Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 22:44:02 -0400 (EDT) From: William Arnal cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Re: GOThomas #14 On Sun, 4 May 1997, Stevan Davies wrote: > 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. This is simply THE BEST description of Horsley's (and so many others') Jesus I have ever heard. I can actually picture it now: and it had previously seemed SO unrealistic. > 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. Sounds like fun. I'll have to try this. > 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 Of course I was NOT arguing about the relative affluence of Thomas' compiler and/or (original) audience. I was referring to the compiler's (et al.) LOCALE. There's no question that synoptics, Thomas, everyone, whatever, knew how things actually worked. But when a text with parallels in which the perspective seems to be countryside talking about countryside starts including its own references to things from an apparently urban perspective, one has to wonder whether we aren't being offered clues as to provenance here. Nothing to do with social class (at least, not directly), and nothing to do with ignorance. Bill