Abstract
This article makes some observations on the Gospel of Thomas in connection with the responses to Goodacre’s Thomas and the Gospels and Gathercole’s Composition of the Gospel of Thomas. It notes that the order of Thomas’s sayings and the genre of Thomas are irrelevant to the question of dependence or independence. More important to the question is the unity of Thomas, which is stronger than is often thought, though Thomas clearly is influenced by a number of (known and unknown) sources. The means of the influence of the Synoptic Gospels remains unknown. These arguments are strengthened by attention to aspects of Gos. Thom. 33 and Gos. Thom. 65–66. Overall, there are no obstacles to concluding that Thomas was influenced by the Synoptic Gospels.
Introduction
I am very happy to have the opportunity to offer a rejoinder to my three respondents, and I would like at the outset also to pay tribute to Mark Goodacre’s book, on the back of which I wrote a blurb which was not in any way contaminated with the hyperbole characteristic of the genre. 1 I was delighted when I first heard that Goodacre was—independently—writing a book on Thomas, because I thought that our two books together would attract much more attention, and have much more impact, than my book on its own. This has clearly turned out to be the case. The SBL panel in 2012 discussed both our books. 2 One of the SBL panellists, Christopher Tuckett, published his response in the form of a review article in the Scottish Journal of Theology in May 2013 (Tuckett 2013: 221-29). Todd Brewer, in a review article in Early Christianity, discussed the two books together in June 2013. 3 The two other SBL panellists are included here—and I was going to say that their responses have been ‘supplemented’ by John Kloppenborg’s piece, but the word ‘supplemented’ would not quite do justice to the size of the beast! I am very grateful for the attention given to my book by the three respondents. Naturally I am extremely gratified to read in Nicola Denzey Lewis’s review that ‘both books substantially altered my own assumption that Thomas was early and independent’. But I am grateful to all three respondents.
We all agree on the importance of the topic. Steve Patterson comments that ‘to pretend that the context within which these books make their argument is not fraught with theological weight is naïve’ (253). John Kloppenborg agrees that the ‘enlarged Synoptic Problem’ is important for both historical and theological reasons (200-201). Denzey Lewis adds another layer, namely the ‘Gnostic question’, and remarks that ‘the Gospel of Thomas stands at the raging epicenter of this debate’ (241).
Kloppenborg and Patterson both tackle the ‘new Synoptic Problem’ issue. Before getting into that matter, I would like briefly to address two points raised by Denzey Lewis.
Original Language
I am glad that Denzey Lewis touched on the matter of the original language of Thomas, because I did not intend it merely as a matter of Prolegomenon, but rather in the hope that it would contribute something to the foundations of Thomas scholarship. I am surprised that there has not really been a substantive discussion of this question before, though Nicholas Perrin’s Thomas and Tatian (2002) is a sustained argument for a Syriac Thomas. It was partly in response to April DeConick’s work, which argues for an early Aramaic core to Thomas, that I mounted an extensive argument for a Greek original, not least because DeConick (especially in her commentary volumes 2005 and 2006) is one of the most widely cited authors writing about Thomas today. On the other hand, it was also my intention to counter Perrin’s arguments which have also been influential in certain quarters. 4 I am glad that, in a sense, the responses here in JSNT suggest (whether openly or tacitly) that a Greek original can now be assumed if it had not been already.
Is Thomas Gnostic?
This hoary old chestnut is particularly complicated because it depends on two unknowns, both the nature of Thomas and the nature of Gnosticism. 5 My own view of ‘the Gnostics’—whom I take to be a genuinely identifiable cluster of groups in antiquity—relies heavily on two very important but unjustly neglected articles by Mark Edwards (with Bentley Layton independently taking a similar line). 6 Edwards is one of the few patristics scholars in the world with a solid knowledge of both second-century Christianity (and later patristic material) and of ancient philosophy. As a result, his treatment of how both ancient Christian writers and the circle of Plotinus alike describe ‘the Gnostics’ is particularly useful. He makes the crucial point that Irenaeus, Hippolytus and other Christian writers on the one hand, and Porphyry and Plotinus together on the other, identify ‘the Gnostics’ quite narrowly as those who assert that the creator of the world and the world itself are evil. (They thus correspond quite closely to what scholars often call ‘Sethian Gnostics’.) The Gnostics therefore stand in some contrast to Valentinians, who see all reality as a continuum, with circles in the Valentinian tradition talking of a creator figure as incompetent (as in the Gospel of Philip) rather than malevolent (as in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, for example). We can, then, find evidence of all three positions discussed by the Epistle of Ptolemy to Flora about creation and the giving of the Law: some attribute these to the supreme God, Ptolemy himself sees them as acts of the ‘just’, intermediate God (not the highest God, but one who all the same hates evil), others (i.e. the Gnostics) identify the creator as an evil Devil. The Platonists in Plotinus’s circle and the earliest fathers define the Gnostics quite narrowly, rather than simply using ‘Gnostic’ indiscriminately as an insult.
