Date: Sun, 01 Mar 1998 20:16:46 -0500 From: "Mahlon H. Smith" To: miser17@epix.net CC: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Re: GoT, doubting Thomas and GoJ Stevan Davies wrote: > > John's Gospel mentions Philip 12 times, > Thomas just shows up 7 times. Pardon my intruding, Steve. I hesitate to get in the middle of a debate between experts on GThom. But since this discussion concerns 4G, I'll brave it. To be accurate your head count on appearances of disciples in 4G needs to put Thomas in quotation marks. The name "Thomas" shows up 7 times in 4G. The actual appearances of the person behind the name are only 3 (if one discounts his voiceless & invisible presence among the 7 fishermen of John 21. Moreover, each of these appearances is somewhat odd from the standpoint of narration. But they are useful for deciding whether the author/editor of 4G had an anti-Thomas bias. In John 11:16 Thomas responds to word that Lazarus has died by inviting his fellow disciples to join him in a mass suicide. The Johannine narrator & all the characters including Jesus totally ignore the remark. In its present form this verse looks like another Johannine non-sequitur which is best regarded as a later gloss. The only way it makes dialogical & narratival sense is to regard the first part of Thomas' line ("Let's all go") as a direct rallying response to Jesus' invitation in John 11:7 to go to Judea, with the intervening material a later interpolation. Thus, at most "Thomas" here appears to be a random spokesman rallying the disciples around Jesus. Any polemical intent obvious in that? In John 14:5 Thomas contradicts Jesus' confident announcement that they are familiar with "the way" to where he's going. Though Jesus' dominical pronouncement "I am, the way, truth & the life" is presented in the current gospel as Jesus' reply to Thomas' plea for directions, it really is not. For Jesus fails to address Thomas as he does Philip, who poses an analogous question just 3 verses later. Again, my hunch is that the introduction of Thomas at this point is the work of a Johannine editor. Even if original, however, Thomas' innocent query can hardly be taken as evidence that the author of 4G accused the Thomasine party of a general a-gnosticism. For his question is just one of many posed by various disciples (Simon Peter, Thomas, Philip, & Judas not-Iscariot) during the last supper discourse. And Jesus does not scold Thomas the way he does Peter or Philip. This leaves only John 20:24-29 where Thomas seems to be singled out for a negative comparison with the disciples who believed in Jesus without empirical evidence. But I'd question whether the narrator who introduced Thomas at this point really intended to convey a negative image of Thomas. (I hold this pericope to be a later interpolation; but for argument sake, I'll cite the gospel text as stands). Is Thomas to be blamed for his absence when Jesus appeared to disciples huddled behind closed doors "for fear of the Jews." Isn't it rather to be concluded from the fact that he was out & around that Thomas as NOT afraid. Is he to be faulted for not accepting hearsay? All he asks is for confirmation of what they had seen (Jesus' hands & side). Is he to be faulted because he actually touched Jesus' wounds? Didn't Jesus invite him to? On the strength of the narrative thrust of 4G, it can be argued that Thomas was privileged with evidence of Jesus' resurrection that no other disciple had. He alone touches Jesus & he alone proclaims Jesus "Lord" & "God," which is after all what the author of the Johannine Logos hymn claims Jesus really is. How then is any of this Thomas material in 4G evidence a polemic between the Johannine & Thomasine branches of primitive Christianity regardless of whether the author of 4G ever read or heard of GThom? Where does one find any explicit claim in 4G that someone who demands empirical evidence is NOT blessed? I would conclude the opposite: Thomas is presented by 4G as the most blessed, if not the most loved, of Jesus' disciples. 4G merely concludes by assuring those who believe without seeing or touching that they too are blessed. Shalom! Mahlon