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The Fall 2007 issue of Christian History and Biography features an article of interest by Nicholas Perrin:

No Other Gospel
Despite the appearance of Gnostic "gospels," the early church decided that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were without rival.
by Nicholas Perrin
from Issue 96: The Gnostics Hunger for Secret Knowledge

It turns out that Nick was at school with Dan Brown; and he admits to being "one of the few literate adults living who has not read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code". Count me in the same club; and I have no intention of ever reading it. The short article is nicely written, and it provides a good introduction to the issues from a conservative perspective, though it side steps some of the issues that scholars might wish to highlight. It does not, for example, make clear that the issues under discussion are controversial within the academy, even if it is universally acknowledged in the academy that Dan Brown has no serious understanding of these issues. The most problematic paragraph is this one:

Historically speaking, those touting the apostolic origins of the apocryphal gospels had little to stand on. These texts came much later than the four-fold gospel collection. The canonical gospels were all first-century documents; all four offer credible eyewitness accounts of Jesus of Nazareth. The apocryphal gospels, written generations later, can barely compete with this claim.

This drives too strong a wedge between "canonical gospels" and "apocryphal gospels". We may not be talking about "generations"; that sounds a bit like overstatement. In contemporary New Testament scholarship, the idea that "all four offer credible eyewitness accounts" is a highly dubious claim, and one that should not be made with so little qualification. It is true that there is now a case that the canonical gospels are reliant on eyewitness testimony (Richard Bauckham) but as far as recent New Testament scholarship is concerned, this is a new and highly controversial claim that is only now beginning to be tested, and even Bauckham does not claim that the four are written by eyewitnesses (except perhaps John).

Labels: Gnosticism, Nicholas Perrin, Non-canonical

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Previous posts in this series:

• Nicholas Perrin, Thomas: The Other Gospel: Reflections

• Nick Perrin Responds

In my review, I drew attention to some critical reviews of Nick Perrin's previous book, Thomas and Tatian, with which Perrin had not engaged in the current book. Perrin's response answered directly one of the reviews I had quoted from, by Peter Williams. I am grateful now to Peter Williams for the following response.

[Technical note: the response uses SPAtlantis (transliteration font) for the Syriac in Pete's comments, and the SP fonts for quotations from Nick's post (SPEdessa and SPAchmim). For some reason, SPAtlantis does not show up when I am viewing this post in Firefox but it does when I am viewing it in IE; but Firefox does show the other fonts. If you prefer, you can download this response as a PDF. Another good illustration of unicode being preferable, though I admit to ignorance about unicode Syriac fonts.]
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Response to Nick Perrin

I am grateful that Nick has chosen to engage with my little review of his work in EJT.

I do indeed chide Perrin for arbitrariness in reconstruction and GT9-10 is a good example of this. We have two different Coptic words (pkah and pkosmos, normally rendered ‘earth’ and ‘world’ respectively), which most naturally are derived from two different Greek or Aramaic words. My point is that (lm) would be a more natural word to reconstruct behind Greek /Coptic kosmos in GT10. Even if the likelihood of )r() vs. (lm) were 50/50 (which it is not), Perrin would be choosing between possibilities in order to get a word play. He cites OS Luke 12:49a as proving his point and says ‘It seems to me rather hubristic – not to mention methodologically suspect – to try to improve on the word choice of the OS composer himself’. I am certainly not doing that. Rather, the OS supports my point: Greek ‘earth’ is rendered by Syriac ‘earth’, not by the word ‘world’. It is consistent with my position not his that speakers of Coptic, Greek and Syriac, and consequently translators between these languages, generally distinguished between the words ‘earth’ and ‘world’. However, I am open to the possibility that these words were sometimes interchanged if someone can adduce examples.

Before I leave off with Williams, we note that he is unhappy with my translating ptwma (body/flesh/corpse) with rSB (flesh): ‘similarly tendentious renderings from Coptic back to Syriac are 'corpse' rendered by 'flesh' (p. 106).’ The Coptic term has a wide range so there are other ways to go with the Syriac. But are there any Syriac options necessarily better than rSB (flesh)? Not in my mind.

I would reply that Coptic ptwma would most naturally represent Syriac sheladda (s6ld); cf. OS Matthew 14:12); or failing that pagra (pgr); cf. OS Matthew 24:28). ‘Corpse’ and ‘flesh’ are not the same thing.

NP: ‘A number of scholars, for example, feel that there is a Hebrew or Aramaic wordplay going on behind Matt. 7:6. Perhaps you feel – because there is no way of eliminating experimental bias in discerning semitic puns there – that such arguments are a priori unsustainable? I am not so prepared to send the likes of Dalman and Black packing.’

