From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 21:46:46 +0000 Subject: Re: orality and anality. Reply-to: miser17@epix.net James Covey wrote: > i'm trying to figure out this issue of the in/dependence > of the gospel of thomas with relation to the synoptics. > > re the synoptic problem: it is always said that the > reason we look to a textual relationship/source for > to explain the similarities between the synoptics is > the extensive word-for-word parallels. > they are too close, it is said, for "common oral tradition" > to suffice as an explanation for those word-for-word > overlaps. there must be a textual relationship. > this seems perfectly obvious to me. it must be so. When discussing the Gospel of Thomas it is always the case that we ignore all previous argumentation vis a vis other intertextualities and just make up brand new things. > but what about thomas with relation to the synoptics? > must there be a close textual relationship there? No. There just has to be a little bit of common material to prove dependence. This is because Thomas is not in the canon and so must be eliminated from consideration by any means necessary. > you see, i haven't conducted my own unit-by-unit > comparisons, so for now i need to rely on the > expertise of those of you who have. > > davies argues that the "primitive" nature of thomas/mark > parallels indicates that mark used thomas as raw material > for, in some instances, more complex allegorizations. > > once this view is accepted, the instances of matthean & lukan > redaction in our the coptic text must, at least in some > cases, be explained as late normalizations of an > earlier, more independent, thomas text. one would think. Not to discuss the Mark issue per se, which I've put aside for the time being, but yes! We must not assume, as is usually the case on crosstalk, that Mt and Lk had NO other source of information than written texts known to us. Both surely were knowledgable of other material, maybe other written material, surely oral material. And surely they would have "normalized" various Markan redactions of such material (whether or not Mark got it from Thomas) back toward the versions otherwise known to them. We must bear in mind that Mt and Lk were redaction critics of Mark. They knew that he has slanted his data and they were each of them out to revise his data back toward what they believed the original would have been. > but... what if those instances (of which there are several) > and the various other "primitive" qualities of thomas were > to be explained in terms of oral tradition? what if the > thomas sayings are written down from *memory*, from a > memory of some person(s) who had read matthew or luke or > both, or had heard people read from or quote from matthew > or luke or both? one can easily imagine other permutations > of a late oral tradition "contaminated" by the synoptic gospels. We have a lot of information about what second and third century Christians did with Jesus sayings material. They did not do with it what Thomas did. There was discussion of what sort of things later Christian writers did with Jesus' sayings on Crosstalk within living memory... but I don't recall the exact argument. But whatever it was it was not that they revised canonical sayings back toward seemingly "authentic" type sayings. > then we wouldn't need to see thomas as some brilliant > editorial redactor, capable of stripping out complex > allegorizations, etc. we might just see him as hitting > whatever synoptic high points that he can reconstruct > from memory and which support his particular > ideological/mythical framework. and maybe making up his > own stuff too. whatever. > > if someone could tell me re such a hypothesis > - why this could fly as an explanation It can't. But it does. Drives me crazy. That's why my present letter is so weak. I can't get beyond thinking that the standard argument "Thomas eliminated 95% of redactional material, but there remains 5% and therefore Thomas copied out of the synoptics" is just dumb. And since I know the people who argue this way aren't dumb, I don't know what to say. > - why it couldn't It isn't what known later Christian writers did. > - where it's been written up Klyne Snodgrass, an evangelical scholar, wrote an article arguing that Thomas was the product of "secondary orality" whereby the canonical sayings were again floating around and were then written down from memory. I think this is what you have in mind. > - where it's been refuted If it's more carefully argued I'll be happy more carefully to refute it here. I don't think anybody has bothered to refute Snodgrass. > - if it's even worth considering Well, yeah. I think it is. It's a reasonable sort of thing to argue. Better than "if it is possible that Thomas copied from the synoptics in a couple cases, and we ignore all other possibilities, then it is certain that Thomas copied from the synoptics in all cases" which is the general run of thought. > i'd be really grateful for some input. If you're really interested I can try to track down the Snodgrass reference. All I remember is the name. It's not easy to forget, that name. Steve