Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 12:10:08 -0500 (EST) From: "William E. Arnal" To: "Stephen C. Carlson" Cc: "Crosstalk (list)" Subject: Re: Thomas and Synoptics On Sat, 31 Jan 1998, Stephen C. Carlson wrote: > I think we are losing the context of the original point. I'm > not out to prove that the Greek Thomas is *always* superior. > That is a strawman. My point is that the attempt to explain > away some clear examples of Synoptic redaction in Thomas (which > may be likened to OJ's DNA at the scene of the crime) by an > appeal to an unverifiable textual corruption is not very convincing. > In fact, any reasonable evaluation of the role of Oxyrhynchus > fragments indicates that divergence is at least as likely as > convergence. No it doesn't. There are two reasons for this. First, as I think I've shown, POxy and Coptic, where they differ and have synoptic parallels, ALTERNATE in terms of which is closer to the NT. This itself is prima facie evidence that the MSS HAVE tended to assimilation. Second, in the absence of ANY grounds for suggesting that the Greek fragments are the BASIS for the Coptic, i.e., for proposing some kind of linear relationship from one to the other, we cannot propose ANY conclusions about textual tendencies, because there's no A --> B relationship. Let me reiterate this, since you and Antonio seem to be resisting what strikes me as a pretty solid conclusion, and, in fact, a near-consensus position in the field: there is no ground for assuming that P.Oxy is a textual anscestor to the Coptic. None. That's not to say it may not be generally better or worse, but rather that, regardless of its qualities, we have no grounds for seeing in the divergences between the MSS a movement or tendency from one to the other. That's reasonable. In fact, we don't even have grounds for concluding that the three P.Oxy's represent the same text or text family. > The problem with this is that it is purely speculative. If he is > wrong any of these cases, his argument for independence dissolves. > The probabilities simply cumulate against him, like betting even > money on five heads from five flips of the coin. As you admit, We disagree here. The argument for dependence versus independence (non-dependence?) is not so logically lop-sided. No matter what position you take, you have to admit some exceptions in the evidence. Once you have arrived at a position, you say, "and so, speculatively, what about all this?" It is no more true that one single case of dependence (or, more accurately, one single bit of evidence that independence-proponents can't explain convincingly) proves anything, than it is that one single case of independence (or, a bit of evidence that dependence-proponents can't deal with effectively) destroys their case. For every instance of probable synoptic redaction in Thomas, I can give you some thing like saying #65, where it is almost impossible plausibly to suggest a pattern of dependence. Any rejoinder to such examples will be as "question-begging" as an appeal to scribal harmonization. The question cannot be decided this way, but rather on the basis of the bulk and weight of the evidence. To take the legal example you invoked before, let's say that my fingerprints are all over the murder weapon, so the police arrest me. I say, "I didn't do it." They say, "so why are your prints all over the gun?" I say, "oh, I visited the murder victim once and he showed me this gun of his, and I handled it." To which the police reply, rightly, Yeah, right, buddy. Fine, then it turns out that I spent the entire month during which the murder took place in a jail cell in Paris. I couldn't have done it. Well, then, the police have to ask, "so how DID his prints get on the gun?" And all of a sudden my explanation looks a lot better. If OJ had really had a decent alibi, his accusations of frame-up would have been more convincing, n'est ce pas? So with Thomas: IF the weight of the evidence (as Patterson maintains) supports a verdict of not guilty, what is one to do with the redactional DNA found at the scene? Well, there are a number of explanations. Textual harmonization is a plausible one, as is the influence of oral tradition, as is the possibility (I would say probability, but I suspect few would support me in this) of multiple redactions of Thomas, amnd so forth. > no conclusion can safely be drawn that there actually was a scribal > harmonization in these specific instances. My point is that the > Greek text also provide no corroboration for scribal harmonzation, > but suggests that it is not so prevalent, and, in fact, indicates > the Coptic has diverged. If the Coptic text has indeed diverged, > then it likely that dissimilation in other places has obscured some > of the evidence for dependence. See above. For the Coptic text to have "divereged," we need a clear