² Koester, Helmut, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Philadelphia: Trinity, 1990) 96Google Scholar. He lists the following as having Gospel of Thomas parallels: Q 12:16–21 (Iogion63); 12:39 (logia 21b, 103); 13:18–19 (logion 20); 13:20–21 (logion 96); 14:16–24 (logion 64); 15:3–7 (logion 107). Not having parallels in the Gospel of Thomas are Q 6:47–49; 7:31–32; 12:35–38; 12:42–46; 15:8–10; 19:12–27. The parallels in content between Q and the Gospel of Thomas do not, of course, stop with the parables.

³ See the table in Kloppenborg, John S., et al. , Q-Thomas Reader (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1990) 159Google Scholar. Koester, (“Q and its Relatives,” in Goehring, James E., et al. , eds., Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings: In Honor of James M. Robinson [Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1990] 55)Google Scholar states that there are 38 such parallels at least and 45 at the most.

⁴ Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 80–81, 86.

⁵ For an extended and comprehensive discussion of the independence of the Gospel of Thomas, see Patterson, Stephen J., The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1993) 9–110Google Scholar.

⁶ See Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 86–87, 91, 95,99; idem, “Jesus the Victim,” JBL 111 (1992) 7. Earlier, Koester (“GNOMAI DIAPHOROI: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity,” in Robinson, James M. and Koester, Helmut, Trajectories Through Early Christianity [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971] 136Google Scholar) was not so bold as to posit any such literary dependence, but simply stopped with the observation that the Gospel of Thomas represented a variety of the same type of literary Gattung as Cameron, Q. Ron (The Other Gospels: Non-Canonical Gospel Texts [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982] 24Google Scholar) claims that the Gospel of Thomas's sources are collections of sayings contemporary with the sources of the canonical gospels; for this reason, according to Cameron, it may be profitably compared to Q. As Koester (Trajectories, 136) recognizes, it would be extraordinarily difficult to demonstrate the Gospel of Thomas's, dependence on Q₁ particularly in light of the absence of common patterns in the organization and order of the material they share. If the Gospel of Thomas depended on Q₁ as we can reconstruct it, then the redactor of the Gospel of Thomas deliberately ripped apart carefully constructed arguments and sundered material with obvious thematic links, only in order to scatter this newly disordered material at random throughout his gospel. Koester notes (“Q and its Relatives,” 56), “As there are also a number of sayings in the Gospel of Thomas with parallels only in John and an additional number of possibly quite early sayings without parallels in the canonical gospels, it is obvious that the Gospel of Thomas cannot simply pass as a variant or as an early form of the Synoptic Sayings Source, nor is it possible to consider Q as the source of any of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas.”

⁷ See Smith, Jonathan Z., Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) esp. 106–7Google Scholar. Smith notes, “It must lead us to insist on an important element of method and theory with regard to comparison: the recognition and role of historical development and change. This is relationa necessary principle of parity. The work of comparison, within and without the area of Late Antiquity, requires an acceptance of the notion that, regardless of whether we are studying myths from literate or non literate cultures, we are dealing with historical processes of reinterpretation, with tradition” (emphasis in the original). Smith, of course, is not talking about the comparison of Q with the Gospel of Thomas, but the basic principle—that recognition of change must be accorded to both elements in any comparison in order to be fair and accurate— applies here as well.

⁸ For example, Jesus speaks with Wisdom's voice in the Gos. Thorn. 28, which has no Q parallel, and in Q 11:49–51; 13:34–35, which have no Gospel of Thomas parallels.

