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.

Nick Perrin: Response to April DeConick on the Historical Jesus

Dear April,
To continue with my surrejoinder and building on my previous post, I thought I would turn my attention to the issue of the historical Jesus.

In Thomas, the Other Gospel I state that your approach to Thomas “necessitates the assumption that those who preserved Jesus' memory, while duly impressed with at least some of his words, found nothing about his life or actions worth remembering.” By saying that this assumption is “necessitated,” I do not mean “logically entailed,” but rather what in my mind is the best inference given your position. In other words, if the Thomas community only preserved Jesus’ words in performance, underwritten at points by texts, but did not carry out any corresponding activity in regards to the actions of Jesus, this suggests to me that this same Thomas community didn’t find anything about Jesus’ life worth remembering. Things that are worth remembering over a span of generations are passed down either orally or textually. Since neither the Thomas’s community’s oral re-performances of the Jesus tradition nor its crisis-driven rescribing of those traditions seem to include his deeds, we must surmise that there was no community-wide interest in passing down Jesus’ story. Therefore, as far as the Thomas community was concerned, the Jesus story was not worth remembering.

A separate but connected issue comes to fore in the relationship between the Thomas traditions and the synoptic tradition. Since in your book you leave this issue virtually untouched, the reader is left on his/her own to follow through with the implications of your thesis for our understanding of the rise of the synoptic tradition. In your rejoinder you begin to connect a few of the dots I wish you would have – perhaps even should have -- connected in your monograph:

Perrin (p. 61): "She [DeConick] does not clarify how and why such speeches eventually gave rise to the narrative gospels." I cannot clarify something that I do not address in my book. Recovering is not a book about how speech gospels became narrative gospels. It is a book attempting to understand a particular case - the compositional history of the Gospel of Thomas. For what it might be worth, in fact, I don't think that speech gospels turned into narrative gospels at all. I think that speech gospels rose alongside oral narrative cycles, cycles that evidently led to Mark. Speech gospels like the Kernel or Q later were incorporated into the narrative gospels, as is the case with Matthew and Luke. But the speech gospel did not generate the narrative gospel as Perrin leads his readers to think is my position.

But this clarification still does not seem very satisfactory. Very little of Q is embedded in narrative – John the Baptist’s preaching and the temptation being notable exceptions, so it is fairly easy to image Q’s assimilation into Matthew and Luke. But where Mark parallels Thomas, the spoken material is often deeply rooted in the narrative of an apophthegmatic scene (e.g. Marcan parallels to GT 44 [Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit], 100 [Giving to Caesar]). How are we to explain the interrelationship between the narratively-embedded sayings in the Marcan tradition and those same sayings in the Thomasine tradition? It seems you really have two options: either Mark inherited the punch line (apophthegm) and then built the story around it (Bultmann), or that Mark fairly accurately preserved pre-Marcan cycles that held story and punch line together as a whole. If you forego the former option (which you appear to do in your rejoinder) and pursue the latter, this means that Thomas ingested the tradition (action + speech together), spit out the actions/narrative setting, while the synoptics – even if later than Thomas -- preserved the prior tradition with a fair degree of integrity. Mark would at any rate be shown as being more interested in preserving the context of Jesus’ words (as passed down) than Thomas, who counts on the audience’s frame of reference. Would you not then conclude that Mark’s sensitivity to the historical context of Jesus’ sayings puts him as a historical document a notch or two above Thomas? And if this is so, then we not only learn something about Jesus from the synoptic tradition, but in order to be historically and source-critically responsible we also must put Thomas in conversation with the synoptics. While there are several major aspects of Recovering that have won both my agreement and admiration, points which I do mention in my book and will do so again in closing here, your monograph seems to suggest (I know you don’t actually think this way) as if in first-century Jerusalem there was no Christianity but Thomas Christianity. In some ways, by avoiding much mention of these other Christianities, other gospels and their sources, you are avoiding a huge X-factor that complicates your thesis considerably.

Finally, a few words about the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. You say in your rejoinder that Thomas Christianity, like “most practicing Christians today,” do not distinguish the two categories, that Thomas community could hear Jesus the Prophet as he was spiritually present to them. “There is,” you write, “no disjuncture between Jesus the Prophet and the living presence of his spirit. There is no disregard for what Jesus actually said, as Perrin appears to want his readers to believe is my position.”

Frankly, I remain puzzled. Allow me to quote your words. As you see it, the early Christian author “does not simply ‘reproduce’ the communal icons, the text may in fact be written to modify or destroy them” (11). Early Christian traditions are a “group’s ‘remembered history,’ the ‘recollections of the past that are determined and shaped by a group’ in the present’ … So the formation of communal memory is not a retrieval of past traditions and history.” (12). “To retain memory, it is necessary for us to … ‘revise personal components to fit the collectively remembered past’ so that we ‘gradually cease to distinguish them.” (14). “The community will ultimately transform its traditions” (15). While no one would disagree that early Christians shaped the Jesus tradition as per their need, this is not the same as saying what you seem to be saying: that the early Christians willy-nilly added to, subtracted from, and radically transformed their memory of Jesus. Again, if I understand you right, you are saying that what Jesus said and did was merely grist for the mill, but the grist could certainly be discarded or transmuted beyond recognition. If so, this seems not only to impose a (post)modern, Halbwachsian understanding of history on the first-century world but also, in the final analysis, to show “disregard for what Jesus actually said” -- just as I suggest it in my treatment of your book. Christians then and Christians now do distinguish what the historical Jesus said and did from what people, inspired or not, say he said and did.

Because second-century Thomas Christianity was more indebted to Greek idealism than Jewish interest in history, their Thomasine sayings collection cares very little whether or not Jesus really said what is ascribed to him. But first-century Christianity, still deeply Jewish and serious about historical events, bank on the historicity of what they preached, including Jesus’ words and deeds.

In your final cautionary notes (4 and 5), you defend your sifting of Thomasine materials. I’m not sure even the most patient blogwatcher would endure me interacting with your comments on the necessary level of detail. Instead, I will simply refer the reader to your initial discussion in your book and my response to it in mine.

Finally, thank you for advancing the conversation of Thomas studies. While as you know I have doubts about your particular reconstruction of Thomas, I think you hit the nail squarely on the head by giving fresh emphasis to the Syriac, Hermetic setting. (When that Syriac, Hermetic setting occurs is another question!) All the same, your creativity, wide-ranging research and energetic writing schedule stands as an example to us all.

In the meantime, April, congratulations on your new book on Judas. Wishing you the best and hoping we can one day continue our interchange in person.

All good wishes,
Nick Perrin

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:

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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).