From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 21:55:19 +0000 Subject: Re: GOThomas Stephen Carlson wrote: > In a criticism of Patterson, appealing to his admissions and premises > is certainly legitimate. Many of Patterson's arguments come across as > if he's grasping at straws. Th 26 is certainly one of them. However, > you have suggested to leave Patterson out of it and start from scratch. > That's been one of my points all along. Then we are one. > >Another problem with the Thomas dependence theory is that it requires > >Thomas to have gone from book to book taking a line from Luke here, > >a saying from Mark there, preferring here a Matthew phrase and there > >a Luke phrase. There does not seem to be any reason for this at all. > > However, you've just described second century Christianity, especially > Justin and Tatian. Harmonizing Matthew and Luke (Thomas shows little > specific influence from Mark that I'm aware of) is par for the course. I've wondered about this line of argument for some time. I've seen it before and it requires another line to be convincing and not just to state a possibility. That is "and here is how Thomas does with Matthew and Luke what Justin and Tatian did with Matthew and Luke" but I've never ever seen that. And in looking for it and expecting it, but not finding it, I conclude that Thomas is probably not doing what Tatian and Justin did but something rather different. I'm not expert enough in such matters to look into them myself, but when they are not-looked-into by the experts they leave me suspicious that upon closer analysis it is not the case that Thomas uses Mt and Lk as Tatian and Justin do. As it stands the generality "Tatian and Justin harmonize and thus Thomas too must be harmonizing" is insufficient argumentation. It MUST be accompanied by "here is how they harmonize similarly." > The presence of apparent Lukan material in Thomas can be explained > by: > 1. Thomas took that material from Luke. > 2. Luke took that material from Thomas. > 3. Thomas and Luke made coincidental modifications. > 4. Thomas and Luke got that material from a shared source > 5. The text of Thomas is corrupt and harmonized to Luke. > 6. The text of Luke is corrupt and harmonized to Thomas. > > Consider Th14:4 ("When you go into any country and walk from place to > place, when people take you in, eat what they serve you AND HEAL THE > SICK AMONG THEM") // Lk10:8-9 ("And if you enter a city and they welcome > you, eat what is set before you; 9 AND HEAL THE SICK IN IT ..."). I immediately observe A. "When you go into any country and walk from place to place" B. "If you enter a city" are quite different. A. is appropriate to the intinerants that Theissen, Patterson (in the second half of his book), Arnal and Seeley (not to mention the Sacred Authors). find to be the case for "Jesus people." B. is sociologically a later stage, assuming that "cities" are the focus of evangelization. Thomas here either preserves earlier tradition or is revising Luke toward "archaism" in a manner that seems unlikely. Hence sociologically Luke is from a later stage of The Church than Thomas here. Further, if "they welcome you, eat what is set before you" cannot be in Q for it is NOT in Matthew! But it can be argued that it was in Q but Matthew cut it out. That could be.... or not. So what of "tell them the Kingdom of God is close to you" which seems to have been in the Mt. Lk. version. Was this in Thomas' version and he cut it out (as Mt. supposedly with eat what is set before you), did he choose not to write "tell them the Kingdom of God is within you" although he could have.... we can't know. What we do know is that Thomas has the saying and makes a little meaningful set of passages in GT 14 vis a vis religious expectations (rare for him to do). Why then leave in the bit about "heal the sick?" The best answer is that this was the way it was in the version he used. It is not relevant to GT 14 as a set, but it is not contradictory either, it is surely just the way it was with early Christian missionaries (they healed the sick... cf. Acts) and Thomas just wrote it as he knew it. The argument Thomas must have taken the bit from Luke assumes that Thomas would have cut out "heal the sick" because of its irrelevancy. But we have zero knowledge that Thomas was prone to delete irrelevancies. (In actual fact, if you want to do an analysis of Thomas' point-of-view you will find that Thomas is filled with sayings absolutely irrelevant to whatever point of view you come up with) and so Thomas is absolutely filled with irrelevant sayings no matter what you would like to present as Thomas' central ideology. To say that this saying is taken from Luke you have to assume that Thomas both introduced an archaism against Luke's "city" for some conscious redactional purpose and that Thomas left in an irrelevancy for no discernable reason. Either Thomas is doing a careful redaction or Thomas is just quoting something he's heard... but I don't think you can have both at once. > Cases 2 and 4 are unlikely, because if Luke used a source at all, > it's Q; This is begging the question against me, who will leave open the possibility that Luke used Thomas and (I think the certainty) that Luke used oral tradition. I also note that the specific point in question "eat what is set before you" is NOT in Matthew and so is tendentiously a Q phrase. > Case 3 is unlikely because the phrase "and heal the sick" is > so out place in Th14. No. It's just irrelevant. For it to be out of place you have to show that Thomas is adverse to healing the sick and you cannot do this. > Case 5 is speculative (considering the synoptic textual tradition, > harmonization to Matthew is more likely). I don't quite understand this, but I'd point out that all these arguments are speculative of necessity. < Case 6 has a probability of close to zero. Perhaps not. Thomas' manuscript (Gk) is MUCH earlier than any ms. of Luke or, I think, even any certain citation of Luke by anyone. Thomas' influence in the first, early second, centuries may have been much greater than we think... which is to say we don't know the probability at all and so cannot say "close to zero." > This leaves Case 1. Indeed, if Thomas is second century, > then case 1 is probable given Luke's distribution in that century. If Thomas is written by third century Gnostics even more so... but this is begging the question against someone asserting that it is first century. > Sure, it's possible that Cases 2, 4, and 5 are the explanation rather > than Case 1, but each of those is not particularly compelling. Given > that there are about 45-60 sayings in Thomas that are close to the > synoptic tradition, the odds are that for one of them, Case 1 is the > explanation. Damn it Stephen! This isn't worthy of you. 'It could be 1,2,4,5, but since 2,4,5, aren't demonstrable, it must be 1." That's canonical bias. That's what Patterson is trying to fight against (in the long run, perhaps mistakenly) by arguing for various sayings "it is 2!" "it is 4" etc. It's an argument from the negative: 'since you cannot show 2,4,5, convincingly therefore it must be 1 WHERE 1 HAS NOT BEEN DEMONSTRATED CONVICINGLY EITHER! Regarding your last sentence, it may be turned around so that since there is no unambiguous evidence that even one saying certainly, to the satisfaction of all including me, is drawn from a synoptic gospel then it's likely none of them are. If there is one, which one and why? (I, of course, agree with Bill Arnal's arguments and thank him for getting into the fray... but I've nothing specific to add or detract from them so won't quote-and-comment here). Steve