Subject: Re: Thomas and Q
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 21:10:11 EDT
From: Maluflen@aol.com
To: miser17@epix.net, crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com, Synoptic-L@bham.ac.uk

In a message dated 98-10-18 18:02:36 EDT, miser17@epix.net writes:

<< > LEONARD: Let me illustrate the point I am trying to make by an example
not
 > taken from the GTh. In Justin the Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, 81, 4, we
 > find the statement (I translate from the Greek text supplied by Kurt Aland,
 > Synopsis, 532): "Whence also our Lord said: They will neither marry nor be
 > given in marriage, but they are equal-to-angels, being children of God of
the
 > resurrection."
 >
 > What I think is a natural evaluation of this evidence (pardon me, Stevan,
for
 > the use of the term "natural" here) is that Justin, writing in the second-
 > century, was aware of and ultimately dependent on the Synoptic
 > Gospels

 STEVE
 I've said much the same thing about Justin's sayings. I recall using
 the word "obviously" rather than "natural" and annoying Stephen
 Carlson in the process. Point is that far as I know everyone who
 looks at the Justin sayings concludes they derive from the synoptics.
 It would indeed be useful to know how you and I conclude this is
 so natural and obvious.... but we do agree on the point.

LEONARD: I'm really glad to hear this. And would you say the same of the Gospel citations found in the Apostolic Fathers (I Clement, Didache, Polycarp, Ignatius, Shepherd, Barnabas?). Or would you have to treat each separately?

STEVE: Now, as I went on to argue before, a good many people, (and I'd
 say not many of whom are morons) look at the Thomas sayings
 and do not find it at all obvious or natural to say this about them.
 Thus, an appeal to what is natural stands only in a community of
 agreement, otherwise argumentation will be necessary. If everybody
 agrees vis a vis Justin, there's no point in trying to demonstrate
 the fact agreed upon.

LEONARD: OK, I accept all this (and, by the way, I really didn't know that we agreed on Justin). Having accepted the point that the position needs to be argued and not simply assumed, I will go on to say that I don't really see the essential difference between my citation from Justin and most of what we find in GTh. Even from the point of view of "form", its relationship to Synoptic material seems quite analogous to that of similar material in Thomas, the main difference being but a greater degree of creativity on the part of Thomas in the use of earlier materials. At least that's where I am at the moment on the subject.

STEVE: Yet the fact that everybody, far as I know, can agree vis a vis
Justin (and so we know what sayings dependent on synoptics look like)
when we look at Thomas we can assert that Thomas sayings are not of that sort but of some other sort.

LEONARD: I'm afraid not everybody WOULD agree about Justin, but again, I really wonder whether the cases (Justin and GTh) represent more than a difference of degree in terms of the nature of their relationship to the canonical gospels.

STEVE:  I note that [GTh] 22 is in 2 Clement.

LEONARD: This is very interesting, and I see that the saying of Jesus is accompanied in 2 Clement by a much needed and quite plausible exegesis. Do you have a theory of dependency here? Was this saying also in the Gospel of the Egyptians? My editions of 2 Clement all refer here to Gospel of the Egyptians(and not to GTh), but I have not found the quote there. Or is it from the writings of Clement of Alexandria that we know (or do we know?) that the statement is in a non-extant portion of the Gospel of the Egyptians? Also, are there other examples of parallels to specifically GTh material in the Apostolic Fathers?

STEVE: The missing proposition in your enthymeme is "If X can be characterized
as a gnostic element X is from the second century or later." This is an
opinion no longer
 held by specialists in Gnosticism who will inform you that Gnostic
 elements were alive and well in the first century, if not before,
 even if (and it is an IF) the writing of gnostic cosmologies did not
 begin until the second century. See, for example, Pheme Perkins'
 Gnosticism and the New Testament,  Minneapolis : Fortress Press,
 1993.

LEONARD: OK, I accept this too. At least it is difficult not to admit some marginally gnostic elements in the Gospel of John, and it certainly seems unlikely that they are being invented in via by the author of that Gospel.

STEVE:  Bill Arnal and I have had several exchanges over Thomas' gnosticism but, while he holds against me that "gnosticism" is the word to use, while I'd advocate other words, we are in complete agreement that whatever we call it it was part of the intellectual landscape of the first century.

LEONARD: Could well be, at least in some geographical areas. But isn't there a difference even between the gnostic elements in GTh (referred to thus for convenience) and those found in e.g., the Gospel of John? I realize that even if the answer here is "yes" nothing relevant to our recent discussion has been proved. My point is that it still seems to me, just instinctively, that GTh reflects second century developments in some way (I don't know of anything certainly written in the first century that quite compares). However, I admit that our recent interchanges on the list have considerably shaken my confidence in this position.

With apologies for recent incautious statements,
Leonard Maluf