Erudition, Power, Secrecy, and Empire:
The rhetoric of self-authorization and empowerment in The Gospel of
Thomas
A Thesis
Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
In Religious Studies
University of Regina
By Ian Phillip Brown
Regina, Saskatchewan
July, 2011
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FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH
SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE
Ian Phillip Brown, candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in Religious Studies, has presented a thesis titled, Erudition, Power, Secrecy, and Empire: The rhetoric of self- authorization and empowerment in The Gospel of Thomas, in an oral examination held on June 27, 2011. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material.
External Examiner: Dr. Willi Braun, University of Alberta
Supervisor: Dr. William Arnal, Department of Religious Studies
Committee Member: Dr. Darlene Juschka, Department of Women's and Gender Studies
Committee Member: Dr. Franz Volker Greifenhagen, Department of Religious Studies
Chair of Defense: Dr. Claire Polster, Department of Sociology & Social Studies
*Not present at defense i
Abstract
The Gospel of Thomas has been understood to be many different things: gnostic, mystic, encratic, apocalyptic and non-apocalyptic. Regardless of what Thomas has been classified as, more often than not Thomas has been classified for ideological reasons, most of which are concerned with the identity and character of the historical Jesus. As a result Thomas is rarely studied as an interesting text in and of itself. Too frequently, instead of examining the form and content of the
Gospel, it is too often used as a stone upon which one can grind his or her historical Jesus axe. This thesis moves away from questions about the historical
Jesus (and the related questions of Thomas' date and relationship with the canonical gospels) and raises the question of Thomas' socio-historical location.
In the following chapters I treat Thomas as a text that is interesting in and of itself. Employing both close exegesis of the text, as well as cross cultural comparison, I argue that Thomas is a (reasonably) sophisticated urban product whose rhetoric suggests that the text was composed by "intellectuals" who felt socially marginalized due to Roman imperial policies. ii
Acknowledgments
Although I have only been at the University of Regina for two years, in that short time a number of people left their mark, both on this thesis, and on me as an person. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor and mentor Dr.
William Arnal. I cannot put into words the effect that learning from, and just being around Bill has had on my academic development. Thank you for the insights, encouragement, and opportunities with which you have provided me over the past two years, and I'm glad I ignored the first piece of advice you gave me. I would also like to thank my committee members Dr. Darlene Juschka and
Dr. Franz Volker Greifenhagen. It was my pleasure to have been able to take classes with both of you, and you both in your own ways have left a mark on this thesis. I would also like to acknowledge everyone in the Department of Religious
Studies, Dr. Kevin Bond and Dr. Yuan Ren for the company and conversations, and Dr. Leona Anderson for her tireless efforts as department head to get as much as possible for us students. Speaking of my fellow students, I would like to thank my office mates, especially Sarah Hagel, Allan Wright, and Jesse Bailey: your insights, criticisms, and most importantly, company made my time here very enjoyable. Most importantly, of course, I thank my parents, Phil and Leslie for their encouragement, support, and love. That goes for the rest of my family!
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the financial support I received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from the
Humanities Research Institute, and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research here at the University of Regina. iii
Table of Contents
Abstract i Acknowledgments ii
Introduction 1
1. A Work in Progress: towards a socio-historical description of the Gospel of Thomas 10 Review of literature 10 Genre 23
2. Farming and Chreiai, Together at Last: Thomas as a (reasonably) sophisticated urban document 36 Thomas as an urban product 36 The chreiai in ancient writing 48
The chreiai in the progymnasmata 50 Chreiai in Thomas 53 Praise 55 Narrative introductions 55 Rationale 57 Statement from the opposite 59 Analogy 59 Argument from authority and exhortation to hear 61 Implications for the study of the Gospel: Thomas and scholasticism 64
3. The Gospel Goes to School: Thomas as a Scholastic Product 69 The schooling of Paul 70 The schooling of Q 76 Graeco-Roman schools 80 Textuality 83 Composition 85 Genre revisited 88 iv
Erudition, power, authorization, and social location 91 Thomas as a "Scholastic" Product 95
4. A place to call their own: Thomas' construction of an alternative reality in the wake of social marginalization 97 The social effects of Roman imperialism 97 Rabbis and the Mishna 110 Epicureans 112 Thomas, secrecy, and negotiating space in the Empire 117 Secrecy and the Kart3bhaj9s 132 Secrecy as discourse 136 Secrecy as capital 137
Conclusion 147 Bibliography 152 1
Introduction
In his 1993 monograph, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, Stephen Patterson states that, in spite of the progress made in Thomasine scholarship through the
1960s, 70s, and 80s, many fundamental questions about Thomas remained unanswered.1 How is Thomas related (or unrelated) to the synoptic gospels?
Where was Thomas composed? When was Thomas composed? And of the most interest to Patterson, who created and used this text, what sort of lives would they have led, and how might they have related to other early Christian groups?2 In
1993, these are the types of questions that needed to be raised in order for Thomas to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on ancient Christianities. If
Thomas was literarily dependent on the New Testament, then Thomas would serve best as an example of secondary mythmaking, a text which works with, and expands upon older texts in order adapt their messages to different situations. A
Thomas that is literarily dependent upon the New Testament may be grouped with
Luke-Acts and the Pastorals as second century elaborations and re-appropriations of older traditions. If, however, Thomas showed no knowledge of the New
Testament, then Thomas' value to the scholar of Christian origins changes dramatically. Instead of a second century text which expands on an established
1 I have intentionally left out the question of whether or not Thomas was Gnostic. While this question was at one point quite important, by the late 1980s it was becoming quite clear that that Thomas' theology did not match that of other "Gnostic" texts. The very usefulness (or accuracy) of the term "Gnostic" has, with good reason, been called into question by both Michael Williams {Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996]) and Karen King (What is Gnosticism? [Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003]), and their efforts have exposed the category as a construction of the modern mind, and wholly unhelpful in describing ancient Christian documents. For this reason, while the debate regarding Thomas' "gnosticism" was at one point important, I have left it out, as it has been all but settled and does not affect my thesis here. 2 Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1993), 9. 2 tradition, Thomas would need to be understood as an earlier text that bears witness to an independent tradition which, in many cases, parallels some of the traditions preserved in the New Testament. As should be apparent, the question of dependence and date are rather intimately tied together,3 and they have come to dominate Thomasine scholarship in the last twenty years. The reasons that the questions of dependence and date have received so much scholarly attention while questions of Thomas' ideology (theology), rhetoric, and social setting have largely been ignored are more ideological than they are pragmatic. This is because, as April DeConick notes in the conclusion of her monograph,
Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and its
Growth, "[t]here is much at stake with the study of the Gospel of Thomas, where we situate it historically and how we translate its meaning, whether it be early or late, sapiential or 'gnostic,' independent or dependent."4 The stakes were raised early on by both James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, especially in the collection of their essays found in Trajectories through Early Christianity (1971).
It is here that Robinson locates Thomas' genre on the same trajectory as Q, that of
3 In many studies, the question of date and dependence are treated as a single question. If Thomas is dependent on portions of the New Testament, then Thomas' composition had to have post dated these portions of the NT. If, however, Thomas is independent of the NT, this does not necessarily mean Thomas' composition needs to predate the composition of certain NT texts. Yes it would be possible for Thomas to be early, but Thomas' dependence on, or independence of the NT should not be the sole piece of evidence with which to date Thomas. More recently scholars have argued for an independent Thomas that was not composed until the first decade of the second century. Richard Valantasis (The Gospel of Thomas [New York: Routledge, 1997], 12-21) dates Thomas' final composition to between 100 and 110 CE based on Thomas' theological parallels with the Gospel of John (a text Valantasis also dates to this period). More recently, Uwe-Karsten Plisch {The Gospel of Thomas: Original Text with Commentary [trans. G. S. Robinson, Germany: Deutsche Biblelgesellschaft, 2008], 15-16) dates Thomas to, at the latest, the beginning of the second century based on the existence of the Oxyrhynchus Greek fragments of Thomas that date from as early as 200 CE. 4 April D. DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and its Growth (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 238. 3
LOGOI SOPHON, wisdom literature.5 Robinson argues that Thomas may well have begun as a primitive sayings collection which ultimately ended up in
Gnosticism.6 Thus Thomas represents an early, independent witness to the Jesus tradition, an argument that Koester makes explicitly in his essay, "One Jesus and
Four Primitive Gospels."7 Later, in 1990 (Ancient Christian Gospels: Their
History and Development), Koester reasserts Thomas' position as early and independent, stating that since "a number of recent studies have shown that in many cases a saying or parable, as it appears in the Gospel of Thomas, is preserved in a form that is more original than any of its canonical parallels... the tradition of sayings of Jesus preserved in the Gospel of Thomas pre-dates the canonical Gospels and rules out the possibility of a dependence upon any of these
Gospels."8
It should be stressed here that it is not the possibility of Thomas being an early independent gospel that causes people to feel uncomfortable. What causes this discomfort is the fact that, because of Thomas' (possible) early independent nature, Thomas (along with Q) has been used as one of the key tools with which to find the historical Jesus (second quest),9 and redescribe Christian origins in
5 James M. Robinson, "LOGOI SOPHON: On the Gattung of Q," in Trajectories through Early Christianity (ed. J. M. Robinson and H. Koester; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 71-113. 6 Ibid., 85. 7 Helmut Koester, "One Jesus and Four Primitive Gospels," in Trajectories through Early Christianity (James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 158- 205. 8 Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 85-86. 9 See for example, John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), especially 265-394. The importance of Thomas in finding the historical Jesus is also reflected in the work of the Jesus seminar (of which Crossan is a leading member). For example, in the Jesus Seminar's book The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, (ed. Robert W. Funk, Roy W. 4 general.10 Thomas, therefore, has been used more often than not as a tool with which to identify the historical Jesus, and redescribe Christian origins. Some of these efforts and uses of Thomas are important and have advanced our understanding of the gospel (see especially Ron Cameron, "Ancient Myths and
Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins"11), and some have not. Regardless of the conclusions one draws from using Thomas in this way, the consequences of Thomas-as-privileged-data for the historical Jesus has been that those opposed to the second quest for the historical Jesus (or to a lesser extent the findings of the Redescribing Symposium) have flagged Thomas as a late, dependent text. If an early and independent Thomas leads to one description of the historical Jesus, then a late, dependent Thomas leads to a very different description.
As a result, the vast majority of scholarship on the Gospel of Thomas has revolved around issues of date/dependence, and the historical Jesus. Gregory
Riley's review, "The Gospel of Thomas in Recent Scholarship" reflects these concerns. In his subsection titled "Theological Character•" he is concerned primarily with the Gnostic vs. non-gnostic debate, a debate in which I am wholly uninterested (see footnote one). Following this, Riley reviews debates over dependency in "The Gospel of Thomas: Dependent on or Independent of the
Canonical Gospels?" His next section deals with "The Gospel of Thomas, 'Q' and
Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, New York: Polebridge Press, 1996) includes Thomas alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in considering what the historical Jesus may have said. 10 See for example, Redescribing Christian Origins (ed. R. Cameron and M. P. Miller; SBLSymS 28; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004). 11 Ron Cameron, "Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins" MTSR 11 (1999): 236-257; repr. in Redescribing Christian Origins (ed. R. Cameron and M. P. Miller; SBLSymS 28; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004), 89-109. 5 the Historical Jesus", and his final sections address Thomas and 1 Corinthians,
Thomas and John, and interpretations of individual sayings of Jesus.12 Wholly absent here are issues of Thomas' rhetoric, socio-historical location, and even
Thomas' theology (removed from the debate as to whether or not it is "Gnostic").
This omission, for the most part, is not the fault of Riley given that the only study of Thomas which did take into account Thomas' socio-historical location was
Patterson's Thomas and Jesus (published the year before in 1993). Riley can be forgiven for not granting a single study its own section in a review essay that encompasses an impressive amount of scholarship in a relatively small space. In the seventeen years since Riley's review, there has been a noticeable shift in
Thomasine studies, some successful, some less successful. Patterson (1993,
2008),13 Deconick (2005), Cameron (2004,2008)14 and William Arnal (2005,
"Rhetoric of Social Construction"), for example, have all examined Thomas without being fixated on questions of date and dependence. And while Cameron and Arnal are primarily interested in positing a socio-historical description of
Thomas, constructing a socio-historical location for the Thomas people is the stated goal for Patterson and an implicit goal for DeConick. Both Patterson and
DeConick make significant contributions to the project of locating Thomas socio- historically, but both rely on reflective readings of Thomas, assuming that the contents of the text report the actual social situations of those who composed and
12 Gregory J. Riley, "The Gospel of Thomas in Recent Scholarship," CurBS 2 (1994): 227-252. 13 Stephen J. Patterson, "Jesus Meets Plato: The Theology of the Gospel of Thomas and Middle Platonism," in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung—Rezeption—Theologie (eds. Jorg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes and Jens Schroter; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter: 2008), 181-205. 14 Ron Cameron, "An Occasion for Thought," in Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith, (eds. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon; London: Equinox Press, 2008), 100-112. 6 used the text.15 This reading is problematic for several reasons which I will address in my first chapter, but for now it should be noted that a plausible socio- historical description of Thomas is lacking.
It is my aim in this thesis to propose not only a better socio-historical description for the Thomas group, but also to propose a better method with which to access the social history of a group that survives only in the form of a text. For this reason I am especially interested in Thomas' rhetoric and genre, as I argue it is here where Thomas' social location is made most apparent.
Chapter One consists of a review of literature which focuses on both scholarship which has striven to identify a "Thomas community" (namely
DeConick and Patterson), as well as scholarship which has examined Thomas' rhetoric and genre. Both Robinson (1971) and John Kloppenborg (1987) have written extensively on the genre of Q, and both Robinson and Kloppenborg use
Thomas as an example of an analogical parallel to Q. Indeed the discovery of the
Gospel of Thomas asserted what Q scholars had already suggested: that there existed in antiquity sayings collections which (shockingly enough) contained the sayings of Jesus. Thomas shares not only Q's formal structure (both are sayings collections), but also Q's genre (both are sayings collections presented as wisdom sayings). In my examination of Thomas' genre I will expand on the idea of
Thomas as a wisdom document: stressing the similarities, and differences between Thomas and other wisdom documents, and placing emphasis on Thomas as a chreiai collection.
15 The issues surrounding reflective readings of texts (and especially religious texts) will be examined below, pages 21-23. 7
Chapter Two begins by establishing Thomas as the product of a city (or at the very least a reasonably large urban environment). Patterson argues that
Thomas' rhetoric suggests that it was written by and for itinerant preachers, but here I follow Arnal's critique of this position in arguing that this rhetoric of uprootedness is just that: rhetoric. Both Thomas' form and content suggest that
Thomas was in fact composed in an urban setting given that the Gospel is familiar with practices which would be considered "urban" (legal contracts, and city layouts), and is not familiar with "rural" practices, especially the intricacies of farming. The second part of chapter two continues some of the arguments made in chapter one regarding Thomas' genre, namely that Thomas is actually a rather sophisticated piece of literature which suggests that a reasonably educated class of people were responsible for composing it. To illustrate this point I will examine
Thomas' formal unity, namely the fact that Thomas is composed exclusively of chreiai. Chreiai were reasonably common in antiquity, but a document that consists exclusively of chreiai is a document which intentionally consists exclusively of chreiai. A point which is perhaps of even more interest to us is the fact that many of the chreiai in Thomas represent expanded chreiai. The manipulation and expansion of chreiai was a learned skill which was taught in the progymnasmata, and the presence of expanded chreiai in Thomas suggests a level of literary sophistication at least on par with those acquainted with the progymnasmata.
Chapter Three will build on the observations made in chapter two that
Thomas is an urban product which contains reasonably elaborate rhetorical 8 devices, and suggest a socio-historical location in which we might understand
Thomas' rhetorical forms and ideology: the Graeco-Roman school. Our knowledge of Graeco-Roman school formations is far from complete, and this chapter will review other attempts to identify early Christian social formations as
"scholastic" social formations, and then situate Thomas within this "scholastic" milieu both in terms of Thomas' content and ideology.16
Having described Greco-Roman philosophical schools, and reviewed how both Thomas' content and ideology make a strong case for seeing Thomas as a school product, Chapter Four will examine Thomas alongside two social formations contemporary with Thomas, Epicureans and the Mishna- forming
Rabbis, as well as one more recent social formation, the Kartabhajas of 19th and early 20th century Bengal. I argue that these social formations are related in two important ways: first, they are all scholastic groups which use written texts as the basis for their social formations; second, they are all colonized subjects who perceive themselves to be alienated from both the economic and social capital which they feel is rightfully theirs.17 Thomas, Q, Paul, Epicureans, Mishna- forming Rabbis, and the Kartabhajas employ scholastic means to negotiate with their situations as colonized people. These scholastic negotiations consist of forming alternative social groups which are based on written texts: Thomas' and
16 My notion of "school" in this chapter is heavily indebted to Willi Braun's 1999 essay, "Socio- Mythic Invention, Graeco-Roman Schools, and the Sayings Gospel Q," MTSR 11 (1999): 210- 235. 17 Here I am following Pierre Bourdieu's "The forms of Capital" (in Education, Culture, Economy, and Society [ed. A. H. Halsey et. Al.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], 46- 58) in which he presents three forms of capital: economic capital (what most people think of when they think of "capital"), cultural capital (things that require economic capital, but also require time and effort, a suntan, or a university degree, for example), and social capital (primarily exchanged symbolically as recognition of social status). 9
Q's gospels, Paul's teaching, Epicurean texts, the Mishna, and the Kartabhajas
"mint sayings."18 Of particular interest to my thesis is the similar means of buying back social capital employed by both Thomas and the Kartabhajas: both of these groups created a discourse of secrecy in which the group claims through their texts to possess a secret which needs to be discovered, and claiming to be able to interpret this "secret" bought the secret holders some degree of social capital, compensating for the social capital they perceived themselves to have lost.
18 A collection of204 sayings which were one of several texts distributed among the Kartabhajas. 10
1. A Work in Progress: towards a socio-historical description of the Gospel of
Thomas
Review of literature
While the Gospel of Thomas has been available to scholars since the late 1950s, very few studies have sought to locate Thomas socio-historically. This is not to say that scholars have not tried to locate Thomas geographically19 or temporally;20 many studies, in fact too many, have focused on these very questions. But the question of just who composed and used Thomas has, for the most part, remained unasked. There are, however, two notable exceptions: Stephen J. Patterson
(1993), and April D. DeConick (2005).
Patterson's 1993 monograph, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, sought among other things to posit and examine an early Thomasine community.
Patterson understands the Gospel of Thomas to have a hermeneutic of social radicalism with strong anti-world sentiments.21 To support this argument he draws on seven themes which he sees as being dominant in Thomas: 1) wandering and
AA A 4 homelessness, 2) cutting family ties, 3) willful poverty and begging, 4) relativizing piety and purity,25 5) the depreciation of officialdom,26 6) minimal organization,27 and 7) women disciples in Thomas.28 Patterson's analysis of the social situation he sees in Thomas is heavily influenced by Gerd Theissen's social
19 See Helmut Koester below page 26-27. 20 See pretty much everyone who has ever written on Thomas. 21 Patterson, Thomas and Jesus, 155. 22 Ibid., 128-134. Sayings included here are 14:4,42, and 86. 23 Ibid., 134-137. Sayings included here are 55,101, 31, and 105. 24 Ibid., 137-146. Sayings included here are 14:4,100, 95, 36,54, 63, 64, 65, 76, 107, 8, and 109. 25 Ibid., 147-148. Sayings included here are 6, 14, 89, 53, 27, and 52. 26 Ibid., 148-150. Sayings included here are 100, 71, and 78. 27 Ibid., 151-153. Sayings included here are 12,49, and 30. 28 Ibid., 153-155. Sayings included here are 114. 11 analysis of early Christianity.29 Theissen argued that "the social formation that characterized earliest Christianity can be described in terms on interplay of three different roles at work in the primitive church: wandering charismatics, local sympathizers, and the Son of Man."30 Patterson adopts Theissen's general theory of social formation in early Christianity to Thomas specifically, concluding that
Thomas as a document supports the existence of wandering charismatics.31
Working from this hypothesis Patterson argues that Thomas represents an (early) example of Jesus-people social formation that was based around the charismatic authority of traveling preachers. Evidence within Thomas shows that the
Thomasine community called on its members to imitate the willful poverty and itinerant lifestyle of the wandering charismatics. As a result of this radical ethos, the Thomasine community clashed with other Jesus-peoples who operated under more rigid institutional structures. He sees evidence of these clashes in the
Didache, James, and 2 and 3 John.32
A full examination of Patterson's argument is not the goal of this thesis, but an analysis of what Patterson identifies as "sayings on willful poverty and begging" will helpfully illustrate his assertion that Thomas represents a call for itinerancy and voluntary poverty. Patterson argues that sayings 8,14:4, 36, 54,
63-65, 76, 95,100,107, and 109 all indicate Thomas' call for the adherents to participate in willful poverty. For example, Patterson claims that sayings 14:4, 36,
95, and 100, a group classified as "legal sayings" (in the traditional form critical
29 Gerd Theissen, The Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity (trans. J. Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978). 30 Ibid., 159. Patterson's summary of Theissen's hypothesis. 31 Ibid., 170. 32 Ibid., 171-195. 12 sense),33 show that voluntary poverty is the goal which the reader should strive to attain. In support of this reading, Patterson presents 14:4, the call for Jesus' disciples to go out in any region, accept hospitality when it is offered and heal the sick, and saying 100, "[...] 'Give over to Caesar Caesar's, give over to God
God's, and that which is mine, give it to me'" as paired sayings.34 He argues that the lifestyle of the wandering beggar proposed in 14:4 is reinforced in saying 100 where Jesus rejects those who want "less government" and instead demands support for himself.35 Thus, for Patterson, 14:4 and saying 100 work together to enforce the importance of living as a beggar.
While Patterson's hypothesis is indeed plausible, there are problems with this interpretation. For example, the context in which 14:4 is situated is not a discourse on itinerancy. Rather it is wedged between two critiques of Jewish religious practice.36 Saying 14 in full reads:
Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will acquire sin, and if you pray, you will be judged, and if you give alms, you will do evil to your spirits. Rather, if you go upon all the earth and walk in the countryside, when people receive you, that which they give to you, eat it and heal those sick among them. For that which will go into your mouth will not defile you; but that which comes out of your mouth, that will defile you."37
In this context voluntarily becoming beggars does not leap out as the obvious point of the passage. There are also similar interpretive gaps in the other "legal
33 Form critical legal sayings should and will be differentiated from sayings that betray special knowledge of the legal system. That is to say there are several sayings in Thomas which show legal knowledge, but do not fit the form critical definition. These will be examined below. 34 Patterson, Thomas and Jesus, 137. Patterson's translation. 35 Ibid. 361 should note these critiques are not critiques of Judaism per say, but very specific practices within Judaism. It is better to understand this section as an internal critique, i.e. Thomas, a Jew, critiquing a version of Judaism that differs from his own, rather than an external attack on Judaism. 37 This and all other translations of the Gospel of Thomas are the author's unless otherwise stated. 13 sayings" that Patterson claims demonstrate a call to willful poverty. While it is true that these sayings could support itinerancy and voluntary poverty, this seems to be the case only if one presupposes Thomas speaks of itinerancy and voluntary poverty. If we encounter these sayings without this presupposition, it is unlikely that Patterson's itinerancy hypothesis would immediately come to mind.39
Additionally, the very existence of Theissen's itinerants has been seriously been questioned, and is now, for the most part, considered implausible for reasons of both geography and demography.40 The reason that the itinerancy thesis maintained its popularity for so long was not that it was self evident, but that is was read into texts. This appears to be the case due to the fact that scholars have understood the rhetoric of uprootedness literally, rather than as rhetoric.41
Theissen, and those following his model do not articulate a theory bridging literary works and their social context: Theissen assumes that texts are more or less "literal and transparent descriptions of what people are actually doing."42 As
Arnal has observed with regard to itinerancy in Q, "the argument from the texts is
38 Need we assume that the imperative to not worry about what one is to wear (saying 36), or the command to not lend at interest, but to give to those who will not pay you back necessarily point to a life of voluntary poverty? As will be demonstrated below, probably not. 39 The theoretical problems that surround the "itinerant theory" have been meticulously laid out by William E. Arnal (2001). With regard to reading itinerancy into one's primary sources, Arnal has commented that "the reading of the sayings tradition that supports the itinerancy thesis tends to an inconsistent literalism and a failure to explore the contextual force and rhetorical use of individual sayings." idem, Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflict and the Setting of Q (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2001), 1. In the case of Q, Arnal's analysis of the beatitudes has been enlightening regarding whether or not they reflected a call to an itinerant lifestyle. Arnal argues that while "[itinerants may choose to be poor, and perhaps even hungry, [...] they do not choose weeping as a feature of their lifestyle." While the blessing of those who weep is not found in Thomas, Arnal's general argument that the beatitudes should not be read as prescriptive but reactive still holds true (189). For a more general critique of reading itinerancy into the sayings traditions, see Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 67-97. 40 See Richard Horsley, Sociology and the Jesus Movement (New York: Crossroad, 1989), William Arnal, "The Rhetoric of Marginality: Apocalypticism, Gnosticism, and Sayings Gospels," HTR 88:4 (1995): 471-494 esp. 481-482, and idem, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 67-95, 172-183. 41 Amal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 68. 42 Ibid., 69. 14 somewhat circular. An initial insight, itinerancy, determines the fashion in which radical sounding synoptic material of various types will be read. Such a reading, of course, then provides evidence for the postulated itinerants in the first place."43
Thus theories of itinerancy have been supported mainly based on the a priori assumption of itinerancy.
April DeConick's 2006 monograph Recovering the Original Gospel of
Thomas: A History of the Gospel and its Growth, has been touted as one of the most important books on the Gospel of Thomas to date, and presents a very different argument than that forwarded by Patterson. While her book is indeed an important contribution to the growing corpus of Thomas scholarship, many of her conclusions regarding the "original Gospel of Thomas," or "kernel," are built on assumptions regarding the nature of early Christianity that DeConick never addresses.44
DeConick's theory as to the socio-historical location of the Gospel of
Thomas relies on the premise that the gospel if a stratified document, compiled in pieces over a period of just over seventy years. But before positing her own stratification of Thomas, DeConick criticizes previous stratifications of Thomas for not appreciating the complex nature of the Gospel's development.45 She argues that scholars have tended to apply three basic models to Thomas: 1) a
43 Ibid. 44 These assumptions are not my focus here, but they do need to be briefly addressed. DeConick works on the assumption that Thomas is a Jewish document (which it obviously is), but uses this assertion to deny any other cultural influences on Thomas. That is to say for reasons that betray political and religious conservativism, DeConick exclusively privileges Jewish sources and social situations (regardless of how geographically or temporally remote they may be) over more contemporary and geographically proximate Greek sources and social situations. Thus her construction of the "original Gospel of Thomas" is based almost exclusively on the a priori assumption that Thomas emerged from a Jewish, apocalyptic milieu. 45 DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 39-55. 15 model that sees Thomas as the production of one author who composed Thomas from written sources that the author had at his/her disposal, 2) a model that sees
Thomas as the production of one author who composed Thomas from written and oral sources that the author had at his/her disposal, 3) and a redactional model where an initial author composed an early, "kernel" version of Thomas from written and oral sources that the author had at his/her disposal, which at some later point Thomas was redacted with new material being added.46 DeConick is especially critical of the redactional models proposed by Arnal (1995) and
Crossan (1991) and her critiques are threefold and worth reflecting on at some length.47 First, she does not think two layers of redaction are enough to account for the diversity of material found in Thomas. Second, she argues that Arnal's reliance on John Kloppenborg's stratification of Q is a mistake as she is "very reluctant to theorize about the nature of particular stratifications of a minimally reconstructed hypothetical document and then to further theorize about their alleged ramifications for understanding the composition of the Gospel of Thomas.
In my opinion, it is not only better methodologically, but also necessary if we are to develop a compositional history for the Gospel of Thomas out of the Gospel of
Thomas, to listen to its own voice first."48 Third, she finds Crossan's and Arnal's
46 This third model is most notably employed by Crossan, The Historical Jesus, and Arnal "Rhetoric of Marginality." 47 DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 51-54. 48 Ibid., 54. It is not without its irony that DeConick chastises Arnal for not "listening to Thomas' own voice first" before going on to study Thomas with the a priori assumption that Thomas originated in an apocalyptic milieu. It is also worth noting that DeConick's "mistrust" of Q scholarship is indicative of those who are not familiar with it. The study of ancient documents is the study of hypothetical documents. As Arnal has argued with regard to Q, "Such reservations about 'hypothetical' conclusions are invoked selectively and tendentiously: the original text of, say, the Gospel of Mark is also hypothetical, as everyone knows, and so any conclusions drawn from it might also be dismissed as hypothetical; indeed there is little in our field that is not 16 argument that a secondary "Gnostic" layer was added to an originally sapiential one to be an incorrect understanding of the term "Gnosticism." Of these three criticisms only the third holds up under scrutiny. The problem with the term
"Gnosticism" has been thoroughly explored in recent scholarship, and the obvious problems with clumping the secondary development in Thomas as "Gnostic" need not be repeated here.49 What DeConick proposes as an alternative model for
Thomas' stratification is a "rolling corpus" model that acknowledges the fluidity of the oral tradition and is therefore capable of recognizing the multiple redactions that she argues are present in Thomas. While her model's sensitivity to the dynamics of the oral tradition is commendable and her move away from the
"secondary Gnostic additions" to Thomas is refreshing, her understanding of the tradition history of the Gospel of Thomas, like Patterson's, has its problems.