⁹ On this issue see especially Rohrbaugh, Richard, “‘;social Location of Thought’ as a Heuristic Construct in New Testament Study,” JSNT 30 (1987) 103–19Google Scholar; and idem, “MethodologicalConsiderations in the Debate over the Social Class Status of Early Christians,” JAAR 52 (1984) 519–46. Mack, Burton L. (“The Kingdom That Didn't Come: A Social History of the Q Tradents,” SBLASP [1988] 608–35)Google Scholar also proposes rudimentary controls for moving from texts to contexts. He argues that the content of the text must make sense in light of the reconstructed social context, that the social world argued for has to make sense in terms of what we know about its larger cultural framework, and that changes in the social situation presupposed by the writing must be accounted for plausibly (p. 609). Gerd Theissen (“Wandering Radicals: Light Shed by the Sociology of Literature on the Early Transmission of Jesus' Sayings,” in idem, Social Reality and the Early Christians: Theology. Ethics, and the World of the New Testament [trans. Margaret Kohl; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992] 36), implies concern for similar controls in his articulation of a threefold “analytical,” “constructive,” and “analogical” method of working from a text to the social reality presupposed by it. He also works out this view in The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of Earliest Christianity (trans. Bowden, John; London: SCM, 1978)Google Scholar. Vernon K. Robbins (“Rhetoric and Culture: Exploring Types of Cultural Rhetoric in a Text,” in Rhetoric and the New Testament 447–67 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993]) argues for a coordination of rhetoric with cultural stances, and proposes a more precise typology of (rhetorical) responses to a “dominant culture”: sub-cultural, countercultural, and contra-cultural.

¹⁰ A11 of these factors may be operative in any given situation; one need not choose among them. Some specification is needed, however, for what precisely is meant when one posits a link between text and context.

¹¹ For a compelling argument for the usefulness of class as a heuristic and analytic tool in biblical studies, see Gottwald, Norman K.'s 1992 Society of Biblical Literature presidential address (“Social Class as an Analytic and Hermeneutical Category in Biblical Studies,” JBL 112 [1993] 3–22Google Scholar).

¹² See Kloppenborg, John, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987)Google Scholar. Kloppenborg's stratification of Q as articulated in this book, assigns the material as follows:

Q₁ (formative stratum): 6:20b–23b, 27–49; 9:57–62; 10:2–11, 16; 11:2–4, 9–13; 12:2–7, 11–12, 21b–31, 33–34; 13:24; 14:26–27; 17:33; 14:34–35.

Q₂ (redactional stratum): 3:7–9, 16–17; 6:23c; 7:1–10, 18–23, 24–28, 31–35; 10:12–15, 21–24; 11:14–26, 29–36, 39–52; 12:8–10, 39–40, 42–46, 49, 51–53, 54–56, 57–59; 13:25–30, 34–35; 14:16–24; 17:23, 24, 26–30, 34–35, 37b; 19:12–17; 22:28–30.

Q₃ (late addition): 4:1–13.

This stratification is assumed for the purposes of this paper. In a more recent article, Kloppenborg (“Nomos and Ethos in Q,” in Goehring, Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings, 35–48) appends additional “glosses” made from a nomistic perspective to Q₃. Here, however, I am concerned only with the first two strata. Note also that Kloppenborg himself does not use the designations “Q₁,” etc.

¹³ The clustering together of sayings with similar formal attributes in this stratum confirms the presumption that this material was collected in a relatively random fashion.

¹⁴ Further, the word used to describe the merchant is constructed differently than in the opening, where, paralleling Matthew yet again, it is (“merchant”) (See Matt 13:45; ἀνθρώπῳ ἐμπόρῳ); while in our gloss the man is (“merchant”).

¹⁵ In both instances, these gar clauses represent originally independent, free-floating sayings. Although this aphorism could stand on its own as a bit of conventional, proverbial wisdom (See Mark 4:22; Matt 10:26; and Luke 8:17; 12:2), it is here (as in its other occurrences) being used as a commentary word on the foregoing imperatives. This seems apparent from its construction (introduced by an inferential/causal conjunction) and its repetition in two consecutive sayings. Logion 6 is more complex, as it contains two additional secondary motive clauses (“because all things are disclosed before heaven” immediately following Jesus' command, and “and there is nothing covered that will remain without being disclosed” as the conclusion to the saying). The provenance of these additions is open to question.

