Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 12:30:58 GMT
From: Mark Goodacre <M.S.GOODACRE@bham.ac.uk>
To: miser17@epix.net,
    crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Thomasine independence 1

Steve commented on Holding's arguments:

> That the "genre" of the "sayings list" was somehow a
> threat to the orthodox doesn't seem sound to me. But the simple
> logic that lists preceded narratives has a lot going for it. It's
> especially strong if you accept the Q theory (as Holding seems to)
> so that you do have an example of a presynoptic sayings list. There
> is no counterexample of a separate list drawn from the synoptics.

Even if one accepts the Q theory, Q is not a sayings list.  There is 
simply too much narrative sequence (especially from Q3 to 
Q7 where Luke is paralleling the non-Markan aspects of Matthew's 
narrative sequence) for it to be like Thomas in this respect.  This 
is a problem that is not commonly perceived, but it is a problem that 
is not going to go away.

Steve commented on Holding's second argument:

> 2. "dependency directions" arguments broken down to
> a. "Simply because a saying is shorter or simpler does not in the
> least mean that it must therefore be earlier." 'Some Thomas sayings
> are shorter and simpler, some are longer and not so simple... same
> goes for inner synoptic relations too.' 'As do gnostics, Thomas
> tries to make things secret and obtuse to the reader.'
> 
> ---- Mark G. has made something of the same comment. Overlooks the
> overall tendency of Thomas toward simplicity and shortness and
> uncommentedonness and assumes that such tendencies should always
> hold in every instance. Dismisses the whole of form-criticism as
> bogus which strikes me as tendentious. Bultmann et al. were just
> wasting their time and their followers know no better? These aren't
> morons.

I think that this is a caricature.  I would not "dismiss the whole of 
form-criticism as bogus" but rather would suggest that we are 
sceptical about the claims of the "tendencies" of the traditions.  
The idea of tendencies is only one aspect of form-criticism.  
Bultmann was not a "moron" -- he was the greatest NT scholar and 
theologian of the 20th C. -- but he made mistakes.  His leading 
critic is Ed Sanders who has written what I would regard 
as the best contemporary introduction to Form Criticism (_Studying 
the Synoptic Gospels_, Part Three), from which I quote:

    "All the form critics thought that the synoptic material changed
    in regular ways, governed by "laws", such as the rule that it
    became increasingly detailed -- or decreasingly detailed.  It is
    the supposition that these laws worked which allows scholars --
    as it allowed Bultmann -- to revise the gospel material by
    stripping away what are thought to be later accretions. 
    Bultmann attempted to give scientific support to his view of how
    the material changed by appealing to research on fairy tales,
    which he said confirmed his analysis (p. 7).  Unfortunately for
    his view, and his reputation, that turns out not to be true. 
    Students of folk literature know no rules of change.  Thus we
    cannot settle our question by referring to research in other
    fields.  We should not that the view that the gospel material is
    "folk" literarure, trasmitted orally, may be and has been
    challenged, but for our present point we still do not need to
    discuss fully the genre of the literature.  Whether the synoptic
    material is "folk" or not, there are no general laws which
    governed its transmission.

    When we study in detail the form critical "laws" of the
    development and change of the material, we discover that none of
    them holds good. A comparision of the quotations of Jesus'
    sayings in second- and third-century literature with the
    synoptic versions does not reveal that the sayings tended to
    become longer and more detailed, or shorter and less detailed. 
    Individual tellers might expand or abbreviate, might elaborate
    or epitomize.  There are no general laws about length and
    detail.  This negative judgement applies to Taylor's proposals
    as well as to those of Dibelius and Bultmann.  His view tha the
    material tended to be "smoothed" has no more support than does
    the opposite view, that it tended to become more complex."  (pp.
    127-8).

All the best

Mark
--------------------------------------
Dr Mark Goodacre       M.S.Goodacre@bham.ac.uk
  Dept of Theology, University of Birmingham
Homepage: http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/goodacre

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