Nick Perrin responds to Judy Redman

Judy Redman is reading Nick Perrin's Thomas, the Other Gospel and offering some thoughts, comments, and reviews of the book as she works through it. Her posts so far focus on belief in Jesus in Thomas and speeches of Jesus and the canon in relation to Perrin and Perrin's interaction with April DeConick. Doug Chaplin chimes in with a response to Judy and Judy responds to Doug.

Here is Nick Perrin's response to the discussion:

This morning I was reading with interest Judy Redman’s blog comments about my book, Thomas: The Other Gospel (for which I am grateful), even as, earlier in the same morning I had just finished E. E. Popkes’s Das Menschenbild des Thomasevangeliums (WUNT 2007), which I am reviewing for CBQ. What a contrast. Indeed, it is hard to believe that how two students of Thomas can have such different takes. Redman seems impressed by April DeConick’s argument which traces Thomas’ sayings back to Jesus: Popkes is much less impressed. Tipping his hand in his introductory chapter, the latter writes: ‘Even if it is possible for the individual logia to have contained early stages of tradition, it would hardly be methodologically feasible to reconstruct the original text-from of Thomas’ (14-15). In fact, given the collection’s patent non-Jewish – even anti-Jewish – tenor, alongside its substantive dissimilarity to Q, ‘Thomas could not be employed as a plank in the reconstruction of an independently developing line of early Christianity’ (15). Popkes in fact goes on to argue for a basic unity of the Coptic text, its close ties to the Apocryphon of John, and its witness to a Gnosticism emerging no later than the second half of the second century. In terms of timeframe he ends up more or less where I end up, second half of second century, although the route by which he gets there is completely different. (I may finally be convinced by Popkes’s argument that Thomas is a Gnostic text after all.)

My point here is in not so much the proper dating of Thomas, but the reasons why Popkes and I tend to minimize the possibility of Thomas being a repository of the historical Jesus’ words – all in answer to Judy Redman’s question about my criticism of DeConick’s reconstruction of the Jesus tradition. Popkes’s entrée into the discussion is to point out that the un-Jewish and even anti-Jewish nature of Thomas makes it a priori unlikely that its sayings go back to Jesus or a very Jewish early Christianity. For Popkes, it isn’t just the well-known anti-Jewish logia in Thomas, it’s the individualizing tendency which permeates the collection and overwrites (on a redactional level) Jewish piety as a whole. He has a strong point here.

This is in some ways analogous to the point I want to make about Jesus’ immediate followers and the high likelihood of their commitment to correlating Jesus’ words and deeds. I take on board Redman’s point that Jesus’ likely gave the same stump speech multiple times. That Jesus had much of the Sermon on the Mount on file is quite possible – fair enough. But a good bit of the sayings materials in the canonical gospels is not presented as merely free-standing sermonic material. A good bit is presented as being issued in the context of historical situations.

Now DeConick seems to argue – like the first form critics of a hundred years ago -- that as a rule Jesus’ earliest followers were quite willing to sit loose to the historical context of Jesus’ sayings. However, given the current state of Jesus scholarship, this is a problematic stance. If the historical Jesus is to be understood in a Jewish context (which now just about every Jesus scholar writing today says we must do), then we have at least grounds for presuming that Jesus was not a sage espousing abstract, universally-valid truths but a Jewish-style prophet who issued his teachings in response to a particular context and with reference to specific addressees (the disciples, the priesthood, the crowds, etc.). He also presumably expected his closest followers to understand the relevance of context to his utterances. Such a prophet, I would offer, would also normally expect to have his words interpreted within his historically-specific context. That Jesus’ followers were eager (in their re-presentation of Jesus) to abstract Jesus’ words from his deeds means either that the Third Quest is simply wrong or that the disciples fundamentally betrayed their master. Neither of these paths seems very helpful.

