Adding GTh, pt. 7

Let’s look at the GTh parallels in Luke/Marcion.  Again, they are

        3:3a    Lk 17:21b
        10    Lk 12:49
        63    Lk 12:16-21
        72    Lk 12:13-14
        79    Lk 11:27-28
        113    Lk 17:20-21

Adding GTh, pt. 6

In my last post, I said that it was unlikely that the Thomasine sayings found in Mc/GLk could have been in the Q source, because Matthew would have had no good reason to ignore them.  They were all compatible with the Matthean ethic.  And yet, they were not in fact found in GMt; so I concluded that they must therefore have been left out of the Q source, but added by Marcion/Luke directly from GTh.

I may have spoken too soon, however.

Adding GTh, pt. 5

Remember that we're looking for the simplest solution, that still explains all the evidence.  Due to the interlocking relationships among the four traditions of Thomasine sayings we've found in the synoptics (Markan, Q, Matthean, and Marcionic/Lukan), we still need to consider two simpler possibilities--under the assumption, that is, that GTh predates the synoptics:

a) One is that the Thomasine sayings unique to Mc/GLk were actually found in Q, and Matthew chose to ignore them. 

b) The other is that the Thomasine sayings unique to GMt were actually found in Q, and Marcion/Luke chose to ignore them.

Of course, there is an even simpler solution:

ab) The Thomasine sayings unique to GMt, and those unique to Mc/GLk, were all found in Q, and Matthew and Marcion/Luke each ignored the ones they disliked.  (And, some may have been ignored by both and are now lost to us.)

We don't have Q at our disposal, so we can't say with certainty what its contents were.  Scholars have assembled a "Q" document, based on material shared between GMt and GLk, but were those the only contents of Q?  We really have no way of knowing, and it is just as likely that there was more there than that the shared material is a complete description of its contents.  If there was more there, some could have found its way into GMt without finding its way into GLk, and vice versa.  So how are we do decide among the scenarios presented above?

Adding GTh, pt. 4

We now examine logia from GTh found uniquely in one synoptic gospel or another.

Adding GTh, pt. 3 continued

Of course, I have already noted that Lk 17:5-6 may not have been in Marcion at all (Knox puts it in his category C, "uncertain")--in which case, Luke (=the author of canonical GLk) was the first to combine the separate Markan and Q sayings about moving the mountain into the single saying in Lk 17.  In that case, we have to explain why Marcion would have left it out--especially if he found it twice, once in each source.

But then we have almost the same problem under the traditional understanding that Marcion edited Luke.  We not only have to explain why Luke combined the two sayings into one, but we also have to explain why Marcion would have left it out. 

And, if we instead assume that Marcion did not leave it out, and that Tertullian just didn't happen to mention it, that solves the problem for Marcionic priority just as much as it does for Lukan priority.  So I am not very concerned about whether there is an obvious answer to the question of why Marcion wouldn't have included what we now know as Lk 17:5-6.