Where does Thomas therefore fit against this background? Unfortunately, given the lack of information about creation in Thomas it is hard to give a clear answer. My own view is that the material world is not identified as good in Thomas (and is actually regarded very negatively); this is, however, the result of a fall—but unfortunately a fall whose contours we cannot easily now delineate. 7
In a sense, however, Denzey Lewis raises a more significant question, one which I found particularly intriguing, and which has not received much attention. The classic ‘evolutionary’ view of Thomas sees a two-stage composition, with Stage 1 consisting of a Synoptic-like Thomas, and Stage 2 adding in the ‘Gnosticizing’ layer, to make up what we know as Thomas today. 8 This fits with our presuppositions that the Synoptic Jesus, as familiar to us, is supplemented by the unfamiliar: in this sense, the composition of Thomas mirrors twentieth-century biblical scholarship, in which a focus on the Synoptics is expanded to include other less familiar material. (It also mirrors the biographies of most twentieth-century Christians, who are influenced first by the canonical Gospels and then learn about additional ‘Gnostic’-type layers later.) Denzey Lewis raises the possibility that it might equally have been the case that the reverse was true. ‘Thomas’s more “Gnostic” Jesus might have been the familiar one for a designated second-century audience. Thomas, then, might have started with this portrait of Jesus as the “living one” who spoke “hidden sayings”, adding in Synoptic material…’ (Denzey Lewis, 244). This is a very useful counterpoint to the evolutionary assumptions that one often encounters in the study of the second century, and of all those odd designations of Thomas as not Gnostic, but characterized by ‘incipient Gnosticism’ (whatever that means). Thomas is often described in such terms: for example, as ‘tending in the Gnostic direction’ (Richardson 1973: 76), or as ‘Jesusüberlieferung auf dem Weg zur Gnosis’ (Bethge and Schröter 2001: 163), evidencing ‘Gnosis in statu nascendi’ (Theissen and Merz 1998: 54). Denzey Lewis’s observation is a helpful corrective to such views of Thomas ‘on the way to Gnosticism but not there yet’. A clear analogy is that of the Valentinians, who by all accounts followed the Gnostics chronologically, but softened the position of the latter in a biblical direction. 9 If Goodacre and I are correct about the date of Thomas, a view according to which the author of Thomas combines sources in (what is to us) a ‘conservative’ direction is perfectly plausible, though admittedly we cannot really know.
Genre and the Question of Thomas’s Independence and Date
Goodacre mounts an argument that the issue of date and genre are irrelevant to one another (2012: 8, 9-14). In my book, I mention the point more briefly, perhaps more incredulously! 10 It seems to me nothing short of bizarre that one could argue that the literary form of Thomas implies its independence (or an early date). I made this point in response to the assertions of, for example, Stevan Davies that ‘because of its primitive literary form (the list) … [and some other reasons—SG] … the Gospel of Thomas appears to be a very early text, perhaps one of the earliest pieces of Christian writing’ (Davies 2005: 11). Hunzinger and Patterson also claim that ‘Thomas therefore represents, in terms of its literary genre, a phase of the development of the tradition that is older than that of the synoptic gospels’. 11 Goodacre, it seems to me, makes the reasonable argument that ‘[w]e do not have extant examples of the kind of gospel sayings collection that the genre argument requires’ (2012: 10, cited in Kloppenborg 205). By ‘genre argument’, Goodacre does not mean the argument for Thomas belonging to a particular genre, but that the genre of Thomas as a sayings-collection implies its independence (and/or early date). I do not think that Goodacre, Kloppenborg and I have any substantial disagreement about the genre of Thomas in itself. In my forthcoming commentary on Thomas (Introduction, section 9, ‘Genre’), I broadly endorse Kloppenborg’s view of Thomas’s genre, 12 which I came to independently, partly as a result of a series of seminars I was part of a few years ago on Epicurus’s Kuriai doxai. 13 Goodacre also accepts that the genre ‘sayings gospel’ is appropriate as a designation of Thomas. 14 The genre of Thomas, however, is irrelevant both (1) to the question of its independence, and (2) to the matter of Thomas’s date.
(1) Independence. Some (and this is not a criticism of Kloppenborg) have made the fallacious assertion that the genre of Thomas as a sayings gospel does not presuppose the existence of, or does presuppose the non-existence of, narrative gospels. This might be the case but it might not. Sayings collections might precede what appear to be more sophisticated literary genres, but equally they might be dependent upon them: there are, for example, instances of florilegia which are excerpts from authors such as Euripides (Chadwick 1969: 1132-33). As far as the question of Thomas and the Synoptics is concerned, the Synoptics might be drawing upon earlier collections of Jesus sayings of which Thomas (perhaps in a less developed form) was an early instance, or Thomas may have begun its life as a collection of excerpts from the Synoptics (and other material). Both are theoretically possible—and of course these are not the only options.
(2) Date. Again, it does not follow that Thomas as a sayings-gospel does not presuppose the existence of narrative gospels and therefore predates them. Kloppenborg’s appeal to non-Christian parallels is irrelevant here (205). (The argument made by Goodacre and me is a negative one against an early date, not an argument that, as a sayings-gospel, Thomas must be late.) As Kloppenborg notes, it is true that there are a great number of sayings collections roughly contemporaneous with Thomas. On the other hand, however, sayings collections both pre-date and post-date Thomas for centuries before and after. Well known to biblical scholars is the Instruction of Amenemope usually thought to come from the Ramesside period (Hallo and Younger 1997: 115), but sentence collections continue well into the medieval manuscript traditions, 15 and indeed into the present day. 16 In other words, the evidence of gnomological traditions is compatible with any date of Thomas, and so is irrelevant to the question. Kloppenborg’s accusation that Goodacre imports theology into the discussion is both inaccurate and unfair.
