From: "Stevan Davies" <miser17@epix.net>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Date:          Tue, 7 Oct 1997 21:04:00 +0000
Subject:       Re: Mk 2:18-20, GTh 104
Reply-to: miser17@epix.net

Mark Goodacre wrote: 
> My concern relates to this notion that one can date material by 
> placing it on the graph of a presumed observable 'tendency'.  I 
> do not, unfortunately, have a copy of Ed Sanders' *Tendencies of 
> the Synoptic Tradition* to hand, but the gist of that work, as I 
> recall, is that tendencies go in every direction, backwards and 
> forwards and backwards again, and that charting their 
> development in a clear line is impossible.

Well, all I can do is give reasons and cite authorities. If that 
won't do it, then there we are. Odd how so many historical Jesus
books are written that take advantage of the ability to discover
more primitive versions of sayings.

> A Markan theme is Markan largely because it is distinctive and thus, 
> largely by definition, it is not in Thomas.  In other words, if 
> Thomas were using Mark we would expect him to drop the distinctively 
> Markan elements, particularly if the Markan elements involve, as 
> here, some stress on conflict and crucifixion, matters which are 
> hardly congenial to Thomas.

No, you can't say either thing. Thomas doesn't mention crucifixion, 
but that doesn't mean he is trying to excise it from texts that have
included it. And I don't know where you're coming from with 
"conflict." 

The underlying argument, I think, is that Thomas would have dropped 
characteristic synoptic-author tendencies whenever he saw them
in Matthew or Mark or Luke and so produced a list of sayings 
that appears to be "primitive" but is actually the result of careful
redaction-critical re-redaction. This is an old line of thought, but 
not one I adopt. I think of it as the Thomas as Bultmann theory.

> > Yet Thomas 104 is evidence
> > that Mark is not simply inventing the frame within which he makes
> >  his redactional points but that he is revising a framework already
> > in existence.

> I think the last sentence in the above quoted paragraph is 
> circular.
> If one is arguing for Markan dependence on Thomas, it is troubling, I 
> think, to talk of Thomas as 'evidence' about what Mark is doing with 
> his account.  The conclusion of the argument (Markan dependence on 
> Thomas) has become one of the assumptions of it.

Here you overlook the fact that I have certain presuppositions that I 
am not arguing in the essays in question. (and, of course, so does
Antonio) 1. The Q hypothesis 2. Markan priority 3. Thomasine
independence. I know I state the latter unequivocally, and the 
other two are quite obvious as well. The idea that every essay must
re-argue all three positions is, of course, impossible. But if
Thomas is independent, and Mark and Thomas share a saying,
then either Mark is taking it from Thomas or the two sources' sayings
have a common ancestor. That's not circular.
  
However, the second of the two Neotestamentica articles is not 
for the most part a direct argument for Mark's use of Thomas but
a redaction-critical study of what one can observe if that thesis
is adopted. I agree that this cannot in and of itself be an argument
for the adoption of the thesis.

But it is inferentially an argument of a sort... if one can see 
patterns of Mark's redaction of Thomas sayings it becomes less 
absurd to think that the postulated redaction could actually have 
taken place. Recall that I am advancing a thesis that nobody on earth
ever heard of before and so the attempt to show that the thesis can
lead to useful consequences is not irrelevant... nor probative.

Steve