From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 21:05:51 +0000 Subject: Re: GOThomas #14 > On Sat, 3 May 1997, Ian Hutchesson wrote: > > > >a tendency to > > >frame things from an urban perspective. > > > > I hadn't thought about this idea, Bill. What's the evidence in the text for > > a lazy person? Someone wrote (I am beginning to think that Satan has taken over Bill Arnal's email and so can't attribute the following to him): > Hmmm, well there's a lot of reference to merchant activity as > opposed to straightforward production. Thomas is interested in > "businessmen" in a way the synoptics are not (not that I doubt that > the synoptics were composed in cities). In addition there's #14's > reference to "chora"; #63's "I shall invest my money" (as opposed to > building granaries; #64's "I have bought a village and am going to > collect the rent"; #65's "owned and vineyard and rented it". There's > probably more, and of course the whole thing needs to be nuanced > because, like the synoptics, the preponderance of imagery seems to > be agricultural. Still, by comparison with the synoptics, the > sayings cited above seem to shift the thrust of the images in a more > urban direction. Hmmm. When I think of agricultural imagery I do think in terms of graneries, villages, vineyards. But, heck, when I was a little boy out picking cotton on the tenant farm owned by Massa we used to wonder just what a "Massa" was, because we had no idea that anybody actually built graneries, we thought they came from the Evolutionary Level Above Human.The idea that people actually owned land and villages and the like, well that never occured to us. We just labored out there hoeing the tabbaccky and figured that all our money just plumb disappeared. Sometimes we'd ask Ma "where'd the money go?" but she'd just point to the corn likker bottle and curse Pa. We had no idear that we actually paid money to Massa. Nope. We were sort of preconscious back then, had no idea that anybody at all owned anything because since we were just field hands shuckin' corn by day and amusing ourselves at night by groaning in the spirit we couldn't get our minds around the episteme of an actual guy owning the fruits of our labour. We just laboured on oblivious. Fortunately, however, Richard Horsley's Jesus came to us and straightened us out and we formed an agrarian commune based on a kind of neo-Maoist dialectic in a usury free environment strongly feminist in its egalitarianism. When we went to borrow money next spring for seed we had to rethink because we had to allow as how we had not the slightest intention of paying it back because that would immerse us in an economy of debt once again and boot us out of the Kingdom. So, in the absence of any seed, we all decided to go off to grad school and become Professors and only actually do any work during mid-December and May... and then only if the concept "multiple choice test" had not occurred to us. > Some people (e.g., Patterson) have speculated that an early > stage of Thomas was composed in Jerusalem (on the basis of the > reference to James) -- this is pretty thin, but the urban tilt to > this earlier material would certainly support such a view. Thin? Support? Support of this sort for such a view would be like balancing a sheet of saran-wrap on a tripod of boiled vermicelli. > Bill I don't think it's Bill. Trust me, whoever you are, that peasants are aware of what is what to a considerable degree. What you're thinking of isn't Thomas 63-65 but Special Luke where the assumption is made that the audience IS wealthy (not just the mistaken assumption that since the audience knows about what wealthy people do with property they must themselves be wealthy). When you hear something like "which one of you, having a servant come from the field...." or "when you build a tower...." and so forth then you may, must, infer wealth for the audience and maybe urban. Steve 8888888888888888888888888888888 From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 17:19:14 +0000 Subject: re: arnal's gnosticism SD > > 2. What I find missing is any "Why" statements. "IF this > > THEN that" necessarily begs the question of "why should this > > be the case?" It won't even do to say "this is the case because > > JESUS said so" because the problem does not lie in the > > accuracy of the statements but in their unintelligibility. Bill > This is why I say that this stratum of Thomas relies on extratextual > points of reference. The "if . . . then" pattern does not so much > communicate ideas and information, as draw implications from > information already assumed. You'd think so. But they don't seem to cohere. Still, the vocabulary is sort of familiar "light" "kingdom" "repose" "not see death" and so on. For