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 Copyright 2011: Ian Phillip Brown Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1*1 Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accordi exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bi Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproc publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, com communicate to the public by par telecommunic telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendi loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforrr commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve ownership and moral rights in this et des droits mors thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des ex substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre irr printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans s< without the author's permission. UNIVERSITY OF REGINA 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.