Back to Robbins' Publications

Jump to any page of the article:

p.86
p.87
p.88
p.89
p.90
p.91
p.92
p.93
p.94
p.95
p.96
p.97
p.98
p.99
p.100
p.101
p.102
p.103
p.104
p.105
p.106
p.107
p.108
p.109
p.110
p.111
p.112
p.113
p.114
Previous | 96 | Next

When you are in the light, what will you do? (11:1; cf. John 12:35)
Who will be our leader? (12:1; cf. John 6:68; 16:28)
What is the evidence of your Father in you? (50:3; cf. John 15:15-16)

One of the questions is a Thomasine formulation of both synoptic and Johannine tradition (see Davies: 60):

When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come? (51:1; cf. Luke 17:20)

Then there are questions with fully Thomasine content:

But when you become two, what will you do? (11:1)
What did Jesus say to you? (13:7)
What are your disciples like? (21:1)
When will they come and take what is theirs? (88:2)

Questions asking for specific information, then, have a topical relation to all of the canonical gospels. But here one notices a special phenomenon: fifty percent of the questions asking for specific information (eight) are fully Thomasine in formulation and orientation. One of the characteristics of Thomas tradition, then, is that it has generated a substantive number of questions asking for specific information in a manner that is not featured in the canonical gospels.

Questions in the Gospel of Thomas and the Q Tradition

The section above shows that five rhetorical questions in three units of the Gos. Thom. have a close verbal relation to material in a Q context, while the relation of other questions is further removed from verbal replication. If one changes the investigation to analysis of Q tradition, analyzes all the questions in Q, and examines the relation of this Q material to the Gos. Thom., there is a remarkable result. There are twenty-two units in the context of Q tradition that contain questions. In this material, the disciples of Jesus never ask a question. Rather, Jesus himself asks questions either to disciples or to crowds; and, in addition, four units feature John the Baptist, the Baptist's disciples, a rich man, God, and a nobleman each asking one question (see Appendix 2). The questions Jesus asks in the context of Q tradition are rhetorical, rather than inquiries for information. A rhetorical question, as we recall, is simply a way of making an assertion. Thus, a rhetorical question may be stated in a declarative as well as interrogative form. Among Matthew, Luke, and Gos. Thom., then, one or two may have a performance of the tradition in an interrogative form, or one or two may have a performance in a declarative form.

The remarkable result is that the Gos. Thom. contains some or most of the content of twelve of the eighteen Q-context units that have questions in them. In other words, sixty-six percent of Q-context tradition containing questions Jesus asks either disciples or crowds is present in full or partial form in the Gos. Thom. (for the full text of all the parallels, see Appendix 2).

The amount of content of the Q-context tradition present in the Gos. Thom. varies from one small item to the entire thought. This is one of the characteristics of oral transmission of

Previous | 96 | Next