By the end of 2012, two monographs by British scholars arguing for the dependence of the Gospel of Thomas (GTh) on the Synoptic Gospels were published: Simon Gathercole’s The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas and Mark Goodacre’s Thomas and the Gospels. These monographs were recently followed by a third book from another UK-based scholar, Prof. Francis Watson’s  Gospel Writings: a Canonical Perspective. As it appears from the title, the book takes the same line in treating the Gospel of Thomas (and Q). 

On the other side of the Atlantic,  SCM Press has provided a fresh reprint (on demand) of Prof. Helmut Koester’s magisterial volume Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development. From the same camp, Brill published the 84th volume of the Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies entitled “The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins“, encompassing a collection of Stephen J. Patterson’s essays on “the fifth Gospel.” Patterson, a pupil of Koester, furthers the studies underscoring the independence and impact of GTh. While writing these words I was informed that three prolific Thomas/Q  scholars from the United States and Canada are drafting responses that will be published this year. I saw one of these drafts and I think the amount of arguments will be quite enough as a response to the Goodacre-Gathercole thesis.  After reading the mentioned books, I would like to post some preliminary remarks.

Too English

The two books of Gathercole and Goodacre are strikingly similar and even more striking is the fact that they were written almost at the same time and independently. As Christopher Tuckett said in his review of the two books: they are quite “English” in their cautious approach. However, I find their “Englishness” stemming from the fact that they are part of what I believe to be “the canonical” approach towards Early Christian topics. Gathercole’s main book was his thesis on proving the preexistence Christology in the Synoptics while Goodacre’s main one, which is the key to interpreting his perspective of GTh, is refuting the Two Source Hypothesis and the existence of Q. This is quite English indeed.

The problem of the theological investment behind the scholarship on Thomas was even mentioned by Goodacre who clearly said that  the conservative (even apologetic) scholarship backs the GTh’s dependence on the Synoptic, while the liberals are against it (with a few exceptions from both sides such as Gerd Theissen who, as Goodacre believes, is conservative while B. Ehrman is liberal).

However, the books should not be underestimated because of this point. The book of prof. Goodacre in particular provides a systematic study of all the arguments for the dependence of GTh on the Synoptics in an unprecedented way. The book must be credited for its intelligent discussions of earlier literature.

16 Swallows do not make a Summer

The discussions, however, were not as complicated as the problem of the Thomasine tradition. Both Goodacre and Gathercole had the very same argument: if we can prove that GTh includes traces of Matthean or Lukan redaction then the author must have had these Gospels before him.  Both managed to focus on specific examples and made their point clear. The question comes: were the authors the first to discover such examples? Absolutely not! However, I failed to see a treatment of the perspective of pro-GTh-indeendence scholars on the matter. For example, Helmut Koester himself never spoke about the GTh in the absolute sense but rather he talked about the dependence on an early tradition common to Q1. Stephen Patterson clearly states that out of 95 parallels with the Synoptic traditions there are 16 sayings in which some sort of Synoptic dependence, on varying and debatable levels, could be claimed (Koester made a similar comment in “Ancient Gospels”).

Then where is the problem? It is in the omission of a treatment of all the materials. Goodacre’s book (which is more comprehensive) focuses almost entirely on these very parallels, avoiding giving the same level of attention to the other materials that might contradict his conclusion. Goodacre’s approach is simply: if only one saying shows dependence on redacted synoptic materials this is quite sufficient. Goodacre deals with GTh as a one literary document that had always been so. If we only have -/+ 17% of sayings that could show dependence while the rest show an independent line of simpler and more genuine form of sayings then it is necessary to equally interpret both blocs. Here we face two major explanations:

1- Either GTh was originally the same as the Coptic copy and the Greek Oxyr. fragments, and therefore GTh had a theological agenda to switch the other  -/+ 83% parallel synoptic sayings to the form they look like.

2- Or, GTh suffered redaction, harmonization or even influence from the Synoptics in its very final form that we know in the latest surviving manuscripts.

Goodacre’s avoidance of dealing in detail with the problem that the other sayings impose made him choose the first approach (even if he did not say that explicitly). He endeavoured to offer explanations such as the “missing middle” in the sayings to make their interpretation a mystery, which was a necessity to gnosticise the sayings. Again, that was far too abstract and inapplicable in many instances. In terms of interpretation, Goodacre’s treatment of Logion 9 (The parable of the Sower) makes the problem clear: why did Thomas keep such a parable with its possible apocalyptic imagery which Thomas “usually takes care to avoid”? Without any justification Goodacre prefers considering that Thomas had been systematically eradicating apocalypticism rather than arguing for a non-apocalyptic source from the beginning (!). This is far too untenable and it is impossible to prove this systematic avoidance in the other sayings. Goodacre appealed to this because the other route (the stratification of GTh) which solves the contradiction of the materials will destroy his case for the dependence of GTh on the Synoptics.

A careful study of the parallel sayings between GTh and the Synoptics will simply show us the 17% mentioned by Patterson, and emphasised by Goodacre, and they are indeed quite enough to show a literary dependance of the final form of GTh known to us  on the Synoptic sayings. Just like what happened to the Gospels (a 4th century manuscript of the Gospel of Mark could show how the scribe tried to redact it to look Matthean!). All it takes is to compare the surviving Oxyr. sayings with the Coptic to see the editing hand of the Coptic scribe, in particular with the term “Kingdom of God” which was twice found in the Oxyr. and redacted in the Coptic to “Kingdom”… such a simple observation is quite enough to rule out the existence of “the Kingdom of Heaven” (only 3 times) as an argument for the presence of Matthean redaction.

The majority of the rest of the sayings show an independent form of the sayings that were not necessarily interpreted by GTh gnostically to claim for a redaction towards Gnosticism (see in particular Koester’s ‘Three Thomas Parables’ in The New Testament and Gnosis: Essays in Honor of Robert McLaughlan Wilson). This significant observation should be set beside the 17% of sayings depending on the Synoptics. Otherwise, the debate will carry on fruitlessly.

The work on the GTh is promising and important in understanding the development of the Jesus tradition. I believe that the recently published books are a good wake up call to reconsider the different trends across the Atlantic. They also show us how pressing it is to provide a full scale study of the sayings in their Sitz im Leben in order to be able to claim what “Gnostic interpretation is” as we do keep using this term without remembering that it is not as clear as we think. 

Mina Monier

Kings College London