For DeConick, the original Gospel of Thomas was an apocalyptic document that was organized into five speeches: 1) Eschatological Urgency (2,
4:2-3, 5, 6:2-3, 8, 9, 10, 11:1, 14:4, 15, and 16:1-3), 2) Eschatological Challenges
(17, 20:2-4,21:5, 21:10, 21:11, 23:1, 24:2, 24:3,25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
hypothetical." Arnal, "The Trouble With Q," 5. See also Kloppenborg, "To admit that the 2DH [two document hypothesis] is a hypothesis ... is not to encourage the kind of sloppy thinking or worse, intellectual laziness, that casually sweeps aside two centuries of Synoptic criticism with the assertion that 'it is all hypothetical.' Hypotheses are all that we have and all we will ever have. The Synoptic Problem can be addressed only at the level of theory and hypothesis. Hypotheses are to be constructed carefully and used critically and self-consciously. They are to be challenged and corrected by careful review of the evidence. When they are ignored with a whimsical dismissal it is time to wonder what nerve has been touched and whose undefended (or indefensible) assumptions have been threatened." John S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 54. Furthermore, DeConick's critique of Arnal's comparative approach is even more baffling when she herself compares Thomas to texts that are temporally and geographically FAR more different from Thomas than is Q- 49 For a complete discussion on the taxonomical usefulness (or lack thereof) of the term, see Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), and Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002). 17 and 36), 3) Exclusive Commitment to Jesus (38:1,39,40, 41, 42, 44:2-3, 45,46,
47, 48, 54, 55, 57, 58, and 61:1), 4) Selection of the Worthy (62, 63, 64:1-11,65,
66, 68:1, 69:2, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 86, 89, 90, and 91:2), and 5) The
Imminent Kingdom of God (92, 93,94, 95, 96, 97,98, 99,100:1-3, 102, 103, 104,
107, 109, and 111:l).50 She situates this kernel geographically in Jerusalem, and treats it as the product of an oral community of believers who "felt a certain skepticism about the accuracy of texts and preferred to rely on oral sources whenever possible."51 To this kernel (which she dates prior to 50 CE) she argues that several layers of accretions were made over the following 70 years: saying 12 and 68:2 were added between 50 and 60 CE in response to relocation and a leadership crisis; 3:1-3, 6:1,14:1-3, 14:5, 18, 20:1, 24:1,27:2, 37, 38:2,43, 50,
51, 52, 53, 59, 60, 64:12, 69, 70, 88, 91:1, and 113 were added between 60 and
100 CE to accommodate gentiles and deal with an early eschatological crisis
(shifting apocalyptic thought towards mystical thought); and the incipit, 1, 3:4-5,
4:1,4:4,6:4-5, 7,11:2-4, 13, 16:4, 19,21:1-4,21:6-9, 22, 23:2,27:1,28,29,44:1,
42:2b, 49, 56, 61:2-5,67,75, 77, 80, 83, 84, 85, 87, 100:4, 101,105, 106, 108,
110,111:2, 111:3, 112, and 114 were added between 80 and 120 CE in response to the death of eyewitnesses, reflecting new Christological developments as the community continued to deal with the eschatological crisis.52 DeConick traces the
50 Note that DeConick assumes without explanation that the ordering of the sayings in Thomas remained unaltered from kernel (30-50C.E.) to final redaction, the 114 sayings found in our Coptic copy (80-120C.E.). 51 DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 57. 52 April D. DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation: With a Commentary and New English Translation of the Complete Gospel (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 10. 18 compositional history of Thomas from an apocalyptic Jewish milieu (likely in
Jerusalem), to an encratic, mystical milieu (likely in Syria).
One of the significant arguments that DeConick forwards in defending her reconstruction of Thomas' kernel is the oral nature of the kernel, and the fluidity between oral Thomas and written Thomas in the process of expanding the gospel.
She argues that Thomas was the property of a community of believers and that this community was made up of Jerusalemites who relied almost exclusively on oral sayings of Jesus.53 She understands Thomas as initially orally constructed and transmitted, and argues that it was not until the oral tradition gained a certain amount of authority that Thomas was ever written down; the scribes only functioned to record what the community deemed to be important, they had no creative control over the composition of the document since according to
DeConick, things were not written down until after they were authoritative within a given community.54 DeConick's presumption of the existence of this type of oral culture, however, is slightly problematic.55
53 DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 58, 122-123. 54 Ibid., 36. "When the traditions finally reached the stage that they were considered the 'ancient' or 'authoritative' record of the community, one of the scribings began to stabilize and the community became less flexible as to its adaptation and interpretation. Then it became the property of the scribes who transmitted the text by translating it and copying it." This is contrary to our expectations that things would be recorded in order to give them authority (see Tom Thatcher, "Why John Wrote a Gospel: Memory and History in an Early Christian Community," in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity [ed. A. Kirk and T. Thatcher; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005], 79-98). Additionally, DeConick is likely quite right that once texts were written down by scribes they became the intellectual property of those scribes. Yet I would argue that all levels of Thomas, not just the later additions cater to distinctly scribal interests. 55 Her model assumes not a limited literacy, or literacy of only a few trained specialists, but a complete lack of literacy as a meaningful way to communicate tradition specifically, but also in daily life more generally. This ignores the fact that the Eastern Mediterranean had been under the influence of written cultures at least since the Babylonian invasion, and specifically Greek written culture since the occupation of Alexander the Great. So while it is true that the majority probably did not have reading and writing knowledge of Greek, that many would have craftsmen literary is almost certain. See William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard 19
While it is true that literacy rates in the first century were likely quite low, this does not mean that we are dealing with an oral culture. Just because a culture is largely illiterate does not mean that written works are entirely foreign to it. In the world of commerce and trade the presence of craftsman literacy shows that the written word in the form of contracts had power, and a power that was recognized by more than just the literate elite.56 But general discussion of literacy rates overlooks the simple fact that the Gospel of Thomas was, in fact, a written document. Therefore regardless of how likely or unlikely one was to be literate, the fact that our data is a work of literature should indicate problems with any thesis that relies heavily on orality.
The other evidence for the written nature of Thomas can be found within the text itself. The Gospel of Thomas, as it exists in its final version, as well as
DeConick's hypothetical kernel form, is a list. Lists lend themselves to writing more so than they do to ancient orality.57 Lists mark the beginning of a construction of a consensus, and were common to both ancient Greek and Jewish
so culture. One need look no further than Proverbs or Leviticus to see how lists have been historically used to solidify community beliefs and identity. Thomas is essentially a catalogue of Jesus sayings, largely devoid of context or discourse.
One would expect that such a list, as a list, would not appeal to the oral tradition.
Indeed the very fact that "list" is not a sign of low level literacy, as the list was
University Press, 1989), 8. He defines craftsman literary as "not the literacy of an individual craftsmen, but the condition in which the majority, or near majority of skilled craftsmen are literate [...]." This type of literacy was primarily functional. Documents could be read by craftsmen, but the actual purpose of reading was for practical rather than literary purposes. 56 Harris, Ancient Literacy, 8. 57 Jack Goody, The logic of writing and the organization of society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 54. 58 Ibid., 40-41. 20 recognized as a genre, is a fact that has been largely ignored in the vast majority of Thomasine scholarship. The seeming simplicity of the genre should not take away from the fact that it is a genre of writing and therefore any attempt to study it should treat it in terms of a written text of a specific genre. Finally, in defense of the written nature of Thomas, I will let Thomas speak for itself: "These are the secret words which Jesus the living one spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them" (prologue). It is quite clear that the writer of this prologue placed a great deal of authority, not just on the figure of Jesus, or the apostle Thomas, but in the written word. If the author only wanted to emphasize that the following were the authentic words of Jesus, then he/she has already taken two steps in that direction: clarifying that the living Jesus himself spoke these words, and that we can trust this because his disciple Thomas was there to hear them. But, of course, our author goes beyond these two rhetorical moves to emphasize that Thomas wrote these sayings down. There is nowhere a more clear indication that, at this point in the Gospel's formation, the authority of the written word was regarded highly. I fully acknowledge that DeConick deems this to be a very late accretion to
Thomas, but that being said, I also argue that there is a level of continuity in the development of Thomas, and it would be rather unusual for Thomas to originate in a primarily oral environment (which for the reasons listed above I find highly suspect) and then move to an environment where the authority of the written word took priority.
We saw with Patterson's book that to a large extent his arguments for an itinerant Thomas people hinge on a reflective reading of the text: Thomas 21 reported literally what people were doing, or were called to do. With DeConick this reflective reading is even more obvious. DeConick assumes a Jewish- apocalyptic setting for Thomas, and goes on to identify religious symbols in
Thomas which she argues directly reflect this social situation.59 Furthermore, she imbues certain symbols in Thomas with inherent religious (explicitly Jewish)60 meaning including: the kingdom of God,61 the harvest motif,62 banquets,63 fire,64 and the son of man (all of which she interprets apocalyptically).65 DeConick assumes that each of these symbols has inherent religious significance, that they are not only vehicles for conceptions, but conceptions themselves.66 This idea of symbols as vehicles for conceptions, and as conceptions themselves has been rightly critiqued by Talal Asad who argues that "a symbol is not an object or event that serves to carry a meaning but a set of relationships between objects or events uniquely brought together as complexes or as concepts, having at once an
591 was first alerted to the scholarly tendency to read texts symbolically and reflectively after readings Sarah E. Rollens' 2009 SBL paper, "The Representative Potential of the Q Document: Theoretical Approaches According to Asad and Geertz" (paper presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the SBL. New Orleans, LA., 1-15). My critique of Patterson, and especially DeConick is indebted to this paper. 60 The use of Judaism as a cipher for conservative Christianity is quite clearly at work here. She actually denies the utility of analogies between Thomas and Greco-Roman-Persian traditions based on the feet that the "preference for Greco-Roman-Persian traditions is not as much a product of good scholarship as the politics of scholarship and prejudice at a time when Christianity was considered the jewel of Western civilization while Judaism was viewed as a degenerate religion" (6). The belief that any study of early Christianity which does not explicitly draw on Judaism is anti- Jewish has been addressed at length by William Arnal in, The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity, (London: Equinox, 2005). 61 DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 131-143. 62 Ibid., 143-144. 63 Ibid., 145. 64 Ibid., 146-148. 65 Ibid., 148-152. 66 This notion of symbol is most evident in Clifford Geertz, "Religion as a Cultural System," in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (ed. M. Banton ASAM 3; London: Tavistock Publications, 1965): repr. and abridged in Reader in Comparative Religion ( ed. W. A. Lessa and E. Z. Vogt; 4d ed. Boston: Harper Collins Publishers, 1979), 78-89. 22 intellectual, instrumental, and emotional significance." By allowing perceived religious symbols in texts to construct the community in which they were written and read, we ignore the fact that symbols are historically situated in social contexts and discursively implemented by social actors. As a case in point, consider DeConick's understanding of the kingdom of God: she sees the kingdom as part of a larger, Jewish-apocalyptic concept. The kingdom is something specific; it symbolizes the apocalyptic expectations of the community. This assumption of the underlying meaning of the kingdom of God in Thomas is an essential part of DeConick's reconstruction of the Thomas people.69
My analysis of Thomas does not assume that the text is a window through which we can see the Thomas community. As Asad has argued, "[t]he connection between religious theory and practice is fundamentally a matter of intervention— of constructing religion in the world (not in the mind) through definitional discourses, interpreting true meaning, excluding some utterances and practices and including others."70 Thomas functions essentially as theory, but as theory
Thomas also functions discursively. There is a reason that Thomas only preserved sayings of Jesus, and there is a reason that Thomas preserves these specific 114 sayings of Jesus. We cannot identify those reasons beyond doubt, but we can posit strong hypotheses. Willi Braun has argued that Thomas (as well as Q and Paul) is
67 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993), 31. 68 See especially DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 131 where she interprets Thomas 20, the parable of the mustard seed, along apocalyptic lines. 69 Once again I am indebted to Sarah Rollens' and her analysis of how the kingdom has been interpreted symbolically in Q. Rollens, "The Representative Potential of the Q Document," 11. 70 Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 44. 23 a text which is actively forging both an identity and an intellectual space.71 The rhetorical forms in Thomas, as well as the rhetorical force of Thomas suggest both that Thomas is a reasonably sophisticated document (therefore the selection of sayings is likely not random), and that Thomas' rhetoric is being employed to some end. The symbolic meaning of such things as the kingdom of God, the son of man, fire, and banquets is not important, and likely not recoverable. What is important is asking how these ideas were employed as rhetorical devices.
Genre
One rhetorical device which Patterson analyzed but DeConick ignored is
Thomas' genre. Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings, and most agree that
Thomas belongs to the very general genre of sayings collections. Fortunately for us, this has been one of the few areas where a reasonable amount of work on
Thomas has already been accomplished. And while these projects are not explicitly related to the question of a Thomas group, they are helpful in attempting to posit one. One of the major stumbling blocks in attempting to
(re)construct a socio-historical situation in which the Gospel of Thomas was composed and used is the fact that Thomas exists exclusively in textual form. We have no archaeological or ethnographic evidence of a Thomas group.
Furthermore, our textual data is not descriptive data but mythic data, that is, the gospel itself. Thomas functions as a group story: people read it, copied it, listened to it, and interpreted its sayings. But as a group story, Thomas does not report directly on the physical makeup of the group. Thomas blesses the poor and states
71 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Invention," 219. 24 that drinking is a prerequisite to attaining knowledge, but this does not mean that
Thomas was read by poor drunks. Thomas compares the kingdom to an assassin, a shepherd, a fisherman, a woman baking bread, and a woman who loses all her meal (just to name a few). Again, this does not mean that Thomas was read by shepherd-fisher-assassin-baker-women. One must be careful not to read the text reflectively (as I have illustrated above) when attempting to posit a community in which Thomas was composed and used. The question of genre has real implications for social setting (as is argued by Jonathan Z. Smith, 77 John
Kloppenborg,73 Braun,74 and Arnal75) and helps us to get around the problems of reflective readings. It is on the question of genre that my investigation of Thomas will begin.
Thomas was made available to the English speaking world as early as the mid 1950s, but my review will begin in 1964 with James M. Robinsons' essay
"LOGOI SOPHON: Zur Gattung der Spruchquelle Q."76 Here Robinson examines
Thomas as part of the sayings trajectory of early Christianity, a trajectory which includes Q, the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabus, and Pistis Sophia, and may have been preserved in parts in the gospels of Mark and Matthew.77 Robinson argues that the sayings trajectory originated with Jewish wisdom traditions, such as those
72 Jonathan Z. Smith, "Wisdom and Apocalyptic," in Religious Syncretism in Antiquity: Essays in Conversation with Geo Widengren (ed. B. A. Pearson; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975), 131-156: repr. Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions, 67-87(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 73 John Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Christian Wisdom (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987; repr. Harrisburg, P.A.: Trinity Press International, 2000), 263- 316. 74 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Invention," 210-235. 75 Arnal, "The Rhetoric of Marginality," 471-494 idem, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 168-172, 183-203. 76 This essay was translated into English in 1971 and is cited here from the English. Robinson, "LOGOI SOPHON," 71-113. 77 Ibid., 85-95. 25 preserved in the book of Proverbs. The Christian appropriation of Jewish wisdom traditions involves the use of Jesus' sayings explicitly, but also the presentation of
Jesus as divine wisdom (Sophia).78 Robinson notes that in ancient Judaism there was a close connection between sayings collections and sages (sophoi), and many of these works came to be labelled as logoi sophon, words of the wise or sayings of the sage. This was already evident in the LXX in Proverbs 22:17, Ecclesiast, or the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach 1:1 and 12:11, all of which introduce material as "the sayings of the wise/sage."79
For Robinson, Thomas represents a more Gnostic trajectory of this tradition, but the parallels he sees between Thomas and Jewish wisdom literature are quite strong. Robinson argues that, since the title "The Gospel According to
Thomas" is not preserved in the Greek fragments of Thomas, and appears at the end of the Coptic gospel, the opening line (and possibly original title) of the gospel is the incipit: "these are the secret words {logoi) which the living Jesus spoke."80 As Robinson notes, while the term "gospel" is completely missing from
Thomas outside of the appended end title, the term Xoyoi (or at least its Coptic translation Q) A.X.6) is quite common.81 Furthermore, in several places Thomas stresses that the knowledge of Jesus' Xoyot/Cj) AXe is required of the reader. In sayings 19 and 38 Thomas states that knowledge of the sayings of Jesus brings
78 Ibid., 104. 79 Ibid., 109-110. 80 The translation is from the Greek fragments of Thomas. It is important to note that the Coptic Gospel of Thomas translates logoi as (pA.X.6 since U)\X.e (words, sayings, or things) appears in many other places in Thomas, and based on what we know of Coptic Thomas' translation policy, should be understood as a translation of logoi or logos. 81 Ibid., 79. 26 salvation, reinforcing the first saying in the gospel (following the incipit)
"whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."82
Robinson goes on to argue that Thomas presents a "gnosticizing distortion" of the
Gattung based on the idea that the Gnostic trajectory of early Christianity was attracted to wisdom sayings based on the role of Sophia in the Gnostic redeemer myth. Recent work by both Michael Williams and Karen King has seriously called into question the existence of a Gnostic redeemer myth, as well as
Gnosticism generally, and Gnosticism should be discarded as a usefiil descriptive category.84 In light of this newer scholarship, it seems that Thomas is much more at home in the trajectory of Jewish wisdom literature than Robinson initially argued, a point which is addressed (see below) by John Kloppenborg.
In "GNOMAI DIAPHOROI: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity," Robinson's contemporary and colleague,
Helmut Koester takes up Walter Bauer's argument that "Christian groups later labelled heretical actually predominated in the first two or three centuries, both geographically and theologically."85 In making this point, Koester examines the
Gospel of Thomas as an example of the diversity in early Christianity. Koester argues that Thomas represents a trajectory of Christianity that originated in
Edessa. Given that Judas Thomas is referred to as "the twin" (Didymos), Koester argues for an Edessan origin based on parallels found in the traditions of Edessa,
82 Again, my translation from the Greek. The Greek uses Wrycov (genitive plural) and the Coptic translates it as Q)A.X.e. 83 Robinson, "LOGOI SOPHON," 113. 84 Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, and King, What is Gnosticism? 85 Helmut Koester, "GNOMAI DIAPHOROI: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity," in Trajectories Through Early Christianity (ed. H. Koester and J. M. Robinson; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 114. 27 namely the Acts of Thomas.86 Also, the Acts of Thomas, a Syrian text preserved by the Manichaeans, shows several pre-Manichaean elements which Koester attributes to a knowledge of the Gospel of Thomas, and he goes on to argue that
Thomas originated early on in Edessa. Since Koester's "GNOMAI
DIAPHOROI," the idea that Thomas was written in Syria has gained popularity to the extent that this "fact" is more or less taken for granted. Stephen Davies is a notable exception who sees no reason that Thomas must have originated in Syria.
With regard to Thomas' use of the title "twin," Davies correctly points out that the Syriac writings which have been used as evidence that Thomas was Syriac were written in the middle of the third century and therefore tell us very little about Thomas' origins. As Davies puts it, "[t]he use of Thomas by authors writing at least eighty-five years later indicates one region of Thomas' popularity (Syria), while the discovery of fragments of Thomas indicates another region of Thomas' popularity (Egypt)."87
In determining the nature of the Thomasine tradition, Koester, like
Robinson, examines the genre of the material preserved in Thomas. Also like
Robinson, Koester sees Thomas as continuing (albeit modifying) the logoi sophon tradition, consisting primarily of smaller collections of sayings. Thomas, according to Koester, represents the eastern branch of the logoi genre while Q represents the western branch. In terms of the content of Thomas, Koester sees
86 Ibid., 127-127. 87 Stephen Davies, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom (California: Bardic Press, 1983; repr. California: Bardic Press, 2005), 19-20. 88 Ibid., 135-136. It should be noted here that, also like Robinson, Koester sees Thomas as being Gnostic, or at least on the Gnostic trajectory. 28
Thomas as being comprised of prophetic and apocalyptic sayings,89 parables,901- sayings,91 wisdom sayings,92 and rules for the community93 organized very loosely by catchwords, if organized at all.94 Koester has published more recently on Thomas, but his conclusions are for the most part the same: Thomas is a Syrian text which represents an independent (but Gnosticized or Gnosticizing) witness to the sayings tradition preserved in Q.95
Stephen Davies' 1983 monograph, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian
Wisdom, remains one of the best analyses of Thomas and Jewish wisdom traditions to date. Davies' point of departure is Jewish wisdom traditions in Q,96 but unlike Robinson, Davies see the Wisdom tradition represented even more strongly in Thomas. Davies uses Robinson's "LOGOI SOPHON" to establish some initial wisdom features in Thomas, namely Thomas being a collection of sayings introduced by "Jesus said." From this foundation, Davies goes on to produce a much more thorough analysis of Thomas as a wisdom document.
Skipping over Thomas' incipit and first saying, Davies draws attention to the first saying in Thomas which is introduced with the set phrase, "Jesus says," saying 2:
Jesus says, "The one seeking should not cease to seek until he finds, and whenever he finds he will be amazed, and being amazed he will rule, and ruling he will come to rest."97
89 Helmut Koester, "One Jesus and Four Primitive Gospels," in Trajectories Through Early Christianity (ed. H. Koester and J. M. Robinson; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 168-175. 90 Ibid., 175-177. 91 Ibid, 177-179. 92 Ibid., 179-184. 93 Ibid., 184-187. 94 Ibid., 167. 95 See Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 75-127. 96 Davies, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, 15. 97 My translation from P. Oxy. 654. 29
Davies argues that the motifs of seeking and finding, resting, and reigning are all common motifs in wisdom literature.98 The theme of seeking and finding, for example, is one of the most common motifs in wisdom literature. Ben Sirach 6:18 and 51:13-14, 4Q 185, Proverbs 1:28 and 8:17, Ecclesiastes 7:25 and 7:28, and
Wisdom of Solomon 1:1-2 and 6:12-14 are all examples of Jewish wisdom literature in which the theme of seeking and finding is emphasized."
Additionally, "rest" is used variously in Jewish Wisdom literature to describe the conditions of the righteous person after death (Wisdom of Solomon 4:7), and even as a reward of wisdom (Ben Sirach 7:28 and 51:26-27). Finally, the idea that reigning is a reward for those who find wisdom is found in Ben Sirach 7:29-31 and 41:14, Proverbs 2:4-6 and 25:2, and Wisdom of Solomon 6:17-20.100 Davies concludes that Thomas 2 is "in essence a brief summary of some leading ideas of the Wisdom tradition especially as exemplified by the Wisdom of Solomon. One who finds Wisdom will rest and will reign."101
From this starting point, Davies goes on to identify several other places in
Thomas where he sees wisdom motifs: saying 3, 5,6,11,18, 22,24, 28,49, 50,
51, 77, and 113. In addition to these thirteen sayings, Davies argues that Thomas uses "the Kingdom" in the place of wisdom.
The identification of Kingdom and Wisdom is one key to the interpretation of the Gospel of Thomas. This identification can be confirmed (as far as any such proposition can ever be confirmed) if Kingdom logia in Thomas which are otherwise obscure become comprehensible as sayings about Wisdom. The use of Kingdom for
98 Davies, The Gospel of Thomas, 37. 99 Ibid., 37-38. 100 Ibid., 39-40. 101 Ibid., 40. 30
Wisdom is certainly not a feature of traditional Jewish Wisdom literature; it is a new move, a creative shift of the tradition.102
Davies interprets the Kingdom in an apocalyptic sense and argues that Thomas stands at a juncture between wisdom and apocalyptic.103 Davies, however, does not understand Thomas solely in terms of apocalypticism; he also notes that a large portion of Thomas concerns ideas of images and light, similar to Philo, and by extension, Plato.104 Davies concludes this section by arguing that Thomas employs the following ideas, almost at random: apocalyptic language operating at a cosmological level, apocalyptic language operating at an anthropological level, light/wisdom language operating at a cosmological level, and light/wisdom language operating at an anthropological level.105
Two more points which Davies makes are worth mentioning briefly at this point. The first is that he argues that Thomas' Christology is actually a
Sophiology; Thomas presents the figure of Jesus as the embodiment of divine wisdom. "Wisdom's capacity to reveal the secret and hidden things of God is frequently attested in Jewish Wisdom literature, as is the idea that this capacity derives from Wisdom's presence at creation. Jesus, as Wisdom, has this role in
Thomas."106 This is explicitly stated in sayings 5, 6, and 17, and implicit elsewhere, most notably Thomas' incipit and first two sayings. The second point is that Thomas functioned within a community of Christians, specifically as post
102 Ibid., 44-45. 103 Ibid., 45.This is in itself a perfectly reasonable claim. Jonathan Z. Smith has illustrated rather clearly the links between the genres of wisdom and apocalyptic in his aptly titled essay, "Wisdom and Apocalyptic." 104 Davies, The Gospel of Thomas, 62-80. Davies' arguments here will be examined at length in chapter three. 105 Ibid., 79-80. 106 Ibid., 89-90. baptism instruction. Building on a thesis originally forwarded by Jonathan Z.
Smith,107 Davies argues that Thomas' call to become "a single one" (sayings 4,
11, 16, 22, 23, 30, 48, 49, 75,107, and 114), Thomas' interest in the primordial
Adam (sayings 46 and 85), and sayings 21 and 37 show that Thomas speaks of baptism, and functions to instruct new Christians recently baptized.108 While these last two points are somewhat more tenuous, what should be taken away from
Davies' work is his situating of Thomas as a wisdom document that in many important ways reflects motifs common in Jewish wisdom literature.
After Davies, the idea that Thomas was a wisdom collection was one of the few general claims made about Thomas upon which most scholars agree. This is not to say, however, that wisdom was the defining characteristic of Thomas. As
Smith (1978) has shown, wisdom and apocalyptic are related genres. Therefore seeing Thomas as wisdom writing did not mean Thomas was not read as apocalyptic. Wisdom was also seen as a trajectory that led towards Gnosticism, and so seeing Thomas as wisdom writing did not prevent Thomas from being read as Gnostic either. One of the major contributors to this discussion concerning the genre and content of sayings collections has been John Kloppenborg in his 1987 monograph, The Formation of Q, which stands as one of the most important studies in the genre of ancient sayings collections to date. Here Kloppenborg argues that in terms of Q's genre (and by extension, Thomas' genre), too much has been made of the influence of Jewish sayings collections, and not enough attention has been paid to Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Near-Eastern sayings
107 Jonathan Z. Smith, "Garments of Shame," in HR 5:2 (1966): 217-238; repr. in Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 1-23. 108 Davies, The Gospel of Thomas, 121. 32 collections, which both pre-date Jewish sayings collections, and have been shown to have influenced them.109 He argues that since Q contains elements not native to
Jewish sayings traditions (namely chreiai, a Greek rhetorical form), and since Q was not written in Hebrew or Aramaic but in Greek (the exact same can be said for Thomas: Thomas is an originally Greek document which consists exclusively of chreiai), Greek analogies should prove just as important as Jewish analogies.
Not acknowledging Q's (or Thomas') affinity with Greek sayings collections had been a major drawback of Q scholarship to date.
Kloppenborg identifies three literary modalities used in and around the ancient Mediterranean to present wise sayings: the instruction genre, the
Hellenistic Gnomologia, and Chreia collections. The instruction genre was the main form in which wisdom was conveyed in both Egypt and the Near East.110
Typical instructions featured a title as well as an attribution to a figure of authority; in many cases kings, scribes, or wise sages. And while these authoritative figures authorized the instructions, they were never presented as the creators of the instructions.111 Instructions also commonly featured a prologue or an exordium which usually contained, among other things, an exhortation to hearken to the instructions herein.112 In the case of Egyptian wisdom instructions, their sociological location was in the palace, or in scribal schools (this is somewhat less clear in the case of Near Eastern instructions).113 The rhetoric of both Egyptian and Near Eastern sayings collections was inherently conservative:
109 Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q, 263. 110 Ibid., 264. 111 Ibid., 275. 112 Ibid., 265-266. 113 Ibid., 282-283. 33 their goal was "to inculcate an appreciation for the divinely ordained order and to promote action in accordance with that order."114
In the Greek wisdom tradition, rhetoricians identify two basic forms of wisdom saying: the gnome and the chreia. They are almost identical except for the fact that the chreia is attributed to a person, and the gnome is not.115 Chreiai also occasionally report biographical details of the sage to which they are attributed, generally in the form of anecdotes from the sage's life. Like the Egyptian and
Near Eastern instructions, for Greek gnomologia and chreia collections attribution to a known sage was the rule, and as with the instruction genre the attribution to a known figure functioned to authorize the sayings.116 A major difference between the Egyptian and Near Eastern instructions, and the Greek gnomologia and chreia, however, is that chreiai and gnomologia are most frequently credited to philosophers, not kings. In terms of social setting, Kloppenborg argues that gnomologia and chreia collections "were used in schools as writing and spelling exorcises, and to inculcate ethical values," while other collections may have been employed on a somewhat higher level of moral instruction, both in schools and in homes.117 Some of the more sophisticated sayings collections functioned in philosophical communities as both catechisms and as summaries of teaching.118
This is especially the case with many chreia collections which seem to have functioned solely to preserve the wise words of a given sage.119 Gnomologia and
1,4 Ibid., 286. 115 Ibid., 291. 116 Ibid., 292-293 117 Ibid., 299. 118 Ibid., 300. 119 Hock and O'Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I. (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1986), 64. 34 chreia collections also differed from Egyptian and Near Eastern instruction in a significant way with regard to interpretation: whereas instructions were conservative and did not invite interpretation, gnomologia and chreia occasionally required interpretation to render them properly.120 Following his analysis of these various sayings genres, Kloppenborg argues that Q originated as an instruction document: it was clear that the document reported the words of Jesus; the use of the imperative signals proximity to the instruction genre; and the setting for the first layer of Q (wisdom speeches to a religious community) falls within the
191 parameters of the possible setting for instruction. Kloppenborg acknowledges elements in Q's first layer that depart from what one would expect in instruction: namely, Q does not employ the metaphor of parental instruction, and Q is not
i "yy conservative, and in fact seems to be much more subversive. This initial layer of Q was expanded through the addition of multiple chreiai (Kloppenborg's Q )
17 "K and finally with the addition of the temptation narrative.