I am happy with the possibility (although it is merely a speculative possibility – Thomas offers us nothing more than very speculative evidence here) that a free-floating collection of Jesus sayings circulated with the Jesus’ backstory fully in mind. Presumably, this backstory could be communicated alongside the sayings of Jesus. I am not willing to make the historically indefensible move of saying that Jesus’ earliest followers transmitted the words of Jesus without giving a darn about the context/backstory. That’s the move Bultmann made; that’s what DeConick seems to want to do. If this is also the move Judy Redman wants to make, then I think she too is running up the pretty steep hill of current Jesus scholarship consensus. It is eminently un-Jewish to separate a prophet’s words from his deeds; in the Jewish scriptures, the two are always mutually reinforcing.

Interview with Nick Perrin on Gos Thom

Chris Skinner interviews Nick Perrin about his theory of Thomas' dependence on Tatian. A few interesting points to note: (1) This quote: "Will April DeConick ever wake up one day and say, 'You know, that Nick Perrin was right about Thomas all along'? I doubt it." (2) Nick will be responding to Peter Williams' criticisms voiced in a review in European Journal of Theology in a forthcoming article in Vigiliae Christianae.

For a good overview of Nick Perrin's thesis see "Thomas: The Fifth Gospels," JETS 49.1 (2006) and his short book Thomas: The Other Gospel which I reviewed here.

Gospel of Thomas: Three Recent Books

Some recent and decent books on the Gospel of Thomas that have come out in recent days include the following:

Uwe-Karsten Plisch
The Gospel of Thomas: Original Text with Commentary
Stuttgart: Bibelgesellschaft, 2007.
Available in the UK and Europe at Alban Books.

This is a fine introduction and commentary on the Gos. Thom. and its associated literature. Plisch is very circumspect about dating and though he recognizes that logia 68 is post-Bar Kochba revolt, it does not mean that the whole document is. He regards the transmission of Gos. Thom. as preserving a mixture of traditions that are earlier and later than the Synoptic Gospels and some independent traditions too, though he provides no argument for this in actuality. But he does raise a good point that the case for Thomasine dependence on the Synoptics only applies to about half of Gos. Thom. which parallels the Synoptic accounts. What I did find interesting was Plisch's suggestion for how the Gos. Thom. emerged and he uses the analogy of a box filled with ostraca. He writes: "In studying the Gospel of Thomas, I was thinking about a box filled with ostraca. Without making too much of it, this image can still be applied to the aporias in the Gospel of Thomas. One the one hand, the size of an ostrakon is limited; on the other hand, it is big enough to allow recording of several excerpted proverbs that can even come from different sources. Yet it can also happen that there is not eough room on the ostrakon (or other writing surfaces) for the entire text of the last excerpted logion, so that the rest of the text has to be recorded on the next writing surface." It is this variety of sources that best explains the disparity of the Gos. Thom. in his thinking. That means that the tradition-history of each logion should be evaluated on case-by-case merits. Plisch follows mainstream commentators by identifying the roots of the Thomasine tradition in Syria. He thinks the use of doublets might indicate the influence of lectionaries on the collection of logia as well. Plisch also provides one of the best short introductions to the theology of Gos. Thom. that I've read where he notes its distictive perspective on Jesus, the kingdom, salvation, ethics, and ecclesiology. The presentation of the text in the commentary contains the Coptic text of each logion, followed by a Greek retroversion of the logion whenever it has a parallel in the NT or in the P.Oxy materials. An English translation is also included and in the commentary Coptic and Greek words are helpfully transliterated.

Enno Edzard Popkes

Das Menschenbild des Thomasevangeliums: Untersuchungen zu seiner religionsgeschichtlichen und chronologischen Einordung

WUNT 206; Tuebingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2007.

This is Popkes' published version of his Habiltationsschrift which is distinguished from some approaches to Gos. Thom. by its refusal to try to excavate layers of redaction and tradition underneath the text. Popkes provides a study of the anthropology in Gos. Thom. and especially the concept of "image". Popkes will also be contributing an essay on "Paul and the Gospel of Thomas" to a collection edited by myself and Joel Willitts in the future so keep an eye out for his essay there.

Christopher W. Skinner
John and Thomas - Gospels in Conflict? Johannine Characterization and the Thomas Question
PTM; Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2009.
Available through Wipf & Stock in the USA.

