From:     Stevan Davies 
To:       crosstalk
Subject:  Re: Dating of Thomas, Mark, et al
Date:     Mon, 29 Apr 1996 11:11:19


Eric Hovee wrote:

> I do not believe you have yet directly commented on your view of the dating
> of Thomas, Mark and other synoptics. The commentary provided on the Gospel of
> Thomas homepage (written by Craig Schenk) indicates that "Thomas was probably
> first written in Greek (or possibly even Syriac or Aramaic) sometime between
> the mid 1st and 2nd centuries" with the Coptic version following 
> later.

As I read this, Thomas would then have been written sometime between 
50 and 100  A.D. and I'd say that's about right. (Or does he mean 50 
to 150? If so the latter is too late). But the "consensus" 
of scholars is that Thomas is later than 100. One of the advantages 
of being an expert on something is that you generally not only know 
what the consensus is but "why" it is. 

When Thomas was discovered around the turn of the century, in the 
Oxyrhynchus Gk. papyri (more than one copiest-ms. was found)
the stratigraphy and handwriting-styles led to the conclusion that 
Thomas was written at the latest by 140 A.D. Further, although we 
don't know what changes took place between the Gk and our full 
Coptic version, the Gk version did evidently contain Thomas' 
two-into-one /  let them be solitaries motif and there's not much 
else in Thomas that shows "redactional tendencies." Point here is 
that there isn't any point in arguing that the Coptic Thomas is much 
different than the Gk. (maybe it is, but one can't prove that). 

So what have we here? A document that has earlier manuscript 
attestation than anything other than the Ryland (?) fragment of John.
[I think]
A document that is written in about the earliest imaginable literary 
style (unstructured list). A document that shows no sign either of 
advanced Orthodox Christian thinking or of Valentinian or Sethian 
etc. Gnostic thinking. So Thomas is perhaps as early as or even 
earlier than Q.  (flashback! I wrote that sentence once before, in 
1981 in GTCW).

But some say Thomas is mid second century or later in date. Why is 
this?

1. People see a variety of sayings that reflect a 
hellenistic/platonic view of the world. This they define as a 
"Gnostic" view. "Gnosticism" is then defined as having begun in the 
second century and so Gnosticism in Thomas places Thomas in the 
second century. 

I'd say that there is zero "Gnosticism" properly so called in Thomas.
Bill Arnal, and others, find a sort of "proto-Gnosticism" in it, but 
they go on to say that this has no chronological significance as 
there was "proto-Gnosticism" in the first century. So the existence 
of some sort of "gnostic" thought in Thomas doesn't mean it's second 
century at all.

2. People think that Thomas contains redactional elements from the 
Syoptics and so drew sayings from the Synoptics and so is later in 
date than the Synoptics. 

All I can say here is that Stephen Patterson *The Gospel of Thomas 
and Jesus* has shown that this is just not true. Thomas' sayings are 
virtually never influenced by synoptic versions and for the occasional 
fragments that seem to be there are lots of reasons why that could 
happen apart from Thomas' origin in the use of synoptics. 

3. And pseudo-reasons are given. Thomas contains a lot of odd stuff 
to the eyes of people who are brought-up on the synoptic gospels. 
Thomas just doesn't seem first century. Since the Gospel of Peter is 
second or third century so Thomas must be too [from John Meier's
chapter on non-canonical sources].  Since Thomas is found 
in a fourth century coptic collection of mostly Gnostic stuff it must be 
late Gnostic stuff  itself. . . . These and other pseudo-reasons are 
given, but have no merit. 

So I would say 

> > Thomas was presumably written outside of 
> > Palestine and contains sayings of Jesus and 
> > sayings that reflect the interests of platonic-
> > hellenistic folks. Both [Thomas & Q] contain 
> > sayings that are not from Jesus, but those 
> > sayings derive from two different intellectual
> > milieux (is that the Fr. pl.?)
> > both of which are commonplace in the year 50 
> > in the ancient world, but in different locales. 
 
and I'd date Thomas ca. 60 A.D. and I think it existed before Mark's 
gospel and was a source for Mark. 

Steve