¹⁶ The disciples inquire about fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and dietary regulations in this introduction; the exact same practices appear in exactly the same order in logion 14. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the same hand is responsible for the preservation and/or formulation of both.

¹⁷ Gos. Thom. 3, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16, 20, 26, 31, 32, 34–36, 42, 45, 47, 54, 55, 57, 63–65, 71, 74, 76, 86, 89, 95–98, 107, 109, 110. This list is not necessarily comprehensive, but rather includes sayings which may be ascribed to this layer with some confidence. Sayings left out of this list and not included in the list of materials from the secondary redaction may represent unclear instances, or later, perhaps scribal, accretions.

¹⁸ Logion 101, for example, advises that one both hate father and mother (this segment of the saying is obviously constructed on the basis of logion 55) and love father and mother, explaining this contradiction by appealing to a distinction between “mother” and “true mother.” Since God is the obvious referent for “father,” Sophia, God's divine consort, is here presented as Jesus' true mother and has a soteriological function. Other examples could be offered as well. The responses in logion 50 are strongly paralleled in the (first) Apocalypse of James where they are used as passwords by James to defeat the archons (the “tollcollectors” who rob “the soul”) on his ascent to heaven (32, 28–34, 20; The Nag Hammadi Library in English [rev. ed.; ed. Robinson, James M.; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988] 265–66Google Scholar). In the Gospel of Thomas's lack of specification of the identity of “they” who are posing the questions, and in its preceding these instructions with a saying about “returning” to the Kingdom, one can see that this parallelism is no coincidence.

¹⁹ See especially logia 15, 84, and the sayings cited above as having mythological referents.

²⁰ Gos. Thom. 13, 21, 61, 114.

²¹ Ibid., 13, 22, 60, 61.

²² Ibid., 18 (; “end”); 84 (; “image”); 101 (; “mother”).

²³ Ibid., 21–22, 27–28, 50–51, 60–61, 83–84.

²⁴ Ibid., 11, 22, 48, 61, 114; compare 75.

²⁵ Ibid., 18, 49.

²⁶ Ibid., 18 (; “will not taste death”; compare logion 1), 61, 111 (; “will not see death”).

²⁷ , ; see esp. logia 11, 50, 101, 111; compare incipit, 60, 61.

²⁸ ; see esp. logia 50, 60.

²⁹ Gos. Thom. 11, 60; compare 7.

³⁰ Ibid., 50, 61, 83.

³¹ Ibid., 13, 28, 108.

³² Ibid., 11, 13, 61. The sayings which appear to derive from this gnostic stratum include logia 11, 13, 15, 18, 21–22, 27–28, 49–50, 51, 60, 61, 83, 84, 101, 105, 108, 111, 114. This list is deliberately modest; I have deliberately excluded instances in which emendations are made from this perspective to material apparently from an earlier stratum.

³³ It is noteworthy that there is an extensive (but not perfect) correspondence between the list of sayings from the gnostic stratum and materials identified as secondary by others. For example, Patterson (Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 198) identifies the following as “gnosticizing” additions: logia 11, 15, 18, 60, 67, 83, 84, 88, 101. King, Karen L., (“Kingdom in the Gospel of Thomas,” Forum 3/1 [1987] 79–81Google Scholar) identifies Thomas “community creations” as logia 22, 27, 49, 82, 114.

³⁴ See Kloppenborg, Formation, 305–6.

³⁵ See Theissen, “Wandering Radicals”; and idem, First Followers of Jesus. On the voluntary aspect of this lifestyle, see especially, idem, “‘We Have Left Everything…’ (Mark 10:28): Discipleship and Social Uprooting in the Jewish-Palestinian Society of the First Century,” in idem, Social Reality and the Early Christians, 64.

³⁶ Throughout the second part of Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus.

³⁷ Ibid., esp. 163–70, 196–213.