Q-specific contributions aside, Kloppenborg's Formation of Q contributes to the study of sayings collections in general by showing that Christian sayings collections can be compared to several ancient sub-genres of collected sayings, and not just Jewish wisdom literature. Reading Q alongside Egyptian and Near
Eastern instructions, and Greek gnomologia and chreia collections as well as
Jewish wisdom literature allows us to see the literary diversity in Q, and helps to
120 Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q, 305. Kloppenborg draws specific attention to the Pythagorean acousmata, sayings which were intentionally obscure and required the interpretation of knowing insiders. This functioned rhetorically to prevent outsiders from understanding. A similar rhetoric seems to be at play in the Gospel of Thomas and will be examined in depth below. 121 Ibid., 317-318. 122 Ibid., 318. 123 Ibid., 322-327. 35 identify analogical parallels which show that Q is much more than merely a collection of Jewish wisdom sayings.124 Q needs to be situated in a milieu in which it is possible to consider non-Jewish literary and stylistic influences. The same is true for Thomas. While it is certainly the case that Thomas, like Q, resembles Jewish wisdom literature in many ways, to examine Thomas through the lens of Jewish wisdom exclusively is to ignore the parallels Thomas shows with other sayings genres, especially gnomogolia and chreiai collections. The remainder of this thesis will address the question of Thomas' genre, and the socio- historical implications that can be drawn based on Thomas' genre and content.
The identification of Thomas as a sayings collection goes a long way to identifying a socio-historical location for the gospel, as will be argued in chapter three. But before this line of thought is pursued further, there are some more specific observations that need to be made about Thomas' genre and setting.
1241 should note that Kloppenborg would argue that Jewish wisdom collections are also much more than Jewish wisdom collections. It is widely acknowledged that Proverbs 1-9 and 22:17- 24:22 was influenced by the Egyptian instruction genre. The same can be said for parts of the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach, ibid., 277-287. 2. Farming and Chreiai, Together at Last: Thomas as a (reasonably) sophisticated urban document
As chapter one hopefully made evident, we are somewhat impoverished when it comes to socio-historical studies of Thomas. That being the case, I would like to suggest two theses which may help us to better understand the gospel: first, that
Thomas was produced in an urban environment; and second, that Thomas, in its final form, is a rhetorically coherent and sophisticated document. In the case of the first argument, there are currently two points of view, neither of which (I think) are supported by the text of Thomas. I have addressed each of these points in chapter one: April DeConick argues that Thomas (or at least Thomas' kernel) was written in Jerusalem (urban), and Stephen Patterson argues that Thomas was written in a rural environment and used by rural peoples in the form of itinerant preachers. I have already addressed the problem of itinerancy in Thomas, but
DeConick's theory that Thomas was written in Jerusalem needs a little bit more attention.
Thomas as an urban product
DeConick's argument that Thomas was composed in Jerusalem should not be confused with an argument that Thomas is the product of an urban environment. In fact, DeConick's general theory that Thomas is an apocalyptic
"speech gospel"125 suggests Thomas was not the product of a scholastic urban group. It is true that the genre "apocalyptic" belongs in an urban setting, but an oral Thomas rather than a written Thomas does not. Regardless of these
125 DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, 113-156. 37 observations, DeConick does not base her situating of Thomas in Jerusalem on genre or orality, but instead on the assumption that Jerusalem was the location of
1 "yfx the origin of Christianity, and that these Jerusalem Christians possessed the kind of oral tradition of which DeConick understands Thomas as being a part. So while DeConick is probably correct in arguing that Thomas was composed in an urban location, her reasoning for this is almost completely counter to my own.
Perhaps one of the strongest arguments for Thomas as an urban document is the fact that Thomas is a written document and individuals with writing competencies were almost exclusively situated in urban environments. This is due to the fact that the ability to write was an extremely functional skill, and if one could write, one was either well educated (a rhetorician, orator, sophist, or philosopher), or a grammarian/scribe. Socially, these grammarians/scribes occupied a "middling respectability"127 and could fill the role of a teacher, assessor, urban tax collector, village administrator, or work in other low level administrative positions,128 and it is these low level administrators who both
Kloppenborg (1991) and Arnal (2001) argue are behind Q.129 Regardless of social standing, rhetoricians, orators, sophists, philosophers, and grammarians/scribes all
126 DeConick is convinced that Christianity emerged from a monolithic single point of origin (245). She goes on to acknowledge the presence of multiple "Christianities" but argues that "the presence of varieties of early Christianities (canonical and extra-canonical) in and of themselves does not mean that Christianity could not have developed out of a singular point of origin," that origin being in Jerusalem with the apostles immediately following Jesus' death (246). DeConick's study of Thomas is better seen as an defence of the Luke-Acts narrative of Christian origins than it is a critical study of Thomas. 127 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Invention," 223. 128 Ibid., 224. 129 John S. Kloppenborg, "Literary Convention, Self-Evidence and the Social History of the Q People," in Semeia 55 (1991) (ed. J. S. Kloppenborg and L. Vaage) 85-86, Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 168-172. 38 operated in urban, not rural settings. Given that Thomas is a written document, it would make sense for us to understand it within an urban milieu.130
One would, perhaps, expect that an urban document would be ripe with images of the city, stories of the city, and metaphorical as well as literal references to city life. If this were the case then the argument that Thomas is an urban product would appear to be a poor one. Indeed there is almost no mention of the city in Thomas, save for two sayings, one of which is so general that it can be rendered rather useless a priori.131 Thus, only in Thomas 64, the parable of the great banquet, do we have imagery of the city. Even so, this passage can tell us a great deal. To briefly summarize the parable, Thomas 64 tells of a man who, having prepared a feast, sent his servants to invite his guests (64:1). The guests all made excuses, and when the servant informed the host that his guests had declined his invitation, the master instructed the servant to go into the streets' and bring in the people he/she finds to dine with the host (64:2-11). The parable concludes with Jesus stating that "buyers and merchants [will] not enter the place of my Father" (64:12). While it is not explicitly stated, it is almost certain that the host of the banquet resides in an urban setting. This is not to say that it is impossible to imagine a man hosting a banquet in the country, but the implicit clues within the parable strongly suggest an urban environment. Central here is the fact that a single servant was able to visit four different people and return to
130 I spend chapter 3 establishing Thomas as a scribal document based on the written forms present in Thomas. This observation further strengthens the argument that Thomas is an urban product. 131 Thomas 32 states that "A city built upon a hill and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden." This saying betrays no specialized knowledge of cities or fortifications; rather it uses the image to make an unrelated rhetorical point. 39 his master with their excuses after the dinner had been prepared.132 This suggests little to no travel from house to house. The urban setting is further affirmed with the master's order to the servant to "go outside to the streets." While AN2IOOYG is slightly ambiguous (it can refers to a road, path, or way; its Greek equivalent, oboq, is equally ambiguous), the fact that it is plural would suggest multiple streets, thus an urban setting. Therefore the narrative of the parable implicitly suggests that is it almost certainly set in an urban environment. This hypothesis finds further support in the excuses given by each of the originally invited guests: the first must collect money from some merchants and give them instructions
(64:3), the second has bought a house and been called away (64:5), the third is to arrange the marriage dinner of a friend (64:7), and the fourth has bought a town
(<\eiTOOY N OYKCJOMe) and needs to collect the rent (64:9). There are several observations that can be made from these four excuses. First, all the invited guests are wealthy men, and their excuses are tied to their participation in an urban environment where they function as elites.133 Additionally these four transactions are all legal transactions—the collection of money, the buying of property, and marriage—and would therefore be very familiar to a particular type of literate
132 Compare this to Matthew 22:1-14 where the host sends several servants. 133 Gregory E. Sterling, '"Where Two or Three are Gathered': The Tradition History of the Parable of the Banquet (Matt 22:1-14ILuke \A:\6-2AIGThom 64)," in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung— Rezeption—Theologie (ed. Jorg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes and Jens Schroter. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter: 2008), 105. Some argue that the wedding host does not seem to represent urban/retainer interests, but if we read Gos. Thorn. 64 alongside Luke 14:26-24 then this argument becomes more clear. In Luke the invited guest was just married (and presumably needs to consummate the marriage as per Deut. 20:7), whereas in Gos. Thorn, the invited guest is hosting a wedding feast. Therefore this guest is not only in a financial position to host a feast, but is also exhibiting his own wealth. For more on hosts exhibiting their own wealth see Willi Braun, Feasting and social rhetoric in Luke 14 (SNTSMS 85. Cambridge: University Press, 1995: repr., Cambridge: University Press, 2005), esp. pages 106-128. 40 urban individual, scribes.134 The conclusion to the parable, "Buyers and merchants [will] not enter the places of my Father," further solidifies the fact that those who refused the banquet are buyers and merchants (and also further suggests an urban setting as buyers and merchants were more typically urban figures). The presence of "buyers and merchants" in the story likely shows that the narrative takes place in an urban setting, but it need not necessarily indicate that the parable was composed in an urban setting. To illustrate this, I turn to the excuses given by the originally invited guests. The composer/redactor of these excuses seems quite familiar with the business dynamics of an urban setting based on the excuses each guest gives. Most telling is the excuse given in 64:9: not only does the composer/redactor show explicit knowledge of the dynamics of this business transaction (when one buys a village he/she must go and collect the rent), but also implicitly presents this as the norm (of course one would collect rent immediately after buying a town!). It should be noted that there is no reason for us to assume that the parable of the great banquet was predisposed to either critique buyers and merchants, or to illustrate familiarity with the legal system itself. The incorporation of these motifs is a distinctly Thomasine addition. We need look no further than the parable of the great banquet in Matthew or Luke to see the different ways it was received. Matthew turns the parable into an allegory of
Israel's history,135 and Luke uses the parable to relate a "realistic story" about the
134 Amal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 150-155. 135 Eugene E. Lemcio, "Hie Parables of the Great Supper and the Wedding Feast: History, Redaction, and Canon," HBT 8 (1986): 5; Warren Carter, "Resisting and Imitating the Empire: Imperial Paradigms in Two Matthean Parables," Int 56 (2002): 269; David C. Sim, "The Man Without the Wedding Garment (Matthew 22:11-13)," HeyJ 31 (1990): 165; Humphrey Palmer, "Just married, Cannot Come," NovT 18 (1976): 255; John Henry Paul Reumann, "Methods in Studying the Biblical Text Today," 41 conversion of a rich householder.136 The very different ways in which this parable has been manipulated by Matthew and Luke support the hypothesis that Thomas' version has also undergone manipulation (probably by Thomas' redactor/composer and not at some oral stage) which intended not only to reflect the concerns of the redactor, but employ images and situations that the redactor was familiar with.
In spite of the evidence that the composer of Thomas 64 betrays a knowledge of the legal system that we would not expect from a rural figure, there are still those who would argue that those most opposed to merchant interests (i.e. those presented in the parable) would have been the peasants exploited by them, and thus we are looking at a peasant, and probably rural, document. However, the overt and literary form of resistance found in Thomas 64 is not indicative of peasant-like resistance, which tends to employ more passive forms of resistance
117 such as simple heel dragging. The formal as well as contextual evidence in 64 strongly suggests not only an urban setting within the parable, but an urban setting for the construction and redaction of the parable. Yet the analysis of a single parable in a text with a compositional history as complex as Thomas is, admittedly, not enough to assert that Thomas is an urban product. In order to do this I turn to the much more common agricultural images found in Thomas.
CTM 40 (1969): 677. Reumann argues that the allegory constructed in the Gospel of Matthew stretches from the prophets of the Hebrew Bible to the last judgment. 136 Braun, Feasting and social rhetoric in Luke 14,98-131. 137 See for instance, James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance (London: Yale University Press, 1985), 24. Regarding passive resistance Scott has in mind "the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth." For an overview of peasant resistance in Q and Thomas see Arnal, "Rhetoric of Marginality," 482. 42
Whereas there are very few instances where images of the city are presented in Thomas, there is an abundance of images of agricultural situations.
One would suspect that the abundance of agriculture images (Thomas 9, 20, 21,
40,45, 57, 63, 65, 73, 77, 78,107, 109) would present a strong case for a rural origin of Thomas. Yet upon closer inspection these images of agriculture are vague and indicate no specialized knowledge of the processes of farming (unlike
Thomas 64 which certainly indicates specialized knowledge of urban legal transactions).
Thomas 9, 20, 21, 40, 45, 57, and 65 deal explicitly with the growing of crops, and an examination of how the composer/redactor presents farming practices provides the best evidence that he/she is not intimately familiar with contemporary farming methods. Thomas 9 describes the sower as taking, "a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them)" some falling on the road, some on rocks, some in thorns, and some in good soil and that the seeds that fell on the good soil
"sixty per measure and one hundred and twenty per measure." What is immediately apparent is the vagueness of this description. I do not think that I am making an unfair assumption when I argue that the fact that seeds needed to be sown in order to grow was reasonably common knowledge in the first century.
Thus this particular section betrays no specialized knowledge of first century farming practices, and in facts lacks explanation for much of its content. Why is the sower not rebuked for being so careless as to sow seeds on the road, on stones or among thorns?138 What type of seed is being sown? What stage of life were
138 Compare this to Columella's rebuke of the careless slaves: "they do not plough the ground carefully, and they charge up the sowing of far more seed than they have actually sown; what they 43 these seeds in? One would expect, even if the parable is intended to be read metaphorically, that the author would do all in his/her power to illustrate that the seed was good, and that the "good soil" was properly prepared. Consider
Columella's (a contemporary land owner who wrote extensively on first century
Syrian farming practices and who provides much of our data on first century farming) De Re Rustica 4:1 where he states regarding the preparation of the earth:
Rich plains which hold water for a considerable length of time are to be broken at a time of year when it is growing warm, after they have put forth all their vegetation and while the seeds of this vegetation have not yet ripened; but they should be ploughed with furrows so numerous and close together that it can hardly be told in what direction the ploughshare has been driven, for in this way all the roots of the growth are broken off and killed.139
While we might not expect this same detailed description in a parable, we would expect some mention of the preparation of the earth beyond "good soil" in a parable of a rural setting. With regard to seed selection, Columella states:
The seeds of first importance and most useful to mankind are grains of wheat and emmer. We know of several varieties of wheat; but of this number that called robus or "ruddy" is most suitable for sowing, because it is superior in both weight and brightness. Second place must be given to siligo or winter wheat, which is of excellent appearance in bread but lacking in weight. The third shall be the three-months wheat, the use of which is most gratifying to farmers; for when, because of rains or some other reason, an early sowing has not been made, recourse is had to this. This, again, is a variety of siligo. The other kinds of wheat, except for those who find pleasure in a great variety of crops and in idle vainglory, are superfluous. Of emmer, however, we commonly see four varieties in use: the far which is called Clusian, of a white and shiny appearance; that called vennuculum, one kind reddish and the other white, but both of greater weight than the Clusian; the three-months far, called halicastrum,
have committed to the earth they do not so foster that it will make the proper growth; and when they have brought it to the threshing-floor, every day during the threshing they lessen the amount either by trickery or by carelessness." De Re Rustica of Columella Book 1, published in Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1941. Public domain accessed at http://penelope.uchicago.edU/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Columella/de_Re_Rustica/l *.html. 7:6. 139 De Re Rustica of Columella Book 1. 44
which is excellent both in weight and in goodness. But these kinds of wheat and emmer should be kept by farmers for this reason, that seldom is any land so situated that we can content ourselves with one kind of seed, as some strip which is either swampy or dry cuts through it. Further, wheat grows better in a dry spot, while emmer is less harmed by moisture.140
Again, my argument here is not that we should expect this type of detailed description from the Thomasine composer/redactor, but that the complete absence of any reference to the type of seed being planted would be puzzling in a rural setting, especially when the integrity of the seed plays directly into the rhetoric of the parable. These neglected details—the proper preparation of the soil, the type of seed, and the time of year that they are sown—will all have direct implications for how much crop is produced.141 Sixty and one hundred and twenty per measure are huge exaggerations which function rhetorically to make the point that something special is happening here; clearly they make no reference to a plausible yield.142 This is indicative of a common theme in Thomas where agricultural images are used in parables and stories that actually have very little to do with agriculture. They betray no specialized knowledge of agricultural processes; rather they are used to tell a story. By way of example, the presence of the parable of the fisherman (Thomas 8) in no way suggests that Thomas was composed in a fishing town. The fact that the fisherman "cast his nets into the sea, and drew it up
141 The neglect of these details prevents a "realistic reading" of the parable in light of the realities of first century agriculture. My observations here have parallels in Kloppenborg's study of viticulture in the parable of the tenants. In his comparison of the parable in Mark 12:1-8 and Thomas 65 Kloppenborg observes that Mark neglects certain details that prevent a "realistic reading" of the parable. For example Mark's landlord plants a vineyard and expects payment right away, in spite of the fact that vineyards take five years to become productive; Mark's tenants believe that murdering the heir will give them the farm, in spite of the fact there is no legal precedent for this; and finally, Mark's landlord exacts his own vengeance, in spite of the fact there were legal channels that the landlord could and should have gone through. John S. Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard (Tubingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 281-283. 142 Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 224 ftn. 19. from the sea full of little fish" in no way requires specialized knowledge of fishing practices to produce or interpret. Indeed the fact that the fisherman threw away all but the biggest fish would indicate, as Patterson observes, that this parable is not concerned with the economics of fishing.143 Likewise Thomas 20,
21, 40, 45, 57, and 63 betray no more knowledge of farming than 9 does.
While there is an undeniable abundance of agricultural images in Thomas, these images by no means hold a monopoly on Thomas' content. Thomas also contains a number of sayings concerned with legal issues, namely sayings 64, 65,
72 and 109. The value in recognizing the legal knowledge betrayed in 64 and 109 should not be under appreciated, as it provides some of the best evidence (as has already been shown to some degree) that Thomas is a scribal document. Scribes specialized in, among other things, legal affairs, and this specialization can be seen in Thomas most clearly in saying 64. Recall that the excuses made by the four originally invited guests show intimate familiarity with the legal transactions taking place here: this is especially significant when we consider that the two other versions of this parable (in Matthew and Luke) differ drastically in terms of the excuses and the overall function of the parable.144 Thus Thomas' presentation of the parable is likely not an example of unaltered tradition, but of Thomasine redaction. This need not assume that Thomas is dependent on Luke and Matthew or vice versa. All three versions of the parable betray the creative hands of the author, illustrating that the integration of the parable into all three of these gospels was by no means a passive process. So what does this say about Thomas? It says
143 Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 143-145. 144 See above page 38-41. 46 that those who redacted 64 show undeniable familiarity with scribal legal knowledge. But it is not only legal content that suggests a scribal origin, but also the rhetorical form and content of many of the sayings in Thomas more generally.
Thus with Thomas we have a document that appears to be at least somewhat familiar with urban legal procedures, while at the same time illustrates only the most general understanding of agricultural practices.
In the previous chapter I mentioned some of the formal aspects of the
Gospel of Thomas, specifically the identification of Thomas with wisdom literature, and the identification of Thomas as a chreai collection. It is on the rhetorical form of the chreia in Thomas which I would like to spend considerably more time, especially given that there has been, to my knowledge, only one published study that attempts to analyze Thomas rhetorically.145 In fact, not only has Thomas' use of rhetorical forms and devices been ignored in Thomasine scholarship, but some have gone so far as to deny the rhetorical integrity of
Thomas as a document.146
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Thomas is rarely studied on its own terms. Instead Thomas is used as a mine for historical Jesus data, or is deemed to be a late dependent gospel, and therefore ignored. Looking at Thomas as an
145 This one exception is William Arnal, "The Rhetoric of Social Construction: Language and Society in the Gospel of Thomas," in Rhetoric and Reality on Early Christianities (ed. Willi Braun; ESCJ 16; Wilfrid Laurier: University Press, 2005): 27-48. There have been investigations of Thomas' genre (see Robinson, "LOGOISOPHON" and Davies, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom), but these studies have been largely uninterested in the rhetorical forms present in the text. The other possible exception, besides Arnal, is Kloppenborg's The Formation of Q. Here Kloppenborg does look at some rhetorical forms in Thomas, but does so to support his thesis regarding Q, and does not forward the arguments for Thomas' sake per se. 14 Notably Nicholas Perrin, Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron, (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002). Perrin argues that Thomas is literarily dependent on the Diatessaron, and therefore any rhetorical devices used in Thomas would not have been Thomasine, but a result of Tatian's own redactional and compositional tendencies. 47 integral document which is interesting on its own is long overdue. However, before this argument is pursued, it is important to acknowledge that, in places, the text of Thomas itself seems to suggest there is no rhetorical sophistication to it.
Thomas lacks both developed dialogues, and narrative structure, and presents itself as a list of scattered, and often unrelated (and sometimes enigmatic) sayings.
See for example Thomas 30 through 32:
30: "Jesus says, 'where there are three, they are godless, and where one is alone, I say that I myself am that one.'147 31: "Jesus says, 'A prophet is not accepted in his fatherland, nor does a physician tend to his neighbours. 32: "Jesus says, 'A city built on the top of a high mountain and fortified can neither fall nor be secret."148
While these three sayings in Thomas share little (if any) thematic parallels, formally they are quite closely related as they are all chreiai. This may not seem as though it is of any importance, but the chreia played a significant role in the education of Greek grammaticians and rhetors and therefore the presence of 114 chreiai in a single document may indicate a lot more about Thomas' rhetoric and formal unity than previously imagined.149
147 This passage is odd enough by itself. It is made stranger by the fact that the Coptic version reads slightly different, "Jesus says, 'In the place where there were three gods, they are gods. In the place where there are two or one, I myself am with it." 148 All three sayings my translation from the Greek fragments. P.Oxy. 1:27-3, 30-41. Additionally, the seemingly random placement of the sayings in Thomas has often caused people to overlook the fact that Thomas is actually unified under the umbrella of a single literary genre: Thomas is a list. This, of course, is never denied, but the implications of understanding Thomas as a list have often been overlooked. Lists mark the beginning of a construction of a consensus, and are alien to neither ancient Greek or Jewish culture (Jack Goody, The logic of writing and the organization of society, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], 40-41). One need look no further than Proverbs or Leviticus to see how lists have been historically used to solidify community beliefs and identity. The seeming simplicity of the genre (lists) should not take away from the fact that the list is a genre of writing. 48
The Chreia in ancient writing
Definitions and descriptions of the chreia abound in ancient texts, but for my purposes I will define the chreia as "a concise statement or action which is attributed with aptness to some specified character or to something analogous to a character."150 "It has the name 'chreia' because of its excellence, for more than the other exercises it is useful in many ways for life."151 This definition was given by Theon of Alexandria in his progymnasmata152 composed sometime in the middle of the first century CE.153 And while this is our earliest available definition of the chreia, they existed as a literary form long before the first century. Plato (c.
428-c. 348 BCE), for example, mentions chreiai attributed to Sophocles (c. 497-c.
407 BCE), and Diogenes Laertius (200s CE) credits Aristippus (c. 435-c. 356
BCE) with having written an entire book on the chreia.154 Exact dates are not important. What is important is that chreiai can be traced back at least as far as
Plato, and were very well known and widely used in the Hellenistic-Roman world by the first century of the common era. The chreia was especially popular in philosophical circles, and was used to capture and preserve the characteristics and teaching behaviours of venerable teachers of the past.155 They were not, however, exclusive to philosophical circles, and they were often attributed to respected or
150 Aelius Theon of Alexandria, Progymnasmata, 201:17-20. Translated by R. F. Hock and E. N. O'Neil in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I. The Progymnasmata, (ed. R. F. Hock and E. N. O'Neil; Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1986), 83. 151 Ibid., 25-28. 152 Much more will be said on the Progymnasmata below. The word progymnasmata refers to both the singular (Theon's progymnasmata), and the plural (the surviving progymnasmata). This is because progymnasmata is a composite word: pro ("fore" in Greek) and gymnasmata ("exercises" in Greek) and gymnasmata is already plural. 153 Hock and O'Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 64. 154 Ibid., 3. 49 authoritative figures more generally. Alexander (the Great), Aesop, Achilles,
Damon (the gymnastic teacher), Euripides (the poet), the Lacedaemonians,
Olympias (Alexander the Great's mother), and many others have chreiai attributed to them. The popularity of the chreia is evident not only in the number of people to whom chreiai were attributed, but also by the number of authors who knew chreiai, and the number of chreiai they used.156 "Dio Chrysostom remarks that everybody could recite chreiai about Diogenes,"157 and thousands of chreiai can be found in the writings of Plutarch, Quintilian, Lucian, and Diogenes
Laertius. Chreia likely circulated orally, but it was in written form that they survived, and very early on recording chreiai in writing was practiced in order to preserve the teachings therein.158
While it is certainly the case that chreiai were known to the masses, and likely used in popular discourse, they also had a scholastic function. As Quintilian tells us, the education system of the ancients was quite complex and involved many stages: primary education, grammatice (grammar school), progymnasmata
(preliminary exercises in preparation for rhetorical training), and finally, learning rhetoric under a rhetorician.159 It is in the progymnasmata where the chreia played the greatest educational role and subsequently it is the surviving progymnasmata which tell us the most about the nature and utility of the chreia. While our first extant progymnasmata are those of Theon of Alexandria (which dates them somewhere in the mid to late first century CE), Quintilian's references to the
158 Ibid., 9-10. 159 Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriae, (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001), 2.1-4. 50 progymnasmata in The Orator's Education indicate that these exercise books were standard by the beginning of the first century CE, and likely date back to the
Hellenistic period.160
The chreia in the progymnasmata
The relative placement of the chreia in the progymnasmata is not absolutely clear. Aphthonius places it third of the fourteen exercises: 1) fable, 2) narrative, 3) chreia, 4) maxim, 5) refutation, 6) confirmation, 7) commonplace, 8) encomium, 9) censure, 10) comparison, 11) characterization, 12) description, 13) thesis, and 14) introduction of a law.161 Theon of Alexandria, however, places the chreia first, followed by fable, narrative, topic, and so on.162 Regardless of the relative position of the chreia in the progymnasmata, what should be observed is that chreiai were worked with at an early stage.
In the progymnasmata students would work with the chreia in several different predetermined exercises. For instance; they would define the chreia in much the same way I have done to introduce them. Additionally the students would be expected to be able to differentiate them from maxims and reminiscence.163 Chreiai, by definition were attributed to some character, maxims were not; chreiai can make both general and specific statements, maxims only make general ones; chreiai are often witty and have no bearing on daily life, whereas maxims are always concerned with useful matters; and chreiai can be
160 Hock and O'Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 16. 161 Anon. Schol. 2.567, 7-10 Walz. in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 17. 162 Hock and O'Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 17. 163 Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume /., 9-24, and Hermogenes of Tarsus, On the Chreia, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume /., 19-22. 51 actions or sayings, whereas maxims are only sayings.164 To this Hermogenes adds that chreiai are frequently expressed as a question and answer dialogue, whereas maxims are simple statements.165 Chreiai also differ from reminiscence as chreiai are quite concise where reminiscence can be expanded, and the reminiscence, like the maxim, is not attributed to a character.166 The students of the progymnasmata would also be expected to be able to divide chreiai into three classifications: sayings chreiai, action chreiai, and mixed chreiai.167
Finally, and perhaps most important, students of the progymnasmata were expected to manipulate chreiai, expanding them in rather specific ways. The ways in which to manipulate chreiai differ from progymnasmata to progymnasmata.
Theon, for example, gives us several exercises in chreiai manipulation: recitation, the student attempts as best he/she can to report an assigned chreiai using similar or identical wording;168 inflexion, a more complicated exercise which requires the student to render the speaker in the singular, dual, plural, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, active, passive, and so on;169 commenting both positively and negatively on the statements in the chreia;170 expand the chreia;171
1 T) condense the chreia; refute the chreia, be it for its obscurity, uselessness,
164 Theon, 9-18. 165 Hermongenes ofTarsus, On the Chreia, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 16-25. This question/answer dialogue arises in several places in Thomas. 166 Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 19-24. 167 Ibid., 29-35. 168 Ibid., 195-198. 169 Ibid., 199-275. 170 Ibid., 276-308. 171 Ibid., 309-312. It is odd that this, the step that most other progymnasmata give the most attention to, receives so little from Theon. 172 Ibid., 313-333. 52 implausibility, falsity, unsuitability, or shamelessness;173 and finally, confirmation, a term and practice that Theon leaves incredibly vague and ill- defined.174 Theon's system of chreiai manipulation is somewhat complicated (due to its vagueness, not to the actual exercises) and it is not attested to in the other progymnasmata.
Hermogenes, unlike Theon, spends comparatively little time treating the definition (lines 2-4), classification (lines 4-30), and expansion (lines 31-61) of chreiai.175 In spite of his brevity, his elaborations are much clearer than Theon's, and the later progymnasmata follow Hermogenes' manipulations, not Theon's.176
Hermogenes' expansions are the following, quoted in full.
But now let me move on to the chief matter, and this is the elaboration. Accordingly, let the elaboration be as follows: (1) First, an encomium, in a few words, for the one who spoke or acted, Then (2) a paraphrase of the chreia itself; then (3) the rationale. For example Isocrates said that education's root is bitter, its fruit is sweet. (1) Praise; "Isocrates was wise," and you amplify the subject moderately. (2) Then the chreia: "He said thus and so," and you are not to express it simply but rather by amplifying the presentation. (3) Then the rationale: "For the most important affairs generally succeed because of toil, and once they have succeeded, then bring pleasure." (4) Then the statement from the opposite: "For ordinary affairs do not need toil, and they have an outcome that is entirely without pleasure; but serious affairs have the opposite outcome." (5) Then the statement from analogy: "For just as it is the lot of farmers to reap their fruits after working with the land, so also is it for those working with words."
