From: "Michael Davies" <miser17@epix.net>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Date:          Wed, 1 Oct 1997 20:52:08 +0000
Subject:       Re: Thomas and synoptics
Reply-to: miser17@epix.net

 Antonio wrote:
> Actually Tuckett leaves GThomas out of his study
> in the book, i e he only looks at the other texts in
> in the Nag Hammadi collection. So no conclusions
> in this book at least about GThomas using the synoptics
> as "a  redaction critical genius".

OK. I'm thinking then of a Tuckett article about Thomas itself
that I have somewhere. I'll see if I can find it and refresh my
memory.
 
> Interestingly enough Tuckett's study doesn't support
> any notion that the redactor/redactors who put GThomas
> together have worked in the same way as the redactors
> who are at work in the other Nag Hammadi writings.

Yep. Exactly.
 
> Stevan answered: 
> > I'll go with "another tradition close to them" the oral tradition
> > that underlies Q and Sp. Mt (or NMM!) etc. 
> 
> Again what I find interesting about Tuckett's study (in conjunction
> with my own) is that it hardly supports Stevan's hypothesis about
> a Markan dependance on GThomas. If GThomas is using an oral
> tradition it looks much closer to the same stream of oral tradition
> that GMatthew/GLuke are dependant on, rather than the form of
> oral tradition (or written source) that GMark seems to use.

For Q sayings Thomas is more similar to the IQP project Q material
than either Mt. or Lk. is... that's my hypothesis. But I don't think
I'll do a study on it right now. Anybody else want to try?

I'm not at all sure what your theory is based upon, but if true, which I 
don't concede because I've not had the benefit of your argument
on behalf of instances of it, it might well follow that Mark is more
prone to revise his sayings material into narratives than Matthew
and Luke are. I do think that's the case... Mark is constructing
a narrative while Mt and Lk are revising a narrative and including
sayings material in it. These are different processes and one would
presume that Mark would be using whatever was at hand, i.e. sayings 
material, to construct narrative more than Mt and Lk would be.

> The
> extremely few instances where GThomas and GMark are closer
> to each other than Thomas and Matthew/Luke are more 
> naturally explained by coincidence and/or oral tradition - not a direct
> literary dependence going from Thomas to Mark.

The extremely few instances where GThomas and Mt or Lk are closer
to each other than Thomas and Mark (vis a vis the same sayings) are more 
naturally explained by coincidence and/or oral tradition - not a direct
literary dependence going from Mt. or Lk. to Thomas.

> Had Mark been
> dependent on Thomas we should have expected the sayings in 
> Mark to look a lot more in line with what we find in Thomas/Matthew/Luke.

As I recall you gave lists of sayings and announced your preferences
without argumentation. The one instance where I argued one,
the mustard seed business, you backed off and admitted
that you had erred. What would be useful would not be lists per
se but instances we can discuss. Let's say two instances. So if
you can, maybe you could repost a dozen instances where Matt
or Luke is more like Thomas than Mark is like Thomas for sayings
that are in Mt and/or Lk and Mk and I'll pick two and we can discuss 
them in detail. 

Steve