Subject: Re: Thoughts of GosThom Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 15:48:04 -0400 From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com > (Jeff Peterson) > To early Chrisitian oral > tradition we have no direct access, only that which we can infer from > documents. We therefore have no way of specifying the putative typical > characteristics of early Christian oral tradition. Maintaining that Thomas > is characteristically closer to oral tradition than the Synoptics, then, is > like arguing that donkeys have more physiological similarities to unicorns > than horses do. Finally, even supposing that such characteristics could be > identified, to maintain the priority of Thomas on the basis of its being > nearer to oral tradition would require a clear differentiation of primary > oral tradition from secondary (i.e., pre-textual oral tradition vs. oral > tradition informed by texts); how would a pre-Synoptic saying transcribed > into Thomas from oral tradition differ from a saying recollected from a > Synoptic recitation? A saying recollected from Synoptic recitation would often be one that maintained the characteristics determinative of Synoptic authorship. Justin's sayings list is a case in point. 2 Clement is a case in point. Oral tradition is characterized, if by nothing else, by its lack of obvious synoptic redactional elements. > >My guess is that when you do the idea "there are so many" > >won't be quite so obvious as it seems now. > > It's quite true that much of the evidence in Thomas is ambiguous, but I > don't think the quantitative issue is as important as Steve suggests; even > one conclusive example of Thomasine dependence -- esp. in the Greek > fragments -- would be sufficient to document that the final redactor of > Thomas was familiar with the Synoptics. Mark Goodacre's treatment of logion > 79 (// Luke 11:27-28) aired on CrossTalk is the single most convincing > argument for dependence I've seen; Then you probably did not notice that for this to be convincing one must conclude (as Mark himself admitted) that Luke in chapter 11 has repudiated Luke in chapter 2, e.g. "henceforth all generations will call me blessed." I think this is preposterous. And other considerations show against Mark's treatment which I will be happy to share with you. > I also find logion 99's agreement with > Matt 12:50 ("the will of my Father") against Mark 3:35 ("the will of God") > striking, especially as the absolute "the Father" is much more > characteristic of Thomas -- introduced in logion 3's programmatic > statement of Thomasine theology, "you are children of the living Father" -- > and appears consistently in logia 96-98. Mark has "the Father" in 27,40,44,69,79,83, and Kingdom of "the Father" in 57,76,96,98,113, and "my Father" in 61,64,99. "God" appears only in 100. (twice also in Gk GTh, but 99 under discussion is Cpt). Thomas did NOT need Mt to write "my father." > I think the word you want is "secondary" rather than dependent. If some of > Thomas' sayings are found dependent on the Synoptics, this would establish > that the final redactor had access to the canonicals but not that all > Thomasine sayings were borrowed, adapted from, or created in reaction to > Synoptic sayings. Finding them "dependent on the Synoptics" stems from arguments such as the two you mention above. Neither strike me as establishing the case. And I need to mention again that "interaction with the Synoptics" is for all intents and purposes a certainty on the scribal and translational levels so that discovering a way of proving that "my" in Thomas 99 is influenced by the Mt version does NOT in any way prove that the final redactor was so influenced... or are you including scribes as redactors so that, for example, when a text of Mt contains elements harmonized with Lk the scribe who did this counts as a redactor? > My post was an attempt to clarify conditions for fruitful discussion of > Thomasine in/dependence rather than a substantive contribution to that > question. What Steve characterizes as my "conclusion that [Thomasine > dependence] has been" established is rather a tentative and corrigible > judgment that Goodacre, Tuckett, Meier, et al. have succeeded in > identifying some clear cases of dependence. The question is clearly an > involved one and I have no illusion of having settled it in a 5K e-mail; > nor is anyone likely to. What are those clear cases from Meier and Tuckett? I think it is very much more likely to be settled in 5K e-mail than in more ancient fashions. Mark announced he would publish his arguments regarding GTh 79 (// Luke 11:27-28). Argument to the contrary would have to be published in the same journal, which is pretty darn unlikely to happen, and a full discussion would take years to play out. But on 5K e-mail things can be discussed at length from alternative points of view. Actual serious discussion is impossible via journals and vastly inferior via conference paper-and-discussion sessions. Steve