The key point here is that, despite the claims of a number, the genre of Thomas as a sayings collection has absolutely no bearing on its date or independence/ dependence. Thomas’s literary form may be compatible with an early date. On the other hand, the portrayal of Jesus as a speaker of sayings is very amenable to a second-century context, in which Jesus is very often depicted as a teacher: this is true both among non-Christians such as Galen, Lucian and Mara bar Sarapion, 17 but also among some second-century Christian writers who, inasmuch as they preserve Gospel material, primarily preserve sayings (e.g., 2 Clement; Justin, 1 Apol. 15–17). 18
Arguments from Order
Another matter of irrelevance, like the argument from genre, is that of order. If I have understood him correctly, I think Kloppenborg is saying that arguments of Tuckett show ‘that one should not press the argument from order too far’ (207), but that nevertheless ‘the differences in sequence between Thomas and the Synoptics are still noteworthy’ (207). He goes on to argue that just as the argument from lack of shared order only has limited value as evidence for independence (because of our ignorance of the original order, which the Coptic version may obscure), so also: equally those who argue for Thomasine dependence on the Synoptics should explain how Thomas, using the Synoptics, came up with so random an order. Gathercole rather weakly pleads that Thomas is a ‘list’ in which one ‘would not expect order to be as important as it clearly is in a narrative’ (p. 132). This only pushes aside the problem of how to account for the massive re-ordering of sayings in Thomas that were ordered in the Synoptics.
There are two reasons why this statement is surprising. First, Kloppenborg stated earlier in the same paragraph in which this quotation appears that in many sayings collections, ‘while some show signs of deliberate serialization, others seem rather random’ (207). If this is correct (as indeed it is), I fail to see why it is a weak plea that one would not necessarily expect to see order in a collection of sayings in the form of a list. Secondly, Kloppenborg here seems to be lapsing into making an accusation against something along the lines of the old ‘scissors-and-paste’ caricature (such as we will have cause to note in Johnson and Crossan below). As he notes about my view elsewhere, ‘Gathercole only needs Matthew and Luke to be “in the air” that Thomas breathes’ (205). Just so. And given that we (or at least, I) do not know how exactly the material got from written Synoptic Gospels to the author or editor of Thomas, I certainly do not claim to be able to account for ‘the massive re-ordering’. This would only be necessary if I thought that Thomas had (say) Luke in front of him, working through it and selecting and re-arranging the sayings. But of course, although the ‘new Synoptic problem’ should be expanded to include Thomas, the nature of the influence of the Synoptics on Thomas is—I would argue—by no means necessarily similar to the influence of Mark upon Matthew. On the other hand, I can account for a number of the clusterings of the Synoptic material: for example, I think Kloppenborg and I probably agree on why Gos. Thom. 63–65 are grouped together, even if we—again—probably agree that they may not have always been a trio from their beginnings. There are numerous links between individual sayings both at the level of linguistic catchwords (see Patterson 1993a: 100-102), thematic links (criticism of involvement in commerce in Gos. Thom. 63–65) and generic groupings (e.g., parables in Gos. Thom. 8–9, 63–65 and 96–98). 19 This of course cannot be pressed too far: an attempt to account for Thomas’s structure in toto is doomed to fail. In a sense the problem of Thomas’s order is a difficulty for any interpreter. None of the solutions suggested thus far have offered the remotest possibility of commanding any kind of agreement! 20
The Unity of Thomas
In contrast to the questions of genre and the arguments from order, the question of Thomas’s compositional unity or ‘non-unity’ is of significance. Kloppenborg raises this as a potential weakness in both Goodacre’s and my approach: ‘both treat Thomas as a unified document, thus avoiding the possibility, raised by a number of scholars, that as a composite or layered document, Thomas might reflect Synoptic influence in some of its compositional moments but not in others’ (Kloppenborg, 201).
Two separate issues need to be distinguished here, because ‘composite’ and ‘layered’ are different. At a simple level, every composition which incorporates more than one source is ‘composite’—and probably almost every scholar working on Thomas assumes that this is the case. This is very different from assuming, however, that Thomas is layered, which I take to mean that Thomas started out with a core and gradually (or in more clearly defined stages) increased in size.
As far as the second question of Thomas being ‘layered’ is concerned, I was surprised to read Kloppenborg’s statement about my avoidance of this matter, because I spend a number of pages addressing this point (pp. 159-66 and 221-23): I do not ‘avoid the possibility’—I think it is simply that Kloppenborg and I have different views of the matter (which is not the same thing!). The sections headed ‘At what stage does the influence happen?’ (pp. 159-66) and ‘When in Thomas’s development?’ (pp. 221-23) were included precisely because I was acutely conscious, in advance, of the question which Kloppenborg has raised. I myself am not persuaded that Thomas came into being as a kind of rolling snowball. I would thus take issue with the statements in Steve Patterson’s response that ‘Thomas is a complex book, a list of many layers, most of which can no longer be detected’ and that ‘it is abundantly clear that this is a layered text’ (258, 259). But in Composition, rather than trying to argue against this at length (i.e. trying to prove a negative), I took four samples of scholarly dissections of Thomas and showed that on any of these four hypothetical processes, the influence of the Synoptics is nevertheless upon the sayings that appear in these scholars’ reconstructed earliest strata. 21 (It may be worth mentioning that one of the scholarly hypotheses examined was that of Arnal, whose view of Thomas is in many ways—of course not coincidentally—similar to that of Kloppenborg. 22 )
Moving to the question of Thomas being merely ‘composite’, I certainly do not operate with a view of Thomas behind which there are no sources other than the Synoptics. As I state in my conclusion, Under the heading of ‘Sources’, in Parts II and III, there has of course been no attempt to delineate what all of Thomas’s sources may have been. There are certainly numerous works lost to us which fed into Thomas. Similarly there are, no doubt, others which are extant but which cannot clearly be identified as sources because we cannot be sure about the direction of the influence, or whether Thomas and the parallel work go back to a common source (Gathercole 2012b: 268).