One of the problems for those who reconstruct Aramaic behind Greek (and other) texts is that they have relatively few ways of demonstrating Aramaic. Alleged word play and mistranslation are two of the most common. Thus, of necessity, they reconstruct a punning Jesus, and mistranslating evangelists. Even while we acknowledge success in their arguments, we also acknowledge that, given their mission, it would have been hard for them to have reached any other conclusion.

NP: ‘Finally, while there are errors in the book (I am painfully aware), and while I am not the Aramaicist that Williams is, and confess to my error of adding a y to )Ns (p. 105). One example does not constitute ‘scores of errors.’ Even if Jesus felt that one yod was of crucial importance (Matt. 5:18), Williams is going to need more than a misplaced yod to overturn my argument. (For the record, I had two Syriacists diligently serving on my dissertation committee – one being a leading Aramaicist / Syriacist – and they both expressed general satisfaction with the technical aspects of my argument, at least as far as the Syriac went.)’

I cannot comment on the committee’s competence in Aramaic, nor have I seen the thesis that they saw. I have only seen the published version. If you want an example of errors we could just focus on three pages from pp. 65 to 67, which deal with GT9-12.

p. 65.

1) )rmywn – delete n
2) b(wr) – I presume that b)r() was meant
3) fn. 37: beth lacks ligature with alaph

p. 66

4) )rmt wrongly written for )rmyt
5) b)r() used when b(lm) would be more natural
6) fn. 38 nuhra and nura described as ‘homophonous’

p. 67

7) First three Syriac words lack ligatures
8) zdyq should be in the emphatic state
9) fn. 40: ‘It is of added interest that in Syriac the phrase “from us” (… man) would hardly be distinguishable from the following vocable “who?” (… man). Thus the Syriac text would exhibit anadiplosis (the rhetorical device of beginning a sentence with the same sound that completed the previous sentence).’ Unfortunately ‘from us’ in Syriac is menan not man, which rather spoils things.

Points 5) and 9) are the only ones that significantly affect the argument. Now I am prepared to admit that it may be that my snobbery prevents me from seeing some of the better arguments in Perrin’s work since I am put off by the fact that most pages of his section on catchwords contain technical errors. However, Perrin does need to clean the presentation up, remove a number of spurious arguments and then present us with what remains. If he does not like my choice of pp. 65-67 and feels that I have not done him justice, perhaps he could suggest some other pages which he believes contain fewer errors.

P.J. Williams
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Labels: Gospel of Thomas, Nicholas Perrin

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I recently composed some reflections on Nicholas Perrin, Thomas, the Other Gospel (see Nicholas Perrin, Thomas, the Other Gospel: Reflections) and I am grateful to Nick for his full response to that post in what follows, which I am delighted to post here:

[Technical Note: Nick's post below uses the Scholars Press Legacy fonts SPAchmim (Coptic), SPEdessa (Syriac) and SPIonic (Greek), which you can download from the SBL site. I have not converted to unicode because it would take too long, but if you can't read this and don't want to download the fonts, I have also uploaded it as a PDF with the fonts embedded.]
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Response to Mark Goodacre

Dear Mark,

I am honored that you have taken the time and the effort to patiently work through my book, and then respond to it at length on your blog. I am gratified by your positive comments and thank you for them – I am particularly gratified to hear your intention to use the book with Duke undergrads. But I am also thankful for your criticisms. These challenge me to think through my position anew; they also give me the opportunity to restate and defend my position, hopefully in fresh and clarifying ways.

As for the level /audience /pitch of the book – this was one of the most difficult aspects in writing it. While straddling on the monkey bars of popular and scholarly genres, it is inevitable that I shift my weight now onto the one foot (at the risk of frustrating some) and now onto the other (at the risk of shooting over the heads of others). Hopefully, there will be something for everybody, “as much as they were able to hear,” as it were.

My second frustration with writing the book was in not being able to engage the spectrum of positions – and you’re right about not giving due space to Tuckett and Snodgrass in the bibliography. An oversight, indeed. I also wish I could have given more space to Risto Uro, especially as his point regarding secondary orality is very salutary. However, unlike my three interlocutors, Uro has never drawn up a comprehensive and cohesive scenario.

Though you have made a number of other sage remarks I would like to pass over them in order to go straight to your first two points of criticism: (1) catchwords and (2) the Diatessaron and John. I think that will be enough to bite off in one blog.

Catchwords

First, let’s talk about catchwords. Here you rely heavily on the reviews of Williams and Joosten. The former I have read; the latter I confess I have never heard of until now. I remember Williams contacting me shortly after the book was released as he was quite keen to review it. After reading his review for myself, however, I found it rather disappointing. Let me explain why by going to the portion you quoted:

Though this conclusion may seem impressively supported, in fact recurring problems in his reconstructions considerably reduce its support.