In this volume Christopher Skinner contests the notion that the Fourth Gospel was composed as a polemic against Thomasine Christians or the Gospel of Thomas due to certain readings of John 20.24-28 which are said to reflect and inter-community conflict. Skinner points out that Thomas is a fairly insignificant character in the Fourth Gospel, Thomas is simply one of many unbelieving and uncomprehending characters which provide a narrative foil for the literary and the theological designs of the Fourth Gospel, and interactions between Jesus and Thomas do not reflect interneccine strife anymore than the interactions between Jesus and Phillip.

He writes: "In their publications on the John-Thomas relationship, Riley, DeConick, and Pagels are concerned with the history of early Christianity and what they regard as its multiform development. All three scholars rely heavily upon source-, form-, and redaction-critical criteria to explain the conflict they envision. Elements of historical inquiry also factor into their discussions. Then, after developing a picture of the John-Thomas conflict using a complex set of different historical-critical elements, each scholar introduces a one narrative critical insight to vaidate their view - the characterization of Thomas. This leads to a truncated reading of the Johannine narrative that drastically overemphasizes the significance of one minor character. The hermeneutic that emerges is an amalgam of loosely connected methodological assumptions forced together to pain a picture that is unsupported by the available information. Through this approach they reveal that their greater concern is to mine the text for insights that will assist their revaluation of early Christianity and gospel origins. Or, to say it more succinctly, in the character of Thomas they simply find what they are looking for. Because of this they generate incomplete, superficial readings of the Fourth Gospel that subjugate the interests of careful reading to those of historical speculation and reconstruction" (pp. 231-32).

Skinner's arguments should be read beside those found in Ismo Dunderberg's volume, The Beloved Disciple in Conflict? since Dunderberg argues similarly against a John/Thomas community conflict. Overall, Skinner's monograph makes for a sound read and gives a good update on recent research on the Gospel of Thomas.

Simon Gathercole on Gos. of Thomas and Paul

In an article by Simon Gathercole on "The Influence of Paul on the Gospel of Thomas (53, 3, & 17)" in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung, Rezeption, Theologie, Gathercole argues the possible influence of Paul's language on the Gos. Thom. in three logia:

- Rom. 2.25-3.2 on Gos. Thom. 53 (a high degree of probability).
- Rom. 10.7 and Gos. Thom. 3 (probably reasonable).

- 1 Cor. 2.9 and Gos. Thom. 17 (probably reasonable - Thomas uses a source that has been shaped by Paul's usage of Isaiah 64.65.

Gathercole concludes: "The above has two wider implications for the fields of study mentioned in the introduction: the issue of the Wirkungsgeschichte of Paul in earliest Chrsitianity, and the question of the origins of the Gospel of Thomas. On this latter question, we have further evidence of the Gospel of Thomas's dependence upon the New Testament. Dassmann's comment cited above ['Dass Thomasevangelium aus der Mitte des 2. Jahrhunderts laesst dagegen jeden paulinischen Einfluss vermissen'], to the effect that Paul shows no influence upon the Gospel of Thomas, is almost certainly wrong. Treatments of the origins of GThomas need to take account of the evidence for this Pauline influence. In terms of the issue of the early influence of Paul, recent scholarship has undoubtedly been right to criticise Harnack's extremely minimalistic assessment. To the literature subsequent to Paul which bears the marks of the apostle, we should now add the Gospel of Thomas."

Review of Perrin: Thomas, the Other Gospel

I have (finally) had the pleasure of reading through Nicholas Perrin's book Thomas: The Other Gospel. The pleasure was heightened by reading it on a sunny beach on the east coast of Australia and also reading it in a small country town located amidst 65 wineries and sipping the local produce as I slowly read over the pages.

Perrin's objective is to give an accessible but scholarly introduction to the Gospel of Thomas especially admidst many (often outrageous) claims about its significance in one corner of North American scholarship. Chapters 1-3 give an overview of the Thomasine scholarship of Stephen J. Patterson, Elaine Pagels, and April DeConick. His analysis here is mostly critical, but sympathetic at certain points. The questions that these scholars seek to address provides the agenda for Perrin's own study of the Gospel of Thomas. Those questions include: (1) what accounts for the strange sequence of sayings in Thomas? (2) How might we explain the ascetical elements in Thomas? (3) Why is Thomas so interested in creation themes? (4) Why is Thomas "according to Thomas"? (5) What accounts for the disparate substance of the sayings? (6) Why are all these sayings connected with Jesus, when most of them cannot be attributed to the historical Jesus? (7) Is there a single hypothesis that accounts for the above questions in a single stroke?