I am clear on the fact that Thomas is based upon multiple sources. I therefore do not, as Kloppenborg avers, ‘embrace’ Stead’s view that Thomas included diverse theological perspectives because the work envisaged diverse audiences: I merely mention it in a list of options. Nor do I disagree with Kloppenborg that the doublets may be the result of Thomas incorporating multiple sources (I mention this as a possibility in 2012b: 165). Why is it ‘rather desperate’ (as per Kloppenborg, 225) to claim that Thomas’s lack of skill in combining sources leads to the doublets? Kloppenborg’s arguments and mine are actually not incompatible: he maintains that the presence of doublets are the result of combining multiple sources, and I would probably agree, but I would add that it is rather unskilful to leave doublets unintentionally in such a short work as Thomas, a work which in English translation is about 5000 words, roughly the length of Steve Patterson’s article in this issue.
In criticizing the view of a developmental model of Thomas’s composition, I am not disputing the fact that Thomas used sources. As I note at every point in the pages of Composition noted above, my main aim was to contest the ‘rolling corpus’ hypothesis, and its potential to derail the possibility of identifying significant influence from the Synoptics. 23 It also, secondly, sought to address the theory that Thomas’s textual history is too chaotic to be able to pronounce on the question of dependence.
Thomas’s Textual History, with a Note on Gos. Thom. 33
A second aspect of the question of Thomas’s composite nature, therefore, lies not in its compositional history, but in its textual history. Here Kloppenborg and I are perhaps closer together, in that he also sees the sequence of Thomas as ‘reasonably stable’ across its textual history (Kloppenborg, 207). I would suggest that it is perhaps even more stable than Kloppenborg suggests. It is beyond doubt that there is a modification of the order of sayings 30 and 77 in Greek and Coptic, and that this occurs—as is usually pointed out—because of the forging of a catch-word link between the two: Gos. Thom. 77.1-2 (77.2 being also 30.4 in the Greek) both have the Coptic word pw6, in the double sense of ‘reach’ and ‘split’. 24
One of the pieces of evidence cited by Kloppenborg as suggestive of diversity in the textual tradition of Thomas (i.e. between the Greek and Coptic texts) is interesting in this regard—though admittedly it is not central to his case. Saying 33 joins a couplet of sayings not joined in the Synoptics, namely ‘what you hear, proclaim on the rooftops’ (Gos. Thom. 33.1/Mt. 10.27/Lk. 12.3) and ‘not putting a lamp under a bushel’ (33.2/Mk 4.21; Mt. 5.15; Lk. 11.33). 25 According to Kloppenborg, at the Coptic stage these sayings are conjoined, to create a pun or catchword connection: 33.1 appears to be linked to 33.2 by the word ⲘⲆⲆϪⲈ (‘ear’ in 33.1 and ‘bushel’ in 33.2). This might suggest that 33.2 had originally been placed elsewhere in Greek Thomas or simply added at a Coptic stage. 26 (The Greek does not survive for most of this saying, so this is hypothetical, but it is a reasonable hypothesis.) There is an interesting piece of counterevidence to this theory, however, because, according to Hippolytus, the Naassenes also juxtaposed the motifs of proclaiming from the rooftops and not hiding a light under a bushel.
And this is the great and secret unknown mystery of the universe among the Egyptians, ‘concealed and revealed’. For there is no temple (they say) in which it has not stood—exposed, but hidden—by the entrance looking downwards, and crowned with all the fruits of ‘the things that are coming into being’ from it. And they say that such a thing stands not only in the most holy temples ahead of the idols, but that also—so that all may know—it is, so to speak, the ‘light not set under a bushel, but upon a lampstand’, the message ‘proclaimed upon the rooftops’, in all the roads and all the streets, and at the houses themselves, set as a boundary and limit of the dwelling, and this is called the Good by all.
27
This is a very difficult passage (mainly because of textual problems), but if I have misunderstood any of the elements, the ambiguous parts do not affect the substance of the argument. It is notable that this passage (Ref. 5.7.27-28) comes shortly after Hippolytus’s quotation of the Naassene usage of the Gospel of Thomas (Ref. 5.7.20-21):
28
They (i.e., the Naassenes) say not only that the mysteries of the Assyrians and Phrygians support their own doctrine, but also that the same is the case with those of the Egyptians about the blessed nature—at the same time hidden and appearing—of those which have been, are coming into being, and are yet to come. This, they say, is the kingdom of heaven to be sought within man, about which they expressly pass on a statement in the Gospel entitled ‘according to Thomas’. ‘The one who seeks me will find me in children from seven years. For there, in the fourteenth aeon I am hidden and yet appear.’ But this is not from Christ but from Hippocrates, who said, ‘The child of seven years is half of his father.’ From this they locate the original nature of all things in its original seed, having heard this Hippocratic doctrine that ‘the child of seven years is half of his father.’ So they say that in four<teen> years, according to Thomas, he is revealed.
