A Common Written Greek Source for Mark and Thomas

by John Horman

Overview

This book uncovers an early collection of sayings, called N, that are ascribed to Jesus and are similar to those found in the Gospel of Thomas and in Q, a document believed to be a common source, with Mark, for Matthew and Luke. In the process, the book sheds light on the literary methods of Mark and Thomas. A literary comparison of the texts of the sayings of Jesus that appear in both Mark and Thomas shows that each adapted an earlier collection for his own purpose. Neither Mark nor Thomas consistently gives the original or earliest form of the shared sayings; hence, Horman states, each used and adapted an earlier source. Close verbal parallels between the versions in Mark and Thomas show that the source was written in Greek. Horman’s conclusion is that this common source is N.

This proposal is new, and has implications for life of Jesus research. Previous research on sayings attributed to Jesus has treated Thomas in one of two ways: either as an independent stream of Jesus sayings written without knowledge of the New Testament Gospels and or as a later piece of pseudo-Scripture that uses the New Testament as source. This book rejects both views.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554582242
Publisher:	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Publication date:	02/25/2011
Series:	Studies in Christianity and Judaism , #20
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

John Horman received his Ph.D. from McMaster Universityin 1973 and is an independent scholar from Waterloo, ON. He has published in Novum Testamentum, and this is his first book.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction 1

N: A New Greek Source

The Scope of N 11

The Sayings Common to Mark and Thomas 23

N 2:19 The Bridegroom and the Bridechamber 23

N 2:21 Old and New 30

N 3:27 Binding the Strong Person 38

N 3:28 Speaking against the Holy Spirit 42

N 3:31 Jesus's Mother and Brothers 47

N 4:3 The Sower 53

N 4:9 Whoever Has Ears 64

N 4:11 Mystery 66

N 4:21 A Lamp under a Storage Vessel 67

N 4:22 What Is Hidden Will Be Revealed 71

N 4:25 Whoever Has Will Receive 76

N 4:29 When the Fruit Ripens 79

N 4:30 A Mustard Seed 82

N 6:4 A Prophet Is Not Received 88

N 7:15 What Goes into the Mouth 92

N 8:27 What Am I Like? 97

N 8:34 Carry One's Cross 98

N 9:1 Tasting Death 99

N 10:15 Become as a Child 100

N 10:31 The First and the Last 104

N 11:23 Moving a Mountain 106

N 12:1 The Vineyard Owner and the Sharecroppers 110

N 12:10 The Stone That the Builders Rejected 120

N 12:13 Taxes to Caesar 124

N 13:31 Heaven Will Pass Away 131

N 14:58 I Will Destroy This House 132

Other Candidates for N 135

The Setting of N in Early Christianity 143

Conclusions 151

Excursus

Excursus 1 Sayings of Jesus and Narrative about Jesus in the Early Church 157

Excursus 2 Esoteric and Exoteric Sayings and Settings in Mark 173

Excursus 3 Narrative Frameworks for Sayings in Mark 179

Excursus 4 Structural Markers Indicating the Use of Sources in Thomas 193

Excursus 5 Thomas and the "Gnostics" 205

Notes 215

Bibliography 241

Indexes 249

Text 249

Nag Hammadi 249

Scriptures 250

Subject 252

Greek 255

Coptic 255

Editorial Reviews

‘‘Systematically working through the evidence, H. makes a strong case for a shared written source behind parts of Mark and Thomas. If he is correct, we have a sayings source as old as Q but with a different viewpoint. More speculative are H.'s ideas about the secondary nature of narrative (includng passion narrative) in early Christian writing and about the lack of interest in a narrative of Jesus' life until the mid-second century. The question of how and where the Gospel of Thomas continued to expand beyond the common written source is left open. The stream of Thomas research shows little sign of abating or reaching a consensus, but H. adds important data and analysis to the ongoing effort.''

Janet Timbie

‘‘Without doubt this is an innovative hypothesis, which carefully reconstructs proposed earlier forms of traditions behind shared Markan and Thomasine parallels. Readers will be grateful for the care displayed in handling both Coptic and Greek sayings, and the technical skills used to recreate the form that is suggested to underlie these parallels.''

Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 34(5), 2012 - Paul Foster Paul Foster

‘‘This is a very learned, thoughtful, meticulous work of scholarship that adds a novel alternative to the various theories on the sources and composition histories of the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Thomas, the latter especially. The N hypothesis will be provocative in the best sense; it will provoke debate, surely criticism, scholarly re-thinking of how to account for the composition of the Gospel of Thomas, still a front of hyper-activity in scholarship on early Christianity and its literature.''

Willi Braun

‘‘Without doubt this is an innovative hypothesis, which carefully reconstructs proposed earlier forms of traditions behind shared Markan and Thomasine parallels. Readers will be grateful for the care displayed in handling both Coptic and Greek sayings, and the technical skills used to recreate the form that is suggested to underlie these parallels.''

Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 34(5), 2012 - Paul Foster