I opened Gathercole's The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas expecting a formidable challenge to the Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis. Instead, I discovered that Gathercole's thesis and the HSH hardly speak to each other at all. And where they do, they actually agree.
Gathercole agrees with the HSH in that the Coptic GTh dervies from a Greek GTh, while admitting that a Semtic GTh nevertheless may still have existed (p. 104, 125). Indeed, the HSH is compatible with Gathercole's overall claim that the Synoptics may have influenced the final (Coptic) text of GTh, even though earlier strata of GTh may also have existed (pp. 223-24).
The HSH is agnostic with respect to Synoptic influence on Coptic GTh; it merely proposes a stratified model of Thomasine development, one that influenced the Markan tradition (at the Semitic stratum) and the Q/Petrine tradition (at the Greek stratum). Any remaining differences between Gathercole's thesis and the HSH lie in this or that particular detail of specific parallel sayings.
However, Gathercole's case for dependence of GTh on GMt and/or GLk is built on the claim that scholars must "eschew reliance on Q in assessments of Thomas" (p. 9), and this is to go too far. Even Gathercole admits that the "majority view" is that Q was real (ibid). And while Gathercole is certainly correct that we must remain skeptical about the reconstructed Q text, that is no license to ignore the reconstructed text altogether. Gathercole tries to cite Patterson's statement that the reconstructed Q text is "tentative at best" (ibid) as a defense of what we might call his "Q-eschewing" position, but that is likewise no grounds for ignoring Q completely. The reconstructed text may well be "tentative" in the sense that it is not 100% accurate, but that is a far cry from claiming that it is in no way reliable! Or that it implies the non-existence of Q in any way.
What Gathercole seems to be faced with is the problem that if Q is to be used in solving problems of Thomasine dependency, then we must have some text for Q to use as a comparison with GTh, especially as questions of dependency can often turn on the use of a single word or phrase, or even a single case ending. And so, if the text of Q is unreliable, this frustrates efforts to study Thomasine dependency. I understand that this may be disappointing for the Thomasine scholar, but there is little to be done about it. It may simply be that scholarship on GTh must proceed slower than some prefer for the time being.
And so, even though he does not say as much in so many words, Gathercole's thesis ultimately relies on Goodacre's case against Q. His work stands or falls on the validity of Goodacre's arguments.
Indeed, I freely and happily agree that without Q, transmission from GTh (in any language and in any version) to the Synoptics is a difficult proposition, and that works like Gathercole's are the only way forward. It's just that, as Gathercole points out, Q is generally assumed to exist, and so it is not illegitimate to make this assumption in building solutions to the question of Thomasine-Synoptic relationship. Now, I might also agree that researchers (such as myself) who use Q to explain Thomasine-Synoptic relationships have a case for Q to make; in other words, they must either engage with Goodacre's arguments, or point to other scholarship that does. Pointing to the critical text of Q is not enough. But such research contra Goodacre exists.
As for the particular details of specific parallel sayings, it would be an interesting exercise to go through them one by one to show how the HSH would handle them, and I may do just that, but it would in some sense be futile, for while the HSH concludes that Q was real, Gathercole rejects Q altogether. No amount of success in using Q as an intermediary to produce Synoptic traditions from GTh would counter Gathercole's claims. (Some attention to his recent NTS article may be more appropriate here.) Instead, it is Goodacre's arguments regarding GTh that I must engage with, or at least with his case against Q in general. So that, I think, will be the subject of my next few posts.
I have not yet had the opportunity to read Gathercole's (or Goodacre's)recent study, but it seems to me that you make a fair point that including "Q" in the reconstruction makes the debate over independence/dependence more complicated (e.g., does Thomas exhibit awareness of the Matthean/Lukan forms of sayings or just the form in Q). But I thought another part of the case for dependence was also to demonstrate Thomas's knowledge of Matthean/Lukan redaction of Mark, so do you find Gathercole's arguments potentially convincing on that front?
ReplyDeleteGood point--the short answer is, the HSH allows for GTh to intersect with GMk at one level, and Q at another--so, an early (Syriac?) GTh could give a saying to GMk, then a later redaction of GTh woyld be used by the Q author to "update" the Markan pericope. Which would then be picked up by either or both of GMt and GLk. So Matthean/Lukan "redacton" of GMk is in these cases just Q+GMk, based on
ReplyDelete1) the first layer of GTh, via GMk, and
2) the second layer of GTh, via Q.