"J Ibid., 334-383. 174 Ibid., 384-404. 175 Theon, on the other hand, spends 404 lines on these subjects. 176 Hock and O'Neil conclude that it was Theon who broke with the tradition of chreia manipulation, and that Hermogenes followed the tradition. Hock and O'Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume!., 162. 53
(6) Then the statement from example: "Demosthenes after locking himself in a room and toiling long, later reaped his fruits: wreaths and public acclamations." (7) It is also possible to argue from the statement by an authority. For example, "Hesiod said, 'In front of virtue gods have ordained sweat.' And another poet says, 'At the price of toil do the gods sell every good to us.'" (8) At the end you are to add an exhortation to the effect that it is necessary to heed the one who has spoken or acted. 1 77
Priscian's Latin translation of Hermogenes' progymnasmata is consistent with the original in asserting that the most important function of the chreia is the elaboration and (internal) arrangement of the chreia.178 Indeed, Hermogenes' method of chreiai manipulation was adopted without alteration by Aphthonious of
Anioch,179 and Nicholas of Myra.180 The Gospel of Thomas, our text in question, also reflects Hermogenes' method of elaboration rather than Theon's.
Chreiai in the Gospel of Thomas
As I have already mentioned, the Gospel of Thomas is comprised of 114 chreiai, many of which appear to have been manipulated in some way, shape, or form. This has often been taken as evidence that Thomas is not a sophisticated document, and that it was thrown together, seemingly at random. Take, for example, Thomas 45:
Jesus said "Grapes are not harvested from thorns, figs are not gathered from thistles, for they do not give fruit. For a good man brings forth good from his storehouse, a wicked man brings evil from his storehouse which is wicked in his heart, and he says evil. For from the abundance of the heart, he brings evil."
177 Hermogenes of Tarsus, On the Chreia, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 30-62. 178 Priscian, On Usus, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume /., 30-64. 179 Aphthonious of Antioch, On the Chreia, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 18-78. 180 Nicholas ofMyra, On the Chreia, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume!., 162-184. 54
Thomas 45 is filled with redundancies, and belabours what should be a rather elementary point (bad things produce bad things, good things produce good things). But if we look at the chreia in Thomas 45 in light of the manipulations in
Hermogenes' progymnasmata, we can see that the redundancy of this saying is actually the result of multiple expansions of an originally succinct chreia.
Original chreia: Jesus said "Grapes are not harvested from thorns, figs are not gathered from thistles." Rationale (introduced by "yap"): "for they do not give fruit." Analogy: "For a good man brings forth good from his storehouse," Statement from the opposite: "a wicked man brings evil from his storehouse which is wicked in his heart, and he says evil." Rationale for statement from the opposite: "For from the abundance of the heart, he brings evil."
While Thomas 45 does not follow the order of Hermogenes' manipulations, or include all eight steps, the rather obvious use of three of the expansion methods suggests some familiarity with these methods. This familiarity is confirmed when we look at the rest of the Gospel of Thomas, and note that of the 114 chreiai, at
1 Q I least sixty-six are expanded, representing almost 60% of the gospel. Again, none of the expanded chreiai in Thomas follow Hermongenes' template in terms of order, and none use all eight steps of expansion. But the steps that they do use can tell us a lot about the rhetoric of Thomas, as well as the rhetorical training of
Thomas' redactors.
181 In some cases it is difficult to discern whether or not a certain line is part of the original chreia, or a result of expansion. For example, Thomas 112: "Jesus said, 'Damn the flesh that depends on the soul. Damn the soul that depends on the flesh.'" The first half could very well stand as a chreia on its own ("Jesus said, 'Damn the flesh that depends on the soul.'"), and the second half could well be seen as an analogy ("Damn the soul that depends on the flesh."). My count of at least 66 chreia which have been expanded is a conservative count, but even 66 expanded chreiai is evidence that something interesting is going on here. 55
Praise
None of the 114 sayings in Thomas praise Jesus in the way that
Hermogenes suggests one should open a chreia by praising the speaker
("Diogenes was wise"). Thomas, however, is not a single chreia, but a chreiai collection. Chreiai collections did not praise the speaker at the beginning of every chreiai, but established the authority of the speaker in a prologue, before moving into the chreiai collection itself.182 Thomas' incipit does just this. It presents Jesus as "the living Jesus" in a document where the goal of the reader is to "not taste death." So while the individual chreiai in Thomas do not praise Jesus, the assumption that Jesus is someone worth listening to carries through from the incipit.
Narrative introductions
While it is not one of the methods for manipulating chreiai stipulated by
Hermongenes, the practice of situating chreiai within a semi-narrative discourse by using a narrative introduction is one of the most common features of the expanded chreiai in Thomas, appearing nineteen times.183 There are countless examples of Hellenistic chreiai that utilize narrative introductions to situate a chreia. Compare, for example, Thomas 24 with Diogenes Laertius 6:63,
His disciples said to him, "Teach us the place where you are because we must seek it." He said to them, "whoever has ears, let that one listen, there is light inside of a light-man, and it gives light to the whole world. If it does not give light, it is dark."
182 Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q, 266-267. 183 See sayings 6,12, 13, 20,21,24, 37,43, 51, 52, 53, 60,72,79, 91, 99, 100, 113, and 114. 56
Diogenes, on being asked what he had gained from philosophy, said: "If nothing else, then at least I have prepared myself for every eventuality."184
Both of these chreia are prefaced with a question that has led to the stated chreia.
Introducing chreiai in this way was popular, especially when the speaker was a philosopher or teacher, as this was an effective way for the philosopher to share knowledge and correct students. The rhetorical force of these narrative introductions is quite clear: both Jesus and Diogenes are re-represented as figures of authority and their statements should be interpreted in light of that authority.
But there are also some clear differences between the narrative introduction in
Diogenes' chreia and in Thomas'. With Diogenes, the introduction is an integral part of the chreia. Without the presence of the question, the chreia would cease to be a chreia, "Diogenes [...] said: 'If nothing else, then at least I have prepared myself for every eventuality.'" While this is indeed a saying of a wise person, it does not make sense since we do not know what has prepared Diogenes for every eventuality. The narrative introduction, then, provides us with important information, without which we cannot interpret what Diogenes is saying. In
Thomas, however, the introduction is not required for the chreia to be a chreia.
"He said to them, 'whoever has ears, let that one listen, there is light inside of a light-man, and it gives light to the whole world. If it does not give light, it is dark.'" This is a perfect example of a chreia in and of itself. This is the case for many of the chreia in Thomas with narrative introductions: the introductions are not an intrinsic or necessary part of the chreia, but are constructed based on the chreia. Since Thomas' chreiai do not require the narrative introduction, the fact
184 Translated by Hock and O'Neil in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume /., 5. 185 Hock and O'Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume I., 4-5. 57 that it is there suggests that in and of itself it has a rhetorical function. Robinson,
Davies, and Kloppenborg have all suggested that Thomas is a Jewish wisdom document, and Kloppenborg in particular suggests that Thomas may be understood as a Jewish wisdom instruction document. As such it is not surprising to find Jesus in actual dialogue with those he is teaching. As Kloppenborg notes, it is a common trait of this kind of authorial fiction to utilize the sage or wise man as the main medium for teaching wisdom.186 This helps to explain why Jesus would be presented in dialogue with other people, and why those dialogues are themselves secondary to the chreia to which they are attached.
Rationale
Rationales are present in at least thirty of Thomas sayings,187 making them the most well represented mode of chreiai expansion (which is not surprising because while it is the case that Jesus' teachings in Thomas are presented as authoritative, persuasion often requires more than simply the ethos of the speaker). Rationales are relatively easy to pick out of Thomas both in their form, as well as their content. Formally, rationales are found immediately following the core chreia (as Hermogenes wrote in his progymnasmata) in all but two cases.188
Additionally, rationales are nearly always introduced by an aXXa or a postpositive yap. See for example Thomas 5:
186 Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q, 301. 187 In some places (sayings 33, 57, 103, and 104 for example) the presence of a rationale claim is a little tenuous. I have not included these in my count. They are still worth considering, but require farther attention. 188 In sayings 43 and 47 the rationale follows an example and an analogy respectively. 58
Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be revealed to you [core chreia]. For (yap) nothing is hidden which will not be made manifest, nor buried which will not be raised [rationale].189
Or again in Thomas 85,
It was from great power and great wealth which Adam came into being, and he did not become worthy of you [core chreia]. For (yap) had he been worthy, he would not have tasted death [rationale].
In both of these examples it is easy to identify the rationale based on its function in each saying; it provides a rationale for the chreia. Why is Adam not worthy of us? Because if he was he would not have tasted death.
Additionally, the form of both the Greek and Coptic languages allow for easy identification of rationales, as generally rationales are introduced by a postpositive yap. The yap that marks the beginning of a rationale statement is found in both the Greek fragments as well as the Coptic whole. Coptic borrows a large number of words from Greek, and yap is one of them, making it easy to identify the breaks between chreiai and rationale in both Greek and Coptic. The use of yap to introduce the rationale is also witnessed in the progymnasmata.
Hermogenes' example of a proper rationale given in his progymnasmata uses yap to mark the beginning of the rationale, as do many of the progymnasmata exercises that survive.190 The presence of this same introductory word in Thomas
189 P.Oxy. 654:27-31. 190 See for example, Text 23. Ps.-Libanius, Progymnasmata 3 (page 189), Text 23. Ps.-Nicolaus, Progymnasmata 3 (page 213), Text 25. Ps.-Nicolaus, Progymnasmata 3 (page 221), Text 26. Ps.- Nicolaus, Progymnasmata 3 (page 225), Text 28. Anonymous in Doxapatres, Homiliae 3 (page 245), Text 30. Anonymous in Doxapatres, Homiliae 3 (page 255), Text 31. Rhetorica Marciana (page 271), Text 32. Nikephoros Baslilakes, Progymnasmata 3 (page 289), and Text 35. George Pachymeres, Progymnasmata 3 (page 345), to name only a few. The page numbers given after each text reference refer to the pages in Ronald F. Hock and Edward N. O'Neil, The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric: Classroom Exercises, (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002). 59 is further evidence that Thomas had some working familiarity with the progymnasmata.
Statement from the opposite
After the rationale, Hermogenes calls for a statement-from-the-opposite which functions to assert the correctness of the chreia. Statements-from-the- opposite are less common in Thomas, but where they do occur they function just as Hermogenes' prescribed. See for example Thomas 70:
Jesus said, "When you beget in you this that is within you, it will make you whole, [core chreia] If it is not in you, this which is not in you will kill you." [statement from the opposite]
This is by no means a complex statement-from-the-opposite, but it does serve the function; to reinforce the importance of the initial chreia. This is quite typical of statement-from-the-opposite in Thomas, as they tend to use the vocabulary of the main chreia to produce a rather obvious, unoriginal, statement-from-the-opposite.
So while those expanding the chreia were aware of this step, they appear to have limited themselves in terms of how creative they could be, and how much they were willing to move away from the vocabulary of the core chreia.
Analogy
The expansion of chreiai through the use of analogies can also be found throughout Thomas. Formally, analogies are much more difficult to identify in
Thomas than are rationales. In the Greek progymnasmata, analogies are almost always introduced with cocrrrep (just as), but this Greek word is not carried over 60 into Coptic. Even without the formal indicators, however, context generally makes it easy to identify analogies. The analogies in Thomas range from short statements that are clearly based on the core chreia, to analogies that seem rather unrelated to the core chreia. As an example of the former, Thomas 25:
Jesus said, "love your brother like your soul [core chreia], watch over him like the pupil of your eye [analogy]."
This expanded chreia is simple, but makes its point very clearly with the supporting analogy. Thomas 31 also provides a witness to this type of simple analogy:
Jesus said, "No prophet is received in his town [core chriea], a doctor does not heal the ones who know him [analogy]."
Once again, there is nothing fancy or complicated going on, simply the addition of an analogy to strengthen the argument of the core chreia.
There are other chreiai in Thomas where the analogy is more sophisticated, for example, Thomas 43:
His disciples said to him, "Who are you to say these things to us?" Jesus said to them, "In the things I say to you, you do not understand what I am [core chreia]. But you have become like these Judeans for they love the tree and hate its fruit, and love the fruit and hate the tree [analogy]."
Here the analogy is not as dependent on the core chreia as the first two examples, indicating some level of creativity in the use of analogues. There are also sayings in Thomas where several different analogies are used to support the core chreia.
For example, Thomas 47,
"a person is not able to mount two horses, or stretch two bows [core chreia]."
This chreia is supported by multiple analogies: 61
a slave is not able to serve two masters [...] a person does not drink aged wine and immediately desire to drink new wine [...] new wine is not placed in old wine skins [...] old wine is not put in new wine skins [...] an old patch is not sewn onto a new garment.
Here is a chreia which is supported (apparently) by multiple analogies, but the relation of the analogies to the core chreia becomes less and less clear. An even better example of this piling up of analogies can be found in saying 21:
Mary said to Jesus, "what are your disciples like?" He said, "they are like little children living in a field that is not theirs. When the lords of the field come they will say 'give the field back to us.' They strip naked in their presence in order to give the field to them [core chreia]. Therefore I say that if the homeowner knows that the thief is about to come, he [homeowner] will be vigilant before he [thief] comes that he [thief] not break into the house of his kingdom and steal his possessions [first analogy]. Therefore you be vigilant against the world. Bind yourselves under your loins with great power, lest they find a way to come to you [second analogy]
Here the analogies appear to have little to nothing to do with the core chreia. In fact they could well function as chreiai independently (and the section about the thief did exist independently in the Q tradition, 12:39). From the three examples given above, it is clear that Thomas uses analogies to support core chreiai, and it is also clear that the level of sophistication in these expansions varies considerably. Still, the analogies found in Thomas provide further evidence that
Thomas' policy on expanding chreiai walks in step with the instructions of the progymnasmata.
Argument from authority, and exhortation to hear
The final two steps of chreiai expansion, the argument from authority and the exhortation to hear are both the easiest to identify, and appear to have been the 62 easiest to append to a core chreia.191 As noted above, the praise given to Jesus as
"the living one" at the beginning of the document serves to assert Jesus' authority for the entire document. Still, there is one chreia which takes an additional step to appeal to the authority of Jesus: Thomas 111:
Jesus said, "The skies and earth will roll up in your presence, and whoever is living from the living one will not see death [core chreia]. Does Jesus not say, 'Those who have found themselves, of them the world is not worthy'? [appeal to authority]."
At first, the second half of this saying appears quite bizarre: Jesus is speaking, yet he refers to himself in the third person in the form of a rhetorical question.
Nowhere else in Thomas does Jesus do this. April DeConick attempts to explain this oddity by arguing that the words Jesus speaks which follow the "Does Jesus not say" introduction are actually the words of Hermes which promote self knowledge.192 These words, however, are not attested to in the Hermetic literature
(or at least not to the knowledge of DeConick who does not identify any parallels from antiquity), but they can be found elsewhere in Thomas. Both sayings 3 and
67 refer specifically to the importance of knowing one's self, and both sayings 56 and 80 refer to knowledge making the world not worthy of the knowledgeable one. In feet sayings 56, 80, and 111 use the identical phrase ttkocmoc MTTO)<\
MMOq AN ("the world is not worthy"). Thus there is no need to argue that the words of Hermes are put into Jesus' mouth (hence the odd introduction in the third person) since it is very clear that Jesus is simply quoting himself. Or more
191 Hermogenes' sixth step for chreia expansion is notably missing from Thomas. It is possible, since examples drew on the authority of someone other than the speaker to support the speaker's point, that they were left out of Thomas, since Jesus is presented as having exclusive authority. 92 DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 293. 63 accurately, the Thomas scribes are quoting Jesus, using what he has said elsewhere to reinforce the core chreia with a statement from authority.
In Hermogenes' instructions, as well as in the extant progymnasmata exercises, the exhortation to hear is the least well explained step, and the least frequently used.193 Hermogenes' instructions specify that the exhortation should be to the effect that it is necessary to heed the preceding instructions.194 In
Thomas, happily, the exhortations to hear are extremely clear. Thomas uses a single set phrase in six different sayings (2, 21,24,63, 65, and 96) in order to call on his readers to heed to the instructions. In each of these sayings Jesus uses the injunctive (a Coptic tense very similar the Greek hortatory subjunctive, "let someone do something") to insist that the reader hearken to the instructions: for example, H6T€ OYN M^XG MMOq (eCGOTM) M^peqeeDTM ("the one with ears to hear, let him hear"). Apart from the TT6T6 (the relative combined with the definite article, "the one who") occasionally being prefixed to the OYN (the predication of existence, "there is/are"), and the redundant statement GCCOTM ("to hear" which refers back to the person's ears) the exhortations are identical. So while Thomas' redactors are not particularly creative with their exhortations to hear, they are certainly using this single set phrase as an exhortation. If this were
193 This is not to say the eighth step of chreia expansion was ignored, but that the "exhortation to hear" was much more subtle in the progymnasmata. Hermogenes' does not provide an example of an exhortation to hear, but they do survive in several exercises. Text 24. Ps. Nicolaus, Progymnasmata 3, for example, concludes with the following "exhortation to hear": "After looking at all these points, we have to admire Diogenes as the best disciplinarian." Yes it gives reason for us to heed to Diogenes' words, but it is not as pronounced as are the exhortations to hear in Thomas. 194 Hermogenes of Tarsus, On the Chreia, in The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric: Volume!., 60-62. 64 not the case it would be rather puzzling as to why the same imperative would be used in six different places in the gospel.
Implications for the study of the Gospel: Thomas and scholasticism
This chapter has brought to light several points that have all too often been ignored. First, Thomas is a collection of chreiai and chreiai exclusively. Second, almost sixty percent of Thomas' chreiai have been expanded in some way. Third, the methods of expansion in Thomas are all outlined in the progymnasmata' s section on chreiai expansion. The fact that Thomas is composed exclusively of chreiai has too often been overlooked, and the fact that many of the chreia in
Thomas show signs of manipulation along the lines called for by the progymnasmata has not, to my knowledge, been acknowledged as, or even considered to be rhetorically significant. While it is true that the expansions found in Thomas do not follow the progymnasmata perfectly, the fact that the only expansions in Thomas are those called for by the progymnasmata suggests that the Thomas redactors were familiar with the rules of chreiai expansion. The rhetorical sophistication of Thomas in the form of the exclusive use of chreiai, and the subsequent expansion of those chreiai suggests that Thomas may be the product of a group which possessed some rhetorical proficiency. Furthermore, it appears as though Thomas' rhetoric, as well as rhetorical forms indicates a scribal level of literacy.195 Scribes occupied a wide range of social locations in the Greco-
Roman world, and even low level scribes possessed the most basic competencies in literary construction and manipulation. Scribes, then, had all the tools necessary
195 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Invention," 217. 65 to recognize chreiai, collect chreiai, and manipulate chreiai in a way that betrays knowledge of the progymnasmata. In addition, the content of Thomas seems to reflect the concerns of the scribal class. For example, while Thomas is overtly a teaching document, authorized by Jesus, it contains "hidden sayings" which require effort on behalf of the reader to interpret. The "meaning" of any given chreia is not self evident, but this seems to be the point of the text. As Ron
Cameron observes, "[t]here is [...] a direct correlation between the production of the text and the skill needed to interpret it correctly."196 Scribes, especially scribes in a school setting, would have had these skills and therefore been in a position to
"correctly" interpret the secret sayings. The importance of effort in producing correct interpretations, and the role of the scribe as interpreters (again, especially in a school environments) would reinforce their social positions.
Thomas' thematic unity, beyond the promise of rewarding effort, also reflects the concerns we would expect to find among scribes.197 For instance, the
196 Cameron, "Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins," 105. 197 Thomas repeatedly makes reference to several themes that can be found spread throughout the gospel: death (sayings 1,11, 18,19, 51, 52, 59, 61, 63, 65, 85, 98, and 111), seeking (sayings 2, 24, 38, 60,92, and 94), reigning (sayings 2,78, 81, and 110), the Kingdom (sayings 3, 20, 22, 27, 49, 54, 57, 76, 82, 96, 97, 98,99,107, 109, 113, and 114), knowing yourself (sayings 3, and 67), children (3,4, 21, 22, 28, 37, and 46), poverty (3, 29, 41, and 54), the Father (sayings 3, 40,44, 50, 59, 61, 64, 65, 69, 76,79, 83, 96, 97,98, 99, and 105), being a single one (sayings 4, 11, 16, 22, 23, 30,48,49, 75, 106, and 114), the hidden (incipit, sayings 5, 6,32, 33, 96, 108, and 109), Thomas' (as a document) views with regard to Judaism and how to be Jewish (sayings 6, 14, 27, 31, 39,43, 52, 53, 88, 89, 102, and 104), correct choices (sayings 8, 76, and 107), agriculture (sayings 9,20, 21, 40,45, 57, 63, 65, 73, 78, 107, and 109), fire (sayings 10, 13, 16, 57, and 82), drinking (13, 28, 74, and 108), light (sayings 11, 24, 33, 50, 61,77, and 83), brothers (sayings 25, 26, 55, and 99), eyes/seeing (sayings 25,26, 34, 59, and 113) wealth (sayings 29,41, 63, 64, 65, 76, 81, 85,98, and 110), Adam (46,85, and 106), rest (sayings 2,50, 51, and 90), beatitudes (sayings 7,18, 19, 49, 54, 58, 68, 69, and 103), division (sayings 16, 47, 61 and 72), and landlords (sayings 21, 35, 64, 65, and 109). Many of these concepts, especially knowing yourself, making correct choices, wealth, and seeking betray scribal interests. On scribalism in Thomas, cf. William E. Arnal, "The Rhetoric of Marginality: Apocalypticism, Gnosticism, and Sayings Gospels," HTR 88:4 (1995): 471-494., idem, Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflict and the Setting of Q, 66 importance of correct interpretation and correct choice arise again and again in
Thomas.198 Scribes would have been in both the social and intellectual positions to correctly interpret the sayings in the document, likely because Thomas is in fact a scribal document. As Jonathan Z. Smith observes, scribes wrote in such a way that their social status was preserved, and indeed exalted.199 In Thomas we find evidence of this scribal discourse of self-empowerment. This self-empowering scribal discourse is by no means restricted to early Christian texts and can be
found in both Philostratus' literary doxography of Apollonius' self-authorized
"display of truth" as well as the "textualization of Cynic rhetoric of demonstrative
action as serialized aphoristic wit" such as we find in Diogenes Laertius or other
gnomologia.200 Thomas' rhetorical sophistication, Thomas' rhetoric of self
empowerment, and especially Thomas' formal and rhetorical relations with Cynic
gnomologia strongly suggest a scribal provenance for the Gospel. Socially,
on i scribes ranked well below rhetoricians and philosophers, but they still received
the training required to work as grammatical instructors, assessors, village
administrators, and low level bureaucrats, the kind of training we would expect in
individuals familiar with the progymnasmata,202 Thomas, both formally and
ideologically, reflects a level of training as well as particular interests which
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2001), idem, "The Rhetoric of Social Construction," 27- 48, and Braun, "Socio-Mythic Inventions," 210-235. 198 Sayings 1, 8, 76,96,98,107. 199 Smith, "Wisdom and Apocalytpic," 70-71. 200 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Invention," 219. 201 Ibid., 223. See also Quintilian's distaste for grammarians in Institiutio Oratorio, Book 1.2, 1.4, and 1.5. 202 Ibid., 224. This is a somewhat redundant statement, as one would become familiar with the progymnasmata through formal training. 67 suggest it was produced by individuals with a reasonably strong grasp on reasonably sophisticated literary techniques.203
To conclude then, this identification of Thomas' genre as a chreai collection has several implications for how Thomas should be read. First, Thomas is not random collection of sayings which shows little rhetorical skill, but a deliberate collection of chreiai. Second, many of Thomas' chreiai show signs of secondary expansion, along the lines called for by the progymnasmata. These expansions often reinforce themes that appear elsewhere in Thomas. The rationale provided in saying 5, "for nothing is hidden which will not be revealed" reflects themes found in sayings 6, 32, 33,96, 97,108, and 109. Similarly the rationale in saying 4, "for there are many who are first that will be last, and they will become a single one," reflects a theme (being a single one) found in sayings 11, 16, 22,
23, 30,48, 49, 75,106, and 114. Finally in Thomas 111 (quoted above), Thomas actually quotes Jesus from two points prior in the gospel, sayings 56 and 80. So not only are these chreiai expanded, but they are expanded in such a way that strongly suggests those expanding the chreiai were working with the gospel (as opposed to being expanded prior to being incorporated into Thomas). This is extremely strong evidence that Thomas was not put together by taking select sayings from other sources. When Thomas' formal unity is looked at alongside
Thomas' ideological unity, it is not only possible to argue for Thomas' integrity
203 1 specify low level scribes as opposed to scribes more generally for several reasons. As Smith argues, the elite scribal class produced work for the royal courts, and their scribal interests were the interests of the elite. As Braun and others have argued, however, the social position of scribes ranged a great deal, from high ranking officials, to rather low ranking village administrators. For an in depth survey of the socio-economic position of the "low level scribes" see Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 97-157. 68 as a document, but also to argue for a social location for that document. Scribes would not only have the literary tools to recognize and expand chreiai, but they also come from a social location in which Thomas' rhetoric of secrecy, and emphasis on effort in producing correct interpretations would serve to elevate their statuses, especially if Thomas was being used in a school setting. Thomas can no longer be considered a late, Gnosticized bastardization based on random selection and esotericizing of sayings, and needs to be recognized as a distinct and integral group of sayings. Rhetorically, Thomas is extremely interesting in its own right; both in terms of the rhetorical forms used, and in how those forms are put to work to further the rhetorical agendas' of Thomas' composers. 69
3. The Gospel goes to School: Thomas as a Scholastic Product
To my knowledge, the argument that the Gospel of Thomas represents the work of a scholastic community has yet to be made. This is partially due to the fact that
Thomas is the focus of an unusual amount of controversy (most of which is ideological), and thus issues of date and dependency have dominated almost all analyses of Thomas. If Thomas is late and dependent, then its socio-historical location is assumed to be some Gnostic group (perhaps in Syria) who produced
Thomas to further their own Gnostic agenda.204 To frustrate the matter even further, those scholars who are not hung up on dating and dependency issues have used the Gospel of Thomas as a window through which to observe their own historical Jesus. As a result, attempts to locate Thomas socio-historically that do not assume Thomas' lateness and dependence have tended to focus on the issue of the historical Jesus. Patterson identifies Thomas' socio-historical milieu in terms of an itinerant historical Jesus (or at least an itinerant early Jesus movement),205 and DeConick's investigation of Thomas' socio-historical location is completely dependent on her own unsupported assumptions that Christianity had a single origin in Jerusalem and was exclusively Jewish, betraying no notable similarities to any of its "pagan" surroundings. A socio-historical investigation of Thomas which is not interested in issues of dating, dependency, or the historical Jesus has yet to be undertaken. Fortunately, however, such investigations have been undertaken on texts which resemble Thomas' rhetoric and/or genre. Thus in my efforts to situate Thomas in a scholastic environment I need to take a brief detour
204 See, for example, Nicholas Perrin, Thomas and Tatian. 205 See especially Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus. 70 through two social groups which both resemble Thomas in form and argument, and whose socio-historical locations have been the subject of a great deal of scholarship: Pauline Jesus groups, and the Q people.
The schooling of Paul
The notion that some early Jesus people were organized as a scholastic community is not a new idea. In 1960 E. A. Judge suggested that, based on the theology, ethics, apologetics, beliefs, and teachings of the New Testament, the early Jesus groups may have organized their thinking and social formations around the idea of a scholastic community.206 Judge argues that this is especially the case for the Pauline churches given that Paul's theology and social position suggest that he was a sophist, and that "Christianity," as Paul expounds it,
"belongs with the doctrines of the philosophical schools rather than with the esoteric rituals of the mystery religions."207 Unfortunately for Judge's argument, similar doctrine and social position does not guarantee or even necessarily suggest that Pauline social formations were modeled on or were philosophical schools; ideological content is not enough to suggest a social form. What is of more interest are the ways in which the texts suggest socio-historical circumstances.
Judge's essay only suggests that Paul emphasized certain things which sophists also emphasized. This, however, does not actually tell us anything about the make-up of that group, and even if it is the case that Paul shares some ideas with sophist philosophy the fact that he does is not nearly as interesting as asking the
206 E. A. Judge, "Early Christianity as a Scholastic Community," JRH1 (1960): 4-15; 2 (1961): 125-137, 9. 207 Ibid., 135. question "why do these two social formations share ideas on one or more topics?"208 The idea that some of the earlier Jesus groups modeled themselves on scholastic groups is actually a stronger argument than Judge suggests. Where
Judge's thesis runs into problems is in where he looks for his analogies. Shared ideas tell us very little about a group's make-up. Rhetorical structures and modes of presenting those ideas, however, may provide better sites for comparison.209
Instead of looking at a group's ideas, I argue that we should look at the social structure of the groups instead.
