found only in Luke’s redactional expansion of Q 12:51–53 (Luke 12:52’s number of antagonists in the house). While Robinson concedes that the history of the transmission of GTh 16:1–2 is probably much more complicated, he finds, quite simply, that GTh 16:3 is dependent upon Luke (whether directly or indirectly he does not indicate). From this, one can conclude that the chreia elaboration-like clustering of sayings in GTh 16 postdates the writing of the Gospel of Luke, even if the traditions behind GTh 16:1–2 are potentially earlier and remain obscure.
On the other hand, Robinson, with Christoph Heil, believes he has identified a rare instance where one can actually observe the literary redaction of a saying of Jesus by the author of Q.20 Central to Robinson and Heil’s argument is the version of the Free from Anxiety like Ravens and Lilies pericope found in P. Oxy. 655 (GTh 36; cf. Q/Luke 12:22–31 and Matt 6:25–34; cf. esp. Q 12:27), a version that is more primitive than the abridged Coptic version and which contains two words (οὐ ξαίνει) that stand behind the version of the saying in Q 12:27 (specifically, Q 12:27’s αὐξάνει). They argue that the P. Oxy. 655 version of the Free from Anxiety like Ravens and Lilies pericope shows no signs of Gnostic theological development—if anything, the P. Oxy. version of GTh 36 is anti-Gnostic and closer to Jesus’ intention than Q—and that the Q version of the pericope shows more theological development in its parallel text (Q 12:22–24; e.g., its body-soul pairing vis-à-vis P. Oxy. 655’s food-clothing pairing).21 In constructing a chart of textual and chronological relations among the versions of the saying of Jesus about the unconcern of the crows, Robinson and Heil date a written pre-Q text to 30–70 CE and the written Gospel of Thomas at ±100 CE, though they give no reason for this comparatively late dating of Thomas. Their own evidence, however, leaves open other possibilities, and Robinson’s further expansion on the “scribal error” in Q makes a turn of the century date for GTh 36 (Oxyrhynchus version) seem even more unlikely.22
Uro and Robinson both demonstrate that the source and composition history of the Gospel of Thomas is complex. They provide one example of the dependence of Thomas on a synoptic gospel23 and one of indirect dependence through secondary orality.24 Conclusions from their other two studies are less clear.25 Do Luke and Thomas reflect use of a common tradition?26 Do Q and Thomas reflect independent developments of oral and literary traditions?27 What is clear from these studies is that the source history of sayings in Thomas defies simplistic answers, and that perhaps we should consider the composition history of the written text of Thomas as having undergone a developmental process, not as a product of a one-time scribal effort.
Gregory J. Riley has added another dimension hitherto lacking in the discussion and certainly complicating it. Using historical-critical methods usually reserved for the study of inter-synoptic relationships, methods that are also observed, however, in the works of Uro and Robinson discussed above, Riley, in his 1996 article “Influence of Thomas Christianity on Luke 12:14 and 5:39,” looked for instances where elements in the Gospel of Thomas that are indicative of Thomasine emphasis, and hence of redaction or modification of tradition, might be reflected in the Gospel of Luke.28 He found two such instances in Luke 12:13–14 (cf. GTh 72) and Luke 5:39 (cf. GTh 47:3–4). In the first case, Riley points out that the word for “divider” in Luke 12:14 rarely occurs in known Greek literature. Its presence does not add much to the saying in Luke.29 However, it is perfectly understandable in the Gospel of Thomas, where the unification of two into one is a central theme and Jesus is most definitely not to be understood as a divider.30 The most logical conclusion from this, considering Luke’s propensity for collecting from disparate sources, is that Luke has conflated two versions of a traditional saying, one of them represented by GTh 72.31 In the other case, Luke’s redaction of Mark 2:21–22 by adding a positive statement about old wine, while creating a generally true statement about good wine, contradicts the Markan emphasis on the value of the new over the old.32 Where did Luke get this idea? Thomas 47 provides a complex of Jesus’ sayings where a decision must be made between two choices, and in GTh 47:3–5 the choice is decidedly for the value of the old over the new. Riley sees this emphasis in Thomas to be redactional, epitomized by the recasting of the New Patch saying so that one is (incredibly) more concerned for an old patch than a new garment.33 According to Riley, Luke’s contradictory complex of sayings makes most sense if one understands Luke 5:36–39 to be a conflation of GTh 47:3–5 and Mark 2:21–22.
Riley chose perhaps the clearest and strongest cases for Lukan dependence on the Thomas tradition. And, while his argument that Luke was in contact with an actual community developing a Thomasine tradition of exegesis of Jesus’ sayings needs further development to be persuasive—Luke may have simply been working from a written collection of sayings that had found its way into the Lukan community from traveling apostles who had passed through a Thomasine community34—Riley has provided strong evidence concerning two sayings in Thomas (72, 47) which stands in sharp contrast to the findings of Uro (GTh 14:5) and Robinson (GTh 16:3). In light of Riley’s findings, Luke’s aggregation of two similar sayings in Luke 17:20–21, 23 might also be re-examined in light of the possibility that Luke has preceded the Q “Coming of the Son of Humanity” pericope (Q 17:23–37) with a saying from the Thomas tradition (GTh 113), or even with a conflation of two sayings from the tradition (GTh 3 and 113).35 Indeed, perhaps parallel Lukan Sondergut material as a whole should be reconsidered on a saying-by-saying basis.36
An equally important implication of Riley’s study is that one must reconsider the composition history of Thomas in a new light. Whereas the results of Uro’s (1990) and Robinson and Heil’s studies (1998) do not necessarily speak to the dating of the composition of Thomas, Riley’s study suggests that at least part of a distinctly Thomasine sayings tradition predates the composition of the Gospel of Luke. Hence, even if one suggests that the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas were written down for the first time at the end of the first century or early in the second century, if Riley’s study holds up under closer scrutiny, then the Gospel of Thomas as a developing tradition of sayings of Jesus transmitted with a particular theological perspective at the very least predates the Gospel of Luke. At the same time, the conclusions of the preceding studies also require that one consider the Thomas tradition, even the written Gospel of Thomas itself, as developing over time. A mid-to-late first century oral collection or written text of the Gospel of Thomas did exist, but did not include all of the sayings of Jesus found in the fourth century Coptic manuscript bearing the gospel title.
Finally, an important implication of the previous studies, when taken as a whole, is that the Thomas text and tradition and synoptic texts and traditions did not develop in isolation from each other.
Thomas and John
While New Testament scholars have mostly focused on the relationship between Thomas and the synoptic traditions, the similarities between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John have long been recognized.37 In contrast to the synoptic similarities, however, similarities
