From: "Stevan Davies" <miser17@epix.net>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Date:          Wed, 3 Apr 1996 17:11:48 +0000
Subject:       Re: Q2 and Thomas 

Dennis wrote: 

> Mack (following Kloppenborg) makes the point that "approximately one 
> third of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas have parallels in Q, and 
> 60% of these [ie 20% of the whole?] are from the earliest layer of Q" 
> (Who Wrote the New Testament, 61;  the bracketed remarks are mine).  
> The other 40% comes from the rest of Q.  In Mack's timeline in 
> Appendix A of "The Lost Gospel" he indicates that GosThom borrowed 
> from Q as redacted by Q2. 

>  If I understand Mack and Kloppenborg correctly, they 
> believe that the Q2 redactions were created in response to the 
> negative reaction the Q1 community had received.

This is certainly true for Mack. I don't know about Kloppenborg. Maybe
you can elucidate, or William Arnal might. 

>  Even if Q2 drew on 
> existing tradition, the apocalyptic and judgemental elements would 
> still presumably be part of the Q2 redaction and would not have 
> existed before Q2 (if someone says that the apocalyptic and 
> judgemental elements existed in tradition previous to Q2,there would 
> be no basis on which to stratify Q). 

Before W.A. goes flying up the wall let me remind you that Klop.'s 
stratification is not based on these principles but on redaction
critical grounds that produce the result of Q2 having apocalyptic and 
judgmental elements which is another thing altogether. Thus your
parenthetical comment is not true. Did you receive Arnal's summary of Klop? 
If not I can forward one to you.

 Since GosThom has parallels to 
> the Q2 tradition all we can say about a GosThom community is that it 
> produced the GosThom sometime after Q2.

Here's how I understand the situation.

1. There was an oral tradition labeled, now, (misguidedly 
misleadingly) "sapiential" and much of Q1 is sapiential. Much of
Thomas is also sapiential with a good bit of overlap. Either both
Q and Thomas drew on that oral tradition, or Thomas drew on Q 
for some of what GTh has of that or vice versa Q drew on Thomas.

2. There are judgemental sayings in Q2 and in GTh. Either they 
also circulated in common oral tradition or, again, Thomas drew on 
Q for those sayings or vice versa Q drew on Thomas. 

3. Kloppenborg argues that Q2 is chronologically later than Q1 but 
does not, as W.A. reiterates with some frequency, conclude strongly
that the Q2 sayings were invented at that time by the Q people. He 
leaves it quite open that the Q2 sayings also circulated orally and 
were selected by Q to add to Q1 to produce Q2. In this case Thomas
also could have selected some of the same sayings from the same oral
pool. Q would be choosing them to fit an ideological agenda, Thomas
just wrote 'em down for no discernable purpose (Thomas does not
share Q2's ideological purpose, at any rate).

4. HOWEVER. Mack seems to make a stronger argument that Q2 sayings
were invented by the Q community and not by others and that those
Q-community-invented sayings were added to Q1 to produce Q2. This
leads to one of two conclusions.

A. Thomas has some of those Q2 sayings and so necessarily post-dates
Q2. The most-likely-hypothesis would be that Thomas took those sayings 
from Q. This would mean that Thomas also took his Q1
overlaps from Q as well (unless Thomas had read Klop's book).

B. Thomas has some of those Q2 sayings and so Mack's thesis that they
were invented by the Q community to serve the mythmaking 
self-justifying god-hates-everybody-but-us tendencies of that later Q
community is shown to be false. Since the Q1 sayings as they appear in
Thomas do not show any signs of identifiable Q redaction (relying on
Patterson here) it is highly unlikely that Thomas took either Q1 or 
Q2 sayings from Q itself and hence Thomas undermines this element
of Mack's thesis. And, come to think of it, this is Mack's MAIN 
thesis in his Lost Gospels book, i.e. that Q2 sayings were invented 
by the later Q people and thus give us good insight into the 
development of that community. 

It seems to me that the Q2//Thomas parallels challenge Kloppenborg's
thesis but they don't by any stretch of the imagination destroy it.
But don't those parallels DESTROY Mack's thesis? [Unless he can
show literary dependence by Thomas on Q, which he hasn't.]

I look forward to hearing from Dennis and W.A. and others on this
subject.

Will Maureen please forward this to Dennis?

Steve Davies