Adding GTh: Cleaning Up, pt. 3

Just a couple more to discuss: logia 75 and 21:9.

75

Schenk thinks Mt 22:14 is a parallel to logion 75.  De Conick notes that Schuermann connects it with Lk 13:25, only to dismiss this claim.  I disagree with De Conick, however, but I would also expand the parallel to include Lk 13:24-25.  This has its own parallel in GMt, Mt 7:13-14, and is a Q saying.  Mt 22:14, meanwhile, is probably just an echo of this same saying.  I doubt logion 75 is the original version of the saying, but whatever it was, it should probably be added to the list of Thomasine parallels in the Q-gospel.

21:9

This saying merits a brief discussion.  Earlier I suggested it could just be ignored; maybe it was a chance resemblance between GMk and GTh, or else for one reason or another both Matthew and Marcion/Luke happened to leave it alone.  It could be that it was ignored by Q, and then consequently by Matthew and Luke.  That's still not unlikely, but the possibility that it's a chance resemblance between GMk and GTh, due perhaps to oral tradition, is even more likely than I previously suggested, because as De Conick shows, this saying has a parallel in Revelation 14:15-16.  In the HSH, Revelation likely predates all the canonical gospels (and I am not the first to suggest an early date), so this logion may have simply been commonly used in early Christian circles.  It therefore could easily have found its way independently into both GTh and canonical GMk.  I move it to the list of parallels in Secret Mark, but only with strong reservations.  At any rate, even if it wasn't added by Secret Mark, but rather by canonical Mark, that is no evidence whatsoever that canonical Mark used GTh; he could well have been familiar with the logion via a separate tradition.


And that basically completes our investigation.  However, we have a couple more cases to discuss in detail: the "On Faith" pericope, and the "Beelzebub/Unforgivable Sin" pericope.  That will launch us into our next subject: the Didache.  And before that, we'll be able to provide a complete list of GTh logia used by Secret Mark, and then those used by Q.