³⁸ Note also the comments made by John H. Sieber (“The Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament,” in Goehring, Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings, 71), “The ideological connection for such a trajectory between wisdom and Gnosticism was already laid out by Robinson in the ‘LOGOI SOPHON’ article [“LOGOI SOPHON: On the Gattung of Q,” in idem and Koester, Trajectories, 71–113], In ‘From Q to Thomas’ [“On Bridging the Gulf from Q to the Gospel of Thomas (or vice versa),” in Hedrick, Charles W. and Hodgson, Robert, eds., Nag Hammadi Gnosticism and Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986) 127–55Google Scholar] he has now accepted as well the need for a sociological explanation of how the shift from wisdom collection to gnostic gospel might have occurred. ‘The sociological substructure presupposed in Gnosticism, namely an ascetic lifestyle, seems particularly related to the bearers of the sayings of Jesus: wandering, begging charismatics’ [“From Q to Thomas,” 135]. In particular he finds congenial the suggestions of Boring, M. Eugene [Sayings of the Risen Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar] about the role of those wandering prophets, although calling some of his arguments ‘strained.’ Those wanderers eventually had to settle down, and in the process some of them at least became Christian Gnostics.”

³⁹ See, for example, Mack, “The Kingdom That Didn't Come,” 622–23, 634; Richard Horsley, “Questions About Redactional Strata and the Social Relations Reflected in Q,” SBLASP (1989) 198; and idem, Sociology and the Jesus Movement (New York: Crossroad, 1989) 111.

⁴⁰ Horsley (“Questions,” 198; see also 200) notes that only the most literal reading of Q 9:59–62; 14:26 will yield up an ethic from Q which involves abandoning family. These texts, at the Q₁ level, and Q 17:26–34, at the Q₂ level, work best rhetorically on the supposition that family relations continue among the Q community. If family relations do not continue among those to whom Q is addressed, the force of 9:59–62 and 14:26 as specific examples of a more general exhortation to detachment from culture is lost.

⁴¹ See further on this issue, Kloppenborg, John, “Literary Convention, Self-Evidence and the Social History of the Q People,” Semeia 55 (1991) 89–90Google Scholar. Kloppenborg notes, “There is little in Q 10 to suggest that the ‘workers’ were expected to stay for a long duration in any village, or that they intended to ‘found’ a community there. There is indeed no indication that the ‘workers’ were leaders at all, either in the communities from which they were sent forth or in the villages that accepted them…. It is important in this regard to note that these workers are not invested with the titles ‘apostle’ (1 Cor 9:1; Did. 11.3–6), prophet (Did. 11.3–11; 13.1), or teacher (Did. 13.2), any of which would have made their role as (potential) leaders clear.”

⁴² Although most translations render the Coptic in this fashion, it is possible that the is a second person plural circumstantial, giving a translation of “Become, while passing away.” This would clearly refer, not to itinerancy, but either to the means by which the soul achieves salvation or to the pursuit of salvation prior to death, as is recommended in logia 60 and 103 (by my reading).

⁴³ See especially Reed, Jonathan L., “The Social Map of Q: An Analysis of the Q Community's Locale,” in Kloppenborg, John S., ed., Conflict and Invention: Literary, Rhetorical and Social Studies on the Sayings Gospel Q (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1995) 17–36Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Kloppenborg, “Literary Convention,” 85. See also Hobsbawm, Eric J., Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959) 13–29Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ On the ubiquity of scribes in Galilean village culture, see Goodman, Martin, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132–212 (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983) 59Google Scholar. See also Kloppenborg, “Literary Convention,” 85–86; and Horsley, “Questions,” 202–3. There is a fair quantity of evidence for the precise character of these local governmental structures in Egypt from the Ptolemaic period onwards, including recurring references to such figures as the κωμογραμματεύς and the κωμαρχής (see, e.g., SEG 33.1359, as well as the papyri cited below). The role of these figures seems at least in part to have involved direct supervision of agricultural production, as well as forwarding villagers' petitions to higher officials, and assisting them in various bureaucratic matters. They do not, however, appear to have possessed much authority in their own right, even at a strictly local level: see Select Papyri in Three Volumes (trans., Hunt, Arthur S. and Edgar, Campbell C.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932) 2. 34–39, 250–59, 392–93 (nos. 204, 275–77, 339Google Scholar). Of course, the vast majority of the evidence for this detailed picture of village life and particularly its administrative features derives exclusively from Egypt. While it is to be expected that most of the papyri evidence will derive from Egypt, one cannot be sure that Egyptian conditions will match those elsewhere in the empire. In fact, the inscriptional evidence, which is more evenly distributed geographically, shows few if any references to the figure of the κωμογραμματεύς outside of Egypt. That the Egyptian economy was under direct and central management by the government, and the land intensively cultivated and controlled (a control particularly manifested in the sale of monopolies), inclines one to suspect that the organization of village bureaucracies would differ somewhat from those in the rest of the Empire. The autonomy, however, of the Galilean villages could only be significantly greater than those of Egypt, and hence the need for local literati and leadership even greater. Whether or not these figures were designated under the formal rubric of κωμογραμματεύς and/or κωμαρχής is less important than the fact that some form of literate local leadership did exist.