29
The later passage (that cited first above) about the ‘great and secret unknown mystery of the universe’ has various echoes of the passage about the Gospel of Thomas. The passage about Thomas discusses ‘the blessed nature—at the same time hidden and appearing’ (μακαρίαν κρυβομένην ὁμοῦ καὶ φανερουμένην): compare the passage about the unknown mystery which is ‘concealed and revealed … exposed, but hidden’ (κεκαλυμμένον καὶ ἀνακεκαλυμμένον… γυμνὸν τὸ κεκρυμμένον). The blessed nature, according to the Naassenes proven by the Gospel of Thomas, is of things past and future, as well as of ‘the things that are coming into being’ (τῶν…γινομένων): compare the unknown mystery which beholds the fruits of ‘the things that are coming into being from it’ (τῶν <ἐξ> αὐτοῦ γινομένων).
This implies that the collocation of the ‘light under a bushel’ saying, and the ‘preaching from the rooftops’ sayings occurred in Greek already among the Naassenes 30 (i.e. it is not only possible at a Coptic stage). Hippolytus claims to be quoting, or at least paraphrasing, the Naassenes here (λέγουσι). Given that this passage about the great mystery echoes Hippolytus’s discussion of the Gospel of Thomas, there is a strong possibility that this collocation appeared in the Greek Gospel of Thomas used by the Naassenes, though of course one cannot be certain of this. Such a theory, however, would remove the need to suppose a re-ordering of the sayings in the Coptic.
One can compare here the situation with Leipoldt’s alleged Coptic word-play in Gos. Thom. 4: Leipoldt posits a play on words between ϪⲚⲆⲨ and ϪⲚⲈ- (for ἀποκνήσει … ἐπερωτῆσ<αι>). Here, however, both Coptic words are natural translations of the Greek, and so this seems irrelevant (Leipoldt 1967: 56).
The Means of Influence
Kloppenborg rightly draws attention to the fact that one point on which Goodacre and I differ is in our assessment of how the Synoptics have influenced Thomas. Goodacre is more confident that there is evidence of direct literary influence, involving the author of Thomas having read some of the Synoptic Gospels and subsequently, during the compositional process, getting hold of copies to check wording. 31 I am either more cautious or more cowardly. To clarify my own position, I do not think it is quite accurate to say, as Kloppenborg does, that I ‘routinely invoke[s] the model of secondary orality’ (203). It is true that I routinely mention it as an option. My main reason for mentioning it is that one still finds scholars caricaturing the position of those who argue for influence from the Synoptics to Thomas in overly scribal terms. On the model of literary influence, it is argued, Thomas takes a word from Matthew, a phrase from Mark, inserts them into the Markan structure: of course, such a position is absurd. Goodacre has cited one such accusation from Crossan, who argues that on the model of literary influence of the Synoptics’ first beatitude upon Thomas, ‘one would have at least to argue that Thomas (a) took the third person “the poor” from Matthew, then (b) the second person “yours” from Luke, and (c) returned to Matthew for the final “Kingdom of Heaven.” It might be simpler to suggest that Thomas was mentally unstable’ (Crossan 1985: 37). More recently, Johnson has argued—on the saying about seeking the imperishable treasure—‘why would the composer of GTh 76:3 go to such trouble picking out individual words here and there from three, or even all four canonical Gospels?’ 32
This is why scholars such as Snodgrass and Uro appeal to secondary orality. It is a way of avoiding, on the one hand, oral explanations, according to which different versions of sayings shared by the Synoptics and Thomas have arisen out of different oral performances, and on the other hand, explanations which identify the author or editor of Thomas as a mere ‘scissors-and-paste’ man.
Already in the introduction, however, I note that secondary orality ‘may be somewhat speculative’ (2012: 14), and I notice in retrospect that I do routinely use this particular adjective in connection with secondary orality! Again, secondary orality may be a common way to avoid the oral/literary polarity, but it is ‘overly speculative’ (158). Or again, secondary orality ‘may well’ be right (177; also ‘may well’ at 184 and 220) but the influence ‘may perhaps be a result of an actual memory of reading the Gospel by the author of this saying of Thomas. This “perhaps” is all that can be said, however’ (177). At one point I use the language of it being ‘more probable’, but that is a relative statement, viz. that secondary orality is ‘more probable’ than an explanation based on independent oral tradition (198).
In the end, I neither reject secondary orality nor advocate it as a solution. The erstwhile Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity in my Faculty, Morna Hooker, in her common-sense approach to New Testament exegesis which eschews speculation, is fond of citing an epigram of R.H. Lightfoot: every New Testament scholar should have a placard on his 33 desk inscribed with the words ‘We do not know’ (Gathercole 2012b: 221). Secondary orality, as I put it (I think) in the final reference in the book, is ‘possible, even likely … This is speculative, however … on this particular point we need to remain agnostic’ (2012b: 269). We can be confident of the ‘that’ of influence; the ‘how’ is much more elusive.