example, in Matthew 11:29-30 IF YOU Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, THEN I will give you repose. IF YOU Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, (for I am gentle and humble in heart) THEN you will find repose for your souls. Matthew 6:23 IF your eyes are bad, THEN your whole body will be full of darkness. IF then the light within you is darkness, THEN how great is that darkness! Kingdom is too ordinary to cite. Not die... actually there isn't much of that eternal life stuff in the synoptics (is there ANY???) but it's all over the place in John. So maybe there were generalized religious goals-and-objectives in the ancient world and no particular system had any sort of monopoly on them. >THEN I am not your master. >THEN you will know the end and not experience death. >THEN you will enter [the Kingdom]. >THEN you will find the Kingdom. >THEN the respose of the dead and the new world will be recognized. >THEN he will be filled with light. >THEN you will become like Me, I myself shall become you, and the >things that are hidden will become revealed to you. >THEN you will not see death. >THEN you are superior to the world. >THEN you (fem.) may become a living spirit and enter the >Kingdom of Heaven." >THEN you will NOT become a corpse and be eaten." >THEN you CANNOT become a disciple to Me. >THEN you will NOT find the Kingdom. >THEN you will NOT see the Father. >IF you drink, become intoxicated by the bubbling spring which I >have measured out >IF you recognize what has already come >IF you take your place in the beginning >IF you make the two one, and when you >make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the >above like the below, and when you make the male and the female >one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female >female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in >place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; >IF you are the solitary and elect, >IF you look for a place for yourself within the repose, >IF you see your images which came into being before you >IF he is >IF you will drink from my mouth >IF you live from the Living One >IF you find yourself >IF a woman makes herself male > >IF you do NOT hate your father and his mother as I do >IF you do NOT love your father and his mother as I do >IF you do NOT fast as regards the world >IF you do NOT observe the Sabbath as a Sabbath, > > 4. Thomas evidently saw Jesus sayings as lacking something > > so that these supplements were useful. > > What they are thought to lack is > > A. What should I do? > > B. What will happen if I do it? > > so the Arnal sayings aren't just of all sorts, they are mainly > > answers to A. B. > > Yes, the salvific implications of certain ideas and/or patterns if > behaviour. Again, though, the problem is that we don't have "ideas" or "patterns of behavior" but words that sound good. For example, you don't know what on earth the "idea" of Kingdom is, just that you enter a thing called "Kingdom." > > Therefore Thomas seems to presuppose a whole system that it > > does not contain. Hence people turn to gnosticism to find > > systems that seem to fit because the same vocabulary can > > sometimes be found. > > YES! This is the most sympathetic reading of my position on this. > And a gnostic (proto-gnostic, esoteric wisdom, whatever) system of > some kind is one answer that's available. What others are there? I wish I knew. My impression of Thomas' arnal sayings is that they are taken from a variety of god knows where places. In fact I think this fits your observations too, that they tend to be clumped together... to which I add that the clumps are not from the same source. 60-62 and 83-85 and 49-50 are not the same sort of thing at all. This is significant. Let's assume falsely that Thomas took sayings from the synoptics and that taking things from texts is what Thomas' method is. Well, he took a whole bunch of them from those similar texts. But when it comes to the arnal gnosticism they are coming from different texts and Thomas seems to be taking only a couple from this text and a couple from that. This would seem to mean both that Thomas was the great redaction critic (a matter often discussed here) AND that Thomas knew to distinguish between "gnostic texts" and "synoptic texts" so that he treated the former in an utterly different way than he treated the latter. Alternatively, the "gnostic" material is circulating in oral tradition along with the "synoptic" material. As freefloating material it may have had some meaning at some point but it does NOT NECESSARILY have any systematic meaning in the oral tradition form that Thomas utilized. What do you think? It seems like we are making some progress here, but we've not entered the light yet. Steve