Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 19:56:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Arnal <warnal@chass.utoronto.ca>
cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: GOThomas (correction}

On Thu, 1 May 1997, Stevan Davies wrote:

> When are we talking about? I'm quite happy to affirm that Thomas is
> pre-Q and reflects pre-Q sayings traditions. The Sacred Authors
> report that the Lord traveleth forth from village to village with his
> band of many women and 12 men. It may well be (how can it not be?)
> that you are correct that the Q stage of things wasn't this way,
> but are you also denying that the initial ca 28-38? AD stage wasn't
> this way? If GT 14b is from the actual historical Jesus (and why 
> not?) then a Q stage would be later than this and so, still, the
> Thomas saying is either an archaism or a reflection of conditions
> vis a vis Jesus himself. Please clarify.

I don't question whether the Thomas form of #14 is more archaic than
that of Q (at the very least it's less carefully worked into an
argumentative context), but I can't determine that Thomas #14
necessarily reflects itinerancy, nor in fact anything in Q. I have
no clue at all who the hell Jesus was or what he was about, so I
can't say with any certainty that he WASN'T itinerant, but I note
that the impression that he WAS is derived from the synoptic
narratives, which, I think, are very dubious historically. I see no
evidence for itinerancy in either the pre-Q or pre-Thomas
traditions; the individual sayings which are cited as evidence for
itinerancy don't really demonstrate such a practice, or, rather,
they only do if one interprets them in light of a prior assumption
of itinerancy.
	Apart from imputing a pro-itinerancy stance to me, I agreed
with the conclusions you derived from Thomas #14 re. the
independence issue.

Bill