, for, as > I have been reminded in earlier discussion on crosstalk, a "gold" > coin could only be a Roman aurei, worth about a quarter of a talent. > It represented a considerable value compared to coinage in common > use. It appears to have been an exaggeration offered to seize the > attention of listeners. I am not an expert on the Gospel of Thomas but have investigated carefully the whole area of 'colourful details' in the synoptics (see my *Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm* (JSNTSup, 133; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), pp. 185-90 and note lots of examples similar to the kind mentioned above for the Gospel of Thomas. My feeling would be that such colourful details are not necessarily indicators of orality. They are especially prevalent in Luke's parables and these are, of all the material in the Synoptics, those which show the strongest signs of a literary mind at work, creatively re-working whatever sources he may have had. But one additional diffculty with defining colourful details, or to use Philip's term 'embellishments', is working out what is superfluous to the story. For as soon as a detail is present in a story, by definition it functions as a part of that story. This is what is coming through in some of the responses to what Philip is saying (e.g. by William Arnal): one can always think of good explanations for the 'gold' coin or the 'largest' sheep. As soon as the element becomes a part of the story, it functions in the story as a key constituent element. Good wishes Mark ------------------------ Dr Mark Goodacre Department of Theology University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT Tel.: 0121 414 7512 Email: M.S.Goodacre@Bham.ac.uk Fax.: 0121 414 6866