Now follow some examples:

Firstly, the reconstructions are not straightforward. Thus from the Coptic word 'earth' (saying 9) and the Coptic word 'world' (saying 10) he reconstructs the Syriac word 'earth', despite the fact that Syriac has a perfectly good word for 'world' (pp. 65-66).

Williams takes up my handling of GT 9 (‘did not take root in the soil’ [epesht ka6 = e)n th= gh=|| ? = )(r)B ?]). and GT 10 (‘I have cast fire upon the world’ [|||e`\n pkosmos eis6hhte = e)pi\ to\n ko&smon ? = )(r)B ?]) and chides me for using )(r)B in GT 10. I suppose he wanted me to use a different word, perhaps )ML(. My only reason for using )(r)B, he implies, is because I want to make a connection between GT 9 and 10 in the Syriac. But if he has a problem with this, he should take it up with the author of the OS Luke 12:49a, where Jesus says, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth ()(r)B),’ and the OS version of the Parable of the Sower in the triple tradition where )(r)B also occurs just at this point (see, e.g. OS Matt 13:8 par.) . (It seems to me rather hubristic – not to mention methodologically suspect – to try to improve on the word choice of the OS composer himself.) Thus there is every reason to believe that the Diatessaron used the exact same constructions in his rendering of Luke 12:49a and the Parable of the Sower, and if Thomas used the Diatessaron and wrote in Syriac, then these two words would have likely occurred in precisely this juxtaposition. So then, rather than being evidence for my being arbitrary, Williams’s illustration splendidly underscores the fact that for a large portion of this experiment my hands are tied; my word choice is controlled by the extant Syriac witness.

Willliams continues with his charge of tendentiousness:

When it suits Perrin to render Coptic 'world' by Syriac 'earth' it is so rendered (p. 78), but on other occasions the Coptic word 'world' is rendered by Syriac 'world' (p. 83). The author is thus selecting the words used in his retroversion in order to create catchwords.

The first sentence I confess is true, for I try my best to use the appropriate Syriac given the context. But what about the second statement: am I really selecting words in order to create catchwords? Perhaps I am ‘creating catchwords’ in a sense. But in each of these instances, if I am tendentiously creating catchwords in the Syriac, what Williams does not tell the readers of his review is that I am showing the very same ‘favoritism’ to the Greek and Coptic! Because I have assigned the same catchword status to the Greek and Coptic versions on the basis of a semantic repetition, the precise Syriac reconstruction of the words in this case is moot. Williams’s criticism is equally non a propos when he says I’m tendentious in my linking ‘evening’ and ‘night’ (p. 115) and ‘belongings/estate’ and ‘house’ (p. 124), for again, all three languages earn ‘catchword points’ – again, on the basis of semantic overlap. The reader may be suspicious of such connections, but actually I am being generous to my devil’s advocate. If you think about a law of ratios, each and every three-way draw certainly doesn’t help my overall argument, but works against it. If these instances are among Williams’s best examples of my tendentiousness (cases in which my allegedly ‘creating catchwords’ actually blunts my argument), his charge does not even come close to being sustained.

Before I leave off with Williams, we note that he is unhappy with my translating ptwma (body/flesh/corpse) with rSB (flesh): ‘similarly tendentious renderings from Coptic back to Syriac are 'corpse' rendered by 'flesh' (p. 106).’ The Coptic term has a wide range so there are other ways to go with the Syriac. But are there any Syriac options necessarily better than rSB (flesh)? Not in my mind. But forgive me for thinking that – whatever the precise Syriac words – something is going on when GT 55 contains the word ‘hate’ (which can be expressed in Syriac as rSB) and then GT 56 contains the word ‘body/flesh/corpse’ (which can be expressed in Syriac as rSB). Coincidence? Perhaps. But then precisely the same coincidence reoccurs when a term denoting ‘body/flesh/corpse’ (GT 80) is again juxtaposed with a term denoting hatred (GT 81). (This by the way is as good as explanation as any for the doublets in Thomas.) There are similar such instances of word pairings, which I mention in Thomas, The Other Gospel; the statistical probability of such collocations being random is nil. I do think this pretty powerful evidence. And I don’t think, as Joosten apparently wants to say (and as Mick Jagger wants to sing), that this is ‘Just my imagination running away with me.’

Finally, while there are errors in the book (I am painfully aware), and while I am not the Aramaicist that Williams is, and confess to my error of adding a y to )Ns (p. 105). One example does not constitute ‘scores of errors.’ Even if Jesus felt that one yod was of crucial importance (Matt. 5:18), Williams is going to need more than a misplaced yod to overturn my argument. (For the record, I had two Syriacists diligently serving on my dissertation committee – one being a leading Aramaicist/Syriacist – and they both expressed general satisfaction with the technical aspects of my argument, at least as far as the Syriac went.) I’m glad you note, Mark, there are reviews of Thomas and Tatian out there that are (far) more sanguine than the viewpoints of Williams and Joosten.

