From: "Stevan Davies" Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 15:19:45 +0000 Subject: Re: Mk or GTh 65-66 ================================== To Bill Arnal: Your observations about Thomas 65-66 and Mark are just wonderful and I'll certainly give credit whenever this project gets published. You are quite right that there is almost never any good reason for Thomas' juxtaposition of sayings except maybe "catchwords" in common. =================================== I am bothered by the idea that Q has GTh 44 as part of the Beelzebul controversy and so does Mark. That would cause complications for my theory. The Luke version of the GTh 44 is quite different than the Mark//Matthew (//GTh) versions and the sequence of sayings in Mark is shifted by both Matthew and Luke by the addition of the "sons casting out demons" pericope. What is one to make of all this, I wondered. I even went to the JBL essays from the International Q Bund and what do I discover but that William Arnal is the world expert on this subject! Oh joy! So, why should I think that Luke got a separate version of this saying *in the Beelzebul controversy sequence* and not either A) that Luke just revised the Mark version or B) Luke substituted a Q saying from somewhere in the Q text into this location based on finding a similar version in that spot in Mark? Am I compelled to think that GTh 44 is in the Beelzebul sequence in Q? I note that it is at this exact point, Mark 3:27 that Mark begins to make sustained use of Thomas materials (about 9 in a row, taking us all the way to the end of chapter 4) ....... and while the fact is not worth much as evidence, lots of NT scholars have hypothesized that Mark's chapter four was drawn from some earlier list of sayings. ================================= About the not praying fasting almsgiving (Thomas 14a), the logic seems to be this: Jesus was such that he did not need to pray or fast or give alms, if you become as Jesus is then you do not need to pray or fast or give alms either, to do so would contradict your claim to be as Jesus is. This is (coincidentally?) the same line of thought as Paul's, i.e. that if you have been saved through faith and yet continue to strive toward salvation through law that behavior contradicts your presumption of salvation through faith. Steve