Following the pioneering work of Judge, Pauline Jesus groups continued to be the subject of comparisons between Hellenistic philosophies and early Jesus groups,210 but this thesis has been increasingly argued to be false. In two articles
(the first published in 1984, the second in 2001) Stanley Stowers introduces us to some of the practices of ancient Mediterranean philosophical schools (as well as other Graeco-Roman voluntary associations) in order to argue that Pauline Jesus groups do not fit in this milieu. He argues that, in terms of philosophical schools, it became common for the well-off to want to have philosophers seen hanging around their houses, and in order to assure this the well-off person provided the philosopher with an audience which functioned as a kind of social legitimation for
208 1 will suggest below that the similarities very likely derive from a similar socio-historical situation of Hellenistic or Roman imperialism. 209 Judge does argue that, as a social group, work which was in many respects of a scholarly nature was important in terms of instructing and organizing followers (136). And while I agree with this point, I think that better evidence for this can be found in the ways in which these groups composed and used their texts. 210 Richard Ascough, What Are They Saying About the Formation of Pauline Churches? (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 29-49. 72 that philosopher.211 The private house of a rich patron, then, seems to have been the most popular place for philosophers and sophists to hold their classes.212
Stowers understands philosophical schools in terms of "non-institutionalized instruction" which was taught in both private homes or in other "household like"
9 11 settings. With regard to Paul then, Stowers argues that Paul did resemble philosophers in that he taught in private houses, but Paul's self-understanding as an artisan and a Jew disqualifies him from being a true philosopher or sophist.214
In his 2001 article, Stowers expands on the idea of Pauline Jesus groups as a Hellenistic philosophy, identifying several areas where he sees Hellenistic philosophies and Pauline Jesus groups to be closely related. First, "Hellenistic philosophies conceived themselves as distinct and mutually exclusive haereseis, choices, or sects."215 This was also the case with the Pauline groups as Paul attempts to construct life in Christ as a distinct and mutually exclusive choice.216
Second, "the choice of the Hellenistic philosophies were paradoxes in the sense going back to pre-Socratics of being para doxa—that is, contrary to conventional thinking. They asserted that the happy life could not be founded on ordinary civic virtue. The modified beliefs created by critical reflection changed one's motivations, desires, and needs, resulting in a tension between conventional life
211 Stanley K. Stowers, "Social Status, Public Speaking, and Private Teaching: the Circumstances ofPaul's Preaching Activity," NovT 26:1 (1984), 66. 212 Ibid. 213 Ibid., 73. 214 Ibid., 81. 215 Stanley K. Stowers, "Does Pauline Christianity Resemble a Hellenistic Philosophy?" in Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (ed. T. Engbrg-Pedersen; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 89. 216 Ibid., 90. Stowers directs our attention to 1 Cor. 7 where Paul relativizes ethnic status (7:19), and calls for "undistracted devotion to the Lord" over and against marriage (7:32-35). 73 and post-reflective life."217 Here Stowers sees a strong ascetic impulse in both the
Hellenistic philosophies and Paul's groups, and claims that "it was no accident that the founders of the Hellenistic schools were not married and that Jesus and
Paul were also not married."218 Third, "the change to the new life might be described as a conversion in the sense of a dramatic reorientation of the self."219
Here Stowers sees conversion to Paul's Jesus groups as distinct from conversion to the philosophies as the conversion Paul calls for required submission to a divine being (he cites Phil. 2:10 and 1 Cor. 15:24-28 as evidence for this required submission). Fourth, "[t]he Hellenistic schools presented differing technologies for asserting this new self formed around focused goals."221 Fifth, "the Hellenistic philosophies developed the notion of the wise man."222 On this point Stowers argues that Paul presents Jesus as a wise man worthy of imitation, and Paul says as much in 1 Cor. 11:1 "be imitators of me, as I am of Christ."223 Sixth,
"encompassing the previous five characteristics, the central practices of
Hellenistic schools and of Pauline Jesus groups were intellectual practices that made reference to the mind."224 On this point Stowers argues that Pauline social groups depended heavily on Paul's textual and interpretive skills, and this dependence makes Paul resemble a teacher of a philosophical school.225 And
217 Ibid., 90. 218 Ibid., 91. 2,9 Ibid. 220 Ibid., 92. 221 Ibid. 222 Ibid. 223 Ibid., 93. 224 Ibid. 225 Ibid. 74 seventh, "the goals and practices of the Hellenistic philosophies and Paul's
'Christianity' might give rise to nontraditional and radical social formations."226
In spite of all the apparent similarities, however, Stowers ultimately concludes that while Pauline Jesus groups (and other Jesus groups) did resemble
Hellenistic philosophies, this was almost certainly not because they were derived from or directly borrowed from these schools. Stowers argues that it was common intellectual goals, relating to the mind, self, or soul, that caused Pauline Jesus groups to resemble philosophical schools. He goes on to point out that ancient rhetorical and legal schools also focused on intellectual practices, but in no other way resembled Hellenistic philosophies because they did not order themselves by
"a tightly focused and totalizing understanding of a unitary good."227 Pauline
Jesus groups, for Stowers, resembled Hellenistic philosophy in some respects, but cannot ultimately have been derived from, or modeled on Hellenistic philosophy.
Stowers is probably correct in his conclusion that Pauline Jesus groups were not a Hellenistic philosophy. Richard Ascough made this same argument three years earlier in 1998 concluding that, "since there is no one dominant philosophical system in evidence [in the authentic Pauline corpus], and because of the diversity among the 'schools' themselves, this understanding [of the Pauline churches as philosophical schools] quickly begins to break down."228
Nevertheless, Ascough is less dismissive of the idea, noting that "by implication
226 Ibid., 94. Paul as a founder of radical, or at the very least, non-traditional social formations has been the subject of a good deal of scholarship, most notably the essays collected in Richard Horsely's (ed) Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1997). 227 Ibid., 95-96. 228 Ascough, What Are They Saying About the Formation of the Pauline Churches?, 48. 75 many would have to grant that by addressing his communities as if they were as familiar as himself with the nuances of various philosophical systems, Paul is assuming that they would understand themselves in light of the model of
'philosophical schools.'"229 Thus the points upon which both Stowers and
Ascough would agree are that Paul structured some of his communities in ways which resembled the structuring of Hellenistic philosophies, and that some of the concepts with which Paul was working would have been recognizable as philosophical concepts.
Again I must stress that both Stowers and Ascough are almost certainly correct in arguing that Pauline social formations were not Hellenistic philosophies, but I think both (and especially Stowers) underestimate the importance of the structural and ideological similarities which they note. Stowers acknowledges that both Hellenistic philosophies and Pauline Jesus groups differentiated themselves from ethnicity-based associations by inventing new modes of relationships (be they fictive kinships, or gatherings of friends) and were therefore more inclusive of peoples from multiple ethnic backgrounds. In spite of this observation Stowers does not stop to ask why social formations operating at the same time, but genealogically unrelated to one another would employ similar discursive strategies for recruitment and group bonding. Stowers' seventh point of similarity, that the goals of Hellenistic philosophies and Pauline
Jesus groups might give rise to non-traditional and radical social formations, is, I argue, what makes these comparisons interesting. In fact, if we could prove that
Pauline Jesus groups were a Hellenistic philosophy, or directly modeled on one,
229 Ibid. 76 we could glean nothing from this observation other than the observation that Paul co-opted an extant social formation. If, however, Pauline Jesus groups did not directly model themselves on Hellenistic philosophies, then we are able to raise the very interesting and important question of why two genealogically unrelated, but temporally proximate social formations employed very similar discursive means with which to structure their social formations. This should be the question when we address the relationship between the letters of Paul and Hellenistic philosophies, and will be the question when I address Thomas and other contemporary school formations in chapter four. This has been also the question for both John Kloppenborg and William Arnal in their studies on Q's socio- historical location.
The schooling of Q
Following his 1987 seminal work on the formation of Q (aptly titled, The
Formation of Q), Kloppenborg set out in a 1991 article230 to identify the socio- historical location of Q. Kloppenborg begins by cautioning us to avoid supposing that documents associated with a community mirror the viewpoints of that community.231 This caution asserted, Kloppenborg moves on to examine the Q community using the only data we have for (reconstructing a Q community, Q itself. One of the first indicators of social location in Q which Kloppenborg addresses is genre: Q is instruction, and instructions are most frequently
230 Kloppenborg, "The Social History of the Q People," 77-102. 231 Ibid., 78.1 echo this caution in my introduction and first chapter, pages 5, and 21-23. 77 associated with scribal schools.232 Additionally, Kloppenborg notes that the values reflected in instructions typically reflect the values of the scribal sector.
Thus both formally and contextually, Q as instruction seems to suggest a scholastic social setting for both the production and sharing of Q.233 Kloppenborg argues that this social setting may have been among what he identifies (admittedly anachronistically) as the '"petit bourgeois' in the lower administrative sector of the cities and villages."234 There is one minor problem with the identification of lower level scribes as the producers of Q, and revolves around the question of why scribes (a generally conservative bunch) would produce a document with a somewhat radical ethos. Q is hardly revolutionary, but it does present a countercultural program which includes the inversion of several societal norms
(see for example Q 6:27, 6:37, 6:43, 11:9, 12:4, and 12:22).235 In order to explain this rhetoric, Kloppenborg suggests that, with Q, we are dealing with people
"whose confidence in the ordinary channels through which social identity is mediated has been shaken or destroyed."236 The source of these social changes, argues Kloppenborg, was the reordering of Galilean political centres through the reduction of Philip's tetrarchy to a Roman province following the death of
Agrippa in 44 CE, and the movement of the provincial capital in 54 CE from
Tiberias (which had been the capital since 18 CE) to Sepphoris.237 Thus significant political and economic change in the mid first century CE created a
232 Ibid., 82. 233 That is to say, the employment of a reasonably sophisticated genre suggests that those in the Q community were of an educational level at which they would be able to understand the content of the instructions. 234 Kloppenborg, "Social History of the Q People" 85. 235 These six sayings are cited by Amal (2001, 185-186) as examples of Q's inversionary rhetoric. 236 Kloppenborg, "Social History of the Q People," 87. 237 Ibid. 78 social situation in which lower level scribes felt alienated from their traditional access to power. As a result they created a discourse (Q) which sought to address this perceived alienation.238
In his 2001 monograph, Jesus and the Village Scribes, William Arnal expands upon Kloppenborg's preliminary observations in order to more firmly situate Q in imperial Roman Galilee. Arnal argues that, prior to the founding and re-founding of Sepphoris and Tiberias, economic and political life in Galilee was for the most part restricted to local trade and production.239 Prior to the economic restructuring of Galilee, local town administrators would have been required to oversee the various legal and economic items which took place in small towns such as bills of sale, petitions, contracts, marriage arrangements, wills, etc.240
These administrative duties would have been fulfilled by a small class of literate people, the village clerk Krojioypannaxeuq Kloppenborg's "petit bourgeois"). The restructuring of the socio-political landscape in Galilee (especially following the founding of Tiberias under Antipas), Arnal argues, would have affected the social roles and perceptions of these village clerks more than anyone else.241 They were no longer required to fill their mediating roles as village administrators given that the power and wealth on whose behalf they mediated was transferred to the larger
238 This creation of an alternative discourse which addresses the perceived problems with reality is, I argue, the same practice that we see in Paul's Jesus groups, and in the Hellenistic philosophies. Reaction to similar or the same social situations would help to explain why groups that did not know (or did not intentionally emulate) one another would employ similar discursive practices, namely the formation of alternate communities not based on traditional categories (as the power which was associated with these traditional categories may have been lessened by social changes). 239 See Arnal 2001 97-155 where he addresses how the distribution of coinage, the minting of money and collection of taxes in Galilee moved out of the hands of local village authorities and into the hands of the authorities of larger cities as Rome urbanized and expanded centres in Galilee. 240 Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 151. 241 Ibid., 152. newly founded cities. As a result, these the local village administrators were turned into "local clerks charged with little more than supervising the intensified exploitation of their compatriots."242 Thus the rhetoric of uprootedness in Q, as well as Q's inversion of customary norms is a symptom of the Q scribes' perceived social uprootedness and their displeasure at their loss of social standing.243 Q, then, represents an attack on the conventional values which promote and support the economic and social changes which resulted in the founding of Tiberias (and led to the social dislocation of the Q scribes).244
Q is, perhaps, a more obvious analogy for Thomas than are the Pauline groups, mostly due to the fact that Thomas and Q are both sayings gospels, and share a rather large amount of material245 which Arnal argues is not the product of direct borrowing.246 Thus the question with which we are left (a question I anticipated in my above section of Paul and Hellenistic philosophies) is why two genealogically unrelated texts would utilize much of the same material. In order to address this question, Arnal argues that Thomas and Q emerged from similar socio-historical contexts in which the producers of each gospel understood themselves to be socially marginal people.247 Arnal's situation of Q has already been reviewed above, and he argues that the situation of Thomas is "quite similar, if more obscure."248 Like Q, Thomas' composers must have boasted a reasonable level of literacy in order for them to construct a sayings gospel with a consistent
242 Ibid., 153. 243 Ibid., 183. 244 Ibid., 198. 245 Approximately 40 separate sayings according to Q Thomas Reader (ed. J. S. Kloppenborg, et. al; Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1990), 159. 246 Arnal, "Rhetoric of Marginality," 472. 247 Ibid., 480-492. 248 Ibid., 489. 80 and coherent set of forms (the chreia, reviewed in chapter 2).249 Arnal locates these literate individuals at a scribal level of literacy, based not only on their skills, but also on Thomas' interest in scribal concerns (particularly debt and legal issues involving land; Thomas 64, 95, and 109). With Q, however, a major concern which the text raises is the exploitation of the rural poor by the urban rich.250 Thomas' criticism of the urban rich is comparable to Q's, but Thomas' interest in the rural poor is significantly lacking when compared to Q. In terms of a probable socio-historical location then, Thomas and Q differ to a considerable degree. In terms of rhetorical tools and a rhetoric of social uprootedness, however,
Q and Thomas are striking similar (as will be argued at length below).
Graeco-Roman schools
Paul's social formations and Q both provide excellent analogies for understanding Thomas as a scholastic work, but we are still left with a rather vague idea of just what constitutes a scholastic social formation. A variety of
"schools" existed in antiquity and ranged from introductory grammar schools, to advanced philosophical schools, and from physical schools where people met at set times on set days, to "schools of thought" which had no material grounding.251
Willi Braun, in his 1999 article, "Socio-Mythic Invention, Graeco-Roman
Schools, and the Sayings Gospel Q," undertook an initial exploration of Graeco-
Roman schools as a possible analogy for the social group behind Q that will help
250 Ibid., 491. 251 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Formation," 211. 81 to narrow our search field considerably.252 Braun argues that the idea of Q as a school product most clearly presents itself in the similar literary tools employed in both schools and Q; tools such as general writing competency, multiple redactional layers,254 genre (typically wise sayings and/or instructions),255 and the use of various "school technologies," including elaboration of chreiai (see chapter two) 256 But perhaps the most interesting observation made by Braun is that concerning the rhetoric of self-empowerment evident in school social forms, as well as in Q (and the Gospel of Thomas, and Paul).257 Q, Braun argues, makes "a scribal return to an apparently repudiated scribal modality of discourse in order to empower its own self-evidencies." Braun goes on to suggestion socio-historical analogies in Jonathan Z. Smith's work on the Greek Magical Papyri, Bernard
Frischer's work on Epicurean fraternities, and Jack Lightstone's work on the emergence of Rabbis following the destruction of the Second Temple (these two latter analogies will be examined at length in chapter four). But before I begin to compare Thomas' socio-historical situation with other school-like formations, some more general comments on school formations are required.
The idea of a scholastic social formation is by no means monolithic, and a variety of scholastic formations operated in the first century Mediterranean world, including philosophical schools, some voluntary associations, and some
252 Ibid., 210-235. 233 Ibid., 215. 254 Ibid. 255 Ibid., 216. We saw this above with Kloppenborg's situating of Q, and Arnal's situating of both Q and Thomas. 256 Ibid., 217. 257 Ibid., 219. 258 Ibid. 259 Especially Epicurean and Pythagorean social formations. religious cults.260 The presence of these multiple "school" formations, however, does not mean that the term "school" is too ambiguous to be useful. As Braun has argued (following Burton Mack), the term "school" is not only a descriptive term reflecting a group's scribal abilities, values, wisdom mode of research, and genre, but it is also strategically useful to us as scholars. The notion of "school"
direct[s] attention to the immanent as well as contextual dimensions of social emergence and formation that have to do with imaginative concept formation, diagnostic and prognostic self-reflection, the "heady" (to use a Mackianism) handling of the cultural repertoire to articulate both an emerging group's initial groans and then to develop a rhetoric to clarify and mobilize motive and initial shape of action. The "school" concept brings into analytic focus the role of the intellectual in social formation.261
This makes a great deal of sense given that texts are themselves the products of some level of intellectual activity. Most people in our period did not possess even basic compositional writing skills, let alone the more advanced writing skills which would have been required to produce such texts at the Mishna, Q, and
Thomas. As I have argued in chapter 2, we expect to find people possessing this level of compositional skill in urban, rather than rural environments, but beyond this observation, we need more information in order to identify a school location.
Unfortunately, there is no set formula as to how to write to, for, and in a scholastic community. There are, however, some general trends which seem to come up again and again, both in Thomas, and in other "school" texts. Here I am following Braun's list of school forms to illustrate the ways in which Thomas can be understood as a school product.
260 Including some Jewish groups, as well as some early Jesus people. 261 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Formation," 212. 83
Textuality
Braun writes that regarding Q as a written text (rather than a source consisting of oral tradition) functions to highlight
the literary competency and instrumentality that was at work in the production of Q, especially when its writtenness is conjoined with the recognition that it was written in Greek (Kloppenborg 1987: 51-64) in a locale where competencies in Greek can hardly be assumed for just anyone, and where especially literary competence in Greek must be regarded as the property of a small "scholarly" sector.262
Q's writtenness is not proof that is the product of a school, but it is a very strong indicator that we may be dealing with a school product. This is also the case for
Thomas. That Thomas is a written document has been disputed by DeConick, but as I have argued above, DeConick's argument for an oral Thomas is not a strong one. Like Q, Thomas was written, and perhaps like Q, in a locale where widespread compositional competency cannot be assumed.263 The best attestation to Thomas' writtenness can be found in the text of Thomas itself: the incipit reads
"These are the secret words which Jesus the living one spoke and Didymos Judas
Thomas wrote." The Greek here, eypayev, makes the written character of
Thomas abundantly clear. Additionally, saying one states that, "whoever finds the interpretation of these words will not taste death."264 The call for interpretation implies reading a written text more so than it does hearing oral teachings.
Secondary school, for example, taught composition and interpretive skills by
262 Ibid., 215. 263 1 say perhaps, because it is much less clear where Thomas was composed. It is possible that Thomas was written in Galilee (in which case Braun's argument would apply equally well to Thomas), but it is also possible that Thomas was written in Alexandria, a city where we would expect a far greater portion of the population to possess compositional competency. But Braun's point was not to make as small as possible the portion of the population who could have composed Q, but to limit that portion to those with compositional competency. It so happens that this leaves us only with scribes in Galilee, but leaves us with a plethora of possible authors in Alexandria. 264 Both the incipit and saying one are my own translation from P. Oxy 1. 84 means of reading written texts, not by listening to oral recitations. Finally, certain structural elements within Thomas suggest that Thomas was a written document at an early stage, especially the (seemingly intentional) mirroring of like sayings at the beginning and end of the gospel. For example, Thomas rarely locates Jesus' sayings in a narrative context, but there are sections that employ narrative introductions, or imply narrative scenes. Two such instances occur at the very beginning, and the very end of Thomas. The incipit and saying 1 depict Jesus teaching and Thomas writing the teachings down, possibly a school setting.
Saying 114 depicts Jesus as a teacher giving instructions to Peter, again possibly in a school setting. Thus Thomas both opens and closes with narrative scenes that depict Jesus as a teacher in what appears to be a school setting, hardly something that can be written off as coincidence. This parallel is supported by the fact that several other parallels can be identified in much of the material found in the first eight and last eight sayings. Both Thomas 3:1-3 and 113 discuss the arrival of the kingdom, both use the imperative eiC£HHTe to present a negative example (the
Kingdom is not in a specific place one can behold), and both conclude that the kingdom is somewhere unexpected: it is within you and outside of you (Thomas
3), and spread upon the earth (Thomas 113). Thomas 3:4-5 parallels Thomas
111:3 as both emphasize the importance of knowing one's self, explicitly in
Thomas 3:4-5, and implicitly in the need to find one's self in 111:3. These thematic parallels continue in Thomas 5 and 108 which both promise the revelation of hidden things. The final parallel in the opening and closing sections
265 Hock and O'Neil, The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric: Classroom Exercises, 51-52. 85 of Thomas is found in Thomas 6 and 104. Both are introduced by the disciples talking about praying and fasting (or more generally, asking questions about
Jewish practice), and both state Jesus' stance on each (or more generally, Jesus stance on how to be Jewish).266 1 am not suggesting that Thomas is a chiasm, or even that the first and last eight sayings in Thomas are arranged chiastically, but the simple fact that that these rather obvious parallels exist needs to be noted.
Moreover, all of these repeated themes—Jesus as a teacher, the nature of the kingdom, knowing yourself, Jesus on Judaism, and the favouring of one over many—occur throughout Thomas, and their paralleled presence at the beginning and the end of the gospel serve only to emphasize the importance of these discourses. This mirroring of related (or identical) themes would be far more effective in a written text in which readers could refer back to the earlier parallel sayings. There are several other examples which could be cited to establish
Thomas as a consciously written document,267 but one of the strongest arguments in favour of Thomas' "writtenness" is found in Thomas' own claims to be a written document found in Thomas' incipit.
Composition
In terms of the stages of composition, Braun argues that documents (such as Q) which can be shown to have been composed in various layers (see
266 While saying 11 stands outside the first eight sayings, its almost direct parallel in saying 111 is worth noting. 267 One such claim is made by Elaine Pagels, "Exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Gospels of Thomas and John," JBL 118 (1999): 477-496. William Atrial also argues for a Thomas that is only coherent as a written document in, "The Rhetoric of Social Construction: Language and Society in the Gospel of Thomas." He argues that we must look to Thomas' language if we are to attempt to understand Thomas' perception of the world (30). Implicit in this argument is the assumption that Thomas is a coherent document with structural integrity. 86
Kloppenborg 1987) show evidence of "robustness to the requirement of learned authorship" and "introduces a temporal dimension which bespeaks some perdurance of interest in returning to the same text again and again."268 This is certainly the case with Q (see Kloppenborg's threefold stratification of Q), and is almost certainly the case for Thomas. And while there is not nearly as much agreement on what comprises what layers of Thomas, that Thomas is a stratified document is almost universally accepted.269 There is evidence of "prolonged tinkering" (Braun's term) with individual sayings in Thomas as well, a phenomenon which I have addressed in my second chapter while looking at chreia and chreia expansion in Thomas. Expanding chreia within a text is the perfect example of what Braun refers to when he speaks of both long term interest in the text, and a learned authorship working with the text. This is especially the case when the expanded chreia reflect interests present elsewhere in Thomas. In saying
11, for example, the basic chreia "Jesus said, 'this heaven will pass away and the one above it will pass away'" is expanded using themes that prominent elsewhere in Thomas:
"The dead do not live and the living will not die." Here Thomas is
engaging in one of his typical practices of breaking down binaries, in this
case between the living and the dead.
268 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Formation," 215. 269 Arnal, "The Rhetoric of Marginality," John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, and DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, all propose different stratifications of the gospel. 87
"The days you were eating that which was dead, you made it alive."
The theme of eating what is dead, and affecting the dead thing being eaten
is common in Thomas, and is also attested to in sayings 7,270 and 60.271
"But until you come into being in light, what will you do?" The idea of
coming into being in light is another common theme in Thomas. In saying
50 Jesus instructs his disciples that when people ask from where they have
come to say "it is from the place of the light which we came." In Thomas
77 Jesus states that "I am the light over all." The Gospel of Thomas also
mentions light being within people in sayings 24, 61, and 83.
"On that day when you are one you will become two. But when you
become two, what will you do?" Thomas finishes elaborating on his
chreia with a saying about one becoming two (which is a problem for the
person who becomes two). This same idea of the importance of being one
(and not two) can be found in sayings 22, and 114 (and probably 84).
We find these same practices of expanding chreiai with distinctly Thomasine themes elsewhere as well, especially in the various places in which Thomas stresses the importance of being "a single one." Sayings 48, 49, 75, and 106 all represent unexpanded chreiai which stress the importance of being alone/a single one, and sayings 4, 11,16, 22, 23, 30, and 114 all stress the importance of being
270 Thomas 7: Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which the man will eat, and the lion becomes man. And polluted is this man who the lion will eat. And the lion will become man." 271 Thomas 60: They saw a Samaritan carrying a lamb going up to Judea. He said to his disciples, "that person around the lamb [text probably corrupt]?" They said to him, "Just as he will kill it and eat it." He said to them, "While it is living he will not eat it, but if he kills it, it becomes a corpse." They said, "otherwise he will not be able to." He said to them "So also you seek the place for yourselves of rest lest you become a corpse and be eaten." If we read Thomas 11 through Thomas 60 (which we should probably do), then we can also related sayings 80 and 81 to saying 11. 88 alone/a single one in an expansion of a chreia which betrays no indication that the importance of the original chreia was being alone/a single one. Thus with Thomas we have a document in which material which was originally not related
(unexpanded chreiai) was modified through chreia expansions in order to cohere with formerly unrelated chreiai. This is an indication of both compositional stratification (even if only at the level of the Thomas scribes elaborating on oral tradition), and Thomas' compositional sophistication given that the conscious expansion of select chreiai in order to emphasize distinctly Thomasine interests indicates a learned composer behind the text.
Genre revisted
*)T) Q has long been considered wisdom literature, and since 1987, an instruction document and a chreiai collection. The category "wisdom literature" is a rather general one referring essentially to sayings collections which contain wise sayings. The term can be (and has been) used to describe certain pieces of
Egyptian literature, Near Eastern literature, and Greek literature. Many subgenres exist within this more general genre of "wisdom literature" and they include: instruction, gnomologia, and chreiai collections.
The instruction genre has a few distinct markers: the instructions are attributed to a wise person,274 the instructions use the language of parental
'yjc 07A instruction, the genre employs a narrative prologue, and instructions use
272 Robinson, "LOGOI SOPHON." 273 Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q, especially 317-328. 274 Ibid., 265. 275 Ibid., 284-287. 89
*)*17 imperatives or clusters of imperatives often followed by motive clauses. We find most of these features in Q1,278 and several in the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas is certainly attributed to a wise person (Jesus), employs a narrative prologue, and occasionally uses imperatives both with motive clauses (sayings 5, 6, and 14), and without (sayings 36,42,95, and 110).279 Despite the similarities, however,
Thomas is not nearly as a good an example of the instruction genre as is Q1. Q1 features not only many more imperatives than does Thomas, but Q1 also uses its imperatives in much more sophisticated ways. Q1 groups many of its imperatives into clusters, and uses these imperative clusters as an organizing structure. For example, as Kloppenborg observes, Q''s four wisdom speeches (6:20b-49; 9:57-
10:16; 12:2-7,11-12; and 13:24-14:34) begin with "a programmatic saying or group of sayings, setting the tone for the cluster (6:20b-23; 9:57-62; 12:2; 13:24), and then follows the imperative or hortatory section."280 Where Q1 has used imperatives as a fundamental structuring device (in step with more sophisticated instructions), Thomas places his imperatives as he would any other saying: in his text without much context. Thus where Q1 is almost certainly instruction, Thomas is almost certainly not.
276 Ibid., 266,279-280. 277 Ibid., 267-269. 278 Ibid., 317-322. In Kloppenborg's stratification of Q, genre plays a large part in identifying the layers: Q1 consisted of wisdom material in the form of instruction, and Q consisted of wisdom material in the form of an apocalyptic chreiai collection. And while Kloppenborg's stratification is not my interest here, this qualifying note is important. 279 Noticeably absent from both Q and Thomas is any indication that Jesus shares his wisdom as a parental figure. Kloppenborg is careful to point out, however, that all sayings collections will have their own "peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, and unparalleled content" (327) but are at the same time "intelligible against the background of antique sayings collections" (327). 280 Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q, 318. 90
While Thomas has some parallels with the instruction genre, it has many more similarities with chreiai collections. The evidence which supports the interpretation of Thomas as a chreiai collection has been supplied in chapter two, but the Sitz of these types of collections is a point to which it is worth returning.
As Kloppenborg observes, gnomologia and chreiai collections were often the product of schools.281 Individual chreiai were used as writing, spelling and grammar exercises (see pages 50-53 chapter two), but of more interest to us is the fact that other chreiai collections seem to have been used as higher-level moral
• • TO") instructions. The akousmata of Pythagoras, for example, existed as sayings collections and "functioned in philosophical communities as catechisms or as convenient summaries of the principal doctrines."283 Kloppenborg argues that the
Gospel of Thomas is a good example of a sayings collection which served as an instrument of instruction: "Like Pythagorean symbola, the Thomas sayings are formulated so that they require interpretation in order to become efficacious."284
Kloppenborg is not alone in noting Thomas' requirement of effort on the part of the reader. Ron Cameron and William Arnal have argued along similar lines, and in much more detail than Kloppenborg. But here I anticipate myself. What needs to be observed in terms of genre is that Thomas employs a genre which betrays not only scribal values (an emphasis on interpretation), but also betrays scribal skills and techniques (especially the use of, and expansion of chreiai).285
281 Ibid., 299. 282 Ibid. 283 Ibid., 300. 284 Ibid., 301. 285 Braun considers "school technologies" apart from "genre" in his essay. In "school technologies" he examines the emphasis which Graeco-Roman literary culture placed on "invention." Here he considers invention in two forms. First, on a more general level invention 91
Erudition, power, authorization, and social location
Braun reminds us that in examining first century Graeco-Roman writings we are dealing with a time in which there was high social regard for intellectuals.286 Furthermore, this high regard was not exclusively reserved for royal scribes and orators, but rather "the recognition that a kitbag of competencies derived from literacy was an important way to get one's hand on an instrument of power in social discourse generally."287 Thus, argues Braun, written works such as Q, the Gospel of Thomas, and even Paul's letters represent a "scribal return to an apparently repudiated scribal modality of discourse in order to empower its own self evidencies."288 Perhaps the best example of this in Thomas is what Ron
Cameron refers to in his 1999 article, "Ancient Myths and Modern Theories on the Gospel of Thomas" as Thomas' "hermeneutic of effort." Cameron understands Thomas' incipit and first two sayings to contain the hermeneutical key with which to interpret the rest of Thomas.
can be understood as "the employment of Hellenistic school technologies for arranging sayings in suasive, argumentative patterns and for elaborating chreiai into arguments and the like" (217). Second, on a more Q specific level, "invention concerns the question of whom to credit with the complex speech and argument constructions one finds in Q" (217). In Thomas, the question of genre is actually much more closely tied to the question of technologies than is the case with Q. This is because Thomas is a chreia collection, therefore the juxtaposing of like chreia, and the expansion of chreia in Thomas occur almost by default. Also, chreia collections tend to be less homogeneous than do instructions, thus we should not expect the same elaborate speech and argument constructions that we find in Q, in Thomas. Arnal has recently argued that Thomas' apparent lack of order may stem from a policy in Thomas to spread out like material in order to intentionally obfuscate the text. "Thomas seems not so much to lack thematic organization as to deliberately adopt a principle of scattering related materials —especially materials that usefully assist in interpreting each other — as far apart as is feasible" William Arnal, "The Politics of Hidden Meaning: Interminable Interpretation as a Group-constituting Practice in The Gospel of Thomas," (unpublished paper, 2011), 18-19. Thus with Thomas we may actually have a document that, through its apparent ^organization is actually rather sophisticatedly organized. 286 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Invention," 218. 287 Ibid. 288 Ibid., 219. 92
These are the hidden sayings which Jesus the living one spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote. 1. And he said, "Whoever will find the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death." 2. Jesus said, "77ie one seeking, let him not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become disturbed. When he is disturbed, he will be amazed, and will reign. [And having reigned he will come to rest.]"