A Test Case: Gos. Thom. 65
In closing, I will simply focus in on the parable of the Tenants (Gos. Thom. 65) as a test case. I think it is obviously a good test case, because Kloppenborg identifies it as—from his point of view—‘a showcase example of a Thomasine saying that has every appearance of being independent of its Synoptic parallels’ (220), whereas I think it is the exact opposite.
First, I freely concede I may have misunderstood his view of the relationship between Mark and Thomas in stating his view as ‘Gos. Thom. (approx.)→Mk→Lk’ in contrast to my view, viz. Mk→Lk→Gos. Thom. I suppose the only defence I can make is the repeated statements throughout Kloppenborg’s monograph which seem to suggest the relative (though not absolute) originality of the form of the parable as we have it in Thomas. 34 (Hence my label ‘Gos. Thom. (approx.)’ as a designation of his view of the original form of the parable.) Kloppenborg does state in his monograph that ‘a version of the parable of the Tenants … substantially similar to that found in GThom 65 is the earliest form of the parable’ (2006: 351).
Secondly, the question of realism. Kloppenborg maintains that the Synoptists’ parable is unrealistic, Thomas’s is realistic, and Mark has sacrificed realism at the altar of apologetic allegory. Kloppenborg thus states that ‘None of the defenders of Thomas’s dependence on the Synoptics has been able to account for Thomas’s transformation of this story, which results in a realistic reflection of viticulture’ (220), and this because ‘it is impossible to imagine him [sc. Thomas] beginning with the Synoptic story and coming up with his highly realistic version, in order to illustrate a completely different point’ (221). A response to Kloppenborg would thus need to account, on the theory of dependence, for the change from unrealism to realism.
One initial point to make about the transformation is that Thomas is an abbreviation, lacking parts of the narrative, as well as points of detail. By comparison with Luke it has only three points at which it is at all significantly longer: (i) in Gos. Thom. 65.1, there is the reference to ‘working’, which is characteristic of Thomas, 35 (ii) in Gos. Thom. 65.3, the first servant having been beaten goes back and tells his master, a useful narrative link, probably just making explicit what is implied in the Synoptics, and (iii) after this, in Gos. Thom. 65.4, the master said, ‘Perhaps they [or he] did not recognize him [or them].’ 36 Again, this reflects a Thomasine interest, as the word for ‘recognize’ is Thomas’s (and Coptic’s) normal word for ‘know’ (souwn, or sooun), a key term in Thomas (appearing, remarkably, 25 times in the 114 sayings, with other similar vocabulary employed as well). 37 It is important to note, then, that, as far as I can see, most of the greater degree of realism which Kloppenborg sees is the result of Thomas’s omission of the Synoptics’ details. 38
Furthermore, I fail to see why moving from an unrealistic parable to a more realistic parable is a problem. I cited in my book four scholars who see Thomas as characteristically making sayings and parables more rational, reducing hyperbole and resolving tensions (Gathercole 2012b: 134 n. 28). I do not understand why the original composer of the parable (let us call him, for the sake of argument, Jesus) needs to have been especially well versed in viticulture.
Thirdly, I want to revisit my five claims in my monograph (Gathercole 2012b: 191-94) in the light of Kloppenborg’s response here with the occasional glance back to his monograph (2006). None of my five is a smoking gun, but cumulatively, they remain significant. I was hoping for more interaction with them, but of course Kloppenborg’s response was already long enough! But several of them remain unanswered.
Thomas shares with Luke a lack of reference to Isa. 5 (with the exception of Luke’s reference to ‘planting’). Kloppenborg’s explanation of this, I think, is that because the Isaianic introduction is a pre-Markan addition, it is therefore easily understandable that Thomas would not have it (on the theory of Thomas’s independence of Mark—and also of the pre-Markan addition); Luke omits it for different reasons (a matter of literary style). Relegating something to a stage in pre-Markan tradition is of course speculative, however. It remains a coincidence, on the theory of independence, that Luke and Thomas share the omission of almost all of the same material.
Mark and Matthew focus on the owner receiving the produce; Luke and Thomas on the tenants giving it. Kloppenborg is, I am sure, correct that as λαμβάνω and δίδωμι are the standard words in these contractual contexts, ‘such variation is not especially telling when both verbs are part of the stereotypical vocabulary of leasing’ (222 n. 59). They may not be particularly significant, but as I said in Composition it is important that one does not simply brush these points aside altogether: there is not just the swapping from receiving to giving, but the shift of focus from owner to tenants common to Luke and Thomas.
Again, as in Composition, I repeat the point that Luke and Thomas—in contrast to Mark and Matthew—reserve the killing for the son alone. Is this another coincidence?
On the ‘perhaps’, Kloppenborg is correct that I should not have said that it is ‘a relatively unusual word’. It remains, on Kloppenborg’s account, however, something which must be put down to coincidence.
39
I maintain that—as in the discussion of Isaiah in point (1) above—a much more likely development is: Mk ∅ ‘perhaps’ → Lk 1× ‘perhaps’ → Thomas 2× ‘perhaps’
Again, as in Composition, I repeat the point that Luke and Thomas end their uses of Ps. 117 with v. 22 (contra Mark and Matthew, who incorporate both vv. 22 and 23). Although he makes no comment on it, Kloppenborg would presumably again have to put this down to coincidence of some sort.