indication that the Greek MS tradition we HAVE was the basis for the Coptic. There is no such indication. > This "general scribal tendency" is really too weak to support the > weight placed on it. Well, not a huge amount of weight has actually been placed on it at all. It's in the nature of "and this also could have happended, as we know it did in other instances." In fact, with familiar SAYINGS of Jesus, we could expect this tendency to be MORE pronounced than it is with narrative material. > There were some arguments that the corruption occurred in > translation, but there is no evidence that this text is a fresh > translation and we also do not really know where the exemplar > for the Nag Hammadi copy came from. I think the fact that Actually, there is some evidence that the Coptic is NOT a fresh translation. We have at least one instance where it has been proposed that an association of two sayings occured because of a COPTIC catchword, and -- a rather stronger example, in my opinion -- one instance of what seems to be an intra-Coptic transmissional error (saying #6: "in the sight of truth" in the Greek, "in the sight of heaven" in the Coptic: Coptic for the former would conclude "ntme" or "ntmee," while for the latter it has "ntpe"; Greek for "truth" and "heaven" of course are widely dissimilar). So we have no reason at all to assume that the Coptic we have is a fresh translation. I'm not sure why this matters, though. > some communities were "orthodox" and other communities were > "heretical" is important, if only in the sense that these > communities are not monolithic but diverse, having different > preferred texts. Thus, scribal habits in communities that > strongly liked Matthew probably differed somewhat from those > communities that more strongly preferred Luke. No doubt. But we don't seem to have a single "community" reading Thomas, or at least no evidence that this was so. The Greek fragments are associated with a settlement, while the Coptic appears associated with a monastery. And Hippolytus is something else altogether. This suggests that the text was circulated rather widely. And that, in turn, means that we cannot speak in terms of the scribal habits of a single community, but rather of the general tendencies of Christian scribes. > A stronger argument against placing so much reliance on a > "general scribal tendency toward assimilation" recognizes that > some texts are more prone to assimilation than others, by > virtue of their common similarity. For example, it is less > likely that John would be assimilated to Matthew than for > Luke to assimilated to Matthew. Since you argue that Thomas > is quite different from the Synoptics, surely the tendency > to assimilate Thomas is much weaker. Actually, I argue not such thing: Thomas's SAYINGS are very much like those of the synoptics, and the parallels -- that is, the fact that these are the SAME sayings -- are quite obvious. Claiming that Thomas is independent is not the same as saying, quite counterfactually, that its sayings are not recognizably parallel to a great many in the synoptics. And the assimilation takes place because of the recognizable parallels, not because of the generic and overall similarity of the texts. The reason Luke would be assimilated to Matthew more than John would is simply because there is more (and more important) parallel material. If John had a Lukan version of the Lord's prayer, don't you think that would be assimilated to Matthew's version just as often as was Luke's? Anyway, you know perfectly well that this argument is entirely reversible: YOUR claim that the Thomas sayings are so similar to those of the synoptics militates in favour of harmonization. > >not just with Mark. The SAME scribes presumably would not > >have treated Thomas any differently. Why would they? > > See above. Early Christianity is not monolithic; the texts > are not identical. Nor is it easily compartmentalized into "heretics" and "orthodox." The fact that Thomas reproduces a whole series of familiar and popular sayings of Jesus from the synoptic tradition; the fact that Gnostics used canonical texts in their exegesis, and that their compositions were influenced by these texts; the fact that some common scribal NT abbreviations show up in the POxy fragments, all strongly suggests to me that Thomas was not mystically immune from the tendencies that goverened the transmission of other early Christian literature. Bill ________________________________________ William E. Arnal 19 University Place, #503 Religious Studies/Classics New York, NY 10003 New York University (212) 998-8990 (o) wea1@is7.nyu.edu (212) 995-5036 (h) "Dominance, or power in itself, is evil; but it takes power to counter it. The categorical imperative must carry a gun wherever and for so long as power can be crushed by no other means." -- Ernst Bloch