Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 12:54:58 -0400 (EDT) From: William Arnal To: Antonio Jerez cc: Stevan Davies , "Crosstalk (list)" Subject: Re: GOThomas #14 On Sat, 3 May 1997, Antonio Jerez wrote: > I just wonder which translation is more correct: Carlson's and > the swedish one where there is talk about the missionaries > going from country to country or Meyer's where there is talk > about walking in different regions and the countryside? It makes > some difference which translation is the more correct. If coptic > Thomas is more like Meyer's translation, then it may be a more > archaic form than Luke's. But if Stephen's and the swedish > translation is more correct I don't see at all what is more archaic > talking about going from country to country as opposed to Luke's > going from city to city. It's largely undecidable. Thomas reads "and when you go in to any LAND (e.kah --> literally, ground or soil, by extension, either country or region) and walk in the countries (hn n.chora) ..." The references to "going from place to place" are an effort to make sense of this last phrase, but I think they're somewhat misleading. 1. It's misleading because it's translated with itinerancy in mind: they is really just generating evidence for a hypothesis by assuming the hypothesis in the first place. 2. It's also misleading in the context of Thomas, because Thomas uses a pair of DIFFERENT words for "place" (p.ma and p.topos) which has some special redactional import for him. This latter actually suggests to me that Thomas' (final, gnostic) redaction is not responsible for this particular wording. On the other hand, I do think it reflects a Tendenz seen in earlier material in Thomas, i.e., a tendency to frame things from an urban perspective. If, in this case, we take "chora" seriously, it looks like what Thomas is implying is visits FROM the city, into the surrounding region under the city's control, i.e., its dependent and immediately surrounding countryside. Bill