For Perrin, the Gospel of Thomas is not Gnostic, rather it is a late second-century document from Syrian Christianity that exhibits features of Encratism, Hermeticism, and realized-eschatology via the influence of Tatian. To this end he draws on several areas of evidence including: evidence for the misunderstanding of sounds from a Syriac original in translation of the text into Greek and Coptic; evidence for Syriac catchwords and redaction; most Thomasine sayings follow the order in the Diatessaron; Thomas reflects Syrian asceticism associated with Tatian; Thomas draws on Tatian's logos theology; and the soteriology of Thomas reflects Tatian's own view of salvation as something essentially internal. Viewed in this light, the Gospel of Thomas should be viewed in Christian origins as part of the puzzle deriving from late second century Syrian Christianity.

This is a good introduction to the Gospel of Thomas for anyone interested. I find Perrin's proposal quite attractive, but confess that I remain agnostic about his overall thesis. I think the strength of Perrin's argument is that he makes a strong case for a Syrian provenance for Thomas, the Diatessaron may have been the first or only Gospel-like piece of literature available in Syriac at the end of the first century, the reconstruction of common catchwords in Syriac is suggestive of a Syriac original for Thomas, and perhaps the order of the sayings in the Diatessaron in comparison with Thomas is a plausible indication of dependency. On the other hand, an original Greek text for Thomas is not impossible esp. since we do have Greek fragments. Composition in Greek would have also made the document easier to spread to different environments outside of Syria as well. Basically there are simply too many unknowns in the equations to be decisive about the original language of Thomas, esp. when we are talking about texts which we do not have access too. Like many others, I am simply not qualified to be able make an informed decision about matters pertaining to Syriac, Coptic and the Diastessaron in order to be able to either affirm or disagree with Perrin's proposal in full. I also wonder about the possibility of Thomas echoing intra-Jewish debates of a former period given the reference to James and circumcision which occur in polemical contexts. Likewise, I am unconvinced that in logion 13 that Simon Peter is a cipher for the Gospel of Mark. I think Matthew and Peter both represent Jewish Christianity. Also ascetic practices were not limited to eastern Syria as vegetarianism was an issue in Romans and sexual abstinence in 1 Corinthians. The Gospel of John and its relationship to Thomas remains a burning issue that any theory on Thomas must account for, e.g. are Johannine traditions found in Thomas (R.E. Brown), is there a John vs. Thomas polemic going on (G.J. Riley), if Thomas cites the Diatessaron why the absence of Johannine material (Mark Goodacre). That being said, if Perrin is correct then there's a lot of North American scholarship that can be taken to the trash-can for good. I think Perrin's most enduring contribution will be his arguments for a Syrian origin for Thomas in the last quarter of the second century and he has made Tatian and the Diatessaron a plausible source for Thomas as well.

Mark Goodacre coveniently lists the reviews of Perrin by David Parker, Paul-Hubert Poirier, Robert Shedinger, Peter Williams, and see also the in-depth critical interaction from April DeConick.

The Q Theory

I'm currently reading James Robinson's book Jesus According to the Earliest Witness, and I am amazed at the certainty that some scholars possess regarding their views on the layering, stratifying, and editing of Q . Some scholars seem to act as if Luhrmann and Kloppenborg are right and that is just a self-evident fact to anyone with a Gospe Synopsis and a Ph.D. But, by analogy, if you think you can discover layers, tiers, and editorial work of pre-Marcan material by using Matthew and Luke, I think you are slightly too optimistic about the nature of the evidence and your scholarly abilities. The same is true for Q. And Q (if it existed!) is a jigsaw, and with a jigsaw you can imagine someone putting the corners together first, then maybe the frame, but after that you enter that part of scholarship where we have to say, "We just don't know!" Have a guess by all means, but let us not pretend to be certain of things which we have no right to be certain about. My biggest complaint about the Q-Thomas theorists is that they treat what is hypothetical as if it were factual (Q) and make what was peripheral out to be central (Gospel of Thomas).