But let’s get back to the question of ‘fudging’ the catchword analysis, especially your concerns:

Perrin's answer to the perceived problem of "fudging" is to assert the statistical improbability of certain patterns of words occurring in the text by accident (pp. 87-8), but this avoids engaging with the most important question, which is not about "a blend of speculation and luck" (p. 87), but is rather about experimental bias, the selection of specific retroversions that make catchword links where other retroversions would not have done. Given the extent to which Perrin's case relies on the retroversion + catchword argument, criticisms of the earlier book need to be taken seriously. It may be that a good counter-argument can be made, but if so, it needs to be made rather than ignored.

I make no claims to pure objectivity, but I do try to be honest. The case I have set forth is cumulative as virtually any argument which seeks to discern an original language of composition beneath a translation must be. Undoubtedly, choices, even guesses, have to be made – hopefully they are good and reasonable cases, and attain to some level of certainty. This is something that has to be argued out on a case-by-case basis, which I try to do as concisely as possible in my footnotes. If this doesn’t satisfy your issue of experimental bias, may I ask you, how would it be possible to make any argument for a document having been originally written or rehearsed in a language other than the one represented in the extant text? A number of scholars, for example, feel that there is a Hebrew or Aramaic wordplay going on behind Matt. 7:6. Perhaps you feel – because there is no way of eliminating experimental bias in discerning semitic puns there – that such arguments are a priori unsustainable? I am not so prepared to send the likes of Dalman and Black packing.

Of course if you’re looking for a kind of objective, positivistic evidence that can be verified or falsified, you will be disappointed. Linguistic retroversion is based on educated guesswork. I have done my best in this regard – but the OS has provided a helping hand at a number of points too. Neither can I verify or falsify catchwords (be they semantic or phonological), any more than any one can prove the existence of a single pun in the Shakespeare corpus. But our inability to prove a pun, either in Thomas or in Shakespeare, doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. It is a rather narrow epistemological framework (and I have a sneaking suspicion this is what Joosten is laboring under) that regards the unverifiable as inadmissible. (By the way, while it may be within the linguist’s remit to determine whether I have matched the right Syriac word-sound with the right Coptic word, you don’t have to be a Syriac or Coptic scholar to judge whether word plays are going on. At those places where my matches are deemed reasonable, I would far more trust the judgment of a student of poetry than an unimaginative linguist or text critic.) If historiography is the act of asking readers to reconsider a limited set of facts by giving them a new way of looking at those facts, then I am simply doing history of a linguistic sort. Nor should it be said that the thesis of Thomas and Tatian doesn’t amount to much because it is merely reconstruction. All history is reconstruction.

My chapter four has other arguments in addition to the catchwords argument. What about my argument that seven points of divergence between the Oxy. Fragments and the Coptic can be explained by a parent Syriac text? What about my argument regarding the Thomasine Syriac redaction? What about my argument that Tatian and Thomas Christianity eerily share many of the same distinctive practices, and that it would have been nigh impossible for Tatian to have inherited these practices from Thomas Christians, although the reverse is entirely possible (Other Gospel, 99-106)? Admittedly, catchwords are an important piece of the pie of Thomas, The Other Gospel, but it is only one piece of larger argument.

Diatessaron and John

So as not to wear out the patience of your blog readers, let me say just a few things about the Diatessaron and John. I do remember reading Parker’s review and the question he raises there. I suppose I am not as personally bothered as you or David. I don’t, at any rate, consider the relative absence of Johannine material a “problem.” Perhaps I should, but let me tell you why I don’t.

First, it is very hard for me to think of any Johannine speech material of any length that would make any sense in a document like Thomas. Generally, when Jesus speaks in John, he is either speaking in the midst of narrative (which Thomas eschews given the nature of what he trying to do), dealing with topics Thomas doesn’t care about (pneumatology, unity) or he is speaking self-referentially (e.g., the I AMs) – while Thomas buys into Johannine protology, he would have been less happy with the claims Jesus makes for himself in the gospels as a whole.

Second, while people often make a big deal out of Q and Thomas (you and I know better!), what is more significant is Thomas’s penchant for the parable material within the double tradition. Judging by Irenaeus’ words (Adv. Haer. 2.27.1) – and he could not have been completely wacked on this – a number of sects were adapting the parables to ‘ambiguous expressions.’ In reading the parables, each such individual would ‘discover for himself as inclination leads him.’ And ‘in accordance with the number of persons who explain the parables will be found the various systems of truth.’ Apparently, at the end of the second century, parables held a certain fascination for a vast number of sects. Could Irenaeus be talking about Thomas Christians? It is entirely possible. If so, we might expect Thomas Christians to have something of a fixation with parabolic material, including Jesus’ enigmatic statements like, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar…’. As you know the parables are found only in the synoptic material, not the Johannine material.