In sum, there are too many ‘coincidental’ agreements between Luke and Thomas for me at least to be able to regard Gos. Thom. 65 as ‘a showcase example of a Thomasine saying that has every appearance of being independent of its Synoptic parallels’ (Kloppenborg, 220).
Conclusion
I am encouraged by the fact that there is nothing in these reviews which does much, if anything, to dent the theory of the influence of the Synoptics upon Thomas. My overriding sense is that the arguments mounted over the years for the independence view, having been subject to so many blows in recent times, are rather worn out, exhausted. The degree of speculation involved in the independence theory has become evident. I hope—and indeed in this case expect—that there is a new mood afoot, in which the elements which are common to Goodacre’s and my books will in the next few years become majority positions. I sense that the worm has turned.
A further encouraging fact is that, with the publication of Goodacre’s Thomas and the Gospels, there is also a reliable book which one can place in the hands of undergraduate students. 40 So many books and commentaries on Thomas in recent years have argued for the independence view that students often receive the impression that this is the standard view which cannot easily be questioned, and in a number of scholarly circles this is indeed the case. Now undergraduates, thanks to Goodacre’s rigorous and learned, but also extremely accessible book, can gain a more accurate perspective on Thomas than has hitherto been the case.
Footnotes
1.
‘Written with both verve and calm intelligence, this book is head and shoulders above most of the rest of the scholarship on Thomas and the Synoptics. It grapples skilfully with both the nitty-gritty of the Greek and Coptic texts and the various scholarly minefields. Read it!’
2.
SBL Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 2012. I am grateful to Jeff Peterson for arranging this.
3.
Brewer 2013: 269-79, including discussion also of Eisele’s recent monograph (
).
5.
I discuss this matter further in the Introduction to my forthcoming commentary (‘Is Thomas Gnostic?’).
6.
Edwards 1989, 1990; .
7.
I explore this matter more fully in the Introduction to my forthcoming commentary (section 10: ‘The Religious Outlook of Thomas’).
8.
E.g., though in different ways, Crossan 1991 and .
10.
11.
Patterson 1992: 68, translating—with apparent approval (see Patterson 1993a: 109; 1993b: 190)—: 843.
13.
The Ancient Philosophy Seminar in the Faculty of Classics, Easter term 2008.
14.
15.
See, e.g., the manuscript collections in Leutsch and Schneidewin 1831: II, 228 and : I, 290.
16.
There are also plenty of collections of bons mots on the internet.
17.
Galen writes of the ‘school of Moses and Christ’ (On the Differences between Pulses 2.4); Lucian calls Jesus a law-giver and a sophist (Peregrinus 13); Mara bar Sarapion refers to the ‘new laws’ which Jesus, ‘the wise king’, instituted.
18.
I am grateful to my colleague, James Carleton Paget, for pointing this out to me.
19.
See again the Introduction to my commentary (section 8: ‘The Structure of Thomas’).
20.
See Fallon and Cameron 1988: 4206-208, for criticisms of attempts to construct thematic sections for Thomas. Some examples include those of Janssens 1961: 301-302; Tripp 1980: 41-44; Diebner 1995: 77-84; Callahan 1997: 411-26; Perrin 2002; Davies 2005: 171-77 (Appendix I); Nordsieck 2008: 174-200, and his commentary on the individual sayings ().
21.
In my forthcoming commentary on Thomas, there is criticism of the views especially of Crossan and DeConick about the compositional development of Thomas: see in the Introduction the section, ‘Thomas as a Rolling Corpus?’
23.
24.
See, e.g., Haenchen 1961: 161-62; Tuckett 1998: 21 n. 17; Popkes 2004: 655; : 907.
25.
Gos. Thom. 33: ‘Jesus said, “Whatever you hear in your ear, in the other ear proclaim on your rooftops. For no-one lights a lamp and places it under a bushel, nor does he put it in a secret place.”’
27.
Translation my own, based on the text of Marcovich: καὶ τοῦτ’ εἶναι τὸ μέγα καὶ κρύφιον τῶν ὅλων <καὶ> ἄγνωστον μυστήριον παρὰ τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις, κεκαλυμμένον καὶ ἀνακεκαλυμμένον. οὐδεὶς γάρ, φησίν, ἔστι ναὸς ἐν <ᾦ> πρὸ τῆς εἰσόδου οὐχ ἕστηκε γυμνὸν τὸ κεκρυμμένον, κάτωθεν ἄνω βλέπον καὶ πάντας τούς καρποὺς τῶν <ἐξ> αὐτοῦ γινομένων στεφανούμενον. ἑστάναι δεε οὐ μόνον ἐν τοῖς ἁγιωτάτοις πρὸ τῶν ἀγαλμάτων ναοῖς λέγουσι τὸ τοιοῦτον, ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ εἰς τὴν ἁπάντων ἐπιγνωσιν—οἱονεὶ φῶς <οὐχ> ὑπὸ τὸν μόδιον, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὴν λυχνίαν ἐπικείμενον, <καὶ> κήρυγμα κηρυσσόμενον ἐπὶ τῶν δωμάτων—ἐν πάσαις ὁδοῖς καὶ πάσαις ἀγυιαῖς καὶ παρ’ αὐταῖς ταῖς οἰκίαις, <ὠς> ὅρον τινὰ καὶ τέρμα τῆς οἰκίας προτεταγμένον. καὶ τοῦτο εἶναι τὸ ἀγαθὸν ὑπὸ πάντων λεγόμενον· This is the text of Marcovich, which is evidently quite different from that on which are based the ANF translation (the text of Miller, supplemented with the Göttingen and Cruice editions), and that of Legge, who follows Cruice with similar results.