Otherwise, Robinson's book contains an excellent chapter entitled, "Theological Autobiography" about his studies in Europe, his move from Systematics to New Testament, his work on Q, and the Nag Hammadi codices, and the story of the publication of the Nag Hammadi contains elements of subterfuge, intrigue, plots, and conspiracies that would leave Dan Brown in awe.

Nick Perrin responds to April DeConick

I have previously mentioned Nick Perrin's book Thomas, the Other Gospel as something I'm hoping to read in the next fortnite (alas there are essays to be marked first). But the blogosphere is buzzing with responses and reflections to Perrin's book. Mark Goodacre has offered the first of his rolling responses to Perrin's book. Over at the Forbidden Gospels blog, April DeConick (Rice University) has offered her critique of Perrin's work, particularly as it relates to Perrin's representation of her position (See Cautionary Note 1: Nick Perrin, Thomas, The Other Gospel, Cautionary Note 2: DeConick on Orality and Literacy, Cautionary Note 3: DeConick on the Historical Jesus, Cautionary Note 4: DeConick on Accretions). In light of this I have invited Nick Perrin to respond to some of the criticisms made by April DeConick so as to enable him to have a voice in a discussion that is essentially about him and his book. His response is below:

----

Dear April (if I may),

I must confess, when my attention was drawn to your comments on my recent book (Thomas, The Other Gospel) in your blog, I was at first a bit stunned. You seem to feel strongly that I have grossly misrepresented your work. I was quite surprised and am truly sorry you feel that way. In the world of academia few things are more troubling than the sense that one’s reviewer has missed the boat. However, after reading your blog, and having now just given your book yet one more read, I feel that I must stick my guns: I feel I have portrayed the thrust of your thesis accurately. I hope and trust that our coming into sharp disagreement with each other (I think you went first in Recovering, pp. 48-49) will not prevent us from having a lively, collegial and good-spirited interchange on your important work – or mine for that matter.

Since you are taking issue with how I take issue with you in piecemeal fashion, I shall try to work in that framework. The first item of business on your docket, it seems, is the whole oral versus scribal interplay. For now, let me stick to that, explain why I think it matters, and then make a few miscellaneous responses.

To be honest, while at points you are very clear in your writing, it is in your first chapter on methodology that you seem to be saying many things – sometimes contradictory things -- at once. If I may, let me provide an example. Toward describing how you see Thomas coming together on pp. 26-28 you (1) cite Fraade approvingly on ancient oral performance as ‘an orality that is grounded in a textuality that remains orally fluid’ (26), (2) state that ‘in such cultures there is reliance on memory with little to no dependence on external sources of information’ [presumably including texts?], even if the contents of that performance are ‘sometimes captured in our texts’ (27), and (3) draw on Lord and Ong to describe a procedure of performance that makes implies little if any use of texts (27-29). So, my question is this: which is it? Are oral performances (1) grounded in texts? (2) Only preserved in texts, but averse to using texts as a basis for performance? Or (3) virtually text-less? Your citing both Fraade and Ong with unmitigated approval seems a bit like wanting your cake and eating it too. In my view, you can apply Fraade’s comments to early Christianity, but I think it would wrong to apply Ong.

As for the mode of transmission before ‘rescribing,’ you say ‘the community will exercise control over how the traditions are passed on and reshaped’ (29) and, on the other, texts were used as aids for memory (32, 35). If the community did really control the content of the performance, as you suggest, then the texts could not have been much more than the ancient equivalent of sticky notes. Since you are unhappy with me on my p. 62 (I’m not sure which part), let me repeat a sentence from the same page: ‘ It seems to me that one cannot both emphasize Thomas’s oral constitution to the degree DeConick does and give any real place to Hermetical influence.’ I might also add a fortiori ‘ … and/or to early Christianity.’ I am aware that you see points of ‘rescribing’ at crucial, as those times when ‘old traditions were refreshed and the old ideas kept current’ (36) (btw, would not keeping old ideas current be more likely in the moment of performance?), but I fear you may be missing the point of my critique.