I know you have raised more issues than I have covered, but for now I must stop – especially if I have any hope of your readers following me to the end. More later on the Diatessaron and the Greek fragments.

Again, Mark, my many thanks. I have appreciated the interaction.

All best wishes,

Nick
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Labels: Gospel of Thomas, Nicholas Perrin

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Nicholas Perrin, Thomas, the Other Gospel has recently appeared in the UK and is due to be released in the US in October. I would like to blog some of my reflections on the book here. The book comes with some overwhelming endorsements, e.g. Scot McKnight, "a stunning achievement that can set the standard for the next generation of scholarship", and to an extent these will affect the reading experience. They set up very high expectations, and it may be that those who remain unpersuaded by Perrin's case will react more strongly than they might otherwise be inclined to. As will become clear from my remarks below, I am not persuaded by its central thesis, and I will spend most of this blog post explaining why that is so.

At the outset, I should underline that the book has some very good features. In particular, I am going to find the book useful in teaching because there has been a lack of books on the Gospel of Thomas from the non-independence perspective that are at the same time accessible to undergraduates. Perrin's book uses translations of the texts and explains terms when he first uses them, synoptic problem, soteriology, ecclesiology etc. There is footnoting but it is about halfway between monograph level and introductory book level, so it's relatively unobtrusive for the beginner but present for the more advanced student. There is a fairly full bibliography too, but it's select and not comprehensive. Naturally I would throw some others into the bibliography that Perrin keeps out, e.g. Snodgrass and Tuckett would always find a place for me, as classics for the so called "dependence" argument with which Perrin is sympathetic.

On the whole I like the way that the book is pitched. It does not patronise or condescend to the reader, and it is clearly aimed at scholars as well as students. Nevertheless, there are moments where some undergraduate students may get lost, where the argument becomes quite detailed and nitty-gritty without the patient step-by-step that marks it out elsewhere, and there are moments where several scholars will be frustrated because Perrin does not engage in the kind of detailed analysis that they will wish to see. Such comments may be a little unfair given that Perrin is trying to write for a broad audience, and this is a tough balancing act to achieve, but I think the format allows him sometimes to plough a path through the space in between the introductory and the scholarly and to meet neither. I stress there the word "sometimes". Often, Perrin achieves this difficult balancing act quite well.

The book is divided into two halves, "What they are saying about the Gospel of Thomas" and "What they should be saying about the Gospel of Thomas". The first part takes a chapter each to discuss Stephen Patterson, Elaine Pagels and April deConick. The second part is an exposition of Perrin's view of Thomas, in which chapter 4 (The Syriac Gospel of Thomas) expounds his 2002 published dissertation, Thomas and Tatian, chapter 5 (Challenging the Apostolic Line) looks at the place of Thomas in the Christianity of the late second century and chapter 6 (The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas) looks at the depiction of Jesus in Thomas, with special reference to Hermeticism, and there is a conclusion reflecting on the (non)value of Thomas in Christianity today.

I don't have a lot to say about the first half of the book. On the Forbidden Gospels blog, April DeConick has laid out a series of notes in which she comments on Perrin's representation of her work (Cautionary Note 1: Nick Perrin, Thomas, The Other Gospel, Cautionary Note 2: DeConick on Orality and Literacy, Cautionary Note 3: DeConick on the Historical Jesus, Cautionary Note 4: DeConick on Accretions, Cautionary Note 5: DeConick on Methodology). Nick Perrin is now responding to those posts over on Euangelion, Nick Perrin Responds to April DeConick. I look forward to spending more time with DeConick's posts and Perrin's response in due course. The dialogue between them should help to clarify some of the issues here.

The way that Part 1 of the book functions is to set up what Perrin thinks is wrong about current Thomasine scholarship, so it is not a survey of the full scene, unlike, say, the What are they saying about . . . series of books. This has some value, especially in terms of structure and readability -- we know exactly where we are in the book and how we should be reacting in each half. There is a downside, though, in that this kind of approach does not allow one to appreciate the broader sweep of current Thomas scholarship. In particular, I'd want to include Risto Uro, Ismo Dunderberg and Antti Marjanen in any major discussion of "what they are saying about" Thomas. Perrin does refer to these figures occasionally in his footnotes, but there is no discussion of any of them. This difficulty is particularly focused in two areas. First, Perrin discusses the relationship between John and Thomas a good deal, discussing the issue in the context of dealing with both Pagels and DeConick, but Ismo Dunderberg has written extensively (and perceptively) on this topic, and I'd have liked to have heard his insights brought in here. And second, Risto Uro has written two superb pieces on the relationship between Thomas and the Gospels, applying and developing the term secondary orality which Snodgrass had first used in relation to Thomas, but neither the articles nor the term get a mention here, as far as I could see, and this is a shame given the extensive discussion of the question of Thomas's relationship to the Gospels in the book. I suppose that what concerns me here is that the newcomer to Thomas studies could get something of a "Perrin vs. the world" feeling in reading this book, not realizing that there is a much broader range of positions in Thomas scholarship than one might pick up from the rhetorical strategy of the two-part "What they are saying . . ." and "What should be said . . ."

