Stephen,I am not an expert on the Coptic Gospel of Thomas.
Some of the sayings were in Greek, earlier.
Is it possible that some collection was presented as known sayings but to be, by some, understood, via self-censorship limits, more deeply?
(And that some refused that.)
Maybe.
I'm not really clear on what you are asking. It's hard to demonstrate a theory literary history to be impossible. The more useful question is if there is evidence supporting a particular theory.
To take a stab at interpreting and then answering your question, you are asking if a theory like DeConick's theory could be correct. That is, that there was first a collection of known sayings of Jesus and then some understood them to have a deeper or different meaning?
Yes; I think that's possible. But at that level of generality, the description would apply to both DeConick's theory and mine.
We both presume a number of sayings known to the community prior to the time they written down by Thomas, and we both presume that someone put the incipit and the first saying at the beginning of Thomas to inform the audience (whether readers or hearers) that the sayings within had hidden meaning not previously known, or at least not widely known. I think the earlier saying known to the community were the synoptic sayings, while DeConick does not.
But the main point of the post is that DeConick's claim that no individual performer (or author) could have distorted (her word) the earlier tradition of Jesus' sayings and modified them according to his own ideology because they were publicly known does not hold up well under scrutiny.
Best,
Ken
Statistics: Posted by Ken Olson — Fri Oct 04, 2024 4:10 pm