aa5874

You appear to be completely unaware of the fact that a "Q" document must predate gLuke and gMatthew.

You don't really know when gThomas, gMatthew or gLuke was written.

You appear not to be aware of the fact that once "Q" or the "sayings" of Jesus or material common to both gLuke and Matthew are mentioned that authorship, date of writing and contents are absolutely INHERENTLY critical.

You simply do not know or can confirm not one single thing about the Gospel of Thomas to claim that it is the sayings of Jesus.

Please show and demonstrate that the material or sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas was fundamentally common to gMatthew and gLuke or that the Gospel of Thomas was written before gMatthew and gLuke.

I have told you already that "Q" is hypothetical and no document have found with the sayings of Jesus.

Chaucer

Oh, for crying out loud.

You. Weren't. Discussing. That. When. You. First. Said. There. Are. No. Found. Jesus-saying. Documents.

You have moved the goal posts entirely. And what's really ironic is that I even anticipated -- and said so -- that you'd do that when I first pointed out that you had initially overlooked Thomas entirely. I knew that instead of saying

"That's right. There is Thomas. I should have mentioned that. But even that has dubious authenticity"

, you'd skip right to

"That has dubious authenticity"

without once acknowledging that you had made no such reference to authenticity when you uttered your first blanket statement that there was no found Jesus-sayings document, period. Well, you're wrong. Thomas is a found Jesus-sayings document. It exists. It's been found. It may be bogus. It may be a fraud. It may be a forgery from Mars, for all we know. But it is a Jesus-sayings document and not a cooking recipe. It may be a bogus Jesus-sayings document. But that's still a Jesus-sayings document of a sort that you never once hinted at when you made your initial blanket statement that there is nothing of the kind, bogus or not! Your initial blanket statement was thus wrong, and you're never going to acknowledge that, are you?

What do you call a heading like this?

"These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded."

If you're trying to be aggravating enough to drive me to a fatal apoplectic fit, you're doing a brilliant job.

And BTW, yes, there are sayings that Thomas has in common with both the double tradition in Matt./Luke and even with Mark.

In fact, all three -- Thomas, the double tradition and Mark -- all have in common all these sayings --


Luke 11


21 When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace:
22 But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.

33 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.


Luke 12


2 For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.

10 And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.


Luke 13


18 Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it?
19 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and was a tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.


30 And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.


Luke 19


26 For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.


Chaucer

aa5874

Please show and demonstrate that the Gospel of Thomas are the "sayings" of document of Jesus and was used by gMatthew and gLuke. Please demonstrate that the Gospel of Thomas was written before gMatthew and gLuke and stop wasting time time.

I have already told you that no "saying" document have been found. You say that the Gospel of Thomas are the "sayings" of Jesus.

Well, just prove it.

You have placed your own goal posts as far away as Mars. Go find them.

Chaucer

This is just changing the subject here to run away from a careless inaccuracy that was made in the very first reference to Jesus-saying documents in this whole exchange. I will not address this _newer_ subject-matter until you concede the initial carelessness and inaccuracy in that first statement.

After all, you have not even bothered with the sayings common to Thomas, the double tradition, and Mark, which I took some trouble to assemble in my previous. So that was evidently a waste of my time. I won't be so dumb as to waste my time like that again.

You won't address those common sayings, nor will you concede the carelessness and inaccuracy of that first reference to Jesus-sayings documents in this whole exchange; so why should I address your _newer_ subject-matter here?

Are you ready to concede that that first reference to Jesus-sayings documents in this whole exchange was careless and inaccurate? Until you are, I see no point to addressing your _newer_ subject-matter here.

Still waiting,

Chaucer

aa5874

You are the one who introduce the Gospel of Thomas as the "sayings" of Jesus that may even be forgeries from Mars.

mountainman

Jesus is not to be found in the C14 dated 348 CE Nag Hammadi. What is found in the coptic text is the abbreviated form I_S which christian scholars in their infinite wisdom have poetically decided to congregate and claim stands for Jesus. The "nomina sacra" in Coptic I_S could equally be translated as THE HEALER --- nothing to do with the new testament character of Jesus.

So it is not indeed a fact that anything coptic at Nag Hammadi refers to an historical Jesus character at all. It is assumed to be a fact based on an "agreed" poetic translation of the consistent use of the abbreviated form.

But the larger problem is that this text has been securely dated by C14 analysis to the year 348 CE plus or minus 60 years. This is somewhat a little late in the peace, and certainly after the epoch in which the warlord Constantine pulled the new testament out of his hat and by his sharp and bloody sword made it the official state dogma of the Greek civilisation.

When will conscious and unconscious apologists for the plain and simple religion of the christians learn to deal with non mythical chronology?

Toto

I split this off because it is so pointless. Yes, there are documents that claim to be the "sayings" of Jesus. No, there is no way to authenticate them.

Is there any real issue here?

Chaucer

Yes, there is. As you point out, there are indeed extant "documents that claim to be the sayings of Jesus". But with no reference to their possible integrity or lack thereof, AA first blurted out in the OP that there are no such documents of any kind, authentic or not, period, end of paragraph.

Now that blanket statement flat-out contradicts both you and common sense. Since then, AA has tried to backtrack from that inaccuracy by any means possible without just manning up and saying that his first bald statement was a misstatement and simply wrong. In backtracking from that, he has constantly tried to change the subject instead of just saying something like --

"You're right. That was just wrong. Here's what I meant to say: There are no externally attested documents showing the sayings of Jesus."

All he's giving us instead are distractions about the nature of the document(s) instead of addressing the plain existence of the document(s), which he first said doesn't even exist!

Either your simple statement "there are documents that claim to be the "sayings" of Jesus" is right or it's wrong. Now since it seems obvious to me that your statement's right, then it follows that AA's must be wrong.

Chaucer

aa5874

When will you show and demonstrate that the Gospel of Thomas, perhaps forgeries from Mars, are the "sayings" of Jesus that was used by the Synoptic authors?

You have a very simple task.

You are claiming that the "sayings" have been found. Just simply prove it.

You must realise by now that no Church writer ever claimed to have used gThomas or regarded it as authentic.

Toto

You have put one particular interpretation on aa's words - that he claimed their were no documents that claimed to be the sayings of Jesus. I don't see that as the only interpretation.

Certainly there is no scholarly consensus that gThomas represents the actual sayings of Jesus. Would you like to make a case that they are authentic?

If there is no real issue here, I can close this.