Let us turn, then, to the second part of the book, where Perrin forwards his own ideas on Thomas. The centre of gravity here is Chapter 4, "The Syriac Gospel of Thomas", which functions largely as a lucid summary of his Thomas and Tatian of 2002, which argued that Thomas was composed in Syriac, that this is demonstrated by the preponderance of catchwords found in a reconstructed Syriac text over against Coptic or Greek, and that Thomas's primary source was Tatian's Diatessaron. I have read that book and was unpersuaded by its thesis, so I was interested to see whether I might be persuaded second time round, all the more so given the stunning endorsements for the current book, and the passage of time since the publication of Thomas and Tatian. That passage of time has brought a good number of reviews, some highly critical of the book, but Perrin does not engage with any of them. He mentions Luomanen (p. 93) but does not mention any of the reviews of his book. I would regard those by Parker, Poirier, Shedinger, Williams and Jan Joosten (see also Quispel, Morrice and McL Wilson) as making some key criticisms of the thesis that need to be seriously addressed if it is to stand up. Perrin's inclination simply to summarise the thesis without engaging with his critics inevitably detracts from the persuasiveness of the restatement. Let me try to isolate some of the features that caused concern about Thomas and Tatian and which are not addressed in any detail here.

Catchwords

Perrin argues that Thomas was originally composed in Syriac because the number of catchwords in his retroversion (502) is far greater than the number in the extant Coptic text (269) or in retroverted (+ P.Oxy) Greek (263). The obvious danger here, and one of which Perrin is aware, is what he calls rather amusingly calls "fudging" (p. 87), but which I would want to call the problem of experimental bias, i.e. the one conducting the experiment is the one reconstructing the text. There is no control. So we are not really comparing like with like -- the experimenter's own retroversion is compared with an extant text. One of the best treatments of this issue is in Peter Williams review of Thomas and Tatian (EJT 13:2 (2004) 139-40), from which I quote:

Though this conclusion may seem impressively supported, in fact recurring problems in his reconstructions considerably reduce its support. Firstly, the reconstructions are not straightforward. Thus from the Coptic word 'earth' (saying 9) and the Coptic word 'world' (saying 10) he reconstructs the Syriac word 'earth', despite the fact that Syriac has a perfectly good word for 'world' (pp. 65-66). When it suits Perrin to render Coptic 'world' by Syriac 'earth' it is so rendered (p. 78), but on other occasions the Coptic word 'world' is rendered by Syriac 'world' (p. 83). The author is thus selecting the words used in his retroversion in order to create catchwords. Similarly tendentious renderings from Coptic back to Syriac are 'corpse' rendered by 'flesh' (p. 106), 'evening' rendered by 'night' (p. 115), and 'belongings' rendered by 'house' (p. 124). A significant proportion of the catchwords discovered can be accounted for in a similar way. (139-40).

In the same review, Williams speaks of "scores of technical errors" (140) that cause the thesis to fail, but on which I am unable to comment given my deficiency in Syriac, but Jan Joosten's review of Thomas and Tatian (Aramaic Studies 2.1 (Jan 2004) 126-130) makes the same points with several examples and concludes:

In the end, the compilation appears to be almost entirely useless. Nothing proves that the network of Syriac catchwords ever existed outside of Perrin’s imagination. (128)

Perrin's answer to the perceived problem of "fudging" is to assert the statistical improbability of certain patterns of words occurring in the text by accident (pp. 87-8), but this avoids engaging with the most important question, which is not about "a blend of speculation and luck" (p. 87), but is rather about experimental bias, the selection of specific retroversions that make catchword links where other retroversions would not have done. Given the extent to which Perrin's case relies on the retroversion + catchword argument, criticisms of the earlier book need to be taken seriously. It may be that a good counter-argument can be made, but if so, it needs to be made rather than ignored.

The Diatessaron and Johannine Material

In his review of Perrin's Thomas and Tatian (TC 8, 2003, http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol08/Perrin2003rev.html), David Parker wrote:

It strikes me as very strange that, if the author was working from a harmony, he produced a text with no discernible Johannine source material. Since, if this was the form of Gospel narrative known to him, he would have had no criteria for discerning Johannine material, this result would have to be an incredible coincidence.