Christianity, like Judaism, was a religion of the book (see Bart Ehrman’s fine chapter on this in Misquoting Jesus). The Torah and the words of Jesus, inflexible hermeneutical anchors for succeeding generations of flexible interpretation, were held in highest authority in earliest Christianity. This stability was not an afterthought or established retrospectively, as you suggest, when ‘the traditions finally reached the stage that they were considered the “ancient” or “authoritative” record of the community’ (36). The resurrection event was the seed of Christianity and the basis for hermeneutical authority. In my view, your reconstruction of Thomas flounders because – with or without your notion of rescribing -- it does not fit with what we know about the early Christian’s inflexible reverence for Jesus and the book, nor does it fit with scribal Hermeticism.

Now for a few miscellania…

Elsewhere on your blog you write as follows:

Perrin (p. 65): "according to DeConick, the Thomas community orally perpetuated its memory of Jesus for a century or so" but no citation. This is not my position which is clearly laid out several times in Recovering. So I will state it again. Thomas began as a written Kernel, a notebook of speeches. This text was used by orators to preach and instruct, and so it moved into the oral environment where it was adapted each time it was performed. It was a text that moved in and out of oral and written environments. I write (pp. 62-63):

"We can imagine that the developing traditions were rescribed at crucial moments in the history of the community when members feared the loss of their traditions or when pressure within the group demanded significant reinterpretation." This process lasted for 60 to 70 years.

But on your chart (97-98) you show four successive periods of accretions (I’m sorry, April, I know you object to calling these ‘stages’, but I don’t know what else to call them) ranging from 30-120 CE. That’s 90 years, or ‘a century or so.’ I don’t think ‘orally perpetuated’ is incompatible with ‘in and out of oral and written environments.’

In regards to Papias, my pg. 59 and your pg. 57, thank you. Your comments are clarifying. If that’s what you mean, I’m good with that.

As for the rest of the comments, I think I’ll save them for my next entry when I come back to you on this historical Jesus, where they seem to fit better.

For now, here’s to continued fruitful interchange. Hopefully, we will both arise from this as better scholars. Michael, I’m grateful for your willingness to host the discussion.

All best wishes,
Nick Perrin

Nicholas Perrin on the Gospel of Thomas

Today our library received a copy of Nicholas Perrin's new book Thomas: The Other Gospel which looks like a scintillating read (sigh, another book to add to the list). Perrin interacts with the work of Stephen Patterson, April DeConick, and Elaine Pagels and asserts a Syrian provenance for Thomas (specifically Edessa). Let me give a few quotes from the conclusion:

"The Gospel of Thomas was a Syriac text written in the last quarter of the second century by a careful editor who arranged his material largely on the basis of catchword connections. As far as his sources, Thomas drew primarily on Tatian's Diatessaron, but also undoubtedly drew on his memory of a number of oral and written traditions. It cannot be ruled out that Thomas preserves authentic sayings of Jesus; it is simply that, give a span of 140-plus years, this would be extremely hard to prove" (137).

"Just as Thomas and Faustus sought a less Jewish Jesus, one more in keeping with Hellenistic tastes, Bultmann too sought to extract Jesus from his Jewish context. In the process all three gave us a Jesus who could be imitated in certain respects but who in the final analysis could neither be known as human or make known the divine. 'Why speak of the dead Jewish historical Jesus,' Bultmann or Thomas might ask, 'when you have the living one, the existential Christ of faith, in your very presence?' Given the varying degrees to which my three interolocutors - not to mention Koester and Robinson - align themselves with a Bultmannian understanding of early Christianity, it is no suprise that a Jesus according to Thomas is the Jesus whom they are most satisifed." (137).

"Is this the Other Gospel we have been waiting for? Somehow, I suspect, we have heard this message before. Somehow we have met this Jesus before. The Gospel of Thomas invites us to imagine a Jesus who says, 'I am not our saviour, but the one who can put you in touch with your true self. Free yourself from your gender, your body, and any concerns that you might have for the outside world. Work for it and self-realization, salvation, will be yours - in this life.' Imagine such a Jesus? One need hardly work very hard. This is precisely the Jesus we know too well, the existential Jesus that so many western evangelical and liberal churches already preach." (139).