Gospel of Thomas Saying 10

From: Brian E. Wilson (brian@twonh.demon.co.uk)
Date: Wed Dec 03 1997 - 04:56:31 EST


>Jane Harper wrote:

>>I am aware that the only complete text of Thomas we have is in Coptic
>> but does anyone on this list know what the underlying Greek might be
>>for Logion 10? I'm interested in doing a word study on "casting fire
>>on the world" and I haven't taken Coptic. Yet.

>Stephen Carlson replied -

>The Greek text for this logion in Thomas is not extant, since the
>Oxyrhynchus papyri comprise only sayings 1-7, 24-33, 36-39, and 70.
>However, the Coptic text includes transliterations of Greek words, e.g.
>KOSMOS in logion 10.

There is a very interesting commentary on The Gospel of Thomas by
Richard Valantasis which was published a few months ago (Routledge,
London and New York, 1997). Pages 69-70 explain Saying 10 in some
detail. You may find this of use, Jane, if you have not already come
across it.

Incidentally, in the Greek version of the Gospel of Thomas, the sayings
are called LOGOI. These may not be the same as LOGIA. The word LOGIA is
used by Papias, for instance, to mean narratives as well as discourse.
He wrote a book called ECEGHSIJ TWN LOGIWN TOU KURIOU which contained
the Pericope Adulterae and other narratives, as well as discourse.
Thomas, on the other hand, is virtually all discourse, many pericopes
beginning with the words IHSOUJ LEGEI. It would perhaps be more correct,
therefore, not to talk of logion 10 but of Saying 10, as does
Valantasis.

For anyone interested, there is a beautiful photographic reproduction of
the recto of papyrus manuscript P. Oxy. 654 showing the beginning of the
Gospel of Thomas in Greek, in John S. Kloppenborg's **Q Parallels**, on
page 114. You can see on the papyrus that line 1 talks of hOI LOGOI, and
line 4 of TWN LOGWN, in describing the contents of the book which
follows. Valantasis comments on hOI LOGOI and TWN LOGWN on pages 31-32
of his commentary where he deal with the P. Oxy. 654 Greek text.

BRIAN WILSON



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:36 EDT