⁴⁶ See Kloppenborg, “Literary Convention,” 81–85.

⁴⁷ See Ronald A. Piper, “The Language of Violence and the Aphoristic Sayings in Q,” in Kloppenborg, Conflict and Invention, 53–72.

⁴⁸ On this hostility generally, see Sjoberg, Gideon, The Preindustrial City (New York: Free Press, 1960) 68–69Google Scholar. For its more specific characteristics in Roman antiquity, see MacMullen, Ramsay, Roman Social Relations: 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974) 30–41Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ See Select Papyri, 250–53, 392–93 (nos. 275, 339), in which reference is made to the village scribe, clearly in the singular.

⁵⁰ Kloppenborg, “Literary Convention,” 86.

⁵¹ Kloppenborg (“Literary Convention,” 90) points out that given the realities of village xenophobia, strong kinship ties, patron–client relationships, and economic interdependence, it is hardly likely that individual households could adopt loyalties at odds with those of the village as a whole.

⁵² See, among others, Cameron, “Response,” 7; Mack, “Kingdom,” 611, 613; Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 158–70, 196–241; and idem in Kloppenborg, Q-Thomas Reader, 100–3; and Theissen, “Wandering Radicals,” 37–40.

⁵³ Kloppenborg, “Literary Convention,” 84, 88. Ronald A. Piper (“The Language of Violence and the Aphoristic Sayings in Q,” 62, 66) claims that the extreme nature of Q's injunctions to avoid litigation seems likely to reflect a profound lack of confidence among the Q people regarding the social and judicial institutions active in their sphere. Piper, however, believes that this total loss of confidence is an indication that the people responsible for the Q traditions are no longer in position as local administrators.

⁵⁴ Roman taxation is frequently blamed for this trend (or even cited as evidence for it). There is, however, very little indication that the Roman tax burden was significantly more onerous for the peasantry than the arrangements prior to Pompey's conquest. Both 1 Macc 10:29–32 and Josephus Ant. 13.48–50 report Seleucid tribute on the land to include one third of grain products and one half of orchard produce. The Roman tribute does not seem to have been substantially greater; Josephus tells us that tribute from Judea was fixed at one fourth of produce sown, Hyrcanus's right to tithes was confirmed, and an exemption was placed on the Sabbatical year (Ant. 14.202–9). If Josephus is to be trusted here, the arrangement appears similar to the one prevailing under the Seleucids. Of course, there are indications, both in Tacitus and in Josephus, that Roman tribute was felt to be burdensome. Tacitus (Annals 2.42 [trans. John Jackson; LCL; 5 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968] 3. 448–51) writes that at about the time of Archelaus's deposition, “the provinces, too, of Syria and Judaea, exhausted by their burdens, were pressing for a diminution of the tribute.” In addition, Josephus (Ant. 17.204–5) describes Archelaus's effort to curry favor with his new subjects, and lists, among other demands made to him, the reduction of “yearly payments” and various sales taxes. A somewhat less clear instance is offered in Ant. 17.308, in which a delegation to Caesar opposing Archelaus's claims to the throne complains bitterly (and retrospectively) of Herod the Great's vexing taxation practices. (In this latter instance, however, the complaints have more to do with the idiosyncratic and irregular behavior of Herod himself than with the amount of tribute normally expected either from Rome or as a result of various Temple dues; further, the complaints clearly reflect those of an elite against the depredations of political authority, rather than offering any indication of destitute agricultural producers driven below subsistence by taxation; lastly, the charges are opportunistic and politically motivated.) The fact, however, that there is no evidence that taxation was numerically amplified under Roman rule suggests that the rationale behind these complaints may have been nationalistic sentiment or the ubiquitous (and understandable) desire for relief from these obligations, made expedient, in these instances, by political unrest.