29.
Οὐ μόνον <δεε> αὑτῶν ἐπιμαρτυρεῖν φασι τῷ λόγῳ τὰ’ Ασσυρίων μυστήρια καὶ Φρυγῶν, <ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ Αἰγυπτίων> περὶ τὴν τῶν γεγονότων καὶ γινομένων καὶ ἐσομένων ἔτι μακαρίαν κρυβομένην ὁμοῦ καὶ φανερουμένην φύσιν, ἥνπερ φασὶν <τὴν> ἐντὸς ἀνθρώπου βασιλείαν <τῶν> οὐρανῶν ζητουμένην. περὶ ἧς διαρρήδεν ἐν τῷ κατὰ Θωμᾶν ἐπιγραφομένῳ εὐαγγελίῳ παραδιδόασι λέγοντες οὕτως· «ἐμεε ὁ ζητῶν εὑρήσει ἐν παιδίοις ἀπὸ ἐτῶν ἑπτά· ἐκεῖ γὰρ ἐν τῷ τεσσαρεσκαιδεκάτῳ αἰῶνι κρυβόμενος φανεροῦμαι». τοῦτο δεε οὐκ ἔστιν Χριστοῦ, ἀλλα` ‘Ιπποκράτους λέγοντος «ἑπτὰ ἐτῶν παῖς πατρὸς ἥμισυ»· ὅθεν οὗτοι, τὴν ἀρχέγονον φύσιν τῶν ὅλων ἐν ἀρχεγόνῳ τιθέμενοι σπέρματι, το` ‘Ιπποκράτειον ἀκηκοότες ὅτι ἐστὶν ἥμισυ πατρὸς παιδίον ἑπτὰ ἐτῶν, ἐν τοῖς τέσσαρσι <καὶ δέκα> φασὶν ἔτεσι, κατὰ τὸν Θωμᾶν, εἶναι φανερούμενον.
30.
See Hippolytus, Ref. 5.7.28.
31.
: 150: ‘One major clue is the presence of several sequences of words in verbatim agreement between Thomas and the Synoptics (chapter 2 above), which means that the author is highly likely, on occasions, to have consulted the Synoptic Gospels directly. These will be occasions where the author has obtained a copy of Matthew or Luke, either his own or copies belonging to his church or community, and has looked up a passage in order to check the wording.’
33.
R.H. Lightfoot was Dean Ireland’s Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at Oxford from 1934 to 1949, and so ‘his’ was appropriate almost universally at the time to refer to New Testament scholars.
34.
It is not merely the absence of Matthaean, Lukan, and even Markan and pre-Markan redactional features in Thomas which Kloppenborg claims; he also maintains that at the (1) ideological and (2) cultural levels, the Thomas version is closest to the earliest strata of the Jesus tradition. Taking these in turn, Kloppenborg concludes: ‘On each register then, the ideological texture of the Synoptic version of the parable of the Tenants is remarkably out of keeping with that of other sectors of the early Jesus tradition, while the texture of Thomas’ version seems much more coherent with it … it is not Mark’s story, with its freight of élite-leaning ideology, that is the most congenial to the early Jesus tradition; rather it is Thomas’ account of the failure of land-based wealth and social privilege that coheres with the earliest strata’ (: 48). Secondly, the verisimilitude of Thomas lies chiefly in its more realistic sense of ancient viticulture (Kloppenborg 2006: esp. ch. 9). In the end, Kloppenborg’s ‘original’ parable does not look very different from Thomas’s version.
35.
See, e.g., Gos. Thom. 58; 97?; 107.3; 109.3.
36.
It is usually supposed that the Coptic text, which has ‘perhaps he did not recognize them’, should be emended to read, ‘perhaps they did not recognize him.’
37.
Of the twenty-five, twenty are of theological significance, with five more casual instances: Gos. Thom. 3.4 (bis); 3.5; 5.1; 16.2; 18.3; 19.4; 46.2; 51.2; 56.1; 67; 69.1; 78.3; 80.1; 91.2 (bis); 103; 105; 109.1; 109.2. Casual: 12.1; 31.2; 65.4; 65.7; 97.3?. There is also the Greek loan-word ⲄⲚⲰⲤⲒⲤ in Gos. Thom. 39.1, and six instances of Coptic ⲈⲒⲘⲈ (probably five of them are theological in intent): Gos. Thom. 3.4; 21.5; 43.2; (62.2); 97.3; 98.2.
38.
These omissions may have occurred either at the compositional stage or in the course of the parable’s transmission to the editor of Thomas or to Thomas’s most immediate source.
39.
It is also highly questionable what the implications are of the fact (if it is a fact) that ‘the erroneous nature of the owner’s belief is fundamental to Thomas’s story, but only incidental to Luke’s’ (Kloppenborg, 222). The presence or absence of a ‘perhaps’ would seem to me to make no difference to Thomas’s version: indeed, if it were absent, it would only reinforce the ‘erroneous nature of the owner’s belief’, thus making it perhaps more ‘fundamental’. On the Lukan side, some interpreters have seen it as quite appropriate, given that the owner represents God.