I'll have a more detailed answer when I get home from SBL, but thanks for mentioning that--I had neglecd it.
("neglected" above--sorry for the typo)
ReplyDeleteNow that I'm back, let me answer a bit more fully, by providing an example. Gathercole (who, by the way, was very gracious in joining Goodacre to help answer my half-baked questioning on Monday--more about that in my next post), on p. 175, puts up a chart that shows Matthean redaction of GMk in Peter's confession (Mk 8.27-32/Mt 16.13-22), and then shows that GTh seems to reflect, at least to some rough degree, a number of Matthew's additions to the Markan story.
I agree that GTh seems to be somehow related to the Matthean version. But why could this not be Q redaction of an earlier Thomasine saying?
--the earlier version found its way into GMk;
--the later version found its way into Q, on the one hand, and thence to GMt;
--and into Coptic GTh, on the other hand.
Now I know very well that this is not included in Q; but I claim that this is a mistake, and that it must have been there. I fully realize this is controversial; nevertheless, that's how the HSH works. The HSH claims that Q was much, much more than the union of GMt with GLk.
Nevertheless, one might ask, well, then where did it go in GLk? Indeed, Gathercole does not include GLk in his table, because Luke largely just reproduces GMk here. But I say that Marcion (in the HSH, it is Marcion who wrote proto-GLk) ignored the Q version in favor of the Markan version, the reason being that the Q version favored Peter too highly, and Marcion was anti-Roman; he would never have wanted to suggest that Peter was in any way a favored disciple, or at least not favored over and above all the other disciples. See, for example, Peter's embarrassment in Marcion's Miraculous Catch of Fish (GLk 5.1-11), which I have dealt with before.
And on the Farrer theory which Goodacre supports, Luke must have discarded the Matthean version of this pericope in favor of the Markan version, but if Goodacre can do this with GMt-->GLk, then I can do it with Q-->Mc/GLk. And if Goodacre can assume that Luke had his reasons for ignoring the Matthean version here, then I can assume that Marcion (and later Luke) had his reasons for ignoring a Q version here.
So what did the Q version look like? Again, I think the Q version was based on a Greek Thomasine version, which was a redaction of an earlier Thomasine version (in whatever language) upon which the Markan version was based. "Matthean redaction of GMk" is really just self-redaction within the Thomasine tradition, plus Q. The Gathercole chart actually helps us with reconstructing the Thomasine redaction; the Greek GTh version probably looked like the thematic overlap between GMt and GTh, running as follows:
ReplyDelete--Jesus asks the disciples to describe him
--They enumerate some possibilities
--One disciple succeeds
[here the original version ended]
--Jesus replies by addressing that disciple favorably
[this is Thomasine self-redaction]
Q then combined this GkGTh redaction with the Markan version, coming up with something that looked much more like GMt than GTh, since we know Marcion was sufficiently bothered by it to leave it out. This Q version replaced the Markan rebuke of Peter (or else it wasn't in original GMk at all) with the blessing of Peter (Mt. 16.17, "Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah" and perhaps added Mt. 16.18-19 (the "Keys of the Kingdom" verses, which are not paralleled in GTh), though they could belong to Matthean redaction.
Marcion basically followed GMk here, ignoring the offensive pro-Petrine stance of Q, but did add "of God" to Peter's confession. There may be some question why Marcion wouldn't have included the (canonical?) Markan rebuke of Peter, but then Marcion had already dealt with Peter in GLk 5.1-11. (See also the inclusion of "Get behind me, Satan" in some versions of Lk 4.8, quoted as early as Justin Martyr).
Matthew favored the Q version, perhaps conflating it a bit with the Markan version, perhaps also adding vv. 18-19 as above, and included the rebuke of Peter from GMk.
Coptic GTh probably elaborated the GkGTh version a bit, though it's not totally clear how.
Now, Gathercole also suggests that Th 13.3 ("Matthew said to him, 'You are like a wise philosopher'") is a reference to the Matthean gospel tradition (this was briefly discussed at SBL), but admits that this is not conclusive. And I agree: it is not conclusive at all.
Whew! Well, sorry for the long-winded reply, but that is one example of how I think "Matthean redaction of GMk in GTh" really boils down to 1) Thomasine self-redaction, and 2) Q redaction of both Thomasine and Markan tradition.