⁵⁵ See, for example, Matt 6:12; 18:23–34; 20:1–15; Mark 12:1–11 pars.; Luke 12:16–20; 16:1–7; Gos. Thom. 21.

⁵⁶ Most directly, and in narrative fashion, in logion 65, but implicitly elsewhere as well.

⁵⁷ Josephus Bell. 2.427.

⁵⁸ See Goodman, State and Society, 59.

⁵⁹ It should also be conceded that benefaction must also have been a motive, either from outright altruism (which, as an individual psychological datum, cannot be measured historically or sociologically) or in order to facilitate clientage or simply in conformity with this recognized social practice. Presumably loans were sought not out of a desire to lose one's holdings, but out of desperate need. However much one is struck by the venality of the practices under discussion, we should be careful not to slander the subjects of our inquiry by confusing historical processes with individual intentions.

⁶⁰ See, for example, Select Papyri, nos. 247, 259, 277, 279, 286–87 (172–73, 200–1, 255–59, 261–65, 277–79); Westermann, William Linn, and Hasenoehrl, Elizabeth Sayre, eds., Zenon Papyri: Business Papers of the Third Century B.C. Dealing with Palestine and Egypt (2 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1934) 1. 134–43Google Scholar; 2. 83–86. Palestinian loan documents are among the papyri found at Murabba˓ât; see Benoit, Pierre, Milik, Jozef T., and Vaux, Roland de, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert II: Les Grottes de Murabba˓ât (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) 101–3Google Scholar (for an Aramaic loan contract dated around 55–56 CE), 240–41 (for a Greek loan contract dated around 171 CE).

⁶¹ The relevant material is in m. Šeb. 10.1–9 (Danby, Herbert, The Mishnah [London: Oxford University Press, 1933] 50–51Google Scholar). See also m. Git. 3.3 (Danby, The Mishnah, 311).

⁶² Benoit (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, 101–3) cites an Aramaic loan contract from about 55–56 CE; this text specifies that the debt will be repaid “even if it is the sabbatical year.”

⁶³ See m. Šeb. 10.6.

⁶⁴ For the text of this inscription see Landau, Y. H., “A Greek Inscription Found Near Hefzibah,” IEJ 16 (1966) 54–70Google Scholar, esp. 59–61 (lines 21–23): “I propose, if you approve, King,…to Kleon and Heliodoros the διοικεται respecting the villages belonging to me as property (τας ὑπ[αρχ]ουσας μοι κομαδ εγμας εγκτεσει) and hereditary tenure and respecting those which you ordered to be assigned to me.”

⁶⁵ Reed, Jonathan L., “Population Numbers, Urbanization, and Economics: Galilean Archaeology and the Historical Jesus,” SBLASP (1994) 203–19, esp. 214–15Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ See also Freyne, Sean, “Galilean Questions to Crossan's Mediterranean Jesus”(Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies,Ottawa, Canada,June 1993) 19–21Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ So Goodman, Martin, “The First Jewish Revolt: Social Conflict and the Problem of Debt,” JJS 33 (1982) 419–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁸ Sepphoris was rebuilt after its destruction by Varus in 9 CE. The refounding of the city (by Herodian loyalists) was no doubt accomplished at the expense of the villages within its immediate orbit.