Cameron alerts us to two important points: 1) the sayings are "hidden," and 2) they require interpretation to become effective.289 Thomas' interpretive program, then, requires effort on behalf of the reader. Thus the reader is an active participant in the text, rather than a passive recipient of the text. Cameron goes on to identify several other places in Thomas where effort is rewarded: sayings 5, 92 and 94 which promise one who seeks will find, but more importantly in the multiple sayings which explicitly invoke toil (£IC€), as necessary for rewards.
Saying 58 states it most clearly, "blessed is the man who has toiled and has found life." Again in saying 109 a merchant finds a pearl hidden in a field only after he plowed it. Saying 107 reports that the shepherd finds his lost sheep only after he toiled (2IC6). Sayings 8, 76, 96, and 98 also feature protagonists who gain their reward through effort.
The importance of effort in Thomas is quite clear, especially the effort, or toil, required to choose the one good thing, be it fish (saying 8), sheep (saying
109), or pearl (saying 76). But this is not the only notable thematic feature of
Thomas which suggests Thomas' intentional erudition. Perhaps even more important, if less obvious, is Thomas' use of ordinary language. Arnal observes in his essay "The Rhetoric of Social Formation" that,"Thomas views ordinary
289 Cameron, "Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins," 105. 93 language as concealing the true meaning of divine revelation: the sayings of Jesus are 'secret' or 'hidden' (e©H1T) and there are not [...] layers of (compatible) meaning to be ascertained according to the depth of one's intellect, but rather a meaning, fixed and single, to be found (£€ e or <5lNe) beneath the text."290
Arnal argues that this interpretive process is highlighted in Thomas by Thomas' invocation and subsequent inversion of what appear to be binaries. This inversionary project is most obvious in Thomas' use of metaphors. Arnal lists nine examples: poverty is bad in sayings 2 and 29, but good in 54; robbers are antagonists in sayings 21 and 103, but protagonists in 35 and 98; being drunk is a hindrance to understanding in saying 28, but a symptom of understanding in 13; collecting interest is prohibited in saying 95, but offered as a reward in 109; wealth is unspiritual in sayings 63-65, but is a metaphor for spirituality in 29, 81, and 110; merchants will not enter the kingdom in saying 64, but the kingdom is like a merchant in 76; kings cannot understand the truth in saying 78, but the goal of the reader is to become a king in 2 and 81; division is bad in saying 61 and
Jesus claims not to be a divider in 72, but in 16 Jesus claims to have come to provoke division.291 Arnal argues that these inversions are more than social critique, and are actually an attempt to "call into question the stability of words and the cogency of metaphoric language."292 The presence of both Thomas' hermeneutic of effort and Thomas' subversion of language should not be understood as attempts to conceal the content of Thomas, but rather as attempts to
290 Arnal, "Rhetoric of Social Construction," 32. 291 Ibid., 36-37. 292 Ibid., 37. 94 make Thomas appear important and sophisticated. As with Thomas' choice of genre, the choice of how to present information in Thomas is a symptom of
Thomas' social milieu: scholastic groups produced and used chreiai collections, and the study and interpretation of texts was one of the main functions of many of these scholastic groups. The hermeneutic of effort, and Thomas' inversionary project involving everyday language reek of the pretentious erudition which would have functioned to empower the one(s) able to interpret Thomas, i.e. the scribes who composed Thomas.
Braun treats "social location" and "erudition, power, and authorization" as different but related issues in his article, but here I have combined them in order to illustrate as clearly as possible the interrelatedness of these two ideas. Social location can be broken into two related subfields: the geographical location of the authors, and social status of the authors. In terms of the former, I have argued in chapter 2 that Thomas is the product of an urban setting (rather than rural setting), and I need not readdress that point here. Of more interest to us is the probable social status of those who produced Thomas. As all of the preceding points have suggested, Thomas (and Q) should be considered the product of a reasonably literate class, capable not only of structuring arguments, but also of composing large segments of material.293 When one thinks of a literate class of reasonably sophisticated writers in antiquity, one almost immediately thinks of scribes. As I
293 Intricate structuring is more obviously evident in Q than it is in Thomas, but if Arnal is correct that one of Thomas' structuring policies was to intentionally disperse like material (in order to appear more esoteric than it actually was) then we could argue that Thomas also possesses a reasonably sophisticated level of internal structuring. 95 have argued above, and as Kloppenborg and Arnal have illustrated, Thomas is almost certainly the product of scribes.
Thomas as a "Scholastic" product
It should now be clear from my above review that several trajectories of early Jesus groups resembled scholastic social formations. Paul structured his communities using almost identical methods as did Hellenistic philosophies
(ignoring ethnicity in favour of inclusiveness, creating alternate social structures such as Active kinship ties to replace the social structures of the world), and much of Paul's teachings also reflect the ethos of Hellenistic philosophies (especially his emphasis on intellectual reflection on the mind, self, soul). Q and Thomas both betray a scribal level of literacy (namely their writing technologies and skills), and both appear to have emerged from a social situation in which
"scholastic" peoples were being marginalized due to political and economic changes.294 Additionally, Thomas possesses all the characteristics which Braun suggests are indicative of scholastic production. Thomas is a written text whose composition shows at the very least minimal (if not advanced) ordering techniques that cannot be explained by the random accrual of oral traditions.
Thomas is a chreiai collection, and, apart from the incipit, contains chreiai and expanded chreiai only. Again we cannot explain the existence of a text composed exclusively of a single rhetorical form unless we understand it as a text which is intentionally constructed so as to contain only a single rhetorical form. Chreiai themselves are the property of schools (albeit the sophistication of those in these
294 This marginalization will be examined at length in chapter four. 96 schools ranges widely from introductory grammar schools to advanced philosophical schools), and the expansion of chreiai, as is in evidence in Thomas, was a learned practice which took place in the progymnasmata. And finally,
Thomas' social situation of (perceived) uprootedness combined with its self authorizing discourse and its stress on correct interpretation all suggest that
Thomas was consciously attempting to make a return to a discourse in which the scribes (here also the interpreters) have social status (here as interpreters).
It is with this idea of self-authorization in the face of (perceived) marginality that I will conclude my thesis. Just as Thomas is not the only early
Christian text produced in the Roman Mediterranean in what appears to be a school environment, Thomas is also not the only text produced in the Roman
Mediterranean which attempts to address its (perceived) loss of power by creating an alternative discourse in which that lost power is restored. In my final chapter I shall examine Thomas as a document negotiating with an imperial/colonial situation that has blocked access to traditional forms of prestige. In order to do so
I will present Thomas alongside Epicurean social formations, and Rabbis, as well as a more contemporary example of the Kartabhajas of 19th Bengal in order to illustrate the similar ways scholastic groups negotiate imperialism and alienation. 4. A place to call their own: Thomas' construction of an alternative reality in the wake of social marginalization
There are two major traits shared by all of the scholastic social formations reviewed in the previous chapter: first, they all used intellectual means (generally in the form of written texts) to establish social identities, and second, they all suffered from, or perceived themselves to be suffering from alienation and deracination.295 The cause of this (perceived) alienation and deracination was most often the colonial and imperial conquests brought on through Hellenization, and continued into the Roman period by Roman imperialism. It is within this context of Roman imperialism and colonialism that I suggest that we locate the
Gospel of Thomas and the Thomas community.
The social effects of Roman imperialism
Locating Thomas within the socio-historical context of Roman imperialism does more than simply pin down a time period for the gospel, it also helps to situate the gospel socio-historically. As I will argue at length below,
Thomas was composed in a situation in which the composers' traditional claims to authority and prestige have been, and continue to be undermined by Roman imperial policy, and as a result Thomas employs a self-authorizing discourse in which the authors can reclaim their lost status. In this sense Thomas is hardly unique, both in terms of early Jesus groups and textually oriented groups under the thumb of imperial Rome more generally. Q, the Rabbis who produced the
Mishna, Paul, and some Epicurean groups all represent textual efforts to find (or
295 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Formation," 225. This idea will be explored at length below. 98 construct) a place in which a group can deal with the changes brought on by
Roman imperialism. To better understand the Mediterranean as a colonized area under imperial rule, it is necessary to look back further than Roman imperialism, and begin with the conquest of Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic period.
No study of the Gospel of Thomas (specifically), nor early Christian social formations (generally) can begin without acknowledging the importance of two historical phenomena: Hellenization, and Roman Imperialism. These two mutually inclusive political, social, and economic forces functioned to shape social formations in the Mediterranean for over 700 years: beginning with the colonial conquests of Alexander the Great, and ending with the adoption of
Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.296 The social and political consequences of the Alexandrian conquest of the Mediterranean cannot be understated. It led to the foundation of new cities, the relocation (and sometimes establishment) of political and economic centres, and the empowering of select portions of the population at the expense of the majority. Alexander sought to unite the Mediterranean under Greek language and culture, and irreversibly altered "the socio-political world of the Greeks by replacing the local world of the polis, the Hellenistic model of independent, democratic city-state, with an internationalizing vision of the entire world as polis."297 Under
Alexander's successors (particularly the Ptolemies and the Seleucids), dozens of
296 Luther H. Martin, Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) 4-6. Martin acknowledges that the "Hellenistic period" is often considered to have been ended in 30 BCE by the final incorporation of lands ruled by Alexander into the Roman Empire. However, Martin argues that in many important ways (which will become evident over the course of this chapter) imperial Rome should be included in the Hellenistic age; especially in terms of both Alexander's and Rome's efforts of colonization. 297 Ibid., 4. 99 new Hellenistic cities were founded throughout the Mediterranean as a means of maintaining and controlling the empire (or the fragments into which the empire broke following Alexander's death).298 These new imperial cities were often established close to old indigenous cities in order to supplant those native cities as centres of commerce and government.299 These newly founded cities also functioned to ensure that the Hellenistic kingdoms (which had emerged out of
Alexander's empire following his death) would permanently eliminate native kingship in the lands conquered by Alexander.
One of the major results of Alexander's attempt to establish the world-as-
polis, and his successors' establishment of their own Hellenistic kingdoms in the place of native kings, was the re-establishment, or re-inventing of traditional national cults, or the creation of other social formations.300 What is more, these social formations occurred not only in traditional homelands, but, as a result of the colonial disruption of Hellenistic conquest, in diaspora settings as well. The social effects of Hellenization are, perhaps, most apparent in the diaspora where both physical and social deracination led to the appearance of a plethora of new social formations. As Luther H. Martin puts it:
[t]he protracted conquest of political space ensuing from the imperial aspirations of Alexander and continued by his successors had challenged, among other local institutions, traditional locative definitions of social existence to produce a complex and richly textured religious culture that included private clubs, the mysteries, and even some of the early Christianities. This profusion of alternative religious communities perdured well beyond any imagined social cohesiveness under Pax
298 Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1995), 24. 299 Ibid. 300 On this phenomenon see Jonathan Z. Smith, Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 100
Romana; indeed, this social diversification intensified throughout the centuries under Roman rule. The politeia of the traditional polis, as of the subsequent imperial ideals, gave ground, in other words, to the mysteria of club and cult.3 1
I do not wish to dwell on the dynamics of Hellenization, but I would like to assert that with the colonial and imperial conquests of Alexander came a new way of being in the Mediterranean: old local cults were revived and re-invented
(especially in the wake of the loss of native kings) and a new, large diasporic population emerged as an increasing number of people were physically uprooted from their native soil as a result of colonial and imperial actions. In addition to this physical uprootedness, there was also a degree of social uprootedness; as the political and social landscape was changed, people who were formerly in positions of (relative) power often found themselves in less powerful positions.302
And while Alexander's empire did not properly survive his own death, the changes which it had brought to the Mediterranean lasted well into the Common
Era.
The extent to which Hellenization set the stage for Roman imperialism cannot be understated. The cities founded by Alexander and his successors continued (for the most part) to play important political and economic roles well into Roman times. As Stephen Moore argues, the multilayered Hellenization had serious and long lasting effects on the culture of the Mediterranean, and expedited
301 Luther H. Martin, "Secrecy in Hellenistic Communities," in Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religion (ed. H. G. Kippenberg and G. G. Stroumsa, SHR65; Leidon: E. J. Brill, 1995), 102. 302 This is especially the case for anyone who was closely tied to the functioning of native kingships, namely the high priests and scribes. With the cessation of native kingship, these highly trained, and (formerly) highly important individuals found themselves in positions of (perceived) marginality, as their raison d'etre had been rather abruptly brought to an end. Cf. Smith "Wisdom and Apocalyptic." 101 the region's "eventual absorption by the consummately Hellenized Romans."
The imperial and colonial project of Roman military conquest (perhaps even more so than Alexander's conquests) turned the Mediterranean into a type of global village. Inhabiting this global village, however, meant the loss of particular
(mainly ethnic/national) identity. The physical displacement of a vast number of peoples combined with the breakup of established social and cultural units which resulted from those displacements led to social tension, especially with regard to culturally conditioned values, which persisted well into the Roman age.304
One of the most important features of Roman imperialism and colonisation, as with Alexander's conquests, was the establishment of new power centres. This was especially the case in Asia Minor and Greece, Egypt, and
Palestine and Syria. In Greece, for example, the Romans sacked and torched
Corinth (146 BCE), slaughtering its male inhabitants and enslaving its women and children. Over one hundred years later (44 BCE) Corinth was re-founded as a
Roman colony populated by freed slaves and undesired peoples from Rome. This
process of military colonization was repeated throughout Greece. Thirty years
after Corinth was re-founded, Augustus founded the new Roman colonies Patrae and Nicoplos in order to stimulate the stagnant Greek economy.306 Nicopolis served a double role in that it was founded near Actium (an older Greek city), and functioned to draw in the people of the surrounding countryside to this new
303 Stephen Moore, "Empire and Apocalypse: Postcolonialism and the New Testament (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 100. 304 Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament, 26-27. 305 Richard Horsley, "Introduction," in Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (ed. R. Horsley; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1997), 11. 306 Martin Goodman, The Roman World 44 BC-AD180 (New York: Routledge, 1997), 231. 102 political centre.307 Philippi and Thessalonica underwent similar military resettlements, as did areas of Achaia, Macedonia, and Asia Minor.308 The changes brought on by Roman imperialism were not limited to the geographical relocation of populations: Imperial Rome also needed some way to govern its populace, and this often resulted in significant changes to extant political systems. Galatia,
Lycia, and Cappadocia, for example, underwent major administrative changes during the Early Empire,309 and administrative changes were even more extreme in Egypt due to the fact that Egypt boasted one of the most established
i jn bureaucratic systems in the Mediterranean. This phenomenon of conquest, population depletion, and forced resettlement created truly diverse populations, with many people well removed from their native soil and cults.311
The changes brought on by imperial Rome were, perhaps, even more dramatic in Judea. The Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem in 63 BCE, and periodic re-conquests of Judea and Galilee resulted in mass enslavements at
Magdala/Tarichaea (Galilee) in 52-51 BCE, mass enslavements in and around
Sepphoris and mass crucifixions at Emmaus (Judea) in 4 BCE,312 as well as the dramatic restructuring of the economy in Galilee with the founding of Sepphoris and Tiberias (18 CE) under Antipas.313 Judea underwent further political change in 44 CE when the regions of Galilee and Philip's tetrarchy was reduced to a
307 Ibid. 308 Horsley, "Introduction," 11. 309 Ibid., 237 310 Ibid., 266-268. 311 For an excellent account of how one group in Corinth may have dealt with their geographical displacement, see John W. Parrish, "Speaking in Tongues, Dancing with Ghosts: Redescription, Translation, and the Language of Resurrection," SR 39:1 (2010): 25-45. 312 Horsley, "Introduction,"10-11. 313 Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 146-147. 103
Roman province.314 These political changes resulted in political power moving away from multiple rural centres (town administrators and village scribes), and into one or two Roman established imperial urban centres (namely Sepphoris and
Tiberias). The founding of Tiberias was even more significant in that it actually replaced Sepphoris as the provincial capital of Galilee (a title which Sepphoris would win back in 44 CE).315 Arnal summarizes quite nicely the effect that the founding of Sepphoris and Tiberias would have had on the surrounding countryside:
The foundation of Tiberias, then, should be seen as a deliberate part of Roman-Herodian policy and one that had a decisive and dramatic effect on the surrounding countryside, which had prior to this foundation, lived in relative smallerholder autonomy, protected by geography and the constraints on ancient transport from severe exploitation by Roman or Hellenistic powers based even as close by as Sepphoris. The moment the brand-new city of Tiberias went up, however, there would have been a sudden and dramatic effect on the countryside around the lake [the Sea of Galilee], and, to a lesser degree, in Upper Galilee. In particular, we would expect this region to experience a drift of goods toward the city (with attendant social effects at the village level), a (forcible) reorientation of agriculture toward urban consumption, progressive monetization of the economy, more frequent use of hired labor, greater efficacy in the extraction of taxes and other duties, incremental concentration of land with resultant tenancy and loss of smallholdings, cash cropping and specialization, greater trade, and a noticeable polarizing of the divide between the relatively wealthy and the very poor—in short, an incremental reduction, at a variety of levels, in the rural peasantry's standard of living.316
Arnal is quick to point out that we should not view these political changes as the dismantling of Utopia, but they did have significant effects at the social level: namely, the relative loss of autonomy by low level village administrators whose jobs had been essentially eliminated by the founding of large urban centres near
314 Kloppenborg, "The Social History of the Q People," 87. 315 Ibid. 316 Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 149. 104 formerly (relatively) autonomous villages.317 This social alienation and
(perceived) deracination will be examined in much more depth below. But for now, suffice to say that significant social, political, and economic change defined
Rome's imperial relationship with Judea and Galilee.
Egypt experienced similar forms of Roman imperialism and colonization, as one might expect given that many consider Emperor Augustus' defeat and incorporation of Egypt into the Roman Empire to be the end of the Hellenistic age, and the beginning of the Roman.318 One of the best examples of imperial meddling in Egypt is the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great, and establishing it as Egypt's main political and cultural centre. And while the Roman
Empire did not go so far as establishing yet another new capital, their colonial practices were significant nonetheless. Antinoopolis, for example, was established by Hadrian early in the second century CE, initially as a port city, but
Antinoopolis' importance grew as it became a settlement for "New Greeks"
(Egyptian Greeks), as well veterans of the army.319 Egypt experienced numerous bureaucratic changes as well (as mentioned above), most notably the introduction of Roman eques as high priests, and the increased importance of the metropolis
(the main town in each provinces) at the expense of smaller, and formerly reasonably autonomous towns.320 As Martin Goodman observes,
In a significant innovation, the local Graeco-Egyptian elite of these metropoleis were granted a major role in communal government as
317 Ibid., 152. 318 Martin, Hellenistic Religions, 4. 319 Gary Lease, "What constitutes globalization for religion?" in Hellenisation, Empire and Globalisation: Lessons from Antiquity (ed. L. H. Martin and P. Pachis; Thessaloniki: Vanias Publications, 2004), 107-108. 320 Goodman, The Roman World, 267. 105
magistrates. Their independence differed from that of local aristocrats elsewhere in the empire principally because of their lack of councils; since there was no mechanism from within the metropoleis to check the competence of magistrates, this duty reverted to the stategos. On the other hand, the social status of these local aristocrats was jealously preserved by the Roman state, which permitted such positions only to those of the 'gymnasial' class. Entry into this select class, in Ptolemaic times a private matter, was carefully controlled after AD 4/5 by epokrisis, a formal hearing in front of a Roman official. Entry required documentation of pedigree. The interest of the state was involved not least because such status carried tax privileges.321
The administration of towns and villages changed slightly from Ptolemaic times to Roman times, but for the most part the villages continued to be administrated by elders who supervised leases and taxes, and were themselves supervised by a state appointed clerk.322 So unlike in Galilee and Judea, some of the most significant political, social, and economic changes in Egypt occurred in large cities, especially Alexandria. During most of the Ptolemaic reign, Alexandria had a functioning city council or boule. The Romans abolished the council which resulted in a great deal of resentment from the Alexandrian population in general, and the (former) elites specifically. In fact the Alexandrians went so far as to send ambassadors to Caesar to request the reinstitution of the city council: "We ask, then, that it be permitted for the Council to convene annually and at the end of each year submit a report of its transactions."323 This demand for a council is just one instance of symbolic resistance to Rome in the form of attempting to re-attain some semblance of self-government.
321 Ibid. 322 Ibid., 270. 323Translated by Alexander Fuks and Avigdor Tcherikover, in Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, (eds Alexander Fuks and Avigdor Tcherikover; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, for the Magnes Press, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1957-1964), vol. 2, no. 150. (quoted in Ibid., 268). 106
In Egypt, as well as in almost all of Rome's other colonies, it is important to note that Rome's "colonies" were colonies of occupation: the indigenous populations remained numerically superior, but were subjugated to foreign
(Roman) governance.324 As I have already suggested above, Rome governed its colonies through urban centres, and it was from/through these urban centres
(structured as self-governing cities) that Rome administered its provinces.325 And while the specifics of any given colonial situation may differ, two generalizations can be made about Roman imperialism: a sizeable section of the population of the
Roman empire would have been physically displaced from their homelands, and an even more sizeable portion, likely a majority, would have been socially and economically displaced due to Rome's restructuring of local political and economic systems.
As one might expect, Rome's colonized subjects did not take Rome's imperial policies lying down. Revolts, while not frequent, were numerous enough.
Revolts broke out in Pannonia and Dalmatia in 6 CE;326 repeatedly in Britain in
38, 31-28, and 12 BCE, and in 21, 68, and 69 CE;327 in the Rhineland in 69-70
CE;328 in the Balkans in 9 CE;329 in Judea in 66-70 and again in 132 CE;330 the
Jewish population of Egypt rioted in 38 and 66 CE, and revolted in 115-117
CE;331 and there were sporadic revolts in North Africa.332 But in many ways these
324 Moore, Empire and Apocalypse, 100-101. 325 Ibid., 100. 326 Goodman, The Roman World, 82. 327 Ibid., 211. 328 Ibid., 221. 329 Ibid., 224. 330 Ibid., 256-257. 331 Ibid., 269. 332 Ibid., 279-283. 107 open revolts are one of the less interesting reactions to Roman imperialism. First off, these revolts were all brutally crushed by the superior power of the Roman legions, perhaps most obviously in the case of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple. Open defiance of Rome got one killed (or enslaved if one was so lucky) and little more.
The more interesting reactions to Roman imperialism were the multiple non-violent modes of negotiating with the present situation of imperialism and colonialism. In fact, negotiation is probably a better term than reaction, as reaction implies a lack of agency, and a lack of critical thinking, at least in the ways in which "reaction" is used today.333 We have already seen one example of negotiation in the citizens of Alexandria's petition to have their city council re established. There are, of course, numerous other examples of imperial negotiation. Many subjects of Rome, for example, addressed their powerlessness by dissociating from the Roman state by making lives and careers within alternative value systems.334 We have seen this very same strategy employed by various subjects of Hellenization, especially in the formation of voluntary associations which include trade guilds, some philosophical schools, religious cults, and the mysteries. Members of these voluntary associations tended to be
333 1 am thinking especially of the term "reaction" in scientific discourses. A chemical reaction, for example, refers to a situation in which two or more chemicals are combined which creates an a priori result. We already know that when iron is exposed to sodium chloride and oxygen, rust will form. Under no circumstances will this process create gold. This use of "reaction" can also be seen in political discourse. When country A is said to "react" to some action of country B, the message is almost certainly that country A had no choice. Country B's actions already determined what country A's response would be. "Negotiate," on the other hand, implies agency on behalf of the subject. Chemicals cannot negotiate with each other, but country A and coiuitry B can. In the case of colonized people, it is better to understand various responses to colonization as negotiations (giving agency, thought, and subjectivity to the colonized subject), rather than reactions which deny those qualities. 334 Goodman, The Roman World, 159. 108 artificially tied together by Active kinship bonds (replacing kinship bonds broken by physical deracination),335 and the various positions within these institutions functioned to give members higher social status, at least within the group
(replacing social status lost by social deracination).
While not all of these groups produced written works, the ones that did tended to establish their secondary world and identity in their writings, which refers us back to what Braun calls "a scribal return to an apparently repudiated scribal modality of discourse in order to empower its own self-evidencies."336 The practice of reading and writing was, and continues to be an important mode of discourse, one which can potentially accumulate a degree of power for the reader/writer. As Braun observes:
the high social regard displayed in the iconographic record shows that Graeco-Roman societies were scholastically oriented societies, if only in the recognition that a kitbag of competencies derived from literacy was an important way to get one's hands on an instrument of power in social discourse generally, but also in dealing with the civic and imperial bureaucratic structures—and this whether deployed for conservation or corrosion of the dominant cultural 'facts'.337
The production and interpretation of texts allows for the production of (new) identities, a practice that one would think would be appealing to a colonized
people who have lost their former ethnic and social identities. Already I have identified several such deracinated peoples such as: low level officials in Greece and Asia-Minor who were cut off from politics due to the Roman reordering of local administrative systems; Galilean village scribes who found themselves
335 Martin, "Secrecy," 105. 336 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Formation," 219. 337 Ibid., 218-219. 338 Goodman, The Roman World, 231-237. 109 without jobs (and the social prestige which came with them) after the economic reordering of Galilee in the first half of the first century CE;339 lower level
Alexandrian "politicians" (former city council members, or those who would have been on the city council) who found themselves reasonably powerless to affect civic discourse due to the Roman abolition of Alexandria's city council;340 and, of course, the high priests and Temple scribes of Jerusalem who found themselves without a raison d'etre following the destruction of the Second Temple.341 The reason I have drawn attention to these four instances rather than the multitude of other examples is that, in addition to suffering from social deracination, each of these groups possessed a level of literary competence that allowed for the negotiation of their colonial situation and social deracination through textual means. The Alexandrians' request for the reestablishment of their city council
(written on papyri) is one example of people using writing to negotiate their social situation. The other reason that I have chosen these four examples is that in all cases, in addition to losing a source of income (economic capital), these people lost a measure of prestige (social capital). Their social identities were closely tied to their jobs, and when they lost their jobs, they lost their social titles. As a result these reasonably learned people needed to employ tools they had at their disposal in order to find a new way to access economic and social capital.
339 Kloppenborg, "The Social History of the Q People," 87, and Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 168-171. 340 Goodman, The Roman World, 267. 341 Jack N. Lightstone, "Whence the Rabbis? From coherent description to fragmented reconstruction," SR 26:3 (1997): 275-295. 110
Rabbis and the Mishna
One clear example of this can be seen in the emergence of Rabbis and the
Mishna following the destruction of the Second Temple. Following the failure of the Jewish revolt (66-70 CE) and the destruction of the Second Temple (along with much of Jerusalem), the religious leaders whose livelihoods and status depended on the operation of the Temple (namely priests and scribes) found themselves out of work. In addition to the financial burdens this would have placed on these individuals, they also would have suffered (to a certain extent at any rate) from a loss of the prestige associated with their former posts; the High
Priest of a ruined temple in a desolate city is not much of a title. This loss of temple (and by extension, livelihood) was not an exclusively Jewish problem, and occurred sporadically during the Hellenistic age due to the loss of native kingship caused by Hellenistic imperialism.342 In many cases this loss of the native kingship/temple which functioned as the benefactors of a scribal and priestly caste resulted in the production of apocalyptic literature. The priests and scribes, experts in cosmology, legal catalogues, and mythic histories have used their expertise in these areas in order to address the situational incongruity caused by a loss of native kings.343 This is quite evident in Daniel, Asclepius, the Potter's
Oracle,344 and maybe even the Gospel of Mark.345
342 Smith, "Wisdom and Apocalyptic," 67-87. 343 Ibid., 70-71. 344 Ibid., 74-75. 345 See John Parrish, "After This Nothing Happened," (unpublished paper). It is not necessarily that the composers of Mark were deracinated temple scribes, but that they viewed the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem as a loss of their ethnic identity. The principle is the same, even if the composers are not. Ill
But the turn towards apocalypticism was not the only option available to jobless scribes. Another response also involves utilizing scribal knowledge
(mythic legal history) and skills (advanced writing abilities) to create new textual traditions. Jack Lightstone argues that the Mishna (comprised grammatically and structurally of morphological repetitions, the repetition of similar or identical words, and the linking of these two qualities with repeated stock conjunction formulas) is an example of a move away from temple worship towards textual study.346 The Mishna was constructed as a lyrical list; a construction which
Lightstone suggests became a "principle hallmark and mode of authoritativeness constituting the 'mastery' of the 'mishnaic' rabbi."347 The Mishna as a whole functions to rhetorically reinforce and reflect "a portrayal of elite, authoritative virtuosity which may be characterized as a mastery of guardianship of the old social and cultic order overseen by priests and their scribal guild."348 The Rabbis, then, through the Mishna portray themselves as the heirs of the priestly and scribal administration of the destroyed temple. Lightstone goes on to suggest that the origin of the Rabbis is in '"refugees' from the Temple-state's national bureaucracy and administration who, having lost their institutional base, first tried to preserve and pass on their professional guild expertise."349
I would add two comments to Lightstones' analysis. First, while it is possible, it seems unlikely that former temple scribes wrote the Mishna solely to make themselves feel good; even (or, perhaps, especially) artificially constructed
346 Lightstone, "Whence the Rabbis?" 275-295. 347 Ibid., 287. 348 Ibid., 288. 349 Ibid., 290. 112 positions of social status require others to recognize that status. This was likely one goal, but certainly not the only goal. There is an overt sense of a community in the Mishna, and understanding the creation of the Mishna in terms of mythmaking and social formation makes a good deal of sense.350 Second, literary responses to situations of incongruity need not be limited to only elite scribes. In fact, we have a good deal of evidence from antiquity that writing as response/negotiation with changing social situations occurred at many levels,
from the elite priestly class (Lightstones' proto-Rabbis) to rather low level scribes
(Arnal's village scribes behind Q).3511 would classify all of these various written responses to social change as "textual efforts." By textual I mean simply that these groups used writing to address the situations in which they found themselves. It is this idea of "textual effort" which I would like to spend the remainder of this chapter examining.