I had hoped that Perrin might deal with this problem in the book, but it is not mentioned, so I flag it up again here. While the Gospel of Thomas features extensive parallels with the Synoptic Gospels, it has no major parallels with the Gospel of John (only arguably a phrase here, a thought there -- nothing clear cut or extended). If Thomas's major source is the Diatessaron, this is surprising. It won't do to say that Thomas simply removed the Johannine material, because then we would be back to Thomas's familiarity with the four canonical Gospels, and the apparent economy of the Thomas and Tatian theory would be negated. Perrin's thesis is that Thomas's knowledge of the Gospels is mediated via the Diatessaron, and if his knowledge of the Gospels is mediated via the Diatessaron, why does he not feature Johannine material?

The Order of Diatessaronic Material

One of Perrin's arguments in favour of Thomas's dependence on the Diatessaron is based on the order of the Synoptic material that appears in Thomas. The argument is stressed in both Thomas and Tatian and in Thomas, the Other Gospel. There is a problem with the argument here. In all but one of the examples of Thomas following the Diatessaron's order, he is in fact also following the Synoptic order. In other words, the Diatessaron is almost always unnecessary to explain Thomas's order (I'll return to the exception below). In both books, Perrin speaks as if parallels with the Synoptic order are good enough to establish the point, but they are not. Where Thomas's order parallels the Synoptic order, it is unnecessary for it to be mediated through the Diatessaron. This difficulty was addressed in Parker's review of Thomas and Tatian (6):

His own suggestions are limited to comments on places where Thomas has the same ordering of material as Tatian. This is rather confusingly introduced with the statement that "at some points Thomas does indeed follow the order of the canonical and Diatessaronic tradition" (p. 185). But there is a problem: where examples he adduces--such as Matt 5.14b and Matt 5.15--consist of contiguous material within a given Gospel, it is hard to see why anybody should want to claim that this is evidence for having followed a harmony.

The point is not dealt with in the new book; rather, the new book simply works with the same underlying assumption, that parallels in order with the Synoptics are evidence for Thomas's use of the Diatessaron. Take, for example, the following statement:

At points the Gospel of Thomas does follow the order of both the synoptics and the Diatessaron: Gos. Thom. 8-9, 32-33, 42/43-44, 47, 65-66, 68-69, 92-93 and 93-94. (95)

My point is that the "both . . . and" is true but irrelevant. The relevant piece of data is that Thomas here follows the order of the Synoptics.

However, Perrin provides one additional example where Thomas agrees with the Diatessaron against the Synoptics. The example is:

Thomas 44 // Matt. 12.32 // Luke 12.10
Thomas 45.1 // Matt. 7.16 // Luke 6.44
Thomas 45.2-4 // Matt. 12.35, 34b // Luke 6.45

Perrin helpfully sets out the example in a clear table (96). It is difficult to quantify such things, but I would tend to feel that we would need a lot more than one example to make a strong case for Thomas's dependence on the Diatessaron. Nevertheless, if it were a very strong example, it would at least give us some important evidence, so it is worth looking in a little more detail. This is how Perrin states the case:

If Thomas were imitating the sequence of Matthew 12 this would explain Gos. Thom. 44 and 45.2-4, but would not explain the insertion of 45.1 (= Matt. 7.16). Luke as a source would explain the wording of Gos. Thom. 45, but would not explain the collocation of Gos. Thom. 45, as Matthew 12 does. The case for Thomas's dependence on Matthew or on Luke has its merits as well as its problems. The best explanation is that the hand behind Gos. Thom. 44-45 drew on a harmonization of Matthew and Luke as reflected in the Diatessaron, where, judging by the eastern witness of Ephraem and the western witness of the Middle Dutch harmony, the words of Matthew 12.32-35 seem to have attached themselves precisely at this point of the Sermon on the Mount. (95).

There are two problems with the case here. First, Thomas's familiarity with Matthew and Luke is adequate on its own to explain the order; there is no need to appeal to the Diatessaron. As Perrin's chart makes clear, there is a simple map of parallels here. Matt. 12.32-35 is in mind throughout; Luke 6.45 is parallel to the last two verses in that passage, and Luke 6.44 is parallel to Matt. 7.16. The harmonist proceeds naturally from Matt. 12.32-35 to Luke 6.44-45 to Matt. 7.16. There is nothing out of place or surprising here. The fact that these passages appear together in Aland's Synopsis and Huck-Greeven's Synopsis is not because they are dependent on the Diatessaron, or Thomas, but because there is a clear and natural pattern of parallels.

Second, Perrin's comments here assume that these parallels are undoubtedly found together in the Diatessaron, but this is by no means clear. The reference to "the eastern witness of Ephraem" is an error; as David Parker points out in his review of Perrin's earlier book (9), the passage does not even appear in Ephraem's commentary, and as he goes on to note:

The Persian Harmony contains only the material found in Matthew 12.33ff. The Arabic follows the order Luke 6.44 - Matthew 7.17f - Luke 6.45. We thus already find a dearth of Eastern witnesses to fulfil the Petersen criterion, accepted by Perrin.

