Subject: Re: Thoughts of GosThom Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 23:52:58 GMT From: "Mark Goodacre" Organization: University of Birmingham To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com On 30 Sep 98 at 16:20, Stevan Davies wrote: > The question of verbatim agreements comes down to a judgement > call: to what extent are such agreements imagined possible through > oral tradition and to what extent might they result from scribal > harmonization in the text tradition? If the answer is that one > imagines that these are not reasonable possibilities, then all > verbatim agreements require textual copying. So far as I know the > only person who has insisted upon the latter is Mark himself. This is a good question -- how far do verbatim agreements demand a theory of textual copying? One of the things that may help us is if the verbatim agreement in question constitutes a sentence, construction etc. that is in some way odd or striking, the kind of thing that would not easily be remembered verbatim. I think that the strongest Thomasine // Synoptic agreement, between Saying 26 in P Oxy 1.1-4 and Luke 6.42 is like this. This is a 13 word verbatim agreement between Thom. and Luke (the position of EKBALEIN agreeing with Matt.7.5b). I noticed recently that this was one of the sentences that Hawkins at the turn of the century regarded as making literary dependence among the Synoptics likely. But we will need more than just that, I think. > > Finally... Mark's 'verbatim means dependence argument' does, of course, > as he knows full well, not give a direction of dependence... and yet > he seems to conclude that it does. I'm not sure why. I'm happy to > find a verbatim agreement of Mark and Thomas to support the thesis > that Thomas was a source for Mark. The direction could of course go either way if we conclude that there is dependence. As I indicated before, I think a good case of Thomas >> Luke is Thom. 79a, but then we have debated that. > > [I wrote Mark a letter offlist awhile ago about the verbatims in > Thomas// regarding "the hidden will be revealed" etc. But he could > not respond as he was going off to a conference (he had just sent > me some other earlier letters on the subject that he'd filed away). > Reason I mention this is that if he filed the one that I sent just > before the conference I'd appreciate him sending it back to me. My > own filing system is flawed by the fact that what I think I file away > and what I do file away are two entirely unrelated matters!] Steve tells me he has now found this, and I must return to it. I was wrapped up in Jesus films at the time I received it but now would be a good time to come back to the real world of texts. > I think the question has been asked, if only in the minds of Koester > and Patterson and Robinson and Crossan and Valentasis and so forth... > for it is hard to imagine that such scholars never ever noticed any > such thing. None of them have found the agreements a compelling > argument for dependence nor, indeed, have Tuckett and Meier and other > independence supporters used the agreements to support their > positions. So far as I know Mark's judgement is unique to himself. Actually, I think that Tuckett and Meier take for granted that there is some verbatim identity, but I think that this needs to be spelled out more clearly as a prior step before asking about the redactional elements. > Seems to me that the Minor Agreements question and the Thomas- > using-redactional-synoptic material question are fundamentally > identical. The preponderance of scholars seem quite happy to think > the Minor Agreements do NOT demonstrate M---->Lk. And > yet they do the opposite vis a vis Thomas so that Thomas' "Minor > Agreements" are taken as probative for dependence. [Leaving aside > Mark's and my own disagreements with the presuppositions above.] I think that this is a useful way of looking at the situation. On the Minor Agreements between Mt and Lk against Mk, I suspect that the difficulty for many is either (a) they don't know about them (I know this because of talking to New Testament scholars and asking them) or (b) they suspect that they cannot be very important -- they are "minor" after all. Those who do deal with the more striking ones admit the difficulty they present for the classic form of the 2ST (e.g. Tuckett, Neirynck). > You leave out another often argued position. The arguments for > independence stress the LACK of clearly redactional elements, a lack > that is so striking that dependence scholars are reduced to finding > rare redactional "words" or "phrases" to make their case all of which > IMO are subject to alternative explanations. Good point, and this may be a good argument. > > We do generally know how Christians worked with other texts > however one theorizes about synoptic origins. Mt or > Mk or Lk or for that matter Justin did not so carefully eliminate > the phraseology of their sources that anyone denies obvious > intertextual dependence. According to the dependence side Thomas > would have had to have uniquely used NT materials in a way no other > known source did... including the Gnostics! I don't know. Aren't we often looking at material that is a mixture of primitive and not-so-primitive. Mahlon tells us that John's Gospel is a mixture of a primitive signs source and later, redactional material. Crossan tells us that there is an Cross Gospel behind the blatantly later material in Peter. P. Egerton 2 is an odd mix, possibly, betwen earlier and later elements. Thomas might not be much different from this, might it not? > I thought I had a copy of Mark's statement of his position saved, but > I guess not. As I recall it was that Thomas used the texts of > Mt and Mk, and Lk and Thomas used sayings that were in circulation > orally that derived from Mt and Mk and Lk, and that Thomas used > oral tradition sayings independent of the synoptics. Yes, that's about it. It is only a working hypothesis. I like the word "interaction", though, and I prefer the use of that word to words like "derived" and "used". > > I'm not certain that this is a position that the dependence side must > end up supporting. Far as I know Mark alone has maintained it. But > it might be the inevitable result of the dependence position for, > after all, the bulwark "logic" of the dependence position is that if > Thomas used the synoptics in a few instances Thomas certainly > used the synoptics in all instances... and that is probably > indefensible. If that is indefensible, then Mark's position may > arise of necessity. That is a negative way of putting it, but I suppose that that is right. > > Yet Mark's is IMO a "reductio ad absurdum" against himself. It takes > observation for causality. "Quite similar" means "took from a > canonical text." "Quite dissimilar" means "took from oral tradition founded on > a canonical text." "Different" means "oral tradition." And I would ask Mark if > he knows of any text in early Christianity wherein an author with available > text-sources uses them sometimes and then refrains from using them *for the > same material* other times? As Bill mentioned, Luke (on my theory) would be a good example. I would have thought that there were others -- needs thought. I don't think that I take observation for causality, though. Nor does the description above quite reflect what I think. Thomas may, for example, have interacted with oral traditions independent of canonical texts for "quite similar" material, or he may have interacted with oral traditions that were themselves influenced by the canonical texts, and so on. > > Mahlon, I believe, forcefully stressed the unlikelihood of the > procedure dependence people must affirm that Thomas utilized. > The independence position is much the simpler. Thomas pulled stuff > from oral tradition. Why then are there some "minor agreements"? > There are several reasons that I could list but possibly the main one > is one Mark himself agrees with: to quote Mark from a different > recent letter, > > "Furthermore, I do not think that oral traditions die the moment that some of > them are crystallised in texts. Thus it is likely that Matthew has interacted > with Mark itself in the light of oral traditions. And so on." > > And THEREFORE it is entirely likely that Matthew's interaction with > Mark in the light of oral traditions will, on occasion, produce a > product similar to Thomas' which will account for, e.g., > Thomas//Matthew against Mark on whether "what goes in your MOUTH" > is what matters (GTh 14c). Good point -- this could indeed be the case. Mark ------------------------------------------- Dr Mark Goodacre mailto:M.S.Goodacre@bham.ac.uk Dept. of Theology Tel: +44 (0)121 414 7512 University of Birmingham Fax: +44 (0)121 414 6866 Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom Homepage: http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/goodacre World Without Q: http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/q