Subject: Re: Thoughts on GosThom Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1998 08:18:34 -0700 From: Andrew Bernhard To: M.S.Goodacre@bham.ac.uk CC: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com MARK WROTE: That completes a quick survey of the issue of literary identity in the Oxyrhynchus fragments. There is one very good case of literary identity (the first one listed, from P Oxy 1) and there are lots of interesting smaller cases where the texts are identical over a smaller amount of space. An investigation of the Coptic material is necessary too, of course, but there seem to be some grounds here for a limited degree of literary dependence one way or the other. What do others think? Is there enough here at least to establish a limited amount of literary dependence one way or the other? - - - - Mark, Thanks for the list. I've looked over the parallels in the Greek fragments and I must confess I don't think there is much of a case for literary dependence on that basis. You yourself admit that there is only "one very good case of literary identity." As for the rest, I don't think the nearly verbatim agreement is enough to prove dependence. Luke 17:21/POxy 654.15-16: First, Fitzmeyer's reconstruction is based on the Lucan parallel. And second, even if the reconstruction is accurate, this saying is so short that it could easily have been carried verbatim in the oral tradition. If you and I heard the saying, "the kingdom of God is within you" (7 words) in church, and decided to write it down again later, I bet we would come up with identical sayings. The same comment about how easily the sayings could have been transmitted verbatim in oral tradition also applies to the remainder of the parallels you list. I notice as I look through the parallels that they all are short and have a form of the equitive verb eimi (except for the parallels you list to POxy 1.30-35 which don't exactly qualify as verbatim agreement anyway). This suggests to me that all of the "verbatim" agreements are of an extremely simple ("primitive") consturction and could easily have been carried _verbatim_ in an oral form. I don't care about how people change sayings in their mind when they memorize them, you and I could easily memorize 7 or words and recite them verbatim. That does not prove that one of us borrowed from the other. That, in the end, leaves us with the only extensive parallel (Lk.6:42/POxy 1.1-4). Here we have 13 words verbatim, probably more. But we also have a coptic counterpart that differs slightly.. So, it would seem to me that we do indeed (as you note is possible) have an instance of harmonization. I think the best explanation is that POxy 1 has been harmonized with a canonical saying. It seems less probable that the Coptic has been unharmonized with the synoptics. In the end, I don't think these parallel amount to much of anything. No wonder they are never cited in arguments for dependence. They are so slight that they don't indicate anything and the one parallel that might is extremely questionable. Andrew