Epicureans
Lightstone's proto-Rabbis are a clear case of an elite, alienated group adapting to changing circumstances by creating an alternative reality/cultural system in which they are no longer alienated. The creation of alternative cultural systems is one of the most common and well attested responses to (perceived) alienation in antiquity, and nowhere is this more clear than in the case of
350 On the inter-relation between mythmaking and social formation, see especially Burton Mack, "Social Formation," in Guide to the Study of Religion (ed. W. Braun and R. McCutcheon; London and New York: Cassell, 2000), 283-296. 351 Neither of these points should be understood as criticisms of Lightstones article, and his argument at the very least would not deny either of these points (if it does not directly support both points). 113
Hellenistic philosophy schools, or even schools more generally. Ancient Greek,
Hellenistic, and late Hellenistic philosophical schools were founded for a variety of reasons under a variety of socio-historical circumstances. Unlike our Rabbis,
Q, Paul, and Thomas, these social groups did not necessarily emerge from colonial or imperial circumstances. That being said, from their very beginnings
Greek schools functioned as subcultures which were intended to replace the realities in which the philosopher and his/her students were the subjects of some form of alienation and deracination.352 This alienation and deracination could be class based, geographical, or both. Many of the founders of some of the larger philosophical schools in ancient Greece suffered from geographical or class based exile. Pythagoras and Epicurus were both exiles from Samos, Diogenes from
Sinope, and Plato was an exile from the aristocratic class into which he was born.353 As Bernard Frischer observes, "[a]lieantion and deracination, whether of class or geography (or sometimes both), were the major sociological burdens carried by most Greek philosophers and their students."354 He goes on to argue that the positive side of this deracination was the freeing of the philosophers' minds to escape the unreflective acceptance of those part of the status quo which served to further their philosophical ends. The negative side (their social and physical uprootedness), however, served as the basis for their social formations.
Diogenes' alienation is extremely evident in both his philosophy and his way of life. Diogenes represents an almost perfect countercultural figure, rejecting the
352 Bernard Frischer, The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece (Berkley, Los Angles, and London: University of California Press, 1982), 52-53. 353 Ibid., 53. 354 Ibid. 114 luxuries of the class which rejected him, and acting in ways deemed to be completely inappropriate to all classes (especially masturbating in the agora).
Both Plato and Pythagoras employed enigmatic teachings in order to ensure that their philosophies could only be read and understood by people in their schools, thus insolating it from the world which rejected them. Plato, for example, hid the truth of his dialogues in plain sight: most of the truths were apparent and accessible to all readers, but some required proper interpretation. "The reader who has the requisite interpretive skills is able to find the single truth behind the variegated surface (7totKiXia) of the dialogues."355
It was extremely common for philosophical schools to address their social rootlessness and marginality through the creation of subcultures (Platonic,
Pythagorean, Cynic, and Epicurean groups all did this), but for the most part these subcultures existed on paper alone. Epicureanism, however, "offered the deracinated and alienated intellectual a home in a consciously constructed community that embodied a genuinely positive and legitimate alternative to the dominant culture of Greece."356 Beginning with Epicurus himself, the efforts of
Epicurean social formations were directed toward creating "an alternative community for philosophers in which normal life could be pursued along with philosophy. Philosophy no longer criticizes or serves the dominant culture; it turns its back on it, secedes from it, and, most importantly, puts something
355 Robert Lamberton, "The AllOPPHTOI ©EfiPIA and the Roles of Secrecy in the History of Platonism," in Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religion (ed. H. G. Kippenberg and G. G. Stroumsa, SHR 65; Leidon: E. J. Brill, 1995), 145. 356 Frischer, The Sculpted Word, 52. 115
1<7 positive in its place." As such, Epicurean social formations did more than create subcultures operating within the dominate culture; they created an alternative polis complete with alternative social norms. Epicurean schools functioned as both educational centres as well as genuine communities in which normal activities of daily life took place alongside philosophical learning and teaching.358 Epicurean communities, like other philosophies, distanced themselves from mainstream society in multiple ways: Epicureans published many texts, but these texts were (or were intended to be) reasonably inaccessible to the general reading public,359 and the Epicurean philosopher made himself difficult to access in order to surround his teachings in an aura of mystery and desirability.360
Other philosophers and philosophical schools practiced unorthodox sexuality in order to attest to their alienation from society. By not participating in marriage (a central institution of society), philosophers did not help to regenerate society.361 Epicureans broke with this pattern slightly by both admitting women, and encouraging marriage and child rearing within the school.362 In some ways they were practicing unorthodox sexual practices as well as a break from society in that the dominant culture no longer dictated the rearing of that generation. The admission of women was itself a significant countercultural move in a culture which was predominantly patriarchal, and the importance and attractiveness of
357 Ibid., 61. 358 Ibid., 62-63. 359 Ibid., 50. The practice of confining circulation of Epicurean books to members of the school can be, according to Frischer, dated to the lifetime of Epicurus. 360 Ibid., 48. 361 Ibid., 56-57. 362 Ibid., 61. 116 this policy cannot be overemphasized. The admission of women, of course, was a prerequisite for inter-group marriages and offspring, and thus it served the triple purpose of expanding Epicureanism's popularity, asserting its countercultural agenda, and ensuring that the school could actually function as an alternative social body in the literal sense of people living, learning, and growing together, and not just learning together.
Hellenistic philosophical schools, the Mishna-forming Rabbis, the authors of Q, and perhaps even Paul all represent groups or individuals attempting to address and negotiate their own uprootedness (be it social, geographical, or merely perceived) through intellectual means. Following Braun, I must stress that by "intellectual" I am not advocating a top-down approach where the intellectual elite dictates to the passive masses. The efforts of the Mishna, Q, Paul, and certainly Hellenistic philosophers were to assert the intellectual's own authority and importance, but this act is inherently social, and altogether empty if there are not people there to work with, and acknowledge that intellectual. As Braun argues, each of these intellectuals is related to their community through a shared context, "motivations, interests, and the various means of articulating these interests which makes thought and communication among people possible in the first place."364
363 Ibid., 62. 364 Braun, "Socio-Mythic Formation," footnote 5. 117
Thomas, secrecy, and negotiating space in the Empire
That Thomas was formed in an imperial situation is not a debated issue.
The Mediterranean was a thoroughly colonized area, and the weight of Roman imperialism was on everyone's shoulders. It is within this situation of colonialism and imperialism which we must situate the Gospel of Thomas. As with Q, Paul,
Epicurean social formations, and the formation of the Mishna, with Thomas we have a written text using the available tools to address and negotiate a situation in which the producers of the text have lost (or perceived themselves to have lost) some measure of social capital. The authors of Thomas understood themselves as wrongfully uprooted. This rhetoric of uprootedness is evident in Thomas in some of the same ways it is evident in Q. Thomas blesses the poor, informing them that theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Thomas 54). Thomas also blesses those hated and persecuted, those persecuted in their hearts, and those who hunger (Thomas
68 and 69). As Arnal has observed with Q, this blessing the hungry and persecuted is not a call to become starving martyrs,365 but instead an inversionary scheme which critiques the status quo. Thomas' rhetoric of uprootedness is actually much less pronounced than is Q's, but this does not mean that Thomas' composers felt any less alienated. Q addressed this perceived deracination rather directly with a rhetoric of deracination; Thomas employed a different means to address this situation.
As with Pythagoreans and Platonists, one of the most distinct features of the Gospel of Thomas is Thomas' claim to secrecy. I have already examined this
365 Arnal, Village Scribes, 188-193. 118 claim in terms of Ron Cameron's "hermeneutic of effort,"366 and here I will expand on that, focusing more on the existence and nature of the secret itself, rather than the interpretive process which the presence of the secret implies/requires. For a long time Thomas' incipit has been argued to be an identifying marker of Gnosticism. "These are the secret/hidden words/things which Jesus the living one spoke" has been taken as a Gnostic introduction to a
Gnostic text. Gnosticism was generally understood to be the intentional obscuring of Christianity in order to make a more enigmatic, sexier, and more exclusive religion. Gnostics made claims to special and secret knowledge which differentiated them from orthodox catholic Christians.367 In spite of all the glaring problems with this theory, the basic observation is probably correct: the claim to secrecy did function as a literary tool which bought those holding the secret a measure of prestige. This is most obvious, perhaps, when we investigate Thomas' claims to secrecy.
Thomas refers to secrecy in multiple places. Thomas' incipit states explicitly that the text contains the secret/hidden words of Jesus the living one, and the incipit is part of the larger three saying cluster which Cameron argues presents the hermeneutical key for the gospel:
1. these sayings are hidden (incipit) 2. whoever finds the interpretation of the hidden sayings will not taste death (saying 1) 3. one must seek until one finds, when one finds one will be disturbed, when one becomes disturbed one reigns, and having reigned, one will rest (saying 2)
366 See above pages 92-95. 367 1 am using these anachronistic terms intentionally as the assumed existence of a single Christianity from the beginning which was then bastardized by crazy Gnostics is one of the most common scholarly myths regarding Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi library. 119
Elsewhere Jesus reveals three secret things/words to Thomas (the Gospel's namesake) after Thomas correctly states that he is unable to say what Jesus is like
(saying 13). In saying 17, Jesus states that he will give to you all "what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart." And in saying 62 Jesus states that he discloses his mysteries to those worthy of receiving his mysteries. Jesus also repeatedly makes reference to hidden things. He uses a stock phrase "for there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed" in sayings 5 and 6, promises to reveal hidden things in saying 108, and uses hidden things as the object of his teachings in sayings 32, 33, 96, 97, and
109. And, in keeping with Cameron's hermeneutic of effort, Thomas emphasizes seeking in sayings 2, 24, 38,60, 92,94; making the correct choice in sayings 8,
76, and 107; and emphasizes toil in sayings 8, 58, 97, and 107.
In addition to things which Thomas presents as secret/hidden, and
Thomas' emphasis on seeking and toiling after what is hidden (seen in the hermeneutic of effort sayings), Thomas also appears to have utilized several literary devices in order to make the gospel appear to be more esoteric and enigmatic (therefore secret) than it actually was.368 For example, Thomas uses the practice of intertextuality to make reasonably simple theses more obscure.369
Elaine Pagels identifies fifteen sayings that either refer directly to the creation account or to themes which refer to Genesis 1 (4, 11, 18, 19, 37,49, 50, 77, 83,
368 Thomas' intentional esotericization of the text was first brought to my attention by Bill Arnal, and the following observations are deeply indebted to him. 369 William Arnal, "The Politics of Hidden Meaning: Interminable Interpretation as a Group- constituting Practice in The Gospel of Thomas," (unpublished paper), 12-16. 120
84, 85), or are implicitly related to the creation story (22, 24, 61, 70).370 Her interpretation works from the hypothesis that the sayings in Thomas, "are not randomly arranged, but carefully ordered to lead one through the process of seeing and 'finding the interpretation of these sayings' (log. I)."371 She understands Thomas' organizing structure to be a "complex, riddling composition that requires the reader to 'continue seeking until he finds,'"372 what Ron
Cameron has called a hermeneutic of effort. By understanding Thomas' exegesis of Genesis, the reader, unlike Adam, will not taste death. Pagels' hypothesis is primarily supported by sayings in Thomas that refer to primordial light, which she argues represents the state of nature prior to creation.373 Examining these sayings alongside Genesis 1, she concludes that the source of Thomas' religious conviction is an exegesis of Genesis 1, which she shows follows a pattern both widely known and varied in the ancient world.374 Arnal has argued that this use of
Genesis by Thomas is an example of intertextuality which serves to obscure rather than elucidate. He argues that the Genesis reinterpretation in Thomas is not particularly difficult to communicate or conceptualize, and that a Jewish
(re)interpretation of Genesis through Middle Platonism would not have been difficult to receive, nor require much intellectual sophistication to comprehend.375
That being said, unlike Paul or Philo, Thomas is not forthright with his use of
Genesis. Philo's Creation, for example, states explicitly that he is interpreting
370 Pagels, "Exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Gospels of Thomas and John," 481. 371 Ibid. 372 Ibid., 481-482. 373 Ibid., 484. 374 Ibid., 488. 375 Arnal, "The Politics of Hidden Meaning," 14. 121
Genesis, and even cites the relevant passages. Thomas, on the other hand, presents his interpretation of Genesis through obscured and scattered sayings which have no additional explanation (the reader of Thomas is not informed that these sayings are making reference to Genesis).376
Other techniques Thomas uses to make the text seem more esoteric include: the use of the same or similar words to mean different things (sayings 83-
84); using different words to mean the same thing (sayings 27, 60, 89, and 102); the seemingly random scattering of related, or even identical sayings (sayings 55
376 Arnal, has argued this point at length in "The Politics of Hidden Meaning," stating that, "Thomas chooses to communicate them [Middle-Platonic/Genesis sayings] to the reader via a series of obscure and unexplicated sayings, which only begin to make sense once the reader has unlocked their — fairly simple — hermeneutical key. He does not cite the book of Genesis in any clear way, the reader is forced to figure this reference out by pondering sayings that refer to light, Adam, images, and rest, clues dropped throughout the text to force the reader, eventually, to think of the creation account, and therefore to make additional sense of more obscure sayings, finally finding in the intertext the intended point of reference of such common Thomasine words as 'image' and 'light.' A process of research is assumed, in which the interpreter returns to Thomas again and again; and in which, moreover, the moment of insight comes in the form of recognizing a link to another text, and, even more so, to a tradition of interpreting that text. If we turn to contemporary writers who have comparable (if more sophisticated) worldviews, such as Philo, what we discover is that they are much more explicit about what they are doing. Philo not only indicates that he is engaging in the interpretation of specific texts, but even indicates that this interpretation is non-literal. The very first lines of his 'Allegorical Interpretation' read as follows: 'And the heaven and the earth and all their world was Completed.' [Genesis 2:1.] Having previously related the creation of the mind and of sense, Moses now proceeds to describe the perfection which was brought about by them both. And he says that neither the indivisible mind nor the particular sensations received perfection, but only ideas, one the idea of the mind, the other of sensation. And, speaking symbolically, he calls the mind heaven, since the natures which can only be comprehended by the intellect are in heaven. And sensation he calls earth, because it is sensation which has obtained a corporeal and some what earthy constitution. Philo's use of Genesis begins with a direct quotation, is followed by a clear statement of the text's meaning, and then accounts for that reading by stressing the symbolic character of some of the text's words. This contrasts sharply to Thomas, which leaves it up the reader to take these steps and to draw these conclusions. For Thomas, then, intertextuality is at least in part used to obscure the worldview of the author, and more specifically, to encourage a readerly practice of returning to the text and pondering it. The writing becomes essentially a crude book-code, the meaning of individual words discernible only by reference to their meaning in another book" 14-16. 122 and 101, and 48 and 106 just to name a few); and finally, Thomas' employment of and subsequent inversion of binaries, and Thomas' use of oppositional metaphors.
On the topic of binaries and oppositional metaphors, Arnal has contributed a very helpful essay, "The Rhetoric of Social Construction: Language and Society in the
Gospel of Thomas.''' Here Arnal argues that we must look to Thomas' language if
^77 we are to attempt to understand Thomas' perception of the world. Arnal, like
Pagels and Cameron, begins by emphasizing the importance of the Incipit and saying 1 and 2,
{Incipit) These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. (1) And he said: "The one who finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death." (2) Jesus said: "Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds, and when he finds, he will be disturbed. And when he is disturbed, he will marvel, and will reign over everything."378
This opening cluster, Arnal argues, "indicates both rewards and the rules of interpretation."379 Based on these rules Arnal argues that, for Thomas, ordinary language conceals the true meaning of divine revelation, and that the true meaning needed to be found beneath the text.380 At the same time that Thomas uses language to emphasize rhetorical points, the gospel also requires the reader to devalue language, engaging in a "deliberate anti-taxonomical process in which dichotomies are consistently evoked and then undermined."381 In support of this
Arnal argues that Thomas constructs multiple value-laden dichotomies with one
377 Arnal, "The Rhetoric of Social Construction," 30. 378 ArnaPs translation, ibid., 31. 379 Ibid. 380 Ibid., 32. 381 Ibid., 34. 123 element representing something that is seemingly positive, and the other something that is seemingly negative:
hidden vs. manifest inner vs. outer dead vs. living being eaten vs. eating being two vs. being one little vs. big female vs. male beginning vs. end motion vs. rest body vs. spirit/soul light vs. dark382
Thomas' rhetoric, Arnal argues, "seems to consist in large measure precisely in deconstructing these pairs and their differential valuation, arguing that the two are identical or, more usually, that one may be transformed into the other."383 He argues that these binary categories are invoked by the text (and therefore should not be seen as pre-existing and self-evident) only to be undermined at a later point.
As one who reads Thomas immediately notices, Thomas uses a number of everyday people, places, and things in his gospel, and many of these people, places and things function metaphorically. Examples include: poverty, robbers, being drunk, collecting interest, wealth, merchants, kings, toil, division, and fire.
What is most notable about these particular metaphors is that they are inconsistently used; in one saying poverty is a bad thing, and in another being poor is a good thing. This inconsistency is itself rather consistent, and Arnal argues that this was intentional: these metaphors were value laden and the 124 presentation of oppositional metaphors functioned rhetorically to question these
ISA values radically. He cites nine examples that are extremely clear, and five that are "more questionable."
1. Poverty is a bad thing in sayings 2 and 39, but being poor is good in saying 54 2. Robbers are antagonists in sayings 21 and 103, but protagonists in 35 and 98 3. Being drunk is a hindrance to understanding in saying 28, and a symptom of understanding in 13 4. Collecting interest is prohibited in saying 95, but a reward in 106 5. Wealth is unspiritual in sayings 63, 64, and 65, but is used as a metaphor for spiritual attainment in 29, 81, and 110 6. Merchants will not enter the kingdom of the father in saying 64, but the kingdom is like a merchant in 76 7. Kings cannot understand the truth in saying 78, but the goal of the reader is to become a king in sayings 2 and 81 8. The wise man avoids toil in saying 8; but engages in toil in 58 and 107 9. Division fills one with darkness in 61 and Jesus claims not to be a divider in 72, but Jesus claims to have come in order to provoke division in 16.385 10. Saying 38 states "you will seek me and you will not find me" with reference to the future, while 92 states "seek and you will find" with reference to the past 11. Mothers are negative figures in sayings 101, and perhaps 105 (and 55?), but also positive figures in 101 12. Being like a child is a bad thing in saying 21, but a good thing in sayings 3, 22, 37, 46, and 50 13. Landlords are negative figures in sayings 64 and 65, and positive figures in saying 21 14. Tenants are negative figures in saying 21, and positive figures in 65.
Arnal concludes by arguing that, in Thomas, the kingdom is the destruction of linguistic distinctions, or at least the realization that these distinctions are unsustainable and unreal. Thomas' practice of breaking down binaries and inverting oppositional metaphors functions as a critique and rejection of normal and accepted modes of behavior and communication. Thomas creates a subculture
384 Ibid., 38. 385 Ibid., 36-37. 386 Ibid., 38. 125 by arguing that the very language and social norms of the dominant culture do not make sense. Thus with Thomas we have a text that claims to be secret, and employs various sayings and literary devices in order to assert that status of
"secret." In spite of all of this, Thomas' claims to secrecy are, at best, questionable.
One would think, for example, that a text which claims to be secret would be reasonably difficult to physically locate. It would make sense for texts that were meant to be concealed to have a low circulation. Yet this was surely not so in the case of the Gospel of Thomas. Prior to the third century CE we actually have better textual evidence for the Gospel of Thomas (three Greek papyri fragments) than we do for the canonical Gospel of Mark.387 In addition to these three Greek fragments, patristic writers Origen, Jerome, and Hippolytus all claim to know of a "gospel according to Thomas," and Origen and Hippolytus go so far as to quote from the gospel before 250 CE. By the middle of the third century, then, our "secret book" existed in at least four copies (assuming none of the fragmentary papyri are the autograph) and was known to multiple patristic writers, one of whom was a heresy hunter, presumably not someone one would want reading a secret book. Additionally, the fact that Thomas is best preserved in a Coptic translation which belonged to an Egyptian monastery which itself
387 Our first textual evidence of Mark is actually found in Uncial 0212, which appears to be a harmony of sections of the four canonical gospels and is dated to the early third century. The first copy of Mark we have is the almost complete copy of Mark preserved in Codex Sinaitcus which was composed between 330 and 360 CE, and Codex Vaticanus which was composed between 325 and 350 CE. In feet, in the first two centuries CE, we have as many fragments of Thomas as we do the Gospel of Matthew (P. Oxy 4404,2683 and 4405, and the Magdalen Papyrus), by far the most popular gospel. 88 Patterson, "Introduction," in Q Thomas Reader (ed. J. S. Kloppenborg, et. al; Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1990), 78. 126 contained a large number of very different "secret books," suggests that the importance of Thomas' claim to secrecy was not in its limited circulation.
So with Thomas we have a gospel that claims to contain secret teachings which were not kept secret at all, at least in the sense that a lot of people had access to the text. In fact, the composer(s) of Thomas could not have regarded
Thomas' content as secret given that the vast majority of Thomas was almost certainly derived from popular oral tradition. Evidence for this can be found in the numerous sayings and parables which Thomas shares with the canonical gospels.
Thomas shares approximately seventy-nine sayings with the synoptic gospels, and none of these sayings suggest that they are related on a literary level (i.e. Thomas does not appear to have copied these sayings from the synoptic gospels, and the synoptic gospels do not appear to have copied these sayings from Thomas). In other words roughly seventy percent of Thomas is almost certainly derived from common oral tradition. Perhaps a more interesting observation is made by
Stephen Patterson: Thomas contains fifty "Synoptic Twins," sayings which have very close parallels in the synoptic gospels; sixteen "Synoptic Siblings," saying which have loose parallels in the synoptic gospels; and twenty-six "Synoptic
Cousins," sayings which have no synoptic parallels, but have traditions, forms, or content that would be at home in the synoptic tradition.389 What makes
Patterson's argument important is that individual sayings in Thomas may bear witness to multiple oral traditions. Saying 14 for example combines two pieces of oral tradition: 14:1-3 which Patterson classifies as a synoptic cousin (Jesus
389 Patterson, Thomas and Jesus, 17-18. 127 teaching about fasting, prayer, and giving alms),390 and 14:4-5 which Patterson classifies as a synoptic twin (Jesus teaching concerning diet, and the mission call). April DeConick goes even further and (in my opinion correctly) breaks
Thomas 14 into three different oral traditions: 14:1-3, 4, and 5.392 Thus Thomas' secrecy could not realistically have been referring to the fact Thomas contained sayings no one else knew about: Thomas seems to have circulated widely, and taken ninety-two different sayings from shared oral tradition. We find very much the same idea of secrecy at play in some philosophical schools. Here, for the most part, secrets were concealed in the esoteric interpretation of generally accessible texts.393 In some Platonic schools access to these secret truths became a hermeneutic matter: interpretation was required to get at what a given text or saying of Plato actually meant.394 The skilled reader who knew the hermeneutical key was the only person with access to these interpretations. We find a similar emphasis on the need for correct interpretation in Pythagorean and Neo-
Pythagorean groups. Iamblichus, a third century commentator on Pythagoras, remarks that,
Pythagoras considered it of great importance if someone carefully and clearly elucidated the meanings and secret conceptions of the Pythagorean symbols, (and discerned) how much righteousness and truth they contained when revealed and freed from their enigmatic form, and when adapted with simple and unadorned teaching for the lofty geniuses of these philosophers, deified beyond human thought.395
390 Ibid., 84-85. 391 Ibid., 24-25. 392 DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 87-92. 393 Lamberton, "Secrecy in the History of Platonism," 140. 394 Ibid., 145. 395 Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Way of Life (trans. John Dillon and Jackson Hershbell; Texts and Translations 29; Graeco-Roman Religion Series 11; Atlanta, GO: Scholars Press, 1991), 127. 128
What is important to note here is that while certain interpretations of a given text or teaching are claimed to be secret, the text or teaching is itself quite obviously not secret. This should raise the question, why would certain authors or groups want to limit access to their secrets, while making those very texts available to the public? There were indeed certain groups who may have feared censorship, and it was not unusual for a Roman emperor to persecute some philosophies, but if we are dealing with these types of groups, we must again ask ourselves why they would make their writings, teachings, and rituals available on a large enough scale that two thousand years later, we have access to them? Additionally, texts that were kept secret in order to protect those producing and reading them would likely not have announced themselves as secret texts. Why then have secret teachings at all?
It is possible that Thomas' claim to secrecy may have been grounded in the idea of a hidden interpretation of certain sayings. This brings us back to Ron
Cameron's hermeneutic of effort: the sayings are available to many, but only through toil can one find the true meaning of the sayings. But recognizing that
Thomas valued effort and interpretation cannot be our end: we must ask why
Thomas valued these qualities. As with the authors of Q and the Mishna, and the
Hellenistic philosophers, Thomas was composed in a situation in which the authors felt, or were, socially marginalized. As I have argued in chapter three, the
Gospel of Thomas utilizes philosophical ideas and literary devices which would suggest that Thomas' authors were reasonably educated people, but by no means part of the intellectual elite. As both Arnal (2001) and Kloppenborg (1991) have 129 shown, the political and social rearrangements brought on by Roman imperial policy in the first century would have affected these intellectuals the most given that the relative autonomy and social prestige which they would have enjoyed prior to Roman meddling had been lost. This was certainly the case for Galilee (as both Arnal and Kloppenborg argue, and as I have reviewed above), and general social and economic reordering as a result of Roman imperial policy occurred
(albeit in different forms) in many other parts of the empire as well (as I have tried to illustrate above). The Mishna-forming Rabbis and the Hellenistic philosophies attempted to create alternative cultures operating (as) independently as possible) from the mainstream which was deemed to be corrupt (since it marginalized those who clearly felt they should not be marginalized). With Q, and especially Q1, the goals of the groups were slightly different.396
In Ql the effort to address the loss of prestige was centred on creating an instruction document which inverted social norms and idealized poverty and detachment from the world. These values, however, would probably not have appealed to beggars, day labourers, or smallholders; they lived in poverty everyday and could have attested first-hand to the fact that it was extremely difficult. Instead, this idealization, even romanticization of poverty appears to be the view of intellectuals who "utilized such idealizations as a counterbalance to what is perceived as a bankrupt or failing culture."397 The failure to appeal to a
396 Paul is different still, and may be a case of an individual tapping into others' feelings of social and geographical uprootedness. Again see Parrish, "Speaking in Tongues, Dancing with Ghosts," 29-31. 397 Kloppenborg, "The Social History of the Q People," 88. 130 significant portion of the population is probably the reason that Q1 "failed" and the reason that Q2 takes on such a polemic/apocalyptic tone.398
Unlike Q, Thomas was much less concerned with idealizing the impoverished and oppressed. Yes, Thomas does invert many of the same values as does Q, but the ends here are to invert all the norms of society, not only the ones upsetting the village scribes. Further, where Q presents itself as an instruction document which is to be received passively, Thomas presents itself as a secret document which is to be interpreted actively. It is Thomas' claim to secrecy, I argue, that is the key to Thomas' social program. As a secret document which promises that the one who correctly interprets the secret will not taste death, Thomas assigns itself an importance, even an urgency which Q does not possess. Q states that "nothing has been covered up that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known" (Q 12:2). Thomas has a nearly identical saying, but it is framed with the call for the disciples to know, "Jesus said, 'know what is in front of your face and what is hidden will be disclosed to you, for there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.'" Q promises to disclose what is hidden,
Thomas places a stipulation on that disclosure: the disciple must first know what is in front of his/her face. This call to know and interpret the secret is the key to understanding secrecy in Thomas. The idea of secrecy, and the intentionally obscuring of the text of Thomas suggests that there would have been a group of people (probably the "intellectuals" responsible for composing Thomas) who could interpret (or claimed to be able to interpret) the secret, and these
398 Arnal, "Why Q Failed," in Redescribing Christian Origins (ed. R. Cameron and M. P. Miller; SBLSymS 28; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004), 84-87. 131 intellectuals could teach others how to interpret the secret as well. The idea of the secret, and the desire to know the secret functioned to buy those who could (or claimed to be able to) interpret the text a great deal of social capital. The political, economic, and social disruptions which came with Roman imperialism functioned take away economic capital from a number of social groups: Temple Priests in
Jerusalem (Lightstone's proto-Rabbis), Hellenistic philosophical groups such as the Epicureans, or the Alexandrian city council, to name only a few. In addition to the economic capital these groups would have lost, of equal (or more) significance was the loss of social capital: these people were formerly relatively important individuals, vital to the operation of towns, cities, temples, or schools.