⁶⁹ On this concentration of land ownership as an issue pertinent to the study of the earliest Jesus tradition, see especially Fiensy, David A., The Social History of Palestine in the Herodian Period: The Land is Mine (Lewiston: Mellen, 1991)Google Scholar; Sean Freyne, “Galilean Questions,” 19–21; Hamel, Gildas, Poverty and Charity in Roman Palestine, First Three Centuries C.E. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) 159–60Google Scholar. Fiensy (p. 178) describes the consequences of this trend thus: “Such a movement in land ownership must have cost many peasants their farm plots. The result was a class of tenant farmers and day laborers who barely stayed at the subsistence level in the best of times. The peasants who were able to hold on to their patrimony were undoubtedly burdened under taxation, farm plots that were too small, and simply the vicissitudes of life in the ancient Mediterranean world.” Hamel (p. 156–58) convincingly argues, however, that that concentration of holdings would have made little practical difference to first-century peasants; he suggests that while the existence of debt facilitated optimal extraction of surplus regardless of actual ownership, foreclosure itself would have involved little more than a change of title. In any case, regardless of any actual physical hardship implied by foreclosure, Hamel (p. 158) admits that the entire system was socially disruptive, “This onerous system of debts and the great luxury of rich landowning families in Jerusalem may have been one major factor leading to the Jewish War and the fall of the Temple. Reasons other than simply economic factors may also have been at work: perhaps a deep-seated bitterness about the way in which some members of the religious hierarchy manipulated their traditional religious authority and seemed to abandon revered customs.”

⁷⁰ By way of establishing the comparability of the Gospel of Thomas's setting with that of Q, it is important to note that the document is to be dated, like Q, sometime in the latter half of the first century. See, for example, Cameron, Other Gospels, 25; Davies, Stevan L., The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom (New York: Seabury, 1983) 16Google Scholar; Koester, , “Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels,” HTR 73 (1980) 116–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Patterson, Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 120. Although normally thought of in terms of a Syrian provenance, Patterson (Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 113–20) argues that an earlier version of the Gospel of Thomas may be associated with the environs of Jerusalem, given its ascription of such high status to James in logion 12.

⁷¹ See Gos. Thom. 78; also note the tendency to “urbanize” the villains in logia 63–65, although it is difficult to determine to what stage this tendency belongs.

⁷² On the role of the village scribe, see Goodman, State and Society, 59.

⁷³ Note also that the Gospel of Thomas is even less inclined to idealize the countryside than is Q₁. Both layers of the Gospel of Thomas go beyond a shared interest with Q₁ in legal matters to an explicit preoccupation with violence and criminality (logia 16, 21, 32, 35, 57, 65, 98, 103). This reflects a clear awareness of the actual state of affairs in rural settings. See MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 1–12.

⁷⁴ So also Davies, Christian Wisdom, 117. Bruce Lincoln (“Thomas-Gospel and Thomas-Community: A New Approach to a Familiar Text,” NovT 19 [1977] 65–76) argues that this group is stratified according to the level of spiritual initiation they have attained, and that different sayings in the gospel are directed to the different levels within this in-group. The evidence for the existence of any organized group behind the Gospel of Thomas, however, and especially of any group organized along the particular lines laid out by Lincoln, is scant.

⁷⁵ Patterson (Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 124–25) is explicitly against the assumption made by Lincoln and King that there is a “cohesive group living in community together” behind the Gospel of Thomas.

⁷⁶ Particularly in Kloppenborg, Q-Thomas Reader, 100–3; Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 158–70, 196–241; idem “Wisdom in Q and Thomas,” in Leo G. Perdue, Bernard Brandon Scott, and William J. Wiseman, eds., In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 187–221.