In other words, it is not clear, in this one case where Perrin attempts to demonstrate an agreement between Thomas and the Diatessaron against the Synoptics, that the ordering is Diatesseronic.

The Importance of Oxyrhynchus

If I have been critical of Perrin for not always having engaged with his critics, there is one area where he does respond to some criticism of his earlier book. In a section headed "Objections considered" (97-99), he notes that some have objected that his thesis provides only a small window for the writing of Thomas. It has to be between the writing of the Diatessaron, dated to 173, and the dating of the first extant text of Thomas, P.Oxy.1, which Grenfell and Hunt dated to roughly 200. This gives a tight period for all the following to have taken place: (a) Thomas becomes familiar with the Diatessaron; (b) Thomas writes his Gospel in Syriac in Edessa; (c) Thomas is translated into Greek; (d) A Greek manuscript copy finds its way to Egypt. These things all take place within about 25 years. Perrin mounts a good defence of his thesis here, and notes that this is adequate time for Thomas to be disseminated, and he encourages readers not to be too dogmatic about the year 200. I think that that is right; palaeography is not a precise science and we can certainly allow a generation either side of that 200 date, say 175-225. There is still a lot to squeeze into one generation or so, but it is not impossible. P.Oxy. 1 could be as late as 225, but it could also be as early as 175.

I remain concerned, however, about an issue here which Perrin does not address, and which adds a difficulty for the Syriac Thomas hypothesis, the issue of verbatim agreement between the P.Oxy. fragments of Thomas and the Synoptics. There are good several examples of verbatim agreement in Greek, and one is very strong, and it is a fact widely ignored in Thomas studies. Thomas 26 in P. Oxy. 1.1-4 features a thirteen word verbatim agreement with Luke 6.42 (position of ἐκβαλεῖν agreeing with Matt. 7.5b), a fact all the more striking in that it is a very literary Greek construction, ὁ + phrase + noun, and that the piece in question is only fragmentary. This evidence needs accounting for on the Syriac Thomas hypothesis.

Overall, there remain too many question marks over the thesis of Thomas and Tatian, in spite of a helpful restatement in Thomas, the Other Gospel. What would help would be some critical engagement with the reactions to the first book.

Most of my reflections have focused on Chapter 4, which is the heart of the book, since it is the restatement of the case for the Syriac Thomas dependent on the Diatessaron. But the remaining two chapters of the book deserve mention, especially Chapter 5, "Challenging the apostolic line", in which Perrin has some interesting and helpful reflections in Logion 13. He follows others (e.g. Francis Watson) who see Simon Peter and Matthew here as cyphers for the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, and Thomas commenting negatively on them. Perrin situates Thomas in the late second century, contemporary with Irenaeus, and in tension with the combination of Mark's and Matthew's Gospels. "It is the first two Gospels together that stand opposed to Thomas" (p. 115, emphasis original). There is a lot of material of interest and insight in this chapter, but again, Perrin's late dating actually sits a bit less comfortably with his thoughts here than an earlier dating, in the 140s, for example, would do. In the 170s, we have Irenaeus's stress on the fourfold Gospel (which Perrin cites) and we have Tatian writing a harmony of the four Gospels. And then Perrin's Thomas stresses only two of the Gospels, Mark and Matthew, and has extensive parallels to only three of them, the Synoptics. A Thomas that first emerges in the 140s makes better sense; all three Synoptics are known to him; Mark and Matthew have some status, as in Papias, but Luke is a relative newcomer. John is newer still, and is not mentioned by name in Logion 13, nor is it the subject of extensive parallels. Nevertheless, this chapter is a very helpful contribution to the debate on Thomas and it is one I look forward to engaging with further in my own research.

The book is relatively free of typographical errors, but I spotted a few:

p. 95: the only sense I can make of the flow of argument on this page is to assume that paragraphs two and three have become switched around by mistake.

p. 61, n. 30: the publication date for Wrede is 1901, not 1910.

p. 133: "as late the sixth century" should be "as late as the sixth century"

Labels: Gospel of Thomas, Nicholas Perrin

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My copy of Nicholas Perrin, Thomas, the Other Gospel (London: SPCK, 2007) arrived today and I am looking forward to reading it. Although Nick is based in the US, at Wheaton College, the book has been released in the UK ahead of its US release. It's already been noted by Michael Bird on Euangelion. I am going to try to read it this weekend and I hope to comment.

Update (Saturday, 16.52): April deConick registers a major protest about Nick Perrin's misrepresentation of her position on the Forbidden Gospels blog. I've not yet got to that part of the book yet, but hope to post my thoughts about the book in general in due course.

Labels: Gospel of Thomas, Nicholas Perrin

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