¹ This argument is made, for example, by Blomberg, Craig L., “Tradition and Redaction in the Parables of the Gospel of Thomas,” in Wenham, David, ed., The Jesus Tradition outside the Gospels (Gospel Perspectives 5; Sheffield: JSOT, 1985) 177–205Google Scholar; and Snodgrass, Klyne R., “The Gospel of Thomas: A Secondary Gospel,” SecCent 7 (1989–90) 19–38Google Scholar. For a relatively complete listing and overview of works on both sides of the question of the dependence or independence of the Gospel of Thomas in relation to the canon, see Fallon, Francis T. and Cameron, Ron, “The Gospel of Thomas: A Forschungsbericht and Analysis,” ANRW 2. 25/6 (1988) 4195–4251Google Scholar; and Riley, Gregory J., “The Gospel of Thomas in Recent Research,” in Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 2 (1994) 227–52Google Scholar.

² Most commentators give no explanation for the term and point only to the interesting text critical problems that surround it (see next note). Daniel Gershenson and Gilles Quispel (“Meristae,” VC 12 [1958] 23–25), however, think it a translation of Hebrew קלח or Aramaic בלפ, both meaning “to divide,” and see a pun on “divider (of inheritance)” and “divider (of opinion)” = “sectarian”; J. Duncan M. Derrett suggests that the term is a translation of the Hebrew רזוג “one who cuts” in the sense of “one who makes a decree” like Moses or Solomon (“The Rich Fool: A Parable of Jesus concerning Inheritance,” HeyJ 18 [1977] 133–34).

³ For a brief but authoritative treatment of the text critical variations, see Metzger, Bruce, A Textual Commentary on the New Testament (London/New York: United Bible Societies, 1971) 160Google Scholar. By far the most comprehensive and far-ranging treatment is that of Baarda, Tjitze, “Luke 12:13–14: Text and Transmission from Marcion to Augustine,” in Heldermann, Jan and Noorda, Sijbolt J., eds., Early Transmission of Words of Jesus: Thomas, Tatian and the Text of the New Testament (Amsterdam: VU/Uitgeverij, 1983) 117–72Google Scholar.

⁴ Reference to the disciple as the “single, unified one” (Gos. Thom. 4, 22, 23), the “solitary, unique one” (Greek μοναχός: Gos. Thom. 16, 49, 75); compare Gos. Thom. 106: “When you make the two one”; also Gos. Thom. 61: “if [the disciple] is divided, he will be filled with darkness.”

⁵ Baarda (“Luke 12:13–14,” 151), in his excellent study of the passage, understands why the saying in Thomas should have the term “divider” for reasons similar to those developed here, yet claims that Thomas has abbreviated Luke's version. He gives no explanation for the occurrence of the term in Luke. It was meditation on that issue that gave rise to the present essay.

⁶ Tim Schramm sees the whole passage as a combination by Luke of Markan material (5:36–38) and a non-Markan source (Luke 5:39) with no logical connection to its Lukan context (Der Markus-Stoff bei Lucas: Ein literarkritische und redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung [SNTSMS 14; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971” 105–11). Joachim Jeremias finds the contradiction occasioned by the addition of the verse “unfortunate” and due merely to catchword association with the phrase “new wine” (The Parables of Jesus [rev. ed.; trans. Samuel H. Hooke; London: SCM, 1963] 104).

⁷ Alistair Kee has aptly stated that “the ending which Luke adds to his account.… destroys the meaning of the parable on any interpretation” (“The Old Coat and the New Wine,” Nov T 12 [1970] 13). Yet a number of ingenious explanations have been invented for the presence of the verse. For example, Jacques Dupont sees it as excluding all compromise with the alternatives of the entire preceding chapter (“Vin vieux, vin nouveau (Luc 5,39),” CBQ 25 [1963] 286–304). For Danker, Frederick W., “tastes are difficult to change. One prefers that to which one has become accustomed. … [T]hose Pharisees who object to Jesus' conduct. … should be content with their adherence to tradition” (Jesus and the New Age: A Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988] 129)Google Scholar. Joseph A. Fitzmyer sees that it should say its opposite and makes it do so by understanding it as “a wry comment on the effect that clinging to the old has on those who have closed their minds. ” [B]y its irony the saying carries just the opposite meaning” (The Gospel according to Luke (1–IX) [AB 28; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981] 602).

⁸ R. S. Good uses Luke 5:39 to reinterpret the whole of the Luke's Gospel and finds that Jesus' purpose in Luke is really recovery of the old original intention of God (“Jesus, Protagonist of the Old, Lk 5: 33–39,” NovT25 [1983] 19–36). This is extremely difficult in Luke, but it is quite close to the point of the teachings of Jesus in Thomas Christianity; compare Gos. Thom. 18: “Where the beginning is, there shall be the end. Blessed is he who shall stand at the beginning, and he shall know the end and shall not taste death.” On Thomas as recommending a “restorative return to the time of primordial mythic origins,” see Davies, Stevan, “The Christology and Protology of the Gospel of Thomas,” JBL 111 (1992) 674Google Scholar.

⁹ John Dominic Crossan outlines four stages in the evolution of the saying: (1) a pre-Markan version; (2) Mark's version; (3) Thomas's version; (4) Luke's version (In Fragments: The Aphorisms of Jesus [San Francisco: Harper, 1983] 124–27). I do not think, as this evolutionary scheme might imply (though Crossan does not), that Thomas's version is derived from Mark's written Gospel, but that both Mark and Thomas inherited the saying from pre-Markan tradition (Crossan's stage one); Luke encountered both redacted versions, from which he produced his combination.