Subject: Re: Thomas and Q Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 17:33:57 -0400 From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com > From: "Mark Goodacre" > And I see the point -- after a while it might strain belief to have an > independent Thomas + Luke consistently producing apparently more primitive > versions of Q sayings, especially if it were a really pervasive pattern. I > remain interested in this perspective for your own position. Are there only > three occasions where Luke supposedly works Mark back towards a Thomasine > original? Off the top of my head I can think of at least four: Tenants in the > Vineyard, Prayer and Fasting, Hidden & Revealed, DEKTOS; which are your three? > And then there will be the question of proportion -- there is more double > tradition than triple tradition in Thomas (see the figures sent today by Rene). What I had in mind were Hidden & Revealed (reversion to future tense) and The Lamp (Proverbial saying against Mk's double rhetorical question). In these two cases one must presume an version known to both Luke and Thomas that is not Mark's version. I said three on the grounds that there probably is another one somewhere. But we should be careful to separate out our categories. Prayer and Dektos are single word coincidences and not "more primitive versions." Why "prayer" in Luke, where it is a problematic for the Lukan view of things, I don't know... it fits Thomas fine. Dektos I don't know either, but there's an arsenal of alternative explanations for one word including good old "scribal harmonization" that some folks like to think was a phenomenon unique to canonical manuscripts. The Vineyard business is a third kind of thing. And I think the Jesus' New Family business is in the same category. Here Luke is shortening Mark but still, clearly, dependent on Mark. No alternative version that is not Mark's version need be assumed. Thomas too is shorter than Mark... but I don't think "shortness" is somehow a signficant datum pointing to some sort of intertextuality, rather, in Luke's case, an editorial reduction and in Thomas' a version prior to Mark's monkeying around with it. Like Dolly Partin and Muggsy Bogues (5' 3" pro basketball player) they are both short but they aren't the same kind of short! > Perhaps Antonio and Stephen will be able to help here. I seem to remember that > the gist of their critique of the Mark used Thomas thesis was precisely this, > that Thomas is generally closer to Matthew and Luke R of Mark than to Mark. They do say this, or rather, Stephen quotes Antonio saying this. My response was, and is, that we have to be an order of magnitude more sophisticated in looking at the instances. "Generally closer to Matthew and Luke R of Mark" must be broken down into categories for "what kind of closer are we talking about." For the vineyard "closer" is trivial. For "prayer" closer seems to indicate possible Thomasine influence on Luke. For "lamp" closer implies a Q version revised by Mark in very typical Markan ways. Bob Schact wrote: "Come to think of it, I haven't seen too much on the theme "Matthew used Thomas". Given Renee's helpful figures, that hypothesis certainly deserves attention, especially among those who think GThomas is early. Someone remind me-- have we rehashed the relationship between "Special Matthew" and Thomas?" I don't recall hashing it. It would be nice to have a list of them. Hmmm. If I come up with one I'll post it. The sheer number of sayings // is impressive. But this may well be because there weren't a lot more sayings floating around at the time. If 2 Clement's Gospel was another independent collection, most of its sayings are also in the synoptics, and only a couple that aren't (one of them also in Thomas). It's also striking that very few unique Thomas sayings are thought by anybody to be authentic. From every evidence we have it seems that anybody in the later first century writing down sayings had only a core set available. Steve