Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship Between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron (Academia Biblica, 5) [Hardcover]

Nicholas Perrin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 9004127100 | ISBN-13: 978-9004127104 | Publication Date: January 2003

The relationship between the Coptic "Gospel of Thomas" and the synoptic gospels has been a matter of long-standing debate. Some maintain that the sayings of Jesus in Thomas reflect a line of transmission independent of the synoptic tradition; others contend that the Coptic collection is finally a reworking of the Greek synoptic gospels. This book proposes a third possibility: namely, that the "Gospel of Thomas" depends on a second-century Syriac gospel harmony, Tatian's "Diatessaron," written in 175 C.E. Following a linguistic analysis of Thomas, the author argues that the Coptic collection is actually a translation of a unified Syriac text which at places followed the wording and sequence of the "Diatessaron," The book argues for a late second-century C.E. dating of Thomas, rules out Thomas as a meaningful source for Historical Jesus research, and suggests possible links between Thomas and other mystical literature of the ancient near east. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org).

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About the Author

Nicholas Perrin, Ph.D. in Biblical Studies (2001), Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is Researcher for the Canon Theologian of the Westminster Abbey in London, England.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9004127100
• ISBN-13: 978-9004127104
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,052,863 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Lucid Challenge to the Status Quo, June 18, 2003

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Stephen C. Carlson (Springfield, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship Between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron (Academia Biblica (Society of Biblical Literature) (Paper)) (Paperback)

Perrin makes a powerful case that the Gospel of Thomas was originally written in an eastern Aramaic dialect, and, somewhat less persuasively, that it is dependent on a gospel harmony written in 173 A.D. Both conclusions challenge the premises of the Jesus Seminar and other recent scholars that Thomas was originally written in Greek and predates the canonical Gospels. Although intended for academic audiences, Perrin's book is surprisingly accessible to non-specialists and well-educated laymen.

The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus contained in a 4th century Coptic manuscript that came to light in 1948. In addition, Thomas is attested in three Greek fragments that were discovered in 1898 and dated to the 2nd century. About half of its sayings parallel those in the New Testament, but others are quite different. Although scholars initially assigned the original composition of Thomas to the early-to-mid 2nd century, a recent trend in certain scholarly circles is to situate Thomas as early as 50 A.D., making it one of the earliest sources for early Christianity and the historical Jesus. As a result, Thomas has become very important in recent times.

Perrin approaches Thomas from a different angle, by concentrating on its original language of composition and using that to assess Thomas's origin. He makes a powerful case that Thomas was originally written in Syriac, an eastern dialect of Aramaic (Jesus spoke a western dialect). Perrin begins by surveying scholarship on Thomas's language of composition and notes several places where certain oddities in Thomas can be readily explained by an Aramaic or Syriac intermediary. Building on the observation that Thomas appears to be organized by catchwords (similarly sounding words that link one saying to the next), Perrin next investigates whether each saying can be connected by Syriac catchwords. He finds that Thomas has 502 potential catchwords in Syriac, but only 263 in Greek and 269 in Coptic. In addition, all but three of the sayings can be linked by a Syriac catchword to its neighboring sayings, and some of the repeated catchwords are based on puns that only work in Syriac. Perrin's case is compelling and fits very neatly with other scholars' findings that Thomas reflects an eastern Syrian provenance.

Perrin's second point, that Thomas is dependent on Tatian's Diatessaron, is less thoroughly established. Unfortunately, Perrin did not do a detailed comparison of each saying in Thomas with corresponding passages in the Diatessaron. Rather, Perrin argued that Thomas must have had written sources and the Diatessaron, as the first known source of Gospel tradition in Syriac, is the best candidate to be one of those sources. Although this argument is very suggestive and Perrin did point out a few contacts in Thomas with the Diatessaron in his initial survey, a full judgment on this issue must be withheld until the detailed comparison is made.

Those seriously interested in the Gospel of Thomas will find Perrin's book intriguing and thought-provoking. Knowledge of Syriac is not necessary to follow his arguments.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Clues to a Syriac Origin in the Language of the Gospel of Thomas., January 8, 2010

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mirasreviews (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship Between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron (Academia Biblica (Society of Biblical Literature) (Paper)) (Paperback)

In "Thomas and Tatian", Nicholas Perrin sets out to prove four hypotheses whose cumulative effect would lead one to conclude that the Gospel of Thomas had Tatian's Diatessaron as its primary source and therefore must be dated between 170 and 200 AD. Perrin is not the first to draw a connection between the Gospel of Thomas (GT) and the Diatessaron or the first to claim that GT was originally composed in Syriac, but he undertakes a more thorough examination of the issue than has been done in the past. The four points which he proposes to demonstrate are:

(1) GT was originally written in Syriac. (2) The GT text is unified, not a disjointed list of sayings. (3) The Syriac original was based primarily on written, not oral, sources. (4) The primary source was Tatian's Diatessaron. Scholarship of the Gospel of Thomas has tended to arrive at two possibilities regarding its origins: Thomas is either dependent upon the synoptic gospels or independent of them. Perrin sees a third possibility: Thomas is indirectly dependent upon the synoptic gospels, through a semitic intermediate document, which he believes to be the Diatessaron. After providing the reader with a summary of scholarship that bears upon his thesis, he lays out his evidence.

First, Perrin argues for a Syriac original by demonstrating that differences between the synoptic gospels and GT can often be resolved by postulating a Syriac substratum. Second, he analyzes GT for catchwords ("a catchword is any word which can be semantically, etymologically, or phonologically associated with another word found in an adjacent logion"). He's looking for rhymes and puns. Perrin has constructed a table of the text of GT that compares English translation to the (alleged) catchwords in Coptic and in their conjectured equivalents in Greek and Syriac. He concludes that there are twice as many catchwords in Syriac than in Greek or Coptic, supporting a Syriac origin. Third, he looks at variants that are unique to Thomas in light of Syriac catchwords.

The obvious conclusion, if Perrin has correctly identified catchwords, is that GT was composed by a single author at a particular point in time, and that author manipulated the text for stylistic purposes. It would also explain why the order of the sayings in GT sometimes departs from that of the synoptic gospels. But does this mean that the Syriac source was necessarily the Diatessaron? Perrin thinks it does, as the Diatessaron is the only known source of the synoptic tradition in Syriac at that time. I was not entirely convinced by that last step, but the analysis of catchwords in fascinating. I read no Syriac so cannot judge the plausibility of the catchwords for myself, but I think that anyone interested in the Gospel of Thomas will want to consider Perrin's theory.