⁷⁷ That is, a person of rank or distinction, rather than simply a physically strong man. The term used to describe the assassination victim is , usually translated as “a powerful man.” But elsewhere when the Gospel of Thomas wishes to indicate a strong man it uses the perfectly serviceable . In Gos. Thom. 78, moreover, is juxtaposed with . Notably, it is only in the earliest layer of the Gospel of Thomas that criminals are protagonists; at the later stage, for example, the image of the housebreaker is inverted, and the reader is encouraged to identify with the person defending their house (logia 21, 103), rather than the one breaching it (logia 35; compare 98).

⁷⁸ In support of these general observations see Horsley, “Questions,” 191, 196–98; King, “Kingdom,” 52–53; Kloppenborg, John, “Symbolic Eschatology and the Apocalypticism of Q,” HTR 80 (1987) 293, 299Google Scholar; idem, “City and Wasteland: Narrative World and the Beginnings of the Sayings Gospel (Q),” Semeia 52 (1990) 152 and throughout; Koester, “Jesus the Victim,” 9–10; idem, Ancient Christian Gospels, 127, 160; Mack, “Kingdom That Didn't Come,” 612; and Theissen, “We Have Left Everything,” 60, 91–93.

⁷⁹ This point is made repeatedly with respect to wisdom and apocalyptic tendencies. See Horsley, “Questions,” 191; idem, Sociology, 110; King, “Kingdom,” 78; and, most strikingly, Smith, Jonathan Z., “Wisdom and Apocalyptic,” in Hanson, Paul D., ed., Visionaries and Their Apocalypses (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 101–20Google Scholar. Gnosticism, as yet another development out of the wisdom tradition is likewise socially comparable with apocalypticism. Indeed, Smith (“Wisdom and Apocalyptic,” 116) claims that Gnosticism was impelled by a “radical interiorization” of apocalyptic ideology. See Rudolph, Kurt, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987) 277–81Google Scholar. Rudolph relates gnostic theology to both the Jewish wisdom tradition and Jewish apocalypticism.

⁸⁰ See the comments on the intellectual character of Q, the Gospel of Thomas, and gnostic, apocalyptic, and wisdom traditions in Horsley, “Questions,” 191; Theissen, “Wandering Radicals,” 57 n. 69; Kloppenborg, Formation of Q, 319–20; Mack, “Kingdom That Didn't Come,” 616; Rudolph, Gnosis, 292; Davies, Stevan L., “The Christology and Protology of the Gospel of Thomas,” JBL 111 (1992) 665, 682Google Scholar. Note that both Q and Thomas seem to have developed increasing intellectual sophistication.

⁸¹ See King, “Kingdom,” 75–78; Kloppenborg, “Symbolic Eschatology,” 305–6; Mack, “Kingdom That Didn't Come,” 617, 624, 626; Patterson, Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 202, 204–5; Rudolph, Gnosis, 291; Theissen, “Wandering Radicals”; and idem, “We Have Left Everything,” 93.

⁸² See King, “Kingdom,” 62, 69–71; Kloppenborg, “Symbolic Eschatology,” 305; Koester, “Jesus the Victim,” 9; and Patterson, Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 200.

⁸³ See, for example, Gos. Thom. 17, 23, 28, 77; Q 13:34–35.

⁸⁴ Gos. Thom. 101b, 105; Q 11:49–51.

⁸⁵ See esp. Q 13:34–35 and Gos. Thom. 28; logion 23 also uses a wisdom-based elitism to rationalize the group's marginality.

⁸⁶ As argued above, pp. 489–91.

⁸⁷ See esp. Gos. Thom. 27–28, 56, 80, 87, 110, 112.

⁸⁸ See Kloppenborg, “Literary Convention,” 90–91: “At this formative stage, the Q people evince some of the characteristics of liminal situations that produce communitas: the fictive use of family language (Q 6:41–42; 17:3) and the corresponding devaluation of ordinary kinship ties (14:26), and the use of inversionary language…. At this stage an alternate community has coalesced but social boundaries are as yet quite weak.” See also Mack, Burton L., The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco: Harper, 1993) 120–30Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ See the much milder rebuke in Gos. Thom. 39.