With the reordering of the economic and political systems, the social prestige of a number of people took a significant hit. We see this especially in the "scholastic sector," for example, with philosophers, temple priests, village scribes, and the
Alexandrian city council who all lost the positions which ensured them both an income and a prestigious social status.
The authors of Thomas were writing in, and addressing in their writing, a colonial situation. The composers of Thomas were clearly not pleased with the results of Roman imperialism and say as much in saying 100, "They showed Jesus a gold coin and said to him, 'They of Caesar demand taxes from us.' Jesus said to them, 'give to Caesar Caesar's, give to god god's, and that which is mine give to me.'" But just because people are not happy with the imperial situation in which they find themselves, this does not mean that any discourse which they create will inevitably be a discourse of resistance. To identify Thomas' apparent displeasure 132 with his colonized circumstances with a rhetoric of resistance in the text is not only to misread the gospel, but to deny that the composers of the gospel could themselves be creative agents. Reading Thomas as a "reaction" to a colonial situation implies that Thomas' composers had no agency or subjectivity of their own: they are a part of an inevitable chemical reaction, the results of which were already determined by the first chemical, the colonizers. These assumptions cannot account for the diverse ways in which various social groups negotiated situations of marginalization and colonization evident in Paul, Q, Hellenistic philosophies, Rabbis, and others. But this does not mean that Thomas is by any means unique. As has been argued above, responses to Roman imperialism often involved the (sometimes fictional) creation of alternative social bodies which in turn authorized members of these alternative bodies through means over which
Rome had no control. This is a reasonably common way to negotiate colonial situations, and perhaps one of the best analogies between Thomas and another colonized community can be found in Hugh B. Urban's ethnography of the
Kartabhajas.
Secrecy and the Kartabhajas
The Kartabhajas, or worshippers of the master, was founded by "a semilegendary holy madman named Aulcand (ca. 1686-1779)—who is said to have been Sri Caitanya in the disguise of a poor, crazy fakir."399 The school founded by Aulcand was both sophistocated and profoundly esoteric, combining
399 Hugh B. Urban, "The Torment of Secrecy: Ethical and Epistemological Problems in the Study of Esoteric Traditions," HR 37:3 (1998), 224. 133 elments of a highly esoteric school of Buddhist Tantra called Sahajiyas with
Vaisnava mystical devotion to lord Krishna.400 What is of the most interest to us is the historical circumstances from which the Kartabhajas emerged. The sect was formed in and around Calcutta which, by the beginning of the ninteenth century, had become Britain's imperial city in India. Urban notes that the majority of those who joined the sect hailed from the social classes who had suffered most profoundly under the rapidly changing social and economic conditions brought on by British colonialsim.401 "In village areas, they [members of the sect] came primarily from the poorer peasantry of rural Bengal, who faced increasing hardships under the new land-revenue policies of the British East India
Company."402 Members were, for the most part, low caste and poor.
The philosophy of the Kartabhajas is rooted in older Tantric and
Viasvana-Sahajiyas practices, and the goal of devotees is to attain Sahaja, '"the in-born, spontaneous, or irate' condition of all things in their true nature, unobscured by the veils of ignorance and the illusion of the phenomenal world...
Attaining Sahaja lies in and through the individual human body, through techniques of yoga and meditation, and, in some cases, through rituals of sexual intercourse between male and female practitioners."403 Urban notes that the most expedient means to liberation was also the most socially transgressive and morally objectionable. As a result, the practices and philosophies of the
Kartabhajas needed to be kept secret, transmitted only to initiates by authoritative
400 Ibid. 401 Ibid., 225. 402 Ibid. 403 Ibid. 134 gurus.404 The notion of secret teachings and practices have long been a part of
Tantric traditions in Bengal,405 but Urban observes that the notion of secrecy took on a new importance during the changing socio-economic circumstances brought on by British colonialism. Tantric traditions were increasingly persecuted and these persecutions forced the Kartabhajas to go "underground," a move which included the encrypting of their texts and the adoption of a sophisticated system of esoteric discourses referred to as "the language of the mint."406 In the early twentieth century a list of 204 short, cryptic "mint sayings" were collected and published in the Sahajatattva Prakasa (The Revelation of the Essence of
Sahaja) 407 The word "mint" in "language of the mint" refers to the production of coinage, and the appropriation of that term for language, speech and specific sayings was used as a way to artificially/rhetorically "mint" a coinage for those who did not have access not to British coinage. As the Sahajatattva Prakasa states, "these Mint Sayings are neither for the Marketplace nor for wealth; they are only for the Poor."408 To ensure that the sayings are kept for the poor and are not interpreted by those who are not initiated, the sayings themselves are esoteric and require guided interpretation. As a result, the meaning of any given saying was never fixed, and interpreting mint sayings was an ongoing and always changing process, and this was only for insiders. To outsiders, mint sayings were a guarded secret. The substance of these secrets, however, is not consistently interpreted, even amongst insiders. Interpretations of individual sayings range
404 Ibid., 226. 405 Ibid. 406 Ibid., 228-229. 407 Ibid., 230. 408 Sahajatattva Prakasa p. 58 quoted in Urban, 230. 135 widely among Kartabhajas commentators and Gurus: "there is a rather enormous difference of opinion as to the meaning of these cryptic sayings."409
Compounding this problem of interpretation is the variety of different, and even contradictory interpretations of the same truth within the Kartabhajas community.
Urban identifies multiple interprative stumbling blocks which he encountered while trying to find the truth behind one of the Kartabhajas' mint sayings.
Different "insiders" directly contradicted each other's interpretation, while others interpreted it in completely different ways.410 Most frustrating to Urban was the fact that several Gurus which he interviewed contradicted their own
409 Urban, 231. 410 Urban uses as an example the varying interpretations he received for the mint sayings which states that the woman must become a hijra and the man must become a eunuch. "In the course of my own textual research and fieldwork, I have encountered (at least) the following eight different interpretations: 1. According to the more conservative or "orthodox" interpretation, like that of the recently deceased Karta, Satyasiva Pal, this phrase simply means that the Kartabhaja must be extremely chaste and pure, as austere and sexless as a eunuch. 2. In complete contrast, according to the more "esoteric" interpretation, this phrase means that the Kartabhaja disciple must be capable of the most difficult Tantric ritual of sexual intercourse—but must do so without giving in to mere sensual lust. This paradoxical and dangerous feat (impossible for most ordinary human beings) is said to be like "making a frog dance in a snake's mouth," like "bathing in the ocean without getting your hair wet, or like a woman becoming a hijra. 3. For others, this statement has a more spiritual and mystical meaning: it refers to the ultimate state of divine union and bliss—a kind of "spiritual androgyny" -in which the Kartabhaja experiences both male and female principles within his own body. 4. For some, it means that both male and female devotees must become symbolically "feminine," passive and receptive in relation to God, who is the only true "male" in the universe. 5. And for still others, it simply means that the Kartabhaja must go beyond all dualities altogether—to the "formless state," beyond male and female, beyond body and spirit, beyond good and evil. 6. It is rather striking that at least a few have interpreted this sentence quite literally, taking it to mean that the Kartabhaja must really be a hijra—that is, part of a special community of castrated males, who dress as women and are involved in homosexual prostitution (as Ramakrsna's biographer, Ramchandra Datta, described them, their "repulsive lifestyle is worse even than that of prostitutes"). 7. Some suggest that the meaning of this statement is not fixed or singular, but rather that it varies depending on the disciple's capacity and level of initiation. 8. Finally, I should also note that, in the course of my interviews with several Gurus, I ran into the rather frustrating problem of self-contradictory and changeable interpretations, receiving one answer on one occasion and a completely different answer on another. Urban, "Torment of Secrecy," 232-233. 136 interpretations, giving one answer on one occasion, and a different or contradictory answer on another.411 Thus there does not appear to be an individual truth to each mint saying (or to mint language generally); the secrect discourse for the Kartabhajas is both inderterminate and contextual.
Secrecy as discourse
In the introduction to his 1984 monograph, The Language of Secrecy:
Symbols & Metaphors in Poro Ritual, Beryl Bellman argues that "the practice of keeping secrets is pertinent to virtually every kind of social situation in any culture."412 Evidence in the form of both contemporary ethnographic studies
(especially in Africa and Melanesia) and ancient Mediterranean texts supports
Bellman's argument; secret teachings and initiations were, and continue to be important. Studying this phenomenon, however, raises the epistemological problem that it is ultimately impossible to know with any certainty the content of any given secret. This is so for two major reasons: first, different people, even those privy to a secret, will often interpret that secret quite differently; second, there is no way of verifying if the secret is being interpreted correctly, or even if there is a correct interpretation. This problem of interpretation is compounded when we examine secrecy in ancient texts and have no access to those who wrote them. Fortunately, however, asking what secrets mean is not the only way to study the phenomenon of secrecy. A better question may be "what do secrets do?"
411 Ibid., 233. 412 Beryl L. Bellman, The Language of Secrecy: Symbols & Metaphors in Poro Ritual (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1984), 3. 137
One option is to view secrecy in terms of deviance. James C. Scott has examined the phenomenon of secret deviance in his 1990 monograph.413 Here
Scott examines what he calls "hidden transcripts," the content of which can vary from general griping about the dominant by the dominated, to revolutionary plots constructed by the dominated. It makes good sense that these discourses would need to be kept secret. The very success of a plot depended on that plot being kept secret until the appropriate time. If a ruler discovered a plot against him or her, the plotters would most likely be killed, and so their very lives depend on secrecy.
This idea of secrecy, however, is not the only way in which secrets were employed, both contemporarily, and in the ancient Mediterranean.
Secrecy as capital
In his essay "The Forms of Capital," Pierre Bourdieu defines capital as
"accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its 'incorporated,' embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor."414 Bourdieu goes on to assert that it is not possible to account for the structure and function of the social world unless we recognize capital in all its forms, not merely the one form recognized by economic theory. For Bourdieu there are three general forms of capital: economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital.415 Economic capital is likely the most recognizable, and constitutes
413 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 414 Pierre Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital," 46. 415 Ibid., 47. 138 goods and services that have monetary value. Cultural capital can exist in three forms:
in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realization of theories or critiques of these theories, problematic, etc.; and in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be set apart because, as will be seen in the case of educational qualifications, it confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee.41
A suntan, sexy body, a collection of paintings, or a graduate degree are all examples of cultural capital: each represent the conversion of economic capital into a cultural possession.417 Of the most interest to us, however, is Bourdieu's notion of social capital.
Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition—or in other words, to membership in a group—which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a 'credential' which entitles them to credit, in the various sense of the word 418
The exchange of social capital is primarily symbolic and, as with other types of exchange, requires both parties to recognize the value of what is being exchanged.
Social capital is exchanged in almost every variety of social formation: family, club, school, tribe, government, and so on.419 The benefits of being a member in one of these social formations provide the basis for the mutual recognition and
4,6 Ibid. 417 One needs time and leisure to attain a nice suntan, one needs time and money to go to the gym to attain a sexy body, one needs money to purchase art which will provide the illusion that the possessor of that art is cultured, and one needs time and money to attend school to earn a degree. No form of cultural capital can be directly exchanged for economic capital; I cannot sell my sun tan, and I cannot purchase a Masters' degree on the street, but both depend on economic capital in that I need the money and leisure to tan, and a great deal of money and time to obtain a graduate degree. 418 Ibid., 51. 419 Ibid. 139 exchange of social capital. The existence of any social formation depends, of course, entirely on the construction and recognition of the legitimacy of that social formation by the members. Social formations are the products of "an endless effort at institution, of which institutional rites—often wrongly described as rites of passage—mark the essential moments and which is necessary in order to produce and reproduce lasting, useful relationships that can secure material or symbolic profits."420 Material profits are an obvious goal, but symbolic profits are, at first, not so obvious a goal. In many cases, however, symbolic profit is as important, or more important than material profit. Social formations by their very existence invent their own forms of social capital, and these new forms of capital would be most appealing to those who have lost (or perceive themselves to have lost) other forms of capital (be it economic, cultural, or social). The creation of alternative forms of capital could serve to empower those who have lost access to traditional forms of social capital, and one especially useful form of social capital is the secret.
The discourses of secrecy can be (and perhaps should be) understood as a strategy for attaining social capital in the form of status and prestige.421 The idea of a secret implies that someone knows something which few others know, thus that thing is recognized as being rare and worth seeking. "Secrecy ... is a deliberate and self-imposed censorship, which functions to maximize the scarcity, value, and desirability of a given piece of knowledge."422 Secrecy can transform general information into social capital which can be exchanged, and it is this
420 Ibid., 52. 421 Urban, "Torment of Secrecy," 219. 422 Ibid., 220. 140
"economy of exchange" that makes secrets important and valuable. Secrecy as social capital signifies membership within a social formation in which the secret is important and significant and therefore worth something to other members of that social formation.423
It is here where Thomas and the Kartabhajas converge most notably. And although the Kartabhajas had some good reason to keep their sayings and practices concealed (while with Thomas it seems clear that very little was actually concealed), the emphasis on guided interpretation provides us with a common motif with which to compare these secrecies. Thus it is the idea of secrecy, and not the content, that makes secrecy in both Thomas and the Kartabhajas interesting to us. Urban submits that secrecy is better understood in terms of its forms and strategies (rather than its content or substance which is ultimately unknowable) and goes on to identify four strategies which he sees as useful for understanding Kartabhajas secrecy which are also helpful for understanding
Thomas' secrecy.
First, "advertising the secret: the dialectic of lure and withdrawl"; the simple claim to possess secret knowledge makes those who do not know the secret want to know the secret.424 The idea of the secret draws the interest of potential recruits without giving away any portion of that secret. The existence of the secret and the claim made by elite insiders that they will interpret/reveal secrets increases their social prestige. This is not unique to the Kartabhajas or
Thomas, and we have seen similar uses of secrecy in many of the Hellenistic
423 Ibid., 221. 424 Urban, "Torment of Secrecy," 235. 141 philosophies.425 Second, "the hierarchalization of truth and controlled access to information."426 Those claiming to hold secrets need to establish ways in which aspects of the secret are slowly revealed; this ensures the continued commitment of initiates who would otherwise abandon the cause if they, a) had the secret revealed to them immediately, or b) never made any progress towards the unveiling of the secret. Third, "the skillful use of obscurity: mumbo jumbo with exchange value." Many of the mint sayings of the Kartabhajas, as well as many sayings in the Gospel of Thomas seem to have been made intentionally obscure and engimatic427 in order to create the ruse of esotericism. And fourth, "semantic shock and extreme metaphorization."428 Secret holders seem to delight in creating contradictions and paradoxes. Arnal notes this use of paradox and contradictory metaphors in the Gospel of Thomas, and Paul Ricoeur observes that "[t]he strategy of metaphoric discourse is aimed not at facilitating communication or improving the efficacy of argumentation, but rather at challenging and even shattering our sense of reality through reflective redescription."429 Both the
Gospel of Thomas and the Kartabhajas mint sayings go beyond semantic shock and aim to shatter language and reality itself.
But knowing some of the strategies behind secrecy is only half of the battle. In both the Gospel of Thomas and the Kartabhajas mint sayings, the discourse of secrecy helps to create an alternate reality in which the destitute
423 See above pages 114-118. 426 Urban, 236. 427 See above pages 118-133. 428 Urban, "Torment of Secrecy," 239. 429 Ricoeur, A Ricoeur Reader. Reflection and Imagination (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 32, quoted in Urban, "Torment of Secrecy," 239-240. 142 receive agency and blessing. This is not only evident in the discourse, but also in several sayings which directly address the situation of the poor and persecuted. In the mint sayings:
Saying 24: In the healthy state, there is only the Poor. 63: One should desire the work of a servant. 64: If one is satisfied with suffering he will attain invaluable wealth. 85:1 wish to become a poor man; if one attains the state of poverty, there is supreme happiness 91: If one does not love with suffering, he cannot know true happiness 109: Even among all the heavens, there's no equal to a poor thatched hut in which there's light. 115: Wordy affairs, food, a name, religion, etc.—even if one attains all of these things he still won't find satisfaction. 123. These Mint Sayings are neither for the marketplace nor for wealth; they are only for the poor. 124: The command of the Lord's Mouth is "the poor belong to me, and I belong to the poor." 125: I run along behind Poor Men; apart from the Poor, there is no one else. But if one simply gives them money, and if one simply approaches them, he has no right to embrace them. 128: He who has no possessions has all possessions. 184: The name of the land of one's [true] Mother and Father is the "poor Company."430
And in the Gospel of Thomas:
Saying 54: Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of the heavens." 68: Jesus said, "You are blessed when you are hated and hunted, and they will not find a place in the place in which they persecuted you." 69: Jesus said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted in their hearts, they have truly known the father. Blessed are those who are hungry, for their desires will be satisfied."
Thomas, and even more so the Kartabhajas, employ sayings which elevate and even idealize the poor (Mint sayings 24, 85,123, and 128, and all four Thomas beattitudes from Thomas).431 But it is almost impossible for the poor to have had
430 Translated and recorded by Hugh B. Urban in Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 111-119. 431 Thomas also includes multiple sayings which criticize wealth, especially sayings 63-65. 143 the capabilities to compose either the Gospel of Thomas or the Mint Sayings. As I have argued in chapter three, the Gospel of Thomas was almost certainly composed by those in the scribal classes, and we know that the Mint Sayings were created and written down by Gurus. So now we must ask why people who were not experiencing the same struggles as the poor would have been writing about them.
Every social formation possesses more or less "institutionalized forms of delegation" which allow them to concentrate the totality of their social capital on one, or a small number of individuals within the group.432 For the Kartabhajas this would have been the Gurus, for Thomas, the scribes. And while belonging to a social formation that was based around a secret provided the poor with an alternative discourse in which they could gain a small measure of symbolic capital, those who possessed and controlled the secret (the scribes and Gurus) would have also possessed an enormous amount of prestige and social capital.
This large amount of social capital and prestige would have been extremely appealing to both Thomas' scribes, and the Kartabhajas Gurus as each of these groups understood themselves to have wrongfully lost a great deal of the social and economic capital which they felt was rightfully theirs. In the case of the
Kartabhajas, observes Urban,
despite their constant rhetoric of egalitarianism and freedom for all castes, the Kartabhajas soon developed their own highly symmetrical hierarchies and often oppressive power structures. The practice of secrecy, in this as in most esoteric traditions, could also very easily be turned into a strategy of elitism and exploitation within the community itself—a means of obfuscating of inequalities, constructing new hierarchies of power, or concealing of more subtle forms of oppression. As Simmel long ago
432 Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital," 53. 144
pointed out, the practice of secrecy naturally lends itself to the construction of hierarchies: it is a basic strategy of masking and mystification, which simultaneously conceals the numerical insignificance of the elite, while exaggerating their aura of power, awe, or mystery.433
An elaborate system of taxation between Gurus and disciples was established which was labelled "corporeal taxation." It has been observed that this "corporeal taxation" closely resembles traditional pre-British systems of land revenue under the semi-feudal Zamindari system of agrarian Bengal, and this system of taxation allowed the Gurus to become some of the most wealthy and powerful sectarian leaders in nineteenth century Bengal.434 Urban concludes that secrecy as a strategy for social formation can be a double edged knife: on the one hand it can be the source of freedom and empowerment for the oppressed in the form of alternative social capital: on the other hand it can be the source of domination and exploitation, gaining for the elite, who control the secret social capital, prestige and high status as well as economic capital.435
We know that the Kartabhajas Gurus profited from their claim to secrecy because their practices of corporeal taxation and their own vast wealth have been well documented. Our evidence is not so clear for the scribes who composed the
Gospel of Thomas. But what we lack in material evidence, we can make up for in rhetorical evidence. As Ron Cameron has argued, Thomas contains an emphasis on effort and correct interpretation: most notably in Thomas' incipit and first two sayings, and sayings 8, 76, and 109 which stress the importance of picking the one good thing. Additionally, the scholastic nature of Thomas and the fact that
433 Urban, "Torment of Secrecy,"245. 434 Ibid., 246. 435 Ibid., 247. 145
Thomas is composed entirely of chreiai suggests that the interpretation of the gospel itself may have been a guided effort rather than an individual effort. This emphasis on guidance is perhaps most apparent in the Gospel of Thomas in saying 114:
Simon Peter said to them, "let Mary come away from us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "Behold, I will guide (CCDK.) her so as to make her male in order that she will become a living spirit, resembling you men. Every woman who makes herself male will enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Mary can only reach the Kingdom of Heaven through Jesus' guidance: the emphasis on the need for guidance is clear. Thus with Thomas' scribes, as with the Kartabhajas Gurus, we have elite insiders who claim to possess secret knowledge, and lower level insiders who depend on the guidance of the scribes and Gurus. As a result of this relationship, the scribes and Gurus attained a disproportionately large amount of social prestige. This would have been appealing (and likely the reason for forming a discourse of secrecy in the first place) given that both the Kartabhajas Gurus and Thomas' scribes were suffering from alienation and (social) deracination in the wake of British and Roman imperialism respectively. In order to address their loss (or perceived loss) of prestige, each of these groups formed an alternative discourse based around the notion of a secret. As Luther Martin argues, "all Hellenistic religious communities represented, in fact as in organization, a 'second world alongside the manifest world', the construction of which, in the oft-cited conclusion of G. Simmel, is facilitated by the secret."436 Secrecy helped to structure social relationships by
436 Martin, "Secrecy in Hellenistic Religious Communities," 108. 146 creating a second world in which alienated outsiders were once again important insiders. The rhetoric of secrecy becomes a communal claim of truth, but also empowered those individuals who claimed direct access to the secret.437 It makes a great deal of sense that individuals who have suffered from a loss of any form of capital (in this case both social and economic due to the relocating of political power in the Roman and British empires) would find ways in which to regain capital by new means. Possessing a secret is one way in which to claim social and symbolic power for one's self.438
The rhetoric of, and employment of secrecy in the Gospel of Thomas is, perhaps, our best piece of evidence showing that Thomas is a scholastic product.
Scribes had the most to lose in terms of both social and economic capital following the social and economic upheavals brought on by Roman imperialism.
The creation of a secret served to buy back some of that lost social capital.
Additionally, the nature of the secret in Thomas as one that must be worked at and correctly interpreted, as well as the exclusive use of chreiai in Thomas implies that the interpretation of Thomas' secret was not a solo venture, but instead a guided effort where the privileged insider guided the less privileged insider. In this way the Gospel of Thomas functioned to both form an alternative scholastic community around the secret, and to empower those who claimed to know the interpretation of that secret.
437 Ibid., 113. 438 That is, of course, provided one recognizes the symbolic power of the person trying to claim it. See Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson; ed. J. B. Thompson; Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 72-76. 147
Conclusion
In spite of the fact that we do not possess a succinct understanding of just what constituted a "school" in the late Hellenistic Mediterranean world, this thesis has argued that on the grounds of both form and content, the Gospel of Thomas should be considered a "school" product. The identification of Thomas as the product of a city, or an urban location more generally (chapter two), already suggests to us that Thomas may be a scholastic product. The observation that
Thomas employed and manipulated chreiai further supports Thomas' scholasticism: the composition and manipulation of chreiai was a learned skill, and even the more basic manipulations of chreiai evident in Thomas suggest some familiarity with the lessons of the progymnasmata (chapter two). Following
Braun's understanding of "school" presented in "Socio-Mythic Formation," I have argued that Thomas, like Q, possesses many of the traits that we would expect to find in a school product. Thomas was a written document; Thomas may have undergone "prolonged tinkering" in the form of multiple redactions;
Thomas' genre (chreiai collection) is a "school" genre; Thomas employs "school technologies," especially the expansion of chreiai; and finally, Thomas contains a rhetoric of self-empowerment (chapter three, pages 83-95).
In addition to possessing the school traits which Braun identifies, Thomas also resembles several contemporary social formations which have been understood to be schools, or school-like. Q, Paul's groups, the Mishna-forming
Rabbis, and Epicureans all resemble the purveyors of the Gospel of Thomas in terms of the ways in which these groups construct their social identities. Each of 148 these social formations represents textual efforts to construct an alternative reality in light of the fact that the current social reality has somehow wronged the members of the group. In the case of Epicurean social formations (and Hellenistic philosophies more generally), the creation of an alternative reality is due mainly to the (perceived) intellectual marginalization which these philosophers understood themselves to have suffered. There is ample evidence of philosophers suffering from deracination in the form of exile (pages 115-116 above), but more often philosophers felt marginalized socially: they saw themselves as the intellectual elite, yet had little to no political power. In the case of Q, Paul,439 the
Mishna-forming Rabbis, and Thomas, the creation of alternative social bodies through texts was a means by which each of these groups addressed the situation of "colonized" in which they found themselves as a result of Roman imperial practices.
In his conclusion to Jesus and the Village Scribes, Arnal argues that what was at issue for the composers of Q1 was an effort to revive native traditions as a way to negotiate the encroachments of Roman imperialism.440 Q''s rhetoric of uprootedness referred to the social uprootedness which the Q scribes experienced as a result of the economic reordering of Galilee by the Romans: "[t]he uprootedness evinced by Q [...] reflects a realignment of the social interests of the scribal figures responsible for Q and the change their own status had recently
439 1 acknowledge that for Paul, although our evidence for Paul's community building projects as it exists today is textual, Paul's communities were not textual communities in the way that die Rabbis or Thomas was. 1 Corinthians was probably not regarded as a foundational document by the Corinthian church. That being the case, Paul was still using textual means (his letters) in order to organize these communities, and in this way he operates analogously to Thomas and the Rabbis. 440 Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 203. 149 suffered."441 In Thomas (as I have argued above), we find a similar (although less pronounced) rhetoric of uprootedness which appears to have been employed for similar reasons: to address the social deracination which the composers of
Thomas perceive themselves to have suffered. With Q, we can be almost certain as to what caused this social uprootedness: the reordering of the Galilean economy upon the (re)foundations of Sepphoris and Tiberias. With regard to the cause of Thomas' composers' perceived deracination, we cannot be as certain.442
But, as I have argued in the first half of chapter four, the imperial and colonial practices of the Romans caused rather substantial social and economic changes across the Mediterranean. Thomas could have been written in Corinth, Antioch,
Galilee, Alexandria, and so on, and Thomas' rhetoric of uprootedness would make just as much sense.
Later in his conclusion Arnal states that the validity of his thesis (that Q is an effort to revive native traditions as a means of negotiating Roman imperialism)
"could probably be tested by comparing Q, and the social situation it presupposes, to other imperial situations, especially within Roman antiquity (but also cross- culturally)."443 Chapter four has been an attempt to argue just this point: Paul,
Thomas, Q, the Rabbis, and Epicurean social formations can all be understood as textual efforts which use native traditions444 to negotiate Roman imperialism. But
441 Ibid., 202. 442 Q's familiarity with, and reference to reasonably insignificant towns and cities in Galilee allows us to be reasonably certain that Q was composed in Galilee. Thomas makes no reference to any geographical location besides Jerusalem (saying 60), and one cannot conclude much based on this reference since Jerusalem would have been important to Jews living all over the Mediterranean. 443 Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes, 203. 444 The employment/revival of native traditions has not been a focus for me in my thesis. But it should be obvious that Paul's and Q's references to the Hebrew Bible represents just this kind of 150 perhaps the most interesting example is that of the Kartabhajas mint sayings. With
Thomas and the Kartabhajas we find a scholastically minded people who address their (perceived) lack of prestige by creating a sayings-based discourse which both revived native traditions, and also made them more attractive by implementing a discourse of secrecy. The idea of the secret, and the claim to be able to interpret that secret, functioned as attempts by each group to buy back a measure of social capital. In the case of the Kartabhajas, it worked; the gurus who controlled the secrets became rich and powerful men. In the case of Thomas, we cannot be so sure. But given that Thomas appears to have been reasonably popular into the middle of the third century, it seems as though Thomas' discourse of secrecy was also rather successful. The deployment of this discourse of secrecy, in addition to the formal and contextual devices Thomas employs
(chapter three), are very strong indications that Thomas was a "school" product.
I have been careful throughout to avoid issues of Thomas and the
Redescribing Christian Origins Seminar, not because I am opposed to the project, but because too often the issue of Christian origins comes to dominant the discussion: Thomas is interesting because it challenges the Luke-Acts narrative of early Christianity. But Thomas has more to offer. Thomas, it seems to me, is a wonderful example of the problem with the term Christian Origins, a term which still implies the importance of a singular point of origin, and also implies that
Christianity was (in the first century CE) a meaningful analytic category. The fact
revival. So too for the Mishna-forming Rabbis who used their skills as interpreters of scripture to comment on the Hebrew Bible; the Epicureans (and other Hellenistic philosophies) who perpetuated the teachings of their long dead founders; and the Kartabhajas who employed older Tantric and Vaisnava-Sahajiya traditions. 151 that Thomas, Q, and Paul share as much (or more) with Epicurean social formations and Mishna-forming Rabbis than the Book of Acts should tell us something. When looking at Thomas, Q, Paul, and probably the Gospel of Mark, we would be better off trying to understand these texts/groups as Mediterranean peoples operating within a socio-historical situation of Roman domination.
Instead of asking questions about the origins of Christianities, we would be better off asking questions about the ways in which the colonized subjects of the Roman
Empire negotiated space while under the foot of an imperial power. 152
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